so far so so-so

A couple of hours with an old yellow T-shirt,a tube of glue and a permanant marker... and that's me all set for the Egg-Run tomorrow !

Wahey !

I find myself despairing of myself, I really do...

On the issue of the Guv'ment debating changes to the law on Royals marrying Catholics...

I think it does actually matter a lot...

(Although of course I recognize this is a cynical 'debate' designed to get the poppies out and the flags flying)...

Because we could all end up under the Papal Bullwhipshit faster than you could say ...

Biblical Inerrancy ...

ie) The literal interpretation of the Bible is without error, and the Pope's interpretation of the Bible is just the Jeez bees knees...

Pope Benedict's view that 'Condoms are BAD' would seem a sad substitute for the 'Knickers have AIDS' ads that we've got going for us in our struggling society...

Faith and Godlessness are not mutually exclusive terms when it comes to morality, after all, we are all worried that we might be going to hell in a hand-cart...

I really don't give a toss about Monarchy or God...

But I care deeply about rationality and common-sense and the future of me and you...

Why does that positive structural word have the warning red triangle 'con' in front of it ?...

I've had a constructive day...

I sorted out Firstborn's immediate educational requirements...

I learned the Alto harmony and a couple of words to 'Rhythm of Life' (there are several clues in the title, and guess which one I can't get my head 'round ?)...

And I showered the sodding dog...

All hail !

I. Showered. The. Dog.

The hound rolled in dead seagull juice a couple of days ago and has been seven-stones worth of unwelcome, sad-puppy-eyed, bull-necked stupid stinky dog flesh in the house since...

But now brethren, he is cleansed and smells of coconuts and roses...

On the other hand, I smell of a big, wet, terrified, shitty dog who used to smell of dead seagulls before he rubbed it all off on me...

But on the upside...

I got a bracing workout keeping him in there, with my back to the shower-door, arms and legs and sundry furniture firmly planted against the opposite wall while he did his sweet 'Aaarararghargh I will kill you' thing... Bless !

So I think you'll all agree that today (despite my bruises, scratches and miscellaneous damage to bathroom fixtures and fittings)...

I did won, yes ?...

Today the dog...

Tomorrow the kids...

The day after that... who knows ?

*rolls sleeves up*

No. Don't stop me now...

I took Sinister up to A&E after school yesterday to get one of my earrings out after her little experiment with self-piercing last weekend...

The whole stud had disappeared inside the ear-lobe (and we had to relive the embarrassment of them checking that her last attendance had been when she glued her own clanging gob shut with nail-glue)...

After two hours they put her on laughing-gas and removed the stud with what looked like pliers and a brad-awl, whilst she lay there guffawing and breaking my fingers...

So, by hook or by crook I got my earring back, bloodied but unbent... result !

And as we left arm-in-arm she piped up a little wobbily...

'Wow, that was great !...where can you buy that stuff ?'

My mum is ancient and frail and a bit of a nutter...

She doesn't want my pity, but for plenty of reasons that's pretty much all I've got...

And pity is a such a serious and bloody sad business...

She lives close by, so I've been able to help her for many more years than she did me...

To cut a dramatic, long (and possibly serialized) story short...

She's needed to go into care for quite a while, but has absolutely refused until last week...

When it all became scramble!scramble!.for the Queen-and-King-of-Cheese ...

Everything was set up with Social Services and her GP for an assessment ...

When I phoned her half-a-dozen times and got no reply Beloved ran me to her flat...

She was reading in bed...(she knew I'd come although I'd done the cards and gifts last night and I'd begged for today to be with my own fragile kids under the circumstances)...

Aha !...she has a cunning plan to stop those bastard care-homes getting their hands on her pension...

To come and live with us !!...

If there is indeed a just and caring God...

I demand that he kill one of us now

(In other news I got red roses; white tulips; incredibly short-lived chocolates; candles; china-mugs; balloons from which we can inhale and say 'I wub youuuu!' like Britney and 'The Elegance of the Hedgehog' by Muriel Barbery)...

And Firstborn threw his hearing-aid case at the lappy and smashed some keys, because he's gone a bit like Helen Keller before Anne Sullivan got onto her case...

Firstborn's attitude is...

'At least I don't have to listen to shit I don't want to hear any more'...

But now he's put his hearing-aid in for once, because I've explained through the art of mime, how much we miss talking to him (even though the feeling isn't reciprocated) and he has gone to talk to his dad about The Reds ...

Re: Raffa's contract...do you think they put something in the ink ?

At community choir rehearsals :

'It's Elton John... not fucking Aida'...

'Yes, yes...you shit glitter'...

And why am I not the most popular person on the planet...

Again ?

Everyone else did it !...

Yelped Sinister...

Whilst dipping her day-glo agent-orange self-pierced ear into a hot saline bowl, while her mum and dad pondered the E&A options...

I've said it before and I'll say it again...

Teens...

Wankers !...

There were 16 professionals at that meeting and I'm still reeling...

Shit, it was hard...

I thought I'd burst...

But I didn't...

Hoofuckingray...

There are so many threads to unwind...

Firstborn is well and truly fuckedstuck...

Everything is 'pointless'...

He won't attend appointments in case they're audiology and they set off tinnitus...

He has to have a scan tomorrow, and face it, he's a six-footer and I can't carry him to the car...

The upshot is that other people have responsibilities towards my child...

So I don't have to pick up all the dropped stitches...

Lazy cow that I am...

The star of the show was the LEA SEN head honcho...

This shit Local-Respect-My-Authority-LEA does not deserve her, or her manager.

I have developed a healthy respect for the people signing the cheques...

In the meantime we have to 'talk' to Firstborn about his harsh options...

He can be 'deaf' and learn signing and join the deaf community...

He can be 'hearing' (but not as he knew it) with technological aids...

Both options forbid him and us sitting on our sorry arses being...

Well, you know...

*whispers*

Sorry for ourselves...

In my bid to be the cheap-skateriest eco-bint in this world of sagging Agas, I have grown my own sourdough starter...

It's bubbling away malevolently in the corner there, waiting to be fed...

All it took was flour, warm water and 48 hours exposure to the natural yeasts, nicotine, hacking coughs and the bad vibes in our kitchen...

These starters can last for generations I'm told...

They are even given names (yes, like pets, bless !)...

Perhaps I shall call mine Marlon...

Or Nigella...

Or Homer...

Or Mum...

Any suggestions ?

http://www.wirraleggrun.org/jellybean-kids-appeal

The Wirral Egg Run will be scrambling on 29th March...

If you've got a bike you can ride it if you like...

It would be great to get the official bike count up to 10,000...

Have a browse around the various sites...

BrrrummmBruuuUUUMMmmm !!!

Gibbous...

I'm still chasing cats...

You know the way Wylie Coyote happily hangs in mid-air until he realizes there is no solid ground beneath his feet, and it's only then he plummets into the canyon ?...

Well, that was me this morning, a moments panic about the lack of support for Firstborn and I'm a blubbing goner...

The 'emergency' multi-agency meeting about his sudden deafness is still a week away, making it seven weeks since it happened, giving emergency the same weight with the Local Authority as the term fast-food with McDonalds...

So I got onto NDCS (National Deaf Childrens Society) who listened to me blert and took my number. This evening a woman called me back with some really helpful advice and ideas as to who to contact and what to ask for at the meeting. She spoke to me for a good half-hour, they are looking up local teenagers with cochlear implants to come and talk to Firstborn about that and other options...

He is disengaging decisively and has refused to attend his cherry-picked timetable (a bit here and a bit there), which doesn't sit well with his Asperger's way of thinking, so we'll be content get him into school for three set afternoons a week for the time being...

Wearing his hearing aid is another battle...after all it must be much more satisfying to watch us shout/mime 'stop kicking that bloody football in the house !' a la 'What's My Line ?'...

Liverpool University is at risk of losing it's Philosophy Department along with the Division of Statistics and Probability as part of a review...

What were the chances of that happening, eh ?

Ah well, got to be philosophical about it...

*shrugs*

FirstNews reports that research carried out for TheBabyWebsite.com looking at online phone directories, found these people living in the UK :

Mary Christmas, Doug Hole, Paige Turner, Stan Still, Rose Bush, Tim Barr, Pearl Button, Justin Case and Carrie Oakey...

Personally I always wanted to be called Rosy Glow...

I am unique....

I am one with the angry Squirrel. I shout : 'I am the unique. I am unified with the badger overlord.'...

People run away...

That's because they're jealous...

JEALOUS..

I thought bread baking might be therapeutic for Firstborn, but as he wasn't interested (and quite forcibly so!)...it has become therapy for me...

Oh the wonderful alchemy of it !...

How the crumbly, flaky brewhouse mess of dough becomes toffee-silken when kneaded quickly over and over in a little pool of oil...

How it grows and transforms secretly under it's muslin, skin becoming talc-soft and peachy like a puffball fungus in the dark...

Then a quick punch ! and down it goes, putty in my kneading hands again...

Wallop ! into the tin from a great height, slash slash slash! into it's perfectly taut pale underbelly and back under wraps to regain it's pride with perfect aplomb...

A smear of oil, the merest stroke, then it's into the pumpkin-carriage oven to it's final metamorphosis...

A golden disc, the staff of life...

An old shoe...

PIRATE PARTAAY !!

x

Nigella has been known to pull it off...

But I couldn't...

Her leftovers make sundry dinner guests swoon with delight...

I should have just said...

Fuck Nigella....

And stood back and watched the curry burn in the rush...

Again...

I'm all backwards...

I used to be head of faculty and now I don't know which end to put my velcro shoes on...

Somehow I ended up giving up full-time work, then part-time work then supply-work...

(Over the years you understand, not all in the same week)...

I've de-skilled myself utterly...

If I was any good at on-line poker I'd do that instead (but I think we all know that wouldn't end particularly well either !)...

So...

I go into work this morning, walk into a class of 15 year-olds (who kind of half know my face from being around the place) and say...

'Hello'...

One six-foot shaven-headed bruiser takes a short appraisal...

'Fuck off you cunt, just fuckofffuckoff' he says...

Fair enough...

I remove the trays of plastic rulers and sharp pencils out of harms way, take my gigs off and wait for the showdown...

But only few moments later it's all over...

One set of window-blinds down, one table over, one door slammed...

A few half-hearted missiles on the floor (I know it was half-hearted because if he wanted to cause real damage he easily could have, and does do)...

Minimal damage, and no offence meant or taken...

It takes me out of myself...

Y'know ?

It's good to be back...

Feels kinda homely...

It was a cheap shot I know...

No I don't have strong views on body hair maintenance generally, but I'm talking about the cat...

She looks like a bandy-legged half-pint of exploded Guinness and the time has come (as it does to us all) to trim the furball's chest bobbles...

The Elastoplast and Dettol are on stand-by (for me, not her)...

*snaps marigolds*

I'm going in...

The perfect book would have to be a graphic novel with a strip of text underneath each frame (like the old Rupert books)...

Titled 'Debbie Does Titus Andronicus in a Victorian Frock' translated from Russian and published by Mills n' Swoon...

And the job's a good'un !

*Bagsy all rights to the genre*

Instructions:
Look at the list and make bold those you have read and italicise the ones you own but haven't read yet (note, not just own and will never read ).

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen -
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien -
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte -
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling -
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible -
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte -
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell I
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations -
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott -
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy -
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare -
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien -
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens -
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll -
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis -
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis -
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery -
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding -
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan -
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert -
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons -
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley -
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce -
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens -
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas -
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So I think that's 67/100, although I can read better than I can count and I don't see why individual titles are listed with collections/chronicles/complete works...

I was surprised and disappointed in myself by the number of books there I thought I'd read (particularly Enid Blyton The Faraway Tree)...

*promise to self Moby Dick next and no excuses*

And I don't suppose singing Les Miz in the key of flat counts?

And yes, I did read The Bible, out of interest...and very interesting it was too...

Does anybody know who compiled the list and on what basis ?...

Was it a Tristram in preparation for a speed-date ?...

In pecking away (like a bull at a gate) at the practicalities, I feel that I am contributing to some sort of order and it helps to bury the underlying feelings of sheer uselessness and panic...

The notepad is full of phone numbers and my head is full of shite, my fingers have got dial-tingle and my tongue is cleaved to the roof of my mouth with gibbering...

I have prioritized three things to get Firstborn through to the other side of this :

Psychological support (talking about it)
Rehabilitation (getting used to it)
Access (getting on with it)

There will be a multi-agency meeting shortly to see just who can do what, as the support has to be specialized yet no-one has the experience in such sudden hearing loss with a teen who has underlying ASD to boot...

There must also be further testing for a diagnosis... at the moment they are looking at brain de-myelination and lesions caused by CMV... in short, this and other of Firstborn's difficulties might have originated because of complications in the womb and lain dormant like a microscopic dragon in it's lair that has just woken up and started frying neurons...

We're chasing it's tail ...

Why can't you fit a rectangular jpeg into a square hole hmmm ?...

There were thousands of these spent egg-cases along the shoreline this morning... ten-deep at the bar and a few miles across...

'Whelks' yelps Rick Stein, 'porridge-poison' groans Heston and 'I'm not eating that crap no-matter how hard things get' vow the rest of us...

*puts the kettle on and gets the vinegar out*

Thanks for your responses to my robe-rending...

No, there's nothing you can do...

I just promised myself when Firstborn lost his hearing that I would beat myself up about it openly instead of curling up on the sofa whimpering...

I could write it for my own eyes only, but where's the hand-wringing-cat-kicking-carpet-chewing satisfaction in that ?

I might prefix all such posts with 'Deaf-', just so you know what to skip, because this is going to go on and on and I'll be gnashing my teeth a lot, and it is awkward if you're after a chat and a laugh to find someone endlessly and unhingedly ranting...

Hell, I cross the road and pretend I haven't seen people when I can't think what to say to them all the time !...

But please know that the drugs hugs and kisses are much appreciated...

We've (I've) been pushing Firstborn to press-on with his life...

I'm usually there every step of the way, which as a teenager he naturally resents...

He was in charge, had to be ready, had to watch for his taxi...

Had to get used to it...

At 10.30 there was a call from school saying he wasn't in...

The taxi escort had pushed a note through the door, but the post had come on top of that and I didn't see it...he had appeared to be brave but his sister Sinister said that he was horribly depressed the night before...

He wouldn't...not that...would he ?...

So the calls were made, I trawled the streets first on foot and then in the car. Beloved came home and a very nice policeman came round and searched the house and asked for dental records and photos...

About 5 hours later the same policeman picked Firstborn up just wandering around as he had been all day, technically truanting . In a world of his own...a world that is his for life now and which I can't imagine......

I've been forcing him to go to school, continuity and all that...

I've been a fool...

This fragile lad ...

We're shredded because we can't help him....

I know he's almost big enough and ugly enough to look after himself...

But he was and is...

A lost boy

He needs help...

Nobody's offered, I've had to ask...

When will it come ?

One year ago...

(Remembering I'm not a penny-counter and there are people far more qualified than I am, urging you not to panic and to sew your savings into your sleeves)...

I swear when I did a big family supermarket shop at a competetive outlet I could roughly calculate the cost round the shelves and again at the till, and it always worked out at about a fiver a bag...

It's more than doubled...

Serious news...

We'll be hauling our sorry arses along with our newly printed notes in wheel-barrows next to buy a white-sliced...

And we'll be fighting over it ...

In the true spirit of socialism I intend to set up a 'with-profits' soup-kitchen...

*Bagsy the lard*

Feed the people, tuppence a bag...