One Of Those Days

I've been a bit flattened by the Birthday Weekend, but yesterday (Wednesday) I had a productive morning. Then mum and Chris had gone out for the day and asked me to let their dog out at lunchtime, so at about 1pm I went to their house (only two blocks away), let the dog out, had a rest, let the dog back in, and went to the shop for some bread on my way home. I had a bit more trouble than usual getting up the stairs to the flat, and once I was in I called Steve to warn him that I was going to be asleep all afternoon and went to bed.

Woken up by the phone ringing, it was mum. Their car had broken down. Their breakdown cover would relay them and the car either home, or to a garage of their choice. Chris's preferred garage is quite a distance from home, so they figured that it would be easier use the cover to get them and the car to the garage and find another way to get them from the garage to home, than to use the cover to get them and the car home and then have to find another way to get the broken down car from home to the garage. My job was to go to their house, dig out their address book, and text them with the number of a friend who lived in that area and might be able to give them a lift home.

Parents stranded in the wilds of East Anglia is one of those situations where "do I have the energy for this?" doesn't really come into it. I was kind of wiped out, and for ten or fifteen miles I'd have told them to call a taxi and I would cover it, but the actual distance according to Google Maps is just over FIFTY miles, which is not taxi territory. So I warned them I might take a while, put on my coat and shoes, and began to shuffle.

Halfway to their house, a group of kids playing in the street with a football came careering towards me. No problem, I just paused and held onto a handy wall... then one of the kids who wasn't in the scrum yelled "MIND THE OLD LADY!"

I looked round.

They meant me.

I was mortified.

Anyway, got to the house, found the number, texted it to mum, let the dog out again, and curled up on the sofa to try and finish my nap. Woke up, took painkillers, planned to head home once they were working. So far so good - until The Sister got home from work. I've mentioned her before. Nice enough girl, although of course being siblings we regularly fight like cat and dog and have phases of Not Speaking to each other, but Oh Dear God does she talk. On and on and on and on, well I can deal with that, but also high-pitched, too fast, repeats herself, and never ever lets anyone else get a word in. Plus, she had had a bad day at work. I nodded and smiled and prayed for deliverance. After half an hour an absolutely shattered mum and Chris wandered in, and I could leave the room. We ordered some takeaway and then I think mum persuaded her to do a bit of work on her job application so she was quiet for a bit, but soon she was talking about what she was writing rather than writing it. Aargh.

We all had dinner and then mum offered to walk me home. Getting up the stairs took the last little bit out of me. I took my coat and shoes off, stood up to get ready for bed, and lurched into the bathroom just in time to throw up. Lovely. No one else is feeling ill so it's not food poisoning and it's unlikely to be a bug. The only theory Steve and I can come up with is that it's my system telling me to bloody well stop punishing it, on the basis that last time I was throwing up for no reason (so that's not counting little teeny bits when I'm extra-dizzy, heat exhaustion, or that bit of food poisoning last year) was when I first got ill and was pushing it by keeping going to work. So today I'm in bed, no ifs, buts, or maybes, and having as many little naps as I can. It's helping.

While I was final-editing this, mum rang. Turns out that as well as their car breaking down and my sister's bad day and me being sick, the people they had gone to meet, on their way home, got stuck in traffic and then something hit and shattered their windscreen. Not a good day for anyone!

Book Spines

Unsurprisingly I've spent the largest part of today in bed. Most of that time has been spent asleep but quite a bit has been vaguely staring at the ceiling or the wall or the bookshelves wondering when it's going to be time for the next painkillers. It's not an exciting way to spend the day but it keeps me out of trouble.

So anyway, I was staring at my bookshelf when I noticed something about the spines of the books. There are three different styles.

1. Large and/or interesting font for the book title, small subtle font for the author name. Examples of this include Chocolat by Joanne Harris, and Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel by Scott Adams.

2. The same size and possibly the same exact font for both title and author. Prime examples from my shelves include anything by Ian McEwan, and the individual books of the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis.

3. Large and quite possibly shiny lettering for the author's name, with the title of the book seeming to be a bit of an afterthought. The major culprit here is the hardback of Next (or at least I hope that was the title, given the size of lettering one would be forgiven for thinking it was the publisher) by big, red, shiny Michael Crichton, although Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code (yes, I know, I know) makes a significant effort as well.

So I started wondering, is there any kind of system to figuring out the prominence ratio for authors and titles? There's none I can really work out from my own collection, past the fact that books by the same author published by the same publisher tend to be consistent in style. There's no similarity for different authors by the same publisher (except for Penguin Pound Classics which are pretty much a set in their own right) and it's annoying.

From the above you may draw your own conclusions about where exactly my head is at today. Sorry. This stuff has been bugging me all afternoon and evening and it needed to come out. Please add your own thoughts.

Happy Birthday To Steve

It was Steve's birthday on Friday and he came to visit for a few days. On top of the birthday thing, we also haven't seen each other for a few weeks and most likely won't see each other again for a bit, because he's currently studying for another bit of accreditation (so that he can apply for jobs paying £obscene) and fixing up his motorbike. If I'm actually physically present, which we tried briefly, then on the one hand he eats properly (because he wants to look after me and as that involves me eating one hot meal a day, it makes sense for him to eat one too, at the same time), but on the other hand he doesn't get much study done because he wants to spend time with me, talk to me, take me places and so on. I am a distraction. And lovely as it is to spend time together, it doesn't lead to any kind of technical qualification. So we are apart, and he is losing weight, which alarms me, but he's a grownup so it's up to him.

It was wonderful to see him though, even if it was rather less of him than I had hoped to see. Plus, for a couple of days (and with a couple of weeks to fall apart afterwards), I can push the boat out a bit - no long romantic walks, or parties at nightclubs, or adventure activity days, or anything like that, but I made sure we could Do Stuff for his birthday.

The day started well. I'd got him one soppy present, one present he knew I was getting him, and one geeky present he never imagined he was getting. He was extremely happy, especially with that last one.

We went to Southwold for the morning where we investigated the Under the Pier Show, which was just fantastic and bizarre, and then we went into the "town centre" and found a posh chocolate shop with a tea-room in the back where we had a lovely civilised cream tea. Southwold is a strange place. It's a bit like the 1950s unless you're trying to find a place to park in which case it's like central London just before the congestion charge. People largely come to Southwold to retire (if they can afford it - beach huts in Southwold sell for the same as houses elsewhere), or for lovely wholesome family day-trips. Lots of parked cars and nothing like enough spaces. Even on a weekday in February. Then it was back to Lowestoft, went and said hello to Pip, tried to say hello to my sister at the place where she works (hadn't realised it was her day off), got some lunch, and went back to the flat.

In the evening we went for a nice meal at a nearby Chinese restaurant. Well, that was the plan. It started so smoothly, too. Wake up from late-afternoon nap. Have a nice cuppa and browse the net together until deciding it's about time for dinner. Start to get ready.

Unfortunately the next bit went: Mary attempts to go and use the toilet, falls over, and lands in/on the bathtub, winded. Steve hears the crash, leaps up, helps the Mary-spaghetti out of the tub and into her bedroom, upon which he realises he's just got a nosebleed, probably from jumping up in panic like that. Both of us sit quietly, me with ibuprofen and him with a tissue up one nostril, until we decide to try again.

Nevertheless we got out and we had our dinner and, indeed, got home again, all in one piece (each).

On Saturday, as you can imagine I wasn't really up to much at all, but we went to the cinema to see Hot Fuzz. If you like Spaced or Shaun of the Dead or Black Books or any of that kind of stuff, you'll probably like this. The homage-o-meter goes through the roof, so I'm going to need to get this on DVD when it comes out.

And today... well, today he went back home. He wanted to travel while it was still light - the plan was he'd pack in the morning, then we'd have lunch, and then he'd leave - but it never works out like that at the best of times, instead he packed after lunch and didn't get gone until dusk. I wanted to go downstairs to wave him off but he was too worried about whether or not I'd make it back up to the flat on my own. He worries far too much. Still, he says it was a nice birthday so I guess that's mission accomplished :)

Error the First

Ladies and gentlemen, may I announce my first form-filling cock-up on page 11 of the 39-page Very Important Form.

Two pages, both alike in dignity layout. At the top is a question and tick boxes for Do you have problems with this? Yes/No. Then there's a largish box for "Tell us the problems you have and the help you need" and another one for "Tell us about any equipment you need and if someone helps you use this." Finally there's some small boxes for how often you have these problems/need this help, and for how long each time.

The first page is headed Getting out of bed in the morning and into bed at night. The second one is headed When you are in bed.

I very carefully and neatly started writing about the problems and techniques and equipment I use to get out of bed. I'd painstakingly written about eight lines before I had to stop. I sat with my eyes shut until I felt a bit better, then looked back down at the form and realised I'd written it all on the When you are in bed page.

I may have used interesting language.

Luckily I have plain paper and a pritt-stick which I am assured by the helpline people will be absolutely fine, happens all the time, nothing to worry about. That doesn't stop me feeling like a total wally though.

Tomorrow I'll try and sort it out. Today, I used up most of my energy going to see the doctor. I was quite nervous about this - the GP who's seen me since I was a kid is on maternity leave and the doctor who is covering for her isn't someone I'd seen before.

Doctors can be a bit funny about ME/CFS. I can't completely say I blame them - some people with ME get a bit evangelical about the whole thing, they read every bit of research and see their GPs once a fortnight and chase here there and everywhere following crazy therapies and are convinced they're allergic to The World and campaign for this that and the other to such an extent that one can't help wondering what they might achieve if they put such massive amounts of energy into something other than "illness". The trouble is, this puts people like me, who are less enthusiastically ill, at a bit of a disadvantage. I want a doctor to look at my notes, spot the diagnosis of ME/CFS and think "ah, so she suffers from mental and physical exhaustion, a certain amount of pain, sleep problems, etc," and then listen to me explain why I have come to see them, rather than think "oh god, not one of them. What wacky cure/pseudoscientific research am I going to have to hear about today?"

Luckily I don't tend to see the GP because of the ME/CFS stuff, only for acute illnesses, or at her request ("come back in 3 months for a review"), and I hope this works in my favour as establishing myself as Not A Timewaster. This particular visit was mainly about my ear now that I've completed the course of antibiotics. It's still a bit tender and itchy and, to use the new doctor's technical term after having looked in it, there's quite a bit of "green gunk" in there. Lovely. Ear drops and more pills, and come back to see her in three or four weeks.

She seemed nice, so I braced myself and told her the little worry that has been on my mind - as part of the DLA renewal, there are forms sent to your GP to fill out, which isn't a problem for my regular GP who has known me for ages, but might cause a hiccup for someone who's only ever seen me for six minutes about an ear infection. She smiled and said she'd already had one of those for another patient already, and what she would like to do is, when she gets the form, call me in for a long appointment to go through it and dig up any information that isn't readily available in my notes. So there's another big sigh of relief.


In other news, I've broken my kitchen. One of the drawers (the cutlery drawer to be precise) has come apart, not badly or irreparably, but the side pieces of chipboard that had been glued together are no longer together. Suggestions about the best product to fix it with are welcome.

Code Monkey

I've been digging through old emails, bookmarks, etc, and rediscovered this song:


Code Monkey!
Song by Jonathan Coulton, Video by Mike Spiff Booth.

I love this song. Liked some of his other stuff too. Have a looksee.


edited a minute after posting to add the creators' names. Oops.

If I'm ever short of a few bob

I'll know exactly what I can do.

Blue Badges selling for up to £1600

Jesus. I wouldn't leave an iPod (£260) or a TomTom (£350) in a car, particularly not anywhere it would be visible to anyone having a nosey, but if I use a disabled parking space I am supposed to leave my disabled parking badge (£1,600 - more than the value of my stepdad's entire car!) right on top of the dashboard, specifically in full and easy view.

In fact, technically we could get a ticket if it isn't in full view, for instance if it blows off the dashboard when we shut the door. It is my responsibility to make sure the badge is displayed in the correct manner.

There is of course the issue that plenty of people go ahead and park in the disabled spaces with no badge whatsoever. This year two of the spaces outside my flat are marked as "disabled". I've yet to go past it and see two cars displaying blue badges. Generally there's at least one of the following:
- A red crapmobile with printout pages in the windows advertising it For Sale.
- A green car advertising and belonging to the Indian restaurant/takeaway on the corner.
- A transit van advertising and belonging to Chriscott, an electrical shop two doors away.
- A 4x4 advertising and belonging to Home PC Fix, a computer shop a few doors down (but this is not the crappy shop that sold us the Problem Machine).

Strangely, none of these display blue badges. And they're all properly parked, not just dropping someone off or whatever. But I digress.

All I can think of is that I could keep the badge on me at all times and see if I get away with leaving a note in the windscreen stating my name, mobile number, which building I've gone into, and that if a parking warden wishes to check my badge they can please feel free to call me, or come in and find me, and examine my badge to their heart's content.

Improving

A Good News Day.

Firstly, the antibiotics aren't having anywhere near as spectacular a digestive effect on me as they have been known to do in the past. Which is nice.

Secondly, although I am still almost-deaf in one ear, it's stopped oozing pus and isn't as painful any more as it was on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Thirdly, I've had two decent nights of sleep - little naps keep me going through the day but I need 8-10 hours of proper sleep a night as well in order to keep functioning. At the beginning of the week the ear was waking me up (probably because I kept rolling onto it), but now it's stopped.

And finally, I got a Nice Letter from the Department of Work and Pensions. As the disability claimants in the audience will know, disability benefits are split into two lots, the Incapacity Benefit (IB) which is the money you get to live off because you are incapable of work, and the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) which is the money you get whether you're working or not to cover the additional costs incurred by your impairment for day-to-day living such as tap-turners and kettle-tippers, taxi-fares, shopping delivery services, ready-prepared microwave meals, help with housework, or whatever else you deem appropriate. I'm currently working on a renewal form for my DLA but I'm much relieved by having had a letter today telling me that the IB50 form I filled out before Christmas to renew my IB was successful and therefore that part of my benefit will continue, with the next review not due for a couple of years.

The words "a weight off my mind" don't adequately express the relief I felt upon reading that letter.

Happy Valentine's Day

Contrary to expectations I did get some mail today.

Unfortunately it was a renewal form for my disability living allowance - thirty-nine A4 pages asking me to think REALLY hard about every single day-to-day activity I can't do or have trouble doing, and then write out exactly what sort of trouble I have. Phrased exactly right so that the maximum of information is given in the boxes they give you for each section, which is an art form in itself. You're allowed to enclose extra sheets, but given the DWP's astounding lack of ability to keep track of forms (they lost my initial claim twice), I wouldn't trust them with additional paperwork unless my life depended on it.

I think it may be one of the most depressing forms on the planet. Kind of like the opposite of a CV.

The thing which bugs me most is that if I was fit and healthy, it would cause me no problems whatsoever to sit at the desk for an hour or so and carefully write out "tailored" answers in their little boxes to depict a tale of such utter woe that I would be sure to get the money.

As it is, however, I can manage one page at a time, even with help. Then I have to lie down and shut my eyes and rest for a while, except the rest I get whilst in the middle of filling in forms like this is crap rest because it's full of worry - on the one hand, I don't like to think about all the stuff I can't do, but on the other hand, if I don't fill in this form on time and I don't tell it exactly how it is, I won't get the money I need to live on (especially as all my housing benefit and stuff links into the DLA decision).

It will take me at least a week, probably two, quite possibly three, to get this form sorted out, during which time I will be extra-stressed. And then on top of that, I've got this poxy ear infection/antibiotics thing going on at the moment too.

Bah.

Save Me From My Fragile Little Mind

So, the last few days I've been in a bit of a strange condition. My body has been out to get me, muscles cramping, joints protesting, legs going out from under me, hands dropping things, throat on fire, you name it. But my brain (and it is there, they've checked) has been probably the best it's been this year, and I've managed to get a load of important stuff done in terms of filing, phone calls, and plotting what to do once my body is behaving again.

As you might imagine, I'm having quite a bit of trouble sleeping. I lie there in bed thinking "tired, want to sleeeeeeeep" but the physical aches and pains just keep on shouting at me. Last night I gave up. As well as my usual painkillers I took a little bit of Diazepam, which is lovely stuff for relieving muscle pain and also for helping me get to sleep. It's also really easy to build up a tolerance to it, or become addicted, which is why I only let myself use it a couple of times a month.

Thus followed a night of sleep, yes, but unusually also of bizarre dreams, some of which I remember very clearly.

The first one I can remember is one I've had a few times now. There's a big house with a big driveway and big gardens... and hundreds upon hundreds of cars. But the whole property appears deserted. I go into the house and start exploring (not sure why) and eventually find a room where a girl who looks a bit like my sister is lying in a kind of suspended animation. As I walk in she "comes to life" and explains that she's really eighty years old, and that the house is owned by her boyfriend who's a bit of a mad scientist character. He keeps arranging parties and meetings and the suchlike at the house and then kidnapping the attendees, taking them down to the cellar, and sucking out their life-force to keep her young and pretty. She doesn't mind so much but it would be nice for her if she could have a chat with them first as she's tired of never leaving the house and only seeing Mad Scientist Boyfriend. Enter Mad Scientist Boyfriend himself, who starts chasing us both around the house and gardens, waving a machete in one hand and a Standard Mad Scientist Green Bubbling Beaker in the other.

The second is one I've had since I was about six. Imagine a really BIG apartment building in a huge city, with metal fire-escapes criss-crossing the whole side of the building. Imagine something like a cross between the Marble Zone and the Star Light Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog. A nameless and terrifying figure in black (Death, the Wicked Witch, a creature made of binbags, depending on my age and frame of mind) is chasing me around the web of fire escapes. Like Sonic, the action is entirely in 2-D, although every so often I bang on one of the doors on the "back wall" if I can see light, hear voices, etc. No one ever answers.

The final dream I had was the strangest. It wasn't one I've had before and involved a fair few Real People.

It started on a film set for a Thomas the Tank Engine movie, although sometimes it was a movie and sometimes it was "real life". The train drivers were all people I knew though - Steve, Pip, The Goldfish, Aibee and Daniel, my parents, all there. There was also Tom Reynolds driving Bertie the Bus. I regret to inform my readers that I cannot remember (ahem) who took the part of the Fat Controller.

Everyone had their own little bit of storyline doing what they did best. The Goldfish and me came up with an ingenious scheme to make Annie and Clarabel completely accessible (alas, I can't remember the details). Pip built the extra parts and Steve wired and programmed it all, and while Annie and Clarabel were out of action being modified, Tom Reynolds and Bertie the Bus did a sterling job of driving the passengers at breakneck speeds to meet their connections at the next station where Aibee and Daniel were waiting. We'd just finished the modifications when he pulled up in Bertie and said that they'd been offered a job as an ambulance helping Harold the Helicopter (as piloted by Dominocat.

We all went to, er, "somewhere" to celebrate, it was a large theatre but seemed to be a house as well. We decided to play hide and seek upon which Reynolds announced that he had been Shakespeare in a former life (everyone accepted this quite happily) and knew all the secret passages in the theare. He helped me to the stage, pressed a few bits of wall, and then hid me behind a curtain, all the while insisting that it was the safest, most secret place there was. Then he dashed off to help other people and I saw that everyone was hiding in various curtains, except Pip's Littlun, who was counting, and Steve, who was making everybody a drink and telling us we must be found before our tea got cold. Reynolds came back saying he'd run out of blankets and could he borrow my curtain, so we pulled it down...

I woke up completely under my duvet.
I have decided that I must spend less time with the Littlun, less time playing counting-games with the Littlun, less time watching Thomas the Tank Engine with the Littlun... it's only a mercy that I haven't really been involved in the potty-training effort.

Edit/Update: I've been having trouble hearing and this afternoon my left ear started leaking pus, so I rang NHS direct who sent me to see a doctor and the upshot is that my sore throat isn't just the usual CFS sore throat, I've got an ear and throat type of infection and am running a fever with it. That explains a lot. It took about a minute and a half from me walking into the consulting room for the doctor to look in my ears and ask if I was allergic to antibiotics. Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing, but nevertheless I have some tablets and should feel better within a week.

Why?

It is February.

It is dark.

It is about teatime.

It is, for want of a better phrase, bloody freezing out there.

All this leads me to wonder why it is that I can hear an ice cream van doing the rounds?!?

Is there any good reason?

*makes nice hot cup of tea, bungs heat-pack in the microwave*

Unavoidable Topic: Bird Flu

Most of my friends, and most of the blogs I read, successfully avoided making a comment on the non-story that was Celebrity Big Brother last month. I kind of hoped the same thing would be the case for the ridiculousness that is Bird Flu Panic - the mainstream media get shouty, but among ourselves, we're not too bothered. No such luck. I realised I had to make some sort of comment on the matter when a friend of mine from the Darlington area contacted me to gleefully inform me of his plans to purchase a chicken and drive around with it in his car, just because he could. Or more to the point, because I can't, as I am within the exclusion zone.

The media is making every effort it can to scare us about the bird-flu thing. Can you imagine another situation where "man has a bit of a cold" in the UK in early February would turn into headline news on the front page of news.bbc.co.uk?

Taking it even further was 103.4 The Beach, which is the only radio station with a decent signal on this outlying edge of the country. Their website asks:
Bird flu is reported at Bernard Matthews in Halesworth. Are you concerned?
-Yes - especially as this has claimed human lives overseas
-Only for those workers who have come into contact with them
-No - the officials say there is nothing to fear and I trust them

That's leading enough - and no option for "I'm not scared because I actually have my own opinions" - however the announcer Pip and I heard the other day was phrasing it more along the lines of:
"Are you concerned about bird flu? Do you think that only workers in the industry are at risk? Or perhaps (voice changes to tone of utter disbelief) you ACTUALLY believe everything the so-called experts are saying and that there really is nothing to worry about?!?" We ended up shouting at the radio. It seems like they are trying to create a panic.

Personally, I'm not really worried at all about bird-flu as a health issue. Regular normal seasonal flu kills plenty more people, as do a hundred other illnesses. I do not own any chickens and I wasn't planning on visiting any farms. Any chicken I eat is properly prepared and thoroughly cooked anyway. (If, after saying that, I do happen to die horribly of H5N1, then you may all dance on my grave shouting "told you so!" However I will not be held responsible if my ghost infects those who do this).

BUT I am worried about bird flu in an economic and social sense. You see, Bernard Matthews is pretty much THE biggest employer around here. Then there's about half a dozen other factories dealing wholly or partially with chicken. Not to mention the farms. It's a big industry here.

When we had the BSE hoo-ha, a lot of people stopped eating British beef. Some stopped eating beef altogether, others bought imported beef. Supermarkets stopped stocking British beef altogether for a time. Farms were crippled.

If the media continues to try and upset the public over bird flu, the poultry industry is likely to feel the same effects. Less demand for chicken and turkey. Imports being preferred over the British produce. Mr Matthews won't need to run his UK factory at full capacity. He might decide to begin moving ops abroad. I asked a friend of a friend, who used to work there, what he thought. Here's what I was told, I've tried to be accurate although bear in mind it's not an exact quote as I don't often tape discussions with people. ;)

"The company themselves don't really have that many employees at a factory-floor level. They get people via agencies on really short contracts that usually get renewed so long as the person wants to work there. Usually a contract is four weeks. If the factory doesn't need to run at full capacity, they don't need to sack people and deal with all the redundancy stuff. Remember, the workers aren't employees of BM. They're being provided by the agencies, and it's the agencies who deal with the contracts. So one month, an agency might have 100 BM contracts available. The next month, they have 90 contracts available. But no one's been "sacked". Of course, there's a pretty high turnover of staff - people get better jobs or leave because of illness, maternity, whatever - so the little fluctuations aren't really noticed. But if there's anything big, or if the factory closes completely, a lot of people are going to be utterly screwed."

Disclaimer: That is not an official Bernard Matthews statement. It is simply the paraphrased opinion of someone who no longer works there, of what he percieved the situation to be when he did work there, and how he thinks things might pan out. For official Bernard Matthews statements, see their website.

For now, I think if I worked at BM I would be making sure my CV was up to date and that I had an interview suit that fitted. If I worked for the Jobcentre, I would be trying to clear my desk to deal with a possible influx of new applications for JSA. And if I worked within one of the agencies, I might invest in a suit of armour...

Edited about a minute after posting to fix a broken link.
Edited 0953 on 8 Feb 07, "HN51" to "H5N1", thanks Jo :)

Comment Moderation

As a little break from the computer worries, I thought I'd post a bit about Blogger comment moderation.

As the posters here know, I have comment moderation turned on, and occasionally someone will start to discuss this with me via email or msn or (heaven forbid) in person. So I thought maybe I should post an explanation.

There are a lot of good reasons why I should un-moderate the comments. Readers could have conversations, if I am away from the keyboard for a couple of days the comments would still go online, and people might be more inclined to post comments. I like getting comments. Some more than others, admittedly, but on the whole, I write this in order that people read it and it's nice to think that what I've written has made people want to respond.

When I started this blog, the comments were as open and free as you could wish for. Then I turned on the CAPTCHA because I doubt that many readers actually have an ardent desire to buy V14gr4 online at l0w l0w pr1c3s! Or fake Rolex watches. Although if you do then please don't hesitate to let me know - I am sure my junk mail folder can accomodate you.

The trouble seemed to start when I left a couple of comments on the Wandering Scribe blog by Anya Peters when it hit the BBC news website. Ms Peters has felt compelled to totally turn off the comments to her blog these days, because of the sheer volume of abuse she was getting. The antagonists turned their attention to any and every blogger who was being friendly towards her. These people weren't reading what had been written and writing a response to it. They weren't even people I knew who might have had a reason to dislike me, and it wasn't just me who was a target. They were merely trying to be as abrasive as possible to as many people as possible.

I didn't want to "censor" material, but neither did I want to clutter up my few genuine comments with stuff like twenty lines full of copy/paste/repeated "c*nt c*nt c*nt c*nt c*nt c*nt nt c*nt c*nt c*nt" posted as a comment several times a day.

Blogger's recommendation on how to deal with trolls like this was to turn on moderation, not allow their comments through, and not bother responding. It's much the same principle as dropping junk mail into the recycle bin without opening it.

Of course, there are also people who simply don't like me (fair enough) and have, at various stages of the last year, wished to tell me this via the comments page. I am not sure why it is that, since they don't like me, don't like my writing, think the world would be a happier place if I were removed from it, etc, they were bothering to keep up with my blog on a regular basis... the internet has many many pages and no one has to read these ones.

Some of the blog comments from this sort of people were simply tirades with an expletive for every other word. Some were outright threats. And some were just unimaginative insults - an example of this sort of person can be seen on the comments for my post on 28th November 2006, when I started blogging again after a three-month break. The very first comment reads: "Not dead yet you whining bitch? I was hoping..."

I cannot, will not, and have not deleted readers' comments just because they disagree with my viewpoint, or they've said something a bit nasty to/about me, or I personally dislike them. However I don't see where I've got a duty to publish and broadcast (at the expense of the readability of my own blog comments section) the off-topic gibberings of out-and-out trolls - they can do that on their own websites! Same goes for advertisers. Threats aren't a regular occurence and the posters probably couldn't/wouldn't fulfil them, but they get forwarded to Blogger without being published. That much is easy.

Slightly trickier is comments full of swearwords or "isms" (sexism, disablism, racism, homophobia(uh, ism) and so on) make me a bit uneasy, but if they're making an actual point, rather than just being random and inchoate insults, then they should probably go through. But swearwords on the page also mean that some readers can't view the page through their net-nanny type software, and I want them to be able to view it. (Plus, my mother sometimes reads this.) I could always reject those comments and then repost them with the swearwords ****ed out, but then it opens the can of worms about editing people's posts without their knowledge or consent. I could email the writer and ask them to repost without the swearing and/or "isms", but I would need their email address and for some reason this sort of commenter never seems to want to put their name to what they've written.

Where would you draw the line?

Quiz Question IV

Unsurprisingly, the burn in test result was a FAIL. In two-inch high, black and red flashing letters.

We recorded the session but at present we're unsure of legal ramifications and so are not yet posting it on the web. But here's a quick rundown of what happened:

The engineer turned up and turned on the monitor and saw "FAIL". That's when the excuses started. "That one's just the A-drive, because it didn't have a disk in it probably, and the CD drive, because that didn't have a disk in it either, ah, that one's the sound card..." and then he trailed off.

Next time he spoke, it was to express surprise at how slowly the machine was running. He agreed with us that we had not touched it since he left the previous day.

Steve told him that we had had enough. Forget fixing the thing - we wanted the shop to take the computer back and to give the owners their money back and call it quits. This is part of why I have not yet disclosed the name, address, website, etc of the shop in question - I have been hoping that things can be sorted out amicably.

At this point the engineer - who yesterday had been trying to befuddle us - started up on a theme of "I agree, I'm on your side". On the recording he can clearly be heard making the statement "I'll be honest with you, I came back here this morning half-expecting it not to work." He also made a couple of other comments about how he would feel and behave if all these problems were happening with a computer he had bought. However he preceded these with "off the record, and please don't quote me..." so I shouldn't really document precisely what was said. He insisted that he was just an engineer, and as such had no way of getting our money back, so he couldn't make any promises or take the computer away, we would have to speak directly to the manager. We agreed that the engineer had half an hour to call the shop and report the failure of the test to the manager, and then we would phone to discuss things.

I am extremely glad it was Steve who handled that phone call as it would have left me floored and god knows what it would have done to the owners of the computer.

The manager refused all suggestion of taking the computer back in exchange for a refund. He then accused us of tinkering with it, cited the "favour" he had done the owners by "repairing" the computer after the owners "messed it up" (trying to repair it themselves with the Windows disk). The pièce de résistance had to be when he told Steve that the computer had left his shop with all the hardware components it was supposed to have and therefore someone outside the shop must have tinkered with it - to us this sounded a lot like he was accusing us of opening it up, deliberately stealing pieces of hardware, and causing the issues ourselves, deliberately (I'm not sure why we'd do that?). Steve was shocked at this and asked him to clarify that this was what he meant. The statement was repeated, and not retracted.

The outcome of the conversation was an agreement that we should bring the computer in (again), he would test it (again), and call us by lunchtime the following day. If he found ANY problems with the machine, the owners would get a full refund. If not, the machine would be returned to us as a fully working, as-specified computer.

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets...

Quiz Question III

At this point I decided enough was enough. The owners of the computer were getting increasingly upset, not to mention the fact they'd been charged an additional £20 to "fix" the computer that hadn't worked since day one - but the "fixing" had evidently been ineffectual since the computer still didn't work.

So at their request, I took over things, and phoned the shop and asked to speak to the owner/manager/director by name. After all, I considered him to be a reasonable bloke, someone I and my friends had done business with in a very happy manner for a number of years. Perhaps all these problems were simply bad luck, the expansion of the business, maybe understaffing or staff sickness, the run up to Christmas, whatever. This was about my birthday, so I figured the Christmas stuff should have all been dealt with and we would be able to get a result.

The manager was as apologetic to me as I would have expected. As I detailed the catalogue of problems - and just kept going, and going, and going - he kept expressing how very sorry he was, how he didn't want to lose a customer, how he would like it if the owners of the computer could come in so he could apologise in person... we agreed that Steve and I would bring the computer into the shop, and he would test every individual component and then the whole system, at no charge. The thoroughness of testing necessary would mean the computer would have to stay in the shop a couple of days and he hoped that would be alright. Steve and I brought him the computer and all the driver disks, etc, that went with it, left my contact details and went on our way.

Two weeks passed and we were all starting to wonder why none of us had heard from the shop. Eventually, the owners of the computer phoned the shop to ask how things were going.

Owner #1 was told on the phone that the computer was ready for collection, that it had been tested "more than any other computer we've had in here before" and that no problems had been found.

Owner #2 then drove to the shop to pick up the machine. He was told that they had found a couple of problems with things that had been installed but it was all sorted out now.

I do not know which of these is the truth.

Upon being asked what would happen if it still didn't work, the manager suggested to the owners that "maybe it just doesn't like your wallpaper or something". He said that if there was a problem, he would send an engineer round, and if it was the shop's fault, this would be free, and if it was the computer owners' fault, he would charge them.

In other words, this computer that they paid £450 for (it didn't work), then paid £20 to have it repaired (and it didn't work), they may well have to pay even more for (and will it work then?).

This is turning out to be a very expensive doorstop.

With that in mind, the owners didn't plug it in straight away, but waited a couple of days until Steve (eg a qualified person) could set up and test the computer for them at their own home. That was today. Steve approached the problem from the beginning. He plugged in the bare essentials of monitor, speakers, keyboard and mouse (so no printer, no internet, no USB add-ons of any sort that could be blamed) and started up the machine.

First test, he ran the antivirus scan. It worked! It completed the scan! That's the best performance we've had out of this machine so far! Things were looking hopeful... did the owners, almost three months after paying for it, finally have a working computer? Next he started up Windows Media Player, playing one of the sample songs that is preloaded on any Windows machine. The music played! How encouraging! He clicked the visualisation to go full-screen... and that's when it crashed, Blue Screen Of Death, approximately twenty minutes after being started up.

Off and on again, and then more playing about with the things that had already been put on the computer at the shop, eg Paint. This time it lasted very nearly an hour before BSODing.

Finally, Steve decided to have a look at the system spec. That was when we discovered more discrepancies.

1. The owners had requested, and paid for, a gig of RAM. The computer contained 512mb.

2. The owners are really into their music and had specifically asked for a good sound card. However the machine was using onboard sound.

3. That said, there was a spangly 256mb graphics card in there. Which I am sure lots of people would appreciate, however, the owners of the computer don't play any games beyond Freecell and Solitaire. A nice graphics card was not on their specification and is frankly no use to them.

We did wonder briefly if we had picked up the wrong machine - but no, the owners' names and so on were all on there correctly. We phoned the shop to confirm the spec that had been asked for, and sure enough, the machine we had plugged in did not match the spec. That was enough. In no way could it be "our fault" that the machine wasn't as per spec, so the shop could bloody well sort it out. One of their engineers was dispatched to the house.

After an insistence that the router had been set up wrong (funny how every other computer can use it, and anyway, we haven't even tried to connect to the router yet this time) and a brave attempt to insist that the computer had booted up fine and therefore was "working perfectly", the engineer realised that Steve was keeping up with all the techno-bull-sh*t he was trying to confound us with and not swallowing any of it, and asked if Steve did this for a living?

His face went... interesting... when Steve responded "actually I'm a [company] network engineer." He made some more efforts to blag his way out of it but ended up by putting a "burn in test" onto the computer from his own USB stick. It was agreed to leave this test running overnight - he started it up and then with his approval the screen was turned off. The machine is being left on overnight, exactly according to his instructions.

He will return to the house tomorrow morning, to see the results of the test and fit the missing RAM. We will be there too. It will be interesting to see what the result is.



How much coffee should we allow Steve before the showdown tomorrow morning?
Should we videotape it?

Quiz Question II

Okay, thank you for your answers to the previous post.

The first two problems with the computer were:

1. The build sheet had included a 3 1/2 inch floppy disk drive, since several important and often-updated files were kept on floppy disks. However, this was missing.

However this was not terribly important, in fact it was forgotten, as
2. The CD/DVD drive wasn't working. Therefore none of the home software (for instance, the drivers for the printer or the wireless doodah) could be installed. Nor could files from CDs be put on the computer.

Back to the shop, where they took out the CD/DVD drive and replaced it, same day and free of charge.

This rather important issue being dealt with, the owners of the computer (one hopes they can be considered to own it - they paid several hundred pounds by credit/debit card, but are still, a couple of months on, waiting for any paperwork beyond the card slip) took it home, plugged it in, and tried again.

Do you think it worked properly this time?

No, of course not.

Let's consider what the computer-owners asked for.

"I want to use it to access the internet."
The house has a wireless internet connection set up. It was set up by Steve. Steve is a networks engineer by trade. It is fairly safe to say he knew what he was doing. There is a desktop pc at the house (running XP Home) using that connection with no problems at all. It also has been cheerfully used in a problem-free way by four different laptops and two different sorts of PDAs. The internet connection is sound.

This little computer though, once we had installed the antivirus recommended by the shop, and installed the drivers for the wireless... decided to play silly buggers. It would run MSN messenger, for instance, but none of your contacts could see you were online. It would also run Internet Explorer, but after a short period of time (usually about two minutes, sometimes less, occasionally as long as 45 minutes but that was a maximum), the program would crash, and sometimes the computer would Blue Screen Of Death as well.

They tried installing FireFox. Same thing happened to that as had happened to IE. Standard, reliable, "safe" sites, google, eBay, BBC News, crash, crash, crash.

They decided to cut their losses and use the non-internet functions and ask Steve to check the network.

"I want to use basic office software."
Crash. Lockup. Blue Screen Of Death.

They tried to run the virus scan. It wouldn't complete the scan, it just crashed. Repeatedly.

They tried to run Scandisk and Defragmentation. Crash, crash, crash.

Finally, they recalled that the Windows XP disk had a "repair" function and decided to do that. They put in the CD... but it DIDN'T have a repair function. It did, however, suggest reinstalling Windows. So they decided to try that.

Crash. Blue Screen Of Death.

At this point they gave up and took it back to the shop. The people at the shop asked what had happened and agreed to fix it. Technically one would hope that, it being only about a month since they'd bought it, and certainly less than a month since a working CD drive was put in, it would still be under warranty (although of course they have no paperwork).

No. They were told that normally bench-time would be £40, but "because you've admitted what you did to mess it up" they would "only" be charged £20.

For some reason it was impossible to explain to the shop in a way they could understand that it was messed up before anyone did anything to it...

Anyway, to avoid confrontation (the owners were getting quite upset at effectively being told "it's your fault the brand-new computer doesn't work"), they paid up the £20 and took the computer home, again.

Who thinks it worked right this time?
Is it unreasonable to expect something you have purchased to do the things the retailer said it would do?
What would you have done at this point?

edit 12:13 on 30/01/07
Apparently the owners of the computer never got a credit card slip either. But it is on the credit card statement they have since received.

Quiz Question

Background
Imagine you are in the market for a new computer, after your old one has succumbed to the ravages of time and given up.

You go to a local computer dealer who has been a pleasure to do business with for several of your friends and family. Unto him you say,
"I want to buy a new computer. I want to use it to access the internet, manage my music collection, and use basic office software for writing letters and managing my household finances."

The computer dealer asks you a few questions and then creates and prints out a couple of build-sheets with price quotes. You peruse these, pick one, and ask him to go ahead and build it (and to install the relevant OS and other basic software included on your personalised build sheet).

Some time later, a man from the computer dealer comes to your house with your shiny new computer. Hurrah!

Now for the question.

Question
Read the above background information carefully, and give a brief description of what you would expect this new computer to be able to do. Answers should be submitted via the comments form. Extra points may be awarded for wit and creativity.

MooOOOOoooooOOOooo!

I first saw this over a year ago.

It still pleases me immensely.

Requires sound. Not suitable for work.

You have been warned.

Accessibility, Equality and the Need To Pee

If I'm feeling well enough to, say, go out for dinner, then I'm probably feeling well enough to walk (with my stick, but nevertheless walk) from the carpark to the restaurant, rather than use up a load of energy assembling and dismantling the wheelchair. I'm extremely lucky to have that option.

I do still need to use some of the concessions available for disabled people though. I need to park in a space close to the restaurant, for instance, with enough room for Steve/Pip/whoever to open the car door wide and help me to get out. I don't use my blue badge frivolously, we even usually pay for a parking token at car parks in which we could park for free - but I have no qualms about using it when it is necessary.

And I generally use the disabled loo. At first I wouldn't unless I was actually in my wheelchair - the disabled loo, I felt, was for people in wheelchairs who needed lots of space to maneouver, and I would not want to be taking up a resource I had no real claim on which other people needed. What changed my mind was that I kept falling into the flimsy chipboard from which the cubicles are constructed. This was upsetting other toilet users in the vicinity, particularly since the Inside-the-cubicle-view was "someone just banged on the partition and oh my god, now there's a hand coming through the gap between partition and floor, some pervert is trying to get into the cubicle with me!!" (although in fairness, when that particular woman saw that the hand and wrist she was stamping on wasn't moving, she investigated further and was very helpful as I regained consciousness). I decided to start using the disabled loos, with solid walls and useful grab-rails.

Ha.

Within a few months I had changed my opinion entirely. The disabled loo is NOT for people in wheelchairs. The disabled loo in the majority of establishments is there to meet a requirement. If I had no legs, or my legs had no movement at all, it would be taking my life in my hands to attempt to use the facilities.

Examples:

Toilets that wheelchairs can't get to.
"Where is the disabled toilet, please?"
"Just up those stairs... oh."
I wish I was joking.

The other version of this is:
"Just up those stairs, but we have a Stannah stairlift, hang on."
(Much faff trying to remember how the stairlift works)
"Right, that's me up to the top of the stairs, now what about my wheelchair?"
"Um..."

Seats you can't sit on.
Or more specifically, seats which aren't fixed to the loo and slide out to the side if your weight isn't perfecly balanced. To pull oneself sideways onto a seat like this from a wheelchair seat is asking for trouble.

Grab rails you can't grab.
Places buy a standard set of assorted grab rails. I have seen several loos where you cannot reach the grab rails from the seat. They have been put where it is convenient to put them rather than where they are needed. Even better is when the rails are not fixed to the wall. I saw many forms of vandalism in The Ladies, but it takes a very special vandal to go around with a toolkit and undo all the bolts they can find.

Emergency Assistance cords you can't pull.
Disabled loos are required to have an emergency pull cord in case anyone is hurt or injured in the disabled loo - for instance, if the floor is wet and slippery (as it usually is) and your wheelchair, despite having the brakes on, goes skidding out from under you when you try to transfer. These cords are supposed to be bright glow-in-the-dark orange, with a plastic circle or triangle so that you do not have to be able to grip a string in your fingers to pull it. They are also supposed to reach all the way to the floor, since the floor is where a disabled person is most likely to be if they've just had a nasty accident and need assistance.

I see a lot of them looped up high out of reach ("so that people can't pull them" apparently, which rather defeats the object), or dangling in the corner behind the loo, so pulling them either means being able to stand and lean into the corner, or, from the floor, cuddling up to the porcelain trying desperately to reach past the pipework. I've also seen some where the fitting is there, but no cord, "because the orange didn't fit in with the decor."



Even if the establishment isn't actively trying to maim you in one of these ways, they're still likely to try and get you on disgust or embarassment that an able-bodied person wouldn't put up with - and isn't asked to put up with either. "These facilities are checked and cleaned regularly." I really, really have trouble believing that.

The Baby-changing Room.
Anyone who has kids knows that on a regular basis they produce real humdingers of nappy-contents. If they do one of these poops at home, then the parent generally scrapes off the nappy, cleans the child with babywipes, puts all of this into a scented and sealed nappy baggie and THEN immediately runs with it to put it in a bin with a lid at the far end of the yard, and this is only because they lack the facilities to seal it in lead and concrete and dump it in the North Sea.

In a disabled loo/baby-changing room, they leave it sitting on the opened-out change table (which is usually just the right height to hit the head of anyone in a wheelchair, and also can't be folded back up by anyone who can't stand). The reason they leave it on the change table is because the nappy-bin is full of, and wedged open with, similar offerings. Nice.

The Love Shack.
How anyone can want to have sex in a toilet cubicle is beyond me. It's hardly comfortable, or romantic, is it? What is even further beyond me, is why people who enjoy having sex in toilet cubicles would leave the used condom in the sink. Ew.
*shudder*

Please Miss, can I go to the bathroom?
Sometimes, in a bid to stop it being used for babychanges, illicit sexual relations, able-bodied people who simply can't be bothered to walk the extra steps or wait thirty seconds for the Gents/Ladies, etc, the disabled loo is locked.

The correct way of doing this is with a RADAR lock. Disabled people may obtain a RADAR key from the RADAR website (you only pay something like £3.50 postage), or from local disability organisations which may be able to provide them free of charge. These keys are also used for assistance bells (when, for instance, a pub in a listed/inaccessible building doesn't want passing kids ringing the assistance bell, they can fit a bell which can only be activated by a RADAR key).

I'll explain why having a RADAR lock is important.

If an able-bodied person wants the loo, they excuse themselves from the table, find the Ladies or Gents, open the door, do what they do, and come back to the table.

If I want the loo, I excuse myself from the table, find the disabled loo, flip the lock with my handy RADAR key, do what I do, and come back to the table having locked the door behind me.

If the lock isn't RADAR though, it goes more like this: Excuse self from table, find the disabled loo, try key, swear under breath. Find member of staff. Say "Please miss, I need the loo (a phrase I thought I wouldn't have to use any more after primary school), can I have the key please?". Have minor debate about whether I'm "really" disabled and "can't you just use the regular loo? Why not?" before being told the key is kept at the bar and I will have to ask there. Get to bar - did I mention walking is painful and difficult for me? Queue for attention - did I mention that standing for any period of time is painful and difficult for me? Ask for key. Ask for key again, louder, upon which everyone's attention is drawn to the inevitable debate about my level of disability and toilet needs again. Finally get handed a key attached to an "anti-theft device", generally a large yellow rubber duck, the idea being that I won't then be able to walk off with their precious key. Traverse restaurant with big bright duck in tow. Unlock door, do what I do, return to table (I tend to leave the door unlocked and the duck in there - save some embarassment for the next disabled sod who comes along).


This is not equality.


I'm going to stop ranting about toilets now, but if anyone reading this works in a public-use building, perhaps you're the cleaner or perhaps you're the owner or perhaps, heaven help you, you're in charge of Health and Safety, please just think about things like this for thirty seconds.

Also, let me know if you find any places which don't have ANY of the above problems. I promise to be impresssed.

Birthday

Sorry this post has been such a long time coming. I've been trying to recover from Christmas, New Year and birthday, and fighting a bit of a sniffle, while still keeping on top of things like doing the dishes and whatnot. Looking at the computer screen has been causing problems.

Anyway, Steve and his plotting. He'd spent pretty much all of the Saturday (the day before my birthday) out with Pip, so that I could get some big proper rest in and they could scheme and connive.

We went to mum's house, where everyone except my stepdad was feeling much better. I got a gift token for my favourite massage place - well, I say "gift token", mum had expected to go in and buy some sort of monetary-value voucher, you know, "£20 towards treatments at..." Instead Jane asked her to choose a blank-inside greetings card, and then asked her to please come back the next day so she could "do it properly". The result is a beautifully calligraphed card, not even fill-in-name-here type of thing but all written out nicely. Apparently mum felt awful about scrawling "with love from Mum xxx" on it, even though her handwriting isn't bad.

Mum also suggested we go on a bit of a shopping trip at some point, which will be nice. Alas, we both have to be feeling well enough for it, so this may be more "Easter" or even "Summer" than "January sales".

Steve encouraged me to have a nap before we had to set off for the "lunch appointment", which turned out to be at a nice restaurant with Steve, Pip and the Littlun. That was when I got my presents. Pip is a bit skint at the moment, but he'd got me a bag of my favourite dark chocolate from my very favourite chocolate shop. I always get a very little bit when I'm in that part of the city, but this is a big bag. I have declared birthday chocolate to have no calories and am thus able to fully enjoy it.

The other gift in the bag was from Steve. A box containing a brightly coloured wooden duck-on-a-string, on wheels. This is the first gift Steve gave me on Kingdom Of Loathing, (in a virtual sense - it's a handy weapon in the game) and so he wanted to get me a real one. So far so sweet, and I was very happy, and I assumed that was where the swimming reference came in: duck, water, wet.

I was then encouraged to get the ducky out of the box, to play with it. That's when I found another present, inside the duck packaging - a little jeweller's box containing a gorgeous pair of diamond earrings. I was beyond gobsmacked by then. Pip and Steve gleefully told me about the look on the jeweller's face when he offered to gift-wrap the earrings (cinnamon stick anyone?) and they cheerfully announced that they already had their own packaging and plonked Ducky onto the counter. I get the impression it may have made Pip's year...

After lunch, Pip whisked the littlun off "for his nap", there's wishful thinking as, at two and a bit, Littlun is starting to feel that he doesn't really need a nap most days (instead he starts to grump and rub his eyes at about 4pm, until the dinner-bath-bed routine starts). Steve and I got into Steve's car, and he told me to pick some music for about 45 minutes worth of drive, during which I may want to nap.

Just under an hour later, we pulled up here. Not only that, but we were booked into a big, and I mean BIG suite. Four-poster bed, couches, chairs, a chaise longue, and a bathroom with a shower cubicle, two sinks, and a whirlpool bathtub bigger than the whole bathroom in my flat!

The next 24 hours were pure decadence. Steve had sneakily packed me my stuff, pills and whatnot, while I was napping, and we were able to buy me a surprisingly-not-hideously-overpriced swimsuit at the hotel so I could enjoy the leisure centre (this is the one bit where the Sprowston Manor falls down - the accessibility around the leisure centre is a nightmare). We had a good time splashing about and then went back up to the room to de-chlorinate in the amazing bathroom before dinner. Dinner was a wonderful four-course job in the hotel's lovely restaurant, and we even had late check-out so we could have a lie-in, take our time over breakfast, and have a really leisurely bath before gathering up our stuff and leaving. Steve even offered to take me into Norwich for lunch and shopping, but I was just too tired (although I realise this makes me a disgrace to womankind).

I don't believe I've ever been quite so spoiled. It was great! :)

Now all I have to do is work out what I should do for Steve's birthday, in February. Eep.

25

Happy Birthday to Me,
Happy Birthday to Me,
Happy Birthday dear Mary
Happy Birthday to Me!



Steve has already given me cuddles and brought me a cup of tea in bed. Now I'm up, and I've had my weetabix, and I'm ready to face the world... I hope! He's planning something. Apparently we go to see my parents this morning (they're feeling much better now), and then I have "a lunch appointment" but he won't tell me where or what happens next. I've had to pick out a spare outfit, including shoes, "in case I get wet" and he asked if I had a swimsuit, but when I said it was at his he said it didn't matter.

HMMMMMM.

Epic Journey

or, Popping To The Shop For Some Milk.


It's my own fault really. I decided I was going to be so big and clever and go to the shop for some milk. Ordinarily when feeling like this I'd have asked mum to pick me up some when she next went, but since mum (and everyone else) is ill then in my eternal wisdom I figured I would take the chance.

The result was me spending half an hour slumped on the stairs of my flat block, with several bruises and a wet arse.

I managed to get TO the shop. Then I had a little rest perched on a kickstool, and then I got my milk and left.

Halfway back (and this is a journey of maybe 50 yards) my legs went out from under me. I caught myself with the nearest wall and then sat on a step for a minute. That's where the wet arse came from.

Into the flat block, across to the stairway, and started climbing on all fours. Perhaps I wasn't concentrating as much as I should have been because I got most of the way up and then my legs went again and a wonderful tangle of me, carrier-bag, and walking stick went bouncing down the stairs, nearly to the bottom. I now have bruises all down my right-hand side.

After getting my breath back, I started to rather awkwardly climb again, but three steps later I nearly threw up with the combination of dizziness and headache and two steps on from that I actually lost consciousness for a moment or two. That was the point at which I decided that maybe I should call for a bit of help after all.

And THAT was the point at which I discovered my mobile phone has no reception in the stairway of this block of flats.

I think if I'd screamed and shouted "help! help!" then someone from one of the flats might have come to see what the problem was, but I'd really rather save that for when it's needed, pools of blood and broken bones and so on.

So I sat there.

And I sat there.

And I still didn't feel any better, so I sat there.

A quick look at my receipt showed I'd left the shop at 11 o'clock. It was now half past. I decided to climb again, resting on each step for a minute instead of attempting a continuous climb. I got to the top and lay there in the hallway for a bit before crawling to the door, unlocking it, and crawling directly into bed.

I've had sleep and painkillers and dry clothes and a chat with Steve now, but it really really pisses me off when stuff like this happens, and it's happening far too regularly, and there's sod-all I can do about it. Gaaa.

Quarantine

I'm about to write a sentence I didn't think I was going to get the chance to write in the forseeable future. Wait for it...

I am currently the healthiest member of my family!

They've all got the lurgy, some kind of horrible flu-type thing. First to succumb was Little Sis, who came home from work unexpectedly a few days ago while I was having a cup of tea with mum. She staggered in on the arm of her current boyfriend (also co-worker), who'd driven her home after their boss basically told her to go home, go directly home, do not pass Go, do not collect £200, and get into her bed with a hot drink and some Beechams. She was not in a good way. Shivering, fever, face and glands all puffy, nose running like a tap, kept falling into things, the lot.

She's not good with being ill at the best of times - a stubbed toe can be a calamity sometimes, unless she has a party to go to - and I think that's why mum seemed to be swaying between "oh god, Mary's illness started with flu, what if it happens to her too?!" and "good grief, she didn't milk it this much when she was a four-year-old!" (these are paraphrases).

Then mum came down with it, two days later, and combined with other stuff that's up, she's become totally laid up in bed. That's not like her at all. A few years back there was a possibility of her needing spinal surgery (didn't happen in the end) and the biggest problem was going to be how on earth to get her to lie down for several weeks.

And now my stepdad thinks he's getting it too. He's getting something - he's diabetic and whenever he's fighting a bug of some sort his sugar levels go wacky, and they've been doing that since just before Christmas, but now he's starting to feel rough as well.

I've been laid up most of today anyway, but that's just the usual mundane ME/CFS symptoms letting me know they haven't abandoned me, and since I've got all this stuff*, and have developed alternative ways of Doing Things, I've still been able to shuffle round the flat, get a drink, eat a sandwich, etc. I'm 85% certain I'm not infected. I hope I get a good day tomorrow though, because it's hard to think of anything that would be quite as satisfying as ringing them up and me being the one saying "do you need me to get you anything from the shop?" That said, I reckon that my stepdad's sense of humour would lead him to ask for six pints of milk and ten pounds of potatoes, so perhaps I'll save it until Pip can help me.


*I have cheered up considerably since I posted that photo, now I think of it as useful stuff that helps me have a better quality of life, rather than a depressing indication of how much my life has changed. And I have better flat shoes now, too.

Happy New Year, tiddley-pom

Hopefully by the time you read this it will be 2007. If it isn't, what the hell are you playing at? This is no time to be on the sodding internet! Well, I realise I am, but that's different, I'm also halfway through drafting a long post about internet addiction.

Unsurprisingly I don't have the energy to be out there partying my little cotton socks off, which is kind of a shame. Still, on the plus side, I won't have to pay treble for a cab home, and snuggling in bed with my laptop didn't require me to book tickets in advance. There's always a plus side.

Pip is also likely to be at home, because the Littlun is too young to understand anything about New Year's celebrations or get anything out of it beyond a stinking temper about his sleep routine being disturbed. So today we went out and had a really nice lunch, the three of us. Which was nice.

I went to sleep really early this evening, before I'd had dinner even, and that paid off because the first barrage of fireworks was at 9.30pm. I can rest and meditate despite fireworks but I can't do actual proper sleep through them, so if I'd stuck to my usual routine and tried to settle and get to proper sleep at 10 or 11, I would have been on a losing tack. Anyway, I made myself a sandwich for dinner and settled myself down and now I'm just staying safely put - late evening on New Years Eve is not the time to come unstuck and have to call for help.

All this means I'm in good shape to manage to stay up (yes I'm in bed but you know what I mean) till perhaps 1am. By then, the fireworks should be all done, most of the partygoers will have sung their way home, and I can get back to the rest of my proper sleep. Yay planning!



Happy New Year :)

Christmas Day

Best Present
Originally uploaded by girl_of_bats.

"And don't forget the presents," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, as if reading off some internal list of gloom. "How... how full of potential they seem in all that paper, how pregnant with possibilities... and then you open them and basically the wrapping paper was more interesting and you have to say 'How thoughtful, that will come in handy.' It's not better to give than to receive, in my opinion, it's just less embarrassing."

"I've worked out," said the Senior Wrangler, "that over the years I have been a net exporter of Hogswatch presents-"

"Oh, everyone is," said the Chair. "You spend a fortune on other people and what you get when the paper is cleared away is one slipper that's the wrong colour and a book about earwax."

Terry Pratchett, Hogfather.


With this in mind, I feel extremely glad to have at least one present this year about which I honestly can say "how thoughtful" and mean it, so well done James who gave me a packet of my favourite type of tea, and a "tea-egg" which will enable me to drink it without getting a mouthful of tealeaves.


I am pleased to report that my sister wasn't too noisy for me to cope with after all. This was due to the fact that she had her boyfriend there and she had to keep stopping talking in order to kiss him. There were a couple of points when I felt like reminding them that there were other people in the room as well, but I did a good job of keeping my mouth shut, which is just as well as it probably would have been construed as jealousy due to Steve's absence.

Steve is one of those people who avoids Christmas as much as possible. He goes to stay at his mum's holiday flat in the Alps (she isn't using it because she is in the UK doing family/grandchildrenny Christmas things) and skiis. He invited me to join him, but I don't do well with the cold (it got to minus 23 degrees C there last year before the thermometers went off the scale), I don't do well with travelling for long periods (almost 24 hours to get from his house to that flat), I'm hardly likely to be able to join in and ski, and if I'm going to spend large amounts of the Christmas period sitting in a flat by myself feeling cold, sore and knackered then I'd prefer to be in MY flat, which at least has all my stuff, a phone, an internet connection, friends and family living close by... He phoned me though, which I kind of needed. I miss him hugely and I miss being able to talk to him on the phone every day.

I spent most of the day with my parents, including a bloody lovely Christmas dinner cooked by my stepdad, and then Pip came to pick me up to spend a couple of hours at his. Littlun has his first train set, a Thomas the Tank Engine one, Pip sets it up and then Littlun is in charge of flicking the junctions, pulling the lever that makes it stop at the station, that kind of thing. Amazingly the child is NOT more interested in the boxes.

Plenty of naps, and an early night, but now it's Boxing Day morning and I am shattered. I have an open invite to mum's for lunch again, which I'll probably take up on the basis that it's a lot easier than cooking for myself. There's a few hours yet though, which is good as I can't stand up properly yet this morning. Still, at least at this time of year it's not just me...

Supposed to be resting

So, given that there's Stuff Going On tomorrow, I was meant to be super-resting today. As in, do nothing. No clean dishes? Use the paper plates and plastic cups left over from my birthday. Benefit renewal forms need filling? It'll wait, there's another week before I have to send it off. Flat is untidy? Not important, no one is coming round anyway because today is scheduled as a Total Rest Day. Today was meant to involve me taking it really easy.

Of course, it never works out like that, does it?


First thing, I wanted a bath. I very probably needed a bath. But I was having a worse-than-average day for movement and co-ordination and getting in and out of the bath was going to cause some serious difficulties. Eventually I phoned mum, and asked if I could come and use her shower (which has a seat and grab-rails) at some point that day. Despite the energy needed to walk to her house, it's a lot safer to use her shower than my bath, and to be in a house with someone checking on me rather than in my flat on my own.

Once I'd showered, it would have been silly to walk home with wet hair and mum had far too much to be getting on with for me to want to ask her to dry it for me. So I sat with a cup of tea and tried to get some energy back. So far so rest-y. But then my sister turned up.

Some of you know my sister. She talks. Incessantly. Loudly. Too fast. High-pitched and with a constant rising inflection. She repeats herself, um, repeatedly. She hates the idea of anyone else being the leader of a conversation. She hates the idea of two people having a conversation that she isn't part of. She hates people talking about other people who she does not know (although she does this to everyone else). If you leave the room to escape while she is talking, she will follow you. If another person enters the room, she'll go over everything she's already said for their benefit. And heaven help you should you decide to interject an opinion of your own...

Despite being repeatedly told that my brain simply cannot cope with her loud, high, fast and never-ending babble, she still targets me with it. I can sit there clutching my head with tears running from my eyes and she still won't stop, or even slow down a little. To compound the situation, my mother has made a plea for the two of us to make an effort to "get along" over Christmas.

So, despite every part of my brain and body begging me to lock myself in the bathroom and stuff soap in my ears until the Incredible Talking Machine found another target, I offered to help her wrap her last couple of presents. Luckily, it's rare these days for me to be able to remember any of the crap she comes out with and now, nine hours later, the only real effect is that I am revelling in the blessed peace and quiet that only a decent set of earplugs can bestow, and *really* appreciating it.

I found myself filled with a certain dread about having to contend with her again tomorrow morning. My hope was that when she goes out tonight to celebrate Christmas Eve, she drinks enough to get a hangover and want to be very, very quiet. But a nice long nap saw me right again, plus I've equipped my handbag for tomorrow with the guarantees for the electrical gifts, a couple of pairs of earplugs, and my fully-charged pocket PC in case I do find myself having to take refuge in the bathroom. I can deal with just about anything with enough forward planning.

Sister dealt with, the remainder of my day has been nice and restful. I turned on the TV for the Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College Chapel which is lovely and Christmassy. Unfortunately I could only watch about ten minutes before I had to turn it off again, but it made me feel a lot more full of goodwill to all mankind and all that sort of thing. Well, it's that or I've accidentally taken a double dose of painkillers. Either way, life is good.

Merry Christmas.

All set for Christmas

Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to be able to say that I am now all but ready for Christmas. It may come and do its worst!

The presents are all bought and wrapped and labelled and, what is more, they are at the houses they should be at too. I know whose house I am visiting which day, how I am getting there and whether I should expect to be fed or not.

Today I went and picked up my prescriptions for the next couple of months and went to see a friend to deliver to them my final Christmas card.

Tomorrow I am going to buy one loaf of bread and two pints of milk just so that if I end up too ill to go to anyone else's house, I will have plenty to get by on here at my flat. That is the only piece of preparation left for me to do. I think.

Term Time Only

For the last year, Pip's Littlun has had quite an action-packed weekly schedule. Places like Sure Start and the local library have had things for him to be getting on with most days, socialising with other toddlers his age and doing various noisy and/or messy group activities. He's also had pretty-much weekly visits to the indoor adventure playground, and swimming when Pip has a friend with a day off who can hang onto the tot in the changing room (I don't count for that, being female).

Except we've run up against a little bit of a problem. Most of these social/activity groups are only run during term-time when the older children of the parents - and in some cases, of the people who organise the groups - are safely out of the way at school. In the school holidays, the groups are suspended. It makes sense I suppose. If you have a six year old, you can't include them into a toddlers group and you can't leave them at home. However, it means that Littlun's diary has rapidly emptied.

The adventure playground is effectively Term Time Only too. Technically we could take Littlun there, but in the school holidays it is (understandably) overrun with great big mean tough bruisers of seven or eight years old. As the "big" kids play equipment fills up, they start to investigate the other stuff, and a lot of them have the sort of parents who read the sign saying "This Area Is For Under-4's Only!" as having a little disclaimer underneath saying "oh, and your child too, obviously. Don't bother keeping an eye on him."*

Furthermore, the main "swimming friend" has a girlfriend who works at a college, so once term-time ends, he has other things to occupy his day off.

And finally, the one Sure Start group that isn't listed as Term Time Only is restricted to under-2's, and as of this autumn Littlun no longer falls into that category.

Of course, the Term Time Only problem cropped up in the summer holidays too. But summer was different. We found a list of the locations of all the council-owned playgrounds in the area to visit. There was the beach to go to as well. It was easy for Pip to pop Littlun into the pushchair or the backpack and take him for a walk into town or similar, seeing whatever there was to see along the way. And there were things like our trip to the zoo. Sadly, these activities to not lend themselves well to a cold, wet British winter. Strolling around a lovely green park on a beautiful warm summer's afternoon while the toddler runs about laughing his head off with other kids simply is not the same as shuddering with cold standing on an empty field hoping the rain will hold off while the toddler slips over on the mud.

But that's just it. The parks are empty. All those kids, they must be somewhere, must be doing something. They can't all be watching TV. What are they doing? Where have they gone? How are their parents keeping them entertained?

Pip and I are fast running out of ideas. And because Pip is a single father rather than a mother, a lot of the usual parenting channels are effectively cut off to him. He went to a father and child playgroup at Sure Start once or twice, but it was mostly non-resident fathers, and the only bit of help he gleaned from any of them apparently was that if he was to sign up to a website like mumsnet then as a single father he would get chatted up in seconds by single mums on the lookout for a man who likes kids... which I'm sure is interesting but not exactly what we're looking for here. We are considering setting up an account in my name and him using it pretending to be me pretending to be Littlun's mum, but frankly that could get just far too confusing.

So, I throw the question of entertaining a two-year-old in the Christmas holidays open to the floor. Any ideas?




* I wish I could read the invisible signs. Like "please take a ticket and wait for your number to be called" has "unless it's you, in which case go and give the security guard some verbal abuse." Or "please use the antiseptic hand gel on entering this ward" which has "except you, because even though you haven't washed your hands all day you have extra-special skin that can't possibly harbour germs of any kind." And of course "Disabled parking spaces, blue badges must be displayed" "unless you're only going to be ten minutes, or it's raining, or you're running late..." but that's another post.

Fakers, Misdiagnoses and ME/CFS

According to ME Research UK, about 150,000 people in the UK are affected by ME/CFS.

However, I believe it is highly unlikely that all of these people have the same illness. I think these 150,000 people divide up into those who have ME/CFS (whatever that is); those who have been misdiagnosed due to lack of resources; those who have been misdiagnosed due to lazy doctors; and those who are faking it. I will try to address each of these in turn.

First, I should explain what I mean by "whatever that is". The diagnoses "ME" and "CFS" sitting on a person's medical notes could quite easily be changed for "I don't know", except as a rule doctors don't like writing or saying "I don't know". It is a Dustbin Diagnosis. There is no positive test for ME/CFS. Doctors simply test for everything else they can test for that could be a candidate - multiple sclerosis, hepatitis, hypothyroidism, etc - and as more and more results come back negative, they edge closer to the catch-all.

It has also been suggested that ME is one of a number of Chronic Fatigue "spectrum" illnesses - in other words, that there are a number of distinct illnesses that medical science does not yet fully understand and has not yet developed a definitive diagnostic test for, and that as research progresses, people with the ME/CFS label will be divided up into those with ME, those with fibromyalgia, those with Epstein-Barr, and those with Smurpington's Disorder, and those with Flibbligibblititis, and so on.

With this in mind, it is probably fair to say that quite a chunk of our 150,000 ME/CFS patients - indeed, probably the majority - have ME/CFS of one sort or another.

Sadly we now move onto the other three scenarios, all of which bode badly for people who have ME/CFS.

The issue of misdiagnoses is a touchy one but one that should not be ignored. As stated this takes two forms. First, is the issue of a lack of resources. There are certain tests that the NHS will not carry out because of the cost or the time or whatever. I give you the example of someone I know personally. He is about my age and was given the diagnosis "ME" about ten years ago. Recently he managed to save up an obscenely large amount of money in order to have private tests done. In addition to the astonishingly high fees, he also had to travel across several counties to attend the centre. The private tests revealed he had Lyme Disease. Lyme Disease can be treated with a big, prolonged dose of antibiotics. He has spent the last ten years - his late teens and early twenties - living with his symptoms and being told there was nothing to help him beyond painkillers, antidepressants, and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Now it turns out he could have been "cured" a long time ago. To make matters worse, Lyme Disease gets less treatable the longer you live with it - so this delay may have harmed his potential recovery.

Unfortunately it's not always the lack of resources that is the problem.

I have had a fairly wide range of tests on the NHS. I have had several sets of blood and urine tests, an MRI scan, two EEGs, and face-to-face examinations with a neurologist, a physiotherapist, and a CFS specialist. Obviously I've had nothing like the battery of tests my friend mentioned above had privately, but I've certainly had a reasonable share. I now know for a fact that I do not have multiple sclerosis, cancer, diabetes, thyroid problems, and a load of other things I can't even spell.

However I have met several people who got their diagnosis of "ME/CFS" after giving one sample of blood and one sample of urine to be tested. Their doctors have ruled out the obvious and then stopped. I don't know why. They don't know why. They are stuck wondering how to ask their doctor if they can have an MRI to rule out multiple sclerosis, without sounding pushy or paranoid. Not appearing paranoid or ranty or upset is important as there is a certain breed of doctor who ignores all recent advice and research and persists with the 1970's view of ME/CFS as "a jumped-up form of depression" that simply involves more (psychosomatic) physical symptoms. They tend to then look surprised when antidepressants and CBT fails to "cure" a person, and claim that the lack of recovery is the fault of the patient for "not taking the CBT seriously". On the contrary, many patients follow the CBT courses to the letter because they are desperate for anything that will give them their former lives back. In my experience, most of them report that while their general mood is improved and they find it easier to deal with their day to day lives, thankyouverymuch, it hasn't actually stopped the headache, the muscle pain, the swelling glands, the sore throats, the weakness and dizziness and all the rest of it.

Finally, we have the fakers. It is the fakers who utterly cock things up for people who are genuinely ill. If a faker of any illness is "found out", everybody with that illness is then treated with suspicion. A good example would be someone getting signed off work with a bad back. In summer. While the football's on. You're all raising eyebrows, I bet. But there are definitely a few people who WILL genuinely get terrible back problems - summer and football will not make people immune from having accidents - and the last thing they need is to be considered to be swinging the lead.

But fakers also damage the genuinely ill even if they are never found out at all. They skew research results. They take resources (carers, doctor's appointments, disability benefits etc) they don't need, and because the resources are finite, there's less for those who are genuinely in need. They often think they're just screwing the government, or their employer, but the fact is they are making life harder for all genuinely ill/disabled people.

Before I got sick, my circle of friends knew of one person who "had ME". She was our age, someone's sister. She had the magic version that stopped her having a job and doing housework, but didn't stop her doing much else - walking into town, spending a few hours walking round with her mates shopping and "hanging out", then getting on a train and going drinking/dancing/clubbing in the nearest city, coming home on the first train the next morning, all this posed no challenge to her whatsoever. She had amazing stamina for chasing round a playground with her nephew, pushing swings, clambering up and down climbing frames, playing football, you name it. But get her within five metres of her doctor's surgery or the JobCentre and suddenly she acted half-dead.

People like that are the reason the genuinely ill get treated with disbelief. Except for a vociferous minority who spend more energy shouting and campaigning about ME/CFS than most people spend on their jobs and families, we are not claiming to be the illest people in the world, not by a long way, and in most cases do NOT want to be treated as such. But there are some things that like it or not we need and can no longer provide for ourselves - a place to live and money for food to eat being top of the list - and it annoys me that I, and all the other ME/CFS patients, have trouble getting these because of fakers.

If I had the energy to go round all the agencies, fill out all the forms, read all the rules, jump through the hoops, go to all the appeals tribunals, wait for all the backlogs, deal with all the incompetence, and thus claim every financial benefit and bit of physical help that the government says I am entitled to, it would be proof positive that I do not have ME.

One Year

Steve and I have been together for one year.

He has made me dozens of cups of tea, sweet, sweet tea.

He has caused me to call the police in a panic asking if there had been any road accidents between our houses (long story).

He has never, ever, tried to hurry me on the stairs.

He has absorbed a metric f*kload of my tears into the shoulders of assorted tshirts.

He has helped me to do any amount of things I could not otherwise do, from everyday stuff like getting in and out of the bath, to big events like my birthday party or visiting a theme park.

He gets on with my friends.

He has held my hair out of the way and made reassuring noises while I have been copiously vomiting.

He cheers me up when I feel rotten.

He has surprised me with any amount of little gifts and gestures, including unexpected Kinder Eggs with the morning cuppa and surprise meetings with friends I have not seen for a long time.

He stood next to me on my mother's wedding day.

He has, unasked, occasionally rushed home from work at lunchtime to get me some lunch and a drink when I have been too ill to get down the stairs.

He hasn't put spikes on my mobility scooter... yet.

He can happily spend time sitting in bed with me, both of us on laptops - and send me an MSN while doing so.

He's given me more cuddles and kisses than I can count.

He's caused me to write quite possibly the soppiest blog post ever, for which I apologise, but hopefully you understand why I wanted to.

He's rather wonderful, actually.


for the benefit of readers, buckets are located by all exits. Normal service will be resumed shortly. Thankyou.

Iiiiiiiit's Chriiiiiiiiiist-maaaaaaaas!

Well, no, it isn't, there are still more than two weeks to go. But as far as various commercial establishments are concerned, Christmas it is, and we can all have a slice.

My Christmas has several components. First off the mark is usually the Shops, who have been selling tinsel and greetings cards for a good couple of months but now have the Christmas CD permanently looping. Last week I overheard workers in several shops asking each other if it really was necessary to listen to all twelve of the days of Christmas, and if maybe they could alternate each loop of the Christmas CD with a different album. This week they all seem to be just gritting their teeth and trying to ignore it, although I suppose a few may have been signed off work with stress and are hiding under the blankets at home hallucinating partridges in pear trees.

I wish I felt more brazen about using and abusing my "disabled" status as I am, under the terms of the infamous Disability Discrimination Act, perfectly within my rights to ask a store to turn their music down or off for a short time to enable me to shop there without acquiring a massive headache. Asda, for instance, are happy to turn their in-store radio station off for a while if a disabled person who is affected by noise wishes to shop there, as long as they get a bit of prior warning. However I have not had the balls to do this yet. A shame, as I think there are a number of shop-workers I know who would be eternally grateful for a half-hour break from the Christmas CD. I could make quite a profit if I put my mind to it.

Next up is the Lights. These went up early last month in the town centre, for Diwali. Now there's a "Happy Diwali" banner at one end and a "Happy Christmas" banner at the other end, two celebrations for the price of one! My personal preference would be to have a banner for each winter festival - Diwali, Christmas, Hannukkah, Winter Solstice, New Year, Thanksgiving, you name it, we wouldn't have to stop celebrating until the sun came back.

I quite like the lights, as long as they fit in. Thing is that what is acceptable for a large high-street department store's main window display of Christmas lights, looks a little bit silly for a tiny corner shop.

This year, I think the lights on houses are sometimes even more garish than the ones on shops though, and that takes quite some doing! I have nothing against people who position their lit Christmas tree in front of the open curtains of their window. I have no problem with people winding a cord of lights around a tree in their front garden, or across the top of their porch, or putting a glowing snowman either side of their front step (although it's not something I'd go for).

No, the trouble is when you're about to round a bend in the road and there's such a proliferation of flashing multicoloured lights glowing ahead that you wonder if it's a major road accident or perhaps aliens landing... and then you get round the corner and see that it's a private individual's home Christmas decorations. Or worse, a set of three or four homeowners who are locked in a permanent game of one-up-man-ship, and are now having to stack the plastic reindeers as there's no longer enough room in the garden for them to be set out in single file.

And the inflatable Santas. Oh Dear Lord, the inflatable Santas.

Then there's Christmas shopping. At this point I should be honest, I'm not a Christian and I do not celebrate the birth of Christ. I do not go to Midnight Mass, I do not put up a Nativity scene, I haven't sung Away In A Manger since school. But I do celebrate Christmas.

My reasoning behind that is that festivals evolve over the years. "Christmas" has hundreds of connotations and associations to assorted religions and traditions and folklore going back various lengths of time. Some bits have been accentuated, some have been exploited, some have been almost entirely forgotten. But the midwinter festival, in one form or another, perseveres.

So I celebrate Christmas as a time, in the cold dark damp ICK of winter, when you make an extra effort to see friends and family, you exchange gifts, you cook and eat good food, you make a burst of light and warmth and plenty in the barren, dismal winter world around you.

This is not always as easy as it seems. I am stuck for ideas of what to get several people (including Steve, ideas welcome), and I have wandered round shops and browsed on the internet until my head spins and I'm still STUCK. And on the other side of the coin, my mother is still desperately trying to extract clues from Steve and me about what she could get us. We don't know. We have everything we need. All I tend to want from my mother is a nice cup of tea and a chat, and I get that on a near-enough daily basis. Aargh, what to do, what to do...


On an entirely different note, I have been informed that in my last update I forgot to mention George the Coconut. I am pleased to be able to relay to George's concerned fans that he is still happily sitting on a nest of bubble-wrap in Steve's front room. However he no longer sloshes when moved.