Author Archives: Tina

Unknown's avatar

About Tina

Unleashed for a second term of blogging.

Task mistress

Posted on by
Reply

Not one for succumbing to resolutions and the like, I do recognise that there are a number of tasks that I should include in my to do list for 2013. Some of these are routine, “just fucking get it sorted” sort of chores, others are slightly more aspirational, some are unachievable, but God loves a trier (or at least somebody who recognises their chronic failings).

So, here we go:

Money
I’m shit at personal finance, so my job for this year is to get it under control. Stop being overdrawn, reduce my credit card bill. No gadgets, no holidays. This is not the age of Aquarius, this is the age of austerity… or put another way, living within your means… you know, like your mum and dad did, like normal people do. It shouldn’t be difficult unless you’re a complete fucking numpty. Plan a budget and stick to it.

Health
Pfffft. Bloody health. I suppose discipline in the first point in my task list will help towards this. Planning healthy meals is far better than the ad hoc nature of my diet over the past year. I suppose I could relate to 2012 as my “pasta” year. How difficult is it to buy some vegetables, bits of fruit and some meat and plan some meals? For somebody like me, who needs to have their meals planned for a week in advance, I’m so surprised that I don’t do this anyway. Of course, there’s the eating alone factor, but that’s a pathetic excuse when you’ve got a freezer and enough tupperware to fill two cupboards.

Of course I need to exercise more, but I need a little more of CBT Tina to take over for that to start happening.

Home

  • Bedroom needs painting
  • Railings need sanding and painting
  • Kitchen cupboards need cleaning
  • Back yard needs jet washing
  • Patch needs tidying and replanting

    • Talent
    I’m a talented person. Oh yes I am. I used to play classical guitar, dontcha know! I need to relearn this skill. It’s slightly depressing that the fingers of my adult left hand are utterly pathetic compared to the same digits when I was fifteen, but determination and practise should get me to a level where I could at least do a “Cum bye ya, me lord”.

    I also need to learn to juggle. Just so as I can annoy people more than anything.

    OK, this talent thing has come to the forefront of my conscious mind because a good friend’s 50th birthday is coming up at the end of the year. There will be a party, and at that party I want to be able to do something that she and others will appreciate. Ideally, I’d love to be able to take over a piano and wow the guests with a fabulous rendition of fucking awesome whatever piano playing makes people happy. I’d never be a Winifred Atwell, and Tori Amos’s Cornflake Girl is way beyond most people’s ambitions, but surely My Baby Just Cares For Me can’t be too difficult… if you’re Nina Simone.

    Thinking about things, I may just have to construct a witty monologue praising the guest of honour. I’ve got twelve eleven months. No pressure.

    Now, what did I do with those juggling balls?

    Growing pains

    Posted on by
    Reply

    I’ve been looking after my niece again this evening. The initial plan was for her Nanna to have her overnight, but the little girl plays tricks on poor Mother when she stays over. For some reason, she always wakes in the early hours and asks Mum to go and sleep with her in the spare bed. This results in my mum being kicked by the wriggler and not getting any sleep.

    Little Con’s latest thing is waking in the night with achy limbs, the dreaded growing pains. I remember how awful these can be from when my long bones were growing – they didn’t grow that much, admittedly, but still enough to cause night after night of the most horrible pain in my thighs, knees and hips.

    I prepared badly for tonight: no Calpol. I’m sure she’d be fine with a cocodamol should the need arise. She did have a nice warm bath before bed though, so I’m hoping that might go some way to help.

    Despite her constantly telling me that she doesn’t like spending time with me, she seemed to enjoy tonight. I’d bought her a new colouring book and a bribe Barbie comic in an attempt to get into her good books. Despite this, she stopped at one point, fell silent for a few seconds and said “I miss Tia”. Tia was her cat that had to be put down this week after a brain tumour or other such lesion manifested itself. It’s a hard thing to take for a little one and there’s that period of missing the animal and then worrying about forgetting them, especially when the only photo of the cat that her mum had was one that she’d taken on her mobile phone after it had been euthanised. The cat used to be sort of mine (another pet that my ex ex wanted before she wanted the dog) so I had some photos of her that I’d managed to take when she wasn’t skulking upstairs. In all honesty, it was the oddest cat I’ve ever come across and I wouldn’t be surprised if it had a brain tumour growing from the time that we acquired it. But Little Con loved her and it’s a shame that one so young has to learn about death.

    Death.

    After my recent skirmish with death, my health situation still isn’t resolved. My current concern is whether this super high dose vitamin D therapy is going to cause a massive increase in my calcium levels that actually push me into a coma or cause me a cardiac arrest. I spent most of the day feeling utterly dreadful (dizziness, ataxia and other weirdness). This was despite falling asleep at 8pm, then going to bed at 10pm last night and oversleeping until 8.30 this morning.

    What I also did last night was install an application on my phone called Sleeptalk, which is a noise-activated recording device that picks up and records all the sounds while you’re asleep. Intended as a bit of fun to see whether you talk in your sleep or to assess how bad your snoring is, I set it going then was in the land of nod by 10.30pm.

    Listening to the playback this morning, it became apparent that I need to do something every night: remove the little dog’s collar. I’d forgotten to last night and there are about twenty or more recordings of him scratching or shaking and jangling his collar and nametags loudly. I didn’t stir on any of these occasions, but the noise must cause some disturbance in the pattern of my sleep.

    I didn’t talk in my sleep, but there were a couple of moments where I could be heard turning over and “owing” at the pain in my back. And then there were the two occasions when I had to drink about a litre of fizzy water (then go for a pee) because I was so thirsty. My thirst got me worrying about side effects of hypercalcaemia then I let rationality back into my brain and blamed it on the huge anchovy pizza that I’d had for my tea.

    Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma cha… arse off

    Posted on by
    Reply

    On a number of occasions over recent days the notion of “karma” has been brought to my attention.

    It’s OK that somebody can be hideous, or do something hideous, because the laws of karma dictate that they will get their arse bitten for their misdeeds in due course.

    I have constructed a very well thought-out and philosophical argument with respect to this discussion and my viewpoint is thus: what a load of absolute bollocks.

    The only way to ensure that somebody pays for their wrong doings is sweet revenge at the hands of those who have been wronged. The cleansing of the soul, that feeling of “YES, you bastard, you deserved that” can’t be put on hold while waiting for ripples of consequence to do their cosmic rounds and eventually, maybe, turn back into a tidal wave of shit that smacks the fucker in the face engulfs their entire being with all the crap they’ve poured onto others.

    Revenge allows this. Standing over somebody as they cry and plea for forgiveness, as they surrender when they can’t take any more of the unholy smiting you unleash on them, as their world falls apart around them and they are left, as you were, a wreck of a person cast against the rocks in an stormy unrelenting ocean of despair from which there is no rescue. They shall pay, and the currency is SCREAMING!

    Acts of vengeance are controlled, enacted and witnessed by those who have been wronged. They are certain. In one way or another, they allow closure, and maybe a stay at Her Majesty’s pleasure, but oh that sweet feeling of finally letting go of your demons would make the harshest environment seem like paradise compared to the life of hell and emotional turmoil that would otherwise be your certain destiny.

    Karma? For a start, there’s no evidence for it, in fact, all evidence is contrary. Horrible things keep happening to people who’ve never done any harm, yet nothing bad happens to complete shitbags. Even if karma did exist, there’s no control over it, it might just happen… one day, when you’re probably dead anyway. And you’ll probably never get to know that the bastard has had their comeuppance. It’s a rubbish notion and I’m firmly with the Old Testament on this one: go out and get revenge.

    And this is where I stop because my thoughts of revenge range from a few scratches on a car to The Life and Loves of a She Devil. Poor Bobbo.

    Poor Bobbo indeed.

    Rickety
    After much speculation as a result of allowing my imagination to run away with a few selected Google facts, I saw my GP for my test results this morning.

    He’s been reading up on my current history, he told me, as I sat down and awaited the bad news.

    The bad news is that I almost died of shame at having to be prescribed vitamin D because of a severe deficiency. In 2013, in the UK. I was actually hoping that he was going to prescribe me a month in Mauritius, precisely because I live in the UK in 2013 and we haven’t had a summer for six years. I might just go to the electric beach and pretend.

    In other news, I probably don’t have lung cancer, which I kind of knew anyway. I do have to go back for a second chest x-ray from a different angle… OMG! He didn’t want to break the bad news to me, did he? Maybe I DO have lung cancer and he didn’t want to be the one to tell me, certainly not at 7.30 am on a dreary Monday morning. I could tell the way he avoided eye contact with me. I’ll stop now, I need a second x-ray because the original image wasn’t good enough to prove conclusive and they have to be sure.

    So my hypochondria lives to see another day, and I live on to see many many more. Enough to plot and scheme and imagine dastardly deeds. Or just a few drunk texts.

    Waste

    Posted on by
    Reply

    Christmas is over, long over, but now confined to the dustbin of 2012 by removal of the trimmings of the season… and pine needles, so many pine needles.

    The house seems bare now and so dark with the absence of the twinkly lights that adorned the tree. It’s quite nice having my living room back and it’s like having a new room since I rearranged the furniture to accommodate Narnia.

    If I was a lazy, good for nothing scummer, I’d leave my tree by the roadside and expect the refuse collectors to get rid of it… or I’d take it to nearby path that overlooks the river and throw it down the bank. But I’m not like that, I took it into the yard and dismembered it with secoteurs (however you spell it, those garden things that could lob off a finger) and sawed it up so it fitted into the garden waste bin. Opening the bin lid to fill it with bits of tree, I saw that some utter fucker had dropped a bag of dog poo into it. I wouldn’t mind, but there are four bins out there, including the one that it’s sort of ok for lazy bastards to drop their dogs’ poo into if they can’t be arsed to carry the bag to their own bin, which people often do.

    Actually, I do mind. I mind a lot, but it’s one of the drawbacks of leaving the bins outside the yard, still on my land (moy laaaaaand!!!!), but accessible to locals who fancy dumping their crap in my bin rather than their own. Better than dropping it on the floor I suppose, which many people living in the flats behind my house do… because they’re a bunch of tossers.

    So, I have four bins. I should feel special, but four bins? One for general waste (collected weekly), one for glass, plastic, cans etc, and one for paper (each collected fortnightly), and the garden waste bin, which gets collected at seemingly arbitrary intervals throughout the year.

    We’ve come a long way over the past ten years or so in terms of not chucking so much stuff away and recycling things instead. Even stuff we don’t dispose of ourselves is recycled or disposed of safely (just look at the bill next time you have a tyre changed).

    It’s made easier for us to do our bit by having separate bins for this or that, but even with these facilities, I sometimes rebel. Tonight, I admitted to my niece and my sister that threw a tin can in the normal waste bin last night because I just couldn’t be fagged to wash the bloody thing. I don’t compost either because it means having yet another receptacle to chuck stuff into and store it on its way to getting it out of my kitchen. Shampoo bottles? No, straight into the bin.

    There aren’t many situations where I go against what some might deem acceptable: I stick to speed limits; I pick up my dog poo (and never put it in somebody else’s bin); I don’t queue-jump; I maintain perfect lane discipline at roundabouts. But sometimes, it’s just nice to be able to smile to myself as I say, fuck it, and throw a jar into the kitchen bin.

    Waist
    Good grief. Even the little dog’s waistline has been expanding exponentially during the winter months. I am going to start eating more green stuff, with the exception of mouldy bread… and green fruit pastilles… and green Haribo… and Night Nurse. OK, maybe I was kidding about the Night Nurse.

    The problem with eating well is that you have to have a variety of things and I really struggle with vegetables. Even my meat and two veg rarely has any veg, usually rice. Pffft. I need another serious bout of depression and a return to the coffee and cigs diet, that’ll do it. Not sure it’d be particularly good for the little feller though.

    Sheila’s wheelchairs

    Posted on by
    1

    So, here’s how things have been.

    Christmas was wonderful. I ate lots of nice things, tried to dodge the permacloud for glimpses of heavenly bodies using my telescope. The moon wooed me. Jupiter evaded me.

    It was lovely. Irrespective of my conscious or subconscious motivation for making the most from the festive period, I found the whole thing… super. I was quite drunk on port and sherry for a lot of it though, so I’m sure that helped somewhat.

    And then came the letter.

    Having been called into the GP after a second blood test showing high calcium and parathyroid hormone levels, I’d been booked in for a chest x-ray (naughty smoker, possible lung cancer) and another blood test to confirm previous findings. I’d phoned up the surgery after the blood test and was told that my results were “compatible with my condition” – whatever that was. The chest x-ray was performed the week before Christmas and I’d presumed all was ok… until the letter… the letter that said that I should book an appointment with a doctor to discuss recent tests.

    I have my appointment on Monday morning and I’ve now convinced myself that I have lung cancer and that I’m going to die. Soon.

    I know that I’m way off the mark, but the more I read about lung cancer symptoms in women, the more I convince myself that I’m now amongst those annual statistics of people whom everybody thinks, so what, they deserve it. And I agree.

    But how have I been spending my dying days, have I been wallowing in self pity and self loathing? NO! I have come up with a splendid business idea.

    I have no idea about statistics and stuff, and about how many people who are living with terminal illness who are alone, without a significant other, but I’m sure there are some poor souls who would love to spend their final months sharing that time with somebody who’s close to them. And then it came to me: what about a dating website for people who are terminally ill? It’d be great: find a close companion for those horrible months, maybe get a sympathy shag!

    I shall call it Sheila’s Wheelchairs, or LoveU2Death.com. I’m not sure how well gay men would fair, but I can bet there are plenty of Chorlton-dwelling lesbians who have been turned down for cat adoption who would jump at the chance of having a trophy cancer sufferer.

    All I’d want is some lovely homemaker type who’d make me nice sausage-based food, push me around in my wheelchair, offer me support, embraces, and the odd bit of sexy fun. I’d probably get a left wing vegan who just wanted to drape me in crystals and read me poetry. There’d be monthly, non-religious memorial services to mark the start of my menstrual cycle. With chanting. Lots of chanting. And no doubt “Thatcher” would get blamed for my sad, premature demise: “You know she was a student when Thatcher was in power? That’s when she started smoking!”

    All of this is enough to make me want to be well.

    Please let me be well.

    Christmas present

    Posted on by
    1

    Today was nice, the stress of attempting to cook a Christmas dinner for the first time was actually quite good fun. In all fairness, my parents did all the prep on Christmas Eve and so all I had to do was:

    a. Make sure the oven came on on time
    b. Put the turkey in the oven at the right time
    c. Look after the turkey, turning to breast-side up after an hour
    d. Coordinate all the other shit

    Parts a, b and c went really rather well, but when the bird’s juices still weren’t clear when it should’ve been cooked, I did start to panic somewhat.

    Bird’s juices, there’s a blast from the past…

    …anyway.

    Because I’m a complete twat I forgot myself for a moment, I managed to burn my fingers off as I was trying to take the bird (once it had finally decided to cook, for fuck’s sake) from the roasting tin. This is SO debilitating when you’re trying to do anything at all. And painful.

    There’s this great thing you can do with roast potatoes – cook them half way, leave them for as long as you need, then finish them off. Who’d have thought? You listening, Nigella? Are you?

    Carrots and swede were lovely, apparently. My dog thought so too, but they’re the devil’s food as far as I’m concerned. Vile. Just bypass the middleman and put them straight into the bin.

    Sprouts: delish, but sweet baby jesus and all things holy, my poor tummy. My poor little dog.

    It was great, really wonderful. My mum and sister were fantastic at easing the pressure of getting it all served up. My brother, his girlfriend and my dad did a fantastic job of preventing my niece from wandering into the kitchen and receiving third degree burns. I think we all had a nice dinner, although my niece managed to eat about eight pigs in blankets and not much else. Saying that, it was a mistake to get her to try the parsnips, which had fallen victim to my forgetfulness and some of which had been essentially cremated.

    I’ve spent most of the evening eating cold roast potatoes. They are fucking delish and I refuse to let them share the fate of the excess sprouts that are currently generating dangerous levels of toxic gases in my kitchen bin. No, I don’t bloody compost, for fuck’s sake. I have enough on my plate with all the sodding recycling that I have to deal with without having an explosive bin next to the petrol tank of my car.

    Oh good grief, I should be asleep.

    But I’m not because:

    I got a telescope!
    This wasn’t a surprise because I ordered it myself. I’ve spent years looking up into the night sky, wondering at the moon, smiling at Jupiter, annoyed at the cloud cover in this stupid country. I just wanted to see if I could see as much as I could see.

    I assembled the thing this morning in a moment of quiet between turning the turkey and going into a blind panic over roasted vegetables. It sat there all day until I finally found myself without visitors and felt free to go and have a play outside.

    The moon really is a beautiful thing and its craters appear in such clarity through whichever lens i happened to be using during the brief break in the cloud.

    Deciding to capture the moment, I turned my camera bag upside down trying to look for the camera adapter lens that I’d bought a month ago. No sign. I hit myself about the head a few times, but this resolved nothing. All rather predictable.

    Anyway, I must go. My eyelids are heavy ad the little feller is snoring.

    Running buffet tomorrow. More washing up.

    Hot flush

    Posted on by
    Reply

    It’s 12.45am and I’m absolutely boiling hot. My brief wonder as to whether I was being consumed by demons and being dragged into the fiery pit fizzled out when I remembered that I’d turned the thermostat up after the end of the heating programme.

    There’s a relief. Imagine trying to explain the burn mark on the carpet through the medium of Sally Morgan or Derek Acorah. “What’s that, Sammy? A little girl called Elizabeth, no, Mary? Elizabeth! What happened? What was the year? One, six, five, eight? A malevolent spirit, Richard? James? He use her for firewood? Oh no, that’s awful Sam. Thank you Sam.”

    In reality, I’m a little overcome with stress having spent the evening with my parents. It was actually really nice; they enjoyed my food and engaged in the ritual preparation of the veg for Christmas dinner. We watched some TV together, my mum polished off two thirds of a bottle of wine. But all the time, I had my eye on the clock. I was fucking desperate for a cigarette and wanted to get them home before the shops closed, but time thwarted my craving. Curses! Curse me for never owning up to smoking to my parents, although I’m sure they must know. Curse me for having given up and for having none in the house.

    Anyway.

    ANY FUCKING WAY!

    I’m sure I’ll wake up in a fine mood tomorrow, having been visited by three ghosts during the night.

    Ghost of Christmas past:
    1988: tubby
    1989: tubbier
    1990: watch it, Tina!
    1991 – 1999: for fuck’s sake!
    2000: FIVE STONE LIGHTER THAN LAST YEAR?
    2001 – 2005: you’re looking too thin
    2006: watch it, Tina.
    2007: for fuck’s sake
    2008 – 2009: just settle for this, but be careful
    2010: you’ve done it again
    2011: the coffee, cigs and depression diet really suits you

    Ghost of Christmas present:
    Oh deary me. Should you really even consider eating anything at all for the next couple of months? Still, you’ve put on this marvellous lunch for everyone and they’ll think you’re trying to poison them all if you don’t tuck in yourself. You aren’t trying to poison them all are you?

    Look, you’ve got this fabulous new telescope, I’m sure there’ll be one clear night in the next three months when you might catch a glimpse of the moon’s craters. Unless it’s a new moon of course. Maybe you can use it to see what that weird bloke over the road gets up to. Don’t make it obvious that you’re spying on him though!

    Ghost of Christmas future:
    Well, one thing’s for certain, I’ll be dead at some point. It doesn’t really matter what sort of life you lead, but I suppose if you put stuff in, you get more out. Ultimately though, you could be the nicest person on earth, or a total bastard and whatever happens, you end up in the cold, cold earth.

    This time last year, I was pissed out of my head on rum. Tonight, I’ve just got terrible indigestion, I’ve hurt my back and I have a craving for cigarettes that I won’t have access to until 7am when the shop over the road opens. There’s also an element of excitement. I’m looking forward to tomorrow, to having my family here, to acting the goat with my niece, to improvising methods of heating things without a microwave (there are these things called ovens, that I’ve heard are terribly good for the purpose).

    I don’t have a timetable for tomorrow, so I guess other than getting the turkey into the oven on time, I’ll be winging it. Nothing new there then.

    So here it is…

    Posted on by
    Reply

    … work it out for yourself.

    I could’ve sworn that was included in Jazzie’s Groove from Soul II Soul’s Club Classics vol 2, but anyway, it’s been and gone. In much the same way as the jar of haimisha pickles came and went this evening.

    So today, I prepared for Christmas by covering my hob with sticky cranberry mess and by almost setting fire to my top oven. I’m not usually so disastrous in the kitchen, and I’ve no idea why I’ve suddenly turned into Rhea from Butterflies, but my nonchalance towards roasting the turkey is evaporating with every passing minute.

    Why on earth did I think making cranberry sauce would be a good idea? This is one of those condiments that has never made it onto my family’s Christmas dinner table. For good reason too, because it’s bloody vile. It’s like some sort of earwaxy bitter joke that’s been made up by people who hate Christmas just to inject a little bit of vileness into the best meal of the year. I blame these bloody TV cooks who present their idealised world to millions. Yes, it would be lovely to be one of the people who get invited to one of Nigella’s or Jamie’s Christmas dinner parties, to sample that special world of theirs with all the accoutrements they embelish their dining tables with, but this is my Christmas, and my Christmas has never, ever included cranberry sauce. There’s no justification for including it this year, other than seeing the shiny berries on display in the supermarket the other night and thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to incorporate just a little bit more unnecessary faff and stress into Christmas by making something that I know I don’t like from scratch? And here’s what happened:

    20121224-005739.jpg

    Because my stupid bloody hob can’t do “simmer” the whole gelatinous (pectinous) gloop exploded the second I turned my back. Why does my stove do this? Why can’t the lowest setting of the gas ring be at a temperature that simmers and doesn’t burn things to fuck?

    Then there was the ham, which I decided to cook in cider. It made absolutely no difference to the flavour whatsoever, so there goes another fiver. After “simmering” on the hob for an afternoon (i.e. alternating between vigorous boiling and doing sod all), it was ready to coat in a honey/mustard glaze and roast in the oven. The instructions said to roast at 220C for 30 minutes. My oven said, roast for any more than 15 minutes at 200C and I’ll self combust.

    Such mess. Cooking generates such unwanted mess.

    I’m forever cleaning down my hob, work surfaces and the tiling, especially at the back of the hob. There are a number of reasons for this: a) because I’m not a scumbag; b) because I like things to be clean; c) the kitchen smells if you don’t keep it clean.

    There’s that greasy grime that coats all the surfaces in your kitchen after a while. Despite trying to keep on top of things on a daily basis, some areas do get neglected for months at a time, these being the cooker hood and the tops of my kitchen cupboards. With the propensity for stuff in kitchens to become coated in cack, why do people hang their utensils on the wall behind the hob? This is the prime place for stuff to get completely splattered with grease, covered in steamy and splashed with whatever the hell you’re cooking.

    The more stuff there is on work surfaces, the more stuff that needs to be cleaned and cleaned underneath and around. Microwave? No. Toaster? Absolutely not. And don’t get me started on spoon rests and spice racks.

    The final countdown
    So tomorrow marks the beginning of the end. I need to buy a load of presents and wrap stuff, but that’s fine. The evening brings “veg prep” and turkey showdown round one.

    Despite me “doing Christmas”, my folks are insisting that they do what they usually do in terms of prepping the meal for Christmas Day. I’m having them here for tea and we’ll be peeling and preparing vegetables over Carols from Kings and then stuffing the bird and readying it for cooking on Christmas Day.

    I’m looking forward to it immensely. This is the first time I’ve ever done Christmas. I could be a total nob and try for a Nigella/Good Food/Jamie/Delia thing, but I actually quite like our Christmas the way we do it and I don’t really want any of that to change, cranberry nightmare aside of course.

    Love, actually

    Posted on by
    Reply

    So, it’s just about Christmas, three sleeps to go.

    This year I have been rolling a couple of festive seasons into one, having essentially lost last Christmas due to, well, having my entire world fall apart around me. I guess I’ve been overcompensating, but what the hell, I’ve actually been enjoying the run up to the big day that’s three sleeps away.

    There’s a gammon thing that’s soaking in cider and spices in a huge pot, waiting to be cooked tomorrow. Cranberries are in the fridge: they’ll be turned into some sort of jelly that I won’t touch with a bargepole. The outhouse is playing host to bags of sprouts, carrots, potatoes, parsnips… and a swede… that will all be turned into edible delights (with the exception of the carrots and swede) on Christmas Day. The turkey arrives tomorrow and I’ve cleared and cleaned the fridge in preparation for it.

    I am going to try to make this festive period special, because it is. I have my beautiful niece, six in March. She’s at that perfect age when everything should be magical. Next year, I’ve no idea how Christmas will feel for her, so I need to make this year as good as possible. In conjunction with this is the uncertainty surrounding the health of my parents. They’ll probably be absolutely fine next year and for many years to come, but I can only be certain of their health this Christmas. Nanna + Nonno + Little Con = magical Christmas 2012.

    Now, here’s the question: is my enthusiasm for this Christmas some sort of distraction from the fact that I’m terribly lonely and so desperate to have the love of my life back with me? Possibly. Would I give up this Christmas for a chance of having her back? Yes? No, actually, no I wouldn’t*. There are few things that we can rely on in our lives. The only thing that I’ve ever been able to rely on is my family. My stupid, argumentative, irritating, borderline-dysfunctional family.

    People can tell you they love you; they’ll look you in the eyes with a look that can surely only be reserved for you alone, and they’ll tell you they love you. Unfortunately, words are just words for some, what matters is knowing that the people whom you find so exasperating, so fucking embarrassing, so making you wish you were adopted, it’s knowing that these irritating bastards are always there for you. And I am duty-bound to love them and be there for them, and smile, and shout. Because that’s what we do.

    Love is agony. It’s a real, physical pain that is only ever relieved when you are with the person who you love. In those special moments when you are together, the agony is transformed into joy, contentment, being: you are whole when in the presence of that most special person. I’ve spent a year dealing with the agony and I’m happy to admit that I’m still in a lot of pain, having a whole lump of something torn from my being. But I guess I’ve been lucky in that I’ve become the recipient of a big bundle of joy from a beautiful little girl who is slightly embarrassed to be with me. My work with her is done.

    A postscript
    *I’m in the strange emotional hinterland where I’m almost letting go, accepting singledom as my destiny and I’m kind of OK with that, but my goodness, I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t take her back. You don’t proclaim somebody to be the love of your life easily, unless you’re a total moron, so when you find “the one” it’s so terribly difficult to believe that there could ever be another who is truly deserving of that title. But “the one” wasn’t deserving in the end anyway.

    I shall go away and punch myself in the head for a while. Much easier to cope with than love and the scars don’t last too long either.