Today I am mostly listening to Moondance by Van Morrison which I bought on eBay for £2.74 including postage. When this sort of thing happens I am tempted to leave feedback along the lines; “Excellent seller, fast despatch, but rubbish taste in music.” How could anyone have parted with this piece of sublime loveliness for £2.74? It’s not quite Astral Weeks but it is rather special.
I have been writing, writing and um, writing some more. I spoke to my paternal Granny, which is always good impetus. She’s okay just now, doing quite well in fact. Today was the first time I’ve called up in about six months and it sounded like she had been awake before the phone rang. Even still, I have this fear that she might die before I finish the thing. She won’t much approve of what I’ve written - especially on the subject of religion in general and Catholicism in particular - and she won’t like all the swearing and sexual references. But she will enjoy reading it nevertheless and she has been such a support and encouragement to me. Less conditionally so than my folks.
My maternal grandfather would have been similarly delighted. He was a builder who had bookshelves full of Hemingway and D H Lawrence. He also wrote really bad poetry (I mean, terrifically bad poetry), mostly about family events. Rosie’s GCSE results, my uncle’s new car. He wrote a poem accusing me of stealing his favourite gnome, although in truth I was only one among several conspirators. And he always had somewhat exaggerated faith in my abilities. My paternal Granny recounts that during the last conversation they shared, he declared that I would be the next female prime-minister.
Talking of Rosie’s GCSE results (I wasn’t really, was I?), I thought I should share with you the fact that my sister’s GCSE Music Group got a 100% A-C pass rate. She was the only teacher in the school to achieve this – the overall average was only 55%. So that’s excellent, really, isn’t it? I'd say it's bloody marvellous.
Sleep is still a bit dodgy, but last I moved into the living room around five and watched the fish. Klutz and Schmuck were doing their fishy love dance and in the half-light looked like a ball of black flame swirling about. Lucky sat in a corner of the tank facing the other way, looking absolutely mortified at his parents’ behaviour.
Since I haven’t mentioned the fish in ages, you should be reminded that Klutz and Schmuck are six-year-old black moors and Lucky is the miracle that is their offspring. Miracle because for the first five years Klutz and Schmuck paid no attention to one another; they ate and they grew fat. They grew so fat that they needed a bigger tank, at which point they became sexual beings and started chasing one another around and laying eggs. However, every time they laid eggs, they would eat them all up. Once in a while you’d see the odd fry, whose egg they’d missed, but they it would get swallowed up within a day or two. Lucky was the one that got away. It took him about four months to get to a size where he is too big for them to gobble; every time you looked up at the tank you were sure he was about to get caught. Now six months old, he is still about a sixth of the size of either of his folks but he can now boldly swim beside them.He is not so fancy looking as his parents, but I think he is significantly more intelligent.
Changing the subject completely once again, if anyone has a genuine interest in forensic pathology and the like, check out the Virtual Autopsy at the University of Leicester. Be warned; this is not for the faint hearted or those who have eaten in the last hour, but an interesting resource. I have learnt more useless information in the course of researching my book that I learnt in ten years at school.
Today I cleared out the contents of my handbags. Having a bit of a morbid imagination, when I do this sort of thing I often wonder what they’d think if I disappeared under mysterious circumstances and started looking for clues in my belongings. When I say things like this out loud, [...] tends to ask me “What planet are you on?”
Like last week when I received a tape from Amelia. The tape was completely unmarked and when I tipped it out of the jiffy-bag the accompanying card did not fall out. So for a moment I thought, “Shit. Someone’s sent me a completely unmarked tape and I have no way of knowing who it is until I listen to it. Is one of my friends or associates in deep trouble, recorded evidence of some international outrage and arranged for it to be sent to me in case of their death or capture? If I stick it in the machine will it be some familiar voice saying, “By the time you hear this, I’ll be dead…”? Or “Your mission, if you chose to accept it…”? Or am I being stalked and someone’s sent me a tape of heavy breathing?”
This is the way my imagination works. And when I vocalise this [...] says, “What planet are you on?”
Anyway, I thought I would bear my soul, or to be more accurate the contents of my handbags to you, so you can play at being a forensic psychologist attempting to profile me;
1 black polyester wallet with credit cards etc and about thirty pounds cash
1 set of keys, four of which I don’t know what they belong to. All attached to
1 penknife (Celtic knot-work, two blades)
1 pencil sharpener
1 blunt pencil with the name Grace on it
1 fortune cookie fortune “You are talented in many ways”
1 theatre ticket Stranges On A Train 29/10/04
1 3m/10ft tape measure
1 clothes peg
1 Blue Badge
1 hair elastic
1 chewable toothbrush
1 book Waterstones vouchers, expired 30/04/04
1 Crisis Call leaflet
1 watch with abalone face and leather strap
1 psychiatric referral letter
1 Psychological Services Appointment Card
1 Physiotherapy Appointment Card
1 DWP letter regarding changes in my DLA
1 mirror with a detail from Surprised by Henri Rousseau on the back
1 “Anti-shine” pressed powder
1 map of York
1 yoyo (fluorescent green)
1 liquorice blackcurrant
1 comb (black)
1 half-full bottle bubble-blowing liquid complete with hoop
1 condom
2 Shopmobility Membership cards (Ipswich & Bury St. Edmunds)
2 lipsalves (1 strawberry, 1 eucalyptus)
2 notebooks, containing shopping and things-to-do lists, directions, bad poetry, cartoons, notes on Wargaming rules, notes on guitar tabs and notes relating to my novel
2 Brufen Retard tablets 800mg
2 dihydrocodeine tablets
3 sherbet lemons
3 tampons
3 ballpoint pens
4 teabags (3 x Red Bush, 1 x ordinary)
5 earrings (of which there is one pair)
6 hair pins
6 ibuprofen
7 stamps, 1st Class
8 Tramacet tablets
17 stamps, 2nd Class
20 Aspirin
42 co-codamol tablets (three different strengths from 8/500 to 30/500, some in effervescent form)
£2.73 in loose change
Plus half an acre of Rainforest’s worth of tissues and miscellaneous receipts – everything from earplugs through petrol to wheelchair parts.
So what does all this say about me? And did I commit the murder?
That bag at the top's not mine, by the way. Just a bag. You can buy it from Accessorize for £25 if you like it.
Had yet another terrible night. Actually, it wasn’t too distressing once I finally gave up and lay listening to eleven out of fifteen episodes of Jaqueline Susann’s Valley of The Dolls which is the Woman’s Hour Drama just now on Radio 4. It is not great, but it’s good to familiarise oneself with the gist of such an iconic text. However rather like Wuthering Heights, the song is better than the book. I mean the Dionne Warwick’s Theme from The Valley of The Dolls as opposed to the Billy Idol/ Generation X song which is um, perhaps only as good as the book.
I realise I have just committed cultural heresy by suggesting that Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights is superior to the Emily Brontë novel, but frankly, it is. The book is beautifully written, but it is an ordeal. There’s darkness in novels, but then there’s such unrelenting darkness than your eyes ache with the strain. Whereas the song is fantastic and only takes four minutes and twenty-nine seconds to get through.
Since I only had about three hours of proper sleep (out of about six of lying in the dark with my eyes closed), I can’t imagine I’ll be doing much today. I think it is more my dysfunctioning brain than my pain, as I keep getting stuck in that space between dreams and being awake. Not like a hallucination, but like a profound confusion. I get quite scared and make a scramble for consciousness, and then once awake I am well and truly awake. I’m exhausted so I try to get back to sleep, but I’m on edge and it is at this point that I notice how much pain I’m in, which without visual or aural stimulation is pretty all-consuming. It would be if it was a bad itch in those circumstances.
The only thing I'm really bothered about is that I had my physiotherapy/ acupuncture appointment today which I had apprehensions about and would rather have got over and done with. As it is, I've had to cancel and rebook for next week.
I am having a hard time today, so I am distracting myself by pondering absolute trivia. Like yoghurt. [...] bought me home a pack of yoghurt with four flavours; strawberry, apricot, fig and rhubard. Fig flavour yoghurt? Rhubard?!! I should inform you that that rhubard flavour yoghurt does not taste very much like rhubard because if it did, it really wouldn't work. As it is it tastes of vanilla with a bit of a tart edge. But who sat down in the office (at Danone) and thought, "Hmm, rhubard - an excellent flavour for a yoghurt!" And fig? Is this just a way of reiterating that yoghurt is good for you, by making it taste vaguely unpleasant?
That was the deepest thought I had today. Indicative of my state I think.
You may observe that there have been a number of recent additions to my Favourite Blogs list. These include my mate Becca at Comprehension Dawns and Marmite Boy at Marmite Boy On Toast who are regular Ouchers just getting into this blogger lark. Katya at Broken Clay is another disabled blogger who I've meant to add to this list for an age.
By the way, all the bloggers on my blog list are disabled. This was a coincidence initially, but since then I have exercised a policy of positive discrimination. That having said, they are blogs I do actually consider worth reading - it's not purely out of sympathy for the poor crippled bastards.
On the subject of which, a blog which deserves an extra-special mention is The Perorations of Lady Bracknell (yeah, I keep thinking perforations as well) which is an excellent new blog from everyone's favourite literary battle-axe. It is very very good, do go check it out.
If you're up for something more sombre and beautiful check out today's entry at Did I Miss Something?
I was still feeling pretty low when I got up this morning. I had a night full of nonsense dreams. Then I got round to doing something I meant to do a few days ago and now I’ve gone all mushy.
I belong to a support group for people with my condition. I don’t get a great deal out of it to be honest, but I like to keep my finger on the pulse. The one scheme I am involved with is the “Buddy Scheme” whereby people who are able have a one-way pen-friend correspondences with those who are severely affected and unable to write. I did this in my late teens with a girl who has become good friends with me and I wanted to do it again.
Somehow I wound up with two “Buddies” by accident. One sends me short letters every now and then, but another I have been writing to since around Easter time without having heard a thing. It is quite difficult to write to someone, virtually every week, who you know nearly nothing about. You wonder whether your letters are even being read and if they are, whether you might have been paired with someone who really doesn’t like what you’ve got to say.
Then this week I got a tape in the post and this morning I got round to listening to it.
My friend Amelia recorded this tape one sentence at a time and there’s only about four or five minutes worth. She describes how, when I first started writing she was in a very bad way. After four weeks in hospital she came home and was stuck in a darkened room, having to wear earplugs all the time, unable to speak or anything. So, she says, feeling like she was making a friend at this time meant a great deal to her.
Now she’s doing better, as she can actually speak. This week she managed to stand up for the first time and felt seven foot tall. She says that I shouldn’t worry about how long the book takes me.
I hate to say this about a fellow disabled person, but by God; the lady is an inspiration! And it’s especially humbling since throughout most of the tape she’s thanking me for everything I have done. What did I do? I ramble on in letters to her as I ramble on everywhere else. Still, I don’t feel so useless this morning, except for the fact that earlier I was feeling really crap about my life when really it’s not nearly so bad as it might be.
One of the chief reasons for keeping a blog is to get stuff out of my system, so you'll just have to ignore me while I get all self-indulgent and not for the first time.
In fairness, I am more tired than usual. I had a good ten hours sleep, but if felt more like two. Also I had run out of Earl Grey Teabags. In fact, horror or horrors, I can no longer get Tesco's Finest Earl Grey Teabags on-line. These are the best Earl Grey Teabags ever. They make Twinings taste like Co-Op Red Label. I have still have some Rose Pouchong Teabags left, but I think I'm more addicted to the Bergamot than the caffeine.
Anyway, the big issue isn't fatigue. I've had a couple of days solid writing (such as I ever manage anything solidly) and already my confidence is sinking. I get frustrated and my characters start swearing at each other and at me. Even now, so late in the day, one of them just did something completely unexpected. I was so angry with him, but really it does make sense and elliminates what was really a rather clumsy chain of events.
I also start worrying about all kinds of little things which become much bigger. Like for example, I have my token crip and I start to worry in one chapter about the response of another character to his crippiness; is that too strong? Is that too weak? Then I begin to worry about my entire presentation of disability, if entirely incidental to the plot. Then I begin to worry about all my characters generally and the plot and my ability to use the English language. And the whole thing gets quickly out of control.
Once one little demon gets in, he opens the door to a slightly larger demon who in turn can open the door to even bigger ones and so on. Pretty soon my head is full of demons (see right).
After all, I've never done anything my whole life.
What kind of statement is that? Oh God, I really ought to get myself some coffee or something. But it does take a lot of getting over, this whole void of achievement and despite my having sailed through the recent anniversary of my being ill, I am now thinking, "Shit, I'll be 25 in three months and three weeks time and I haven't achieved anything yet. I've never had a job. I've still only got three GCSEs to my name."
It is probably just today. Trouble is, I was just going to write, "and anyway, I'll probably have finished my book before my birthday" but given my past history of unmet deadlines I really ought to stop saying stuff like that.
I'll shut up now.
I'm writing again, thank God.
That is all I have to say on the matter.
Today I am mostly listening to Moondance by Van Morrison which I bought on eBay for £2.74 including postage. When this sort of thing happens I am tempted to leave feedback along the lines; “Excellent seller, fast despatch, but rubbish taste in music.” How could anyone have parted with this piece of sublime loveliness for £2.74? It’s not quite Astral Weeks but it is rather special.
