Re-assessing your life

 Easier said than done.

I've been looking back over my life a lot which I don't think is healthy . Better to look forward but then as you age that amount of time reduces. As they always cheerfully remind you, there is only one certainty in life and that is that we're all going to die.

I've been analysing how I spend my time and it hasn't been a pretty sight . Getting up late, doom-scrolling, task avoidance etc. I'm hardly likely to change much of that any time soon as It's become a habit and habits are hard to change.

Ther often seems little point in starting any new projects because let's face it, what's the point ? There will never be enough time to learn how to play the bagpipes (I know this because I tried) or learn how to draw because my attempts resemble those of a 5 year old. 

When I do launch myself into a new adventure it usually runs its course within a few weeks if I'm lucky, or more likely a few days at which point I recognise the futility. I try a lot of things but I also experience a lot of setbacks and recognise my shortcomings all too quickly .

So, what is the answer ? I don't know, you tell me. It's tiring.

My current projects ? Amassing a clutch of crappy vintage items to sell at an antique fair and make a few quid. I'd be better of investing my time in researching stocks and shares and dabbling in the market. Best not even try.

How do they do it ?

They turn up at your door looking immaculate. Hair beautifully cut, coloured and styled, co-ordinated high-end outfit, accessories that didn't come from a supermarket. The glamorous friend brigade.

I now know. They throw money at it: a handbag that costs a four figure sum, a high maintenance hairstyling regime with a monthly visit to a top end salon, manicures, pedicures, designer brands.

I used to feel shabby in a shapeless Sainsbury sweatshirt and a year old haircut but not any more. One of the many benefits of getting older. F*ck not given.

Marriage

 I have a new theory ... don't know why I haven't thought of this before.

In mid-19th century England, the average life expectancy was around 40yrs for men, 42yrs for women. So you were only expected to endure married life for a couple of decades if you married at the age of 20.

Roll on to the early 21st century and it's sky-rocketed to around the 80yrs mark. Husbands and wives are expected to get on for nearly 3 times the length of time during their married lives. That's not humanly possible.

And the bad news is,  it's only going to get longer.

Bronchitis, Privilege and Corruption.

 Funny old mix.

I've just been to the doctor - yes, I actually managed to get an appointment to something called a hub but not before disclosing that I was having trouble breathing and may be in need of oxygen-fueled resuscitation.

Usual crap on arrival. Greeted with "We don't seem to have you on our system". They never do. Cock-up by my medical practice who sent me an incorrect message to go to, what turned out to be, the wrong hub.

I tried showing them the text I had received to no avail until a GP who, serendipitously, was standing behind the receptionist came to the rescue. Hearing my plight she looked up, recognised me, and actually remembered that this had happened last time. Taking pity on me she said, I'll see you now and ushered me into her consultation room. She was a life-saver and had been at my last visit when I had received a text from my surgery to make an appointment IMMEDIATELY following some blood tests ... which I did only to hear, on arrival, that they hadn't forwarded my test results and therefore could tell me nothing. Not only that but they were on 'different systems' so even if they had she wouldn't have been able to have read them on her PC. You couldn't make it up. Oh, how I laughed at yet another one of their funny little cock-ups.

I came away with a diagnosis of Bronchitis , a prescription for anti-biotics, rarer than hen's teeth these days, and an inhaler ... "as it was the Bank Holiday" - this said as if it was a special treat like a 99 Mr Whippy.

Meanwhile, back at the Building Site which is how I now refer to our road thanks to the myraid 'essential' projects that are going on in neighbours' houses ( Orangangeries FFS, Outdoor Kitchens, basement swimming pools - essential works obvs ) I pull into our driveway to find that the Fuckwits opposite have clearly bribed the Council to come and give them a brand spanking new shiny pavement outside their newly built pleasure palace of a house which they have squeezed onto a plot the size of a doormat. Funny how their request was seen to by the Council immediately whereas their long-sufferring neighbour, who recently had a stroke and has difficulty getting out of the driveway due to limited mobility, was fobbed off with the remnants of the tarmac scrap used to repair the holes left by the Pleasure Palace people's builders.

Talking of Pleasure Palace house projects, my husband's nephew has just called to ask him to help with his elderly parent's house move next week. Apparanetly he can't be there himself because he's having a million pound deluxe makeover on his own house down the road. Probably, the bespoke sauna they've spashed the cash on ( but they're very very broke apparently - so much so that they were only able to go ONE week's skiing holiday with their kids this year ) is being delivered on the same day and they're also having a 'bit of mare' with their built-in pantry room so he has to be there to see to it all. 

So, that means I'll be left to do the run from here to Essex , with a carboot full of cast off pots and pans and a mish-mash of leftover crockery, where our eldest son is moving in with his girlfriend on the very same day that David will be covering for his nephew, wheezing my way round the M25 with an inhaler strapped to my face.

Happy Days  

Royal Cancer

 Is it just me or is this media wringing of hands over Charles' unspecified diagnosis of cancer necessary ? 

Ordinary people have to get on with their lives whilst living with cancer, juggling work comittments , putting dinner on the table , getting the kids to school , traipsing around a supermarket looking for cheapest food, worry about income, pay their bills, get their tax returns in on time whilst royalty get to offload their duties whilst the country's medical experts fast track them through to recovery without their even having to leave their whatever palace tey choose to reside in.

Enough. 

Notes to those contemplating a kitchen refurb

 1. Your builders are your friends. You might not choose to go on holiday with them but keep them well-fuelled and happy and treat them with respect. By the end of the build, you'll be revering their skilled knowledge of/. pipework and plastering.

2. Treat your research like a PhD. By the end of the experience, what you don't know about 2 Gang CAT 5E outlets, 38mm bullnose edging strips or in-frame profiles won't be worth writing on the back of a fag packet.

3. Put all your new-found knowledge to good use by applying to the BBC for the next series of Mastermind. My specialty subject will be the Howdens Catalogue - Spring 2023 edition.

4. Snacks - buy shares in McVities. You will have bought a lifetime's supply of Jaffa Cakes within the month. Also, be prepared for them to go off Jaffa Cakes at some stage. You will then have to upgrade to luxury triple choc chip shortbread. 

5. Accept that the biggest 'surprise' cost in the project will be something seemingly inconsequential like a cat flap. Not just any cat flap of course but one that invloves the removal of part of a wall, which of course will then need to be plasterboarded, plastered, and all other things to do with plastering and will inevitably cost 10 times what you first envisaged. You'll be left wondering if the wall to wall triple glazed sliding doors were a good investment after all but then your fur babies will thank you.

6. Be prepared to be shocked by the price of a can of paint If you haven't re-decorated in over a decade ( and in our case make that 3 decades) then the £100 price tag on a pot of something that promises to be scuff-proof, bomb-proof and last a lifetime ( even though we're in our sixties so not such a bonus) will make your eyes water. 

7. Vow never to scoff again when you watch an episode of Grand Designs on the telly and they get to the bit where the budget gets blown out of the water by something that was supposed to have been shipped within 6 weeks and ends up being delayed by several months. It's at this point where you laugh at the unsuspecting and hapless person who didn't include a big enough contingency and marvel at their stupidity. It will happen to you. 

8. Remember that everyone you meet who asks you where you're getting your kitchen from will inevitably tell you where you should have gone They'll also have a story about someone who ordered from the company you've chosen and had an 'absolute nightmare'. This phrase will pop up a lot.

9. You will use the phrase 'nightmare' a lot and not at someone else's expense.

10. Remind yourself that it is just a kitchen. Whilst you might compare the process to childbirth or having your wisdom teeth out without anaesthetic, at the end of the day you only have yourslef to blame. What on earth made you think this whole fiasco was a good idea?  

New Kitchen

 You know that thing ...  when you take your glasses off you can't hear as well or so it seems?

Well, having a kitchen fitted is a bit like that. There's 'stuff' going on in the room formerly known as 'The Kitchen' but the other unaffected rooms in the house have gone to pot. I've also lost count as to how many times I've forgotten to brush my teeth in the morning and can't remember when I last bothered with moisturising. In other words, I've lost the plot.

Those grand plans to keep dust at bay by taping up doorways have been long forgotten and washing up in the bath has lost its novelty appeal, not that it ever had any. What's worse, I'm eating junk which is hardly surprising as everything is being bunged in the newly acquired air fryer and although this mystical device can do all kinds of healthy things according to the instruction booklet, all I ever seem to cook is chips.

Have you also noticed that when you embark on anything involving shedloads of money, other people start chipping in about how we should be paying in cash to avoid VAT and why aren't we bargaining our way to a 50% reduction from the builders who, in their opinion, must obviouly be fleecing us? These are the people who are withdrawing £20k in cash on a weekly basis and getting their kitchens from some knock-off supplier that's come from Albania from a bloke who knows a bloke who 'does cheap knock-offs' . Well, good luck with that is all I can say. 

Call me old-fashioned or grossly naive but I prefer to know who I'm dealing with and as for all the tax-dodging, have these know-it-alls ever thought about who paid for their last triple bypass? Yep - us 'little people' who pay taxes.

Burnout

 Burnout is a very useful, if overused, phrase.

At best it indicates a low mood, a feeling of lethargy, exhaustion even but not in a physical way after a workout in the gym. It's more visceral than that . Strangely it's more difficult to spot until it's gone too far.

At its worst, it can mean the complete annihilation of any feeling or emotion to the point of not knowing yourslef or caring about anything. Words like quicksand spring to mind - the helplessness of being sucked under.

The urge to run away

Sometimes it tips into something more serious. It's not just a desperate need to escape it's more of a deep desire to make the world stop so you can step off into oblivion. 

I need to constatly remind myself that this too will pass. And pass it does, only to return in time, again and again and again.

At what point do the agains cease I wonder ?

Middle Class, whatever that is.

I went to hear Roger McGough at the Landmark Arts Centre last night. It was the first night of his new tour Alive and Gigging and what a joy it was to soak up his poetry. I even managed to have a quick catch-up chat with him afterwards. Sat next to a couple called Charlie and Charlie and enjoyed their company too - so much so that we all went for a drink in the Kings Head after the show.

Funny how it only takes one thing to burst your bubble though. Youngest son, when asking about whether I enjoyed myself, offered his views on the venue - which he dislikes. The reason he gave was that it "only attracts white, middle-class, middle aged people ". Unfortunately for him, it's the category I fit into and I wondered if he expected me to apologise for the fact that I had white parents, live in a middle-class suburb of London having crawled my way up the career ladder ( whilst banging my head repeatedly against the glass ceiling of my profession ) and had reached the middle years of my life. This must be why youngsters appropriate a Jamaican patois and aspire to be broke members of the working class. Funny though that they don't spurn the trappings of our tawdry middle class though like, funding through University, a roof over their heads , free meals and permanent rent-free lodgings well into their twenties. 

I have to keep reminding myself that they love us really.

EPCs and other TLAs

Don't know what an EPC is ? Nor did I. I could have guessed I suppose -  Electrical Pulse Calibration , Ergonomic Plant Control, European Police Commission, Exploratory Petrochemical Consortium ? Nope. 

It is an Energy Performance Certificate. Now I've been shamed into admitting my ignorance and even worse - discovered that ours is an F - it's added a whole new level of things to worry about. Savvy homeowners can shove in a few energy-efficient lightbulbs and bump it up a grade. But isn't that cheating ? I'd love to install a ground source heat pump, whatever that is, install some energy-efficient underfloor heating and glaze the whole house in thermally sealed bi-folds but who can afford that?

 

How can it be 2 whole years ...

 ... since I last blogged. And I think of myself as a person who loves to write That must say something about my creative bock which has deepened to the size of a glacial ravine.

We're in the post pandemic recovery period and it's shit. The re-set button has failed to work, the country has gone to the dogs and the world's dictators are wreaking havoc around the world. Not watching the news hasn't worked. It seeps into your life uninvited from unexpectd sources and drip feeds into your psyche. 

I long to escape. Don't know where just anywhere. I've stopped listening to music, can't focus on a book and as for any artistic endeavour...

On a brighter note I did recently go and see Maverick - Top Gun. The phrase that resonated with me was the classic quote "Engage" as Cruise struggles to snap his wingman out of a trance and into action. I'm still trying the engage. 

After nearly 10 weeks ....

... eldest son has moved out as the lockdown eases, having been separated from his girlfriend who has been having to shield. She'll be joining him next week once her quarantine week period comes to an end.

Not just out but out out as Micky Flannigan would say. They won't be down the road but a little further afield but it might as well be Alaska as far as I'm concerned, as the separation pain feels so acute it left me feeling breathless ... but not in a Coronavirus kind of way.

We have enjoyed over 2 months' worth of the family being reunited under one roof. Yes, there have been a few tensions and a couple of tiffs which is only to be expected under the circumstances but it felt as if I'd been given a second chance to have my 'babies' back. And now eldest has flown the nest (again) and youngest will do likewise in a week or two.

I didn't like 'normal' and I won't be looking forward to getting back to it. I liked our new normal but it's all change again and that's not something I'm particularly good at.

Saying I feel directionless would be an understatement. It's as if I've flung my compass out of the window. Not just out .... but out out.

Haven't felt like writing lately ...

... haven't much felt like doing anything lately. Careful what you wish for.

I now have all the time in the world but can't settle to anything. Can't read a book, watch a film, follow a recipe, hold a conversation.

We're into the third week of lockdown and the honeymoon period has abruptly ended, if there ever even was one. Nerves are frayed, anxiety levels are running high and nothing seems to matter anymore. Sleep has become deprived, patience is running low and tempers running high.

But lets keep things in persepctive. Nearly one and a half million people have contracted this killer virus of which nearly 100,000 people have died. They have died alone and will be stored in a makeshift morgue becuase there isn't enough room to store their bodies or bury them all properly. Their funeral can't be attended by more than 2 people. So, all things considered, We are still the lucky ones. Armies of medics and frontline workers are risking their own lives to save those of complete strangers and all people can moan about is having to stay at home and running out of fresh milk.

I suppose for the first time in our lives, ironically, we're really living. This is for real.

So, stay home people.

I'm all for the science ... but ...

... I'm veering towards the fanciful theory that all of this has happened for a reason and someone or something is reponsible for inflicting this virus on mankind.

It's no co-incidence that we were heading for self-destruction of our beutiful planet. The rainforests had been ravaged, Australia burned, flooding was widepread across the globe, povery and disease were rife and then along came Coronavirus to remind us that enough was enough.

So here we are. We brought this on ourselves. We have no-one to blame but ourselves.

Tough isn't it ?

The C Word

No, not cancer - the 'other' C word.

I've just watched someone walk up the driveway and heard the shove of a leaflet through the letterbox. I watched him walk away whilst wiping the snot from his nose. No doubt the leaflet will be slimed with his germs. This is how it's passed on. It feels a little like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, all of our hand sanitising for our lives whilst others treat the hygiene precautions with disdain.

A man in M&S yesterday was licking his fingers before handling assorted food items on a shelf. I stood horrified and considered reporting him to staff before shuffling away and deciding not to buy and container salads there ever again.

A face masked oriental stood on the platform at Olympia underground station, pulled his mask aside and gobbed on the platform.

We would have viewed these incidents with disdain a few months ago but now I look on them as criminal acts of heinous contempt. A chance encounter with a slimed salad pot on a supermarket shelf, an innocuous leaf through a delivered pizza menu leaflet, the sole of your trainers engrained with a stranger's saliva, taken off in your hallway when you return from a trip up to London. This is how it happens.

I'm not tempting fate. I'm staying at home. I don't care what people think. I'm not other people. I'm me and frankly, I'm slightly terrified.

Back

... as in back pain. Been flat on mine all week thanks to some troublesome disc problem. Hideous doctor who wouldn't listen to a word I had to say but at least I came away with a lengthy prescription for some killer pain relief. Dimazepam anyone ? Trouble is they don't seem to make a jot of difference. Should I be worried ? I usually subscribe to the school of 'If it hurts, I'm probably dying' but I can't summon the energy to get worried about it. Pain is debilitating.

I am at least getting my money's worth out of my subscription to Masterclass. I have now learnt how to compose a film score, write poetry , churn out a best-seller and knock up some French patisserie. The pain is still there though.

Away in A Manger

Anyone else blub at the opening bar of Away in a Manger?  Just enjoyed a blub fest. Gets me every time - combine it with a Salvation Army brass band and I'm lost in a pool of messy tears.

The Pre-Christmas Low Spot

It's as traditional as holly and mistletoe. It comes around the middle of December and is usally sparked by some form of retail exasperation. In this case it was the fact that M&S's Coquilles St Jacques were no longer available to order online. I tell this story against myself. It's laughable.

Who gives a monkey's about the unavailabilty of some posh food ? A truly 1st world problem and puts things in persepctives. Why might this spark a bad mood ? I have a theory

It's more to do with disappointment in youself ; the realision that you've been suckered, hook line and sinker into a sink-hole of pretentious retail propaganda. I can't believe I let myself down so badly. Personally, I'd rather eat a bag of Walkers Ready Salted and a tub of Quality Street in any event. In fact I may just do that.

Incidentally, it wasn't just the CSJ ... it was really all about the fact that the Woodland Buch de Noel had also sold out ! Those little spotted Fly Agaric decorations were the cutest. Why anyone would want to stick them on a chocolate cake defeats me, but hey , it's Christmas.

Blogging again ...

... after several months. I've missed you blog, it's nice to be back.

Such a lot has happened so there's no better place to start than with today.
There are 4 teenagers downstairs - aged 19. One of them is mine. They'd been gaming all night, then spread themselves across the various sofas in the house for a couple of hours sleep.

I was going to steer clear but I couldn't help myself. Old habits die hard. I had to come down and make a ton of pancakes and fix a ton of toppings to go with them. It was just like old times , with one difference. They'd all grown up . One year at university has turned them into young men but the tales are still hilarious, their appetites huge and the laughter just as plentiful.

So as I wait out the week ( 3 days and counting ) until 'U' day when my own teen sets off to university having taken a gap year, I yearn for all those old play dates when they'd empty the fridge and pantry like a plague of locusts and leave a mountain of trainers piled up in the hallway. I would feign slight irritation but I loved every minute of it.

The talk around the breakfast table was ... worst hangovers , cheapest quickest meals to cook in Uni halls and why you don't need to bring a collander - a long running joke in our family. I've baked a batch of brownies which I'll cool in the fridge until they resemble chocolate fudge and then send them of with a small parcek which will have been devoured by the time they reach their respective homes.

Trying not to think about hwat an empty nest is going to feel like next week but it's not working.