status anxiety

Circles

2012-01-24T09:13:00.002Z

The recruitment consultant was right. It's not often one has the opportunity to say (write) this, but he was.

"Most people who accept a counter offer will still leave after about 6 months"

He told me all the reasons why I shouldn't accept the counter offer - even sending me an article about it (written by a recruitment consultant, of course, on a recruitment consultant's website). He stood to make a tidy sum if I took the job at [large American corporation], so he wasn't exactly objective.

But, much to his chagrin, I accepted the counter offer. And from that day, my role gradually moved further and further away from what I'm good at and enjoy (being a specialist) to what I'm good at but don't enjoy (being a generalist). The eternal dilemma of a technical specialist: the career path. There comes a point in your career as a software engineer where you either embrace the idea of "management", leaving the detail behind in order to progress, or you cling to your speciality, because that's the only way you can make sense of your role. To me, reward is only possible when I'm designing and delivering systems myself, not when I'm organising a team to design and deliver systems.

At every meeting with my manager, we would have the same conversation:

"I don't enjoy my job at the moment"
"But you're so good at it!"
"But I don't enjoy it"
"But you're so good at it!"
...

and so on, until we finish the coffee. It's not as if I hadn't warned him repeatedly, albeit in a roundabout way.

The problem was, I was trapped by the platform, and I guess he knew that. If I wanted to continue to work with the technology I am a specialist in, and not travel far from home, my options were limited. There was:

[large American corporation] whose offer I had turned down. Interesting, the colleague who did take the job returned after a few months - it was, apparently, horrendous.
[large American corporation] who had rejected me a couple of years before. Who, incidentally, are currently making people redundant.
The current company

In that context, staying was the only sensible option, unless I could find another speciality.

The problem with a speciality is that you have to have been doing it for a while for it to become a speciality. Starting a new career would mean dropping down to a salary that would not keep me in the manner to which I have become accustomed (to coin a phrase). But looking over at my friends who still worked at the company where I was originally trained (and where I was when I started blogging in 2003), I spotted a possibility.

When that company made the decision to take their IT department offshore (yes, India), this removed the need for in-house analyst/programmers, but created a need for a "middle man" between the business and the IT developers. A Business Analyst. Someone who needs many of the same aptitudes as a programmer, but is not tied to a particular platform or technology. A specialist in gathering, structuring and documenting business requirements to deliver change to the business. In an off-shored environment, Business Analysts are both vital and numerous.

After a whirlwind recruitment process (it helps to have contacts), I will start my new job next week at the company where it all began.

And whilst I'm fully aware that it's not "the answer" (which would be not having to work at all, if I'm honest), it's certainly an answer, in that it will allow me to:

walk to work
work in town, rather than on a soulless Business Park
earn a similar salary
be a specialist
not have to go through the "management" dilemma again for a while

Not for the first time, my life has taken a circular route. But that's fine by me.

2011-03-14T20:55:00.001Z

And it came to pass that the big American corporation offered me a job.

And it came to pass that I told my manager.

And it came to pass that they matched the salary offered by the American corporation.

And it came to pass that I didn't need to leave at all.

Result!

The news in (not very) brief

2011-02-27T10:19:00.005Z

I've applied for a new job.

Same as what I do now, but for a large, American corporation.
Same as what I do now, but 30 miles down the road, rather than 5 miles up the road.
Same as what I do now, but for 30 - 40% more salary.

30 - 40%.

And the company I'm at now wonders why they find it hard to recruit. Over the past few years, they've benefited from a couple of big companies in the area either making people redundant or off-shoring their IT to India (or both). They've benefited from those people who have ties in the area so want to find a job locally. The majority of these people took a pay cut to work there, because our line of work is so specialised, you have to take what you can, when you can.

But 30 - 40% just shows how behind the game they are.

It was a no-brainer, I had nothing to lose. I had to give it a try. Me and several others from where I work.

Let's face it, I don't do this work for the love of it, I do it for the money. One pointless corporation is no better than another. The extra money would mean we could refurbish our kitchen diner significantly sooner than if I stayed at the current place.

So, two interviews down (telephone, then face to face) and I'm playing the waiting game...

From hopefully gaining pounds in one area, to definitely losing them in others. Since June last year, I have changed my diet, adopting a "pre-agricultural" regime (also known as "Paleo", "Stone age", "hunter gatherer" etc.). Essentially, I no longer eat cereal-based products (bread, pasta, rice, breakfast cereals etc), the idea being that although our technology has evolved to cultivate and produce these products en masse, our bodies have not evolved to properly digest them. Particularly those of us with the most primitive blood type, O. (And I am O+)

I have spent many a year sneering at low-carbohydrate diets (for this is what it is), but having read the theory behind it and seeing the results (lost around 3 stone and at least 2 dress sizes), I am a true convert.

As a low-carber, there are some comments that are inevitable:

"Oh, the Atkins diet"
Well no, it's not actually. Any diet that tells me I can't eat fruit is not a diet I would want to follow. Fruit is arguably the most natural food for a human being.
"I couldn't do it. I love bread, I love pasta"
Do you think I don't? But let's think about bread for a moment. Think about the amount of grain that you need to make enough flour for one loaf of bread. Think about the processes that the grain of wheat has gone through to become a loaf of bread. Though we may think of bread as a "staple", it is a highly processed food. And a food that would not be available to primitive, pre-agricultural man. So for me, bread is now an occasional treat, and one that I savour.
"But what do you eat?"
Meat and fish. Eggs. Vegetables. Fruits. Nuts. Seeds. Anything that is essentially unchanged from its natural state (other than being chopped up and/or cooked). I also allow myself dairy products, although the pure version of the diet argues that milk and its various sidelines would be unavailable to primitive man (how do you milk a wild animal?).
"But what do you have for breakfast?"
Yes, breakfast is the tricky one. Toast is out. Cereal is out. Bacon and eggs every day, that just can't be particularly healthy. So I have berries and natural yoghurt, topped with toasted nuts. At weekends, I allow myself a pain aux raisins, a bit of toast or eggs and bacon.
"What about a quick lunch when you're out and about? You can't just grab a sandwich!"
No, you can't. Eating on the go is probably the trickiest thing about the diet, because our lunchtime outlets are just packed to the gills with sandwiches. Browse the aisles of Marks and Spencer for a takeaway lunch, and virtually every salad contains pasta, rice, couscous or legumes. So you end up assembling your own lunch from a selection of disparate ingredients. A packet of cooked chicken here, a slightly dreary side salad there.

I allow myself the odd sweet, the odd cake, the odd chip (for potatoes are also not part of the regime). And when I have them, I really savour and enjoy them.

I never feel bloated, but equally I do not feel hungry. I eat plenty. I eat differently. I eat delicious, natural, home-cooked food.

And as a result, I maintain a healthy weight. All the weight I gained through steroids and inactivity, I have lost. And more.

It's given me one less thing to worry about.

Anyway, how are you?

Meet...

2010-12-07T19:25:00.002Z

... the new project.

In its infancy at the moment, but with "web-time" at a premium, I'm liking the snippetiness of it.

Will see how it goes...

UPDATE: I have decided to "break the link" between the new blog and this one, as I don't want to rule out introducing people I actually know (*gasp*) to the new one. So, if you want to see it, remove "the" from the url above and if you want to comment, remember: you don't know me!

Bye

Treat this place like a hotel, etc.

2010-07-23T20:26:00.003+01:00

Yeah, I know. Not been here for a while. Too much life, not enough time, so it would seem. How did I ever find time to do this anyway? Well, I've deigned to drop in and write something, so you may as well hear me out.

A funny thing happened to me at work the other day.

We were having a meeting about testing the project I'm running. Like most software development projects, it's based on an idea put forward by a senior "user" (as we call them). I designed the solution and have built it along with a colleague, over the past couple of months, in close consultation with my users - my customers.

The users for this project are unusual, in that they haven't been involved in projects before - they're far too busy actually transacting the business to worry about projecty things, deadlines, timescales, GANTT charts and milestones. So when the project manager asked the question:

"What if you don't finish testing when you plan to?"

The response came from the senior user:

"Well, we carry on testing until we're happy with it, don't we? It's a no brainer!"

I could have kissed him. Could have, but didn't. (That would have been strange).

In case you're sitting there thinking "but surely, what the man said was just sensible? Logical?", then I don't think you understand the world in which most software developers operate.

Twelve years, I've been in the business of delivering software and twelve years I've waited for someone to say "Let's just do this properly. Let's take the time it takes to build it right. Let's take the time it takes to test it thoroughly. Let's deliver it when it's ready." Twelve long years.

I really could have kissed him.

At that moment, I had just a flash of what my work could be like if it wasn't... well, the way it always is.

An estimate is just that - an estimate. Sometimes things take longer when you get into the detail. Sometimes you don't think of everything. Twenty-year old bespoke IT systems are rambling, complicated, illogical, riddled with holes and inconsistencies. So we estimate as best we can, we build a bit of contigency, but it's a guideline, not an excuse to carve a deadline in stone and hold everyone to it.

I basked in the glory of this man's statement for some time and contemplated its simplicity, its beauty. Only to be brought back down to earth by my manager.

"B said it's okay if we don't deliver bang on the date we pencilled in - he just wants the system to be right"

"Yeah, but we've delivered a few projects late this year, I don't want another one to explain to J (the director). So I'd appreciate if you'd pull this one in on time"

A glimmer of hope, eclipsed by the dark shadow of reality.

Delusion and collusion

2010-03-26T09:46:00.005Z

I had thought that I would never find a colleague as infuriating as this one. Apparently, I was quite wrong.

For the past few months, I have been sitting opposite a man who seems, on the surface, to be an interesting, intelligent and laid back sort of fellow. We all thought so. "Yeah, he's a nice, guy, D". Yeah. And I would stand by that now to some extent - he is interesting, intelligent and laid back.

But as an added "bonus", he has the most extraordinary superiority complex I have ever encountered. The way he talks about himself, one would imagine that he has reached the pinnacle of achievement in his life. Let's look at the facts, shall we? He is a test analyst for an insurance company. He lives alone and by his own admission, has no friends. Truly enviable, no?

He will argue with anything and everything, particularly things which really aren't worth arguing about. If you state a fact to him, his reply will always start with "But surely...". His opinions revolve around what he has gleaned from the One Show, Wikipedia or extrapolated from his own, limited experience of life. Once he has the bit in his mouth on a particular topic, he will not let go, even if the whole office provides evidence to disprove his ill thought out theory.

He has a particular bee in his bonnet about the fact that he didn't go to university, concluding that he is somehow better than those who did. Now, I couldn't give a toss if someone's been to university or not, and there are countless examples of people who do have a degree who are complete cretins and have made a mess of their life. I am very far from being a shining example of graduate success. But what cannot be denied is that if you have a degree, there are certain doors open to you which would not be open to you otherwise. Perhaps they are doors which have no interest to you, perhaps they are doors that you lack the confidence to open, but they are doors nonetheless. This is fact.

Instead of going to university, he will claim, he travelled. He worked in America, he worked in Dubai, he had valuable experiences which have made him who he is today. Well done, fair play to him. But going to university does not prevent someone from travelling and/or working abroad (for example) - in my case, it was part of my degree to do so. Many students take a year off before or after university to do so. Many graduates take a sabbatical part way through a degree to have such experiences. His argument does not hold water. I do not criticise anyone for not having a degree. Yet he will criticise and claim to be superior to those who do.

A particular example he has cited more than once is one of his teachers at school telling him he would never make anything of his life. "But look at me now, and look at him. I wonder how much he's earning..." he will spout, smugly.

I have a number of problems with this. I am looking at you now. You are a test analyst for an insurance company. He is a teacher. I know which profession I have more respect for. As for "how much he's earning", well I would consider that to be utterly irrelevant, but for the record, it's *probably* still more than you.

I almost look forward to going back to my old desk, behind him. Almost.

Luckily, I have an ally. A is, I think, my secret sister. We are both tall, loud, North Londoners who tell it like it is and won't suffer fools gladly. We are both mimics, we both sing if prompted by a phrase that happens to be in a song, we both laugh, we both overreact. Those who don't know us think we can be aggressive or intimidating. Those who do, know that despite our appearance we actually lack confidence and self-esteem.

The other day, A said something to D that made me realise that she felt the same way about him as I do. A hasty email followed by a satisfyingly cathartic bitching session.

Always good to know one is not alone.

Gift

2009-12-09T07:11:00.003Z

What buying a present should be about:

At any time of year:

Seeing something you know someone would love.
Buying it there and then.
Giving it to them when you next see them.
"I saw this and thought of you".

Making something.
Something tailored to a friend, a lover, a family member.
Something you've given up your time to make.
Something utterly unique.

What buying a present should not be about:

December. Shops really busy. Where's my list? What was it he wanted? Was it Guitar Hero or Band Hero? I'm not even bothering going in *that* shop. Where's my list? Argh! Stress! What was it she wanted? Eternity or Escape? Why can't everyone just fuck off? Need a cup of tea. Where's my list? What was it they wanted? Hannah Montana or High School musical? Stop pushing me! Need a drink. Wrapping paper, yes. Queues! Argh! Bus home. Squashed. Oh no! Tags! Sellotape! My sanity! My patience!

...

The older I get, the more pointless it all seems.

Not being at work, relaxing with the ones I love, being warm, being well. That's what I want for Christmas.

What do you want?

La Belle époque

2009-11-22T11:37:00.002Z

It can't have escaped the notice of many "old school" bloggers that Belle de jour has finally been unmasked.

I remember when I first became aware of Belle. I remember, because I blogged about it in the days when I was still finding my own blogging voice, when my posts were distinctly more superficial, impulsive and snippety. I remember the controversy, particularly when she won a blogging award after only a couple of months. I remember the various theories - most notably, that "she" was a man. Furthermore, a journalist. No female, amateur writer could write about sex like that, apparently.

What was different about Belle from my perspective was that she had no comment thread. I had come to blogging at a time (known by some as "the second wave") when comments had become the norm. It seemed unthinkable that a new blog wouldn't have them. What we now know is that Belle had been an early adopter of blogging under a couple of different pseudonyms, therefore not having comments on her latest offering was probably normal for her. But not for the bloggers who saw themselves as her "contemporaries". Me being one of them. It all seemed incredibly aloof. "This is what I have to say. You may not respond, you must simply read and admire" is how I interpreted it. And they did, in droves.

Another feature which set her apart was the "monomania". The blog was about her experiences as a call girl, but not about her as a (as it turned out) PhD student, who had chosen prostitution as a means to pay for her studies. As a woman in a serious relationship. As a woman with American heritage. We never got to "know" her as a whole person, she was an enigma. Whereas I and many other bloggers at the time were open books, blurting out our feelings and failings to anyone who would listen.

She seemed supremely confident in her looks, her abilities, her intelligence, her writing. With good reason, as it turned out. Although this meant that I could never relate to her as I related to so many of the other blogs I was reading at the time. I relate best to humility, honesty, inadequacy.

Hers was probably the first blog that made me feel utterly inadequate about my life, my writing, my everything, but this did not stop me from returning to that url, week after week. When I think about how my own writing has evolved, from the early, chatty posts I used to publish, to the more thought-out, philosophical offerings of more recent times, I suppose I can't deny that I have been influenced, almost despite myself. I was a secret, reluctant admirer, inspired and intimidated in equal measure.

I once sent an email to Belle. She used French date stamps on her posts, and I noticed that the day and month names began with capital letters. If she wanted to be authentic, I pointed out, these should begin with lowercase letters. I have no idea if she read my message, but when I saw her first book in Waterstones, I noticed that lowercase was being used and smiled.

She was the first "blog to book" that I was aware of, and probably heralded the way for many others. I believe that blogging became more competitive and corporate after this - people clamoured for awards and book deals. Not Belle's fault, clearly, but a change was apparent to those of us who'd been blogging "before Belle". Many of my blogging strops have been reactions to these changes, but my instinct to write stuff (however crap) has usually tipped the balance.

So Belle (Brooke) is indeed a woman. A respected scientist. I am not surprised. Her writing betrayed her as a supremely intelligent person, whose intellect extended well beyond the somewhat limited (however specialised) demands of the escort work she wrote about in such detail.

Go well, Brooke.

Delving

2009-10-29T20:18:00.002Z

By the time I was nineteen years old, I'd lost all of my grandparents. I never knew my paternal grandfather, and can barely remember my mother's father either, who died when I was just four, a year after my own father had died.

I saw my two grandmothers regularly: one lived in West London in a 1930s block of flats, the other a stone's throw from the sea, near Bognor Regis in Sussex. Both had many stories to tell, but like most youngsters, I didn't think to really listen.

I lost my mother, my only remaining parent, when I was just twenty-seven. As I moved into my thirties, a time when I began to indulge in much philosophical introspection (the fact that I started blogging at thirty-one is no coincidence) I began to ponder my own history and wonder where I'd come from, but unfortunately had no-one to ask.

In the past few months, I have been inspired by re-runs on satellite channels of this, and with the help of the wealth of resources now available on the Internet (for a nominal fee and in some cases, free), I've been delving around in censuses and putting together my own family tree. Luckily, my grandparents were all old enough to appear on the 1911 census as children, so I was able to find out their parents' names, their siblings, where they lived, and the occupation of the father.

In my family, there have been booksellers, shopkeepers, wood labourers, police constables, mercantile clerks and station masters.

They have lived in Clerkenwell, Camberwell, Bethnal Green, Hoxton (before it was trendy), Stepney, Kent, Surrey, Hampshire, Devon, and Sussex. With the wonder of the Interwebs (most notably, Google Street View for the London addresses), I have even managed to glimpse some of the houses my ancestors lived in - where they have not been replaced by 1950s blocks of flats.

There are numerous Eleanors, Claras, Ediths, Thomases and Georges. One of my great, great grandfathers had a wife called Amelia, a daughter called Amelia and a servant called, yes you've guessed it, Amelia. Another had two sons called John, both alive on the same census.

One of my great grandfathers was one of nine siblings, and grew up just a few miles from where I now live. My paternal grandfather grew up in Sidcup and went to school in Chislehurst - a stone's throw from where I lived briefly with Big, back in 2004. His mother was born in Mottingham - one stop prior to where I used to get off the train from the city during those dark (but mercifully short) days of commuting.

It is all quite, quite fascinating.

Provisions

2009-08-29T20:29:00.004+01:00

Our garden has provided us with:

Gooseberries
Blackcurrants
Redcurrants
Blueberries
Courgettes
Tomatoes
Potatoes
Lettuces
Butternut squash
Apples
Raspberries
Strawberries

The cat has attempted to provide us with:

moths
butterflies
worms
birds
slugs (which attached themselves to her fluffy haunches)
a lack of sleep, due to night time meanderings on the bed
surly, nonchalant behaviour
general ungratefulness
rare moments of utter adoration
seemingly endless amusement

Work has provided me with:

a salary
disillusionment
hatred
despair
exhaustion
cynicism
an overwhelming urge to run for the hills

My sister has provided me with:

a small, perfectly formed niece (to add to my collection)

The municipal recycling centre (or "dump" as it used to be known) has provided us with:

Two filing cabinets
A blind, which miraculously fits the bathroom window as if it were made to measure
Two chrome effect radiator drying racks
A marble lazy susan (used mostly as a Scrabble turntable)
A bird bath
Two large pieces of fabulous "retro" fabric
Some pint glasses

That about covers it, for now.

Orthographic despair

2009-08-03T22:19:00.004+01:00

A couple of roads I pass fairly regularly seem to be having an identity crisis since the council has decided to renew the signs so that they now boast the qualifier "City of Southampton". As if we didn't know.

At one end of one of the roads in question, the sign reads "LANDGUARD ROAD" (the name by which I've always known the road). At the other end, it reads "LANGUARD ROAD". Similarly, the next road up is "HOWARD ROAD" at one end, and "HOWARDS ROAD" at the other.

Where one road has lost a "D" at one end, the other has gained a spurious "S" at the other.

The confusion offered up by the city council has unfortunately spread, like swine flu, to a nearby bus stop. One route displayed on the timetable shows the stop as "Landguard Road", another route shows "Languard Road". On the same sign. On the same piece of paper. By the same bus operator.

To top it all off, I am helpfully advised by a temporary, yellow diversion sign that I should find an alternative route to the "city center".

Where will it end, that's what I ask myself.

Knowing

2009-05-31T19:30:00.005+01:00

Wandering through town, trying to find something to wear for the wedding of the year. Something which doesn't make me want to cry should I happen to catch my reflection unawares.

Dresses are tricky on me. Waists are too high, skirts flare out just at the point where it's most unflattering, hems are too short. After many weekends of traipsing dejectedly in search of the non-existent "dress-that-looks-good-on-me", I have finally decreed that I shall wear trousers to this god-forsaken wedding. I very rarely wear anything untrouserlike, so why should I be different at a wedding? And let's face it, my legs are best just left lurking inside a trusty trouser leg rather than parading around on public display.

So, trousers it is, and of those I have many - but I'll need a nice top.

As I scour the same shops as before, this time looking for tops, not dresses, I decide to take a break for a browse around the bookshop. I very rarely buy new books, my brain quickly becoming bewildered by "l'embarras du choix" offered up by the high street bookstores. I prefer to get my books from charity shops, secure in the knowledge that I will have much less choice, a lower ticket price and the smugness of reuse. But on the odd occasion, I'll pop in to see what catches my eye.

And there, on the shelf, adjacent to the entrance, is something which immediately piques my interest.

I grasp it and read the blurb inside the cover:

... de Botton skillfully raises the big questions we all tend to ask of our work. What should I do with my life? How can I combine earning money with attaining fulfilment?...

I smirk. It is almost as if this book were written just for me. I make a mental note to buy it when it comes out in paperback.

In the meantime, I continue my quest for a wedding outfit, finally finding a blue silk tunic and miraculously matching blue shoes. I am interrupted by a text message from a friend:

Can I have your postal address? I have a present. W x

I duly provide the information, and continue on my way.

Three days later

I receive a jiffy bag.

I open the jiffy bag.

Inside the jiffy bag is this:

Inside the book is this:

*

I love my friends.

* inscription reads: "may the pleasures outweigh the sorrows"

Irritation

2009-05-23T20:26:00.002+01:00

Context: I am talking to my colleague. He is 27 years old, born and bred in the Midlands and university educated

Him: "Where's Torquay?"
Me: "Devon"

[pause]

Him: "Where's Devon?"
Me: [silent incredulity]

Him:"I can't believe it, they didn't pay me when I had one day off sick last month!"

Me:"Yeah, I had that too. That's because you're still in your six month probation period. It's all in your contract - the company won't pay you sick pay in your first six months. They would have told you that on your first day too. Of course, after a certain number of days, you'd get statutory sick pay"

Him: "That's not fair, I can't help being ill!"

Me: "That's not the point - you're in your probationary period - it's like having a temporary contract. It's fairly standard practice in a company like this."

Him: "Well, I've never had that before. I lost a day's pay!"

Me: "Hmmm, one day out of a month's salary - it's not exactly going to leave you on the breadline. To put your experience in a bit of perspective, a couple of years ago I was seriously ill and had 10 weeks on statutory sick pay, because I was in my probationary period. That was pretty hard financially"

[pause]

Him: "At least you got paid. I didn't get anything!"
Me: [silent incredulity]

Me: [noticing a packet of paracetamol on his desk] "Are you okay? You got a headache?"
Him: "Oh, I had flu earlier today. It's gone now..."
Me: [silent incredulity]

I've always been a pretty mild-mannered, laid-back person at work. I am lucky enough to work with bright, highly intelligent people, who mostly share my cynicism and frustration at the corporate world and the games we play within it, but who get on with it, because someone is paying them a decent salary to do so.

My newest colleague, however, is trying my patience to the extreme. Countless mind-numbingly stupid pronouncements like the ones cited above, married with fidgety behaviour, a naivety I have never experienced in someone of his age and background, mood swings hitherto unknown in the male of the species, erratic and melodramatic behaviour (he was once found sitting down in the lift), body language reminiscent of a sulky teenager, appalling standards of work (the fact that a program compiles does not mean that you have "finished" it!), an astonishing lack of numeracy (for a computer science graduate), and a constant need for reassurance (very hard to give, under the circumstances) makes him by far the most high-maintenance programmer I have ever had to work with.

And it's not just me who feels this way - most of our lunchtime conversations will involve an account of his latest demented outburst. At least he provides us with entertainment.

Whilst I usually settle for passive-aggression in the workplace, venting my frustrations once I'm away from those concerned, with this moronic excuse for a colleague, I have been driven to snap at him on a number of occasions. Big has now banned me from talking about him at home, because he is too angry on my behalf and powerless to take any action.

Perhaps the most irritating fact is that his probation period has now been and gone. An opportunity missed. And so, for the foreseeable, I must sit behind this idiot, clenching myself in silent incredulity and resisting the urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake him.

I hate how he makes me feel.

Still here

2009-03-28T21:01:00.005Z

Yes. Still around.

Still a little too round, actually, despite all my best efforts to whittle away the curves with a combination of running, swimming, skipping, and carrying out strange-looking manoeuvres on a so-called lateral stepper (one of my impulse buys, used three or four times in, well, a good couple of months). Nothing, it seems, will take me back to how I was "before WG". But I will not stop trying. My running pal and I, we call ourselves the "special needs" runners. Me, with my drug-induced anaemia, making it much more of a struggle than it used to be, she with her epilepsy, whose seizures can leave her out of action for weeks at a time if they lead to injury. Together, we stumble round Southampton common slowly but surely. Together, we stick our fingers up at our stupid illnesses and, albeit somewhat unathletically, just get on with it.

In work news, following on from this, I proved myself to be far too good at my job and was promoted after six months in the role. When I say promoted, I mean that my manager "strongly encouraged me" to apply for a senior role which had become vacant. Slightly bewildered, I re-did the same aptitude tests that I'd done six months previously and was interviewed by the same interviewers who had interviewed me six months previously. (Is no-one simply promoted any more?)

As a result of my new-found seniority, I have found myself being sucked into the mindset of "caring about work", which always puts me in a curious position. On one hand, I know that my job is essentially pointless in the grand scheme of things. On the other, I am a girly swot, eager to please and desperate to do a good job. And so I excel in the corporate workplace, having senior users fighting over who gets to use me on their ever-so-important projects. And I get paid a little more, which always helps. While inside, I just wonder what it's all for.

The cat continues to delight us. Not a day goes by when we don't laugh at her deranged antics. Now that she spends time outdoors, she has started to bring us the inevitable "presents". So far, a butterfly, an enormous moth and a number of worms have been presented to us, patted about a bit, generally tortured or sometimes eaten. She oscillates between utter aloofness and absolute adoration, depending on whether or not the recipient of her attention (or lack thereof) is holding in their hand one of these (or might do so in the near future).

Her latest obsession is the kitchen sink, which she will peer at, fascinated, for hours on end, listening, eyes wide, to the gurgling of the waste and lapping up any stray droplets of water. Like most cats, she refuses to drink from her dedicated bowl, preferring to take her water in virtually any other context.

My hair is shoulder-length and schizophrenic - curly at the back, barely wavy at the front, so I am back on the straighteners again in a desperate attempt to give it some uniformity. Like my body, I fear I will never have the pre-WG hair back.

And despite that background malaise, that continuing status anxiety, life is good. Big is here. My friends are here. We are healthy and happy. Thank you for asking.

A journey

2009-01-27T21:02:00.007Z

The precocious boy is talking loudly (and precociously) to his father (?) in the seat behind me. I manage to zone most of it out and concentrate on my book, but am distracted when I hear him suggesting to his father that they "do some French". This should be interesting. Having two seats to myself, I shuffle forwards so that my ear is conveniently located between the two seats, maximising my eavesdropping opportunity.

Most of the French exercises they do are correct to my trained ear (bar a few dodgy pronunciations), but I notice the father fluffing the position of the negative when constructing a sentence with a reflexive verb in the perfect tense.

Later, as we approach Clapham Junction, I move towards the front of the train. Time is tight - there is a slim hope that I will make my connection at King's Cross, but only if I minimise the amount of platform I have to walk along once I get to Waterloo.

I choose my exit point, and am joined in the "vestibule" by a woman. She presses the "open" button on the toilet beside us, and the door glides across to reveal a man having a wee. We both avert our eyes and stifle a snigger. The man, now re-buttoned, emerges and checks the door. Somewhat bewildered, he directs his explanation to us: "It just came open...". My conspirator and I shrug innocently, and he makes his exit.

I smile. "He must have forgotten to press the "Lock" button," I suggest, to salve her conscience. We share our opinions of new-fangled toilet door devices, agreeing that a mechanical lock is infinitely preferable to the possibility of a door sliding open whilst one is "otherwise engaged".

I ask her if she knows what's happening with the tube at Waterloo. I had a feeling there was some restriction about which exits were usable, but couldn't remember the details. She looks at me blankly. "I haven't been up here for years, I've no idea!". I ask her which way she's going. "St Pancras. I'm visiting my grandmother in Bedfordshire. I've no idea how to get there, though..." Since I'm going to King's Cross and know exactly which way to go, I tell her to follow me.

I guide her down the escalators through the throng of the Friday evening rush hour (she stands on the left - I hastily usher her over to the right) . "Head for the Bakerloo line - it's an easy change at Oxford Circus...". Old habits die hard.

We make our way onto the platform, and I stomp purposefully to the opposite end, away from the entrance, where there are fewer people. Old habits die hard.

The Bakerloo line is fairly empty, but we're in for a treat on the Victoria line at Oxford Circus. I've barely time to go all nostalgic at the destination of our train ("Walthamstow, my Walthamstow!") before we are crammed together into an altogether less airy vestibule than that offered by South West Trains. I have just enough space to peer down at my watch, concerned.

"Do you think you'll make the train?" she asks, knowing how little time I have. "Nah..." She, on the other hand, will arrive with time to spare.

As we leave the tube and head for the mainline, it's 17:43. My train leaves King's Cross at 17:45. Once we've negotiated the barriers and gone our separate ways, I emerge onto the concourse, looking hopefully at the departure board. First train on the board: 17:50 to Peterborough.

My train has departed... but, as I discover when checking my phone and finding several missed calls from when I was deep underground, the friend I'm meeting there has not. We get some supplies from M&S Simply Food and pile onto the 18:15 instead. Our weekend has begun.

The same. Only different.

2009-01-27T20:24:00.004Z

2006:

2009:

Apparently, I now have curly hair. Who knew?

2009-01-14T21:50:00.002Z

I stuck a note on the printer.

I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t one of those passive-aggressive notes "politely" informing the reader to cease and desist from whatever potential minor contravention was envisaged.

It was a helpful note.

I sit opposite the printer. I see the comings and goings of the users of the printer. I hear the bleeps and see the lights of the printer when the printer is unhappy. I see the frustrated user grappling with the drawers of the printer, tutting with exasperation when their document fails to emerge from the jaws of the printer.

Having worked as a secretary on several occasions in my murky past, I have built up a good rapport with printers. I know how to touch them, how to coax them, how to load them up and press their buttons. Where others slam the doors and jab angrily at the control panel, I calmly remove the paper jams, replace the cartridges and summon the friendly whirr of a happy printer with my gentle machinations.

So, sitting as I do opposite the printer, I often step in to help when I hear the bleeps that signal frayed tempers and concertina’d documents. Even though I rarely print anything out - existing in a largely paperless world, apart from my manuscript book where I scribble my ideas in pencil. This generally involve words with arrows pointing at other words, weird doodles and half-arsed to-do lists (the other day, I wrote "Need to " but then obviously became distracted and never found out what I "needed to" do...).

I would notice the hard-copy fanatics replenishing the paper. This would involve marching off to the opposite end of the office, bringing back one lonely packet of paper, putting half the packet in the printer, and leaving the remainder on top of the cupboard opposite the printer. The cupboard which overlooks my desk. A few hours later, this scene would repeat itself, just with a different user (whoever happened to approach the printer at its moment of need).

Knowing of the director’s penchant for a tidy office (woe betide anyone who leaves a coat on the back of a chair, let alone a half empty packet of paper on a cupboard), I took it upon myself to implement a system. Being a system implementer by trade, I felt qualified to do so. I went to the other end of the office, and picked up several packets of paper – as many as I could carry without contravening Health and Safety regulations. I piled these packets of paper quite neatly, in the (mostly empty) cupboard opposite the printer.

And then I stuck a note on the printer. Large, Arial font, nice and clear, neatly stuck on with backward-looped sellotape.

There should be paper in the cupboard behind you.
If not, you’ll have to take a walk...

Helpful, informative – and a little bit cheeky. Appropriate, I thought, for an IT department.

For several days, I was able to witness the beautiful efficacy of my system. The user would approach the printer, realise it had run out of paper and then turn toward me in a neat pirouette, open the cupboard and find a ready supply of paper. The supply of paper in the cupboard was maintained. My note was working.

Then one day, inexplicably, the note was gone. My colleagues and I speculated at some length on its disappearance, wondering whether a bin audit might reveal the culprit. But then Christmas came, and all was forgotten.

I noted, with some satisfaction, that the memory of my note lived on, as I witnessed further printer users turning instinctively to the cupboard for the paper supply. Evidently, others’ memories were not so efficient, as the departmental email today confirmed:

Please note that paper is kept in the cupboard opposite the printers. Please do not leave half-empty packets of paper on the cupboard tops.

There would have been no need for the email if they'd just kept my note...

(hello!)

In which I polish my medal

2008-07-31T21:41:00.005+01:00

"Did I tell you about the two further occurrences?" he asks me. He tends to operate in one of two modes, enigmatic or smarmy and slightly inappropriate. Today, he has chosen enigmatic.

Once again, my manager has chosen to start a conversation in the middle, rather than at the more traditional beginning. Call me old fash.

"Um, occurrences of what?" I enquire, brows raised in anticipation.

"Of people giving me good feedback about you"

"Ah!" I become slightly embarrassed. "Really? Who was it this time?"

"I, from [other department]. And E, from [my team]. They both said how impressed they were with the work you've done with them."

"Oh... well thanks for letting me know!"

These were to add to my growing collection of plaudits: the original one from N, the large bag of Minstrels from M (I like that sort), the verbal thanks from T and the most recent thank you email from A which was sent to my manager and forwarded to me. Plus, one of my functional design documents was heralded as an example to a new member of staff of how a functional design document should be.

I may have moaned about working at [insert original company name], but it seems that they taught me my trade very well.

And so it turns out that I might be a little bit great.
(At my job, that is. Wouldn't want to get over-excited...)

Simpleton

2008-07-17T18:10:00.002+01:00

I admire it from the window.

"Look, Big, just look at it!"

With the sun beating down and a gentle breeze, it really is in its element. I smile a slightly smug smile, proud of my handiwork.

It had taken me a while to get around to it, I admit. I am not keen on drilling holes in masonry – the noise is unbearable and having had mishaps in the past, I tend to procrastinate when I know that future drilling is required. But that weekend, I had finally climbed the ladder, drill in hand, hammer action engaged, and finished the job.

At our last house, we’d had a free-standing model – no drilling required, but the results are not so satisfactory. The clustering makes the process take longer, and both of us being tall, there is always the risk of inadvertently clubbing oneself with the contraption which, like many domestic items of its kind, is built for those of a more average height. Such dangers with the new one are rare and, with its easily-stowed-away-when-not-in-use design, not of major concern.

Once, whilst enjoying a pub lunch with friends, a man whom we’d assumed to be the resident nutter approached us somewhat angrily, claiming with some conviction: "The evil is in the complexity!" and throwing what looked like a tarot card onto our table. Whilst at the time we’d laughed it off, I still remember that phrase and can’t help thinking he might have been onto something.

Simplicity. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Simplicity is what I strive for.

Which is why, when I look out of the back door at my freshly washed clothes and bed linen, pegged to our new, retractable washing line which I'd just affixed to the exterior wall, propped up with the clothes prop, blowing in the wind, basking in the sun, I feel a little glow.

The glow of simplicity.

Hitch

2008-07-11T19:00:00.004+01:00

The envelope was hand-delivered over the weekend. As I came downstairs, Big was reading it and he handed it over wordlessly.

Damn. We thought we'd got away with it...

Not having been in Southampton at the appropriate time, and not being particularly close to them, we hadn't been included originally and neither had we expected to be. Everyone else had assumed, however, that we had - being part of the same social circle. Kept mentioning it and we kept having to tell them that no, were weren't part of it. But we were okay with it - secretly, rather pleased because it all seemed like a bit of a chore.

Maybe someone thought they were doing us a favour, and mentioned it to them. Or maybe, through seeing us out and about, they themselves suddenly felt guilty about it. Took "pity" on us when there was no need.

Either way, there we were with the envelope and we weren't sure what to do.

"Why don't we go to Manchester that weekend instead? That would give us an excuse"

I screwed up my nose. "K is coming down on Friday night - I said I'd go out for dinner with her, haven't seen her for ages. I'd rather go to Manchester over a long weekend - it's too far to go on Saturday and come back on Sunday...". He rolled his eyes.

And so we have been invited (at the last minute - as an afterthought? After someone else dropped out?) to yet another wedding. It's that time in our life when everyone around us is planning the flowers, booking the venue and choosing the dress. Or moaning about planning the flowers, booking the venue or choosing the dress. Or wittering endlessly about planning the flowers, booking the venue or choosing the dress. Or becoming stressed about planning the flowers, booking the venue or choosing the dress. Or failing to believe the cost of the flowers, the venue or the dress.

I must admit that marriage was "considered" very early on in my relationship with Big. When I say "considered", I mean that he proposed and I accepted. True. And apart from Big and me, no-one else knows this. You are indeed privileged, gentle reader.

However, the more weddings we went to (and being in our mid-thirties, there are plenty going on), the more we realised that we just didn't want it for ourselves. Certainly not in the form we'd experienced and perhaps not in any form at all. The idea of being the centre of attention for a day fills me with horror. The idea of having friends and family spend a fortune on travel, outfits and accommodation just for the "pleasure" of watching me prance around in a pretty frock for a few hours is just bizarre. And as for the idea of expecting a gift, vouchers or whatever alternative schemes people come up with, just because we've decided to sign a piece of paper, is weird beyond belief.

And so we carry on, me being me, him being him, fine on our own, but better together.

For all these reasons and more, we were perfectly okay with not going to this wedding.

And then we got invited.

There's probably still time to hastily arrange a "prior" engagement...

(Am I evil?)

Oh dear

2008-07-01T18:17:00.002+01:00

It's hard to know where to start with this one.

Suffice it to say, if you're going to give your sandwich shop a foreign name, do check the spelling, grammar and capitalisation with someone who knows the language before you go to the signwriters.

A rude awakening

2008-06-25T18:31:00.003+01:00

Confusion reigns, as is often the case in my dreams. Anxiety too. The details vary, but the sense of malaise is always the same. I could be missing a bus, a train, a plane. I might have lost my purse, my bag, my marbles. My legs, arms or hands don't seem to work, or work so sluggishly as to be at best frustrating, at worst, useless. Whatever I'm trying to do in my dreams - and it's usually vitally important - is being hampered by bad luck, physical shortcomings or bizarre logistical problems. I call these my anxiety dreams.

It is during one such mind muddle that I am suddenly aware of the duvet being ripped off me, my real (not dream) body exposed to the cool morning air in a most unexpected fashion. I manage a whimper, the pathetic-ness of which surprises even me. I furrow my brow and whine at the culprit beside me:

"You pulled the duvet off me!"

His look is one of utter bewilderment. As usual, when waking, he has little idea of what he's doing.

"S-sorry, I thought I was... I thought I was pulling it off myself..." he tails off, aware of how absurd his explanation is. He bundles me up again in the duvet and gathers my embundled self into his arms.

"I'm sorry, love" and he makes his exit. It must be time to get up.

I settle back down for a snooze, but before I have a chance to rest my head on the pillow, I am aware of the bedroom door creaking open, the padding of soft feet on the wooden floorboards and a tiny squeak. The cat, released from her downstairs incarceration, is ready for her morning cuddle.

Any plans I may have had for a snooze are now obliterated, as she jumps lightly and nimbly onto the bed and starts frantically kneading my chest (which I have taken care to cover with the duvet) and tickling my already pollen-ridden nose with her fluffy face. After a few minutes of sitting down, lying down, gazing adoringly, standing up, kneading and turning round (repeat, ad nauseam), she leaps over to the opposite corner of the bed, where she looks expectantly from me to the closed window blind.

Her work is done. I am now truly, indisputably awake. I drag my reluctant self from my horizontal position, grab my dressing gown and raise the blind just high enough for her to sit on the windowsill and survey her domain.

I shuffle sulkily downstairs and make a cup of tea. My day, like it or not, has begun.

On the buses

2008-06-13T21:13:00.004+01:00

I walk to the bus stop.

At the end of my road, the man with clippity-cloppity shoes and the close-fitting, slightly shiny suit approaches from the left, just as he did the day before. I am just ahead of him as I turn right towards the station, but am aware of his noisy footfalls just behind me - too close for comfort. Inevitably, I will cross the road to allow him to walk at his, slightly faster, pace.

As I turn left, up the hill, I note that he has now forged ahead. He has an air of confidence about him as he strides along, head held high. I suspect he is a lawyer.

At the top of the hill, I cross the busy junction and enter the park, near the modern statue. From this point on, I can see the road ahead running perpendicular to my trajectory. I have several minutes to contemplate the potential buses I could miss as they come from right to left in my field of vision - still a little too far away to run for. I curse my perfect eyesight, which allows me to notice such distant occurrences.

I approach the war memorial and the gaggle of schoolgirls who loiter there, smoking, chatting, flirting with the boys. The other day, as I walked past, I heard one saying: "I like your top." I'd assumed she was talking to her friend, but turned around to find that she was looking at me. "I like your top," she says again. Her tone of voice has the natural surliness of a teenager, and I'm not sure whether to take her comment at face value. I give her the benefit of the doubt. "Thanks," I smile, and continue on my way.

The long-haired guy is there, at the bus stop, as usual, with his lanky ponytail and laptop bag. Bound to work in IT. Bound to be a heavy metal fan. (I feel qualified to judge on both counts, since I am in the former category and I live with the latter). His attempt at business casual extends to substituting shabby, black trousers for his no-doubt habitual jeans.

The tall guy loiters anxiously, never stopping to sit on the insubstantial and rather uncomfortable looking bench within the shelter. Sometimes, I join him in the shade - the bus shelter being in direct sunlight, uncomfortable on warm mornings.

On the bus now, I notice the short, smiling, balding man, whose trousers are too short. An underwriter, perhaps. Or an actuary. He gets on half-way up the road, by the common. I hear him speaking to a friend - his car is out of action, which is why he's taking the bus. He grins happily for the entire journey. The novelty of taking the bus has not yet worn off.

Already on the bus is the young guy with red-dyed hair and quirky dress sense, who works at the same place as me. Customer services call centre. And he is there again, at the bus stop for the journey home. Another bus stop you can see for several tantalising minutes as you approach it via the large expanse of the supermarket car park. The long-haired, ponytail man is also there, as is the Louis Theroux lookalike whom I sometimes see.

The short, smiling, balding man just makes it onto the bus in time and soon we are heading back into town again. The huge, muscular, unlikely looking jogger is in his usual place, his black skin glistening with sweat, clutching two water bottles which look frosted, as if they'd been put in the freezer beforehand.

As we arrive back in the City Centre, I consider getting another bus home, but my ticket only allows me to take the blue buses. Countless white buses are going in my direction, but the blues are fewer and further between and yes, I can just see the other bus stop - a blue one has just pulled away.

I walk. I need the exercise.

I arrive home to Big, and the cat who now belongs to us. The cat inevitably does something amusing, and I smile and have a cup of tea.

2008-05-30T18:16:00.002+01:00

Stuff.

Like working (impressing), running (progressing), swimming (buoying), socialising (enjoying), sleeping (snoring), Facebooking (boring), laughing (guffawing) and living, for heaven's sake, living.

And NOT blogging.

Ah well.

A year of bad hair days

2008-05-21T22:42:00.004+01:00

2008-04-26T19:39:00.003+01:00

You were beautiful.

"Don't look at me!" you muttered to the staff outside the main room. But how could they not?

I heard the "ahhh" as the assembled guests in the room saw first the two little nieces, holding hands, dressed in pink, then you, luminous, arm in arm with our brother, in loco parentis. Then me, following behind, barely able to look up, only once to find Big with my eyes and return his smiling, gentle wink, but trembling, clutching the bouquet.

I remember only fragments of the ceremony, mostly being occupied with the effort it took to remain composed as poignant words were spoken with shaking voices. We in the front row independently and silently resolved not to look at each other, though we could sense the struggle in the others as we gulped back the tears. I heard your name - your full name, your middle name, our mother's name. A reminder of the gaping hole. I remember our brother-in-law delivering his reading with less gusto than is normal for him. His voice faltered, his eyes glistened - we sympathised.

The ceremony over with, we relaxed a little, but we knew there was more to come. Later, the heartfelt speech from your new husband and his toast to "absent friends" was another catalyst for our eyes to fill and our lips to tremble.

Because we'd been saying for some time that your wedding would be a "blub-fest". The first wedding in our family without mum. Yet another wedding without dad - the dad that you and I can barely remember. The three grandchildren they would never know, though perhaps they see them, perhaps they watch over them.

I wonder how many of your guests knew that just five days before your wedding, you had gone back to the clinic for the results of the biopsy. I wonder how many of them knew that a few weeks before that, you'd found that lump. I wonder how many of them knew that, although the biopsy had suggested that the lump was benign, the doctor was still concerned and booked you in to have it removed, a few days after you return from your honeymoon.

I suppose our bad genes were not content with giving you a rare, congenital heart condition, necessitating bypass surgery at the age of 21 and lifelong medication. I suppose they didn't think that the loss of both parents to cancer by the time you were 28 was sufficient. I guess they reckoned that a younger sister diagnosed with a rare, lifelong, auto-immune disease at the age of 34 and treated with chemotherapy wasn't quite enough for them.

Sometimes, I want to scream: "FOR FUCK'S SAKE, JUST LEAVE US ALONE!"

To whom, to what? I don't know. Whoever or whatever it is that has cursed the health of our family, please, just leave us alone.

Through it all, though, you smiled, you laughed, you danced.

You shone like a star, my sister.

You were beautiful.

Let's get persona-l

2008-04-05T16:50:00.003+01:00

She is a loudmouth. Her voice carries more than you'd think it would. She hiccoughs, sneezes, belches without stifling it, like a man. She cackles like a witch - deep and throaty. Dirty.

She swears. On a Gordon Ramsay scale, she's small fry, but she cusses and curses more than you'd think, from what little you know of her.

She is tall. She undoubtedly has a physical presence. She looks confident - almost intimidating - but there is an inner awkwardness perceptible to the more observant. She is incredibly clumsy - always flailing her arms as she walks and bashing them on walls, radiators, door handles, grazing her knuckles as she goes.

She is incredibly opinionated. In the privacy of her own home, she rants and raves and argues the toss about education, politics, the environment, society, claiming to have an answer to all the wrongs. Outside of her home, she is rarely drawn into any serious debate, doubting her ability to express her view articulately, stifling her thoughts, silently simmering.

She is an appalling gossip. Incredibly observant and intuitive, she can spot the seed of gossip almost before it happens. She can bitch for England (or for any other country that may require her services).

She is an inverted snob at times. A snob at others.

She is "a million different people from one day to the next".

Do you think you know her?

She is me. The me (most of) you don't see. The me who writes, presses publish, gets up, walks away from the screen and becomes a real, three-dimensional, multi-faceted, multi-talented and multi-flawed human being.

Not just anxious. Much, much more.

inspired by this

Hair today

2008-04-01T21:27:00.004+01:00

I've had a few double-takes. A few lingering looks that say "hold on there, missus!". A few "amusing" comments. A few awkward silences, where you can feel the weight of the stares. But mostly raised eyebrows and surprised smiles.

I'd been waiting for this moment for months, putting up with things in that stoic way that I'd learned from my mother. Irritatingly, it was only when the situation became significantly more bearable that I was able to go ahead with the "cure" - or at least, the partial remedy. When I was most desperate for the change, it simply wasn't possible to effect it.

But last Friday, my time came.

It was rather more painful than I'd expected, not only during, but just after. At first, I found it hard to sleep at night and woke up sullen. The tearfulness would continue all day.

Tearfulness, because it wasn't everything I'd hoped for. My expectations were, I fear, a little too high. I'd wanted them to give me back everything I'd lost, but they could only work with what they had. And what they had was not a lot.

Tearfulness, too, because I wondered if this was all just too ungrateful, too vain. Shouldn't I be pleased that everything seems to be okay on the inside?

I suppose that partly, I did it for my sister. Had I not been asked to be her bridesmaid, I wonder whether I would have gone through with it. But with the assurance of photos that will be looked at for years to come, I just wanted to look a bit more like me.

Just a bit.

You see, I paid someone to painstakingly braid the lower sections of my hair into tight cornrows. I paid someone to sew, with an alarmingly large needle, woven sections of real, human hair onto the braids. Human hair so well matched to my own, that it even contains the same odds flecks of grey.

I got some new hair. And though it's so clearly a mullet, I am growing to like it.

Girly swot

2008-03-26T19:48:00.005Z

"Did J tell you what N said about you?" my Manager asked me, quite out of the blue and rather enigmatically, as is his "style".

"Um... no..." I furrowed, slightly concerned. "Wh-what did he say?"

He gave a wry smile.

"I'll forward you the email," and with that, he scuttled back to his "pod".

When his email appeared in my inbox, the subject line was simply "Anx". My hand was trembling slightly and I could feel a prickly heat rising to my cheeks as I moused over the bold lettering, gearing up for the double-click.

I'd had a meeting with N (a senior manager in the user community) the day before, to discuss requirements for a system I'm designing singlehandedly. With only a sketchy, verbal brief from J (my immediate superior), lots of delving around an unknown system and only a couple of weeks in the job, I'd spent some considerable time preparing prototype screen shots and made sure to put my "listening hat" on for the meeting. As a newbie, I wanted to make sure I got it right.

After a productive discussion with N and his colleague, I'd come away from the meeting with a clear idea of how to proceed, and translated this into a detailed requirements spec.

Eager to please - sometimes pathetically so - I was especially curious to find out what N had thought.

I took a deep breath, and double-clicked it open.

-----------------
From: Manager
To: Anx
Subject: Anx

Well done!

-----------------
From: J
To: Manager
Subject: Anx

For your info, I spoke to N this morning who made comments like "Where did you get Anx from?" "I'm well impressed" "I think you've taken on a good one there".

So it looks like she's making a good start!

J

Whilst recognising my eternal, internal desire for a life less corporate, it is nice to know that I can still do my day job, and do it well.

Would that the crow flew

2008-03-19T18:54:00.003Z

I live about four miles away from my office, as the crow flies.

If there were a crow big enough to support my not-insubstantial weight, hitching a ride to work would be quick and efficient - if a little unusual in transport terms. Alas, we do not live in such a world where stygian, carrion-eatering harbingers of doom provide green transport for us eco-wannabe commuters. More's the pity.

Our offices were built at a time when "out of town" and "good road links" were perceived as positive factors. On a business park, two miles from the nearest station, nowhere near town, local shops or anything remotely useful, we are stranded in our own little corporate universe.

"Good road links" are all well and good, but when whoever planned the building in the first place grossly underestimated the required parking capacity, you end up as we do: sharing one space between three employees. Others risk the wrath of the local residents, parking on the surrounding housing estate. None too pleased with the influx of corporate drones clogging up their streets, some residents have resorted to vandalism in an attempt to deter the clamouring commuters.

Recognising the severity of the problem, the company provides a secure, monitored "park and ride" facility nearby, with a regular, chartered bus service in the mornings and evenings to ferry the bleary-eyed commuters from car to office, office to car. A reasonable solution, though many would rather run the risk of punctured tyres or scratched bodywork than be separated from their precious cars.

Then there's the traffic. You'd have thought, wouldn't you, that since I'm travelling out of the city, I would not have to contend with traffic. I thought it too, but I was wrong. Even given my "secret knowledge of backroads" of Southampton, I still always manage to stumble upon a bottleneck somewhere along the way. In fact, it takes me around the same amount of time to drive those four miles as it used to take me to drive the twenty from [town in the West Country where I lived] to [town in the West Country where I worked].

Having been spoiled at previous jobs by being able to walk to work, I find it most uncivilised having to drive. Not to mention unhealthy, carbon-footprinty and stressful, especially on those days when I park in the "park and ride" and have to co-ordinate my time of arrival with the regular (yet not as frequent as one would like) bus service.

So I spend much of my time working out ways of getting to work which do not involve driving...

Yes, admittedly, the most logical solution is so clearly to cycle. In fact, I'd rather like to. Helpfully, there are off-road cycle lanes along much of the route and showers available at work. But there is one rather big problem with that. One rather big problem who goes by the name of Big. Those of you more recent readers are probably not aware that, when Big was 13 years old, his dad was killed in a cycling accident, while cycling to work in Manchester. For his own peace of mind, he has respectfully asked me not to cycle to work, and I have respectfully agreed. And there is nothing more to be said about that.

There are two buses which stop a short walk from the office building. However, in order to take either of these buses, I must walk for almost a mile from my home to the bus stop. It takes me fifty minutes, door to door, to travel those four miles by bus.

I live just five minutes' walk from the Central train station. There are frequent services which can get me to the station nearest to the office building in less than ten minutes, but I am still a two-mile walk away from the office itself. With no useful bus service from the station, again, we're talking about a fifty minute journey door to door.

As preposterous as it may sound, I have even considered running to work. Four miles used to be a short run in my long-distance repertoire. Not nowadays, of course (although I am run-walking again with my old Southampton running pal, who is just returning from injury).

Walking. Four miles. Morning and night. That's just crazy talk, isn't it? Yep.

Car sharing - yes. I have even identified someone who lives just up the road from me. After his initial excitement at the thought of halving his fuel bills and being able to park on site two days out of every three, he has gone all non-committal on me.

These factors, together with my inherent laziness, mean that, despite my strong feelings on the subject, I find myself guiltily bundling myself and my MP3 player into the car each morning, alone.

But, readers, I have a plan.

I will approach the staff council. I will ask them to consider a "train and ride" scheme, providing chartered bus services to and from the two stations in the area. I will ask them to provide a car-sharing forum on the intranet, so that those who wish to pool their resources can find other, like-minded individuals.

And then I will find out whether there is anyone else out of the 700-odd who work in that building who gives a damn.

Supporting...

2008-03-11T19:14:00.001Z

"Hey, Dr. Jones, no time for blog"

2008-02-28T19:23:00.002Z

It appears to be that time of the year again. In my case, of course, it can happen at any time of the year, but that it happens is an inevitable truth.

Once again, it's time to stop this nonsense. For how long, we just don't know. A couple of days (if a suitably bloggable event arises), a couple of months, maybe even forever, though if past experience is anything to go by, that option seems unlikely.

I'll keep it brief.

My new job is making me use my brain. This is, of course, A Good Thing (to use the title case which seems de rigueur in such situations). This means that, when I get home from work, there is not much brain left.

Although I could probably continue to churn out the odd snippet once a week, I just don't have time to read blogs. And to me, writing without reading in the world of Blog is... well, it's just not right. It might be okay for those famous bloggers, whose fascination with their fabulous selves leaves no time to consider the mundane lives of anyone else, but for blogging pondlife such as myself, it's Just Not On.

And so, I shall retreat into the shadows,leaving only my Facebook friends to discover my fate...

Good evening to you, one and all.

2008-02-20T20:03:00.004Z

Special Agent:Amber A.k.a:"Bam-Bam"
Age:2
Sex:Female
Appearance:Small, fluffy, tortoiseshell, large white feet
Special Abilities: Jumping into boxes, hiding under beds, endearing self to human subjects.

Cover Story: Your owner has gone on an extended holiday. You must be temporarily housed with other humans for your own welfare.

Mission Summary: Study the humans in their home environment, collect data and submit report of lifestyle, behaviours, food and hygiene.

Details:
Your duties have two main purposes. Firstly, to engage the humans in order to gain their trust and admiration. Humans are generally weak-minded and will inevitably respond to your charms. Secondly, to collect data on their habitat and behaviours. Duties include, but are not restricted to, the following:

Patrol the room
Peer into the fireplace, going up on hindlegs to better inspect the chimney if necessary
Rub lips against cardboard box on floor to detect its chemical make up. If humans become suspicious, jump into box, looking slightly bewildered and making scratching noises. The humans will probably laugh at this, and continue about their business
Inspect plant pot - try to ascertain the function of the plant in the humans' life. Beware: the plant may try to attack you by brushing you with its fronds. If this occurs - run like the wind!
Jump up on back of sofa and stare out of the window
Use scratching post with intense concentration and with ears pinned back. This is preferable to using other pieces of human furniture - you may lose their trust if you use, for example, the sofa
Jump onto suede beanbag, examine its strange squidginess. This can be an alarming experience if you are not used to it
Beware of any sudden movements/slight noises/passing cars/someone sneezing and run for your life if required.
Jump onto humans and settle down to snuggle, patting them on their face if they dare to stop stroking you. This is part of the endearment process - they will not be able to imagine life without you.
Drink from the humans' water glass on the side table. This is the only way to ensure that the water you drink is safe
Attempt to gain a sample of any foods the humans are eating, by mewling pathetically and looking up at them adoringly
If the humans attempt to shut you downstairs at night, attempt to burrow your way through the carpet using your claws. The humans might shout at you when they come down in the morning, but do not let this deter you - remember, you must study their nocturnal behaviour!

I wish you luck on your mission, Special Agent Amber. Do not let us down.

About a hundred years ago...*

2008-02-16T22:23:00.005Z

... the lovely Miss Tickle tagged me.

I am to come up with Six Random Things About Me, apparently. Now, having been blogging for nearly five years, there's probably not a lot you long-term readers don't know about me, but I'll see what I can do...

I am quite simply incapable of sitting at a chair with my feet flat on the floor, as recommended by Health and Safety advisors the world over. I have a quite curious need to hoist one of my legs at an unlikely angle so that its ankle is resting on the other thigh. Sometimes I will go so far as to rest my foot on the desk top. I did this once without thinking, in a no-doubt vitally important "business meeting", much to the disbelief of my fellow attendees.

These contortions inevitably end in pins and needles and an inability to walk until the feeling returns, but it is quite simply beyond my control.

I am quite comfortable sitting cross-legged, even though I do precisely no yoga. My friend winces when she witnesses this. To wind her up, I show her how close I am to getting my leg right over my head. A useful skill, I think you'll agree.

I played steel drums at school.

We used to play "At The Sign of the Swinging Cymbal", which many Brits will know from the legendary Alan Freeman's "Pick of the Pops" radio show. If you put a "ping-pong" (tenor) steel drum in front of me today, some twenty years later, I could probably still play it, though I remember the movements required to make the tune more than the sequence of notes.

I remember becoming emotional as I played, and I still get a shiver down my spine today when I hear "Wonderful Life" by Black - the only song I know with a (probably synthesised) steel drum rhythm section. I always focus my listening on the steel drums and imagine how easy it would be to play... Man, give me a steel drum!

I am curiously drawn to singing harmonies, as opposed to the melody.

When listening to my iPod in the car, I often find myself singing along, but virtually always with the harmony - sometimes making a harmony line up if it doesn't exist.

I was once a member of a barbershop quintet. When I say a barbershop quintet, I mean that me and four friends used to get together and sing in a barbershop style. We never performed, but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

As I've mentioned before, I *love* singing.
I am extraordinarily heavy.

Before you click away with disgust at the sheer tediousness of this statement, this is not your typical "I'm too fat, I hate myself" rants (although I am, of course, too fat and hate myself).

It is a simple fact that I am much, much heavier than anyone ever imagines. When I was in hospital, I noted several nurses checking the calibration of the scales in disbelief. Even when I was at my slimmest and running twenty odd miles per week, I was still a good couple of stone heavier than I looked. Most people would be horrified to be as heavy as I am, even considering my above-average height. I think I am living proof that there really is such a thing as "being big boned".

This is one of the reasons that I try not to weigh myself. My measure is the relative snugness of the trouser.

At the age of twelve, I was chosen from my school to attend "Mathematics Masterclasses" at the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

I simply cannot walk in high heels. The end.

* give or take... um... about a hundred years.

Friends like these...

2008-02-09T20:31:00.000Z

I doubt you noticed. It seems to me that, these days, you rarely notice anything outside a five metre radius of your own navel. Our friendship, if we can really call it that, started with a kind of kinship, a shared reaction to a similar experience, a mutual, gentle admiration. You, living the life that, at one time, I thought I might live. There was some envy from me, there always is, though not for everything. Not for the failing relationship, the child, the crushing routine. Just aspects of that life - the life I thought I'd live.

In those early days, I was one of the chosen ones and I was pathetically grateful. Too pathetically grateful. I am ashamed to say that I sometimes joined in with the gushing admiration which, when I witness it now, fills me with bitterness and exasperation.

Things started to turn around for you, in a big way. You moved on, were part of something wholly different now - I fell by the wayside, like many others. You paid lip service to our friendship on rare occasions, but there was more and more smugness and aloofness about your changed fortunes and you became part of a clique: a clique which was not open to me. Too ordinary, too mediocre to be on that list.

Mediocre and ordinary, I may be, but my friendship must still be earned and I'm sorry to say, you haven't worked hard enough. And so, for the first time, I used the "Remove from friends" button in Facebook. On you.

I doubt you noticed.

Yes, but is it relevant?

2008-02-03T14:33:00.000Z

I have noticed a phenomenon.

This is not unusual for me. I often notice phenomena whilst going about my daily business. Many of the phenomena I notice are things which annoy me, and the one I'm about to relate to you, oh faithful reader, is no exception.

I've always been a bit "funny" about email signatures. Not funny "ha-ha", but funny "peculiar".

I can see the general function of them. Yes, of course you could put your name and position within the company, especially if it's the first time you are contacting me and I might wonder "Who, in God's name, is this person, sending me an email?". Yes, by all means, put your office number and even your fax number (if you think anyone's going to use it).

But do I need your full postal address? I can see that I might need it for very specific circumstances, but do I need it every time you send me an email? Especially if you work in the same building as me, for the same company as me - hell, in the same office area as me!

Do I need your email address? You've just sent me an email and guess what! There's this amazing facility known as "reply" which allows me to send an email back again! Also, depending on what email client I'm using (and naturally, Lotus Notes is the most useless at doing this), I can (usually) easily see what your email address is by using the power of my eyes.

In my last, fascinating temporary job (I finished on Friday, to allow me to take up my new, permanent, eminently more lucrative but probably only slightly less soul-destroying position), I noted that there were some extra nuggets of information that people seemed keen to include in their email signature.

Firstly, a crappy picture of a ship, made out of various punctuation marks and symbols (the job had "something to do" with ships, although I am not at liberty to reveal any more than this). Ha, aren't they amusingly light-hearted, with their jaunty ship pictures. Not.

Secondly, a worrying trend was the inclusion of letters after the name.

Don't get me wrong - letters after the name are sometimes relevant, if the letters relate directly to the business that the sender is engaged in whilst sending the email. A doctor, perhaps, or an accountant.

But when I receive an email from, say, a "PA to a really important person" (yeah, whatever), where the sender signs off with "Simpering Twit, BA (Hons)", I do wonder what the world is coming to. The fact that you have a degree in, I dunno, "Media Studies", is, I'm afraid, sadly not relevant to your ability to take a pair of trousers to the dry cleaners, do some filing or be treated like a common skivvy by a "very important" executive, now is it?

I am all too aware that my degree in French is basically of no import to my day-to-day existence as a computer programmer so the very idea of shoe-horning my irrelevant qualifications into an email signature on that subject is just plain laughable.

And so I laugh.

Status Anxiety, BA (Hons), DipTransIoLET
Purveyor of Mediocre Blog Posts
02380 xxx xxx*

A sad little corner of the Interweb
The World
The Universe

____/-/_/-/_____
\= = = = = = = = = =/
\= = = = = = = = =/
------------------

*yes, I know. It was deliberate.

We're talking telephone numbers

2008-01-27T18:04:00.000Z

Big jabbed at the landline phone, somewhat confused. Ordering the Chinese was not as straightforward as he'd hoped.

"I don't get it..."
"What?"
"How come I have to dial the whole number, including the code? The restaurant is in Southampton too..."

I raised my eyebrow at him. I knew exactly what had happened: he, like so many others, had fallen into the trap.

"What number were you trying to dial?"

He showed me the menu and the six digits he'd been trying.

I nodded, both smugly and knowingly.

You see, Southampton numbers, like London numbers, have eight digits. The code for Southampton (and incidentally, for Portsmouth and surrounding areas) is 023. Just 023. Not, oh please not, 02380. Ugh, it makes me feel slightly nauseous to type that because it's just wrong wrong wrong.

Our home number is 023 80xx xxxx. The number of the Chinese takeaway is 023 80yy yyyy. So, if I wanted to phone a Chinese takeaway in Southampton from my landline in Southampton, I would dial 80yy yyyy. If I want to phone my consultant, who is based in Portsmouth, I would dial 92zz zzzz. It has been this way since 2000 and is really, quite simple.

Big is new to Southampton, so I'll let him off this time...

Unfortunately, people are so used to having five-digit area codes, they just refuse to comply with this régime. It is often not their fault, as businesses in the area are not consistent in how they print their telephone numbers.

The same is true in London. The code for London is 020. End of. If I'm in London, phoning someone else in London, I will dial an eight-digit number. So if people cite their London number to me in the form "0208 [pause] xxx [pause] xxxx", not only will I roll my eyes at how ignorant they are, but I will also secretly write it down as "020 [space] 8xxx [space] xxxx" with an air of superiority.

Because, for some reason I've yet to ascertain, it matters to me. In my defence, though, it's not just me...

Progress

2008-01-22T21:01:00.000Z

I am swimming up and down in what has become my usual, steady style.

(Sometimes, I even overtake people who look quite fit!)

I stop for a breather and smile at the woman beside me, who has also stopped for a breather.

"I wish I could swim like you..." she laments.

If only she knew...

One of those days

2008-01-08T19:21:00.000Z

I skillfully avoided the dog turd on my way to the Co-op at the end of my road. I saw it there, glistening in the gentle gloom of the streetlamp and hopped over it. I congratulated myself on my turd-avoidance as I entered the store and grabbed the part-baked baguettes, which would accompany our home-made soup later that evening.

As I returned home, my mind wandered off to contemplate what had been a chaotic return to work after the Christmas break.

With the PA off sick for the entire period, I had been doing several jobs: supporting the Managing Director of [prestigious British brand, now owned by Americans] - which is a full time job in itself - on top of my usual job of supporting the Marketing Director, the Director of [other related company], the entire Marketing department and trying to sort out a new-starter.

I had been arriving home brain-dead and tearful, frazzled and frustrated from attending to everyone else's needs all day while mine had been left dangling and neglected. I had been snapping at Big, failing to drag myself to the pool and unable to summon up the energy to cook decent meals at night.

On top of this, I had been waiting to hear about the job for which I'd interviewed before Christmas. I'd been told verbally that I would be offered the job, but after the last job-related débacle, I wouldn't be happy until I received a piece of paper with my name, the company name and a dotted line for me to adorn with my signature.

As these thoughts swirled around my brain, I was vaguely aware of a squelching underfoot.

The glistening turd, which I'd so carefully avoided on my way to the shop, was now embellishing the sole of my shoe. A heavily cleated sole at that.

I rolled my eyes, took a deep breath and stomped home, stopping only to remove the shoes and leave them rather unceremoniously on the doorstep before entering the house. I would deal with them later. Much later.

It had been one of those days...

How a wardrobe made me cry

2007-12-31T19:58:00.000Z

It wasn't the wardrobe's fault, of course. It was just minding its own business, being wardrobey, having hanging space and sliding, mirrored doors.

It had previously belonged to our mutual friend, J. It had come as part of the fixtures and fittings of his flat when he'd bought it and had served him well over the years. Knowing that J was attempting to sell the flat, I wondered (out loud, over lunch with S and J) what would happen to the wardrobe, whilst mind-eyeing that empty space in our own enormous bedroom where my open hanging rail stood rather pathetically, straining under the weight of the too-many-clothes.

"Oh, I'll have to get rid of it," he sighed. Since he and S had got together, combining two households into one, they had struggled to accommodate the excess of possessions.

"Well, maybe we could take it off your hands!" I beamed.

"You're welcome to it! But it'll be up to you to dismantle it and get it out of the flat..."

It seemed like a fair deal, so last Friday, we rolled up in our hired van and loaded it with the bits of melamine-faced chipboard and the little bag of screws which had once been - and would hopefully be once more - a wardrobe.

It was, I realised once it had been put together (not without some chin-scratching, swearing and threats of violence), my first, proper wardrobe as an adult. Prior to that, in my singleton existence, I had made do with open hanging rails. Later, I had combined these with borrowed spaces in Big's childhood wardrobes which seemed to accompany him to every new home out of his innate sense of "if-it-ain't-broke"-ness, but regardless of their distinct lack of aesthetics and very much to my chagrin.

As I screwed the bulbs into place (the sort of bulbs that go in a fridge and light up when the wardrobe doors are opened), I felt all growed up, though only in the wardrobe sense, of course.

But, o mirrored doors, why must you taunt me with that reflection as I approach in my undressed state? The reflection with its short hair and excess kilos that remind me of what happened this year.

Why must your little bulbs light up my clothes? The clothes which no longer fit me properly as a result of what happened this year.

The body I'd respected, taken care of and even grown to like a little - after this year, I can no longer trust it to be well, I can no longer stand the sight of it.

So, wardrobe, if I approach you with my head bowed, if I seem to spend a long time contemplating, choosing, rejecting outfits, if a tear starts to roll down my cheek as I replace another ill-fitting garment inside you, you should now know why. It's not your fault, really.

But I don't think it's mine either.

Roll on 2008. Surely, you can only be better...

The brush-off

2007-12-28T18:52:00.000Z

A toilet brush is a toilet brush is a toilet brush, so you'd think. But you'd be wrong. I was wrong too.

Firstly, and I know that this issue has previously been covered in some depth chez la sorcière bleue, I do solemnly declare that the shape of a typical toilet brush de nos jours is not suited to its purpose. Namely, being able to scrub into the variously shaped nooks and crannies that our toilets provide.

Who decided that rigid bristles in a spherical formation was the ideal configuration for scrubbing into the sometimes square corners found in the interior of our porcelain pals? Who decreed that the older shape of brush - she of the angled head and more flexible bristles, she who can delve deep into the darkest recesses of the pride of Armitage Shanks - should be retired in favour of this younger pretender?

Whoever you may be, sir (or madam), you are a fool. And yet it is I who am left with a stained toilet bowl which no amount of scrubbing with your second-rate brush will correct.

To add insult to injury, my recently acquired toilet brush has one further useless features to add to its pitiful lack of ergonomics.

Ah yes, it may sit proudly and aesthetically within its chrome sheath, but when it is unleashed, one discovers an alarming fact. The brush head is detachable from its very shaft, via the medium of a screwing motion.

Why? Just why would you do that?

A useful feature, one may think at first, allowing the brush head to be replaced in future. But who, in their right mind, is going to want to fiddle around with the "business end" of a toilet brush? Can I just put my hand up at this point and declare: "Not me!"

The issue with this unscrewable head is that, inevitably, it begins to unscrew during normal usage. And there comes the dread. The dread that the thing will drop off mid scrub, and descend into the murky depths, where it must be fished out by hand or may risk blocking the system. If you manage to avoid this by noting that the thing is loosening, you must still work out how to screw it back on again without... ahem... soiling yourself.

No. I really must insist in future that the brush head is permanently attached to the shaft.

And talking of bog brushes - you should see my hair at the moment! When they told me during the chemotherapy that "your hair will grow back", what they actually meant was "someone else's hair will grow back where yours once was". I don't know whose coarse, bouffantish hair this is, but it bears no relation to my straight, sleek, shiny hair, which was last seen clogging up the Dyson over the summer...

Life at the orifice

2007-12-19T18:00:00.001Z

Some recent examples of why Lotus Notes is accused of being "unintuitive":

Example 1

I accidentally delete an email message
I go into the trash can and drag the message out again, into the inbox
Whilst Lotus Notes knows what I have done and acknowledges what I am trying to do, instead of restoring the message into the Inbox, it barks:

No, Lotus Notes, YOU should bloody well Restore it. If you know that's what I'm trying to do, why can't you just do it? Why must I click on OK to acknowledge your stupid error message, then click on Restore?

Unintuitive.

Example 2

I am going to be away from work for a few days, so I set up my Out of Office.
Some time after coming back, Lotus Notes sends me an email to remind me that my Out of Office is on, and advises me of the convoluted method of disabling it. By the time I've read this message, I might have been back at work for some considerable amount of time.

Why not pop up a message as soon as I sign in, reminding me that Out of Office is on and prompting me with a single click to turn it off? (Hint: this is what Outlook does).

Unintuitive.

Example 3

I am typing an email.
I decide that I want to move a paragraph of text to a different location within the message.
I select the piece of text and attempt to drag and drop it.
I cannot drag and drop text.
Instead, I must use Cut and Paste.

What kind of "Professional" Windows GUI application does not allow the user to drag and drop text in a text editing environment? (Yeah, okay, Notepad - but this has no pretensions of being a professional business tool).

Unintuitive.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

One of my favourite things about offices is the Internal Mail envelope, as unlikely as this may seem. I love the fact that it can be used hundreds of times before either the user runs out of boxes, or the thing becomes so worn as to resemble an old, soft, thin yet trusty rag.

I particularly like the ones used by our US office, which are satisfyingly robust and have a string fastening - much more secure than the flap closure favoured on this side of the Atlantic, which is open to all sorts of abuse - notably, the use of sellotape and staples which decreases the life expectancy of the envelopes considerably.

I am quite a stickler for scrubbing out the previous recipient with a thick, black felt tip, and writing the new recipient's name in block capitals, to ensure that there can be no confusion.

Others, I notice, are not so diligent.

Such are the musings of an office dogsbody.

A letter I will never send

2007-12-10T18:25:00.000Z

Dear ex-potential future employer

Thank you for your feedback, which was received via the recruitment consultant only several weeks after the various interviews that I was most generously given the opportunity to attend.

I am sorry that you felt unable to take my application any further, due to your concerns over "team fit". As you said, your department is populated mostly by middle-aged men; heaven forbid that a thirty-something, "happy, outgoing" (your words) woman with a strong personality should be introduced into such a department. Who knows what might happen!

Next time, I shall arrange to have a sex-change and a personality transplant, so that I might better achieve "team fit".

I was interested to note that your HR representative mentioned that I was "difficult to engage" in conversation while walking from the lift to his office (though he also admitted that once in his office and being interviewed, I was fine). How preposterous that someone coming for an interview should be slightly nervous at first! I am thoroughly ashamed of myself for this behaviour. Allow me also to apologise that my knowledge of and interest in rush-hour traffic on the M27 is sadly lacking. I’m afraid I did not realise that such knowledge was a prerequisite for the position (and having gone through the job description, I am still unsure as to how it is relevant, but will bow to your no-doubt superior knowledge on this matter).

Next time, I will be sure to prepare a veritable raft of tedious, traffic-based small talk in preparation for such an eventuality.

I also apologise for achieving the highest score in 3 years in your technical test. Evidently, you are not seeking someone who is highly competent in their area of expertise.

Next time, I will be sure to achieve only an average score.

Finally, I’d like to apologise for causing such confusion among your managers, to the extent that one of them decided that I would be (and I quote) "a breath of fresh air" and informed me (via the recruitment consultant) that I would be offered the job, whilst another had decided that I was not suitable, for the reasons cited above.

I realise that I have wasted several weeks of your no-doubt valuable time in recruitment and wish you luck in finding someone who fits the profile of dull, average, middle-aged man lacking in personality who enjoys discussing motorway traffic.

Yours faithfully

Anx

The comedown

2007-12-06T07:16:00.000Z

To earn a bit of money towards Christmas, I have taken a temporary office job.

I always forget how much I hate secretarial work, until I'm actually doing it again.

This week, among all the usual drudgery, I have been asked to:

Take someone's trousers to the dry cleaners
Go out and buy sandwiches for various directors and hangers on
Go out and buy a packet of tea bags and a pint of skimmed for a director (when I'd just sat down for my lunch break)
Print out a set of spreadsheets for another secretary - sorry, "PA" - who is perfectly capable of printing them out herself and spent several minutes explaining what they were and what to do with them and where to put them; minutes which could, of course, have been used to print them out herself.

As a result, self worth is currently lurking way down in the lower reaches of the graph.

Régime change at Anxious Mansions

2007-11-26T10:55:00.000Z

"I got a cutlery tray!" I beamed, with perhaps more excitement than is necessary under the circumstances. But we had been "managing" with knives, forks and spoons all mixed up in an old Kit-Kat tin (the mini Kit-Kats had long since been consumed), so it seemed like progress.

It had only cost a couple of quid, and had allowed me to compartmentalise the cutlery appropriately and neatly. I had noticed, when loading the tray, that some of the knives were slightly too long for the originally chosen compartment, so I'd had to move them to the longer slot, to the right of the spoons. From left to right: forks, spoons, knives. Teaspoons at the bottom, perpendicular to their larger cousins.

I waited for the reaction.

"Very good, dear..." said Big, dumping his coat and going upstairs to get changed from work. He hadn't yet looked inside the drawer. I returned to staring at my Scrabulous board, searching for that elusive "bingo".

Later on, when putting the cutlery away:

"No, love, this just won't do." he stated, shaking his head with some bewilderment.
"What?" I replied with an innocent air, yet knowing exactly what was coming.
"I'm afraid there's going to have to be a régime change in the cutlery drawer." He looked at me, with his school teachery look. I looked back questioningly and raised my eyebrows. Thought I'd humour him for a while.
"The knives. They're in the wrong place! It should be: knives, forks, spoons, from left to right"
He began shuffling the cutlery around.
"Honey!"
He stopped, momentarily.
"Honey, some of the knives are too long - they won't fit in the other slots, I already tried. I'm afraid they'll have to stay there..."

The look on his face was like that of a lost child.

"I'm sorry, love,"

I distracted him with a plate of food. Always works, at least for a while.

The next morning, Big had left for work some time ago and I began preparing my breakfast. As I reached for a spoon in my newly organised cutlery drawer, I noticed something.

The whole tray had been turned upside down and rearranged, purely so that the knives could take their "rightful" place, on the left.

For someone who is quite happy to live in utter chaos in so many ways, the man is surprisingly strict about cutlery placement.

Someone must pay...

2007-11-23T14:54:00.000Z

... and it looks like it's going to be me.

You know that job that I was told a week and a half ago that I'd got? I found out today that actually, I didn't get it.

Now, either my recruitment consultant lied to me or someone lied to him.

So, with Christmas just around the corner, I have no job and no money.

F**k.

Well

2007-11-17T14:03:00.000Z

Astonishingly, people are still coming here. Not many people, admittedly, but people all the same. Of course, some of these are the people looking for a glossary of tennis club terminology, others are looking for pronunciation tips, but most of you come because you want to know how I'm doing. And that brings a little smile to my face. Thank you.

It's been a month since my last pathetic effort of a post, and a fair bit has changed. We have finally moved into our own house and we are loving it, although like any hundred year-old house, I can safely predict that, before long, it will become a money pit.

Which brings me onto the prickly subject of money. I have finally realised just what a financial disaster this year has been for me. Ten weeks off work with only statutory sick pay (I hadn't been at my new job for long enough to qualify for full pay), six and a half months of part time work, a house move, a car which had just about everything go wrong, two holidays, 3% stamp duty (ouch!) and the dramatic return of my social life have all taken their toll on my reserves, such that when I was offered an interesting looking job in the translation world (NOT as a translator, I hasten to add), after the most agonising weekend I have ever spent, I had to turn it down because it didn't pay enough. On that same day, I noticed an advert for a Systems Analyst not far from here, paying almost double the translation company position...

Alors me voilà, just about to jump back into the dull, meaningless (yet relatively lucrative) world of full-time software development. If my recruitment consultant (who has proved to be an idiot at most stages of this process) is to be believed, I have got the job, though I do not yet know on what terms.

So, where does that leave my so-called freelance translation business? Well, where do you think - simmering slowly on the backburner, exuding its tempting aromas from time to time while I cook my main dish on a more moderate heat...

My hair is now a good two inches long and I am stuck with the dilemma of whether to get it cut into a proper, short style or just leave it to grow. Big favours the latter, as he doesn't want anything to delay the return of my long hair, but I am finding it hard to deal with a style which is starting to look a little... well, mullety. Plus, I'm sure the texture has changed - coarser, possibly curly - which makes me wonder if it will ever get back to how it was...

Healthwise, I am doing fine (despite the refusal of any life assurance companies to offer me cover). Tapering off the steroids slowly, better sleeping (I don't have to get up in the middle of the night for a pee any more! Yay!) and the return of my periods are making me feel normal again, though the steroid-and-inactivity-induced weight gain is proving stubborn even faced with over fifty lengths, three times a week. I still find it hard to look at myself in the mirror...

Plus ça change?

Hiding

2007-10-16T17:01:00.000+01:00

Not coping very well at the moment.
Probably best if I just stay away.

I've missed you

2007-10-08T11:10:00.000+01:00

Last time I saw you, I was lying in a hospital bed, back in March.

You really chose your moment, didn't you? I had to have my biopsy that morning. Whilst the biopsy itself wasn't so bad, afterwards I had to stay motionless on my back for six hours - possibly, the longest six hours of my life, although the time I spent on the back of that motorbike on my way from Lyon to Brussels came pretty close.

After a while, all I could think about was the pain in my back, tears leaking out of my eyes, sipping water with a straw because I could only raise my head a little.

I remember them announcing my diagnosis and the proposed treatment while I was flat on my back. I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry, but I wasn't allowed to move. I let those fat tears just run down my cheeks - they were still there when Big turned up. Between sobs, I told him what they'd told me. His own tears joined mine as he held me.

So when you came, it wasn't a great time. I wasn't at my best, wasn't prepared for your visit, even though your arrival heralded a kind of relief. You stayed for a few days - a breath of normality when everything else was alien and scary.

Then you were gone.

For six months, I didn't see you. I wondered if I would see you ever again. Sometimes I would wake up in the night in a cold sweat and would convince myself that you were gone forever. I'd kind of resigned myself to it, and was okay with that.

But is that you I can see? Is that you I can feel? Your presence is as comforting as it is irritating. What you represent is not what I want or need. And yet.

What you do is contribute to my feeling normal again.

You.
My period.

Desperately seeking my inner Madonna

2007-10-02T21:03:00.000+01:00

A detached National Trust holiday home in the shadow of Skiddaw seems an unlikely venue for a masterful performance of "Papa don't preach", but with the help of a PS2 and this, I was able to fulfil a long held ambition to do Karaoke in the non-intimidating atmosphere of a group of close friends.

I was tentative at first: not a fan of being the centre of attention (one of the reasons why I won't be getting married), I chose to start with a duet of "Everybody's changing" (Keane), which bolstered me with more confidence than I thought I had to take to the floor for some further tunes.

My Madonna was, without question, the performance of the night, although my renditions of "Careless Whisper" (George Michael), "The Bucket" (Kings of Leon) and "Take me out" (Franz Ferdinand) were pretty damn good too, if I say so myself. And all of these were performed stone cold sober, I might add.

Whilst I'm not particularly interested in the Madonna of the noughties, as a teenager, I was captivated by the Madonna of the "Desperately Seeking Susan" era. I wanted to be her - that gum-chewing, smoking, slovenly-yet-unutterably-stylish, slightly grubby, dangerous character portrayed in the movie, instead of the spoddish young girl in a school uniform who always handed her homework in on time. I loved that huge hat box which "Susan" put in the locker, later to be discovered by the other Susan. I coveted that weird jacket with the pyramid on the back. I even wanted those stupid sparkly boots.

So, twenty odd years later, just for those few minutes in that large living room, with a wood fire burning and my friends around me, despite the fact that I was wearing a fleece and some trackie bottoms and I looked utterly horrendous, I *was* Madonna.

Damn - I still want to be a pop star!

28 days later

2007-09-16T21:08:00.000+01:00

Yesterday: thirty-six lengths.

Of which, twelve non-stop.

Mostly breaststroke (I might remind you that I could barely do a single length of this stroke four weeks ago).

I can't believe how much I've improved.

And that's before I even had my first swimming improvement session with my private tutor.

And you know what? I really enjoy it. It feels good.

It took me a long time to enjoy running, and even then, I was never entirely sure that I was enjoying it. Certainly not all the time. I usually dreaded a run beforehand, encountered highs and lows during and relief and euphoria afterwards. Of course, on balance, I miss it. I miss the fresh air, the unjumblement of the mind, the clearing of the lungs, that satisfying buzz in the muscles.

But I really look forward to my swims. The pleasurable sensation of moving through the water. The tangible feeling of wellbeing afterwards.

One of the many things I've envied in others, one of the many things I thought I just couldn't do, one of the many things that scared me: I'm now doing it.

Not particularly fast, not particularly well, not particularly stylishly.

But I'm doing it.

For once, I'm very, very pleased with myself.

I am surrounded by idiots

2007-09-10T15:43:00.000+01:00

Exhibit A

I receive a voicemail message from an estate agent.

"Hello, this is a message for Ms Anx. I'm calling from the office of [estate agent] in [town several miles away from Southampton]. I know you registered with our Southampton office, but I wondered if you'd consider a property in [town several miles away from Southampton]. It's on a new development called [some stupid new-development type name] and [bla bla bla bla bla]..." by which point, I'd stopped listening.

You see, when we'd registered with [estate agent], we had been careful to provide them with a printed list of our details, financial arrangements and requirements for a house.

Under the list of "must haves", the very first and most prominent item was:

"Within walking distance of [Big's school] - i.e. one and a half mile radius"

Big's school is in Southampton. Hence, our registering with Southampton agents.

Further down the list was:

"Older property"

Oh dear.
(Though at least he didn't describe the property as "all up together...")

Exhibit B

I receive a letter from our Mortgage company.

"Dear Ms Anx and Mr Big

I am writing to you as we have been notified by your insurance company, [stupid insurance company], that they have not received the renewal premium for your buildings insurance.

To update our records we require you to send us a copy of your policy schedule to the above address noting [stupid mortgage company] as a joint policyholder and a minimum sum assured of [some random amount that we've just made up which seems to bear no relation to anything]. Please make sure that your mortgage account number is clearly stated so that we can update our records.

Under the terms of the Mortgage Deed, you must ensure that continous insurance is in place. Please give this matter your urgent attention.

An administration fee of £25.00 is charged to all customers who change their insurance providers. Please arrange to forward this amount to us with your new insurance schedule.

If you have any queries on this matter, please contact us on the number below, quoting your mortgage account number.

Yours sincerely

[printed name in silly font, supposed to be a signature]

[name of probably non-existent person]"

An interesting letter to receive when you consider that the mortgage in question was paid off in full three days before the date of the letter and the insurance policy was only cancelled after confirmation that the mortgage had been paid off and that the insurance company were informed of the reason for the cancellation (i.e. we neither own nor live in the property any more).

A double whammy of incompetence, both from the mortgage company itself and the insurance company for "telling on us".

Needless to say, I shan't be paying their £25.00 administration fee.

Exhibit C

I receive a letter from the company handling our new mortgage application.

"Dear Ms Anx and Mr Big

[bla bla received mortgage application bla bla bla]

We require the following information:

The National Insurance number for Ms Anx
The National Insurance number for Mr Big

[bla bla bla]"

I can actually picture these very pieces of information being written down by our mortgage advisor as we sat in her office filling in the application form. How they failed to get passed on, I have no idea, but I'm guessing the word "incompetence" may come into it.

Deep breath... here goes

2007-09-05T15:51:00.001+01:00

Before:

After:

What a difference several months and a cytotoxic drug make!

nb: my hair is not actually green. The light was a bit funny... honest!

In lieu of a proper post...

2007-09-03T14:21:00.000+01:00

... I bring you an unordered list of utter guff including the excessive use of exclamation marks.

I am very rich! That got your attention, didn't it? Are you my bestest friend now after years of indifference? I can see you, sidling over... Yes, having finally sold the old house but not yet having finished buying the new one, my bank account is straining under the weight of all that equity. It won't last, of that I can assure you.
We have found a new house (alluded to above)! It is Edwardian and is semi-detached which probably means I'm middle-class or middle-aged or middle-something.
I seriously considered purchasing a Mock Tudor house! I saw sense in the end, mind.
Everyone is trying to destroy my car! When I say "everyone", of course I mean "a few individuals". Not only did "they" break the glass bit of the driver's side mirror, but "they" also knocked the passenger side wing mirror completely off its hinge and "they" left a nasty dent in the driver's side wing. "They" being a selection of individuals in different towns at different times. This is the car that I tried to sell earlier in the year, but no-one would buy apart from email correspondents whose names and usage of the English language were suspect to say the least.
According to the lady at the gym, I am borderline obese! I also have an elite level of fitness! All at the same time! Yes, I was confused too...
My hair is now about 1cm long all over! I look like a pinhead with an enormous arse! But - and this is quite a good "but" - it's all there; my hair is definitely growing back. Due to the reluctance of a previous hairdresser to hack it all off at my request, I did spend several weeks with a kind of dual hairstyle: very short hair (the new stuff), alongside a comedic chin-length bob of such wispiness that I looked like a Guy (out of "penny for the Guy") where someone got bored of sticking strands of hair on. Now, with the help of a hairdresser with no hacking-related qualms, I just look like a feminist.
This morning, at about 6:30am, I swam 455 metres! A couple of lengths of which were swum without a break in between! Some of which were swum entirely using the breaststroke without my getting bored halfway and switching to crawl! This, though it may not seem like it, is progress.
I have done more socially in the past month than I had over many, many months in my previous residence! To which, the only possible response is: "Yay!"

Open letter to estate agents

2007-08-25T16:45:00.000+01:00

Dear Estate Agents

In UK English, that thing which marks the boundary between the pavement and the road; the thing against which we sometimes squidge our tyres when parallel parking; the thing which is sometimes lowered to assist access to a driveway; that thing is called a "kerb", not a "curb".

The thing you plant flowers in in the garden is called a "border". A "boarder" is quite another thing and not usually a selling point when describing a house.

An area is "sought" after, rather than "saught" after.

When you mentioned that the bathroom window was made of "opaque glass", didn't you actually mean that it was made of "obscured glass"?

So, this house offers: "Off road parking for approximately one car", does it? Approximately one car. Well, I should be okay, because I've got three quarters of a car. What about one and a half cars, though, will that work?

Yours, in bewilderment

Anx

Once again, I find myself confronted with the combination of shoddy grammar, invented vocabulary, pathetic attempts at spelling and downright nonsense that is the very hallmark of estate agents' language. This time we are buyers rather than sellers, which only serves to increase the amount of verbal diarrhoea on offer.

The latest disease which seems endemic to estate agents in this town is to describe properties as being "all up together". "All up together", eh? As opposed to what, exactly? "Partially down and apart" perhaps?

I'm trying to imagine viewing a "partially down and apart" property:

"Ah yes, Ms Anx, this pile of bricks here is what will be the kitchen. The roof is a couple of miles away and the bathroom, whilst fully assembled, is on the other side of the road."

Are they simply differentiating the house from a building site or a plot of land? Well no, of course they're not. Obviously, what they mean by "all up together" is "in good decorative order". Obviously.

So, um, why not just say that instead?

Taking the plunge

2007-08-20T23:40:00.000+01:00

I'm feeling rather pleased with myself. And if you know me, you'll know that "rather pleased" is quite an achievement when it relates to myself. Not as rare an occurrence as "delighted", but certainly rarer than the default of "vaguely disappointed" (or "meh" for short).

You see, I'm doing a thing that I've been saying I'd do for many years.

It's only a little, insignificant thing, but it's still a thing.

I'm not doing it particularly well, stylishly, quickly or efficiently at the moment, but I'm still doing it.

In fairness, I did attempt to start doing it back in February this year (I'd arranged and paid for lessons, and everything), but the small matter of Acute. Renal. Failure. got in the way, somewhat. I think I'm allowed that as an excuse, on this occasion.

So yes, I have taken the plunge. Quite literally. Well, when I say "plunge", I mean "tentative and rather wobbly descent down a ladder". So not literally at all.

I have started swimming with the specific purpose of establishing it as my exercise régime of choice. You see, I started running again and something happened which had never happened before. I went for my third run/walk (the first two had been successful; encouraging, even) and I had to stop after five minutes. I felt sick. I had to walk home. I got scared. I realised that I am not physically the same person any more. Running is too harsh for me at the moment and I must find an alternative.

So I have joined a gym with a pool.

Of course, there is a whole host of anxieties which comes as part of the gym/pool package.

The "I have to wear a swimsuit sort of in public" anxiety.

I have been surprisingly blasé about this one, actually. I figure that I look so appalling at the moment, a bit of cellulite can't make that much difference.

The "I'm really, really crap at this" anxiety.

I only like doing things that I'm good at. I'm not asking to be at Olympic standard here, I just want to be able to chug up and down, nice and steadily, for fitness. I can't do this yet. I have to stop and recover after each length because I'm so unfit, my technique is probably all wrong and I'm almost certainly not breathing correctly.

The "Why does everyone else make it look so effortless?" anxiety.

Here I go again, comparing myself to others. But it is hard not to when you're in the same pool as them. When they go gliding past you, underwater. When they've done four lengths in the time it's taken you to do one and to stand there gasping for a while.

The "Why don't I appear to be moving forward when I do breaststroke?" anxiety.

Lord only knows what I'm doing wrong. Everything, probably. But no matter how much I flail around, my forward progress when attempting breaststroke is, at best, pitiful. Backstroke is also interesting - I simply splash my face with so much water that I have to stop halfway up the pool. I always end up doing front crawl, which I can sort of do, after a fashion. Fashion, I said, not style.

Swimming, for me, is synonymous with panic. As soon as I push off, my only thought is: "Quick, get to the other end before you drown!" and off I splosh, leaving in my wake a flurry of white water. I forget to breathe in, I forget to breathe out, I just flail around until I reach the other end. I imagine, for a spectator, that it's probably quite amusing to watch.

But I do have something in my favour: I did it with running. I started out not being able to run for more than one minute at a time and ended up being able to run for over two hours.

So maybe, just maybe I can do it with swimming. At least I am trying.

Pelmonism

2007-08-15T21:53:00.000+01:00

I've never met anyone else who called it Pelmonism. People would look at me blankly, or with that worried look, or would edge backwards slowly and imperceptibly if I called it Pelmonism.

"Oh, you mean 'Pairs'!" some would exclaim. Maybe to them it was 'Pairs', but to me and my family, it was always 'Pelmonism'.

A simple game with a high-falutin' name, you might think. I certainly did. Get a pack of cards, shuffle, place all of them face down on the table and swirl them around. Take turns to turn two face up: if they match, you keep them; if they don't, you turn them back over again and try to remember what and where they were for next time. The idea being to collect as many pairs as you can.

Pelmonism.

I wondered for years whether it was just one of those things that our family had "made up". You know how when you're little, you think that everyone experiences the same thing as you but as you grow up, you start to realise that some things are family foibles?

The "egg man" being one example which springs to mind.

I remember, at school, discussing different community service providers. The milkman, for example, or the postman. Political correctness not having been invented yet.

When asked, by the teacher, to provide an example of another, I suggested "the egg man", to a number of stifled guffaws.

"The egg man?" the teacher enquired kindly, but with a doubtful look.

"Yes, you know, the man who delivers fresh farm eggs every week. He comes in a van. He also does vegetables and other stuff too, but we call him the egg man..." I tailed off when I noticed that everyone was looking at me strangely. Evidently, not everyone had an "egg man". In fact, nobody but me. I kept my head down and didn't mention him or his fresh farm eggs again.

On a more profound level, I remember being surprised to find that most of my friends still had both parents intact.

"You mean, your dad is still... alive? He didn't die when you were little?" I would ask, wide-eyed and fascinated.

With only my own experience of parents (or lack thereof) to go on, how was I to know that my situation was a little unusual? I soon learned to keep that particular conversation-stopper to myself - unless of course the subject came up and couldn't be avoided.

So, I wondered the other day, was Pelmonism yet another example of my projecting my own family experience onto the world at large?

With the magic of Google, I find that it wasn't just my family after all.

I feel somewhat relieved. I can call it Pelmonism with my head held high again.

The thing I haven't been telling you...

2007-08-10T11:49:00.001+01:00

I have been living back in Southampton for the past week.

The build-up to the move was hideous. Tears, tantrums and taped-up boxes everywhere. I know, I know, maybe I should have got the removal people to pack after all. I think it's a combination of bemused memories of the last time we had someone else do the packing (a wizened tomato, carefully wrapped in a yard of bubble wrap and placed in the kitchen box, ditto a used teabag on a saucer, large boxes filled entirely with books and thus immovable...) and my need to feel in control: if they had packed, we wouldn't have a spreadsheet listing the exact contents of each (numbered) box, now would we? My so-called profession doesn't include the word "anal" for nothing...

Once, however, everything that could be put into a box was put into a box; once the removal men had successfully managed to park their van right outside the house; once they'd started carefully and efficiently stacking the bulk of our possessions into the large wooden crates which will become their home for the next few months (so efficiently, that they only needed three containers instead of the quoted four), the tension began to ease, the horror began to turn to excitement, the realisation that what we'd been anticipating for the past few months was finally happening brought a smile to our previously grimacing faces.

Six (six!) hours of cleaning and several trips to the dump later and I'm finally waving goodbye to the my nine foot sunflower (pictured) whose flower had resolutely refused to open before our departure, and heading East on the A303 (a road which still makes me shudder), away from the West Country for the last time. Well for the last time as a resident.

At our new home (which is not actually our home but the furnished house of a friend who works away during the week but who offered it to us as a short-term measure until we buy our own place - confused?), Big was waiting. He'd travelled down with the man with the van and Umberto, the oversized umbrella plant who could not be put into storage nor would he fit into my car. Once we'd decided to use a van for this purpose, evidently other things started creeping onto our "Let's-take-that-with-us-rather-than-put-it-into-storage" list and we became a little blasé with our "What-is-the-minimum-that-we-actually-need" list.

Luckily, our host for the next few months has a generous double garage to house the boxes of "stuff" which don't really belong anywhere within an already furnished house.

So, here I am: back where I was when I started writing this; back where I was when I'd only just started seeing Big (our four year anniversary being tomorrow); back where I was when I'd decided that I needed to make some changes in my life - on which front, I certainly delivered...

In that time, I've:

Owned two cars
Had six different jobs (all largely pointless with varying degrees of disillusionment)
Lived in four different properties (five if you include the current one) in three different towns
Sold two properties
Bought one property
Been diagnosed with a rare auto-immune disorder
Acquired a diploma in translation
Written two blogs (though not simultaneously)

and those are just the things I can think of whilst writing this.

What I haven't yet done is resolve my work situation so that what I do every day does not fill me with either raging despair or lingering disappointment.

But one thing at a time. I am back where my friends are, I am closer to my family, I am in a place which feels more like somewhere approaching home. And that's definitely something to build on.

A girl I know

2007-08-05T10:52:00.000+01:00

There’s this girl; I’ve known her for a very long time.

Things were generally okay between us until we reached our teenage years. I became critical of her – the way she looked: too tall, too pale, too wide; the way she acted: clumsy, nervous, shy. I would try to avoid seeing her if at all possible as it would often end in upset. Sometimes, though, it was unavoidable.

This continued well into our twenties. I would criticise her life choices: letting her heart rule her head, giving up too easily, setting aside her dreams to take the crushingly boring, predictable and not even particularly lucrative route. Everything she did and the way she looked confirmed for me that she was lazy, foolish, unlikely to make anything of her life. I just avoided her, let her get on with it, let her stagnate if that's what she wanted to do.

She started to prove me wrong as we reached our thirties. She finally got off her arse and got herself fit. She looked good, I admitted a little reluctantly, for the first time. She gained in confidence and self-worth and started to work out what she really wanted from life. She found herself a man and started to stir up the stagnant pond her life had become – vowing to change her career, to do something more worthwhile, to live a simpler yet richer life. It became a pleasure to see her blossoming, finally growing up, finally looking as though she’d achieve her potential. Because I knew, deep down, she had potential.

(And hair, she always had damned good hair).

A few years have passed, and I find myself avoiding her again. Disappointingly, she doesn’t seem to have made much progress in life. Career-wise, she is still doing the same old thing for even less money. She has a vague plan which she seems eternally incapable of implementing – always making excuses as to why it can’t start just yet. Her procrastination irritates me.

Okay, she hasn’t been well just lately, which hasn't helped. It has also had a huge impact on her appearance – one which she didn’t expect. The beautiful hair which used to frame and partially conceal her not-so-delicate features is mostly gone, leaving her exposed, vulnerable, her steroid-bloated face revealed with only the wispy remains of her once copious, silky tresses stuck to her scalp or sticking out at odd angles. I find myself looking away, piteous, embarrassed. The fitness she worked so hard to achieve has melted away due to medication and forced inactivity, giving way to the dumpiness and frumpiness of earlier years.

Whilst inside, she is the same person – a fundamentally good person, I think – I can’t bear to look at her any more, that girl I’ve known for such a long time.

My reflection.

Me.

2007-07-27T17:49:00.000+01:00

I blame Facebook.

Not only does it provide yet another computer-based distraction from whatever it is I should be doing at any given time (currently: preparing for our house move which is happening next week) but also it allows the user to indulge in all sorts of nostalgia, as you start to receive emails notifying you that [blast from the past] has added you as a friend or [old colleague you haven't spoken to in years] has "poked" you.

You start to wonder what happened to [so and so] and [what's his name] and so you search for them on Facebook. If this doesn't yield any results, now overcome with curiosity, you may try to Google them.

This, I did. On my old friend and partner in crime, G.

I first met G probably around March 1996. I had rushed back to work after viewing a couple of flats in my lunch hour in Central Brussels (my workplace being out of town, near the NATO headquarters) and was ravenous, so stopped by the snack bar in the basement. The organisation had extremely good facilities, including an on-site bank, restaurant, shop and snack bar - they even sold cigarettes on the premises.

I grabbed a panini and quickly wolfed it down at one of the little tables. G was also down there and we got chatting. I told him I was looking for a flat so that when my (French) boyfriend returned from military service on the other side of the world, we'd have somewhere to live. Up until then, I'd been sharing, but wanted us to have a place of our own once he was back in Europe.

G was a tortured soul - a brilliant musician who, for reasons I never really understood, ended up working as a glorified secretary at a European Institution in Brussels (which is exactly what I was doing at the time). He knew Brussels and the surrounding area well, having lived there for a while, and so he took me under his wing - taking me to bars and restaurants and on day trips to local beauty spots and other towns in Belgium.

He witnessed how my plans were shattered when my Frenchman decided that a life in Brussels with me was not what he wanted. He stood by patiently as I raged against the unfairness of it all. Together, we referred to him as F***wit - in fact, we referred to most things we didn't like as f***wits. For example, the organisation we worked for was "F***witcontrol" and a bar in town, one of our late night haunts "Rendez-vous des Artistes" was renamed "Rendez-vous des f***wits". At the time, of course, we found this hilarious.

We shared a love of words and languages, a healthy cynicism for work and a liking for good food and conversation. He noticed with surprise that I hardly drank. I noticed that he drank rather a lot, but at first I didn't think it unusual - he was British, after all and thus, by default, alcohol dependent. It soon became clear, though, that he did have problems. He told me himself - manic depressive, he'd said, although back then I didn't really have much understanding of what that really meant.

Though our relationship was never anything other than platonic, he was sometimes incredibly intense, uncomfortably so. He would seem pathetically grateful just to be in my company. A simple dish prepared for him would be described, with a sigh, as "nectar from the Gods". He would consider every detail of what was said and analyse it to the nth degree. When with him, I felt under intense scrutiny.

When my year in Brussels was up, I returned to the UK with my new found plans to become an air traffic controller and we kept in touch, though this tailed off over time. We met up a couple of times - once in London, once in Southampton. Then he started calling me. In the middle of the night. He was not in a good place, psychologically. I listened. For a long time, I just listened, but it became clear that he was desperately in love with me, that he hoped I might fix him: a responsibility I couldn't be expected to take on.

When he learned that I'd been attempting to rekindle the flames with F***wit (several years later), he was incandescent with rage and we argued bitterly on the phone. He continued to call me, in the middle of the night, to rant and rave. I programmed his number into my phone and named it "nutjob", so that I would be alerted to his trying to contact me. I told him this, and he was delighted, relishing in his own madness. His phone rants became more and more obscene and finally, I had to tell him not to ever call me again.

He didn't.

I worried about his state of mind. He needed help, but not from me - from a professional. I often wondered what had become of him.

Some seven years later and I'm googling him.

I find one article - a notification of an inquest into the death of G, aged 45, who died last year in his parental home. The age, the address - all match up. No more details, just one, cold hard line of text. One life.

With no more detail, I cannot be sure, but it's hard not to wonder whether life just got too much, whether, in the end, he just couldn't find his place in this world.

for week ending 29 July 2007

non sono tedesca

2007-07-23T10:04:00.000+01:00

"I am not German" does not, on first glance, seem likely to be a much-needed phrase on a trip to Lake Garda in Italy for a couple of Brits. However, the sheer number of Teutonic tourists abounding in the area means that the default nationality of visitors to the region is naturally assumed, by the native population, to be German.

On a number of occasions, my heart sank ever so slightly as I'd prepared a beautifully pronounced (if I do say so myself) Italian phrase, only to be answered by the Italian functionary in German. German - a language in which I am even less proficient than Italian. I am willing to concede that my beautifully pronounced Italian phrase probably still revealed my foreign-ness, but wouldn't it be advisable to verify the exact nature of that foreign-ness before answering in a language which may conceivably be equally alien to both parties?

After all, I had taken care to start the conversation in Italian; at least they could have humoured me (and tested me a little) by answering first in that same language. If met with the startled and gormless look of someone who clearly hasn't a clue what has just been said, then and only then should you make the next move: establish the nationality of the interlocutor, before finding a mutually suitable means of communication - even if that turns out to be hand signals and badly scribbled pictures on scraps of paper. My badly scribbled pictures are still far superior to the couple of phrases I know in German, "Ich bin zwölf jahre alt, ich habe zwei schwestern und einen bruder" not being particularly useful when purchasing ferry tickets from, say, Torri del Benaco to Maderno for two foot passengers.

Despite these linguistic disappointments, Lake Garda was stunning - surrounded by numerous lovely towns and villages, each with their own different charm and character. The pizzas were thin and loaded, the coffee was strong and black, the hotel was clean and comfortable and the air conditioning thankfully worked a treat.

The weather was far, far too hot for this particular Northern European - overweight from lack of exercise, steroids and serious illness, with a penchant for wearing black and an inability to sit still for any length of time - but that's my problem and one which saw us staggering from one shady spot to another, constantly glistening with a delightful film of sweat. Note to self: next time, go out of season.

There were some interesting dishes on offer in one particular restaurant in our resort: "Laughed to the fruits of the sea" ("risotto ai frutti di mare"), and "I shear of salmon to the grate" ("trancio di salmone alla griglia").

Evidence, if ever it was needed, that there can be no substitute for human translators. Which is handy, given my future career choice...

Picture news update

2007-07-12T07:41:00.000+01:00

This appeared in our front garden:

I was finally allowed to do this:

And next week we'll be here:

Crispée

2007-07-03T19:58:00.000+01:00

I feel like a large pile of dung.

Life, at the moment, for me, seems like a procession of dung beetles.
Grabbing bits of me and rolling them into tight little balls.
Laying their eggs in the tight little balls of me.
Eggs which are now bursting into thousands of tiny grubs.
Grubs which are feeding on my fragmented self, pulling on my limited resources.

This blog, my illness, the house sale, the upcoming move and all its associated hassles, financial concerns, work: all of these are grubs, gnawing away at me, sucking the moisture out of me and leaving me brittle, ready to shatter at any moment.

I am snappy and snarky and bitter and bitchy and crabby and crotchety and flabby and flaky and I don't like myself right now.

There are certain grubs which I cannot shake off - I must deal with them. But others can be cast aside.

So I'll be staying away from here for a while, if you don't mind.

"Cones? Pah..."

2007-06-27T18:53:00.000+01:00

...shrugged the cat.

Check me out

2007-06-22T18:24:00.001+01:00

I'm not sure why I continue to do it. Each time, I become unspeakably irritated, sometimes verging on violent acts. Yet still I find myself drawn to them. "Them" being the self-service checkouts at the Evil Empire which is Tesco.

I think perhaps it is the fulfilment of my childhood ambition, which was to be a checkout girl. Yes, the pinnacle of achievement when I was a pigtailed youngster was to reach the dizzy heights of a cash register, the future I envisaged for myself was clothed in a polyester tabard and seated on a swivel chair. With such ambition, it's hardly surprising that my adult life has not seen me exactly hammering on the doors of professional success.

Back then, of course, cash tills were far more fun. Fewer digital bleeps, more mechanical clunking and whirring; sounds which could not be accurately emulated at home with a standard calculator blu-tacked onto a bedside cabinet, the top drawer of which would be filled with toy money. A better imitation was provided by the printing calculator mum would sometimes bring home from work if she needed to catch up on some figures. It made pleasingly authentic sound and, of course, produced a receipt - vital if you wanted to be "in character".

At the age of seventeen, I finally got to experience the reality of life as a checkout girl, although only at weekends and not in a supermarket. Over the orange tabard of Sainsbury's, I chose the green dungarees of Homebase, a DIY store. The tills were not, however, the noisy mechanical ones at which I had gazed adoringly as a bright-eyed child. These were electronic, computerised and required the entry not of a price, but of a six-digit POS number (I can still remember the code for Baby Bio plant food which was strategically placed at the checkout and provided many a customer with a last minute, unplanned purchase). The use of barcodes was not yet de rigueur.

Whilst I would have happily remained at that little desk, keying in POS numbers and accepting payments throughout my career at the DIY store, the powers-that-be decided that I was too "good" and "promoted" me to the Information Desk. The fact that I would be allowed to make tannoy announcements went some way toward compensating for being dragged reluctantly away from the checkouts, but I still gazed longingly at those numbered desks, where life was easy, predictable, rhythmic...

And so it is that I always find myself drawn to the self-service checkouts, eagerly proffering barcodes to the mysterious, laser-ridden window, awaiting the confirmatory bleep of acceptance. But what temperamental fellows these things are! If I even dare to place my purse in such a way that one tiny part of it touches the conveyor, I am duly scolded by the faceless, bodyless, digital voice. And woe betide me if I attempt to hang my reusable bag on the hook so that I can easily pack my items as I go: "Unexpected item in the bagging area!" she shrieks.

If I were more assertive, I would shriek back: "It's a bag, in a bagging area. Deal with it, bitch!" But no. I resignedly remove my bag, place my items "naked" in the so-called bagging area and only after finishing my transaction am I free to transfer the items into my bag whilst the next customer looks on, disapprovingly.

The experience is always unsatisfactory and yet, like a moth to a flame, I return. Time and time again.

You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone...

2007-06-15T10:20:00.000+01:00

Despite my inherent, probably genetic, predisposition to bone-idleness, I am surprisingly useless at being a lady of leisure.

Having been a corporate drone for so long, I simply have no idea how to fill my time if I am not working. I need structure in my days, even if that structure is no more than "go to work, stay there awhile, then go home". Work is rather like a tailored suit, providing a neat and definite shape to one's time, but leaving its wearer keen to shrug off its restrictive and unyielding fabric when the day is done. Whereas my life of leisure was more like a pair of trackies and a slobby top - infinitely comfortable in some ways, but liable to reveal a flabby mass of hopelessness and depression, the psychological equivalent of muffin tops and visible panty lines.

Oh reader, of course there were plenty of things I could have done whilst at home. A plethora of domestic chores just waiting to be done, books to be read, craft projects to be undertaken, lunches with friends in town to be had. And, to be fair, I did some of those things for some of the time. But for the most part, I would find myself staring pointlessly at the computer screen (not so different from being at work, admittedly), wandering aimlessly around town buying useless things I could ill afford, contemplating my disappearing hair with the inevitable crying which would ensue and bemoaning my inertia with regard to my thus far mythical translation business whilst doing absolutely nothing to progress it.

Add to this the fact that my last employer made a bit of a boo-boo, paying me full salary while I was off sick (to which I was not entitled) and then demanding I repay the difference and you end up with a bored, miserable and rather financially concerned Anx.

So, I hope you won't think badly of me. I've gone against my word. For the past few weeks, I've been *whispers* working.

Don't shout at me, not just yet. You see, I made sure there were conditions.

I work no more than three days per week. Two of those days, I can work remotely from home if I wish. I do not provide on-call support, I do not travel to or work on production sites. It's work-lite, if you will.

Now, to add confusion to your disappointment, I should point out that I am working not for my last employer, but for the one before that. The one I left in December. As I pointed out here, having only worked in my latest job for two months before falling ill, I had not yet become productive. It takes time, in my line of work, to get to know the systems to the extent that one is truly useful. Furthermore, because they did not yet know what I was capable of, I would not have felt confident making demands with regard to working conditions.

However, I had kept in touch with a close colleague from the old place. I knew they had not directly replaced me with an experienced developer, but were training up an internal member of staff - and not without some difficulty. I remembered how they had begged me to stay, offering an increasingly desperate range of incentives. They liked me. They appreciated me. They needed me. They really, really missed me when I left. I knew that, if I wanted, they would take me back in the blink of an eye.

And so, in an arrangement which is mutually beneficial, until I leave the West Country, I am working part time back at the old place. There is the possibility that I might continue to work part time for them on an entirely remote basis when I move to Hampshire. That's how much they value my contribution and that feels pretty good.

I like being with people, talking nonsense with them and laughing with them - being back at work has reminded me of the importance of human contact which was what I'd been missing when I'd been convalescing at home. I have to wonder, then, how I will adapt to working from home, with only myself for company, once (I almost said if...) I start working as a freelance translator...

Sentence

2007-06-13T18:40:00.000+01:00

Eighteen bastard months

It was the first I'd heard of it. I was sure they'd said three - maybe six. But not eighteen. I may have been ill, but I was never "out of it". I took in all the information I was given, but I swear the words "eighteen" and "months" had never before been juxtaposed when talking about my ongoing drug treatment.

Eighteen bloody months

At the time, in the clinic a couple of weeks ago, when she said it, it didn't seem that big a deal. Yeah, yeah, eighteen months, whatever. But the more I thought about it, the more it angered me. Why hadn't they warned me about this? You see, they hadn't warned me about the hair loss either - I had to discover that for myself. What other surprises might be waiting for me? Limbs falling off, brain turning to jelly? Oh, hang on, here's another one: not only can my new, so-called less evil drug cause hair loss, it is also carcinogenic. Great.

Eighteen poxy months

I feel powerless, out of control of my body, of my health, of my fitness. My sister gets married next year - I'm her bridesmaid. A potentially bald, fat, moon-faced, minging bridesmaid. Sorry about that, sis - doctor's orders.

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm quite pissed off. Of course, it's all for my own good. By taking the medication for that long, it decreases my chances of relapse in the future. It would have just been nice to know exactly what to expect.

You see, it's one thing to put up with something when you think it's almost over, quite another to realise that it's only just begun.

Out of the bladders of babes...

2007-06-06T10:08:00.000+01:00

"I done a wee-wee!" proclaimed the shrill voice from the garden.

Big and I looked at each other with furrowed brows as we sat on the sofa. We had just shown the woman around the house and left her to explore again on her own. Although she was not quite on her own. She was accompanied by her two year-old son.

"I done a wee-wee!" he proclaimed again. And again. And again. Like most toddlers, he had clearly not yet grasped the concepts of tedium or appropriate vocal volume, much to the chagrin of anyone who happened to find themselves unexpectedly in his company.

A few moments later, the mother emerged into the dining room, her two year-old slung on her hip. She looked rather sheepish, while he smiled proudly at his most recent achievement.

"I'm afraid he's done a wee on your patio. Say sorry to the lady, Frankie,"

"Frankie" looked at me with a look of gormless fascination perfected by toddlers the world over. Unsurprisingly, no apology was forthcoming.

So, not content with knocking annoyingly on our front door, bleating repeatedly and shrilly at his mother for a jaffa cake while we were attempting to have a conversation, grabbing fridge magnets off the fridge and generally getting in the way both physically and conversationally throughout the farcical "viewing", it now transpired that the child had urinated on our patio.

"I'm sorry, I should have thought to bring his potty,"
"Don't worry, these things happen," I smiled kindly, yet probably rather falsely.

Now, before the parents among you lynch me, it's not that I don't like children (though of course I couldn't eat a whole one... ha bloody ha). Of course, children can only learn how to conduct themselves in society by participating in that society. But is it really appropriate to bring a very young (and, as it turned out, incontinent) child along to view a house? I could tell that the mother wasn't paying attention to her surroundings due to the constant, bleating demands of the child. Every time I attempted to answer her questions, the child would start tugging on her hand or wittering inanely. I can only imagine that her experience of the whole débacle was as frustrating as mine.

Wouldn't it have made more sense to leave the child with a friend or relative for the short period of time required to view the house? This is potentially an important financial decision - isn't it best to be focussed on the task in hand with a clear head, rather than one distracted by talk of jaffa cakes and wee-wees?

As a childless old crone, smug in my world of selfish infertility, I am probably not qualified to comment, but sometimes I really don't understand parents.

If I could just...

2007-06-01T15:20:00.000+01:00

sleep all night without having to get up at least once for a pee
have the rest of my hair back, please
have my normal shaped face rather than a "moon" face (thanks for that, steroids)
go for a few weeks without having some minor ailment or other
go for a day without having to pour a cocktail of medication down my neck
go for a nice, long run
go for a walk without huffing and puffing and sweating in a manner which is disproportionate to the amount of effort expended
feel satisfied after a meal
not have this perpetual weird taste in my mouth
have hands which don't shake uncontrollably at random intervals
not wake up several times in the night, bathed in sweat

If I could just feel normal again.

When I say normal, I mean of course "how I was before I got sick". Unfortunately, the above *is* my normal now. For at least 18 months while I'm on this hideous medication. Which is all so utterly tedious, for me and those who have to put up with me.

Of course, God knows, things could have been worse. There are people out there who have to put up with a hell of a lot more. But I can't be grown up and philosophical all of the time. Occasionally I go through periods of childish questioning where I think: "Why did this have to happen to me? What have I done to deserve this? What's the point of trying to live a healthy, balanced lifestyle only to get clobbered by a completely random and indiscriminate illness?"

Unfortunately and frustratingly, there are no answers to these questions. Life just sucks sometimes, I guess.

Ah well, at least I have my health... Oh, pants...

Open letter

2007-05-30T19:06:00.000+01:00

Dear mother-out-law

Before I say anything else, I should point out that, as mother-out-laws go, you are pretty fabulous. Firstly, of course, you spawned Big and helped (sometimes unwittingly) to make him the man he is today, so I owe you one for that. Secondly, you're kind, generous, friendly, caring, funny (often inadvertently) and incredibly easy going - an ideal house guest these past few days.

But you really are as mad as a stoat.

I provide the following as evidence:

Quite inexplicably, you call Lidl (of German discount store fame) "Liddell's" . Where, just where, did you get those extra letters from? You also call TK Maxx "TJ Maxx". Now, I know it's called TJ Maxx in the U.S., but in case you hadn't noticed, a) you're British and b) you've been living in Manchester for at least the past 40 years, so I'm not entirely sure what your excuse is
When we're playing Nomination Whist, the sequence of trump suits is never-changing: Spades, Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, No Trumps. Furthermore, after dealing, the dealer always confirms which suit is trumps for that round. Despite all of this, I cannot think of one occasion where you did not have to ask at least once again what the trumps are for that round whilst sorting your cards.
You know when we were in that charity shop, the one where there were prominent posters saying "EVERYTHING 99p"? And you know when the shop assistant told you that everything was 99p? And you know how you kept approaching the desk, wielding items and asking how much they were? I felt like I was participating in a live comedy sketch...
I really, really appreciate your helping out with the gardening. I will happily admit to being largely ignorant of things horticultural and bow to your greater knowledge of the subject. But is it really necessary to do the gardening dressed in only shorts and a bra?
I absolutely respect your right to watch Australian soaps. As our house guest, I am happy for you to watch them in our house. However, attempting to engage me in a discussion on one of the above-mentioned programmes will only result in my looking blankly at you because I am Simply Not Interested
Normally, people wait until someone has said something you haven't heard before saying: "Pardon". I've barely opened my mouth to start to say something before I hear you say "Pardon". And often, it transpires that you have actually heard what I've said anyway.
I know you don't like waste. I don't like waste either. But that cream was over a week out of date and I reserve the right to throw it away.
People buy things off the internet all the time. You know, like that cookery book you wanted, because your old one fell apart? One thing, though: you really don't need to send the vendor a thank you letter. No, really. Bless you for wanting to, though.

I know you're used to cooking on a gas hob and that our ceramic hob might cause you some grief. But I couldn't quite believe it when you asked me: "On your cooker, is 6 higher than 1?"

If nothing else, though, you've kept us entertained.

Safe journey home, now.

Love Anx

Big Blogger

2007-05-30T07:14:00.000+01:00

Oh dear.

It seems that I have been nominated to go into the Big Blogger "house". Lord only knows what this will mean. You'll have to come over here to find out.

Thanks, Delboy's Daughter. I think...

Jaded

2007-05-25T16:17:00.000+01:00

It's that time of year again.

The time of year when I start to shrink away into the shadows of Blogland, marginalising myself and peering anxiously back at you all, wondering where, and indeed if, I fit in, wondering why I bother, wondering what it is I'm trying to achieve and whether what I'm achieving (if I'm achieving anything at all) outweighs the inadequacies and irritations engendered.

Is there still a place for my kind of blog today? What is my kind of blog? Natural, honest, earnest, a mish-mash of feelings, occurrences, memories. Undrafted, unrehearsed splishes and sploshes of the mundane existence of a not-very-interesting person. This is how blogs were when I started, nearly four years ago. Or at least, this is how it seemed.

Newer blogs seem to be more carefully constructed, drafted and crafted, enigmatic, only revealing snippets, the author distant and aloof, the themes narrow, the writing more self-consciously about writing than about the subject. In the face of this beautiful prose or that comedy masterpiece, my own efforts feel naïve, unsophisticated, too revealing, too earnest.

Whilst I try to reassure myself that I have just as much right as anyone to tell my story, I still can't help feeling like an eternal low-achiever, paddling clumsily in the stagnant pool of blogging mediocrity, my posts a pathetic bleating, lost among the herds of millions of blogging sheep with nothing to set me apart.

Yes, I'm having a little mope. It's just that time of year...

Health update

2007-05-19T11:32:00.000+01:00

My creatinine level is continuing to fall (Yay!)
But it's still higher than it should be (Boo!)
My haemoglobin level is rising (Yay!)
But I'm still quite anaemic (Boo!)
However, my iron level is good (Yay!)
My inflammation marker is normal (Yay!)
And the evil antibodies are no longer in my blood (Yay-a-rama!)
In a couple of weeks time, I will stop taking my evil hair-fally-outy drug (Yay!)
Although it's going to take a long time for my hair to look halfway decent again (Boo!)
I will then start taking a different, less evil immune-suppressing drug (Yay?)
But I'll need to keep taking it, and the steroids, for another 18 (yes, eighteen) months (Boo!)
The evil hair-fally-outy drug has made my periods stop (Yay! and Boo!)
This might mean that I'll have to have Hormone Replacement Therapy if they don't start again, to safeguard my bones (Boo!)

Overall, using the scientific Yay/Boo ratio, I make that 8 Yays and 6 Boos, so the Yays have it. In other words, my consultant is very happy with my progress.

Stomach News

Curry: 1
Digestive System: 1

Yay!

(Is it me, or is Haloscan having some sort of hissy fit today?)

Don't judge a book...

2007-05-15T20:13:00.000+01:00

I've been tagged by B with the following challenge. She says:

"Tell me 5 things that people wouldn't be able to tell from looking at you"

I have a rare auto-immune disorder which causes my body to attack its own blood vessels
Well, that was easy for the first one, wasn't it?
I am common
Yep, common as muck. Not immediately apparent, as I am pretty good (I think...) at adapting myself to suit the social situation, but once I relax in someone's company, the cockney accent sneaks out and reveals my true roots.

At secondary school, because I was usually top of the class, I was branded "posh" and "boffin" by the other children (obviously...?) and aside from that, I truly believed that our family was quite rich. I certainly didn't feel deprived, but within the confines of one's own childhood, it's hard to know what the norms are. In fact, we probably were rich compared to some of the children with whom I interacted at school.

While I was growing up, "posh" to us meant one of those big houses in Chigwell (yes, that's Essex - to us, that was posh). It meant going to a school where you had to take an exam to get in and the uniform was standard issue rather than ours which just had to be kind of the right colour. We felt posh going shopping at the mall in Ilford rather than down Walthamstow market. It was only when I went to university that I learned the true meaning of "posh" and "rich" and it was at this point that I knew I was neither. No. Where. Near.

So, I am common. I am neither proud nor ashamed of this fact. What's important, I think, is that life and work have brought me into contact with people from many echelons of society and I feel enriched by the diversity I have encountered. I think it has made me into a tolerant and open-minded person.
I am *not* a Goth, nor am I trying to be
Bit of an in-joke this one. Not that I have anything against Goths, but I'm just not one. I am naturally pale and raven-haired and black suits me best. I have a couple of Cure CDs, yes, but what girl of my generation/background/education doesn't? I think I am probably mistaken for a Goth less often nowadays, but it still happens often enough
I am *not* confident
I seem to exude an air of confidence which belies the quivering wreck I actually am beneath the surface. Remember when I went to that blogmeet and various people said I didn't seem anxious at all? Perhaps it's my height and the way I carry it - I refuse to slump. Perhaps it's the way I speak - I have quite a strong, deep voice and a hearty laugh. I'm not sure what it is exactly, but my appearance certainly appears to suggest a level of confidence way above the actual.
I do not drink alcohol
I hesitate to put "I am teetotal" because that makes it sound both final and very conscious, whereas my lack of drinking is neither. I just kind of stopped drinking, it tapered off and I felt I could live without it. I will have a glass of champagne to toast a happy couple but will and can go for months (years?) without a drink. My life feels no less rich without alcohol. Okay, I know, I'm a weirdo. I shall now crawl back into my hole...

This list was compiled with the help of Big, who has the benefit of seeing me from the outside.

If you'd like to have a go at this, please do. Remember, I won't tag you!

A long night

2007-05-13T14:19:00.000+01:00

1am

"Anx,"
"Mmmmm..."
"Could you put your bedside lamp on?"
"What's wrong with yours?"
[a pause]
"Hmmm, didn't think of that..."

Big switches on his bedside lamp and turns onto his back.

"Are you alright, love?" I ask, wondering why he needs the light on.
"I feel a bit funny," he mutters.
"Oh great..." I think. Just recovering from a stomach bug myself, I wonder whether I've passed it onto him.

Within seconds, though, he appears to be sound asleep. The lamp is still on. I then realise that he has probably been asleep throughout this entire exchange. He does have a habit of talking nonsense in his sleep and, given his confusion over the lamp and his slightly slurred delivery, I conclude that if I were to question him about our conversation in the morning, he would surely deny all knowledge. This happens on a regular basis.

So that leaves me, awake at 1am. I consider getting up to turn off Big's lamp, but I decide against it as it would mean leaving the bed. And like Big, I feel a bit funny. After my stomach bug, I'd stuck to bland food for a couple of days but the previous night, I'd been brave and tried some pizza. It was a decision I was now regretting as I felt its rich, gooey cheesiness sitting heavily in my stomach, reminding me of its presence there with a series of gurglings, churnings and internal machinations, the precise nature of which I was not keen to know. Previously of a very strong constitution, rarely afflicted by stomach problems, I am given a stern reminder of how recent events have affected my body's ability both to resist and to deal with infection.

"Just turn over, shut your eyes and relax, it'll be fine," I tell myself in my most soothing voice, concentrating on my breathing. Deep down, though, I'm not convinced of my own reassurances and worry that the pizza will have turned out to be a bad decision.

There are few things I find harder to cope with than insomnia. One of those things, however, is feeling sick. The combination of both, then, makes for a truly terrible night. I just didn't know what to do with myself in those dark, slow-moving minutes.

I try reading. Reading at any other time is almost guaranteed to leave my head a-bobbing and eyelids a-drooping within a few minutes but that night, nah-ah. Wide awake.

I try my anti-anxiety breathing exercises, but when these are constantly interrupted by pizza-flavoured belches, it's hard to relax.

I try sucking a polo mint but this makes me feel sicker.

I get up a few times and walk around, wondering if it would just be better to throw up and get rid of the pizza once and for all rather than waiting for my body to deal with it in its rather long-winded way. This, despite my morbid fear of vomit, such is my desperation for sleep.

I end up grabbing a spare duvet, going downstairs and setting up camp on the sofa with the television on a low volume. Somehow, with the background burbling of whatever happens to be on, I feel less alone and more able to cope. But, despite the soothing tones of the looping news stories on BBC News 24, no sleep is forthcoming. I return glumly upstairs to bed a couple of hours later and Big stirs.

"You okay, love?"
"No, I haven't slept, I feel sick..."

We have a cuddle, he strokes (what's left of) my hair and before long, I hear his deep, steady breathing, his ease in returning to the land of nod reminding me painfully of my own inability to perform this most basic function. Big always tells me to wake him up if I can't sleep, but I just can't do it to him. Aside from the fact that after a no-doubt reassuring cuddle, he'd be asleep again within seconds and I'd be back to square one.

By this time, the dawn chorus has begun, it is light and there is no hope for me.

Result:
Attempted digestion of pizza by put-upon stomach and related anxiety - 1
Sleep - 0

Back to the bland food for a while I think...

A girl with a dot com?

2007-05-08T11:06:00.000+01:00

Being an eternal pessimist, I held back on progressing my idea of starting a freelance translation business until I got the results of my exam. Now that I have passed it, and particularly since I have some time on my hands at the moment, it seems an appropriate time to set some wheels in motion.

Like every business worth its salt, I need a website. It only needs to be simple - a few pages on what I do and how to contact me. But I want it to look professional as it will essentially be my shop window.

I have found a domain name which is available, but I'm afraid I'm a bit hazy on what I need to do to get it all up and running. This is where you, my readers, might be able to help.

As I understand it, I need to:

Buy the domain. It seems that I can buy it from a number of different vendors at a number of different prices with a number of different options to include in the package. What should I be looking for?
Find someone to "host" the site. Any recommendations? Many of the domain companies offer hosting packages too but are these any good or am I better off using a dedicated hosting company?
Design, set up and maintain the site or find someone to do this for me. Do I need to buy some web design software and if so what? Any recommendations?

Geeks, I need your advice!

No jargon, please. As many of us know, possession of a blog does not a web-techie make!

From the trough...

2007-05-05T09:31:00.000+01:00

... to the peak:

I'm getting there. Slowly.

Jumble

2007-05-03T09:39:00.000+01:00

I've realised what I am. I am a counterfeiter.

Everything I do is a (poor) imitation of what someone else is doing. I'm not good at doing anything from scratch - I'm only good at copying things.

I can play things on the guitar - but only things that other people have composed.

I listen, I copy.

I can draw and paint things - but only if someone else has already drawn them first or the things I'm drawing are sitting there in front of my eyes.

I look, I copy.

I write a blog - but it's a mish-mash of the styles of other blogs I read.

I read, I copy.

I'm good at languages - but only because language acquisition is all about imitation.

I listen, I copy.

I am a copycat. Nothing original here.

Yes, I thought it was about time I indulged in a bit of glumness. I've been far too chirpy of late, smiling and laughing and "yes-I-feel-great"ing - who do I think I am? It's time for some good old-fashioned moaning.

Take my hair, for example. Still clinging on for dear life but it is so wispy, so lank, so utterly lifeless. I try to distract attention with hairbands, I apply product after product to try to bestow upon it some kind of body or shape, but no, it is hopeless. My one good feature, screwed.

Then there's the sale of this house. Yesterday, we received an insultingly, pathetically low offer which I, of course, have taken as a personal affront and constructed a scenario whereby we will have to sell it at a loss or we won't be able to sell it at all and will be saddled with it forever. Like the rational being I am.

And there's "work", who are taking weeks to work out what to do with me. Just exactly how long does it take to fill in a P45 and put it in an envelope? I'm not asking for anything other than to leave quietly.

I'm not allowed to run - doctor's orders. In the four years before I was taken ill, I barely missed a week. I now haven't run for over two months. I dread to think how my thighs are going to react to this.

It seems that this is the downside to my current life of leisure. Too much time alone to think, to ponder on my failings, to fret about the coming months but not actually do anything useful to prepare for them.

If I could just press the fast-forward button and find myself there, back in Hampshire, settled at last, doing something I enjoy, rather than being in this uncomfortable limbo.

Fragments of childhood Sundays

2007-04-30T11:50:00.000+01:00

The radio burbles away in the background.

One of those old, brown, Bakelite radios with tortoiseshell preset buttons on top and a cream dial on the side. Born in 1940, she would of course refer to it as the "wireless". It sits on the kitchen windowsill and as well as providing the gentle, bumbling chatter of the cricket commentary, seemingly omnipresent during the summer months, it also gives the cat an ideal vantage point from which to survey both the kitchen for human activity and the garden for avian activity - essentially, any activity which could potentially result in a tasty morsel. As a bonus, the cat can enjoy the warmth generated by the radio's aging internal mechanisms. Sometimes, when changing positions, he would inadvertently press one of the preset buttons, replacing Henry Blofeld with static. We'd long given up trying to clean off the layer of accumulated cat hair on the radio top.

Countless photos of me and my siblings taken from the garden, posing in Brownie uniforms or princess outfits on the low wall bordering the raised bed, prancing around in swimsuits, spraying each other with hosepipes. Always in the background a familiar silhouette at the kitchen window watching over us, preparing the Sunday lunch. My sister always wanted to eat the raw "stump" of the cauliflower, I always wanted more crumble than fruit, so she would bake more topping in a separate dish. We would ask for evaporated milk in a saucer and lap it up like cats.

Otherwise, she would be tending to the washing machine - an old, rumbling, free-standing tub, wheeled out of its cubby hole once a week, filled by a grey hose connected to the kitchen tap, drained via the same hose draped in the kitchen sink. After grumbling away for a while, exuding its soapy aroma, the integral mangle would be erected and clothes would drop into the plastic bowl, strategically placed on the floor beneath to catch its bounty of laundry. Then the spin dryer would appear and we children would be called upon to load it carefully, placing the circular rubber internal lid on top of the wet clothes. Sometimes, if loaded unevenly, it would fail to spin at full speed and start to bounce across the floor, spewing water liberally around the kitchen rather than in the (again) strategically placed plastic bowl.

In the afternoon, Abba on the record player would temporarily drown out the cricket commentary from the kitchen - luckily, we all liked Abba, including my brother. I was the blond one, one of my sisters had to be Björn. We used to buy ex-jukebox 7" singles with cut-out middles, replacement labels and sleeves from the newsagent opposite our grandmother's flat in West London. Much cheaper. It would be years before I ever bought a full-price 7" single from Woolworth's. Double Dutch, by Malcolm McLaren, I think it was.

Sunday tea would be a cold buffet. We would ask for a "messy plate" (essentially, a bowl) and create a mélange of chopped up ham, cheese, hard-boiled egg, tomato, cucumber, cress and salad cream.

The radio burbles away in the background.

The mystery parcel - a photo post

2007-04-27T15:55:00.000+01:00

"Hmmmmm???"

*scampers excitedly to sorting office*

"Hmmmmm..."

"Mmmmmmm!!!!"

"Oooh!"

Thanks, Gordon!

On the market

2007-04-24T21:25:00.000+01:00

The vocabulary of estate agents never ceases to amuse me.

Until a few days ago, I had no idea that our house "benefits from", amongst other things: a "vestibule" (got to love that word) and an "inner lobby". Our staircase, which "ascends to the first floor" (how unusual) has "balustrading and spindles". The tiled splashbacks in the kitchen are, apparently, "complimentary". Well, we weren't going to make the buyer pay extra for them. And the front lawn is similarly "complimented" by mature shrubs. I can just imagine the shrubs addressing the lawn: "Oh, lawn, you are looking lush today", the flattering so-and-sos....

This, of course, can only mean one thing: our house has just gone on the market. Having been disappointed by our potential private buyers, we have been forced to enter the murky world of estate agents with their talk of front aspects, wrought iron pedestrian gates and easy access to comprehensive leisure amenities.

Amused as I am by the flowery language they use to describe the most mundane matters, I am not looking forward to the next few months. Whilst our move to Hampshire will hopefully be a long term one, there are several hurdles to overcome before we'll finally be settled.

Due to my outright refusal to be part of a property chain, buying and selling a house at the same time (I just don't think I could handle the stress), I've built a bit of a rod for my own back.

If we take up our friend's offer to house-sit while he works away, giving us time to find somewhere suitable to buy and giving him security, we will need to put most (but not all) of our possessions in storage. This in turn means we'll have to actually think about packing rather than just shoving things in boxes in a blind panic at the last minute (or paying a removal company to do same). And storage, of course, costs money.

If that offer falls through, we will move into rented accommodation, probably unfurnished, so packing will require less thought but more panic.

Either way, we will still have another move to "look forward to" later on, when we eventually find a place to buy down there.

All of this assumes, of course, that someone will want to buy this house.

Anyone want a house? It has balustrading! It has a vestibule! Go on, you know you want it...

Thirty-five today...

2007-04-23T09:17:00.000+01:00

... and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

Trolley dolly

2007-04-18T17:53:00.000+01:00

He rolls his eyes at the mere mention of it. He is torn between his appreciation of the good intentions and underlying principle behind it and his horror of the actual idea of it in a real-life situation.

"But it's trendy now - I saw a guy with one at Borough Market, so it must be!"

He raises a cynical eyebrow.

"It's okay, you don't have to use it, but I will," I reassure him.

"Him" being Big. "It" being one of my Christmas presents - my Rolser folding shopping trolley.

The idea behind the trolley was closely related to my new job. Since I was able to walk to work in town and that walk brought me right past a supermarket and in the vicinity of a weekly farmers' market and a plethora of local shops, the idea was that I could combine my pedestrian commute with shopping, filling up my trolley at lunchtime or on the way home and thereby fulfilling a number of my principles, being:

not using the car for shopping
using local shops and buying local produce where possible
not using plastic bags - everything goes straight into the trolley
not ripping my hands to shreds by carrying heavy shopping bags over a mile home

Admittedly, I didn't get much opportunity to use it while I was at work - simply because I wasn't actually at work that much (ahem, yes, sorry about that, Mr Employer) - but now I'm a lady of leisure, these principles still apply and I am free to shop all day, every day if I wish. By shunning my car (still unsold), I get the added bonus of a bit of (much needed considering that I'm not running and still eating like a horse) exercise too.

Okay, so I may not have chosen that colour myself, but all in all, the trolley is proving to be a little marvel.

I just wish it didn't make poor Big curl up with embarrassment...

You get what you pay for

2007-04-16T17:00:00.000+01:00

If anyone wants advice on where *not* to stay if you need Bed and Breakfast accommodation in Bristol, I'm your ... er... man.

Location-wise, it was perfect - a few minutes stroll from Big's friend's house which, though envy-enducingly huge compared to our humble abode, was still unable to accommodate the gathering of many friends and appendages for the annual birthday celebration which has become a regular feature in our social calendar.

To be fair, the party hosts had not recommended this place, merely mentioning it as being nearby when the recommended option had been fully booked, so we and another couple reserved our rooms at our own risk.

As we approached, overnight bags in hand, the first thing we noticed was a skip on the front drive. My friend then remarked "Hmmm, an external staircase which appears to be made of Meccano!" The front door, actually located at the side of the house, was surrounded by general detritus. A couple was visible in the back garden, enjoying the sunshine. Overall, first impressions were that the place, whilst a grand, sandstone house probably worth an absolute fortune, had been a little neglected over the years.

We rang the doorbell. Slowly, so slowly at first that we weren't sure that the movement was related to our ringing the doorbell, the lady in the garden began to move, hobbling slowly toward the house in a style reminiscent of Julie Walters' "two soups" waitress, except she was dressed somewhat more flamboyantly in leopard print leggings and sported visible sunscreen on her lips. Also, she did not have bowls of soup in her hand, but that's just being picky.

She disappeared for a while and let us in the front/side door and we passed through to the foyer, where we got our first glimpse of what was in store. A dark, gloomy reception area, musty smelling with an old and garish carpet. The preliminaries over with, she showed us upstairs to our rooms where we noted the stairlift on our way up. She considered us two couples and said to our friends: "I think Room 3 might suit you," showed them the door and handed over the keys.

She then led us through a door, up another staircase, through another door, along a dark corridor to a room right in the top of the house. At 6ft3, Big was already having to stoop in the corridor and sure enough, when we reached the room we were greeted to the sight of a sloping ceiling. I was a little bemused that, faced with a choice of rooms, she deliberately chose to put the clearly taller couple (I'm 5ft10) into the room with the least headroom (the other room having plenty of ceiling height, the other couple being of normal size).

This would be the first of many bemusements, however, others being:

The choice of bedding (see photo above). A dark pink fitted sheet. A dark green flat sheet. A duvet cover printed with frogs. One pillowcase pale pink, the other black with red and white flower motif. All polycotton, all faded, all slightly bobbly.
The seventies kitsch artwork (this, or perhaps this - excuse photo quality)
The curious juxtaposition of furniture styles (e.g. a marble-topped coffee table next to a blue plastic tub chair topped with a cushion with a frog motif)
The absence of window coverings of any kind (e.g. blinds, curtains)
The inability of the shower to provide water any hotter than tepid
The luridly coloured and yet strangely flavourless juice served at breakfast
A request for scrambled eggs refused outright: "No, we only do fried eggs, I'm afraid..."

Our friends' room was no better: a broken door handle, a skylight which could not be reached to open or close, a curiously modern and stylish bowl basin located in the bedroom itself, a television with no reception, a velour headboard, an en-suite shower room in the space the size of a broom cupboard.

Okay, it was reasonably priced, it provided a roof over our heads and was extremely conveniently located for our needs. What it lacked in style, sophistication and good taste, I guess it made up for in comedy value, providing several minutes of conversation and a blog post.

And the muesli was nice.

Ugly head reared

2007-04-12T19:46:00.000+01:00

It was always there, lurking in the background, just popping its head around the corner from time to time. Not often enough to put me off my primary task of being ill and getting better, but just enough to prod me every now and again, saying "Remember me? You're going to have to think about me sooner or later, you know...". Yes, I know. Not just yet.

Work, you see. That thing I normally do nine to five, Monday to Friday, two hundred and thirty odd days per year, give or take.

I must say, as strange as this may seem, my current arrangement of spending my days at home with Big (by happy coincidence, on Easter holiday since my discharge from hospital), indulging my artistic side, eating in, eating out, just general eating (yep, the steroids are still at it), walking, talking, having little days out, reading and relaxing is rather more appealing. Funny that.

But my time is running out. Signed off for six weeks from initial diagnosis of my condition, this means in theory that I am due to start work again on Monday, April 23rd (which also happens to be my birthday, which is "nice" (where "nice" = not very nice actually)). In theory. However, I find myself in a bit of a complicated situation.

Before falling ill, I had only been in my new job for two months. Just prior to my illness, Big accepted his new job. We will be leaving this town in the summer and making our way back to the South Coast. Those are facts.

I have to ask myself:

What benefit is there to me if I return to work for, what, two months?
Only financial
What benefit is there to my employer if I return to work for, say, two months?
Very little, if one considers that I am still learning, still a drain on resources, still not entirely productive

On the other side of the coin, there is my health and wellbeing. Whilst I am now feeling pretty much back to normal, my body and I have been through one hell of a shock and we both need time to recover properly. We have a house to sell and to move out of and new accommodation to sort out - these things suggest the potential for stress and working full time alongside dealing with these things could tip the balance away from my health and wellbeing.

I am lucky enough to be able to afford not to work for a couple of months. Things may be a little tight, but nothing we can't handle.

And so I've decided. Work can just jolly well sod right off. I am more important.

So there!
*pokes tongue out at work and blows raspberry*

My boss knows my plans and is currently digesting the information. I imagine I'm probably not flavour of the month at the moment...

... but you've lots of it

2007-04-09T11:39:00.000+01:00

Every time I go to the hairdresser, I get the same refrain:

"Your hair is very fine, but you've lots of it!"

Up until now, I've always wondered how this information could possibly be of any use to me. I know it's fine - I'm constantly trying to thicken it and give it some body so that it doesn't sit flat against my head. I know there's a lot of it - I'm the one who has to spend my time drying it. Reminding me of these facts is of absolutely no benefit to me, but I continue to greet their seemingly inevitable delivery with a polite smile and nod.

Now, however, the "lot of it" factor has become of some use.

Because whilst I've lost this much hair in a week (for an idea of the amount, cup your hands together and this clump would just about fit, depending on the size of your hands):

I still have this much left:

which is not so bad, really.

Okay, I can feel that it's thinner. The number of times I have to wrap my scrunchie around a rather pathetic ponytail (more of a rat's tail, really) confirms how much it is thinning - as does the evidence on my pillow and comb every morning. But it's coming out evenly and I think the outsider would be hard pushed to tell that there was anything awry. For now.

My consultant has reassured me that whilst hair thinning is a known side-effect, she has never seen anyone go completely bald from my medication. Let's hope I'm not the exception to the rule!

It had all seemed so easy

2007-04-06T16:23:00.000+01:00

Sunday. A conversation with a nurse, on the day of my discharge from hospital.

"I'll need help getting home. My partner doesn't drive and we live in [town about 30 miles from hospital]"
"No problem, we can arrange a car to take you home. I'll get it to come just after five to give you time to get your things together,"
"Thanks!"

Monday. A telephone conversation from home with a member of ward staff (my first port of call as I only had the ward number).

"Hi, I've been asked to come for an out-patient appointment on Wednesday but I need help with transport. My partner doesn't drive and I'm not sure I'm well enough to manage the train and bus."
"Ah yes, I'll arrange that for you. What's your name?"
...
"Thanks!"

Wednesday. A conversation with a member of ward staff at the hospital whilst attending out-patient appointment

"I've got to come in again on Friday for an appointment and last time someone arranged transport for me. Could you help me with this please?"
"Here's the dedicated number for the patient transport service. They will be able to help you."
"Thanks!"

Wednesday afternoon, on arrival home. Attempted telephone conversation with patient transport service.

"[Engaged tone]"
"[Engaged tone]"
"[Engaged tone]"
...
"This service is open from 10am until 4pm. There is no answering service. Please call again during these hours."

Thursday. Attempted telephone conversation with patient transport service.

"[Engaged tone]"
"[Engaged tone]"
"[Engaged tone]"

...

"Patient transport service?"
"Hello. I have an appointment tomorrow and need help with transport please,"
"Tomorrow? Right, well because it's at short notice, I need to give you another number and they'll see if they can fit you in."
"Oh!"
"The number is [another number],"
"Thank you,"
"Bye."

Thursday. Telephone conversation with other, short-notice patient transport service.

"Patient transport service?"
"Hello. I have an out-patient appointment tomorrow and need help with transport, please,"
"Okay, let me just take your details and I'll see what we can do and get back to you. What's your postcode?"
"[postcode]"
"You're in [town 30 miles from hospital]?"
"Um, yes..."
"Well, I'm afraid we wouldn't be able to provide transport, it would be provided by your local Trust. Hold on, I'll get you the number..."
"But you provided transport for me before, on Wednesday. They picked me up from [town 30 miles from hospital] and brought me home"
"Well, you've phoned at short notice, so I'm afraid we can't help you"
*resists urge to say that I had tried to phone the previous day and had received a barrage of engaged tones*
"Here are a couple of numbers to try for your local hospital"
"Um, thanks..."

Thursday. Attempted telephone conversation with first number given, which appears to be the switchboard of the local hospital.

"Welcome to [local hospital]. Please say the name of the person or department you require."
*scratches head*
"Transport?"
...
"Welcome to [local hospital]. Please say the name of the person or department you require."
*slams phone down*

Thursday. Attempted telephone conversation with second number.

"[ring ring]
[ring ring]
[ring ring]
[ring ring]
...
[ring ring]
[ring ring]
[ring ring]
[ring ring]
...
[ring ring]
[ring ring]
[ring ring]
[ring ring]"

*bursts into tears*

From here, Big took over, starting again, phoning the same numbers as before plus a whole lot more, becoming increasingly frustrated and being shunted from pillar to post with no-one willing to accept responsibility for getting me to my appointment. Apparently, it was my fault for:

Having the audacity to have been taken to a hospital 30 miles away from my home in the middle of the night in an ambulance because it was decided that they had the best facilities to diagnose and deal with my problem. (Note that these decisions were not within my control and nor would I have wanted them to be).
Having the bare-faced cheek to phone the patient transport line at a time when the line was permanently engaged and thus coming into the "short notice" category

How very dare I?

We go out for the evening!!!

2007-04-03T11:22:00.000+01:00

Not really postworthy in normal life, but when you consider that I probably haven't been out for an evening for over a month, incarcerated as I was either at home or in hospital, it becomes rather more of an event. We'd booked this (second one down - Rich Hall) weeks ago, before I knew that I would have a serious illness, and once I'd acquired my illness, had kind of written it off as an "ah well, there'll be other times (although actually there probably won't be in a town like this)..." type situation.

But no, I've been feeling pretty well recently and have ventured out in the daytime for breakfasts and lunches out and short walks and expeditions to the shops and even a couple of short drives (after getting Mr AA to sort out the flat battery on my sulking, neglected, still unsold and probably unlikely-now-to-be-sold car) and felt that a couple of hours sitting in a theatre would not be beyond my capabilities. So off we went.

There were two surprises in store for us. Firstly, that there was a warm-up act and secondly, that the warm-up act was actually funnier than the headliner. Not that Rich wasn't funny in his signature lugubrious, curmudgeonly way, but Campbell was consistently laugh-out-loud funny for the short time that he was on stage. He really struck a chord with the West Country audience since he now lives locally and could observe the eccentricities of the Brits in general and West Country folk in particular, whilst also being sympathetic to the place he has adopted as his home and gently ribbing his Canadian origins.

It was slightly unfortunate for Hall that they both made the same joke, albeit about different places (Campbell - Saskatoon, Hall - Montana, the joke: it's so flat, you could watch your dog run away for five days...; Campbell got the laughs, Hall barely a ripple), but I would thoroughly recommend seeing both comedians if you haven't done so already.

I really enjoyed our evening out and it represented another milestone in my recovery.

Okay, so my hair is now falling out, a blow which I hadn't expected, but there are hats and wigs and jokes and it's only hair, after all.

One thing that intrigues me, though, is why it's just my head hair making a bid for freedom. Couldn't it have been some of the *ahem* other hairs which I'd actually quite like to get rid of...? I thought these so-called chemo drugs were supposed to be indiscriminate, yet here they are, choosing only to rid me of my crowning glory, the swines!!!

To the superficial

2007-04-01T14:38:00.000+01:00

My hair is one of the few features of myself that I like, though perhaps sometimes I'd like it to be thicker and more voluminous, more able to hold a shape. It is long, fine but copious, darkly dark, shiny, straight and glossy. I have had approximately the same hairstyle for about 18 years, pausing on a couple of occasions to add a splash of colour here, the odd layer there. But it is my signature - it goes with the territory, it is part of who I am physically, I am immediately recognisable by my hair. Just as my mobile number hasn't changed in ten years so that old friends who try that number by chance will always find me, so they will see the hair and know straight away that it's me.

I hide behind it, keeping it down, rarely tying it back - only when necessitated by hygiene or when the flapping around really gets too much, though sometimes, particularly by the sea, I revel in the flapping and laugh.

It is my curtain, protecting me, veiling me from the world.

It is, then, with some trauma that I notice rather more of it than I'd like to see on the comb over the past few days. A natural effect of the war which has been raging inside my body for the past few weeks, possibly. A side-effect of my medication which I haven't been told about, perhaps. One of the drugs I take to suppress my immune system is also used in chemotherapy, so they tell me, and we all know what some chemotherapy drugs can do. But no-one warned me about this. They warned me about the possible detrimental effect on my fertility, oh yes - news which would be a crushing blow to many a thirty-something, childless female (though not this one), but no-one warned me about this.

I know, I know, it's more important that I get fixed on the inside.
But my hair. I don't think I'm ready to lose my hair...

Update - it is very likely to be due to the chemotherapy-style medication. It may not all fall out. It will grow back. Better get some hats...

Savour

2007-03-30T13:59:00.000+01:00

This post is going to be a bit of a cliché, and for that I apologise in advance. But the thing about clichés is that they have become so for good reason.

You see, I have discovered that having a serious illness can be extraordinarily life-affirming.

After over two weeks of hospitalisation, as I walked in the front door to the house which in truth I've struggled to really love, I suddenly felt incredibly glad and relieved to be "home", yes, home. The first couple of days were punctuated with bursts of unprompted, mixed emotions - tears of relief, tears of joy, tears of mild hysteria.

"I was really ill, wasn't I?"
"I was so scared - I still am, sometimes..."
"I was worried about you..."
"I'm home, I'm actually home!"
"It's so good to have you home,"

The simple feel of the sun on my face and the fresh air in my hair as I sat in the garden on my first day home, even though the glare made me squint and caused my eyes to water, was utter bliss. Smiling, I drank in the smell of freshly cut grass as I read my book, the regular chirrups of the garden birds providing a peaceful background soundtrack. A simple cup of tea tasted like pure nectar from the gods. I would find myself laughing to myself, tears brewing in my eyes, tears of happiness.

Every plate of food makes me roll my eyes with pleasure, everything tastes delectable . Of course, this is helped by the steroids which have given me an almost insatiable appetite, but I'm going with the flow, for now. My body needs and loves food at the moment and I won't stand in its way.

The feel of being in a comfortable, king size bed in the quiet of night with a warm presence beside me, always there for the numerous occasions when I wake up (steroids, again).

I have already acknowledged my need for simplicity in life and this recent episode has only served to increase this need.

Love, simple food, birds singing, cups of tea, hot cross buns, English gardens.

Life is good.
I'm feeling better every day.

Hospital survival guide

2007-03-28T10:11:00.000+01:00

Essential kit

Ear plugs. If you can tolerate them (I know some can't), they are a godsend, especially if you're out on the main ward (as I was for a few nights) or if your side room is right next to the (very noisy, particularly at handover time) nurses' station (as mine was). One morning, the auxiliary who was trying to take my blood pressure stood at my bedside calling my name for several minutes before giving up - I was out for the count and couldn't hear a thing. They didn't want to touch me in case it alarmed me.
Personal stereo. Lose yourself in your music, drown out the coughing, spluttering, moaning and vomiting - just remember your charger!
Mobile phone. Luckily, because of the lamentable lack of patient facilities on our ward, they were quite relaxed about using mobiles and texting was my lifeline. Looking forward to a nice, juicy bill this month, though, as my usual 250 texts per month will not have covered it... Again, make sure you have your charger!

Things you only do in hospital

Puzzles. Thanks to my visitors, I've quite a collection of dedicated puzzle books and they really help to pass the time when you're having plasma exchange therapy, let me tell you! Favourites were crosswords, Sudoku and Logic Problems. Those left well alone were join the dots and spot the difference!
Use (unused) sick bowls to store fruit, condiments and other small items on table trolley thing.
Receive a gift of "York Fruits"
Read. And read. And read. Okay, so lots of people read anyway, but in normal life, I only tend to think of reading when I get into bed and this usually coincides with my wanting to go to sleep. It normally takes me weeks to get through a single book. I read about five while I was in hospital. I particularly enjoyed this

If you didn't know I was in hospital, see post below...

An unexpected interlude

2007-03-26T08:42:00.000+01:00

I've been away for a while, haven't I? Not like me at all, not to keep in touch. Bad me. But this hiatus wasn't one of the usual blog-based hissy fits I have been known to indulge in, ah no; this time I think you'll find I do have quite a good excuse.

For the past two and a half weeks, I've been away from home, in a purpose-built, residential facility. I had all my meals brought to my en-suite room and a variety of expert staff at my disposal. Despite a plethora of high-tech facilities and treatments available on site, all of which were free, I might add, there was unfortunately no internet access.

You see, on 8th March, I was admitted to hospital.

Acute. Renal. Failure.

On 9th March, a biopsy of my kidney and further blood tests revealed that I was suffering from an auto-immune disease where my body suddenly decided, for no good reason, to attack its own blood vessels - in my case, within the kidneys. We do not know what triggered it. It can happen to anyone of any age and any lifestyle.

My blood and urine became a source of fascination, each being monitored on a daily basis. I have been undergoing intensive, aggressive treatment (plasma exchange therapy, dialysis and a cocktail of of powerful medication) designed to make my body "forget" the mess it has got itself into. We do not yet know whether my kidneys will make a full recovery or whether I might require dialysis in the future to help them to do their job.

So, just over two weeks ago, I thought I had flu which I just couldn't throw off. I listened to my body and it told me something wasn't right. Luckily, my GP also listened, took me seriously and insisted on the blood test which was to reveal the frankly terrifying truth.

Acute. Renal. Failure.

Sounds so dramatic, doesn't it? The reality was not so. I just felt awful. Nausea and lethargy were my main complaints. No pain. I was peeing normally, though the colour was ... ahem... unusual. I lost my appetite and, whilst at home, was existing on a slice of bread and a few cups of water and herbal tea per day. No pain, just misery.

Once in hospital, though, I began to feel better, although my kidney function was worsening at first. I started wanting to eat, then I started eating - obviously, once the dependable morning nausea had abated. It was as if I'd handed responsibility for my health over to someone else and I didn't have to worry any more. There was a name for my condition and a tried and tested treatment and someone was going to look after me. A kind of relief. The first few days were a whirlwind of activity - biopsies, lines being inserted into necks, plasma being exchanged. I really didn't feel so bad any more.

Then there was the slump - the treatment was taking a long time to get ahold of the disease, the kidneys worsened a little - I would need dialysis to help... Suddenly, it became a bit too real and a bit too scary. After over a week of being brave, I spent a day just sobbing on my hospital bed. The roller coaster of treatment had stopped and I felt neglected. The nausea was back and I wasn't sleeping at night. That was rock bottom. A super efficient sister took me under her wing, got my medication changed so I could sleep and not feel sick every night and got control of my care plan. Within the next few days, I could feel the changes in myself and these were reflected in the all-important blood results. My kidneys were getting better, the treatments were working and finally, yesterday, I was allowed to go home.

It's not over, of course. I am still on high-dose steroids and cytotoxic drugs and will be for some time. I will be monitored in clinic on a regular basis - I am still ill, my kidney function is still not normal.

But I am home. I am loving food again. I am feeling much better.

This has been scary and life-changing and there is much more to say about it. But let this be a start.

Back

2007-03-25T18:18:00.000+01:00

Been away
I'm okay
Lots to tell... will tell all soon.

Apologies for the inconwenience

2007-03-12T20:11:00.000Z

I'm sorry, but *cough, mutter* err, Anx can't come to the blog right now, but she will get back to you as soon as she can.

Posted by Big

I have a kidney infection!!!

2007-03-05T16:01:00.000Z

The doctor described my urine as "extraordinary"!

She barely needed to dip her testing stick into my proffered cup of urine. All talk of flu and pregnancy was forgotten and antibiotics are now coming to my rescue.

It almost feels like a victory. I was beginning to wonder if I was imagining how bad I felt, wondering if I was just being lazy. Flu, schmu, I thought, I'm perpetuating my feelings of lethargy by pandering to them.

But now I know I've got a proper thing - a thing which can be treated!

I'm so excited, I might go and have a marmite sandwich...

Lurgy

2007-02-26T12:12:00.000Z

I feel terrible.

I spoke to the doctor on the phone and he said exactly what I thought he'd say. It's flu. Nothing can be done, treat the symptoms, drink water, take it easy.

When I came off the phone to him, I just cried. I'm so fed up of feeling like this. It's been over a week now and I'm feeling worse. I just want to switch myself off until I'm better.

Winging it

2007-02-22T20:11:00.000Z

Much of my walk to and from work is spent on paths alongside the rivers and streams which pass through the town. When I'm not keeping my eyes peeled for inconsiderate cyclists, I like to observe the activities of our feathered friends.

As I go about my daily routine, so they go about theirs. In the morning, the mallards are active, chasing the females both in the water and out. I love the way they land in the water after a labour-intensive flight. They raise their orange feet and splash to a halt in the water. They then glide off, looking graceful and effortless, but a closer look reveals those same orange feet flapping away just beneath the surface. Among the mallards is a single, pure, white duck, who seems to have bagged himself a female. They glide around together, rummaging around at the riverbank and upending themselves regularly.

On my walk home, the mallards are preparing for nightfall, bagging the best spot and settling down, turning their heads, hiding beaks in feathers and standing on one leg.

The blackbirds are active at the moment, chasing their females around and singing their sweet and complex melodies. I often see a songthrush just to the left of the path. I expect him to fly away as I approach, but he freezes and watches me pass, only about a metre away. I always wonder if it's the same one.

One day I saw a heron. More recently, a kingfisher. I recognised his shape first as he sat on a branch. The electric blue flash when he flew off was unmistakeable.

For the past couple of days, there's been a new bird on the block, preening himself and stalking the mallards. A handsome fellow, he looks for all the world like an oversized mallard with a sepia filter applied. He doesn't have the classic green head or yellow beak - his head is blackish brown, his beak greyish green. I texted Big, excitedly:

"I've just seen a big duck - like a mallard but considerably bigger, with a brown head and tan body. What do you think it is?"

"I can't think what it could be. Mallards are pretty much the biggest wild ducks. It must be a goose"

I shook my head at my mobile phone as I read his response. I'm no bird-watcher, but I was sure this wasn't a goose. My mystery duck doesn't have the delicate, pinched beak of a goose and it had the same shape and proportions as a mallard, just bigger. It was surely a duck.

When I got home, I scoured Big's bird books but could find nothing close to what I'd seen. I began to wonder if I'd dreamt the whole thing. But when I saw it again this morning and this evening, always in the same location, I stopped to confirm my observations and took a low quality photograph with my low quality phone-camera-phone, ensuring that there was a male mallard in the shot to demonstrate the size difference.

Despite extensive Googling, I'm no closer to finding out exactly what he is beyond being some sort of hybrid, but I'm quite excited about my mystery duck. I shall look out for him each time I walk past.

I wonder how long he'll stick around...

Gloom

2007-02-20T19:50:00.000Z

Last week, I was on a high. I was learning new things, my brain was engaged and challenged and we found out that soon we would be moving back to the closest thing to "home" that I have known in recent times.

I don't know what happened.

Since Friday night, when I returned from the gym, a sense of gloom has descended on me. I feel inexplicably lethargic, weirdly nauseous, pathetically tired. Though I carried on as normal at the weekend - shopping, doing chores, cooking - it was without spark or enthusiasm. I forgot to take my phone alarm off silent on Sunday night and, with Big on half term, I overslept on Monday. Luckily, Big is naturally programmed to wake up at around 7, so prodded me and asked me why I hadn't got up. With hardly the best start to the day, I went to work later than usual, but struggled to stop myself from slumping onto the desk at regular intervals throughout the day. The walk home seemed interminable.

A vague headache; can't tell if I feel hungry or sick; stomach feels empty and fluttery; legs ache; clammy. I just feel all wrong. It's as if my body is fighting something off. Without any proper, meaty symptoms to speak of, I guess that means that my body is winning the fight, but it seems to be at the expense of all my energy and drive.

I've spent today at home, shuffling around, both bored and restless, silently sobbing but not knowing why.

I want to creep away and hide for a while. In a log cabin, watching a lake. On a seaside promenade, buffeted by salty winds, my hair flailing madly, watching the sea.

Full of beans

2007-02-17T10:59:00.000Z

My brain is full to bursting with objects, methods, and classes; with variables, constants and primitives; with arrays, collections and iterators. This can only mean one thing. I've gone all modern: I've been on a Java course.

Quite a change from the 40 year-old language I've been using for the past eight years, amusingly described as: "one of the few languages created for punch card machines that is still in common use today". Bless. Although, of course, the language has made considerable advances since then, the mention of it still draws blank looks from many people in the IT industry. Makes me feel great about my "profession", if one can call it that.

Most people in the business have heard of Java, however, and when my boss said there was a space on the upcoming course, I was keen to see what all the fuss was about.

It was incredibly draining to be back in a classroom situation for five days. I would arrive home later than usual, like a zombie, unable to summon up the energy to produce my usual culinary delights, contenting myself with hastily prepared, simple snacks rather than the proper meals I pride myself on providing. Luckily Big didn't suffer from my slovenliness, as he had a seemingly endless array of parents' evenings to deal with that week. From which he now has a whole week to recover. Grrrr.

I was bewildered by the behaviour of the colleagues who were on the course with me. Almost as soon as we entered the in-house training room, they were scrabbling to configure Outlook so that they could access their email accounts from there. While the trainer trained, they would be clicking and tappity-tapping, replying to the no-doubt incredibly important, earth-shattering issues which couldn't possibly have waited.

Many of them failed to turn up on time, some even attended meetings during the course. And then, when we got to the practicals, they wondered why they didn't understand what they were supposed to do. There was nothing in those practicals which hadn't been covered by the trainer if you were paying attention. Which, like the teacher's pet I have never grown out, I was. Well, mostly. I must admit that my traditional post-lunch lull almost had me nodding off on a couple of occasions, despite the fact that I was genuinely interested in the course and had deliberately dosed myself up on wincingly strong, double espressos at lunchtime to prevent that eventuality.

Apart from the fact that it is appalling bad manners to sit there emailing people when someone is giving a presentation, it was also extremely offputting for those of us who were paying attention to hear the clattering of keyboards and the clicking of mice. Why do so many people imagine that they are indispensible, particularly in a large, corporate organisation where they are no more than one of many anonymous, faceless drones? I am fully aware of the futility of my workaday existence and that if I were to disappear into a puff of smoke, the business would simply carry on without me, as if nothing had happened. This is not good for the soul, clearly, but it is quite simply the truth.

I was annoyed on behalf of the trainer, who I thought was extremely good. She was lively, animated and totally brought the subject to life, relating some truly abstract concepts to real-world situations with enthusiasm and touches of humour. Her voice projected well and changed tone regularly. "How dare they disrespect her!" I would frown to myself as they tapped away. Yes, I imagine she was being paid handsomely to deliver the training, regardless of whether or not the attendees were paying attention, but still, this just felt downright rude.

I made sure to thank her after the course. There was a lot to take in, but I felt that she had done a brilliant job.

She described me as the "star pupil". I was no star. I just listened and learned. Which seems to be what I do best...

(Yay, something I'm good at!)

I have to wonder if I'll ever get to use my newly-acquired knowledge, though, especially given recent developments...

Four little words

2007-02-14T19:02:00.000Z

A quiet, peaceful year.

A year when we would continue to grow and enjoy our own food.
A year when we would finish decorating the house.
A year when I would relax into my new job and enjoy the increased balance it would bring.
A year when I would become fitter and healthier both outside and in due to my improved lifestyle.
A year when I would once again find out the results of my translation exam and hope to lay the foundations for my future life as a freelancer.

That was the plan for 2007.

There was one thing wrong with this plan.

As Blackadder might say: "It was bollocks!".

You see, Big went and said those four magic words.

The words that prove his commitment.
The words that prove just how brilliant he is.

The words he said to me last night, on the eve of Valentine's Day 2007, are hidden below. Go on, select them!

"I got the job!"

Made you look, made you stare, made you lose your underwear!