Guts

I’m up north. Grimstone. Bleakley. Hades-on-Sea. Whichever you prefer.

I’m here to take care of my grandmother. She’s got diverticulitis, which apparently is inflammation of the diverticulum, which apparently is an abnormal sac or pouch formed at a weak point in the wall of the alimentary tract. Twisted guts to you.

She went to the doctor last week. On the way to the doctor, she twisted her ankle and fell in the street, scraping her knee and cutting her hand. No one helped her up. As she was righting herself, a police car pulled up. They were looking for an elderly woman who matched my grandmother’s description. What for, I cannot say. My grandmother said she wasn’t the one they were looking for. Eventually the policeman questioning her noticed that her hand was bleeding. ‘Are you alright?’ he said.

‘No,’ my grandmother answered.

So they gave her a lift to the doctor where she was eventually prescribed an antibiotic called doxycycline. Unfortunately, some of the side effects of doxycycline are nausea, abdominal pains and vomiting. So my grandmother went to the doctor with pain; one day later she had pain and puking. She stopped taking the antibiotics.

I got here on Saturday afternoon, and she wasn’t very well at all. She looked awful in fact. And her voice was half a shadow.

I guess the only thing potentially worse than watching an old person in pain is watching a young person in pain. But then I don’t know. At least with a young person, you’re pretty sure that whatever it is, they’re probably going to get better.

I had a horrible thought the other day. It was wholly knee-jerk, but that doesn’t make it any easier to live with. It was when I heard my grandmother was ill, and it was, ‘Oh, well, if she dies, at least I won’t have to pay her back the money I owe her.’ That’s a pretty horrible thought, I’m sure you’ll agree. And believe me, I’m not proud of it. And I don’t want her to die. On the contrary, I want her to get better, and to feel great and to live long enough for me to be able to buy her a house nearer to other people who care for her. But realistically, that might mean both of us living into our two-hundreds. But if that’s what it takes, that’s what I want.

Christ, existence is horrific at times, isn’t it? Isn’t it though?

Having said that, she feels better today. I scrambled her an egg this morning and put it on a piece of toast, and thus far she’s managed to keep it down. Also, she’s doing the Daily Mail crossword (I know, I know, but what can you do?) and we’re listening to Smooth Radio Northeast (I know, I know – they even have something called ‘Smooth Unplugged’ – imagine that if you can). Also, she said she doesn’t know what she would have done if I hadn’t come up for the weekend. She’d have walked backwards and forwards, she said, from the bedroom to the kitchen, making tea and being sick.

So it’s good that I’m here. Not so good that I have to leave on Monday and leave her on her own to shuffle back and forth making tea and being sick.

But she’s going back to the doctor on Tuesday. Plus she’ll have other visitors next weekend. Plus she reckons she’s getting better. She says time is a great healer and all things must pass. She said she’ll either get better or it’ll turn into something nasty, and there’s no point worrying about that. At which point I went into the kitchen and felt quite, quite miserable.

Life is fucking unbearable. No, not life. Death. But there’s no point worrying about that.

We've just started to watch Little Miss Sunshine. I brought it with me. It was the only remotely grandmother-friendly film I own. I forgot about Alan Arkin's character taking coke in the opening montage. Grandmother made a noise. 'Oh, it's not one of them junkie films, is it?' she said. If she's not careful, I'll make her watch Bad Lieutenant.

Not Just For Christmas

I was out and about in central London yesterday and crikey. You forget. London at Christmas is insane. All that jostling and tension. All those angry shoppers and boozed-up Santas.



It reminded me of something I heard recently when I was listening – kind of by accident – to the audiobook of Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends and Influence People. It apparently formed part of the Christmas advertising of a New York department store, back in the day. You may find it trite, tedious and a little bit sick-making. If so, you may bugger off. I find it rather special, and of course - really - it has nothing to do with Christmas.

The Value of A Smile At Christmas

It costs nothing but creates much.



It enriches those who receive without impoverishing those who give.

It happens in a flash, and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever.



None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits.

It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a business, and is the countersign of friends.

It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad, and nature's best antidote for trouble.



Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is no earthly good to anybody until it is given away.

And if in the last minute rush of Christmas buying, some of our sales people should be too tired to give you a smile, may we ask you to leave one of yours? For nobody needs a smile so much as those who have none left to give.

Eh? Eh? You see?

So - it's my birthday tomorrow. And the two-year anniversary of the blog on Tuesday. I was planning to do something pretty spectacular, but you know how it is, the best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley. Added to which, there is family stuff afoot. My grandmother is going into hospital on Wednesday to have her arthritic foot sliced and scraped. My mum was going to be there to look after her, but for reasons which shall remain her own, she cannot. So I'm going up there. Not sure how yet. Thinking of something quite radical at the moment. Probably won't come to fruition though. You know how it is. Aft agley.

Anyway, if I don't see you for a while, be good.

32! How novel.

Suicide Is Shameless

Of course it could just be a lazy sub-editor that insists on prefacing many of Amanda Platell’s Daily Mail hate-piece headlines with the word ‘sorry’, but I’m pretty sure it’s Amanda herself. You can hear her voice in it, and she isn't sorry at all. Rather, her sorry is the equivalent of her furrowing her brow like a salted slug and snorting contemptuously, ‘Errr, hello?’ For example, there was ‘Sorry, why should the NHS treat people for being fat?’ Then there was, ‘Sorry, but all of us - including me - must share the blame for Susan Boyle's path to The Priory’. Then there was the (slightly ironic? No.) ‘Sorry, but we need more than apologies’, directed at Gordon Brown et al.

Then this week, she did it again. Another title, another contemptuous fake apology. ‘Sorry,’ it begins, ‘but Debbie Purdy’s brave victory diminishes us all.’

This of course is the story of primary progressive MS sufferer Debbie Purdy and her desire – when the pain of her disease becomes unbearable – to go to Dignitas in Switzerland to hasten her death, and to be accompanied by her husband in the knowledge that her husband will not then be sent to jail for 14 years, as the current legislation decrees. Purdy doesn’t want her husband imprisoned.

Platell’s not so sure.

Hmmm.

Platell is worried that in mapping out the guidance for future cases, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, will set our country on course for the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia. ‘Surely it is part of being human,’ Amanda argues, ‘that life is not all about joy and happiness - it is about learning to cope with disappointments, sorrows and, yes, death. The shadows on life's journey are what make its sunny moments so precious. Yet increasingly we seem to shy away from these challenges.’

Amanda Platell, it seems, is a bona fide moron. She seems to be under the impression that deciding to end one’s own life - for whatever reason - is an easy option, a walk in the park on a sunny day; and she seems unaware that opting for death is actually a perfectly valid way of coping with the challenges of life.

‘Coming to terms with a natural death,’ she goes on, ‘is an essential part of the human experience - not just for the person coming to the end of their existence, but for all those around them. Assisted suicide, on the other hand, reduces dying to a process no more significant or challenging than checking out of a hotel.’

Oh, Amanda. Don’t make me wish a wasting disease on you. Again.

Presumably, when - after 54 years of marriage - Sir Edward and Lady Joan Downes chose to end their lives together last month, rather than accept the slow decay of blindness and deafness, and cancer respectively, Amanda would have stepped in and said, ‘Sorry, but a natural death is an essential part of the human experience.’ Rather than allowing this fantastically vibrant and creative and inspiring couple to end their lives peacefully, painlessly and most importantly, together, Amanda would have insisted they suffer the frustration and agony of slow decay and forced them to die on her terms, depressed, out of control and alone.

The strange thing is, being an arch-right winger, you’d expect Platell to be all in favour of self-determination. Perhaps she has religious qualms and thinks that only God should say when life is over. If so, she’s even more of an idiot than she initially appears. For if God actually existed, surely he’d be made up that some of his children sought to speed their return to his loving bosom? At the very least he’d forgive them. But anyway, this is no place for fiction.

The facts are that despite primitive thinkers like Platell, things do seem - finally - to be heading in the right direction. Keir Starmer this week suggested that whether a person seeks to die in Switzerland or even here in England, their friends and family would be equally protected by the new ruling. ‘This is not a policy that's going to apply only to those who go abroad,’ he said. ‘This policy is going to cover all assisted suicides.’ With this kind of thinking, voluntary euthanasia looks certain to become a reality in this country, sooner rather than later.

What makes this excellent news even more exciting is knowing how much it sticks in Platell’s toxic craw. For me it can't come soon enough. I'm hoping that within 20 years, the whole of Europe will be teeming with suicide cafés. They won’t be called ‘suicide cafés’ of course – that would be crass. They’ll be something quite prosaic and functional like Assisted Suicide Centres or Existence Curtailment Clinics. But colloquially they will be known as Euth Clubs and Toppermarkets and they will be very, very popular.

They will be popular because most people understand that, contrary to Platell’s poisonous, egocentric delusions, it in no way diminishes the preciousness of human life to suggest that human beings should be allowed to end it as and when they please. On the contrary, it could even be argued that it is a clear demonstration of that preciousness. In the Julian Barnes novel, Staring At the Sun, suicide has become commonplace and society views it not as something wholly negative, not as something of which we should be ashamed, but quite the contrary:

‘Suicide wasn't self-abnegation. It didn't say: I am so miserable and unimportant that it doesn't matter if I destroy myself. It said the opposite: look, it said, I am important enough to destroy.’

Surely this is an open and shut casket for anyone with even a hint of compassion. If people want to kill themselves, then for the sake of humanity, let them kill themselves. And the option should not be restricted to those who have a terminal disease. The fact of the matter is, some people are simply not cut out for life, and if we care at all for them, it’s our humanitarian duty to allow them, and even to assist them, to shuffle off with dignity.

Thankfully, it’s not and never will be up to some waxy, venomous cretin at The Daily Mail to decree who has to put up with it and who doesn’t.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Granny and I are off to Zurich. I’ll be back tomorrow. She won’t.

Sorry, Granny.

Scanmongering Monday :: Fearful & Aggressive

Towards the end of last year, I discovered I had relatives that I'd never known about. This was wonderful news. Now one of them has died. This is not so wonderful. Furthermore, it's going to have wide-reaching, life-changing repercussions, the most obvious of which is that it looks like I'll be leaving London. Soon. In fact, I've already left London - but only for this week. I'm up north for a funeral. I'll be back at the end of the week, and then - because my landlord is a heartless, grasping devil who is making me want to scream and smash things - I'll have a couple of days to clear everything out of my house and flee.

Strange - and it has to be said, pretty fucking horrible - times.

But it could be worse. It could be my funeral this afternoon. That would be worse. And I do, in general, have my health. So. Life goes on. And with that in mind, here's this week's Bookscan. Name the book and claim the prize. Actually there's no prize this week. Just name the book.

Feedback Friday :: Six Feet Under

bulk :: 15st 3
cigarettes :: 3 (I know, I know. It’s like I have a death wish or something)
tears shed :: no, no, no. Let’s not go there.

So. I just finished watching the 63rd and final episode of Six Feet Under. And you know what I want to do now? I want to start at the beginning and watch all sixty-three episodes all over again. Than again with the commentaries. But I won’t. Not yet. Not now. Now I’ve got to get on with living. But you - if you’ve never seen Six Feet Under, please, please make an effort to do so. It will improve the quality of your life.



Six Feet Under is – in my most humble opinion – the greatest television programme ever made. Not just because it has the most profoundly drawn and miraculously written characters I’ve ever seen. Not just because it is consistently imaginative and hilarious and exciting and harrowing and terrifying and provocative and subversive. But also because it is very, very important.

Before Six Feet Under, TV shows didn’t really talk about death, or if they did, they danced around it on tiptoes, like tourists in a notoriously dodgy part of town. Six Feet Under gets up close and personal with death. It gets right under its fingernails in a way that is courageous and unflinching and at times unbearably painful. And this is important because it helps us to come to terms with our own mortality, and this is important because it helps us to feel the miracle of life more acutely. At least this is how it affected me. And I'm by no means special.

My ex found it uncomfortable. Particularly the deaths which opened each episode. I hope she comes back to it one day, because I think it will help her too. It’s definitely helped me. It's no exaggeration to say that I feel more ready to die because of Six Feet Under. (And not in the same way I felt more ready to die after watching Mamma Mia - I don't want to die; I just don't fear it quite so much.)

Six Feet Under has made my life considerably richer. I feel honoured to have seen it, to have felt it, and I feel genuinely privileged to have known the Fisher family. I love them. I really love them.

Here's a scene - just one scene until I learn how to get DVD clips online - which contains many of the elements which make it so good...



God, I love it so much.

My one regret is that I watched the vast majority of it alone, but... well, that’s life.

And life goes on.

And speaking of which, apologies to Publisher Lady for having fallen behind with the rewrites of the book. I’ve had a tough week. I’ve been grieving. I know, I know. No one was more surprised than me. I thought I was out of the woods, but it came back to haunt me. Sorry for the delay. You’ll have what you need by Monday morning. I hope that's OK. And then, then I guess I’ll have to find another job.

So.

Let's raise a glass. All of us.

To the future.

Who’s with me?

Valentine's Day Cancelled :: A Dead Fox Stole My Heart

Sorry for the piss-poor blogging of late. Couple of excuses: hard work on book (up every day at 6!); and the slow, painful collapse of everything I ever believed in.

I know, I know.

Which is to say, Morag and I have split up.



One day I may tell you the story of the dead fox. It was extraordinarily poignant and in effect helped us sign the death warrant.

This was yesterday. Timing, as ever, impeccable.

I don't have much else to say about it. Certainly nothing that I haven't already said here.

So yeah, Valentine’s Day is cancelled this year. As is the rest of February. I shall be getting back on the horse in March. And not before.

In the meantime, please, even if you feel it, please do not say ‘I told you so’. You know who you are. Thanks.

Oh, and happy Valentine’s Day. May a leather-clad Cupid coat each of your erogenous zones with a heady mix of lubricant, bremelanotide and paprika.

Have fun!

See you in a couple of weeks.

x

Shame Week Bonus :: What’s the Stupidest Thing You’ve Ever Done?

A few years ago, I had a television in my sleeping quarters. I don't recommend it. I watched a lot of films at night. And missed a lot of days. Anyhow, one day, prompted by the sudden smell of burning tuna omelette coming from the kitchen, I bolted from my bedroom in a blind and stupid panic, and in my careless passage from one room to the other, my foot got entangled in the cable. Rather than bring the TV crashing down from the bedside table on which it sat however, the cable merely snapped where it met the plug – a clean break, leaving the naked plug sitting in the socket, a tiny stump of broken wire and plastic jutting from its anus.

Returning from my culinary disaster with screwdriver in hand, I set about reconnecting the plug to the cable. Generally, when it comes to wiring plugs, I’m a bit of a klutz and I invariably make some kind of elementary mistake, connecting the earth to the neutral or the neutral to the live, or not quite managing to make everything connect, and generally I have to rewire it. Especially when there are three wires as opposed to just two. Three, frankly, is two too many. So this time I thought I’d check I’d done it right before screwing the whole thing back together again.

So, without reattaching the plastic cover, I pushed the plug into the wall with the palm of my left hand.

What a strange, surprising sensation!

I wasn’t exactly thrown across the room, but the instinctive recoil when the electricity zunked into my hand was considerable enough for me to move a couple of feet.

I tingled.

I guess I could have died.

But I didn’t. And shall I tell you why?

Quite simply, because God hasn’t finished with me yet.

Nah, just kidding. It’s dumb luck. I could easily have died. People have died for a lot less.

I am an idiot.

...

So. What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done? Leave your most moronic moments in the comments and sit back in shame as the internet shakes its head and despairs.

Thanks.

Of Cats and Men

What greater gift than the love of a cat?

Charles Dickens said that, and I for one think he was onto something.

Meanwhile, William Blake saw God for the first time in 1762, His big old face pressed against the living room window. And Little Billy Blake, only four years old, screamed. Awwww. Even at that age, an absolute looney. But what a talent. Then, somewhere between eight and ten, William Blake was on Peckham Rye. He gazed upon an ordinary tree and do you know what he saw? He saw angels. Or rather, ‘a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars’.

Looney.

Peckham Rye is just down the road of course. And round here Blake’s vision is rightly revered. Here is an artist’s interpretation on the side of a local house.



Revered.

So, naturally, under the circumstances, on Thursday evening, Keith and I set out to find Blake’s angel tree. Within a matter of minutes, as if by divine providence, we found it. Or at least one very similar. Albeit sans readily visible angels.

Then we came home and, with Pablo still on his blanket on the living room floor, we became intoxicated. We looked up cat quotes online. There are a great many.

Here are a few of my favourites:

‘Dogs are dogs, but cats are people.’ – Iranian proverb

‘Way down deep, we're all motivated by the same urges. Cats have the courage to live by them.’ - Jim Davis

‘The little furry buggers are just deep, deep wells you throw all your emotions into.’ - Bruce Schimmel

‘Poets generally love cats because poets have no delusions about their own superiority.’ - Marion Garretty

I also told a few Pablo stories. Here are a few of my favourites:

There was the time he enraged an elderly neighbour by killing one of her rosette-winning doves. I tried to explain to this furious woman that Pablo would never do such a thing, but when I found him later, there were still giveaway white feathers all over his face. I tried to chastise him for that, but he seemed so proud, and really, it was hilarious.

Then there was the time he brought home a beautiful grey squirrel he’d caught and heartlessly murdered for his own pleasure. I love squirrels and was really quite angry with him. But again, you know, what can you do? He was a killer. He loved to kill. And deep down I couldn’t help admire him for it.

When he was a kitten he grew very attached to a straw shopping bag a friend brought round to the house. So attached did he become that the friend brought the bag back the very next day, empty, as a gift for Pablo. We then developed this game, Pablo and I, wherein Pablo would climb into the bag and I would swing him backwards and forwards, causing him to grizzle with pleasure. That low slightly-spooky cat-growl that he’d do when I gave him cat-nip. The higher I swung him, the more he would grizzle, until eventually I was swinging the bag around the room in full circles. Then when I’d stop he would stagger out of the bag, still deep-purring but unable to walk in a straight line. This hilarious pastime came to an end one day in the back garden when the bottom of the bag came loose. Pablo flew out and away, high into the air in the direction of the house. He landed just above the kitchen window, where he remained, clinging to the brick work like a terrified drunken bat.

Then there was the time he wouldn’t stop shitting everywhere, a couple of months into our relationship, and I picked him up and shouted at him and threw him onto the ground like a bow tie I couldn't fasten, hurting him quite badly in the process. He squeaked in pain and when he righted himself he was limping quite badly. Immediately disgusted by what I’d done I went to comfort him, to apologise, and he hissed at me.

I never forgave myself for that. It made me question everything I thought I knew about myself. It made me wonder who I was and what I capable of. It made me question whether I was fit to have children. It made me go into counselling.

I have still never forgiven myself for that. And I think it’s important that I never do. But Pablo forgave me. And that made me love him more than I think I have ever loved anyone.

‘Let’s buy a house,’ said Keith. ‘Then we can get another cat.’

‘That seems a bit extreme,’ I said. ‘But maybe, yeah.’

Then, when it was properly dark and properly late and only cats and drunks were out roaming the streets, two drunks armed with a dead cat, a garden fork and a spade sashayed suspiciously over to Peckham Rye, heading for Blake’s Tree of Angels.

Now, I haven’t dug a hole since I attempted – as I imagine all children do - to tunnel my way to The Bowels of Hell aged five or ten. Turns out it’s bloody hard work. Despite Keith’s manly arms, it took us over an hour to get the hole deep enough so that we had no fear of it being dug up by dogs. And that was with the bare minimum of cannabonoid breaks.

To begin with, Keith – who sings the outdoors electric, frankly, and makes Ray Mears look like Margot Leadbetter – sliced up and removed a few squares of turf a couple of inches thick and put them to one side. Then, with our grave template in place, he unfurled a large sheet of tarpaulin, or, as I rather wittily insisted on calling it, Tom Paulin, and we got to digging in earnest by the light of the moon, Pablo already stationed above us in the branches of Blake’s Tree, angel feathers stuck to his cheeky chops.

When the hole was good and deep and the Tom Paulin piled high, I took Pablo’s body, blanket and all, gave him one final hug and kiss and placed him deep down inside the soft wet earth. Then I recited my poem:

Pablo, Pablo, burning bright, Bespangling all with purrfect light. Sleeping now where angels played, Your life has left me less afraid. And though your days of play are gone, The love you made lives on and on. Bespangling still my heart with light, Forever Pablo, burning bright.

Believe me, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Then we covered him over with earth and earth and more earth and stamped down hard on top of him, which felt a bit wrong but Keith insisted it was necessary to make him safe, to seal him in there, in the heart of the planet. Then we replaced the grassy bits and stamped them down too. For minutes we stamped and stomped and chanted like weird warriors. 'His name was Pablo Cattermole,' we chanted. 'His name was Pablo Cattermole.' The leftover earth we tossed around and kicked about. Then we went home to sleep.

I checked the grave on Friday afternoon and it was fine. A damn good job in fact. You could barely notice it. I had decided that I didn’t want to mark it because, well because it isn’t necessary – I know where Pablo is; Pablo is in my heart. Also, marked graves are easily damaged. By sick, sick human beings.

Then on Saturday, in another stroke of brain-boggling coincidence, Keith and I met Fred, a 12-week old ginger tom owned by Rex and Rita, two Keith's friends. They live in Hampshire. They had invited Keith along for a barbecue. Keith invited me. I went along and met Fred.

Here, readers, meet Fred, and remember the words of Leonardo da Vinci: ‘The smallest feline is a masterpiece.’



























There were quite a few humans at the gathering too, but I paid them very little heed, spending most of my Saturday with Fred.

Lots of people have suggested to me in the last few days that I should get a new kitten, and it’s easy to see why so many bereaved pet owners do immediately get involved with new animals. In fact, the only reason I’m not going to is because I can’t, because my pseudo-Chinese landlord won’t allow it.

I don’t think the procuring of a new kitten is an attempt to replace that cat so much as finding another avenue for that love that you still have inside you but which suddenly has no place to go. I suppose in that sense it’s a little like relationship rebound. But hopefully not as temporary.

Here’s another quote:

‘Another cat? Perhaps. For love there is also a season; its seeds must be resown. But a family cat is not replaceable like a worn-out coat or a set of tires. Each new kitten becomes its own cat, and none is repeated. I am four cats old, measuring out my life in friends that have succeeded but not replaced one another.’ - Irving Townsend

It upsets me that I cannot get a new cat at the moment, without incurring the wrath of the man-ferret Dudley, but so be it. The next house will have space.

And that’s it. I think I’m done for now.

Oh, except to say that at the weekend, Rex and Rita mentioned an article which had appeared in the Guardian a few weeks ago, about the death of a cat called Wilson. I’ve just searched it out and read it. It made me cry.

Rest in peace, Pablo.

Death, Dating and Other Natural Disasters

Sally didn’t fancy the funeral in the end, which is a shame because it was extremely moving. Ange’s mum was evidently very much loved. For some reason (blind prejudice) I had come to assume that the inhabitants of Dartford were all vile soulless cretins no more capable of genuine human emotion than a bucket full of piss and clams. But that was wrong of me. And yesterday brought that home.

Sylvia Charlton had two miscarriages and a still birth before Ange came along, all healthy and bouncing and bold. Then, even though they wanted more, Sylvia and her husband Ed stopped trying to have kids of their own. They thought they'd quit while they were ahead and Ed had a vasectomy. They loved kids so much however, that – as well as cherishing Ange, obviously - they did everything they possibly could for everybody else’s kids. I guess they realised more than most how truly sacred young life is and they wanted to do everything within their power to nurture it, and to make it great. And so they became community child carers in a way which would never be possible today. (I am led to believe that these days, before you can even blow a raspberry at someone else’s child, you need a qualification in midwifery and a certificate from the local council.) In the 70s and 80s however, children were not made of sugar glass and you could still throw half a dozen rocks into a crowd of people without necessarily hitting a paedophile.

So basically Ange was raised in a community crèche. And although she never had any siblings of her own, other people’s kids were always around and she never wanted for company. Sometimes she got jealous of course, and on occasion she lashed out, but that’s only because she was – in Sylvia’s words – ‘a proper little madam’.

Naturally, as she spent a lot of time looking after their kids, Sylvia spent a lot of time with the young mums of the area. Consequently, she got to know them, and when they had problems – problems of a sensitive nature – they would confide in her, and Sylvia discovered that she had a knack for sorting them out, giving them the right advice and helping them help themselves to get their lives back on track. And so, as well as her role as community childcare consultant, Sylvia became the first port of call for any young couples in need of any kind of advice. As far as I could gather, she gained a reputation as a kind of a cross between Dr Ruth and Dr Spock.

Consequently her funeral was a very emotional affair, with a long line of friends and relatives taking turns to pay tribute to Sylvia, to tell their stories of how she’d helped them better their lives, and to thank her for all that she’d done.

Then when they were all done, we listened to The Green Green Grass of Home by Tom Jones. I don’t think there was a single person in the church who was not crying.

Sylvia loved Tom Jones.

Tom Jones and Dr Hook.

Despite that, I wish I’d known Sylvia, and although I never met her, I found myself missing her. Grief is infectious. At some stage it seemed odd to me to be weeping over a woman that I never knew; but then later it occurred to me that it wasn’t at all odd. Funerals are an emotional business, and as any decent film or book proves, just a couple of tales of human kindness and suffering are enough to move a person. In fact, by the time I got back home this morning, I felt like I’d been dragged through a particularly involving episode of Six Feet Under.



In the absence of Sally, Keith accompanied me to the funeral. It was the first time (as far as I am aware) that he’d seen Ange since they slept together. Ordinarily such a meeting might have been slightly fraught, but death has a way of putting things in perspective. And although Keith may have ruined a decent relationship by putting his thing in Ange, at least no one had died.

On the whole, Sylvia's funeral was pretty amazing. Indeed, and I don’t mean to be in any way disrespectful or inappropriate when I say this, it was truly wonderful. It was everything a good funeral should be. It was a mega-moving celebration of a life tremendously lived.

‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ said Keith.

This was this morning, on an early train back into London. We were a little hungover and probably still slightly mawkish from the funeral. I already knew about the results of Keith’s MS tests. He told me last week. He asked me not to mention it here because he was intent on getting on with his own blog. But that hasn’t happened. And if I want to tell you what Keith said next, which I do, I have to tell you what Keith said before. So here goes.

Last week Keith went to see the specialist to talk over the results of his various tests. There was good news and there was bad news. The bad news was that he does have MS. The good news is that he has a very mild form of MS and apparently there’s no reason it should get any worse than the intermittent tremors he experiences now. Although it might. But there’s no reason it should.

And that was that.

As I say, that was last week.

This morning, Keith said, ‘There’s something I didn’t mention.’ He looked me in the eye. The right eye. It twitched. ‘There’s something in my brain,’ he said. ‘The size of a blueberry.’ He smiled. ‘It’s not supposed to be there.’ He shrugged, looked out of the window.

He had a brain scan. And they found this area, this small dark patch. A shadow. It could be anything. It could be nothing. Well, not nothing. It’s definitely something. But it could mean nothing.

He has to go in for more tests this Wednesday. So he’ll find out soon enough. Well, not soon enough, but… you know what I mean.

Last night I had Ange crying on my shoulder, sobbing that she wouldn’t know what to do without her mum. I told her everything will be alright. Will it? Probably. One way or the other.

This morning I had Keith, all wet-eyed and looking elsewhere as the grey Kent countryside blurred past him like quotidian hyperspace. I told him everything will be alright. Will it?

We hang by a thread.

And sometimes it really scares me.

Meanwhile, in other, somewhat lighter news, Sally wants to take me out for a meal, which is as queer as it is exciting. (Queer in the old-fashioned sense). But she can only do Thursday. Which means that speed dating will have to be sacrificed. Apart from the fact that I’ve already paid, this actually makes me feel rather gay. (Also in the old-fashioned sense.) So… rather than throwing the money away, is there anyone out there who’d like a potentially humiliating experience on me? If so, drop me a line and I’ll give you all the details.

Salut.

Feedback Friday :: All Work And No Play Makes This A Dull Blog

bulk :: 16st 5 (Bollocks bollocks bollocks)
alcohol units imbibed :: 12
cigarettes smoked :: 0 (Hurray!)
joints smoked :: 0
runs run :: 0
swims swum :: 0
writing jobs accepted :: 4
grieving friends comforted :: 1
silver linings :: 1

Typically, just as I’d decided to devote more time to writing stuff that interests me, I got offered a lot more work writing stuff that doesn’t interest me. Which I would be a lunatic to turn down. This means that my entire week has been eaten whole by deadlines. Except for the small part of it which has been dedicated to helping Ange come to terms with the death of her mum.

I never met Ange’s mum, but by all accounts she was a wonderful woman. She’d been ill for a while and she suffered a second stroke last weekend. Then, just as she was recovering from that, she suffered a fatal heart attack. Ange was there when she died. She took it hard, blamed herself, got drunk, had sex with a stranger, cried during the sex, ran home in the middle of the night without any knickers and took the week off work. Then she phoned me on Tuesday in tears. Mutual schoolfriend Karen was also there by the time I arrived. I spent the rest of the week popping back when possible to keep her from beating herself up and helping her arrange the funeral.

The funeral is on Sunday.

Oh, and next Thursday, I am going speed dating. I booked it on a whim, a bottle of wine and a prayer, before I could talk myself out of it.

So next week at least, should be interesting. This week however, all told, has been rotten. I had so many things I wanted to get on with and I couldn’t get on with any of them. One interesting thing however: I received an email from Sally (she of the silver eyes and Araki obsession), asking me how I am. I haven’t replied yet. Because I am cool.

If you’re still reading this, Sally, how do you fancy coming to a funeral on Sunday? Go on, it'll be dead good.

Now I must work.

How very very dull of me.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

RIP Sylvia.