Saturday February 19th – The Hate Game.

I hope there aren’t too many people who adhere to that old adage of ‘if you can’t think of anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.’

How dull and inanely maddening is that? I am twitchingly cross at the very thought of it and strangely being a bit angry has lifted my poorly spirits far more than Pollyanna’s glad game.

I actually think I might have hit upon something here. I am not talking about tragedy, injustice or dreadful wrongs, but the little things that make you wince and shake with fury.

Perhaps even the things you ought to like but can’t stand, like salmon or Forest Gump.

Or those vile, bitty snippets that can strike the day like a paper-cut at the base of your thumb. Oh! Polystyrene! How I love to hate you!

A positive mental attitude is a beautiful thing, but right now I’m enjoying a good old rant. My head is alive with the sound of monsters.

Here are a few of my least favourite things:

1.      The phrase ‘Smile it might never happen’. This is grammatically hideous and far more annoying than the more directly irksome, ‘Now, you didn’t want to do that.’ It’s a logic that I just can’t follow, if I tried to, I would find myself shouting a strangers in the middle of winter, ‘Get your woollies off! It might not be that cold.’

2.      Goat’s cheese. I just haven’t ever been able to enjoy eating a leathery arm-pit. I absolutely love goats and one day even hope to own a few, but my Good-Life fantasy won’t stretch to milking them. In fact, it is one of Bat’s favourite games, that even the mere mention of ‘Curry Goat’ will result in my uncontrollable retching. It sounds harsh, but apparently it’s hilarious.

3.      Washing lines. I wish I could be in love with line-dried linens, but I’m not. I long to be green and wholesome, but battering towels about in the tumble drier renders them fluffy and delicious. When I hang them out to dry, they return like stale biscuits -adorned with flies, spiders or bird poo.

This is working, you know. I am feeling distinctly warmer and more human.

Perhaps, sometimes a little of what you don’t fancy does you the world of good!

Friday February 18th –Made it!

Hello Friday you beautiful creature! I have never needed you or loved you more.

Thursday February 17th ––Leave me alone!

On and on and on...

The only thing I hate more that repetition is more repetition.

Wednesday February 16th –Sick of This Now.

I’m losing the strength to moan. It’s true. I really don’t have the energy to whinge anymore.

Hoobiz might tell it differently. Still, that could be because the doors of his perception have got dirty windows in them, so it’s best not to listen to him about this sort of business.

Anyway, Tree, I am glad to see you again today. You do look lovely!

Tuesday February 15th –Is Anybody There?

Today happened and that’s all I really know.

It sounded like a series of beeps, followed by a few hours listening to Charlie Brown’s teacher and then more beeps before a long loud whirring noise that wouldn’t leave me alone.

I wouldn’t like to do it again and I wouldn’t recommend it to a friend.

I think that the picture says it all: sort of there, but only just.

Monday February 14th –Office Chic.

I’m not well, I can’t stand driving and I need to go into the office tomorrow.

Dull as these facts might be, they are not getting any prettier. I now have the new delights of a hacking cough and a blooming cold sore.

So much for wowing my old colleagues with my new yummy-mummy status!  I’ll be chuffed if they think I’m still allowed to walk among the living.

Oh well! At least I can look slim-ish. That’ll be the upside. I’ll pick out something snappy from my ‘not completely massive’ wardrobe and that will give me an enormous lift.

Oops...

The only problem is that the 2 jackets that ought to fit me don’t, my elegant skirt makes me look shrink-wrapped and my classic shirts simply don’t do up.

Damn Christmas! Damn desk job! Damn utter lack of self-restraint and total inability to stick at anything!

Big-fat-fatty trousers and a saggy jumper it is!

Sunday February 13th - A lesson in the perils of procrastination.

Hope is a beautiful thing, but sometimes it’s also pretty daft.

I spent most of the night wrapped in four blankets, shaking and chattering beneath the duvet. I just kept telling myself that with a little bit of sleep I would feel so much better in the morning.

I wasn’t necessarily expecting 100%, but I really hoped to feel anything but worse.

It’s raining, it’s miserable, I’ve got to drive on the M4 and I haven’t yet mastered sitting up.

Yuck upon a double yuck!

Bursting with all the drugs that breastfeeding will allow, and with steady words from Hoobiz I somehow make it all the way to Goliath HQ. It wasn’t faultless: I got beeped at twice, once for being in the wrong lane and once for going too slowly, I went around one roundabout 3 times in a row and didn’t often leave 3^rd gear, but I made it.

Under normal circumstances I’d be elated, but it seems that that would require too much energy. It’s strange then, that I’ve just enough oomph to torture myself with terrifying visions of the actual journey on Tuesday.

What an absolute twit! That was the whole point of this exercise. I needed to do a dry run so that I would able to do the real thing. Now I’m in a complete sweaty panic. Part fever and part rage at the fact that cars were ever invented.

The niggly voice in my head that I can’t pass off as whispers of delirium is the one that keeps sneering,

‘But you were perfectly well last week and you chose not to bother.’

(Demonic laughter)

‘That was a bit silly wasn’t it? Honestly, when will you learn?’

(More demonic laughter)

‘Procrastination never pays. Just dilly-dally all your days.’

Shut- up!  It’s not ideal, but even if there’s not a reason for everything, then I’m sure one can be found.

Who knows, me and my little red car might have been of some use to someone. Perhaps somewhere there’s a bog post inspired by my limping down the motorway – ‘Ban on Sunday drivers’

Saturday February 12th – All grown up.

No! It’s can’t be. This is horrific, unjust and just plain rude of the universe to go doing this to me now.

I have woken up with that dreadful dull twisted feeling that can only mean one thing: some nasty stinking virus has violated me. Of course the only other thing that feels like this is the stingy beginnings of a hideous 48 hour hang-over, but I’m all grown up now and that just wouldn’t happen.

It’s official. I have a family-size cold and can barely keep my head upright. It’s as if I’ve been beaten up, forced to drink buckets of sand, had loo-roll shoved-up my nose then abandoned in a spinning strobe-lit sauna.

Hoobiz is working today, so I’m stumbling after a highly charged Little Perfect One in what seems like a sort of crushing slow motion.

Happy days!

I think the dummy run will have to wait until tomorrow...

Friday February 11th – Where do you go to my lovely?

Missing sock sends rude postcard home.

Thursday February 10th –Dreaming Some More.

Dream Catcher looses net. Total nightmare!

Wednesday February 9th - You Gotta Have Faith: A Love Story.

It’s crisp and delicious out there this morning, tree, like the first sparkling sip of a still purring G&T. Damn! It’s barely cornflakes-time and I’m already talking myself into a bucket of Mother’s Ruin! Not that I would, of course...but the thought is a yummy one.

It’s funny, sometimes just thinking a little about what you fancy is blissful and then there are occasions when it’s pure torture. I’ve won at least 58 titles at Wimbledon and the French Open once or twice, which is marvellous, but there must be a part of me that knows it’s not really going to happen. More to the point, that part of me must be OK with it.

Whereas, I can no longer endure the fantasy about being the youngest person to swim the channel, read English at Oxford or solve the mysteries of life the universe and everything. It’s just too late to start preparing my sparkling debut as an international bright young thing. Perhaps I am OK with that as well and if not then I ought to be.

It’s the little glimpses of those half-buried embers that are so precious and so protected. Yet for me these are the most dangerous. It’s certainly not OK to me that these can’t or won’t happen and that’s why indulging in these ‘real dreams’ can sometimes be a bit a nightmare. 

My teenage ‘pin-up’, as it were, was Stephen Fry. Smash Hits might have been bursting with glossy one hit wonders, but all I really wanted was a poster that said ‘Damn’ or ‘Bah. I wasn’t trying to be different, I just thought he was perfect.

Every book I read, film I saw, place I visited, meal I ate, flower I sniffed, I’d wonder what Mr Fry might have made of them. Perhaps even pretend that after we’d had lunch we’d spend the afternoon laughing together as we strolled beside the Thames.

As with all teenage dreams it becomes increasingly embarrassing...I’ve picked out 2 acceptable moments:

1 - My friend Evie and I watched Peter’s Friends over and over in a somewhat obsessive loop. We’d act out our favourite scenes, whilst scoffing bags of Maltesers and sipping mugs of herbal tea. Evie would play Roger and Mary and I would be everyone else. It was just less awkward that way and Evie was a little bit in love with Hugh Laurie. Or Hubert-Shoobert-Doobert as Evie called him. (If she ever reads this she might just actually kill me!)

It was then we vowed to become stand-up comedians. We told Evie’s father, who having not known us to move from his sofa for months found great hilarity in responding with ‘more like sit-down comedians!’ It seems we had indirectly provided a good giggle to someone.

2– When I was 22, I worked in a designer fabric shop. I was a lovely place, with beautiful material and a marvellous boss. However, as it was completely lacking in the customer department, it was the most delicious spot for an eight hour day dream. It was also right next door to a wonky, but most excellent book shop.

One Tuesday morning when the rubbish was being put out for collection I noticed a giant cardboard cut-out of Stephen Fry propped up against the bin. I hovered by the door for over 40 minutes, spinning and muttering to myself. I just didn’t have the courage to go out there and nab him. More to the point, I couldn’t face asking the book shop if I might take him off their hands – what if they had asked me why?

I was peeking through my fingers as I watched poor ‘Stephen’ being launched into the back of the crusher. A few years earlier I might have made a last minute dash to rescue him. Luckily I’d escaped my teens and with new maturity I didn’t even cry (much) as they carted him off for landfill.

Anyway, it was all a completely harmless crush. Nobody was left crying by the phone or plagued by unwanted attention. It didn’t stop me from doing anything and let’s face it Stephen Fry is never even going to know about it. It’s one of those dreams that is nice to dream and that’s OK.

OK that was, unless you were Alissen Green. I can’t blame her for the silly spelling of her name, but it sort of sums her up. She was a nice enough girl, but utterly convinced that it was her destiny to be the ‘One and Only’.

In a rare break from her fearless self-promotion, 15 year old Alissen wanted to know if I fancied anyone in our French class.

‘Joel is quite nice’, I lied. Well, everyone liked Joel so it was the easy answer.

‘I suppose,’ said Alissen, but he’s nothing like my future husband.’

Alissen’s bag, folder, note book, pencil case, lunch box and quite possibly knickers were all emblazoned with the smiling face of her one true love.

‘Isn’t he gorgeous?’, she said fondling his fluffy hair on her wallet.

‘He’s not bad,’ I replied truthfully. Silly me...

‘Huh! What would you know? Dubber! He wouldn’t look twice at you anyway, you’ve got evil eyes.’ Alissen ranted.

I let it go and tried to get to my back to work.

‘Oy!’ Alissen poked me with her pop-tastic ruler. ‘So who do you think is so special then?’

‘Well, I really like Stephen Fry’. There is was again, that unnecessary honesty.

‘Stephen Fry?’ screeched Alissen, ‘ But he’s a poof! He’s gay, you can’t marry him. How can you be in love with a queer?’ She blurted

I tried to explain that I didn’t see how it mattered in the slightest. I mean, she’d asked me who I liked and not who liked me. She didn’t get it and we spent the rest of the lesson in silence.

I wonder if she gets it now?

Not that I would want to stamp on anyone’s childish dreams, but a few years back I did have a little chuckle to myself. You see, the big-haired hunk beaming from Alissen’s diary was George Michael.

I suppose it’s got a lot do with knowing the difference between what’s actually happening and what you want to be happening. Dare to dream, of course, but don’t lose sleep over the dreams that are just that; delicious fantasy.

The truth is, I loved Stephan Fry and when you think about it that’s about as commonplace as burnt-bread for breakfast. I mean who doesn’t love Stephen Fry?