Acts for Today

If this was a proper diary, there might be a round-up of my day here. I used to do it that way, but I was getting bored with it, so I went all topic focussed. That generally works OK because I quite often obsess and move on, but mow I’m missing the round-up pages. I want to record that today I: overslept, learned how to give an orange an injection, bought H and I cheese pasties, found a mobile phone in the snow and rang the owner’s mum, read an e-book on asylum and cried a bit, talked to Nina on facebook about Christmas, listened to Frank Turner, Chris T-T and Billy Bragg on Spotify, roasted chicken and potatoes, finished off an on-line assignment, donated some money to Education for Choice and thought of Elsie, read some blogs including lovely Richard Herring's, remembered World Aids Day and forgot to call the GP surgery for H.

I think that’s quite a mixed bag. I’m not sure what kind of a snapshot of my life it is. I don’t even remember yesterday, so it may have to act as a memento of the year. It certainly picks up of some of the 2010 themes quite nicely.

Coming back to the topic approach, I want to write a bit about the nursing. I’m still a bit scared of putting the wrong thing and getting into trouble though. Uni is taking up more of my time and attention these days, and if I get through the three years to qualification it’ll seem a shame not to have written anything about it. What to do? You will tell me if I go too far won’t you? I’m not even sure that student nurse blogs will be any more interesting than quilting ones. Probably better than that cringe-worthy poem the other day though.

The uncontroversial student scoops are that injecting an orange with water is unsurprisingly easy (they keep still and don’t complain at all), whereas taking blood-pressure is harder than filleting plaice was 25 years ago in a former life but might be a bit more important to get right.

UPDATE: the man who lost the phone came round and gave us £20 which we’ll give to the homeless sanctuary seekers. The love is spreading.

Tickling the tick-list

Just because I know I'll look back and wonder if I did bother to get everything done for the Uni interview as planned, the answer is.....yes, I did. Clothes, shoes, photos, copying, hair booked for tomorrow. Go me.

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.

Wednesday 5.8.09

Managed to feel fairly normal today, as did the sunshine which appeared, quite unexpectedly given the recent greyness.

Feeling normal has not helped me to get anything done though. I eventually pulled myself away from a Tim Minchin fest and took Darcy for a long walk. He was delighted and went off frolicking a long way, from puddle to puddle, rushing to a climax when he decided to swim in the pond. I'm not sure if the stench will ever leave him. The Memorial park was crowded, and lots of people stopped to chat. Maybe the warmth put everybody in a good mood, the joggers and the children on bikes,'that's a nice doggy', the couples and the old guy, 'I don't mind him jumping up'. I felt unfit though. And wheezy.

Afterwards, I was uninspired and got no writing done, but had a big headache and got Nick to make burgers for tea.

Big Brother remains a fascination and tonight's episode was particularly good. All human life is there; the bickering, lies, alliances, divisions, heroes and victims, the vain and the beautiful. Laughs too. Lots of laughs.

Tuesday 4.8.09

Today had two beginnings. I woke up in time to see Nick off to work, but made the fatal decision to go back to bed with my headache. I read quite a few chapters but then fell asleep, waking up to the sound of H with friends in the house. Embarrassingly, it turned out to be 3pm. I had lots to get done, and felt ashamed as it seemed too late and I had let everybody down again. Depression appeared in the form of octopus tentacles crushing the ability to have a coherent thought. I went out of the house without my keys, lucky H was in, then went the wrong direction for the tyre place, and then drove past it.

There was a bit of a moment when the tyre man said that I would need three tyres (I do think he was telling the truth but it wasn't a truth I wanted to hear). He quoted over £200 but he took me at my word when I said that I couldn't afford it and shipped in some cheaper ones for me. I subsequently see he has charged me £15 for a guarantee I didn't ask for or even know about. Since there's no explanation of what this guarantee is, I can't think how I'll ever avail myself to it. What are they guaranteeing? that the tyres will stay black? or round? or rubbery? Why would I want a guarantee when the Sale Of Goods Act protects me for up to four years? I think it guarantees they get £15 out of me for a cost to them of one line of computer print. I considered complaining, but it feels like too much hassle. I hate to be had, so maybe tomorrow though.

I started to feel better and did a supermarket run, got home feeling upbeat and made a family dinner. Everybody is in better spirits today, so the benefits of the holiday are still with us. We had a good chat and a laugh.

I watched Derren Brown's The Heist on 4OD. A group of successful middle managers are persuaded into holding up a security van using a toy gun. I was reminded of my former self, suited and articulate, attending motivational seminars and lapping it up. The oddest bit was where he persuaded them that they should each steal sweets from a shop. Out of the large group, only one had the sense to say that he had a teenage daughter and there was no way, even for fun that he was ever going to shoplift. Well done him. I'd like to think I'd have done the same, but I'm conscious that at the time, I would have been buoyed up by over confidence, and competitiveness and would have gone with it. Funny enough, now, because there's nothing to loose by being myself, I would be more likely to refuse. Anyway, the important thing is that I had a good laugh at the expense of the suited ones.

Wednesday 15.7.09

I got around to a bit of it today. I've been telling myself for some time to clear out our bedroom. I have clothes that date back to the time when I wore suits to work, through the time when I wore joggers 24 hours at a time. They were stuffed deep in the wardrobe, in a chest, in those shallow boxes you keep under the bed, and (hope my Mum-in-Law doesn't read this) piled on the floor. Added to this, I think I've never thrown away a pair of shoes. I have a tall laundry basket full of old ones I never use. Today, I made a beginning, clearing the wardrobe. It was easier than I thought, although I went through things one at a time, I threw away everything except two unworn pairs of trousers (size 12, imagine me in a size 12!) which I gave to the children.

I also kept a jumper. Monsoon. Pink knitted cotton with buttons sewn on to form a heart shape at the centre. It had been Nina's favorite, she wore it for years and I had held on to it. I never kept any of the children's baby clothes. While they were small we were all living in a one bedroom flat and didn't have the space. I'm not too sentimental about things in general in any case. The jumper carries some poignancy though. A pink flash of pre-pubescence, pre exams, pre employment, pre serious boyfriend, pre grown-up.

My grown -up Nina rang me to let me know that she had the option of tickets, thanks to her volunteering work for Oxfam, for an audience with Andrew Davies if I was interested. "I knew you'd be up for it" she said, when I stopped gushing. Andrew Davies, author and screen writer was responsible for the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (the Firth and Ehle version). That's my all time favorite TV thing of all time, ever ever ever. He's done loads of other stuff I like too, including Middlemarch, Tipping the Velvet, Bleak House, and most recently Little Dorritt. I was sky-high with excitement.

It turned out amusing and, if I'm honest, a teensy bit disappointing. Nina, Holly and I met up with the rest of the Oxfam contingent at the Library. I was glad to see my Oxfam friends, who I hardly ever see these days although I worked there on and off for three years. Everyone seems unchanged, A a little more gaunt perhaps. We made up around a third of the audience, the front of which was a sea of permed hair and cardigans. How strange human demographics are.

Andrew Davies has every right to be smug, and that's how he came across. It was as though he had himself written Pride and Prejudice without any help from Jane Austen at all. He drew attention to the parts of his work that I had thought were the weakest, the prettying up of drab female characters, and the beefing up of the male, the heavy-handed sexualising of the relationships. These cliches were his triumphs it seems. Most amusingly, towards the end, a member of the audience asked him how he avoided cliches. He had just described his invention of a rainy wood chopping scene invented to give a reason for a female character's attraction to a male. There surely could never have been a greater cliche. This was topped by another question, "What prompted you to take up writing?" The answer: because I wanted to have my own voice, I thought I could do it better.

I still love the man's work. My sneering is the product of my own envy. Andrew Davies is highly skilled and successful. He can afford to be confident in his ability and if that comes across as arrogance, he's earned it. I don't know who first said 'never meet your heroes', but they were right. I came away bemused, and regretting that I had gone. Some of the magic of those truly great dramatisations had been lost for me.

Oh, and I would like to point out that the exclamation mark I used further up the page there, I meant it. Me, a size 12? Who would believe it now?

Saturday 11.7.09

Sometimes I think that Saturdays are too easy. With the kids busy with their own things these days, Nick and I make a very smug cozy couple. Sickening, but true.

We did that most coupleish of things, and hung new bedroom curtains, bought at a bargain price from Ikea last week. They look all fresh and clean. It made me think that I should have a go at having a major and long overdue clear-out. I haven't really done one since we moved in over eight years ago and have more clothes than I'll ever use in sizes ranging from 12 to 24, also hundreds of magazines and books that I'll never read again. Shoes too. I don't know why I kept them, there are some truly disgusting specimens. So, if I can keep my energy up, maybe next week.

I'm starting to feel the benefit of the healthier diet that Nina has been encouraging. Not a single french fancie in two weeks. Fresh fruit & veg every day. No takeaways. Wow, I'm good. As long as you don't count the McDonalds I had today. I would like to be thinner and fitter for interview in September/October. I might manage it. We need to be a bit more careful with money anyway, as we've made the decision to get a loan for double glazing. Scary thought. I hate loans.

In the light of the health kick, Nina and I went for a walk around the Memorial Park. That was nice and cozy too.

So, a slow day, but good. I wouldn't remember it if it wasn't for writing this, and yet it was a happy one. Ordinary happy family days don't make a good story, or even memories. It was special though.

The picture above is an old one of Richard Herring. Since I'm obsessed with him at the moment, I thought I'd go the whole hog. I've no idea why he is pictured in a bath with sweets.

Monday 8.6.09

Motivation low. Spent the morning in bed reading just a couple of pages, listening to the ringroad. Came down and ate a bit of breaded fish. Scrolled around the internet, half watching a DVD. Got Nick to get chips for tea, was going to take H to flute, but didn't in the end. Stayed up too late doing nothing.

Not an unhappy day, just a blank. Predictable come down from the nice weekend I suppose.

H rang to say she's in Cov tomorrow. I agreed to meet up, but it feels too much to clean up the house. She's not due 'till 4, worry about that tomorrow.

Sunday 7.6.09

A day of love and romance. It's hard to believe that a few weeks ago I was feeling quite mean things about Nick, we have been close and bonded all day and it feels fabulous.

We lay in bed this morning reminiscing and trying to work out how long we have been in a relationship. It comes to 26 years, who'd have thought it? Not us back in Truro, that's for certain. We held hands walking into town and got lunch at Ikea, not talking about much, but chattering and laughing a fair bit. I didn't want it to end, so we sat in the Windmill pub for half an hour and watched people play with a young dog that Nick thought was a Staffie and that I thought was too big fro a Staffie. I asked Nick if we could have another dog, and right away he said yes. Speaks volumes for how relaxed he was, he would usually need persuading. Ironically, I don't particularly want another dog at the moment, but I'll hold him to his rash words in due time.

We went on to the pictures to see the new Terminator Salvation film. I thought I might end up falling asleep as I was feeling mellow, but it was entertaining. there was too much action and too little characterisation for my liking, but the plot was good enough. It all lived up to expectations and we came home happy.

Once we were home, we went our own ways as usual. Nick cooked and I worried about where H had gone, she was expected home at 2pm but it was 7.30 when she arrived. I didn't panic, knowing that it was likely just teenage behaviour because she had wanted to stay out until 5.

This evening, a glut of reality TV with Nina: Celebrity Wife Swap, The Apprentice finale, and the first Big Brother eviction. Very disappointed about the evictee, although now, just an hour later, I can't remember her name. BBC2 were all the while screening the Euro Elections, but it's out of my hands now, so I didn't feel guilty about the vacuous fodder for the masses that I was wolfing down.

Wish every day could be like today.

Monday 1.6.09

I didn't write a blog on the day, so now, four days later, I have forgotten it. All I remember is thinking that I had something good to write about, but alas, it is gone forever now. RIP 1st June.

Friday 29.5.09

An errand into town ought not to be so complex, it must be a metaphor for life.

Task:

post my friend S half a dozen pieces of A4 paper

Method:

Looked for one of at least four staplers in the house, unable to find any. Also unable to find A4 envelopes. Jotted down S's address, sandwiched A4 paper in book.

Walked into town. Got to £1 shop to get envelopes and stapler. Only 80p in purse. Retraced steps to cash machine.

Back to £1 shop. No ordinary envelopes in stock, but lots of bubble-wrap type ones. Decided that was Ok but seemed silly to use for just the paper. Browsed shop for suitable small gifts to enclose for S's children.

Queued in shop, feeling pleasantly beneficent.

Sat on bench to put it all together, realised had not bought stapler, back to shop.

Back to bench to assemble the collection. Extreme difficulty in opening packet for stapler. Man in religious dress moved away quickly.

Go to post office deep in the bowels of WHSmith, joined wrong end of queue.

Called over by efficient post office worker. Pay quite a lot of money to post unnecessarily large packet. "I'll take that from you", said the cashier. I imagine his disappointment when he finds, instead of his anticipated cornucopia of cash and electronic goods, some A4 paper and a packet of girlie fashion stickers.

Walk back through town noting the shops that have closed down since I last came in to town.

Looked in shop windows at watches. Decided they are all too expensive and that what I need to do is to find the perfectly good watch that I have mislaid in the house.

Could my life be any more complicated?

Yes, because Morrissey has rescheduled his show. I now have £35 of coach tickets to London that I don't need. I also have a spare ticket for Richard Herring in Bristol on Tuesday because my brother can't make it. Any takers? For the ticket I mean, not my life, I'll be keeping that thanks.

Friday 22.5.09

Nick woke me up early this morning. He doesn't normally do this and most days I don't even notice him getting up. I came awake fast and was a little jittery, in the middle of one of those dreams where I'm under threat from an unknown force. I don't know if I acted a bit oddly, hopefully not, because Nick was very sweet. It was nice to spend some time together even if it was at a strange time of day (to be fair to Nick, the time was not that strange to people with normal sleep patterns, probably about 7am).

When I woke up again, I mistook the time and thought I had slept through 'till lunch. It was a couple of hours before I realised it was only 10.30am. I was horribly disorientated by that time. I had wasted time listening to Jarvis Cocker do radio interviews promoting his new CD. I've heard it a couple of times, and I don't think it's all that good, but I might change my mind. I didn't like This is Hardcore until the 20th listen, then it became one of my favorites.

Amazon sent me the final David Baddiel book, The Secret Purposes. It is an historical novel. I don't generally read them, so we'll see if I finish it. In my shallow way, I find that I don't like the cover, which is a kind of smudged ballroom dancing. It has started to put me off already. I've invested a fiver though, so I need to get on with it to get my value for money.

I got quite a bit of writing done today. Most importantly, I was pleased with what I wrote yesterday. I have over 3000 words to send down to Sami. There's just one problem. It's a technical issue, just like my old English teacher, Mr Fee warned me about. I have poor spelling, but thanks to spellcheckers that hasn't been so important since 1990. You can judge my punctuation for yourself, going by this blog, I don't think it's too bad. What you can't judge is my punctuation of speech. If you think about it, it's not a skill that's in demand generally, but I find that I need it to write the novel. I'm going to have to get hold of a book about grammar or the one or two people that I'm going to inflict the book on (I don't expect to be able to get it published) won't be able to work out who's talking. Anyway, I've got one chapter from the middle of the book to pretty much ready to show around. It's a sort of dark romance. If you fancy a read, let me know and if I like you, I'll email it to you. I never said it was any good mind.

The biggest thrill for the day was that I replied to a Richard Herring joke on Twitter, and he replied to me. It was a conversation about writing, so it felt strangely appropriate. He was writing from his hotel room in Geneva, I was writing from my living room in Coventry, and he was correct, he could have been anywhere. Anyway, he's done 8000 words this week, which is a lot more than me, and he's very funny. Git.

Nina and I went for a walk with Darcy this evening and she told me her plot for a book she doesn't think she'll write. It's brilliant. Much better than mine. Git.

Sunday 17.5.09

Nick and I had our fairly predictable Sunday. Routines seem to evolve to fill a vacuum, even when things could be spontaneous, so there must be some benefit, although I'm not sure what that might be. We sat about until mid-morning, then went to Mc Donalds for lunch and to read the paper. The press induced scandal of MPs' expenses has been in print for weeks. I don't understand the surprise that people are expressing. It is human nature to take what we can, and anyone who makes it in politics must have a selfish, ruthless streak, and a sense of entitlement. That's how those in power managed to get on. The fun is in thinking how long their routine earner has lasted through generations of politicians. They made up the lax rules that let them claim anything from plumbing under the tennis court to a Twix, and then put the claims in, year upon year. We elected them (or didn't). I can't remember the last time I voted, it's always the same guy who gets in here, and whilst I don't identify with him, he is the correct political shade. This is where I might tell myself that people died for my right to vote, and apologise for being cynical, but I won't be doing either.

In the afternoon, we went on a hunt for a cycle helmet for Nina. We didn't find one, but boy did we suffer the fucked-up-ness of Sunday in the supermarket. The debate of the 1990's about whether there was demand for Sunday trading has definitively been won and lost. It wasn't worth it, even for the French Fancies that were on special offer. I like to think their soaring popularity is thanks to my blog.

When we got home, I went to bed, read for a bit, and then fell asleep. It's the only foolproof way of dealing with period pains. Nina brought up the sausages, bread and scrambled egg that Nick had made. I felt a bit bad that I hadn't fed the family anything good for them. Everybody was a bit grouchy, probably because I had ignored them all. That's being a mother. With great power comes great responsibility, but not always a great big payment for expenses.

Meant to say a couple of days ago, I thought of a working title for the writing. 'Two Hours To Taunton Deane'. I was inspired at Bridgewater. Also meant to say that I donated some of the money we got for the car to Richard Herring's programme for Hitler Mustache so that M201DNV will be printed in the brochure. It's a little memorial, and a little bit potty. The money goes to Scope.

Wednesday 25.3.09

Happy Birthday to me!

Stratford

Chips

Chat

DVD

Lasagna

Cake

The Apprentice

Feeling pretty good

Tuesday 24.3.09

Woke up to the sunshine, feeling energetic today. Isn't that an ordinary thing? The last time I fully experienced this feeling - including waking up and wanting to get out of bed - was, I think late August last year. I've got used to the sluggishness to the extent that I've incorporated it into my life as being normal, just me being me, and today that seemed absurd. At around 2pm, I recognised that the ability and motivation to sort out some bags of junk, finish the laundry, listen to the whole of a podcast and recall it, is a normal state of mind. I hope I'm able to sustain it as it feels good, and I've got loads done.

I sorted out the three bags of stuff that Nick cleared out of the car a couple of months ago. It was all stuff that I had accumulated there while I was in Cornwall last year. As I didn't want some of it but thought it could be used, I put it out on the front wall, hoping someone would take it. There were the packets of vegetable seeds that never got planted, and some books that I had got from the Lions Club sale on the beach. I was pleased that a couple of hours later, the books had gone. It had rained by this time so I had to throw away the seeds. With all the rest of the tidying, I threw out four bin bags, ready for the lorry tomorrow.

I cooked a good dinner and while it was cooking, took Darcy for a walk. Get me, doing two things at once! He is a bit miserable, having been wormed. The gaudy flower beds have been planted up. From one angle, the park looked like the guardians of civic life in the 50's might have imagined with the formal flower beds, the pavilion, and tennis courts, and the grand deco memorial in the background. It says something that today I even managed to appreciate something of Coventry. Surely this can't last.

In the evening, Nina and I went to the supermarket and amongst other things, bought me a giant pink French Fancie Birthday Cake. Deep, deep joy. The young man who served us at the checkout said that I would enjoy it as he had had one for his birthday. I told him I would think of him tomorrow, and I will.

In a final burst of positive Dee, I have partially completed my college application. It'll all end in tears.

Tuesday 10.3.09

It seems that I'm in a phase of quiet days. I was a little more adventurous than yesterday, a very little.

Today's activities:

read a couple of chapters of Frank Skinner

got up

had shower

weighed self: good news, same as last month, 16st4lbs

watched new dvd, Richard Herring Oh Fck I'm 40, OK, but not too amazing - extras dreadful

cooked chips (2 portions)

tidied around

talked to kids

groomed Darcy

cooked family tea

browsed on Internet

watched Holby, plot so bad I'm considered giving it up

watched Collings & Herrin video podcast

That's it.

Not much to look back on then, all things considered.

That's about it