Silver Lining

Having lived my life by text for the past four years, I find myself increasingly out of love with thumbing my communications.  Unable to articulate, incoherent, and altogether partial, frustrated and grumpy.  I am tempted to throw the phone down the toilet, and have done with it altogether. 

So there.

Beautiful morning

While my thoughts were, bizarrely, in the Welsh mountains, I sat on the top step of my lower deck, and nursed a cup of tea this morning.  My unfocussed gazed rested on a splash of red which, I gradually realised, was a poppy, opening to the sunlight.  An hour later, it looked like this.  I can't get over the fragility of the petals, and the clarity of the stamen. 

What follows is a question so important that I really think the future of our whole relationship might hang on it.  Are you ready...

Do you like Primal Scream?

And answer came there none.  Of course.

Which has no possible relevance to anything, does it?  But it seemed like a good opening to a post after a short break, so I am not to be deterred by the mere detail that it goes nowhere.  Nowhere can be good.  Nowhere is where you end up when you're last seen heading out of town with a sign that reads, "Anywhere but here" (bonus points if you identify the song.)

Not much time to post more sensibly, as it's that time of year and I am glued to men in lycra shorts.  Not all of them on bikes, as it turns out (smiles, waves etc.)  I'm back in the zone where happiness writes white.  I thought that was Moliere, but I can only find it attributed to some no-mark rock band...

Today I have mostly been caught out - by the meeting I forgot I had; by the loveliness of the unexpected lunchtime; by the bastard rain which met my barbecue building efforts (why wouldn't you build a complex gas BBQ in the rain, anyway??)  And now I am chill, curled up in a chair; one dog under my knees, another alongside me and the new cat stretched out on my lap, suckling my armpit.  Drinking wine and caught out by the tiredness that has sprung up on me.  Again. 

All these late nights don't agree, and I hope Leonard Cohen is feeling his age, and appreciates that some of his audience will have a long drive home...

The Conversation

Jon, Jon, Graculus, Graculus Wetherby George Dupree
Took great care with his blogging,
Although he was rarely free.
Jon, Jon Graculus Graculus
Has a day job, you see,
And when he's away
He likes to go play
On a beach, by the Cornish sea.

Jon Jon Graculus G really should comprehend
That a day at the beach
Is rarely complete
Unless you go there with a friend.
Jon Jon G G has often heard it recited
He must never be seen
At Land's End or Pendeen
Unless Silver has been invited.

This rule is really quite simple:
A trifle, if truth be told.
And so it is doubly baffling
(A crime for which he'll atone)
Why J J G G
Wilfully goes, whenever he's free
To a beautiful beach by the Cornish sea
Completely, discretely ALONE!

 (with very slight apologies to A A Milne.  And none to Grac. Who got off lightly.  So there.)

I am the Jolly Tired.  It's been a funny old week.  Life has taken a turn for the frantic, what with theatre trips and salsa lessons and lots of sitting in bars and pubs and restaurants talking till the wee small hours.  This evening, I even had an invitation to go clubbing!  Imagine!!  I'm exhausted just thinking about it.  Turns out the world is full of people my age behaving like teenagers, if you only turn over the right stones...

Now, I'm not complaining.  No, no.  Far from it.  Very, very far from it in fact.

But actually, the truth is, I'm not a teenager any more.  I'm a grown up and every morning I have to get up and do a proper job.  That needs my synapses to be sparking in the correct order, on demand, every time.  And that's jolly difficult, with a social life like mine.  Fortunately, my boss is minded to be very amused about the whole thing and seems willing to forgive the occasional synaptic lapse.  So that's good. I will continue to burn the candle at every available end...

Did I mention the cat?

We have a new cat.  We've called him Mr Muggles.  I rescued him after a plea from a woman in Coventry.  He's a 13 month old ginger tom, and was living in the most revolting, squalid little studio flat with a pair of junkies and a small - a very small - boy.  The place was quite revolting.  I guess squalid places usually are.  Stank of cat pee (he'll be going for a special conversation with the vet, shortly), and stale beer and mould. 

He spent the first 24 hours crammed into the corner of the kitchen, squeezed behind the fish tank, trembling.  He wouldn't come out for love nor tuna.  I'm sure he was going through DTs, in retrospect.  Anyway, he's settled in a treat now.  He's tall, and rangy.  They said he ate anything "you know, bread, chips, anything..." and I'm beginning to think he'd not seen cat food for an awful long time.  For the first week, he ate like a dog - three mouthfuls, no chewing, you don't know where the next bowlful's coming from...  I suspect that when he fills out, he'll be a significant size.  You know, for a cat.

Smudge is none too impressed, of course.  Actually, she thinks he could go straight back where we got him from.  Jip thinks he's great.  Just what she wanted, another baby.  She shepherds him round with her nose, and makes sure he doesn't do anything she would disapprove of.  Unfortunately, she doesn't disapprove of much but still, old dogs and all that.  He's an incredibly affectionate little beast.  Spends a lot of time wondering around the house calling, and when he finds me, he stretches himself across me, with his nose buried in my armpit or - if I've just been running - the crook of my elbow.  Or, just right at this very moment, in my cleavage.  It's a very strange sensation, a purring cat dribbling into your cleavage.  I'm not sure what to make of it, to be honest.

Still, it can't be any odder than a night out clubbing would have been. 

Can it?

En Train

l had forgotten about trains. Forgotten the painlessness of moving through the countryside, unfettered by jams or the need for ceaseless attention. The woman opposite me is asleep, slack jawed. The couple over the aisle variously texting or rustling their newspapers

I am reading - Notes From An Exhibition - while the other half of my brain idly dreams. Walking with you on the Cornish coastal path, the sun casting sparkles off the sea, far below us. It must be off season for we encounter few others. We are in the air, caressed by the breeze and sunlight, walking, talking, holding hands.

We pause occasionally, to watch a bird, or a seal bobbing out on the open sea. Or simply to entwine, wrapping ourselves in each other, tasting the salt from the air on each other's lips, losing our hands under the other's clothes. We are torn between the sheer, exuberant pleasure of simply being: part of this place, this time, each other; and the insistence, urgency of desire.

The countryside slips, backwards, past my window. Oxford's manicured lawns and occasional swimming pools give way to fields, and then to conurbation. Still green, maintaining the illusion of connection with a landscape. Houses more and more infrequently interspersed with fields until the greenness ceases altogether: replaced by urban grittiness, and a settling uniform of grey conformity.

Trees struggle up through pavements, their roots dislodging the unnatural flags, insisting on their right to reclaim the city - straggling leftovers of anciently forrested history. Even these tenacious rear-guard soldiers are nearly defeated: their leaves tainted with a patina of exhaust fumes and weary resignation.

The Cornish coastal path struggles to hold my imagination, as it competes with my bladder and the incursion of the city. I can still taste your mouth over mine, and I am remotely envious of the hills that hold you now.

The underground is unnaturally, impossibly warm and I am over dressed. The chill misery of this morning's early, rain soaked run taunts me from the depths of memory in my calf muscles as I swelter in my too late, too posh raincoat. The trains cast a gloomy aura on the tunnel roofs, and the buskers mime engagingly along with Leonard Cohen in my ears. The next station is Stockwell. I have nearly arrived, in a press of sardine bodies and the muffled shout of strangers' children.

This morning, I stood up in front of 400 odd of my colleagues and told them about the building I'm building for them.  I told them that it's been accepted into the University's plan.  I told them that I have managed to negotiate up to £6m of Capital funding from the government.  I told them that I need their help, to make sure the building has everything in it that they need to be in it.

I didn't tell them about the observatory the astro-physicists want to put on the roof (which will also contribute to the funding of the overall building); or the recorded feed from the telescopes which will beam into the cafeteria throughout the following day.  Nor did I tell them about the deal I'm doing with the conference people to surrender an outpost of our teaching facilities to conferences in exchange for a partial contribution to relocating the carpark on which I want to build this building.  I didn't tell them about all the stuff I've learned about newt habitats, and newt relocation.  I ommitted to mention the sliding walls, flexible grids, novel partitions we're looking at, to make the space as flexible and relevant as possible. 

I completely forgot to tell them how much fun I'm having.

Then, when I got back to my desk, there was an envelope: private and confidential.

It was a letter from my boss's boss, thanking me for my hard work, and expressing how impressed he is at the impact I've had in such a short time.

At some point in the next 18 months, I will have to make career choices again.  It's hard to see how I can improve on the job I have at the moment, frankly.

"What have you got (apart from photographs) that you've had for years?", asks Ian.

Not much, is the answer.  We moved around every couple of years when I was a child, which meant that things got thrown away on a regular basis, and as a result I've never been much of a hoarder.

I do have one thing, though, which escaped the packers' clearance mania.  Only by accident, mind you, but all the same...

Not being a hoarding sort of family means we were thrown back on our own resources from a very early age.  Possibly as a result of this, Sissy and I were both thumb suckers.  Daisy and the nibling are also thumb suckers - in fact, both of them have been sucking their thumbs since before they were born, so perhaps there's something genetic in it.  Anyway, Sissy and I both had favourite, thumb sucking toys.  Sissy's was a white glove puppet cat, whose tail was crammed into one small nostril, while the thumb of the hand holding it plugged into her mouth.  On those occasions, you could guarantee Sissy would be silent.  So the cat was encouraged.

Mine was a donkey.  My mother made my donkey from a pattern in Golden Hands magazine.  He had a tufted woollen mane, and a plaited woollen tail, and an embroidered face. 

I don't know how old I was when I got my first donkey, but I was soon very attached to him.  I used to twiddle the end of his little plaited tail against the tip of my nose, while I sucked my thumb.  To this day, twiddling bits of yarn against the tip of my nose will transport me to an almost bliss-like state of infantile contentment.  Evidently, my first donkey pre-dated the ability to talk, and donkey is a very hard word to say (particularly when your mouth is full of thumb), so the donkey became universally known as Dondee.

I had several dondees over the first few years of my life.  Some of them were worn out with loving and some of them were simply lost.  I remember losing one dondee one day when we went to Stonehenge in the car.  My father loaded me into the car, placing dondee on the roof while he made sure I was in correctly.  But he forgot about dondee, and we drove off with him still on the roof.  Much hysteria followed - I'm sure I can remember the panic and distress - and we spent a happy hour or two searching the hedgerows and verges of Wiltshire for a small, stuffed animal with a plaited tail.  I hope some other little person picked him up and loved him well.

I can't remember what happened to the final Dondee.  I just know that when I was little, he was there.  Then, when I was bigger, he wasn't.  But he was the stuff of legend.

When I was 4, we moved from Wiltshire to Germany, for a short tour of duty.  My parents expected to return to the UK in a couple of years, and so we put a lot of stuff into storage crates, and gave them into the safekeeping of Pickfords.  And we found a new home for our little Lakeland Terrier, because it wasn't worth taking her all the way out to Germany for 2 years, and then making her go through quarantine for 6 months...  Moving to Germany for a short tour was quite the trauma.

The short tour turned out to be 12 years long.  We moved around to a different base in the Ruhr valley every couple of years, and I went to boarding school in Kent.  With no dondee and, eventually, no thumb sucking. When I was 16 it was whispered that we were finally returning to the UK, and Mum and Dad decided to buy a house.  It was a semi-detached in a quiet road in Bourne.  I don't really remember much about it, except that it had flock wallpaper and florid carpets - purple, with gold scroll work.  We weren't ever going to live in it, so the carpet didn't really matter.  But buying a house meant we could get our stuff out of storage.  The crates arrived while I was at school - Mum usually arranged to move house while I was at school, and we did spend oh, one holiday?  One half term?  Part of a holiday?  Some time in that house, anyway.

On our first night, Mum and Dad came to school to pick me up, and drive me home.  That was a novelty in itself; I usually got a plane home under the auspices of a Universal Aunt and a bored squaddy, alternately.  We chatted about whatever constituted usual first night at home chat, and eventually we arrived at the new house.  There was much oohing and aahing over the flock wallpaper and the florid carpets, and Mum fed us on 12 year old baked beans which had recently emerged from the storage crates.  Eventually, with no particular sense of urgency, I took my bag up to my new bedroom.

There, on my bed, tatty and tired and much patched, was my Dondee. 

He doesn't sit on my bed any more, because I'm a grown up now.  And anyway, I don't suck my thumb any more.  Not so's anyone would notice.  But he sits on the stool next to my bed, looking increasingly dusty and grey, testament to my mother's one and only hoarding experiment.

Typepad has recently upgraded its compose screen.  And ever since, it has booted me out every time I start to type.  Which is becoming annoying. So here I am, using the dreaded Internet Explorer - not my browser of choice.  But I'm back!

It's been a funny little break. The old car is now a small, rusting blue cube somewhere.  I've picked up the new car and am slowly getting used to driving with only one foot.  The Honda has gone back to the fast car fairies from whence it came.  And it will not return, unless I win the lottery.

I have dropped another clothes size.  I am now, officially, an 8.  I discovered this when I put on a pair of size 12 trousers yesterday, and started off down the stairs for breakfast.  Halfway down the stairs, the trousers were round my knees.  Not quite the sleek, professional image I was hoping to portray...

Other than that, same old same old.  And an unstable browser.  Oh, and long visit from Sissy and the nibling.  Who is a bewitchment.

Proof positive...

That I never have taken a good photo, and I always have had unusual taste in shoes...

There is, it seems, much amusement to be derived from listening to a small child trying to twist her tongue around the phrase "procrastinating imp".

So much fun, that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy...

Dad came to stay at the weekend, and we went round car showrooms.  I've bought a little silver VW Polo.  It's the same age as my Skoda, but has 53,000 miles on the clock where the Skoda has 124,000...  They agreed a price for the Skoda sight unseen, since it's still at the body shop being repaired from the accident the other day, and I should be able to go and pick up the new car and hand in the old on Saturday.

All seems too easy, right?

Right.

So, today the phone rings and it's the AA - the body shop has deemed the Skoda uneconomical to repair and is recommending it be classified as a write-off.  Apparently, when they got it onto the ramps and looked at it more closely, it turns out the axle is bent (so glad I was driving the kids round in it for a fortnight - that sounds perfect!).  Anyway, the AA has spoken to my insurance, and they need to get a second opinion.  So, Garage B has to go and pick it up from the bodyshop and take it to Banbury, where it will be assessed for the insurance.

I should know by the weekend whether they agree it's a write-off.
Otherwise, it could take several weeks to repair....

I don't know whether to ring the VW garage now, and give them the sorry tale, or whether to wait till, say, Thursday in the hope I'll know what's what.  I guess they won't care if it's written off as they'll just get full cash rather than a trade-in, but I need to know whether they'd still want the Skoda with a new axle.  In the meantime, I'd better ring Garage A in the morning, and arrange to clear my personal stuff out of the Skoda, on the assumption I may not see it again. It's an ignominious end for an old friend!

Things are slowly becoming clearer, here at Silver Mansions.  Not least because the optician has pointed out that I should be wearing glasses, and kindly prescribed me some.  So now I can see to type and read and do work, and stuff.  It makes a surprising amount of difference.  To be fair, I have always been supposed to wear glasses, but Dan broke them, when he was a baby, and I've never got round to getting them fixed.  So, for the past 9 years, I've simply done without.  But no longer.  Now I have two pairs - one for each of my moods, you might say. 

I also have a brand new Honda Civic to play with, while the trusty Skoda is at the body shop, having its bumps and scrapes taken care of.  I'm enjoying the Honda - it has air conditioning and a raft of control buttons on the steering wheel, and an indicator which scores the ecological friendliness of my driving.  Unfortunately, I think the body shop will expect me to give it back. 

Fine needle aspiration

There was a letter, a week or so ago, notifying me of the changed nature of my appointment at the ultrasound department.  I didn't like the sound of that.

Anyway, yesterday was the appointed day so off I trogged.  Or rather, I stewed and fretted, and DBO gently led me to the hospital. 

I've never before had an ultrasound that didn't end with the words, "Look!  There's the heartbeat..."  It would have been rather disturbing if this one had ended that way.  I was nervous, but my heart wasn't in my throat...

The screen was positioned behind my head - I needed to crane my neck to see the images.  There's the oesophagus, the thyroid.  With a bit of prompting, the sonographer was happy to point out the landmarks of my lower neck.  The big round dark thing was the artery - blood to the brain.  The small round dark thing was the vein.  Blood somewhere else, I guess.  He could flood the image with colour, so you could see the blood moving around.  Kind of freaky, watching your own blood pumping about your body.  The large, irregularly shaped dark thing - big enough to swallow the artery several times over?  That was the cyst.  Beneath the thyroid and slightly behind.  Sufficiently beneath to warrant some question as to whether it *is* actually thyroid, or whether it might be lymphatic, or oesophagal.  Or something.  We measured it - about an inch across.  That's a big thing, to fit into a skinny neck.

The sonographer and the cytopathologist left the room, for a quick discussion.  They came back and gave me a vote - which I wasn't entirely expecting.  The nurse let DBO into the room, and told him to stand by my head.  I was expecting a local anaesthetic, but you only get that in the States, or if you pay...

"Don't worry.  It's quite a small needle."

I stretched my head back.

"Sharp scratch, now".  Why do they say that?  It's not a sharp scratch, at all.  It's the sensation of someone forcing a thin steel stick through your skin and into your flesh.  The needle was in my neck.  I was consumed by the urge to swallow.

The cyst was on the screen, and the needle wasn't.  He wiggled, and pushed.  Wiggled and pushed.  Steel into flesh.  Wiggle, push.  There it is.  He begins drawing the syringe full of whatever it is that lives in cysts.  The cyst collapses.  There.  All gone.

Steel out of flesh, syringe emptied into sample pot.  Labelled and scurried off to the cytopathology lab.

It hurt.  Quite a lot.  But remarkably, there isn't a mark on me, this morning.  A very tiny red puncture, in the hollow of my collar bone.  But you have to really know where to look.  My throat is sore, though. And there's a lump missing, which is kind of weird.  I hadn't realised I could feel it - I guess it might have been there for some time.

Anyway, now begins the wait for the results.

Last week's events have left me more uncomfortable than I care to admit.  It was very unsettling to meet my own mortality in the death of a stranger.  Death is a peculiarly intimate event - even when it's as public and violent as this one was - and I can't help feeling that seeing him as I saw him is an unwarranted intrusion into his private affairs. 

I am also now an unbearably twitchy passenger.  Poor DBO has had a difficult weekend!