The Learning Process

My first nursing placement now has two weeks left to run. I’ve just about got used to the early starts, the long days, and having to wear clothes that need ironing. Nick’s job is also due to finish in a few weeks, so the future feels uncertain. We’re trying to stay positive, but if positivity isn’t coming naturally, it’s a fragile concept. Home late last night, having not eaten for twelve hours, we went out for a takeaway. Both of us wanted to vent, neither of us felt like listening, so out voices ebbed away into a mutually dissatisfied silence. Fried food fixed it of course. What doesn’t a kebab improve. Heart disease? Oh.


It was inevitable that I would make a gigantic cock-up on this placement. Last week, it happened. Although I regret it, and curse my bad behaviour, I’m sort of relieved. Whilst I have no belief in fate or any spooky goings on, and certainly didn’t intend to do anything wrong, I had felt it coming. What now? Mistakes, especially as a student are viewed as learning experiences ,and everybody has been very kind to me in this respect. I’m less generous with myself though, because, I should have known better, and in particular, known to trust my instincts. Ah well, what’s done is done.

I’m glad I picked mental health nursing, although the shadows of my former career are appearing all the time. In a break between meetings, I was asked about my background. When I said Learning Disabilities there was a pause and then, from the dashing young consultant and his older junior ‘LD? Oohh’. Another silence followed. I had no idea what it meant. They asked a few more questions, and assumed I had been a support worker, which I encouraged. The NHS is all about status, and I find it easier to play down my background. It saves my explaining myself and people seem to feel easier. I sense that some of the people who have been told have gone on to have felt judged. While there have been some things I haven’t liked, I respect everyone I’ve been working with, so that hasn’t been my intention. I had an odd moment outside of the hospital. Someone with a person with learning disabilities stopped me. I did not recognise him, but he was excited to see me. ‘Oh, you’re working in mental health now?’ His eyes on the badge and then to the person I was accompanying. Luckily, the car pulled up an we had to go.

So much is the same that I’m caught out by the differences. Patients tell me their stories, and I listen. These are versions of the horror stories I enjoyed as a teenager, but they are real, lived out by the person before me once in the flesh and then often in their mind, the damage extending through years and generations. Astonished, not knowing how to help, I am not speaking because I don’t know what to say. They go on, sometimes angry, often weeping and then apologise to me. Inept, I tell them that they are brave and strong, that things will get better. Once their crisis has passed, I make a them hot drink, or fold laundry, I offer clean sheets, small comforts. They thank me. I feel bad, because that’s the gratifying bit. When nursing is described as ‘rewarding’, that’s what is meant. Because I find it a terrible thing to leave a person with tears still drying alone, I deposit them in the lounge, hoping that they may be cheered up by an antiques programme and the company of others. There is always an antiques programme.

Everything has to be reported and recorded so I retreat to the office where the phone is always ringing and there’s a lot of paper. I write down the gist of the conversation, but it’s hard to know what’s important from the nursing perspective and much of it doesn’t translate to the page. I pretend composure, pass it on to the nurses. They spot the things that affect the treatment plans and the risk assessments, embodying the saying about changing what can be changed, accepting what can’t be and having the wisdom to know the difference. I have much to learn.

If You Love Me

‘Do you love me?...If you love me please will you..’ I say this at least daily to annoy my family. Usually I ask for tea, sometimes for my Love to fetch something from upstairs. I ask Nick to make hot water bottles when he’s warm in bed and almost asleep while I’m wide awake with cold feet. If he refuses, I sulk. Almost always, my Loves go fetching and come back to find that I let the tea go cold, or fall asleep before the hot water bottle is ready, their love having been demonstrated. The whole thing is one of those family intimacies that don’t get shared outside because they’re a bit odd and shameful. A bit like sugar sandwiches.

And so, lovely reader, if you love me please will you watch these two excellent things featuring my favourite comedian, Richard Herring. Only people who can get BBCi-player will be able to demonstrate their love this time, although everyone can look at Herring’s blog which talks about his Mastermind appearance (spoiler alert).

Richard Herring on Celebrity Mastermind

Richard Herring doing stand-up on Russell Howard's Good News Christmas Special from 28.30 if you don't want to see the whole show.

lol Just Kidding

It’s a sad thing that most humour comes across badly when written down, especially if the reader isn’t expecting funnies. That’s the excuse I’m sticking to for some jovial comments I’ve put on social networking sites being misconstrued. Not content with having people think that I genuinely suggest setting off fire alarms in B&Q as a nice last day folly, and at the height of writers block, I’m posting this bit of fan mail. I’m saying it now: I’m joking. And no, I’m not affixing a stamp and putting it in the letter box.


I love you my darling, I could be your girl and it would be great. I’d let you take me to galleries and ask you questions to feed your ego. My interest would be genuine. I’d offer praise to your creations and consolation when others didn’t. I’d leave you in peace to do your stuff, and if you wanted to go out drinking with your mates, I wouldn’t object. I’d laugh at your jokes and cope with your infidelity because I’d like it when you wept and wrote me poetry. You could make a study of my insane family and we could walk up to the orchard and snog against one of the big pine trees. I would never drink coffee but I’d learn to make it the way you like it. Same with breakfast except that I’d eat it if you made it because you would like that. Although I am less experienced than you in the way of spicy chicken and - I’ve thought about it quite a bit and just know we would enjoy all the things we would like to enjoy.


This is all a fantasy though because I am forty something not twenty something, even if I were so young, I was never so slim or beautiful. I don’t have a glamorous career, or any career, style, vivacity, or sex-appeal. I can’t give you the option of breeding. It saddens me to think you need these things, but I’m convinced you do, and thus, we are incompatible.

Also, we’ve never met, and please to the high heavens we never do, or if we do then let the deities I don’t believe in make sure you never see this.
Also, (and this is important) I’m in love with someone else. Sorry to disappoint.



Love you Nick, and thanks for the anniversary chocolates, and sorry that I didn’t get you anything. Let’s go see a castle soon.

Opening the Envelope

Today is GCSE results day. I took the worst Mum in the world route and went up to the school with H to collect them. A couple of hundred sixteen year old girls in the gym, most in jubilant clusters, some teary, all talking too loud. H wanted to leave as soon as she could, but she’s never liked a din. She can proudly sign up for her much anticipated college course this afternoon.


Inevitably it took me back to my own results, O’levels and a solitary insurance maths CSE back in 1984. I waited for them to arrive in the post, and cried when I got them. They weren’t bad, but I failed RE which seemed important at the time. Strange to say, I don’t think it’s held me back too much, I mean, there was a job I went for in a trendy 1991 baguette shop that I wasn’t offered so I can’t say for certain.....

On the plus side, I had my first orgasm that I hadn’t given myself that day. Nick and I drank cheap wine under a tree in Victoria Park. There were squirrels and sunshine to accompany the dry humping and sneaky shenanigans. Nick had no idea of what he had achieved, and I didn’t inform him for years afterwards. We were both innocents and far less well informed than we thought.

I went home to give the good news to my Mum, who took it well. The exam result, I mean.



Well done to everyone who got their GCSEs today. You took the courageous step to open the envelope.

Don't you just love this song?

Dusty Alien B Movie

Remember the film Invasion of the Bodysnatchers? I don’t. Not very well anyway. I’m pretty convinced I’ve been taken over by some alien presence though. The alien likes to spend time clearing up. Clearly I can’t be the real me because the real me would rather do anything than tidy (and I include getting dental treatment in that statement). I have been trying to work out what started me off, but I’m clueless.


Yesterday, I scrubbed up the bathroom, including washing the shower curtain and the window. If you’re the kind of person who does that once a week, good for you. Me, I reserve them for major events like a visit from Nick’s Mum, her last visit was in 1999. Today, I washed sofa cushions and went to do a bit of sewing but got distracted by a little tub of stuff that had fallen down. I’ve been taking stuff off shelves, dusting and replacing ever since, with lots of chucking stuff out and packing things into smaller containers. Usually, I’d be screaming at it after five minutes and giving up after ten. Today, I’m itching to get back to it and am only still at it due to a bin-bag deficit.

Poor Nick is coming off worse in this virtual wife swap. Yesterday, I thought we were having a lovely time as we were chatting while he scrubbed up the grouting in the shower. I was delighted that he had got off work a couple of hours early, it seemed like fate, and it was such a shame when after half an hour he said, ‘I’ve had enough of this’ and went to do some work he’d brought home. Today, I found two boxes of computer discs and cables to sort out and throw away, plus I need him to put the sofa cushions back. He didn’t seem at all keen and said it was unlikely that anything could be spared, and proceeded to pack it all back up into one box, apart from a pile that isn’t in a box any more. I’m cool with that. I’ve interpreted his behaviour as hoarding given that the stuff hasn’t been touched in four years, so tomorrow, I’ll be getting rid of it all. If he doesn’t read this, he’ll find out in two years time. I will deny all.

Looking around, the place looks a lot worse. Tomorrow, I will almost certainly be restored to my body and everything will be piled up floor to ceiling again. All that will be left will be the two UfO’s that I found, now folded neatly and waiting to be completed. If I ever remember where I put them.

Soppy Feminist

If my imagination transports me anywhere, it is to world of Elizabeth Bennett, where I sew, gossip, and have romantic conversations to handsome men. I don’t say that those times were anything like that, or even that I aspire to them. Still though…

I count myself as a feminist and would say I’m independent spirited. I subscribed to Spare Rib from the 1980’s until the paper went bust, I read books published by Virago including The Colour Purple, I zig-a-zig-ahh’d with the Spice Girls. I’ve even been known to wear dungarees and flat shoes. It’s just that this week I’ve started to doubt my credentials. First off, I read a blog that was talking about marriage being potentially legalised exploitation. It was from a mostly comedy blog, so I probably took it too seriously, but I did reply in defence of marriage, at least of my own marriage. This is the reply I wrote:

Wow, too deep for me, and I read Spare Rib all through my teens. If my having been married for (deep breath) 21 years has been a kind of prostitution, then having 'sold' myself and 'bought' my husband in turn, I haven't minded. It's prostitution, not rape, every day offers to choice to each of us to stay or go. That's what makes it exciting, and rather beautiful.

Then, today, a young comedian put up a one liner against women changing their name when they get married. I learned my lesson from the Richard Herring call centre controversy , so I didn’t answer that one. Finally, in the park today, I met an old acquaintance. We talked about how our children were growing up and leaving home, and I joked that Nick and I might run away together. This went down to a mixture of surprise and disgust as though we shouldn’t be that into each-other, how dare we be happily married.
I agree with feminist principles, certainly as they apply to the workplace, government and society. It’s just that in my own life, the best and happiest things have been being with Nick and having children together. I like it that we all have the same name. I like it that we are bonded economically as well as emotionally. I like to say that he is mine, my husband, and that I am his, his wife. Here I am with my stitching, nattering and marrying. I am Elizabeth Bennett. I don’t even wish that Nick looks like Colin Firth.

Quilt, Herring Herring, Quilt. Part 2: Herring

Sometimes, even before something has happened, it’s already good. People watching from the window of the upper floor of Burger King, I spied Richard Herring and the cast of As It Occurs To Me (AIOTM) walking below. He was leading slightly and had the look of a man who had won already. That’s the look that has inspired all of those ‘Think Yourself Successful ‘ type self help books. They don’t work of course. You can’t bottle it, it comes and goes, and when a person has it they invariably aren’t aware of it. Still, I knew it would be a fine performance, and it was. It was the best I’ve ever seen him, and I don’t just mean the view from the front, although his eyes are lovely. To be in the presence of a quick minded and skilled performer surfing the laughter of a confident audience is such joy.

I had booked the front row seats when I thought Nina would be coming. Nick was a last minute substitution, and I had told him we were close to the stage, but also said that he was unlikely to be picked on because AIOTM is scripted. I had forgotten that Richard would be doing stand-up first. Oh dear. Herring’s top form performance can be listened to over and over as he had put it out as a podcast for free. Had he charged, I would have paid money to hear my sweet, shy, husband being told that he was an old, Roy Chubby Brown lookalike. I turned away and could hardly listen at the time, but had the impression that Nick had been coping well. Playing it back, I notice Nick’s terse responses. Just before the interval, Herring says ‘..this guy hates me, I think he may not come back.’ The only other time I took Nick to a Herring gig, he nearly walked out during the ‘wanking off paedophiles’ routine. I don’t think he’ll accompany me again. Not even for the golden opportunity to look at maps at the British Museum.

Nick won’t need to see Herring again though because I’ve got fellow Herring fans as mates. That may be taking it a bit too far, but there is a little community of Herring fanciers on face book that is providing a warm glow of familiarity. By not so strange coincidence, many are featured in the show. Unaccountably, star fan the Reverend Peter Organ is not a member of the I Fancy Richard Herring and Am Only Slightly Ashamed To Admit It face book group. His loss.

AIOTM (aiotm) podcast here: http://www.comedy.co.uk/podcasts/as_it_occurs_to_me/

Richard Herring’s new book that one day I’ll get around to writing my thoughts down about is reduced to £6 (lesson: don’t bother advanced ordering from Amazon, you get the book late and pay more) here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Not-Grow-Up-Memoir/dp/0091932084/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274570601&sr=1-1

Quilt,Herring Herring, Quilt. Part 1a: Intermission

The last time I went to a showing of Richard Herring’s As It Occurs To Me (AIOTM) , a homeless man outside of the theatre proposed to me. I had only given him £2. That was entertainment. As Nina remarked afterwards ‘nothing that Richard Herring can do can top this’, he was excellent. In fact, highly charged things often happen around Herring gigs, not always connected to the show, but as a spiritual aside, calling me back to the references to Jesus, cumpkins, tortoises…. What would happen this time?


I was already a bit of a state. After the V&A, Nick and I got the tube to Euston so that I could drink tea and he could see an exhibition of maps at the British Library. In the middle of the main road, my baby brother R appeared. Neither of us were aware of the other’s travel plans, we were hundreds of miles from our separate homes, and yet coincidence worked its magic. It was freaky and lovely to sample the last giant fig rolls on the patio of the British library and talk politics, linguistics, job hunting and Britain’s Got Talent. Giant fig rolls taste just like ordinary sized ones, whoever could have guessed?

Leicester Square was the most pleasant I had ever seen it. The crowds were sitting outside of restaurants drinking wine in the sunshine, and having photos taken beside some statues of decorated elephants. I spoilt it by starting a row, then sulkily buying dinner in Burger King (my least favourite fast food joint, rubbish chips). Finally, I slumped to sleep across the table. At the time, I was fully convinced that I was in the right. The next morning, I realised I had been a complete bitch while Nick was all kindness. No excuses but I need to find an alternative travel sickness tablet.

Friends

Some lines from life‘s sit-com:

Sitting room 6pm, Two teenage children exit, laughing. Wife is lounging on the sofa, Husband in armchair, they are watching TV.

Wife: Will you make tea please?

Husband: What do you want?

Wife: Burgers.

Half an hour later

Husband (standing in kitchen doorway): Your burgers are ready.

Wife: Oh great, what are we having them with?

Husband: I’m not having burgers.

Wife (getting up): What, you just cooked burgers?

Husband (sitting down with a meal): Yes, they’re under the grill.

Camera moves to close up of two curled up burgers on a grubby grill tray.

Wife (shouting): What use is this, what about the kids’ tea?



Ok, not much of a sit-com, but there’s something there. Heartening that after 26 years, and on the back of a truly lovely and quite romantic weekend together. Nick and I still miscomunicate.

Now We Are Somewhat Older

I’m not sure how this day arrived. Our children have grown up. I know because today, Nick and I went on a just the two of us day trip and didn’t consult the kids. This seems to be as good a way of determining their maturity as any. Nina made mock-outraged sounds along the lines of, ‘you could have invited me’, Holly made a grunting sound from under her bedclothes, and the dogs were the most put out. We didn’t think of any of them once.


We went on a trip that was a negotiated compromise, achieving a lot more that the not-yet-leaders of our indecisive nation have yet managed. There is a hung parliament and anarchy in the UK. The anarchy is being expressed by means of polite speculation. Shrewsbury, followed by Cosford Air Museum it was. I had been up late reading and holding out for Nina to come back from the nightclubs, falling asleep at 5.30, just as Nick was turning over to the songs of the blackbirds, so I was a bit subdued.

It was hard to remember our way around Shrewsbury, we had been there once, but long enough ago to have forgotten where the good car parks are. I had the idea that we would have a nice lunch in a proper restaurant but we amused ourselves by eating at an old fashioned café serving salads as presented in 1973 (lettuce leaves, sliced tomato, cucumber, white onion in large rings, grated cheese, white bread and butter), and things with chips. I had sausages, Nick had pie which was topped with an outrageously high quiff of puff pastry. The place was thronging with people treating themselves in a moderate way, bouncing babies and speaking in hushed tones. We discussed the winners and losers in the local elections. Then we did a bit of browsing around the market. We were playful with each other, and I fell for Nick and this little town, as representative of England as anywhere could be with old stone bridges, waterfront cafes, small shops and a big M&S.

Nick loves aeroplanes. I think his teenage dream was to become and RAF pilot, not to kill strangers, but for the roar of the engines and the lines of wings. He had given up this ambition before we met, but I’ve always had to accept that he is an opportunistic plane spotter and occasional attendee of air shows (baseball cap and camera compulsory). I sat in the café while Nick wondered about. My plans to do some writing went by the by as I was very sleepy. I watched the crow on the lawn, the air ambulance go out, and a grandmother enjoying her tiny baby grandson, his face still squashed and his little head supported by her hand.

On the way home, Nick remembered the time his Dad came here with him. Over a decade ago, we didn’t have a car, and the father and son had bonded over the train journey and long walk. They both like planes. We are thinking about Nick’s Dad a lot these days. Get well soon Bernard, last time you visited, you painted the outside of our house. It wants doing again when you feel up to it.

Just a Perfect Day

A couple of days sunshine, and the Midlands becomes another place.

On Friday, I took Darcy up to the Memorial Park. I’m used to having the place more or less to myself, occasionally in the company of a park keeper on a mower, and a jogger in waterproofs. It had been sunny all day. When I arrived at 3pm the car park was full and the grass was littered. Littered with crisp packets and also with people who just didn’t seem to have visited a park before. Teenage girls sat cross legged in fairy ring circles, while boys without footballs kicked empty cans in diverse directions while eyeing the girls’ pale flesh. Amongst the families were an unusual number of dog-phobics. I’m cautious around unfamiliar animals and don’t like barking or jumping up, so I sort of get them. I don’t like to see anybody distressed by my dogs, but some people act unreasonably in what is a park where dogs off lead are allowed. People with kids: get over it, how much damage do you think my Cavalier King Charles Spaniel is going to do to you and your offspring, especially if he’s ten feet away and sniffing a tree? The somewhat frenetic energy about the place had left me tense, and so I cut my intended route short.

Saturday, Nick and I took a trip to Birmingham. I have very mixed feelings about the city, some days struggling with the grubbiness of the streets, competitive driving style and the overcrowding. This was a perfect day though. Presumably many people had gone to find greenspace because the shops were running at and easy going pace. It is a rare day that Nick and I enjoy each others company while shopping, but this was one such time. I relaxed the budget a little and once we had bought Nick a good bag for work, we had a nice healthy lunch and a posh ice-cream as a treat. I felt like the me of several years ago, chatting with a stranger in a queue and joking with two little girls whose Dad was carrying an unfeasibly large bunch of balloons into a lift. Nick even let me tease him a little by getting him a tropical fruit salad rather than the sticky bun he requested. There was a bad sitcom moment when, in a bookshop plastered with posters advertising Richard Herring’s soon to be published book. Nick helpfully suggested that I get hold of the lifesize on and display it at home. I was sent by staff from desk to desk and floor to floor in search of tickets for the book read, winding up paying for this unashamedly adult entertainment at the children’s desk.

List a Hundred Things

Friday 27.11.09

As promised: 100 things I love about Nick. Those of you who feel nauseous outrage when you come across couples holding hands should probably skip this entry.

1. the hairs that grow from the backs of your fingers, your long rogue eyebrow hairs, and the curls behind your ears

2. the way you're reluctant to look into my handbag, even when I've asked you to

3. babies fall asleep on you

4. dogs fall asleep on you

5. cats allow you to feed them tablets, mostly

6. you've more or less grown out of spots, but you still let me pick the odd one

7. if I've stayed out late, you wait up for me or wake up for me

8. you make me cups of tea, even if you're busy or can't be bothered

9. you cook a mean egg fried rice

10. you can pace out a length that is almost exactly a metre just by eye

11. you remember all of the people who met you once and stop you in the supermarket

12. you have no interest in televised sport

13. you have no interest in the TV programme Top Gear

14. you have never aligned yourself with a right wing political party

15. you save up pennies for the RSPCA

16. you've given so many pennies to the RSPCA that the people on the desk know you

17. you've made all of the kids' fancy dress costumes

18. you didn't divorce me when, in a fit of temper, I threw out all of your aeroplane magazines

19. you didn't become one of the men who sit in the viewing gallery at Birmingham airport with a radio and a packed lunch

20. you put up with my crazy plans and never tell me I can't...(even though perhaps you should)

21. you are polite and welcoming to the children's boyfriends and girlfriends, even when you have your doubts

22. you make the best of holidays and days out

23. you can speed read, but you still wait for me to finish a book the long way before you read it

24. you are funny

25. your lips are soft

26. you have girlishly long and luscious eyelashes

27. you can be counted on to bring home a nice cake and have never given me a bouquet of cabbages

28. you like your mum's cooking best, but don't expect me to compete

29. sometimes, you sing to me in bed

30. you know where all the cables at the back of the tv go

31. you know about science, history, geography, geology and maths

32. even after 27 years you surprise me, this year I learned you don't like tomato soup

33. you have gorgeous brown eyes

34. you used to say your hair was brown, I used to say it was black, now we agree it's a fetching shade of grey

35. you encourage me

36. you take my side, even when I don't deserve it

37. you're tolerant of bizarre family dynamics

38. if shoes need polishing, you're the man

39. you find things to love about Coventry

40. you play your music through headphones

41. you put the children first

42. you remember happy things from your childhood

43. you're an early riser, but you don't expect me to be

44. you let me rest my head on your shoulder

45. you hold my hand in public

46. you sit with me and share the weekend papers, I get the magazines

47. you walk 'round Ikea with me

48. you come to craft fairs with me

49. you buy me Thorntons' chocolates

50. you buy me Hagan Das ice cream

51. you like ham and pineapple pizza but you never buy it because I don't like it

52. If I'm poorly, you check in at lunchtime

53. you've always worked and never complained about having to

54. you believe that everyone should get a second chance

55. you believe that the poor deserve better chances

56. you believe that young people are essentially good

57. you listen carefully to what people want and try to deliver it

58. you deal with bureaucracy well, but you're not a bureaucrat

59. years after you've finished with a project you're still visiting the area to keep an eye on it

60. you admit it when things could have been done better and try to do better next time

61. you don't shy away from talking to people who you know won't agree with you

62. you tell people if you can't give them what they want

63. you like your toys, but you don't crave more or better

64. you look after your toys and share nicely

65. you don't get jealous

66. you are trusting and trustworthy

67. you are even tempered

68. you see jigsaws and game of monopoly through to the bitter end

69. you wash-up on Christmas Day

70. you are good at choosing perfume for me

71. you notice if I get new clothes or a haircut

72. you don't notice if I get spotty or put on weight

73. you do chores with me 50/50

74. you make dorset apple cake and let me have the bits without the apple

75. you put the bins out

76. you kiss me whenever I want, and I always want

77. you say 'I love you' and mean it

78. you don't remember the times I've been evil

79. you find things I've mislaid

80. you say 'I told you so' but you laugh about it

81. you like to try new foods as advertised on TV

82. you love sci-fi films, but not too much

83. you're proud to be Cornish, but not xenophobicly so

84. you don't mind who drives

85. you don't drink-drive, speed, or do road rage

86. you have a good sense of direction

87. you don't pretend to know much about cars so you found a good garage

88. you're better at diy than you claim to be

89. you are Santa

90. you appreciate it when I cook for you

91. you like my friends

92. your friends are likeable

93. you are mostly predictable, and yet you're also impulsive in a good way

94. you don't tease me too much

95. you don't get 'man-flu'

96. you look impressed when I show off my sewing

97. you let me play Billy Bragg in the car, and took it well when I named your tunes 'tinnitus music'

98. you do the right thing, not the easy thing

99. you miss me when I'm away, but still let me go

100. I love that you love me.

That was easy. Let me know if you would like me to go on.

..and Would it were the Last

Thursday 26.11.09 (Thanksgiving for you, if you're American, but not for me. Hope it was good.)

We rushed out through rush-hour traffic this evening to make it to H's school. It was the night where the school encourages sixteeen-year-olds to stay on after their compulsory stay expires. Oddly enough, it was at a school that we had never visited. H's school works in partnership with the boy's school up the road, so there we were at 5.59 trying to find somewhere to park. H is our youngest, so we won't have to do it again. Like nappies, it's not something I'm going to miss.

The school is an old one by Coventry standards. I found myself noticing things about it that I'm sure escape the pupils. There are some lovely remnents of the 1954 architecture and ethos. The school was one of the first comprihensives in the country and attempted to emulate the independent sector. Some of the steps are made of very large, hard stones, worn smooth by many feet, but not worn away. Above the stage in the hall is a plaster frieze in Grecian style with paired male and female figures. I wasn't able to work out who they represented. There are wooden plaques of the type seen in independent schools with the names of old boys who have achieved national sporting success. Perhaps thirty names in fifty years.

All of these things came to my notice because the talk was turgid. Twenty minutes of self aggrandising on the theme of how excellent the school is, in spite of the figures dictating that at best its results are just below the national average. The sixth formers who spoke were however, charming and beautiful to the extent that I had to wonder if they had been chosen as head boys and girls on the basis of those characteristics. We were warned, though we didn't know it at the time. Standing at the sides, a man next to us pointed out the high and wobbly staging, "Room up the back", he said. We declined, high and wobbly doesn't combine well with fat and clumsy I find. "Are you sure?" Mr Jovial continued, "He goes on a bit once he starts". We thought it was a bit of a mean comment. That was until the talk commenced. What I'm saying is, I have true admiration and respect for any boy who has been taught by that particular teacher. Even though the teacher prefers to call himself Director. Maybe especially so.

The scrum around the trestle tables commenced. Not selling cakes and plants, but futures. What can you do with this A Level, or that one? Teachers of the less popular or less respected subjects working hard to drum up support, English teachers barely visible. Pupils keen. A credit to their school. H looked a bit daunted, but in spite of encouragement from school, she's settled on College instead. More-or-less anyway. She'll apply to sixth form anyway, just in case she changes her mind between now and September. And why shouldn't she? A year when you're nearly sixteen is, after all, one-sixteenth of a lifetime. By the look on her scrunched up face, I think we can count on it that she won't be taking business studies, and given the lack of disguising this, she maybe shouldn't take up acting either.

In the middle of the night, I woke Nick up coming to bed. He expressed disappointment that I had not written in my blog that he and his team have won three gleaming national awards for their work on improving bus travel. Frankly, since I got myself in trouble for my early writing about not getting the specific box of Thorntons' Continental chocolates I wanted, I decided to lay off more than casual mentions of him. Last night, he said that it would be all right to write nice things about him. Ah, but this blog is all about me me me isn't it? I agreed to publish a list of one hundred things I like about him. It won't be hard, it will be mushy. I'm just saying, you might want to skip the next entry, that's all.

Title is a quote from memory from George Eliott's Middlemarch. Casabon makes me on a bad day look cheery. Back on the up.

Remembering the Fifth of November

Saturday 7.11.09

Just past bonfire night and as I write this, I can hear fireworks. This year, journalists have taken to complaining about the pervasiveness of American-style celebration of Haloween, so the letters pages are missing words on the theme that fireworks are distributed to too many people for too long a period. Now I find I rather miss shouting 'it's because people let them off for Divali' at the paper.

Nick and I are a bit sentimental about bonfire night. On November 5th 1984, on the way down from some illicit passion, we watched a red marine flare floating leisurely down to earth. We said at the time that we would always spend November 5th together. Shortly after, following a tip-off that my Mum was on the way, we were forced to scarper. We didn't spend every bonfire night together as it turned out, there's been college and work and all kinds of commitments in the intervening years. To my eternal joy, we are still together. This year, we went to see a film that we both enjoyed. The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus was a feast for the geeky lover of the fantasy genre. It was an unusual thing for a picture to come along that we both wanted to see, making it a special pleasure. As we walked home, we watched the fireworks coming from town. We didn't ask each-other to spend out remaining bonfire nights together, but stood hand-in-hand and picked out the ones we liked best. The next night, Nick told me I was precious and gathered me up to rest in my favorite place; the hollow of his collarbone. Twenty-five bonfires on, and the romance lives.

Speaking of love, I had a real flash of concern about my baby brother in Beijing. When I saw him off on the bus to the airport, he didn't have a good pair of shoes (we found that out during our rainy stay at the Edinburgh Festival). I saw on Newsround (children's TV news) that Beijing was coated in snow that at arrived thanks to a weather altering experiment. I pictured my ever frugal brother cold footed, snow melting into his old trainers. Anxious to find out more, I watched the grown-up news, but there was nothing on Beijing. Perhaps the almost unbelievable sci-magic was only fit for children. I emailed my brother, this is the reply:

Replaced successfully, new shoes still leaked because of the massive downpour the night before the snow but it's ok, they're fine now. Still rather cold here though. Is the UK still a bed of warmth? x

there was a follow-up too:

Oooh, in terms of footwear gossip my two new pairs of shoes are Chinese brands - I'm supporting the development of the Chinese textiles industry as I think it's a route out of sweatshop dependence (even though they obviously just produce them in their own sweatshops, at least at the moment). No rain / snow for the past few days, just horribly low air temperatures to deal with. Central heating hasn't officially come on here yet (the official date is Nov 15th, set by the government and only applying to housing above the Yangtze river - hence why it never came on in Nanjing, even when it was sub-zero) but the community management committee have authorised it for a couple of hours in the evening.

Loads of studies, not much work as students keep cancelling, no longer scheduled to represent MA Linguistics at the uni-wide karaoke contest as it's been cancelled over swine flu, still in scholarship limbo, otherwise things are going well :) Miss you too x

So there you go, he's fine but a bit chilly and with wet feet. It's a good job he never grew up to be a soldier. Poppies would definitely not be enough.

To complete the love theme: we've had our new dog Bingley for a month now. He is very sweet and mostly settled in aside from needing to work on recall. It has all gone fast and I still don't feel he's quite ours yet. It's coming though.

Saturday 10.10.09

I don't think of myself as a creature of routine or of ritualised behaviour, and yet....

I woke up next to Nick this morning. The yellow sunlight seemed to have been altered by its journey through the beech trees outside so that is had a mustardy Autumnal quality. Then, I got too busy dozing to notice it.

We went out for lunch and a few groceries, both of us reading papers and not talking much. Nick did the crossword and right at the end showed me the missing words. We filled them in together, but weren't sure that we had them right. At the supermarket, we bought, bread, cake, and mixed nuts. I don't eat nuts, Nick loves them. I will eat most of the cake but Nick might have the second to last one if he is about at the right time.

As we did when we were pregnant, we went out for some fancy things. We're only expecting a dog though, so we egged each other to spend too much money on a fancy collar, lead, name tag and treats. For the rest of the day, we pootled at home.

I decided to make a roast dinner. This was mostly to show off as H has her girlfriend and Nina her boyfriend here. It got a bit elaborate, but everyone enjoyed it. No-one washed up.

I watched Casualty then found something else on TV and sat stitching way past a sensible bed-time.

Looking back on the day, I've done all of this before, and all of it in the same way. From the sleeping in until my bladder hurts, to the cutting two carrots at a time, to the way I secure the sewing thread and double stitch one in ten. Everyone seems to have routines and rituals, not the same as mine, but everyone has them. People are predictable. If not, they are believed to be mad, only when their behaviour is examined it often turns out to be both explicable and routine if a bit elaborate.

I could change any one of these little rituals, and if it made my life better, this might be called 'learning', if not, it would just be unsettling. I'm not going to make any alterations to my little rituals though because, in spite of all of their drawbacks, they're cozy, and they're mine.

Friday 9.10.09

A bit of steely determination got me over my procrastination block, and I spent some time getting my college work up to date, just in time for week two to begin. I got a little thrill once I finished and look back over it, realising that I had been absorbed and interested. I was always good at reading and commentating on things when I was young, and could write a good essay (although all the work never bore fruit under exam conditions). It was pleasing to feel those old skills surfacing naturally. It used to be popular to tell young students that study skills once learned can be used throughout your life. I wonder if this is a line thrown to students still. It was once said to a group of slightly hung over students, which might have included my yawning self, by a librarian just before she explained the index card system and the microfiche. It was a small miracle today to be accessing a newspaper article on line, and finding out about the author as easily as blinking, in fact as easy as typing a couple of words.

Nick and I went out with friends from work to see Hazel O'Connor. Very much Nick's choice of thing, and a kind of musical biography as it turned out. I found myself enjoying it, 80's nostalgia fodder though it is. Sweetly, Nick held my hand and cuddled up close, misty eyed at the song Will You which is certainly one of 'our songs' although it came out in 1980 and we didn't even meet until 1983. Hazel is a Cov Kid so the audience were rapturous, awarding a standing ovation. In the show, Hazel told us that she ran away from home as a teenager and has lived in London, Europe, Beirut, California, and now Ireland.

It was the first time I had been to the Belgrade Theatre since it has been renovated. The new studio theatre is in urban garage style with galleries stacked in three storeys high and tight, I have doubts about what the view would be from the top, the top of the performers' heads certainly. The view and sound from where I was sitting several rows back in the circle was fine. Not so the leg room alas.

We arrived home to one of those on-the-spot tests that parenting has the tendency to throw up. I went for option A: turning a blind eye. I'll have to wait to get my mark back.

Friday 18.9.09

Gulp. Change is in the air.

I got up today to find an email confirming the start of the OU certificate. I was glad that it had come through, having got the application in a bit late, then worried I might not keep it up, then excited in turn. In avoidance mode, I haven't looked at the special student internet pages. Oh but I will. It struck me how 21st century things are. The last time I did any course that needed the internet it was 2002, and we were taught how to use Google as a search engine. That was revolutionary to a lot of us, as was the fall of the Twin Towers a few months later. I hope I haven't been a fool, and can get on and make the most of this opportunity. If I can't, it will have been an expensive mistake that we can ill afford.

H has her girlfriend over for the weekend, so I went shopping, read the paper in the cafe, and did a good clean-up. I'm pretty pleased that the house is being kept in fairly good order, maybe it's more a barometer of how things are than I would like to believe.

Nick came home with some news that was unsurprising and disappointing at the same time. In spite of all of his commitment, well, I won't say, except that we will be affected financially by £200 a month from February. Not in a good way. We just about manage now, so I don't know how we'll economise. Maybe I'll have to get another minimum wage job. I don't want to think about that at the moment. I feel bad that I couldn't hide my anxiety from Nick. I think he will view this as my being upset with him, which is not the case. I am so proud of him. He deserves so much better. Hey kid, move on, it was good while it lasted.

Derren Brown is very much in the news with his magic stunts. Tonight was an attempt to get the audience glued to their seats. It didn't work on Nina or me, but about 50,000 people called the show to tell about their experience. This is far more important than Obama's decision to cancel the space-weapons programme, swine flu, and the economy combined.

Sunday 6.9.09

I slept until a ridiculous 2pm. , that's a generous and inexcusable eleven hours. Once up, a day of little activity. Nick and I went to drop a bag of change up to the RSPCA kennels. We have a thing for giving them our coppers, and we're regular enough there for one of the staff to recognise Nick and tell him about the great things that are happening. They are rebuilding all of the dog accommodation and have a new shower block. I sat in the car with Darcy. The worker said to Nick that he should bring me because I would like to see it. I would. Another day.

We took Darcy for a wonder around Lake View. As the winter comes on, it becomes unpleasant to walk there, it floods. It was dry today though and the river was low. We had a minor spat, the magic of yesterday all broken. I thought after trying and liking Dave Gorman (and seeming to like an evening out with me) that Nick would like to come to Stewart Lee. It turns out not. We made up though. We always do. I wanted not to be walking with him, but found after thirty seconds that I would rather be arm in arm. I'm still hurt, but if I had continued the argument then I still would be, plus I would feel sick and lonely. It wouldn't, I think, change the way Nick feels.

I'm glad my partner in crime, Nina is back. We've been chatting and catching up and making plans. She will go off to college in another year or so, and whatever will I do then? Take H to see Stewart Lee, I'm a-guessing.

Picture above from http://vonpipmusicalexpress.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/andrew-collins/ because I spent a lot of today listening to his good show on 6music, and because he's Billy Bragg's biographer.

Saturday 5.9.09

Nick and I had an evening out. In fact, it was a just the two of us kind of day, with a romantic morning that had me feeling contented all day, a slow domestic afternoon (with an anxious wobble when Nina's train was late so that we couldn't set off on time), a meal out, and a Dave Gorman stand-up show.

The show was in High Wycombe. I've taken to being willing to drive for an hour or two to gigs. I find it makes it something of an occasion, and there's a sense of control in not waiting for the unlikely event of the world making a visit to Coventry. In many ways, going to High Wycombe (a straight run down the motorway if 1 hour 30mins, car park £1.50 next to the theatre) is easier than going to Birmingham (20 miles of urban traffic, hard to find car-park, feeling of threat on leaving squalid venue). Nick and I had a good talk on the way down, about work stuff and potential college stuff. Mundane, maybe, but important and somehow too easily avoided in day to day life. We had hoped to get there early enough to have a nice meal out, but having set off late ended up at McDonalds. We are nothing if not predictable. High Wycombe is a surprisingly pretty down to earth market town with a picturesque parish church at centre. Seemingly it is populated in the early evening by teenagers laughing and shoving each-other good naturedly, playing football. Their voices echo up and down the paved main street and around the narrowing network of back-streets.

We got to the Wycombe Swan to find the crowd that had gathered for a Queen tribute show (it may have been the Ben Elton We Will Rock You show, I'm not sure). It was a crowd of women with permed hair and men in sports coats. The youth of the 1970's are in later middle age and look incongruously conservative considering they were about to celebrate the work of a flamboyant tights-wearing, gay, parsis Indian with perfect coloratura. Hmm, you may need to Wiki that. It was a bit of a wobble for us, but closer examination of the tickets showed we needed to be at the Town Hall around the corner. I will remark that it is quite something that a tribute act was attracting a crowd over three times the size than the one for Dave Gorman, but also say that Dave is in his ascendancy, and next year, if he wants, he may be playing the big, big venues.

One of the joys of the gig was that it was the kind of crowd where people were talking to each-other. We talked to a couple of men about the Queen gig they had ended up at too, and at the bar I had a lot of fun. I was served by a slightly terse bar manager. She handed me my two Bulmers. "You'll have to top your glass or finish the bottles here.", she said "You can't take the bottles with you." The man next to me grinned, teasing. "shame" he said. Yup. I swigged the two gluggs from each bottle. We laughed.

I'm not sure how much to say about Dave Gorman's set. It was a very enjoyable evening, made more so because he caught my eye at the end of the first joke, I was hooked, so shallow am I. The first half was warm, sweet conventional stand-up with some unusual topics. I felt that some gags were very much in the linguistic style of Frank Skinner. No rude stuff though, I could happily have taken a kid of twelve. There's a delightful playfulness to him (although for me, the laughing at your own jokes in order to make the audience laugh was a bit overplayed). The second half utilised Gorman's well practiced stage methodology. He was incredibly slick, it seemed to me that it was a tough thing to do, and he made it look easy. At the end of it all, I think that Dave Gorman is a storyteller who can turn a commonplace happening into lightness and warmth. He's also strangely attractive on stage, and I understand better the reasons for his having a devoted following. Nina's the real fan in the family, and she would have loved it. By way of compensation, I've booked for her to see him at Warwick in March. That's the way I roll.

Saturday 18.7.09

Nick and I got a taste of what it will be like when the kids leave home and we're free and single again (although no longer young, sadly). They were both out early doing a music event for Oxfam, then H went for a sleepover at her girlfriend's place and Nina was of with her boyfriend P for a weekend break in Blackpool. Nick and I spent some leisurely time together doing the obvious, even recreating our pre-parenting days by sitting on the sofa together, Nick watching something on TV and me chattering and being distracting. It was lovely and left me with a fizzy giddy feeling all day. There's such a contrast between how I was feeling about our relationship a couple of weeks ago -I was seriously concerned we were unravelling - and today when we are as perfect as we've always been.

We went out to do the usual Saturday chores, a little shopping, the pet shop for a sack of Darcy food, a coffee and the papers. I wasn't thinking about much, mostly focused on the feel of Nick's hand in mine, how warm he is when I lean against him, how my cheek fits into the hollow between his neck and shoulder.

The clouds were high and fluffy in the blue sky. That's about the only thing outside of Nick and me that I noticed today. I was content.