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.
Thursday, 29 March 2018
Monday, 26 March 2018
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.
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.
Tuesday, 6 March 2018
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.)
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.)
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