Sun says scribbler's scuppered!

Song of songs

One line from each of my overall top twenty et voila! A whole new song!

Well it's been more than a year
Turn a new page, tear the old one out
Life takes some fighting
That's just the fear

But that's not the only lie I told you
And it's too late to change
You've got a chance to put things right
I keep on pushing for some way through

Sometimes I wish, I could cry on demand
that I would be loved even when I numb myself
They tell me to fight it
Can't expect the world to be your Raggedy And-y

I've never wanted something rational
I don't want to be your idol
And every star above you
A fragment of the girl, soft and sentimental

And wondering what's meant to be
An older version of me
And though it seems absurd
All I wanted was some evidence
that you really like me


I did have each line link to it's song but lost it when I formatted the text to look uniform. Bollocks and buggeration.

My cockliments to the chef

What a dick

Dreams and dishcloths

I'm in a dentists waiting room, it's packed. He's running three hours late.

I go to the reception and ask to make an appointment for another, quieter day. Explain that there's standing room only in the ante room, three people on a sofa in the surgery and two going through the relaxation process before they join them there.

"No! He only agreed to see you at this time!"

I leave, ride my bike away from the Canning Town high street of my youth and into the pub. It's a birthday celebration, everyone is doing a turn on stage. I drink and watch songs, speeches, mimes, photo displays, dances made up by children. The birthday couple I'm sitting with tell me it's my turn but I don't know them so I go to the toilet to look for my bike. It's not there so I search the park that the pub is in. It's been stolen.

I go home to get another bike so I can go back to the dentist. The bikes are kept in the front room, a proper front room that should only be used for visitors so I tidy the chains and locks and bags full of puncture repair kits before cycling off to the receptionist that speaks like acid. I go via the shopping centre where I try without success to find something to spend a gift voucher on.

The reception is now in the park, near the pub that I don't want to return to because I don't know what to perform. It's dark, I get past the pub unnoticed, find my bike in the now circular room and sit on it waiting for the woman behind the counter to tell me the dentist will see me now, even though I'm not in pain anymore. She doesn't, she just glares at me.

Waking up from that dream I find myself in a shaky state. Gently I potter round the house doing mindless tasks until I catch myself fixating on why I bought pink designer dishcloths with pretty flowers on when essentially all they do is wipe up grease and dirt.

I think this is why I drink. My mind scares me when I'm sober.

The oldest child

I need a top to do garden work in, something that will allow me to catch the sun without the neighbours catching a flash. The one I choose is a canary islands souvenir, it suddenly hits me that I bought it on honeymoon. 17 years ago.

Tournament day. I don't compete, I cheerlead. Wildly, to make sure my students know how proud I am of them and my mates get the lift they need mid bout. One mate asked babygirl if I was this daft all the time and was graced with a sigh and rolling eyes. "She drives us all mad, we're more mature than her most of the time"

I go out for takeaway, notice a face I vaguely recognise. Chat and catch up, as you do. It's been 25 years since we saw each other.

I think my kids might be right. Maybe it is time I grew up.

Love calls you by your name

Sis tells me it's grass is greener syndrome. Tactfully, she reminds me that if you were here I'd not be doing karate. How I felt more suffocated than cared for. How I'd crave space after a week or so, just as you were settling in. How, far from my current fantasy of you helping me work through my thoughts and feelings, you would expect me to do so on your timetable. How I'd put my emotional shutters down and you'd keep me up all night trying to shout them back up. How you used the very intelligence and articulateness I fell in love with to keep me in my place.

Sure, those are some of the reasons I finished things after five years. That doesn't mean I don't wish things could have been different. You gave me so much, I was able to give you so much and we discovered so much together. I'll always love you for that, darling. And I really, really miss you.


I hope you find your manger, Joseph.

Sitting on my shoulders

Something interesting I found on Mike's site about how you see yourself and how others see you. I've done something similar with real life people when I studied psychology (I got bored with the stats work and threw it in in the second year. So much for my degree!) but I'm interested to see if there's any difference between my awareness of myself and my online personality.

Feel free to be anonymous, I'd much prefer honesty to names! There's one for nice traits and one for not so nice, all you have to do is go and click six words of each that you think apply to me. And then get your own, of course...

Angel words

Devil words

Procrastinating prat

I have lovely lessons planned for tonight's students.

I have discovered my new kitchen blind is too narrow so

I have tidied up all my tools and separated my nails and screws according to size.

I have the cleanest oven in the land.

I have the neatest pile of bath towels in any airing cupboard, ever.



I have still not completed my impact statement.

If you see me start to go through and attach labels to my posts, please find me and strap me to the keyboard till the fucking thing is finally done.

Making the grade

Today has been quite weird. I drove the kids to my mothers and saw her for the first time in months but I'll blog/process that another time, this is about recognition, celebration, feeling visible and valid and actually liking myself for a change.

Getting back and having the house to myself was blissful. It was, of course, a shitpit due to kids being on holidays but after a couple of loud, therapeutic hours with Rufus and Henry , both my abode and my mind were much clearer.

Sitting down with lunch I click lazily onto one of my favourite brainfood places and discover that Lyle has nominated me for POTW. As a regular reader I know the high standard of nominations so I'm immensely flattered that someone thought a post of mine good enough to include in the longlist. Thank you again, Lyle. For a lurker you ain't half had an affect!


Off to karate with a smile on my face, collecting my friend on the way. I really like her but I'm jealous of her skill in kumite and finding certain things so easy so, when she raves about certain moves of mine that I do as a matter of course my grin gets that bit bigger. I realise that my mindset needs changing, I am improving and I need to acknowledge it.

Get to the dojo, flirt through warm up, sigh when Sensei announces a stamina session. Pace breathing, keep going, be faster than that up his own arse bloke, breathe, spar, kata, spar, kata, legs screaming, feel no pain, think helium, spar Sensei, try not to die, push through, dig deep, I hit him!, cop a few, I kicked him!, keep breathing, don't vomit, kata, spar, kata, spar, is it over yet?, it's only meant to be 1.5 hours, breathe, dig, deep, don't, die, done. It's done. Line up to bow out and hear some names called to accept their grades, clap, whoop pitifully at one I'm closer to, hear my name. My name. MY NAME!

2nd kyu. One more grading then it's black belt.

That was a good day.

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My bum hurts

An hour and a half of cycling will do that to you, assuming you're not used to sitting on a razor blade. And don't believe all that crap those gel saddle cover selling people tell you cos they don't work either.

Still, babygirl and I had fun and there's something very liberating about cycling, even if I do feel like a bloody great blimp and have to be taught cyclecraft by my daughter. She found it incredible that the bike I was on was the first one I'd ever owned in my life and I loved that she did cos that means she thinks it's normal for all kids to have a bike of their own. It fucking is! I just never had normal, or a bike, so I love the times when she makes those incredulous faces cos it means I've done good atsomefuckingthing as a mum. My own mind may be fubar'd but my kids? They're fit to live life fantastically and therefore easily pay for my choice of care home.

We also had a major giggle at the top of the hill where we stopped for a water break. A group of teens were messing about near the stream/river thingy at the bottom (I'm not good at knowing what these things are but it's wet and runs in a wavy line through the country park, ok?), you know pushing each other in and filming it for youtube, that sort of thing.

The group of teens that joined us at the hilltop were picking out the ones they knew at the bottom and, me being me, I joined in the conversation and made jokes about washing wet, smelly clothes - just prior to one of the lads deciding that if he was going in he'd at least save his mum a mucky job and strip off.

Completely. Stark, bollock, naked.

Which, obviously, meant that his mates picked up his discarded clothes and ran off with them.

I'm pleased to report that this lad had no self-confidence issues whatsoever judging by his waving at his audience at the top of the hill before running, Benny Hill style, after the lads that had his boxers then doing star jumps and hip thrusts when he realised he wasn't going to retrieve them.

I only stopped laughing when a real grown up ascended the hill from the other side and gave us all a sideways glance and a tut. The very second he'd passed us I collapsed into giggles again, babygirl voiced her shame of me to the group of giggling teens and the naked lad recovered his socks so it was all over.

It was fun while it lasted but blimey, my bum don't half hurt now!



I've had a major Alanis day today, ripping all her cd's to the hdd and replaying them as mp3's and suchlike. That was the last of the cd's to add to the downloaded stuff - so why do I still not feel like I have the right music to fit my mood? 15 fucking gigs of music and nothing touches me?

That's just wrong.

And now, the end is near...

and I don't know where to start.

I'm trying to do an impact statement. No, that's not it. I'm trying to get together a mere list of notes to take to the appointment to do the victim impact statement.

An appointment which will also involve me hearing of episodes of abuse that I had forgotten, tucked away in the dark recesses of my mind, locked in a sturdy old box with phone directories and bricks and anvils stacked on top so they can't fall out unexpectedly. Denied, avoided, dismissed. Much like myself, really.

Until now. Because these are episodes, incidents, occurrences that he remembers, that he told of during his questioning and that form part of his statement. Not my statement, because I buried them somewhere inaccessible and couldn't find them to tell when, 30 years later, I eventually got brave enough to tell anything.

Because of the guilty plea I don't have to hear them, but I'm choosing to anyway. This may sound weird, sick even, but those moments, well they're mine and I lived them and deserve to remember them. I've lost so many years to blackout and I want my years back.

I figure there must have been good times in there somewhere so maybe if I get the bad memories acknowledged, let them out of the box, I may find some good ones that got shoved in with them by accident. Or is that my inner silver lining girl talking? Could be. God, that bitch never shuts up, she's always there with the 'at least' this and 'lesson learned' that.

Fuck off, Pollyanna; just, please. Fuck. A. Long. Way. Off.

I have a list to make.

I don't know where to start.

Alanis does Fergie's humps

And it's absolutely hysterical... regarde vous!

You couldn't make it up

My mother, in her standard victim-y fashion, has been using my brother as a go between to take items belonging to step-dad and hand them over in various lay-bys. The most recent meeting they had was a few days before last tuesdays plea and directions hearing. Brother isn't a big talker anyway and finds these occassions particularly awkward, but found himself more lost for words than ever when stepdad said

"If the case gets thrown out due to a technicality, do you think your mother would let me move back in? I mean, nothing would have been proven, right?"

What a tit

I'm a music girly but last night, for some completely unknown reason, I had the telly on in the background. BBC3 were showing a prog called 'My big breasts and me' and I, being all modern and techy and suchlike, nipped off to the website to get some info as soon as I heard something that caught my interest.

The site tells me it's a "Documentary following three women who are naturally well endowed and exploring how they feel about having big breasts"

And that "Jodie is terrified of having breast reduction surgery but with her breasts causing her chronic back pain she knows it may be her only option. Vicky hopes that alternative therapies and an exercise regime will downsize her chest, and Maddie, a fashion student, struggles to be taken seriously in a world where she feels only women with small boobs can look attractive"

The bit that originally got my interest was Vicky being measured at the gym. Vicky is a promoter of gay nights in Brighton and, in photo shoots, chooses to let the fellas glam up and takes the part of Ugly Betty for herself. The man in charge of the tape at the gym looked like these were the first real set of funbags he'd ever had to deal with, on or off duty. Prior to the exercise program her bust was 39.25 inches at the fullest point.

Mine's 45.

Stop fucking whinging, faghag!

Fwengebola - obvious when you know it!

The man with the name that made me slap my own head has tagged me with this completely merkin meme. So blame him...

A - Available or Single? Single, not always available.
B - Best Friends? No, loads of mates though.
C - Cake or Pie? Cake. Naughty but nice!
D - Drink of Choice? Brandy, diet coke, no ice.
E - Essential Item? My pc.
F - Favourite Colour? Pink.
G - Gummi Bears or Worms? Both gross.
H - Hometown? London.
I - Indulgence? Chocolate.
K - Kids and Names? Three, one of each. They all have names.
L - Life is incomplete without? Death. It rounds things out.
M - Marriage Date? Inconsequential. The divorce finalised on Valentines day though.
N - Number of Siblings? 2 full, 2 half, one adopted.
O - Oranges or Apples? Broccoli.
P - Phobias/Fears? Crawly things (men included)
Q - Favourite Quote? I ask for so little, just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave.
R - Reasons to smile? Dirty jokes.
S - Season? Summer.
T - Tag 3 People? No.
U - Unknown Fact About Me? I detest badly written questions.
V - Vegetable You Hate? Beetroot.
W - Worst Habit? Comfort eating.
X - X-rays You've Had? None.
Y - Your Favourite Foods? Chocolate.
Z - Zodiac? Gemini.

Cheers for that, fuckface.

Guilty!

Step dad has pleaded/pled (I can't think of the right word and right now I don't give a rubbery yellow fuck!) guilty! I don't have to go to a full trial in the summer! One of the charges has been negotiated down a step in exchange for him pleading guilty to everything but basically he's admitted about 15 charges!

About last night...

Ok, so everyone is gorgeous and lovely and all that so take that as read. I know what you really want is the juicy bits, the gossip, the debauchery. Which I'd tell you in minute detail, if I could remember any.

The snippets I do recall are...

Before leaving the house - Me, midnight, my kids.

No 1 Son confirming that he really does come out with some cracking lines by saying (about his not supporting West Ham despite being born on the manor) "If you're born in a bin you don't eat garbage all your life, you get out"

In the pub - Me, Midnight, Lady, Innocent, Vi, Goro and Homme

Everyone going crazy when I got a call and gave directions over the phone to where we were. No-one realised it was my nephew on the line and not Fwengey till I told them after. They visibly deflated.

Me not realising the topic of David Cameron had come to an end during a round of Kings and, when everyone looked at me for my go, shouting 'lying bastards!' instead of taking a card like I was meant to.

Me grabbing hold of middy under the table to alert him to a thumb round. Him kicking the hell out of my leg to return the favour!

Untold amounts of hugging, kissing and flirting. We're an extremely touchy feely crowd. Goro is completely eatable even if she does think that 24 is a multiple of 7 (and have the ability to convince everyone but me that it is, too!)

Yeehaa, turn around, shaking that ass, blowing kisses, swearing allegiance, little green men, 'your finger didn't get wet!', strange looks from other punters, pointing (always with the pointing!), me getting the blame for being the last out of the bar, wanting to rub the bar guys head but not.

In the club - me, goro, vi and middy

Goro grabbing a handbag thinking it was Vi's. We then noticed Vi's was on her shoulder and had to sneak it back quick!

Us girls doing that silly scream thing that drunk girls do when I saw that fwengey had texted.

Me trying to get some ciggies from the machine in the very dark corner, only to find later that I'd pressed the button for menthols. (Worry not, I've discovered I can be just a social (read: pissed) smoker, woohoo!)

Me and Vi going to the loo, me coming out and finding her gone, only to be found wandering drunkenly, ten minutes later by middy.

Plenty flirting, singing and dancing, Vi with her hand on the ceiling a lot of the time. Goro and I not really getting why, Middy getting a lot of 'Man, you're with three women? That's just greedy!' type looks.

After the club

Deciding that Vi was in no condition to travel alone and bringing her back with me and Middy after seeing Goro into a cab.

Driving a hard bargain with the cab driver, stating (ok, slurring) that I'd ring my ex husband and check the price if I thought he was fleecing us and telling him he was lucky to have such a long job. Singing snow patrol in the cab, loudly. Adding insult to injury by arguing that he definitely had to turn right and don't tell me it's illegal, I lived round here and knew what I was doing. I was wrong, we had to turn round.

Getting back to mine to find No 1 Son still up. Middy pouring drinks as Vi hugged No 1 Son hello and I sorted out playing a track that seemed really very important at the time.

Having the absolute best drunken conversation which veered from being screamingly funny to incredibly intense with me doing my wise old woman of perception and intuition thing (I still say I'm right too so piss off, middy!)

Running out of booze and realising it was around 5.30am.

All going to bed. Together.

Bloody brilliant night which I had to sleep off till about 3pm today. Can't wait to do it all again!

Sssshhh!

I'm feeling extremely delicate.

Back later. Just wanted to say I'm alive. (Vi wasn't wearing a belt, that helped)