Beat that, Beyonce

Beyonce, if you need a perfect life - because, let's face it, yours isn't quite good enough - then we can swap places, and you can have mine.

Grit's life, more or less as she went about her business and texted to a variety of friends and family.

Oh! #myperfectday.

> Are you still sick? I just rammed the car into a metal bar, dented the door, and smashed off the trim.

> I have bought a bin.

> I will get potatoes from Lidl.

> Of course I drove back and picked up the trim. The garage can glue it back on.

> I bet I can get the dent out with a hammer.

> I also smashed the sidelight. I hope you do not want peas.

> I am at the dentist.

> Shark hates me.

> Does that mean we do not have to pay the £500 fine?

> Yes, I am taking her climbing. I have driven her up the wall. HAHAHAHA.

> We are going to A&E.

> We are coming home. He is malingering. They say clear off until you are dying.

> Thank you. Please say nothing to my advanced driving instructor.

3 Negatives, 3 Positives

1. Planning blight.
What are you doing next Tuesday? Living with cancer treatment turns our calender into a tombola. Pick a date. I might be able to leave the house for more than one hour. Or not. We might be at hospital. I might be recovering from 2 hours sleep after a night spent on a plastic chair in Accident and Emergency. We can't plan next Tuesday like we can't plan a holiday or secure a day trip.

2. Income drop. Sudden, severe, scary.
The accountant has called Dig's career path, adventurous. As in, we work on our wits and make an income from what we can. So far, twenty years on, it worked! But our client hears that word, cancer, and the income of 25k drops to 12k overnight. Maybe it will disappear altogether. Say what? Disasters come in threes? The icing on the cake will be rep from the VAT office come round again to scrutinise the accounts because we have no invoices going out.

3. Increased expenditure in unexpected areas.
Who knew I would need to buy a plastic sleeve? And another one! Thanks to the first being thrown away by accident. Um, maybe because it looks like a plastic bag with a string at one end. And the hospital car parking! Parking the car at the oncology ward, I whisper my gratitude to those people who fought to get free car parking for cancer patients. If it were not for you, my last and treasured one hundred pounds would vanish in a trice.

1. Gratitudes.
I can chronicle the mood swings, tears and temper tantrums, the sleeplessness, terrors, anxieties, hiccups and nausea, and I will. All with the usual and pervasive tone of woe and mortality. But we're still laughing, sitting together round the dinner table, getting jobs done and notching up big successes. Like the children's playhouse, end of garden, now project-planned for conversion into Squirrel's writing shed. Looking forward to that summer clear out, paint from scrapstore, freecycle, old desk installed with home-made bookcases. Ta-da!

2. The people we meet.
People who live another day, ring bells, clap, laugh, tell stories, find beauty in the everyday, count blessings, chase butterflies, watch birds, ask how are things, forgive me, say hello, and simply smile, when I am searching in my heart for the tiniest thing to be glad about.

3. Family and friends.
People, I love you for being so warm and happy to share your thoughts for us. The only downside to this is that I am usually very bad about keeping you updated. I keep resolving to do so on the blog. (Which I know I will do badly.)

My 2 and 3 there, they sound the same. Maybe they are enormous positives, growing beyond numbers.

It's not all cancercancercancer

No, indeed. Life is not all cancer. Some of it is theatre! Not theatre of the operating kind, but of the dramatic and fateful variety. Tales of ne'er-do-wells, villains and bad choices, fortunate findings, unhappy women and unhappy endings. Ah, the theatre! Love of my life!

Example: Hedda Gabler. The National touring performance. Now, not coming to a theatre near you (unless you're at this moment in Dublin). We travelled to see this in Northampton. Except we didn't see it. Someone needed an emergency ambulance half way through, and the performance was cancelled. We tried to see it again in Milton Keynes last week. When there was snow. The performance was cancelled to stop us travelling to the theatre. A fact I found out, after I'd travelled to the theatre with a car load of ticket holders.

Example: The Birthday Party. Pintery offerings at the old comedy theatre, London. Plot: Disturbing happenings in a front room. Glad it isn't my front room, although it sets the nerve endings a-tingling, simply by knowing that everything chilling and disturbing happening in your front room is also very ordinary. Would you like a cup of tea with your toast?

Example: Passage to India. Northampton. I didn't go. I gave up my ticket to the Travelling Aunty who had a jolly good evening out with the gritlets. The report back was, 'like the book except on a stage'.

Example: Imperium. RSC, Stratford. Brilliant. I loved every minute of it, this study of Cicero's life, played wonderfully by Richard McCabe, and taken in great gulps over two Saturdays. The construction of the episodes, by zooming in on the players entering Cicero's life, made for unputdownable theatre. I particularly thrilled at Caesar, thoroughly unctuous, played like a horror show that you can't stop watching. I could watch it all again.

Example: Twelfth Night. RSC Live/Cineworld screening. Strangely, I didn't enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed other interpretations of this play, although Adrian Edmonson is a treat to watch. Here, too much emphasis on Victorian singalongs for my liking. But, having paid a dollop and a half for sets like that, I don't suppose you can do much else but use them to put on a musical.

Example: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Young Vic/NT Live. (Not Live at All / Encore screening.) I don't think I even tried to get tickets for this live. Sienna Miller without her clothes on? I don't have that amount of money. Thank goodness then, for the Encore screenings, suited for hand-to-mouth merchants like me. All the cast were excellent. The set was perfect. Costumes, sound, lighting, the lot, an example of great professional theatre.

Not theatre, but like it: Knickerdrawer Notebooks, stitched with story in mind. Every book is a book to play with: story, drama, character and, um, theatre. As soon as you hold one of these in your hands, it's a world waiting to be transformed.

(I have to do some marketing somewhere. This weekend, Central Milton Keynes, Stall 13. Vintage and Handmade Show. Come and see me and let's talk drama.)

37.5

We have a conversation, all day, everyday. It is, basically, the same conversation, with minor variations. It goes something like this:

Have you taken it?
[Beep]
What is it?
37.1

What is it now?
[Beep]
37.2

Take it again.
[Beep]
What is it?
37.4

[Beep]
What is it?
37.3
Perhaps it'll go down.

What is it now?
[Beep]
37.2

What is it?
[Beep]
37.5
Right. Ring the hospital.
No. I'll take it again.
[Beep]
What is it?
37.5
They said 38.
They did not.
They did.
Take it again.
37.3

This conversation goes on, and on, and sometimes I ache with the immobility of it, the confinement of it: this is a conversation I cannot leave. I am trapped by it, listening for those numbers to rise, or to fall. By their rising or falling, my actions are decided.

At a temperature reading of 36.6, when the ear thermometer can be laid to one side, there is no conversation needed. I can leave the room, go back to work, drink tea, pop out for milk, muse about the evening.

But as the thermometer beeps, 37.1, I am edgy, watchful, cautious.

At 37.5 I am pacing about the room. The listing of numbers, like a rehearsal, a bouncing of sounds back and forth to each other, this ordeal is in full swing, and we cannot stop.

37.5. 37.6. 37.5. 37.4. 37.7.

On, and on, it goes. At night I sleep in my clothes in case the numbers stop, which they must do, at 38.0.

Day, or night, morning or evening. It doesn't matter. At 38.0, a different set of actions begin. I pick up the hospital bag and wrap scarves around my husband. I run and fetch the car, and order him to wait in the hall and not go back to settle in his office in his stubborn, stubborn way. Fifteen minutes later, I drop him at the Accident and Emergency unit which is the entry point to fluids, drips, bags, wires, tests and staying by his side until we know he will be rattled away on a trolley-bed to an isolation room in a ward where I can visit tomorrow.

These numbers define my life. They are neutropenia. And Dig is in hospital, again.

Chemo Hiccups

Day 2 and the bed is shaking.

At 3am, this reminds me of a once-upon-a-time state. The early days when we couldn't keep our hands off each other. Oh how I wish those days back again! Surely there's nothing to stop those wondrous days returning! Apart from age, exhaustion, children, absence, separations, grief, loss, broken hearts, surgeries, sprains, strains, injuries and arthritis.

But here, in this mocking echo, the bed is shaking. With great heaving gallops. But I know no pleasure at all in this rhythmic shudder. Because these are the chemo hiccups.

They should be funny. Because hiccups are funny. They make the wearer jump, add surprise to any sentence, and give the most serious scholar the air of an unintentional buffoon.

As the bed shakes, I try to find the chemo hiccups amusing. I really do. But truth is, they are wearisome, troublesome jolts that show no signs of stopping whether it be midnight, 3am, or alarm-clock time.

Cold water and surprises are no remedy. My never-fail recipe (sip water through a straw with your fingers in your ears) works not one bit. Sipping hot milk, nada. Standing on one foot, upside down, both eyes closed, deep breath, key down the underpants, nothing works. After several days, and nights, Dig's diaphragm is painful, his muscles are exhausted, and I haven't slept a full night since last Tuesday.

Don't send me remedies. These hiccups originate not in an unsettled stomach or unbalanced airways, but from the vagus nerves, running neck to colon, shocked from the poison that floods Dig's system. I console myself. We are reassured by the Macmillan nurses. After a few days, the hiccups will subside. Medications are available for reflux, aches, muscle spasms and troublesome breathing. Not so readily available is remedy for broken heart, or grief.

Counting the days

Before this started, I was already in a bad way with time.

Time was ever a tricksy sun-and-moon arrangement that bewildered me. In my head I try to hold on to it: a single moment, a hand clasp, a kiss, an arrangement of flowers, and I look up to find the day has passed and the month is ripped from the calender.

I have often thought myself lucky for my inabilities with clocks. It creates a detachment, for here are moments of timelessness when I can wonder, and dream. I have been fortunate. To live outside of set hours is to be open to spontaneity, to distractions, diversions, and wanderings.

But now, now, I live to a different rhythm. I live in Cancer Time. I have lost the reminders of Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. That patacake rhythm that clapped me through the weeks and placed some structure round my wanderings. Now I live with numbers to mark the days. 1. 2. 3. They tell me what to do.

I count them out. Write them in pen to my diary. 1drip. 2pump. 3flush. 4. 5. 6. *Beware 7-12.* 13. 14blood.

The numbers are important, because they dictate my actions, outline my freedoms, define my behaviours.

This is how I know them.

1. I drive Dig to the hospital and leave him in the Oncology Ward where he is hooked into a plastic tube delivering a Chemotherapy drug. The drug enters his arm through a line which people refer to as a picc line. He is marked; pin-pricked. As if a map of his anatomy is pin-pointed to the exact location where this drug must enter. A fine line tracks into his body, from the outside to the inside; plastic to flesh; colourless liquid to living, breathing human. He stays there all day.

2. He is at home with a small bottle and tube through the day. He sleeps two nights with a small bottle by the bed. This is easier than I expected. At first, I thought I couldn't hold him through the night, but we have found we can place the small plastic bottle to one side to hold one another.

3. I drive Dig back to the hospital for the bottle and tube to be removed, and his arm cleaned. This is a process which the nurses call flushed. It is a word like a reward. We won. Dig is demob happy, but will be tired, and sensitive to cold, so Day 3 means that I turn the heating up and keep the rooms at coddling temperature. I overheat. I sometimes try and fool him, and slide the thermostat dial down a notch or two, but his body shivers, and back up to 20 that number will go.

4 to 6. We have learned this. Go out. Go to the cinema. Go to the shops. Walk, if that's possible, along the road and back again. Work. Answer emails. Write a little. Read a book. Be distracted by ordinary things. These are the pleasure days.

7 to 12. The chemotherapy drug works by killing what it can, including the body's ability to fight infection and keep the body safe. A sign that infection is taking hold is a rising body temperature. If Dig's temperature reaches 38, I leave a note for the children and pick up the bags I've packed. We spend the night in the Emergency unit. After 4 hours, Dig is given a place to lie down. Blood tests are taken and fluids are given. I doze on 2 chairs pushed together. By 5am we know whether Dig is coming home, or staying in the hospital for 3, maybe 4 or 5 days. The first week, he came home with tablets, 3 times a day. Week 2, he stayed in isolation 3 days until his body's ability to fight infection recovered. The magic number, when he can come home, is 1.

13. We can breathe, assess progress, count blessings, look at the diary, count numbers.

14. Blood test. Before each chemotherapy cycle, Dig has a blood test to make sure his body can take the poison we hope renews life. The cycle starts again with 1.

Thinking it through before I begin

It's taking me some time to think how I want to write about life, living with Dig's cancer. My uncertainty stems from my precarious position. This is uncomfortable. I don't know the story. I don't know what will happen. I can't be certain about anything. And I can't yet answer this most basic question: What is this bomb blast that surrounds us, as we get up every day to tread our normal paths?

A large part of me answers, then don't write at all. And certainly not in public. Head down, keep going. No one is a part of this, except us.

But I respect the shared human knowledges that come through text; the hand-holding of folk wisdoms; the comfort of the written word. Blogs, forums, anecdotes, discussion lists, interest groups. They've all been friends to me. They are reminders; to do lists; promissory notes. Don't forget this will happen. Be prepared for that. Watch for the impact of this drug. Have you tried this? Did you remember to ask when you had the chance? Maybe our experiences can be useful, from me to you.

But then again, I know that my purpose for writing is utterly selfish. Here's my self-indulgent therapy of a tippytappy keyboard. Words remind me to have a goal, a focus, a point. They help me put one foot in front of another, and remember what I'm doing. Now I want to record the days to know that they were here. In them, we lived. And through them, I know I can find my cold eye to turn on my own experience.

But what is this story I'm telling? I don't want it to be drugged up with words like Oxaliplatin and  Fluorouracil. You can find places enough for those. I want it to be a story with love and gratitude, kindnesses and bright sides. And humour. Because if we don't laugh, we don't survive.

But there are moments, many, many, when the path's all messed up; the words are jumbled, and not much meaning will arise. But if you're facing cancer, that just might make sense.

How many battles would I like to fight?

Not content with Dig's cancer diagnosis - for which the blog will morph into a whining pile of self-pity larded with too-much-anatomical-information* - I could choose other battles too!

1. Lord Soley Bill. Oh, you school choosers! How fortunate you are! You are cocooned already by the Corporate Curriculum. Your frogs are a nice, warm temperature. You know nothing of struggles out here, in the land of the free. Our frogs are still fighting.

We won't be free much longer, if LS et al. get their way. We'll all be at gas mark 9. No child left behind? Every child matters? There is a pragmatic behind that. These days, every citizen is an asset waiting to be stripped for the $$$$$ payback. The education budget translates into a lot of yachts.

2. Or I could choose the ongoing misery that is Squirrel's School. The battle is simply this: to get the school to stop treating Squirrel like a person of no independent thought, and start treating her like a young woman who has chosen to be there. The irony is: Squirrel is the least likely person to cause them problems.

Squirrel is laid back, easy to get along with, widely educated, articulate, fluent, an A-grade candidate who just asks Why. Yet the school cannot figure this, throwing themselves on techniques of reprimand rather than discussion. Not surprisingly, they have made for themselves a basic problem: that Squirrel doesn't fit the conveyor belt they have built. They have been creating consumers of facts, but Squirrel is a producer, creator, original person who makes her own destinies. She wants the school for 3 A Levels, not for their insistence on detailed scrutiny and control over her every action.

I do not know how you school choosers handle schools when they turn ordinary kids into problem kids. For a parent, it must be a long journey into emotional pain.

What I do see is that the Modus Operandi of the school is attempt to divide parent and child. It feels to me as if there must be the School Rule Book paragraph 1.3: To divide and rule, insinuate/use downright lies. Paragraph 1.4 probably suggests offering stuff like, 'your child is best supported by supervision to address their underperformance'.

I feel fortunate to be able to calibrate this nonsense by 17 years of self-directed learning in a virtually non-supervised home ed environment. This at least I can use to assess the quality of school 'supported supervision to target underperformance' (a seat in the library independent learning hub, on her own).

3. Myself. Yes, I can beat myself up any day of the week for various shames, guilts, losses, griefs, despairs and sorrows! Currently, I am in battle with life itself, facing (not for the first time) a profound overhaul of all my assumptions, expectations, wishes and desires.

Looking on the bleak side, this moment is something I am used to, this teetering-on-the-edge moment; knowing that I'll be leaving behind what is familiar and comforting; knowing that I am about to be pitched into the strange, fearful, bewildering, unfamiliar, scary. I feel ill-equipped to deal with it all, but know too that I'll be thrown into reliance on my instincts to chart a way through, and that will make a different person of me, once again.


* might be useful, if you face the same

Candidate for worst day of 2018, so far.

1. We receive an email from Squirrel's prison. Previously, on Prison Update, we have suggested Squirrel needs a slightly more flexible timetable. Without the attentions of a school for the last 16 years, she has self-educated to A-grade GCSE standard, and can do private study, thank you very much.

But! Squirrel's prison insists! Squirrel must be present in school for all her non-contact 6th form day. i.e. from 8.30 to 3.15. Even if she has just two contact hours that day. She must present herself at the extensive self-learning hub (aka library).

The library, I need add, consists of one shelf books, a desk, and a chair. Here she is supposed to 'study' while being supervised. Mmmm. Supervised study looks an awful lot like being chained in solitary confinement as in a monk's cell. Tell me, is this the Modern Expectation? Fine, then, study away! But if study means educating yourself with the aid of 7,000 books, five computer systems, an office equipped with uptodate software, her private space with all stuff, books, resources, own networked computer, and Planet Internet, then, um, come home.

Sorry to pull rank, you crappy-equipped crappity crap prison, but we can do better.

But! Squirrel's prison says she needs to be in school, alone and chained to a desk if she is to perform. They also added, for good measure, some acronyms, and the novel idea that Squirrel needs to be in school because then they can give support. Squirrel has worked out that this support must mean the 'Independent Study Self Learning Hub Supervisor' (aka librarian) shouting Be Quiet to the 6th formers hiding in the space under the stairs.

2. Shark had two teeth extracted. Shark was all, Uh? what is your problem. I can have two teeth extracted any time. I'm taking that in my stride, so stop whining, because it is embarrassing. I nearly passed out.

3. A pot of cream threw itself, with full Verdi operatic drama, out of the fridge as I opened the door. The cream splatter was over my shoes, the floor, under the fridge, across the wall, down the curtain and in my face. It was the La Traviata moment of fallen cream. Mop-up took an hour.

4. I had an Angels and Demons argument with Tiger over a pack of balloons.

5. Dig finally told the children about his diagnosis of cancer. As every Good Husband know (learn from his Good Wif Grit), you introduce bad news only after eating dinner.

6. Donald Trump is still heading up the USA, sending us all to global warfare, so what does anything matter? We're all going to die anyway.

There is no bright spot to any of this, except number 6. La famille Grit now has a new phrase for any family member exhibiting pugnacious behaviour, ill-tempered hostility or general belligerence. Don't start getting Presidential.

12 Days of Christmas: what day is it?

I have lost all track of time. The Christmas tree is down, on the stroke of Twelfth Night, as is customary in these parts. Clearly, that phase of the year is done for us.

I have lost time because all my attention is focused on Dig and the kids. The kids are back at their respective prisons, and it has come hard to all of us. Dig, he of weak and fragile constitution, requires special attention, so for him, I am attentive, and consider myself candidate of Best Wif Badge.

But I learn much! Never having done much Good Wiffery, I now find that some elements are important to this culture called Good Wif Service. I discover that Dig's requirements include the following:

Muffins. (Part 1) They must be scored properly otherwise 'it is all horrible'.
Muffins. (Part 2) They must be served at the right temperature otherwise 'they are inedible'.
Water. Must be served tepid and in a thermos flask otherwise it is squeally noise.
Paracetamol. Capsule type, not effervescent nor breeze-block type. Otherwise it is 'uughghgughghg'.

It is intriguing, I can say that, learning new things about one's partner of nearly 30 years. How lost time is all about reflecting.

12 Days of Christmas: 9

I've had enough of this Christmas lark now, thank you very much.

I'm clinging to my 12 days only to fulfil my fantasies of wearing my Tudor smock and burning my evergreen next to the pig pen.

That is what I have decided to do, by the way. I am going to become an old woman. Maybe an old woman peasant fitted to some Central Asian state, circa nineteenth century. In my mind's eye, I have padded felt clothing and my middle is tied with string. I am in retreat. Perhaps I have heard about the railways, but my donkey is just fine. Also, I have a ladder to mend the roof. And I live alone. No folks pass this way. I will eat the pig next year. This year, grass.

This is my new fantasy, because times are hard. They are going to become quite, quite Worse. It is possible that for a while I will become mad.

Anyway, because we tell each other that life is filled with bright sides and lead silver, for the time being I still hold onto my Cineworld card.

Rich rewards then, because today we see the Cineworld advance screening of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

This film is fantastic. All hail to McDonagh's writing, which pulled no punches at all and hit me straight between the eyeballs. That is a rare treat, to be punched in the face by a writer of uncompromising words. And splendid acting. I want Frances McDormand to go on and on, forever. See it, as soon as it comes out, for a perfect study of characters in a small town exploring extreme states of vengeance and justice.

Unless you like romantic comedies to take your mind off 2018. In which case, avoid.

12 Days of Christmas: 8

New Year's Day! Dig has bought me, amongst other treats, a radical year, in the shape of the Verso Radical Diary.

Did you know, January 1st 1994, is the day that Zapatista forces overtake towns in Chiapas, beginning an ongoing revolution against the Mexican state?

Personally, I wouldn't trust the leaders of the Mexican state any further than I can throw them, what with the border drug wars, reported corruptions and missing students. But strangely, they did briefly get my sympathies last year when Toddler Trump got into the sand pit.

Troublesome times, this 2018, when one is thrown into sympathies with torturers in order to avoid association with an unhinged narcissistic sociopath.

12 Days of Christmas: 7

New Year's Eve? Really? I don't think so. I think someone has a-hold of that time machine. They have  behaved in a reckless and foolhardy manner, set the dials this way and that, pressed the knobs and exploded the buttons. Their dials and adjustments are all wrong. Mine are right. It is not New Year's Eve. It is Year Something-or-other. Time for a nice Cuppatea.

Because it makes no difference at all, this changeover from one number to another. I already lurch like a drunkard twixt states of resigned gloom, and a peaceful acceptance of the world and my load in it.

As in: Life is okay, except when it is shite, like now, only going to get worse, then chin up, not so bad, there's life in the old dog yet, except there isn't, and we're all going to die. What am I going to do when that happens? I must mend the shed roof before it falls in. etc etc etc.

What does a number change mean then, to such a brain as this? I cannot even claim the fashionable glory  that is bipolar, more just that I am human. Particularly a human who hasn't had a huge amount to complain about from one year to the next: no wars, no forced displacement, no refugee status, no immediate threat of violence, not held as a domestic slave. On the other hand, I get just as much human pain as anyone else regarding death, failure, despair, loss, grief, and those states of life which have no shades of humour to lighten my load. (Although for humour, believe me, I have looked.)

The upshot is, on this evening of evenings, we all watch The Martian.

I conclude after 3 minutes that I'd be dead. Probably self-inflicted, by pulling off my own helmet to scratch my nose, the Martian dust set off my sneezing. The film finishes obligingly at 11.52pm, when I put out the bio-bin into the yard (it attracts the rat if I leave it in the kitchen), then I get back to the front room just in time to clink glasses because someone said, Oi, what are you doing? Come in here. It's 2018.

12 Days of Christmas: 6

Let the neighbours in! We have spent all year pissing them off, so they're owed a drink on us.

This tradition of 'Open House' began for us when the Gritsprogs were tiny, when we all howled with intent. By way of apology, I scoured the cabinets and cupboards for anything resembling alcohol, ripped the packet open on a Tesco cheese selection, tuned off the lights, lit the candles so no-one could see the grime and chaos, and I opened the front door. The invite is, you can stay for five hours or five minutes, depending on your day, and bring nothing except yourselves and your other(s).

We have varied the event (a little), to the effect that these days I am ready with a tribal cooking pot involving yesterday's stewed aubergines. The bottles invite your own intriguing cocktail invention, and at some point I slap down a Dirty Flan (recipe takes 5 minutes and the entire confection costs £1.70). Regarding etiquette, we have only one requirement, and it's Help Yourself.

Then you are welcome to join us! Except I'm not putting it on Facebook, because I'm not aged 12 or socially disconnected to the point of dementia, and you just have to show up at the right time. We only had one guest I didn't recognise. Okay, it turned out to be the son of my oldest friend, but he had grown another foot in height as well as a beard, so I can be forgiven.

This year we did not dress Steampunk (thanks to organisational delays), but next year Wendy is coming in a ballgown, and so will I.

12 Days of Christmas: 5

Tra-la-la! It's a perfect day to visit Gritty Family! In the beautiful, weather ragged landscape of Suffolk!

Imagine, how we can walk by the fields, along the country roads, through the woody patch and into the pub!

We have to imagine it, because by 11am I am tearing open an envelope that tells me my driving licence is expired and the Contact, Capture and Destroy Central Intelligence Unit is threatening me with £1000 fine when I so much as mentally conjure up an accelerator pedal.

I should have ignored that threat, jumped into the car, and driven to Suffolk. Last year the local pub brewed me an excellent non-alcoholic mulled wine, and three of those set me up nicely, about 7,000 calories a glass, but consider it just another sacrifice to make for Christmas with family.

Yes, I should have ignored that letter. What should have alerted me was how it was written: in the spirit and style of the TV licencing 'Enforcement Division'. They too are coming round this afternoon with The Boys to take me to court, smash up my life, and kill my dog*. It doesn't matter that I have a TV licence, that I have previously told them I have a TV licence, and that I pay every month by direct debit. This is of no concern when there are ransom demands to send out to the law-abiding with pictures of dead dogs and bloodied bandages.

But I didn't ignore that letter from the DVLA, those happity-chappity-chums who say, if you drive with an expired licence, we will fine you £1,000, take you to court, smash up your life and kill your dog. I paid attention to it. I went to the website where I am told to go (or pay the Post Office an extra £4.50 for the human contact). At the website, I quickly became trapped in Web-Jail and it took two hours to extract myself before I was confirmed Legal. In other words, I had handed over the appropriate money and was now free to go. Except that it was too late, and my window of opportunity had slid shut.

Several thoughts struck me in the course of this procedure.

1. I wanted to become illegal, take to the highways, go to Suffolk and drink. Therefore what sort of fool had I aged into? Leaping to attend to government instruction? I shall do something about that in 2018.
2. It's probably not even a government department anymore, but Capita and Pearson, our twin-headed corporate overlords and my pet hatreds; they who are charged now with asset-stripping every citizen in the UK to ensure our children are indebted and our grandchildren are sold as slaves.
3. How like Hong Kong is the UK, where citizenry responsibilities are settled by the kerching of a cash register.
4. How fecking awful difficult it must be for people to claim benefits (only available online), and how the system must be designed deliberately to ensure they give up. It took me two hours and I wasn't trying to get anything out of anyone's claws.
5. The Tories are as bad as Labour and they are both desperate to hand over our lives to their corporate chums as they spin round the revolving doors of profit and the lot of them can go to hell in a handcart. Say what? Now I am legal, I'll drive the bastard thing.


*We don't have a dog. Shark keeps a pet fish called Brutus (both Cassius and Julius Caesar died in tragic circumstances), so I suppose dog=fish, it's all the same to the Contact, Capture and Destroy Central Intelligence Unit.

12 Days of Christmas: 4

I have no idea what happened on this day, so for the record, it's no use asking. That is the problem with this holiday. All the days get messed about and I become timeless.

12 Days of Christmas: 3

Let's Go Out!

Feels like we've been inside since the eighteenth century. Also, I have lost track of which day I'm on.

Usually, I struggle with Time. I can just manage if the first question I ask on opening my eyes is, 'What day is it?' and the answer is a day I recognise. Take this routine away from me, and I am hopelessly  lost. Call a Monday by a different day, and this is like putting a blindfold on me, spinning me round, and pushing me off a cliff.

Must be time to go out. Then to the British Museum!

This is a journey, like each day, now fraught with danger. Is London Midland NorthbyNorthWest about to do any of the following? It is like a Hitchcock suspense film! Will they:

a) Cancel all the trains
b) Cancel the train we arrive to catch, so we stand on the platform for 45 mins, at temperature 1C.
c) Start, then stop the train we are on, for two hours, maybe more, who knows? We can while away the time watching our lives fade into the distance.
d) Start and stop, start and stop, start and stop. Our plan to get off at Cheddington and walk home seems viable.
e) Break down, either going to London, or coming out of London.
f) Take us to London then cancel all the trains home, so we must crawl home via StPancras to Bedford and hitch a lift across country with someone who says 'It's alright, I'm a headteacher'.
g) Refuse to sell us tickets (ticket office shut, machine not working) then try and sell us, on the train, Group Saver Discount Day Return Flexible Journey at a total cost of £175 for the five of us, thus prompting a ten-minute argument with the ticket man while the other passengers join in.
h) Throw everyone off the train at an unknown station in the dark, then drive the train off, while all the miserable passengers huddle round the solitary swaying light bulb positioned over the closed station building, which offers no facilities anyway.

We were lucky! Today, (h) happened to the ingoing passengers, not us, and we avoided (b) because we were late.

The Scythians stayed put while we went down to meet them, but if you are keen to catch them before they depart, then hurry up.

12 Days of Christmas: 2

Boxing Day! SALE DAY! Thank you to all shopaholics. Go at it! Buy! Buy!! BUY!!!

You know you must have those desirable tops, blouses, skirts, trousers, jeans (all sizes from 10 through to 16 please) and add black evening gowns, leather jackets, leather trousers (I am sorry that I still love them), and shoes. Buy walking shoes. Shoes about town. Boots, plenty of boots all colours, low heeled to no heeled. Throw in a pair of kittens for old times sake. Then large comfort jackets for standing in fields? Tick those on your must-have list. Also, I have a weakness, as do you, for jewellery both dainty and bold, discreet and statement. Both ways are good: with the right jewellery, is it not true that the moment is made?

Anyhow, once you have acquired all your wondrous goodness and your wardrobes are bursting to exhaustion, please recycle by taking all your old (and new) to the charity shops, where I will be very grateful that you love Sale Day, and I don't need to acquire any debt to wear Zara.

Thank you.

In other news, today we are mostly eating carrots, on account of them now being 6p at Tesco.

12 Days of Christmas: 1

Christmas Day! Yippee! Four hours eaty-drinky, followed by four hours in front of tellybox watching, allthefamily, Jeeves and Wooster, boxset gift from the Magic Universe because Shark dun read the books.

By the way, everyone hate us, we never did Santa, not no way. Santa is an awful lie.

Tiger says she would have been scared witless, to never sleep again, the horror, the horror, some bloke, you never saw before or since, lumbered into your room, you all otherworld and vulnerable, and he crashed about in hot stinking reindeer poo stench, and smashed windows to get in and out because you have no chimbley in the sleeping room. Please do not let him come in, mama!

Squirrel says she knew forever No Santa because mama stands naked-foot on upturned Playmobil sailors at 1am and swears like a trooper. It is how Squirrel learned the f-word.

Sharks says she believes in Santa. She has the bestest dripping sarcastic voice, carried to service and for purpose, to all incidents, events, circumstances, small children, and Mother.

Dig, he beautiful wondrous husband, has a little panic squeak as comely wif Grit suggests re-using the wine glass for the Monbazillac (left bank of Dordogne River) because she is all 'uh-washing-up' and he is all There is Proper Way of Doing Things and cheese-after-fruit. Now relax, proper order restored.

Things learned, read, need to chant: Enjoy the moment, memento, there are things of bright beauty that sparkle along the ordinary way.

December

How time flew. I could live that time, again.