Surly Reviews: I Am Legend*

I Am Bollocks, more like. What an unmitigated, pseudo-parable pile of big dog's cock.

That is all.

* Will Smith. Will, Will, Will. Will I never learn? He is turning out so much shit that I am beginning to suspect him of being a stooge of the McGregor/Dorff axis of evil, purveyors of cinematic crapfests since time immemorial.

Here I am!

I am alive!!

Yeah yeah, I know, enough with the drama already.

So I had my surgery and I came round in the recovery room and tried to scratch my nose but the oxygen mask was in the way. Um, oxygen mask? Yup. The surgery turned out to be a little more intense than anyone had anticipated, so they had to put me under a bit deeper, which meant that I needed a little more help to wake up again. Still, up I woke.

And snuck a look under the covers and saw a great big enormous padded bandage from mid-thigh to shin on my left leg. Okay so far. Except....ow! That hurts! The nice nurse lady asked if I was in any pain. Yes, was the emphatic reply. So she had a half-whispered conversation with the anaesthetist. Who had explained to me before surgery that he would give me extra pain relief and a local into the knee joint before bringing me round. Brows were furrowed. The nurse mentioned codeine. More frowns. A decision was made.

Ladies and gentleman, I am here to tell you that morphine rocks*. It tastes a little bit like a strong gin and tonic, and brings on the most fabulous la-la-la floaty feeling. Delicious.

Upshot being (like you care) that I had a microfracture procedure on my left leg. Basically, the bone lining between femur and patella had worn away and bone was rubbing on bone, explaining the sicky graunching noise the knee made when I walked down steps**. So the rest of the rough lining was removed and lots of little tiny holes have been drilled into the knee end of my thigh bone in an effort to stimulate scar tissue to cover the exposed bone. I am signed off work for two weeks, and am partial weight-bearing on crutches for four to six weeks. I have been sternly informed that this may not help my symptoms and further surgery may be needed.

Now, the Munchausen's part of me is naturally pleased. Look at me! Proper broken! But then I remember that I have to think through every physical manoeuvre before I attempt it, and that I struggle to put my own underwear on, and that crutches are not nearly so much fun as I thought they were when I was nine and Oona Landridge broke her leg and let everyone have a go on her crutches at break time. Also, that I am getting married in fifteen weeks and have bought the most amazing pair of Fuck-Me shoes to wear and they have four and a half inch heels and dammit I want to wear them!!

So. anyway. That's where we're up to. I will naturally bore you more at every possible opportunity. Meanwhile, the cat continues to claw at my bandage and glare at me as I have disrupted her daily routine of dragging her ringpiece along the kitchen worktops while we are out of the house.

Flowers, gifts and large bottles of Bushmills in the the comments box please.

* Disclaimer: Drugs are bad, mmkay?

** You're welcome.

Nurse, the screens!

I have my knee arthroscopy tomorrow.

In order to paint a picture of my current state of mind, there follows the transcript of an email I sent to the Other Half this afternoon:

From: Surly Girl
Sent: 22 April 2008 14:18
To: Other Half

this afternoon's irrational fear:

that i won't wake up from the anaesthetic tomorrow and i haven't made a will so you don't have any custody of Small Person and the Ex takes her and she grows up all pikey and feral and works in Budgens on the fag kiosk for the rest of her life.

xxx

There, you see. I am not altogether confident about the chances of my waking up from a general anaesthetic tomorrow afternoon. This is irrational for many reasons.

I have had four general anasthaetics so far in my life. Two of them were for wisdom tooth extraction at the dentists, back before it was illegal to knock people out at the dentists (this legislation was introduced some years ago after some government bean-counter realised that people who had a general at the dentists were quite likely to die, owing to there not being an anasthetist or anything - they more sort of drugged you, pulled your teeth out and sat around with hopeful looks on their faces, silently willing you to wake up).* I have also had my adenoids removed (aged nine, left me with a pathological fear of giving urine samples that persists to this day) and, somewhat bizarrely, had an enormous verucca removed from my foot (aged seven - I don't even want to think about how big that motherfucker had to be in order to warrant a full-on operation).

So I am no stranger to pre-meds, to counting backwards, to coming to round in the recovery room with an inexplicably aching body. Only now, you see, my irrational fear extends to what might happen while a person is under the anasthetic to cause that sort of aching, exactly. I mean, for surgeons, it must be like slipping a librarian a roofy in the local nightclub. I am convinced that within half an hour of coming round, the internet will be awash with pictures of me in all sorts of unnatural positions, presided over by a succession of grinning middle-aged men in operating theatre wellies and golf club ties. Brrr.

Please, make it be alright. Only I've just started reading this really good book, you see, and I need to see how it comes out.**

See you on the other side.

* I know. This is a long, irritating sentence and could I please shut the fuck up with the "general anaesthetic" repetition already. Acknowledged.

** Yes, of course I would be more bothered about never seeing my daughter or partner again. I'm just showing off, innit?

Me me me.

Right.

Let's sort this out, shall we? I know you're there. I can see my stats. I can see you. So why the bloody hell don't you comment any more? Is it me? Have I changed?

I mean, I know most people only come here these days to look at pictures of Sarah Beeny's tits. But, give me a hand here.

Am I talking to an empty room?

[/narcissism]

Edit: I have just read this back and realise that I come off a bit Carrie Bradshaw. I am sincerely sorry. Please, do excuse me. Only I'm off to shoot myself in the head.

Overheard in (my) Office...

So anyway, we were talking (well, I was) about the cows and how at some point they’ll evolve big wide flat feet so they can breach the cattle grids and what will we all do then, and everyone said I was mental and I said well, when you’re connected to a milking machine at five in the morning and there’s a Friesian with its hoof on the switch, don’t come crying to me.

Nobody believes me about the cows but I know they are evil and are plotting to take over the world. They don’t fool me with the whole standing-around-in-fields-looking-a-bit-dim routine. Oh no. I’m smarter than that. You won’t catch me wandering through a field in a brightly coloured cagoule, blithely unaware of the cows at the end of the field all plotting and planning and waiting for the moment when, as one, they will stampede down the field and kill me with their tightly-executed kick/trample manoeuvre.

Um. Anyway. That’s not what I wanted to tell you.

What I wanted to tell you was about the extremely Dante/Randall-esque exchange that took place between my (pregnant) colleague and I, shortly after the above conversation.

Her: I don’t trust horses. I don’t trust their mouths.

Me: You don’t trust their mouths? What’s wrong with their mouths?

Her: I don’t like the teeth. Or the gums. And I don’t like the erratic lip thing.

Me: You find horses’ lips erotic? That’s wrong. Pervert.

Her: No. I said erratic. I Don’t find horses sexy. Not like you, you horsefucker.

Me: Seriously? I’m a girl. How am I going to fuck a horse?



I’m going to miss that girl when she goes on maternity leave. Even if she does find horses attractive.

The pervert.

Desperately Seeking..

..with the emphasis on "desperate".

One of the finest things about the Times of a weekend is the Encounters page.

It's a richly-jewelled wonderland of confused, hopeful egomaniacs* and I love it. Really, proper love it. All of human life is here, and the examples below are just from Men Seeking Women. Women Seeking Men is pretty much of a muchness - full of "bubbly" (annoying), "curvy" (fat), "fun-loving" (drunk) divorcees seeking "possible LTR" (I will peer through your letterbox at three in the morning until you become afraid enough to take out a restraining order against me. I will then attempt suicide and say that, although my first three husbands are entirely to blame, you certainly played a big part in my devastation and subsequent breakdown).

Anyway.

Enjoy.

- Youthful, slim gentleman, submissive, seeks very assertive, mature lady for relationship.

There's a lot of these about. See also:

- Do you have a powerful and assertive personality? Extremely fit male, 60s, with an unconventional lifestyle, seeking never-ordinary woman with a dominant attitude.

Okaaay. Now, The first guy is clearly looking for a nice lady to treat him the way Nanny used to in the big house, back between the wars. Fair do's. But the second one? To me, it smacks (no pun intended) of the sort of man who wants a full-on wrestling match every time the naughties creep up on him. No dinner and flowers on this agenda, thank you. No. It's crash mats on the living room floor and three counts or a full submission to decide the winner. Every time.

Which is all well and good, but in the personals page of the Times? Really? Aren't there a few more, um, specialist publications out there that might perhaps yield better results? Or are all those bubbly, curvy, fun-loving divorcees thinking to themselves well, it's not really my thing. But a date's a date, and it's only Heartbeat on tomorrow night. I might give him a ring. He might be nice.

Good luck, ladies.

From the guys who know what they want to a man who is clearly hoping things at least go his way slightly:

Virile, optimistic guy..

Stop right there, Mr Erectile Dysfunction. Don't be putting "optimistic" in the same sentence as "virile". Really. We all know what you mean, and it makes us feel slightly sad for you.

There are, of course, a great number of Mature, Attractive, Solvent, Athletic, Charming, Trustworthy, Gentle, Honest, Genuine, Good-Looking, Caring, Affluent, Fun-Loving and Athletic men advertising their various USPs. Taken at face value, it's like David Hasslehoff, Donald Trump and George Clooney collided at high speed and rained down sparkling lady-magnet fallout all over the page. I don't buy it though. Not really.

However, one advertisement really stood out for me. I mean, if I were single I'd be all over this one like a curvy, fun-loving rash. Ladies, strap yourselves in. I give you:

Doctor/Philosopher, 70s, retired, non-religious, WLTM analytical, scholarly lady, 59+, together to find the truth about health, psychology, longevity, relaxation, culture and ethics.

No pressure then, girls. If you're the intellectual image of Stephen Hawking in a dress, why not give him a call? It's either a future spent in knife-edged debate, sparring over the very fabric of humankind, or he wants to spend his evenings telling your stiff, rouged corpse why you'll never be as nice as Mummy was.

The decision is yours.

* Yes, thank you. It's lovely to be altogether perfect and mock people I have never met and have no idea about. Now, move along please.

Kill me now.

Please.

So anyway. We were in the pub today, which is normal for a Saturday. We take the papers and eat pub food and drink beer and banter with the bar staff and it's all good.

Except today.

Today, there's a new girl behind the bar. She's funny, and a little bit odd, and we like her. On talking, we establish that she's eighteen. Eighteen.

The conversation swung around to festivals. She went to Eastern Haze last year. I went to Glastonbury* once. We are off to Beautiful Days for our honeymoon this year.

Wow, she said. Do you have any kids?

Um, yes. I have one...

Oh, that's so cool. I wish you were my parents.

Oh.

Thanks for that. Thanks for the realisation that I am old enough to have an eighteen year old child. Thanks for relegating me to the ranks of oh-but-you're-cool-even-though-you're-old. I mean, I'm flattered and all, but really? I could have done without it.

I suppose my enthusiastic double-thumbs-up when Girls Aloud came on the jukebox didn't help. Much.

Gah.

* Please don't call it "Glasto". Please? It makes me want to kill you. Or myself. Neither of which is good, or healthy. You know?

Poorly

So, getting older. Mmm.

To summarise:

I have a horrid eye infection. My left eyelid is red and swollen and itchy and I look like a victim of domestic abuse/Heather Mills in Paul McCartney's dreams. It is rubbish. I have to put antibiotic ointment on it every two hours and my eye is so fat that my eyelashes keep leaving smears all over the inside of the lenses of my glasses. I make Olive from On the Buses look like Elle Macpherson.

I have a crap knee. I saw the surgeon last Tuesday and he thinks I have a loose fragment of something-or-other in my knee joint. I win an arthroscopy. On April 23rd. So all I have to do between now and then is give up smoking, not fall over pissed any more and try not to think about anaesthetics/blood clots/infections/earth being invaded by giant bitey squids.

I am fat. I am getting married on August 9th and have already bought my wedding dress. The more I think about how I need to lose half a stone in time for the wedding the more tortillas and garlic dip I eat. This scares me. I do not want to be the girl who gets married in jeans and a baggy t-shirt because my lack of self-control in the presence of cold sausages has rendered me totally unable to squeeze into my wedding dress. I wonder if there are bathing machines available on e-Bay, and whether the pink Cadillac we have booked as the wedding car would be able to tow one to the registrar's office. I don't think it is viable. Which worries me, so I eat toast and marmite. Which really helps.

Oh yes. I'm quite the prize.

Announcement

Today is my birthday.

Thirty-five had fucking well better be the new twenty-five or there's going to be trouble.

That is all.

Overheard on the Tube..

"You know that band? The ones what do the running and that, the dancing on the running machines? What they called again?"

*pauses*

"Oh, yeah, Marilyn Manson, innit. They stab themselves in the eye and that."

Okaaayyy.....

Keep it Fluffy

I really, really shouldn’t listen to the Levellers on the way to work.

We’re off to that fancy London tomorrow for Beautiful Nights – somehow I have got very old indeed and the Levellers have been together for *cough*twentyyears*cough*. So Saturday night will find me and the Other Half bouncing around Brixton Academy in the company of people who smell of patchouli and weed. Bliss.

Anyway.

I listened to “Levellers” on the way in this morning.

Error.

When I arrived at the office, my boss started on about his carbon footprint and how it was up to the man in the street to save the planet. I don’t quite know what happened next, but I opened my mouth and the words “Now, I’m all about the earth and the planet and all that….” fell out, followed by a ten minute rant about the government and the environmental smokescreen they’re throwing up to hide all that other bad shit they’re sneaking about with, and about Iraq and America and (randomly) Seaworld and then I got onto Darfur and Zimbabwe and how it’s all about the oil, yeah, they’re just fucking us all over for all they’re worth and making the most of it before the oil runs out, yeah? And then all I wanted to do was shout “Smash the State!!” and go on a demo and drink cider and stick it to The Man.

Good lord.

Progress

So. Mother's Day.

It's been a year since I spoke to my own mother. I still don't know how I feel about it - not really. It's a pretty mixed bag, emotion-wise. I am happier - that much is indisputably the case. I don't spend my time dreading the next phone call, the next visit, the next endless, poor-me monologue. I don't miss the pretence of it all being alright, when all I ever really wanted to do was ask her why? Why did she do that to us? Not just me, all of us. Her own three children, and my stepsister.

I don't know if it's the meds, or the growing-up, or the poisoned gift of last year's breakdown (a gift because it's allowed me to really think about myself for the first time in my life - who I really am, not who I tell the world this person is), but I'm starting to get a bit of a handle on the mother thing.

Having spent my entire life being the counsellor/barmaid/emotional punchbag for my mother's fractured idea of parenting, all I ever dreamed of was being free of her. When I was younger, I found this extremely hard to reconcile with the absolute longing I felt - longing to be normal, to be loved, to be a child - able to depend on her rather than her depending on me. I've struggled with that for a very long time. Having taken the decision to rid myself of her once and for all, things took a little while to settle down on Planet Surly. For years, I'd been self-destructing. I hid my distress and my pain and my worries from everybody because I've never been able to accept that I might have a voice worth hearing. I had all sorts of unsuitable outlets for how I was feeling. Nothing we need to talk about here though. Not yet, maybe not ever.

Anyway.

Since last August's meltdown, some clarity is beginning to creep in. I had only seen as far ahead as cutting my mother off. I hadn't considered at all the possiblity that I would need to mourn her. I carried on regardless, brave-facing for all I was worth. Everything was fine. Really. Until it wasn't.

I'm beginning to realise that I have every right to feel like this. I didn't ask for any of the shit I've had in my life. I didn't ask to be born to a woman who is so devoid of empathy that I'm pretty sure there's a diagnosable disorder in there somewhere. I have every right to sit here, on Mother's Day, and weep for the life I should have had.

I wonder if she had any cards today? Somehow, I think not. I don't think that makes me pleased, exactly. But as I look at my own daughter, I can see that it's no more than she deserved.

I don't miss my mother. I just miss having a mother.

To summarise:

1) Florida is a slightly odd place, what with it still being 1986 over there and all.

2) Despite this, we had a fabulous holiday. I didn't panic on the way over (even with the six hour delay when the plane went tech with, ahem, "rudder problems"). I didn't panic in any of the parks, even when people-who-have-clearly-never-seen-a-person-with-pink-hair-and-piercings-and-tattoos-and-a-small-child before stared at me in a weird combination of hostility and astonishment. I didn't panic on the way home*. It rocked. I rock. Woo!

3) We had a fabulous holiday. I know, I already said that. But it needed saying again. So there.

4) I had a call while away from the knee clinic. I am being referred to a surgeon. I have been doing lots of Googling and have self-diagnosed that I have to discontinue my meds to have a general anaesthetic.

5) I am wondering whether surgery while under hypnosis is as flat-out loopy as it sounds. I know it is. But still....

6) Um. That's it really. In the next thrilling instalment, 'Do All Mammals Have Hair, Or Is American Factual Programming Fatally Flawed? What With the Dolphins. And the Whales. You Know'

As you were.

* This is NOT a lie. In fact, I saved four hundred and eighty three lives by grimacing, gripping the armrests and thereby ensuring that we Did Not Crash. I thank you.

Apologies for length

I had an MRI scan this morning.

I have a dodgy knee, you see. I crashed a motorbike *cough*thirteenyearsago*cough* and spanged my left knee rather comprehensively. I didn’t get it checked at the time as the waiting time in Saarrfend Hostipal’s A&E department was really long and besides, I had an appointment with the body piercer.

As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

I am currently lumbered with a knee that functions at the level of an arthritic door hinge. It gives out on me, it creaks and it pings and if I crouch down to get anything from the fridge at work I have to then clutch at the worktop like a drowning Labrador and haul myself bodily upwards, which is always attractive. Oh yes.

I had Physio. It made it worse. So I was referred to the sinister-sounding Musculoskeletal Clinic, where I was told I would need x-rays and an MRI to see if surgery will be needed. X-rays? That’s fine by me. MRI? Um….

It started badly, to be fair. The nurse-lady called me through, sat me down and stared in horror at my piercings. I rang the clinic last week, you see, to ask them how far in the machine I would have to go. What with the claustrophobia and the panic attacks and all. I was assured that only my legs would go in so I didn’t bother removing any of my jewellery. Well, there’s seventeen of the buggers, and most of them need pliers to undo the rings. Plus, I am lazy. So I left them in.

The nurse-lady asked if I could remove my jewellery. I asked if she had any pliers. She asked if there were any more that she couldn’t see. I lifted my hair to show her my ears. She went pale.

It turned out that I would be going into the scanner up to my chest. Sweet.

It all got a bit weird from there on in. I was informed that the machine-operating-lady would have to decide if I was allowed to go ahead. Which struck me as odd – either you have to remove jewellery so that bits of surgical steel don’t go flying around the room like little silver bullets, or it’s fine. It doesn’t strike me as a discretionary matter.

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. Although I had to take my boots off (metal zips, you see), when I told the nurse-lady that I had a metal zip in my trousers and an underwire in my bra, she just sort of shrugged sullenly and told me it would be fine. Oh, really? What the hell was all the drama about my piercings for then? Gah.

After answering a succession of increasingly bizarre questions (ranging from how-much-do-you-weigh to the distinctly unscientific-sounding have-you-ever-had-a-bit-of-metal-in-your-eye; um, no, but I once cut my ear open falling off a bottle bank, if that counts?) I was led through to the torture chamber scanning room.

Jesus H Baldheaded Christ on a Bike.

Giant washing machine thingy? Check. Worrying bed-thing with a knee holder on it? Check. Incipient panic attack? Check. How long will it take? I quavered in Piglet’s voice. Oh, only about twenty minutes, breezed the machine-operator-lady. I was invited to lie down, had my leg immobilised, was given a panic button and some earphones and was shoved into the scanner. Good lord. Because I had to go in up to my chest, the front of the machine was directly in front of my face. Like, an inch away. From a worrying looking slot-thing labelled “Laser Aperture”. Um. Help? Now, although this was better for me than having to go all the way in (a procedure that for me would necessitate sedation, restraints and a scuba tank), it was far from ideal. Far. From. Ideal.

There then followed an endless twenty minutes of staring at the ceiling, trying to keep breathing, and being subjected to the sort of noises that would have confessions from every last inmate of Guantanamo Bay after three minutes. I mean, the noises!! So loud!! Big clangy ones. Horrible headfuck buzzing ones. Weird oh-my-god-what-was-that ones. It was as much as I could do to stop myself blurting “Madeleine McCann has been in my understairs cupboard all along!” in an effort to make them stop.

By the time I got out of there I was shaking so much that I couldn’t get the key in the locker to retrieve my belongings. I had to go home and watch Homes Under the Hammer until I felt better.

Still, it’s done now. Now all I have to worry about is the holiday in two weeks, the flight there, the being in America, the crowds, the heat and the flight home, the possibility of surgery which means I have to worry about dying under anaesthetic or them doing the wrong knee or me catching Ebola from my bedside cabinet. And then there’s the wedding….

Does anyone have a spare Valium? Kthx.

Opinion: Author's Own

Mostly, feminism isn’t top of my list.

Occasionally, however, one of the sisterhood makes such a breathtakingly offensive remark that I feel slightly ashamed to be on the same team.

A discussion was taking place this afternoon in the next-department-over (you know, the one where they’re all a little bit thick, but it’s okay as one of them is doing one of the directors*) about the then-ongoing trial of John Hogan.

In case you can’t be arsed to clicky, I’ll summarise:

John Hogan, on learning that his (already foundering, as admitted by both parties) marriage was lurching towards its final demise, waited until his wife’s back was turned, then scooped up his six-year-old son and two-year-old daughter and, with them in his arms, threw himself over the fourth floor balcony of their holiday hotel room. His son died of massive head injuries, as his mother tried in vain to resuscitate him. John Hogan and his daughter survived with relatively minor injuries.

Now, I personally think that this was an incredibly selfish act. If you feel that your life isn’t worth living and that a quick backflip over the edge will put it all in perspective for you then please, be my guest. Don’t be taking two small children with you though.

Just my opinion.

However, the blonde one in the next-department-over disagrees. It’s much simpler from where she’s sitting. According to her logic, if Natasha Hogan hadn’t told her husband that their marriage was pretty much in the shitter, he would never have committed such a terrible act. In fact, she opined, the ex-Mrs-Hogan (ooh, and didn’t she divorce him a bit quick? Ooh..) should feel guilty that her son is dead and her ex-husband detained in a Greek psychiatric unit.

Oh! It all makes perfect sense now! People should always remain in unhappy relationships, in case the spurned partner decides to invite the kids to their pity party! Nobody should ever leave anyone, ever, in case they turn out to be the sort of deranged mentaller who sees child-killing as the ideal response! I should feel grateful that, on learning that I was leaving him, the Ex didn’t take Small Person down to the river and hold her under until the bubbles stopped coming up!

Good lord.

* That is a whole other story. You do not want to hear it. Brr.

Surly's Little Helper

So anyway.

I went to the doctors on Friday for a review of my meds. It's been three months now since I went mental, and I needed to see him to carry on renewing my prescriptions. As I'm not doing so well currently, and should apparently be "better" by now, a couple of suggestions were made.

Firstly, I was offered Effexor. Um, no thanks. Isn't that the one, I asked, that I've read loads of really scary things about? Oh, no, smiled the doctor. It's all fine now! They've fixed all that!

I declined. As fun as weight gain, addiction and increased likelihood of suicide might be, I'd really rather go without. You know. Just for now.

So, in order to get me through our upcoming trip to Florida, itwas suggested that I double the meds I'm on now. Fine, thought I. I've been on them for a while, with no discernible side effects. What can the difference be? I won't even notice.

Wrong.

Kids, I am stoned. I mean, you could make me watch "Beaches" intercut with pictures of dying puppies and I wouldn't even flinch. I am extremely, um, level. It's odd, and a little bit interesting. I might watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest later, just to see if I can still feel anything.

Wheee!

In which nothing happens

The Other Half has gone to watch the football. Small Person is on the other sofa playing Nintendogs with her head under a blanket. The cat is catching up on some sleep having only managed 23 hours yesterday. There is nothing on the telly. I am lightly medicated.

Happy New Year, all.....

Mentalism

Panic attacks suck.

About fifteen years ago I had a disastrous LSD experience. I won't bore you with the details - suffice to say that I was left with agoraphobia, panic attacks and a strong conviction that I had actually, properly ruined my life and could look forward to a future filled with very-small rooms and prescription medication.

I got through it though. I eventually plucked up the courage to visit my GP and explain that I'd been spiked at a party (this was a complete lie but I was by this stage so paranoid that I was convinced that telling the truth would result in an immediate citizen's arrest and/or a nice cosy section). He was marvellous, and prescribed a course of beta-blockers and some counselling. The meds worked fabulously, the counselling not so much.

If I cast my mind back, I can't properly recall how I came out of that period. I have, since then, been extremely wary of drugs - the most I do know is the occasional hash pipe and even that is a rarity*. I have been pretty much on an even keel for quite some while now.

Except, all of a sudden, the panic is back. I have no idea why. It started on the way home from our semi-disastrous "holiday" back in August. We'd spent a week variously bickering in a soaking tent, slumping in a shitty hotel and wandering around a festival in approximately fifteen feet of sucky, greedy mud. We were tired, and a little bit emotional. On the Monday, we left the festival site at 8am. By one o'clock we were almost home. The Other Half was driving and I was half-dozing in the passenger seat. Suddenly, everything felt wrong. The radio was too quiet. My fingers were numb, and everything I touched felt...detached, somehow. I began to sweat, and to feel those old, horrid-familiar waves of panic wash over me. I'll keep my eyes shut, I thought. If I can cut the sensory input, I'll be fine.

But I wasn't fine. I sat, and I panicked, and I sweated and I tried really, really hard not to think about why I was suddenly thinking about how just the very act of sitting in a moving car felt somehow wrong and how scared I was that I might suddenly do something irrational like, I don't know, get out of the car in the middle of the A12, or something. It was like an old, well-thumbed nightmare.

So we made it home and the Other Half unpacked the car and sorted out a week's-worth of sodden, muddy detritus while I slept on the sofa. It seemed the only logical way to feel better - I was exhausted and the thing to do was sleep and then I might feel "real" again when I woke up. And, do you know what? It worked. Until a fortnight later, when I was in the car one Sunday afternoon with Small Person, on a mission to acquire new school shoes before term started.

It was all fine, until, suddenly...everything felt wrong. The radio was too quiet. My fingers were numb, and everything I touched felt...detached, somehow. I began to sweat, and to feel those old, horrid-familiar waves of panic wash over me. Keeping my eyes shut wasn't really an option, what with the driving and the Small Person and all. So I had to keep going. I deep-breathed my way round a giant, spinout-inducing Tesco store. I autopiloted through the shoe shop. I drove home, manoeuvring the car through an ever-decreasing comfort zone, and legged it straight to bed on arriving back at the house.

And that's pretty much where we're up to. I am suspended in a faintly horrible half-life, in which I am constantly panicking about panicking. Every car journey is an exercise in self-distraction since I am now irrationally convinced that being in/on any/all methods of transport is the root of my problems. I spend my mornings worrying about where I am going at lunchtime - all those years ago I lost my job as I simply couldn't cope with the journey to work any more and I am terrified that I will flip out one lunchtime and find myself on the same spiral.

So. To sum up.

Panic attacks suck. Irrationality rules, apparently. The inevitable fallout from possibly the most stressful year of my post-divorce life (meltdown? Check! Life-altering reality check? Check! Ditching a mother and dealing with the consequences? Check!) has been far greater than I'd imagined. The Other Half is simply the most fabulous person I have ever met, owing to his ability to witter on about inconsequential, distracting things once he realises I am in the grip of irrational, paralysing panic (plus, you know, all the other reasons why he's fabulous. Yes, including that). Drugs are bad, m'kay. Our new kitten is insane.

But, most importantly of all.

I am going mental. Wheee!

* Yes. Alcohol is my drug of choice. Sweet, sweet beer. So much more damaging than cannabis, yet curiously unregulated. Marvellous.

Why Snopes should be mandatory

You see, about a hundred years ago when I wrote things that were sometimes quite good, I got a link from a site featuring British blogs.

That was a proper long time ago though, and I'd forgotten all about it until someone visiting these echoing, empty pages was referred by that very same link. Ooh! I though. I'll go and have a look! There was a comments section - I wonder if anyone's said anything new?

Clicky, and scroll down past all that other stuff to the bottom, until you find yourself reading Kim's comment. Kind of makes you fear for the gene pool, doesn't it?

As for me - well, I couldn't just let that little gem pass by, could I?

Enjoy.

In which I make a slightly dull return

I don’t understand vibrating chairs.

I mean, I get that they might feel nice. I don’t get why they are suddenly appearing in motorway service stations and shopping centres.

I mean, I sort of get why they might be popular in shopping centres. Sort of. If you’ve been slogging round in over-lit, echoing hell all morning, a bit of a sit-down is probably quite nice. Except, wouldn’t a bench do the job? Or a chair in a coffee shop? Or, as is my preference, a lovely comfy bar stool?. Why would you pay a pound to sit, shamefaced, in a wobbling faux-leather recliner in the middle of Lakeside while smirking indie kids* slouch past, whispering to their mates about you as they hitch their ridiculous trousers up.

Um.

So, yes. Shopping centres, possibly.

But motorway service stations? Really?

It’s the same sort of random stupidity that's behind those weird, glitzy amusement arcades full of driving games that also populate these places. Who came up with that particular peach of an idea? I know!! When people have been sitting, trapped, in an airless Nissan Micra on the M4 for the last five hours, what they’ll really want to do when they get a break is to sit down! They could pay a pound to sit down in a jiggly chair for three minutes! Or, I know!! They could pay two pounds to go on a driving simulator!! And pretend to drive! You know, to pass the time until they can do some more driving!

Genius.

* Why are there so many indie kids now? Where did all the Emo kids go? Where do indie kids get their ideas from for all those odd styling decisions? Our town centre is positively rammed with stick-thin teenage boys**, dressed like a cross between Russell Brand and Timmy Mallet but with hair by Liberace. It’s creepy.

** I know how old this makes me sound. It can’t be helped though. Stupid passage-of-time.