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Holidays are coming

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Caution is advised when sharing ones enthusiasm for Christmas with others. A time of year that traditionally brings love, happiness and belonging to many can bring the polar opposites from the emotional spectrum to those who have experienced misery. Having been on the receiving end of the shittest Christmas in living memory last year, I know too well that it can be hideous.

My dad never enjoyed Christmas when I was a child. In fact, he used to go out of his way to make sure that we didn’t enjoy it either, often spending the entire period in bed. We just shrugged it off and made the most of the best bits anyway, but it was never nice seeing my mum’s efforts to pacify him cause such a strain on her. She’d have been advised to hit the sherry and forget about him by many, but she carried on with her matriarchal duties to ensure that the festive period was enjoyable for everyone.

Now I’m older I can sympathise with Dad somewhat: he was away from his family in Italy and communication via telephone wasn’t even a possibility in the days when there was a waiting list for a telephone line. On the other hand, he was also a miserable, moody sort and he just used any excuse to retreat to his blackness.

Despite those Christmases that were “sub-optimal” because of my dad’s moods, I always think fondly of the time, remembering back to the excitement shared with my sister as we counted down from the first of December, or maybe even November. We shared a bedroom and we’d try to stay awake on Christmas Eve in the hope of hearing sleigh bells. But anyway, we’ve both had our own homes for the past few years so that all stopped in about 2000. ;o)

With my niece growing into a child that I love to spend time with, I fully intend to make the absolute most of the Christmas period for as many years as the magic remains for her. Saying that though, and having been in the “this is the most terrible, awful time of the year” situation last year, I am conscious that the joy can’t be forced on people.

On the other hand, some people are just fucking miserable for the sake of it, probably because they read the Guardian and listen to too much Radio 4 and they deliberately let all the joy be leached from their lives. They can go fuck themselves with what ever non-religious, non-festive, eco-friendly miserable box set of “teach yourself how to knit yourself content: a self-help guide because nobody wants to help you” DVDs and stay out of my way.

Happy Holidays.

In the midnight hour

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It’s midnight on Saturday and I’m in bed drinking coffee. Madness, I know, but sometimes I let the crazy take over.

Today was a bit of a waste, having spent most of it nursing grogginess and a headache that resulted from enjoying 730ml of strong red Italian wine last night. As I left a small amount undrunk in the glass last night, I was proud at the restraint I’d shown in not going for the whole 750ml. At 9am today, I cursed that my restraint hadn’t kicked in further up the bottle.

It’s always been like this, the first two glasses of wine are lovely and warming, cuddling me with their giddiness and I always know that this is when it’s time to stop and recork the bottle. The flavour changes with the third glass and the enjoyment of the drink itself evaporates, but by this stage, I lose all sense of sense and drink for the sake of finishing the bottle.

Utterly stupid.

So it’s a proven fact that alcohol and me don’t mix and that’s why I stopped drinking so many years ago.

End of story.

Interview
I had a job interview yesterday. It’s odd when people ask “how did it go?” because I can never tell, apart from there are always OK bits, not bad bits, and bits that left me wanting to punch myself in the head in front of the panel.

To say that I don’t care whether I get the job would be untrue. If I get it, it will put me on the next rung of the ladder and I’d find myself in a job with more responsibility, possibly less mither and the opportunity to offer a different level of support in the field in which I’ve found myself. Plus with final salary pensions in mind, it’s good to move up. Saying all this though, I have the advantage of being in a good job that I’m finally enjoying; I work with some fantastic people and I’m never short of things to do.

At this stage, I’d be kidding myself to think I’ve been successful in my current quest to move on, but it’s always good to put yourself through these ordeals on occasions to help figure out how to achieve that next step.

Chicken
I’m quite nostalgic, always referring back to my childhood. This is because I never wanted to grow up. Being an adult is basically shit. There’s a magic about being a kid and with each passing day, the fairy dust just turns to dust and one day, when you’re a grown up, all there is is dusting. Philip Pullman clearly realised all this when he penned “His dark materials”, the metaphor for children losing their innocence being the point at which they can see dust.

When I was young, my parents would drag me around places either on foot or by public transport. I disliked this during the winter months because they’d always find somebody to stop and talk to on the mile walk home from Swinton and, being short and close to the frozen ground, I’d have to stand there in silence getting colder and colder as they talked grown up stuff with other grown ups.

We’d go to the local market some days and Mum would buy a rotisserie chicken to make a curry from. These things were divine with proper crispy skin and a full flavour that oozed out of the shopping bag all the way home.

All the supermarkets do rotisserie this or that these days, but none produce anything like those we had when I was a kid. Yet still I buy them in the hope that they might one day find the secret recipe that the stall on Pendlebury market used all those years ago.

December shall be magic again
So, it’s finally December and I’ve not even bought my sprouts for Christmas dinner yet. There’ll be riots in Stoneclough if I get them wrong, so I’d better get a move on and get them boiling by next weekend at the latest.

I recalled last Christmas to somebody when I was drunk, maybe more than one person, maybe on more than one occasion. Anyway, last Christmas was the most hideous time I’ve ever had during my hideous life: I’d had my heart ripped out; I’d started medication for depression that stopped me sleeping and made me feel like I was being chased by a pack of wolves; I spent most days exhausted, starving and hungover. I went to my parents’ for Christmas dinner, my entire being suffering from tremors and thoughts of murder, desperate to be anywhere else, but needing to be near my family. As I pushed what remained of a sprout around my dinner plate, and just as I thought things couldn’t get any worse, my dad exclaimed “we’ve forgotten the parsnips!”.

So this year, dear family, there will be parsnips aplenty, roast potatoes without rival and enough sprouts to fuel a small town for a month. There will also be stabbings if my brother insists on watching anything on TV other than the festive offerings on the main channels. I refuse to spend another Christmas Day being subjected to the Discovery Channel.

Dangerous liaisons

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Weekends used to be so full of joy. It was at the weekend that I’d be reunited with my then partner after spending the weeks apart. That all stopped when the relationship was assassinated and it’s been a struggle to find the motivation to do anything other than sleep on Saturdays and Sundays since my world was ripped apart a year ago.

Things have changed of late though with my surprisingly buoyant mood, and the prospect of doing stuff no longer fills me with dread. The opposite is now true and, while I still relish my Saturday and Sunday lie-ins with coffee and iPad, I find myself thinking of activities to fill my time. I’d be kidding myself if I thought this was down to anything other than my medication becoming more effective since I stopped drinking again, but I’ll take it, whatever the reason.

Singledom is finally suiting me and although I wouldn’t go as far as to proclaim that I’m single and happy, I am single and not absolutely fucking miserable. At last. The grieving process might be coming to an end at last and I can start rebuilding.

This all means that, whereas a few months ago, I’d shirk any opportunity to “do stuff”, I’m currently more inclined to accept people’s offers than I have been for a long time. So this brings me to this weekend when, despite domestic worries with Mother’s continued hospital stay, I went up to visit friends in the Lake District. Who in their right mind would refuse an offer to spend some time in such a beautiful part of the world with people whose company is, for want of a better word, charming? Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to spend time with people who provide wonderful hospitality and the freedom to say cunt as much as you like? You certainly don’t get that on Ward B6 at Hope Hospital.

So, on this particular November Saturday morning, me and the Little Dog packed ourselves up and hit the motorway for the two hour drive to fresh air, mountains, lakes… and cunts.

My friends currently live in a converted barn at the back of which are some fells. And on the fells there are sheep. When I’d visited previously, the sheep roamed up to their back door, being stupid and regularly running into the part-finished fence that would separate them from the house if ONLY it was completed. The sheep weren’t there yesterday afternoon, so the little dog was allowed to run around up the hill for a while to stretch his legs. Impeccably behaved, he returned to me immediately, twice.

The evening was lovely, I treated myself to quite a few glasses of wine and even some port before retiring pleasantly drunk as the witching hour passed past passed. Woken by Rocky’s full bladder at 9, I got up and let him out of the back door, assured by a) the lack of sheep and b) his behaviour the previous afternoon.

If there’s one thing that’s absolutely certain about the little dog, it’s his predictable unpredictability. This morning the mood took him to do a runner up the hillside where, I discovered to my horror and his delight, there were sheep after all. So he chased them, very well actually: I’m sure with a little bit of training (ha, ha, ha), he could be a sheep dog. As it was, however, he simply chased them further and further up the hillside. While he managed to keep the flock together admirably, I’m not sure the farmer would have appreciated his skill if he’d have seen him. Tempting as it was to leave him to and return to the warm kitchen and coffee, awaiting the gunshot, I stayed and kept an eye on him, calling in vain for over thirty minutes for him to return. He came back, then ran off again. He came back, then went to stare at the neighbours through their kitchen window. He was eventually trapped by some skilful howling, which has the strange power of making him stand still and join in.

So, I got the dog back *sighs* and he lives on to continue being an embarrassment to me and a danger to himself.

The little cunt.

Waiting for the knock on the door

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My niece is brilliant at the moment. So much so that I want to bottle her up and keep her as she is forever. At five and a half, she’s a bundle of fun and a chatterbox sponge that just soaks up information. And she’s currently fast asleep in my spare bedroom.

I don’t like children as a rule. They irritate me, make too much noise and mess, and they either don’t listen or they answer back when they do. Over the years I’ve come to realise that it’s not the children I dislike so much, well it is, but it’s the parents of unruly chimps that are the main focus of my ire. Class isn’t an issue either and I don’t discriminate between the offspring of middle class yummy mummies any more that I would dolescum breeders those parents at the lower end of the income scale; I just find them all generally disagreeable.

It’s like dogs and cats. I have my little pooch, who I love, and I’ve had cats that I have absolutely adored. I can see myself always having a pet of dog or cat persuasion, but when it comes to other people’s pets, I’m not that fussed. So when somebody thinks it’s appropriate to send me e-mails with pictures of cute cats in them, I tend to delete unread.

This post went missing for a couple of days between starting it and rediscovering it just now. Needless to say, my niece did come knocking on the door in the small hours. I fed her some Calpol and she came to bed with me and the little dog. She wriggles. He snores. They both have a tendency to kick me in the face while they’re asleep. It’s not the best night’s sleep imaginable, but I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

I’d like to have her as my own, but her mum would object and so would she. When all is said and done, and despite my sister’s lack of patience with her, they adore each other. But I’ve got Nick Junior!!! And an iPad!!!! It just doesn’t compete with that unbreakable bond between them.

Mother
Connie, my mum, is in a bad way. She’s getting on and bits are wearing out: she has a pacemaker; she’s diabetic; hypothyroid; arthritic. A total knee replacement a eighteen months ago never brought any relief to the pain she was suffering in the joint, she complained that it was even worse than before the surgery. She insisted repeatedly that it wasn’t right with the surgeon, who sent her for physio, she pleaded for help from her GP (who could only refer her back to the hospital). The climax of her troubles has been emergency admission to hospital after the whole leg became swollen this week. The joint is infected. It may have been infected since the very beginning. The joint will probably have to be replaced, once the infection is cleared, but if this isn’t possible, the options are: remove the joint and fuse the leg, or amputate above the knee. I’m certain that we won’t be heading for a worst case scenario, but it’s still extremely concerning.

That aside, her stay in hospital has provided some entertainment. The use of morphine sent her off her tits last night and it transpires that she doesn’t even recall me being there. I was there all right. Oh yes, I was there while she tried to talk to Rocky, spoke to people in empty beds, told me that the beds were moving towards her and repeatedly asked her neighbouring patients when they were having their surgery, despite them all being in a holding area awaiting discharge or onward movement for further treatment. Unfortunately, I wasn’t there when she had a fight with two nurses who were trying to put her on a commode, because that would’ve rounded off a perfect day for me. “My husband is here, he’ll stop you. What are you doing to me?? How dare you!” It’s fortunate that staff were understanding of her drug intake, so they were firm, but fair.

I hope she’s going to be alright after all this. I don’t mind the prospect of looking after my parents, they’ve looked after me long enough, but the prospect of her losing her independence fills me with dread.

Children, look after your parents, give them a worry free and happy life, insist that they take care of themselves. What the fuck am I on about? I’ve never been a cause of worry for my folks. I was a lovely child who brought them happiness and pride. I’ve always insisted that they take better care of themselves. And look at how they repay me, by falling apart in front of my eyes. I think I need to write a letter of complaint to whoever’s in charge.

When the sky falls

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I’ve been expecting you, I said when the delivery man knocked on my door yesterday evening. Having ordered a new gadget from Amazon on Sunday, the lovely automated e-mail told me that I’d receive it the next day because I’d signed up to Amazon Prime in a drunken state earlier on this year. On returning from work, I scanned the floor beneath my letterbox, only to be disappointed at that it was devoid of anything other than the draft excluder and a litter of the little dog’s toys.

Humph. So much for promises.

I checked my e-mails again and found a tracking number: my delivery was still in transit and could still arrive that very day! The excitement brought on the predictable desire to go to the toilet, but I was in a quandary: how could I leave the vicinity of my front door for anything more than a millisecond? Why does this happen to me? Every time I need to do something, my colon gets in the way. Luckily, I managed to keep it together for long enough for the knock on the door at 6pm. Trying my best not to look too desperate excited, I cheerily signed the man’s electronic whatever the hell that thing is called with a “you think I’m signing my name, but I’m writing that I need a poo” and took the package from him.

So what brought about all this excitement? Well, it’s a fabulous keyboard/cover for my iPad, one of these, in fact. It’s functional, but it’s also beautiful and when great design meets great technology, I’m hooked/screwed.

The keypad on the iPad itself is pretty nifty, but this effectively turns the device into a little notebook.

Little things.

Skyfall
Having found myself stuck in the doldrums for months, something happened a week or so ago that seems to have dropped me a rope ladder that I’m using to climb out of my black hole of doom and gloom, albeit slowly. I don’t know what that something was, but I decided to stop drinking and this one simple thing has helped enormously.

My improved mood prompted me to want to do stuff all of a sudden, and it stopped me from wanting to do other things. With the building excitement about the impending release of the latest Bond film, I decide to go to the cinema on opening night to watch it… on my own. So I did.

On Friday night, I took myself off to Bury, managed to get to my destination without getting lost (as I usually do) or writing off my car (as I have done once) and I found the cinema. The excitement was building and I felt drawn to the pick and mix. The rule here is GO FOR THE LIGHT STUFF, but I’m a sucker for chocolate brazils and cola bottles, so ended up paying £7 for about four sweets.

Still stunned from being mugged by something that made my pancreas scream, I found my “VIP” seat in the theatre and waited for the feature to start. And I waited, and waited, and waited. There was half an hour’s worth of adverts and trailers. Half a fucking hour. I sat there becoming restless, my tablet was wearing off and bad Tina was telling me to forget it and go home. CBT Tina told me to “Shut the fuck up and stop being ridiculous. Besides, you’re now wedged in your seat after eating all that confectionary, so you can’t get out if you try”.

The film itself was brilliant and I’ve found myself bursting to talk to somebody about it, but nobody else has seen it yet. I could ruin it all here by saying that Skyfall is [insert spoiler here], [insert another spoiler here] dies and [insert another spoiler here] played by Ralph Fiennes, but that would be really unfair. Do I hit delete? Well I would, but this being effectively a Mac keyboard, it doesn’t have one. Ok, I took out the spoilers, it was CBT Tina who made me do it.

Animals
I love animals: as pets; as food; as cute things to look at in fields and that. I must love animals, or the little dog would be dead rehomed by now. I’d love to have more pets: ever since the beautiful Max cat, I’ve wanted another tabby; I also think it’d be a nice idea for Rocky to have another little dog (who I shall name Sausage) as a companion. Unfortunately, neither of these is a possibility. I live on a busy road and the cat would get squished in much the same way as the poor kitty I found this evening. The idea of a Sausage is appealing when I think of taking the little fellers for runs in the woods, but my heart sinks when I consider taking another dog for a walk on-lead with Rocky behaving as he does when he’s on his.

Alas, therefore, it’s just me and the little guy for a while. We do OK together, me and him.

Tail-lights and takeaways: depression is a ten minute traffic queue

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Every afternoon on my journey home from work there are two or three traffic hot spots that cause me anxiety as I approach them:

  • Will somebody ignore the “stay in lane” instruction and side swipe me as I cross over Portland street?
  • How many changes of lights will it take to turn left onto Liverpool Street?
  • How many vehicles will cut me up on the roundabout with the A6?
  • Will the top road queue start before or after I’ve reached McDonalds?

    • The latter queue is a depressing place to be held in traffic. It represents a journey through time that I took on foot or by bus many times as a child as I went to the local market or swimming pool, or the local children’s hospital where my sister was a regular inpatient. It’s not in a particularly deprived area, but nor is it affluent, but for all my life it’s always felt run down, in need of some TLC, a bit of investment.

    20121016-234057.jpgThis used to be a Co-op, now it’s a bargain shoe store

    The market disappeared years ago, it’s an Asda now. The shops that lined the road have gradually been taken over by takeaway after takeaway. As I sit in the traffic, hoping for a speedy change of lights, I look at their signs. Chicken, curry, kebabs, burgers – over and over. Some look less than attractive, but others have been renovated recently; I really fancy the look of Sykes’ chippy, the only stalwart from my youth.

    20121016-234143.jpgKurry Hut for a kebab?

    20121016-234219.jpgThe Windmill in all its glory

    I am overwhelmed with depression. Why can’t they phase the lights so the queue in this directions isn’t so bad at this time? Why not introduce parking restrictions to open up traffic flow on the approach to the junction? Why not do something other than hand out fast food licences when these premises are leased out? Probably because they’re the only sorts of businesses that are successful there.

    As I finally reach the set of lights that have delayed me, the feelings of anxiety start to subside. It’s a clear road from here. Thirty seconds along and I’m past my parents’ house, past my primary school, past my past and into my now. Is it past or passed? I never know.

    20121016-234243.jpgThe final stretch approaches

    Staring into the abyss

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    It’s Monday afternoon and I’m finally starting to feel human after roughly 36 hours of a vomiting frenzy that rendered me bed bound for the duration. Thanks to a banana and chicken pasta broth, I think I’ve turned the corner and I’m returning to wellness; an infection-free state at least.

    The little dog is now becoming impatient with me after not having a walk since Saturday afternoon, however his behaviour yesterday was impeccable, especially during those scary moments when it must have seemed like my face was being devoured by the monster dwelling at the bottom of the sick bucket. At one point, the sick monster took the form of a harp seal: black eyes and nose formed from large bubbles within a face of foam, the result of a guttural explosion of sparkling water.

    The aches and shakes that accompanied the first 24 hours of illness have now gone, but for that time, my joints screamed at me, begging me to at least attempt some placebo paracetamol to ease the pain and fever. Alas, I’m one of these pathetic creatures that can’t hold anything in my stomach, so I just had to ride the storm.

    So the question is this: where did I pick up this infection? I hadn’t to my knowledge been vomited on the previous few days, nobody I knew had been suffering similarly. Then it dawned on me, the brief visit to my GP on Friday morning. That Mecca for the diseased to trudge to and insist on help, rather than staying the fuck in bed and riding it out like the rest of us do. In a Sixth Sense scenario, I could be that little boy, looking around the waiting room, “I see norovirus… everywhere”. You can’t avoid touching things while you’re there: the exterior doors are automatic, but the next set aren’t; you walk past two sets of toilets on your way into the reception; you confirm your attendance using an touch-screen log on; you sit in the waiting area, surrounded by illness.

    Once the sickness subsides, I absolutely need two to three things to get me back on my feet: fizzy water; chicken pasta broth; orange Fanta. Salt, sugar and water. I’m going to phone the shop over the road to see if they’ll bring me a can of pop. In the meantime, here’s a photo of Rocky, wondering if he’ll get to go for some fresh air today. Later, boy, later.

    20121015-154217.jpg

    Manners, bitch

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    Rain hit my windscreen as I sat in my usual queue of traffic this morning.  The left wiper scraped and juddered up, juddered down, juddered up, juddered down.  I hate this car.  I resent it.  It tortures me on intermittent wipe with its juddering wiper blade.

    There’s always a queue there, and always, I take my place in it along with many others who just want to get through the fucking lights before they… just.. go.. no… it’s amber… don’t stop!  Before they change to red.  And there are the others who sail past us all and cut into the lane at the last minute. I never let them in.  I’d rather throw myself in front of their cars than let them jump the queue.  Today, however, was different.  Distracted by the juddering wiper blade and the unfamiliarity of the radio presenter, I wasn’t quick enough to prevent being cut up by some woman in an Audi.   She’s obviously a nasty piece of work who probably does vile things to small animals, you can tell the sort.  

    I spent the next ten minutes behind her as we crawled forward towards the traffic lights.  Ten minutes in which she didn’t stop fannying around with her hair. I contemplated the consequences of ramming her really hard.  Obviously a dead car and possibly a conviction for me, but at least she wouldn’t have been messing about with her hair anymore.

    What is it about the back of somebody’s head that induces such violent daydreams in me? Bad manners, generally. I have an imaginary skewer with which I’d like to make a very large human kebab on which perpetrators of crimes against me meet a slow death by cattleprod.  I can’t remember who’s on there specifically, but any ill-mannered, inconsiderate arsehole should be on the lookout for my metaphorical spike.

    My thoughts of an apocalyptic outcome to my commute were broken when I discovered some soft mints that had gone hard over night.  They stuck to my teeth when I chewed them.  

    Why do people make things that stick to your teeth?

    It’s still raining.

     

    The dog that snored

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    This is an introductory piece that I write as I wait for sleep to take me this Sunday night Monday morning. I was exhausted for most of the day, but life pinged into my head at bedtime, as usual. Comme d’habitude, as the Frenchies would say. Sempre.

    So, I try to sleep while my subconscious keeps me awake, trying to avoid the dreams that come most nights. Dreams where it’s all ok, dreams where the nightmare of the betrayal is relived. And alongside me, the snoring dog. My companion for the past five years. The one constant who I can rely on for bad smells in the house and car, embarrassment while on our walks, unpredictability with young children and strangers, destruction of my home, unconditional love.

    I must try to sleep. I shall try to leave this with a touch of creativity; a photo of my smelly little companion who snores beside me. I can’t even figure out how to get rid of the bloody keypad..

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