Tag Archives: author blog

7 Apr 2024 · 12:25 pm

Respite and random thoughts about faith…

Blimey, this week’s been a bit of a roller coaster. As you know, last week I was having extreme difficulties with what felt like bowel-based armageddon. I’m going to relate the happy ending of that story (spoiler: I didn’t die in the end even though I was genuinely beginning to wonder which would go first, the virus or me). I should also run this with the caveat that it is mostly supposed to be funny, and/or reassuring to those in a similar position. But I have no idea which bits of what I write/say make people laugh. I know they usually do, somewhere along the way, the trick is just to make it look deliberate. So if I’ve misjudged this and none of it is funny at all my humblest apologies. I’ll try and find something laminating-bacon-level stupid to do over the course of the week to make things more interesting. Right. Disclaimer made, on we go …

Having cancelled our holiday I then hot-footed it to the Doc’s on Tuesday again, desperately seeking help but also the referral she suggested to see what in god’s name is going on with my insides. She agreed that the referral was a good idea and suggested I have another go at solids. ‘Rice and chicken … and maybe a hard boiled egg, but not much else,’ she warned me.

‘Can I have the egg scrambled?’ I asked her.

‘Yes, but no butter or milk.’

‘Can I have coffee?’

‘With a meal.’

Woot.

‘With a tiny bit of milk?’

‘Yes.’

God love her. So I went home, made myself a small cup of coffee and had a scrambled egg. It might possibly have been the loveliest thing I’ve eaten in my entire fucking life. Trooper that he is, McOther went off and bought some chicken which he divided, making some into a delicious pasta dish for himself and McMini. I decided I would do my portion with basmati rice, chopped onions and herbs, I also added a stock cube. It was surprisingly tasty.

The next day, I felt human. I went and had the first appointment, an ultrasound scan (clear) and then we collected the cat. I had energy. It was wonderful.

That night I felt so much better I decided to branch out with some different foods. The following lunch I had the chicken and bacon in an amatricana sauce that the boys hadn’t finished the night before on lovely big shells of pasta. I did forebear to have cheese. There were no ill effects or indeed any. Having not ‘BEEN’ for 24 hours, I was cautiously optimistic I might, possibly, have turned the corner. For supper I put lentils rather than rice with my chicken and veg and cooked it in the oven with a tiny bit of cider. It was lovely. As I went to bed, I took my HRT pill and the hayfever one, although with real work to do my immune system had stopped yanking my chain and I wasn’t having any hayfever. My hands had stopped aching too.

I normally take supplements. Not many but taking Magnesium L-Threonate has definitely helped my menopausal brain fog and also made me sleep better. I’d read a few days previously that Magnesium supplements can set off this kind of reaction so I’d stopped them. Feeling a bit awake but at the same time really tired, I took one and went to bed. I knew what to do now, I reasoned. If my bottom unleashed armageddon during the night I could fix it.

It did.

Here’s another useful nugget of information people. If you are having the shits in the night, it’s more likely to be an infection, having them in the day is more likely to be IBS or some other thing caused by your immune system pissing you about. Always useful to know that. I spent Thursday drinking diorolite and thinking I was going to die but manfully started in again with the scrambled egg breakfast on Friday. Supper was chicken and rice. I had no coffee, indeed, I am no longer addicted to coffee. I can now not drink any for a whole day and there will be no headache, which is a bit of a bonus. Let’s face it, something good had to come out of all this tsunami of crap. Come the evening I did not take a magnesium pill.

I slept like a fucking log.

Today I am very tired but I am basically fine. I know I have had something grim, I feel very post viral; weak and feeble the way you do after a really bad go of flu, but my weight has stabilised at 10st 13lbs (about 67kg I think) but I had a tom tit today and it was normal for the first time in about 6 weeks … Holy shit (literally I guess)! What a joy that was! I nearly took a fucking photo of it. But I didn’t because even I am not quite that bad, so instead here’s one of the absolutely enormous shit that pigeon did on my car (and long-suffering sister in-law) a while back.

Pigeon shit down the window of a Lotus Mwhahahargh! What have I sunk to?

And I took a walk up to the market today which feels so much better. At some point I will be having an endoscopy and a colonoscopy (either together in a couple of weeks or separately, starting with the endoscopy next week and the colonoscopy in a month or so).

Any takeaways from this? I probably should have stopped and rested at the beginning but I just. did. not. have. time. And I should have known it was a virus, because it had given my overactive immune system enough to do that the allergies and arthritic pain had all stopped. Well no, actually, I did know it was a virus, I just wasn’t sure if I was going to get better! I genuinely believed it might kill me at one point, because I’m not a drama queen at all. (Yes, that’s terribly melodramatic but, in my defence, I remember my Mum saying the exact same thing after she had pleurisy; as in, ‘It was awful! If I hadn’t had to look after your father I think I’d have happily gone then’.)

Also, I tidied up something I’d got lying about and turned it into a short story which I submitted to an anthology, so that’s grand. And I applied for a stall at the Ely Cathedral Christmas Fair, so that was grand too.

Thank you, everyone who gave me advice. It was actually really useful. I listened to/read all the links and stuff you all sent and it gave me things to try.

Now, if I can make this stick I have a target of getting fit and well by 21st when I have booked to go on a metal detecting rally half an hour up the road. Really looking forward to it as I haven’t been out for ages. And I’m going to go back to the gym. Possibly Thursday or maybe a week on Monday.

Other stuff …

A propos of nothing much, on the way home from the market today, I popped into the cafe next to the church to give them a bit of pay it forward cash. They know some of their customers, are really hungry but can’t afford to pay for a meal so you can drop a few quid in so they can give meals to these people for a reduced rate (or nothing). I then nipped into church to light a candle and say thanks for the end of the tsunami of crap. I tend to pay £1 each for them, I’m not sure if there is an actual price anywhere, but I didn’t have any cash so I did the minimum £5 card thing on the doo-hicky at the back which which is a safe 3 up front, anyway, I reckon. There was another lady in there, who was obviously having a bit of quiet time and as I walked back past her I stopped to ask if she was OK, but she said hello first.

I asked her if she was OK, anyway. I always ask this, because … I dunno … because I think it gives people an option if they need or want to say something, but they can also not say anything too, and it’s an important part of the ministry of that particular church, to me, because it’s a place of welcoming and inclusive kindness. Then as I got to the door thought about my remaining candles-in-hand and went back.

‘I didn’t have any cash so I’ve paid for a few candles up front, if you’d like to light one on me you are more than welcome,’ I said.

We got talking and she is new in her faith. She’d been brought up a Christian but it just hadn’t really clicked until recently. We ended up having a chat, which was lovely until we got onto the topic of how stuff sometimes aligns uncannily and … ugh, I ended up telling her the fucking ridiculously long Mother Death story which, even in the abridged version, took far too long. I only wanted to talk enough for her to feel relaxed and comfortable and then ask her about her faith journey, because I love hearing how other people came to have their faiths, possibly because my faith journey is so boring, or because I’m nosey, or quite possibly simply because I’m unable to do anything, even being a Christian, without hyperfocussing autistically about it. But also, because I suspect the lady would have liked to have talked about it, too, and that is far more likely to be the reason our paths crossed. But oh no, no. Nothing like that from shit-for-brains here.

If the good lord sent me to listen to her story, all I did was bloody well tell her mine. Perhaps that’s what he sent her for, to listen … poor woman if he did. I was desperate to ask her when I got to the end of her story but I could see she also wanted to be on her own for a bit too and recharge during her lunch hour. So I felt I should leave her to have a chat to God rather than me.

On the upside, I did make her laugh by telling her that one of the windows looked like Jesus jumping on a trampoline, a little nugget that was pointed out to me by one of the lay readers and she did pop in to church this morning for the first ten minutes or so.

On the downside … I comprehensively stuffed judging when it was time for me to shut up and I didn’t even ask her name. I think it was OK. She gave me a hug anyway. But urgh. It’s really frustrating to have a brain that’s really pointy in some respects and then be thicker than mince in others.

The thing is … I think I do have a kind of calling. Not to be holy particularly or anything, mostly it’s to write, but also to be kind … because my parents are both gone it is left to my brother and I to Be The Light. And I have a very strong sense that I must be the light now … it’s just that my parents made it look so fucking effortless but it’s actually really difficult. I’m not the kind of legend they both were were so … I can’t … yet. I might if I work very hard at it and all the stars align.

The thing is, maybe sometimes the fact I am a cheerful soul who is, to be honest, a bit of a bell-end is something I can use in a good way. It’s just that it’s a weapon I don’t quite know how to wield yet. I think it’s at the stage where it’s still a bit heavy for me, and metaphorically, I’m waving it round inadvertently cutting off the limbs of people round me and gouging walls the way a 6 year old would if given a real working lightsaber. It’s like a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of a rather overenthusiastic labrador … or my cat.

I think if I was to complete a what disciple are you? quiz, I’d be Peter; lovely guy, really sweet and well meaning, totally solid and practical too, but just … a bit of a wazzock sometimes. If he can say the wrong thing at the wrong time he will (God love you I’m sorry Peter but you know it’s true) and he’s just, so sensible and practical and well meaning and even though he blunders on from gaffe to gaffe he learns (unlike me). Maybe it’s because he’s so obviously human and flawed that I think he’s great … maybe we’re all Peter.

But at the same time, when I think about all the things I saw my parents do, the really amazing, treat-your-neighbour-as-yourself stuff, the overriding thing is that they were not embarrassed. They gave absolutely no fucks for social convention. On all levels there was simply the question, what is the right thing to do here? Oh yeh. That is. Check. Off we go.

The first time I saw a stranger in trouble on the street I stopped but I hung back, waiting for others to act. I was too shy to stop and help, myself. But then I shared a flat with someone who had epilepsy and she told me that actually, it really meant something when people stopped to help if she’d had a fit in a public place and was just lying on the ground. So now, if I see someone who looks like they might be in trouble I make a point of stopping.

If someone’s sitting down on the ground looking tired or weary, or yes, drunk, I ask them if they’re OK. Even if there’s a crowd round them I stop and ask (and the one time that has happened, when there was a crowd I mean, the woman on the ground was having a heart attack and nobody gathered round her had thought to phone for an ambulance, they were all just standing there, gawping. No-one was even holding her hand. So although six people had found her before me, I was the one who phoned). If someone’s begging I don’t always give them cash but I try to ensure I acknowledge their humanity and say hi.

Thinking about it. That’s the thing about my Mum and Dad. If there was some guy lying on the pavement with people stepping over him, my parents were not afraid to go over and check that he was merely in a drunken stupor, rather than seriously ill, and pop him in the recovery position if need be. They were never scared to ask people if they were OK, even if it might have made them look a bit stupid. In some cases they were not afraid to do something a bit dangerous, like give a homeless man a bed for the night.

While I looked on, not getting what was happening, my mum ran across the shingle of Shoreham beach and into the breaking waves to save the life of a child. She didn’t stop to think, ‘the parents might get the wrong idea if I manhandle their toddler’ or not even realise what was happening, like me. Maybe that’s the trick, at every level; getting to that point where the part of your brain that knows, ‘I should act/offer help, be kind,’ subsumes the ‘will I embarrass myself?’ awkwardness as the go-to neural pathway.

My parents were never afraid to step up. So I guess I’m getting there. I’ve got to the bit where I give no fucks about asking or offering or helping. But they were also really good at the aftermath and I’m not (unless it’s a crisis. I’m properly level-headed in a crisis but I’m a bit lumpy at the rest). I just need to get to the listening bit faster when it’s not a crisis I guess! Or I dunno … maybe I just have to hope that this afternoon was a time when the good lord had decided that what that lady actually needed, right there, was a well-meaning wanker. Although I’m not beyond thinking that it might have been that the well-meaning wanker needed a kind lady to talk to.

And yes. I think about everything I do in this much detail, which is why I write books I guess. Indeed it’s probably what makes the books alright. And no it doesn’t drive me that nuts. Although this mix of extreme self-awareness—and at the same time none—kind of dumb at times like Peter (sorry Peter) is sometimes annoying and I know I embarrass my very introvert husband constantly. But I can also let it go quite happily; chalk it up to experience, try to learn and move on. If I didn’t, I’d have probably topped myself, or been admitted to a long term mental institution, years ago. Never mind. I’ve got the no fucks bit down, so that’s a start. And tomorrow is a clean slate, after all. I can start again.

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Filed under General Wittering

Tagged as advice from writers, author blog, author blogs, faith, faith journey, god stuff, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T McGuire, Mary Fails at Modern Life, off topic, trying to be a writer, women in sci-fi, women writers

17 Feb 2024 · 12:14 pm

Eyebomb, Therefore I Am: new book release

Yep! You read that correctly, I, M T (writes at a speed which compares unfavourably with continental drift) McGuire have a new book out. This book.

Illustration of eyebombing to show what it is

Eyebomb, Therefore I Am

Currently it is available, with perks, on Kickstarter, until 22nd February and will roll out to other retailers and my own store in a few months. Although, to be honest, by the time I’ve given Ingram/Amazon a cut, the cataloguing people at Betram’s or Gardeners a cut, and the book store a cut, it will cost about £50 a copy from anywhere else, whereas I can sell it at £30 on Kickstarter or my shop and still ‘lose’ some of the postage costs in there along the way so that even the Antipodeans only have to pay about half £10-£15 (£5-£8 if they go for the hardback or purchase the softback with other things).

Yeh, I nearly did …

Here’s some more about it:

Eyebomb, Therefore I Am

Everything’s a bit grim right now isn’t it? So if you’re looking for something to lighten life up a bit, if you want to grace your home, or your coffee table, with something classy-but-funny, light-yet-cutting-edge; something joyously humorous but at the same time, sort of deep. Here’s a book that might be your thing. It’s about street art. Eyebombing, to be exact.

Picture of an eyebombed scaffolding guard at an art exhibion

Yeh that is a Banksey behind there …

Eyebombing is the art, if that’s the right word, of sticking googly eyes onto inanimate objects to give them a personality and raise a smile. See above, and below. I think you may all know this. I’ve forgotten how much I’ve talked about eyebombing on my blog, or not. I know I’ve banged on about it pretty much endlessly on Facebook and Instagram but …

Anyway, if who know my imprint, HUP, or me, you will, at least, know that I illustrate a lot of my social media and blog posts with eyebombing pictures like this:

For years people have been asking me to do a photo book.

Doing a book involved learning a lot of new stuff (like Desktop Publishing) which was a bit daunting. It would also be really expensive (see earlier paragraph) so there wasn’t really much point that I could see. As a result, for almost as many years, about ten to be precise, I ignored peoples’ frequent requests to do a photobook. But people kept on asking, so now I’ve given in, if only to shut them up. Eyebomb, Therefore I Am is the result. Here it is …

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hamgee/eyebomb-therefore-i-am-a-photo-book-of-funny-street-art?ref=1sxan3

And here it is again. This time, with cat for scale, because I didn’t have a banana to hand.

Sniff test passed

Eyebomb, Therefore I Am is my first photo-book. It’s a deluxe 21cm x 21cm (8.5” x 8.5”) hardback containing over 120 images taken my own personal collection of more than 4,000 photos. It’s a bit mad but then … for those of you who read this blog regularly and know me, that should come as absolutely no surprise whatsoever. You will also be unsurprised to learn that the Kickstarter actually started on 7th February and runs until 22nd Feb and I’ve only got round to mentioning it now.

In my defence, I hadn’t got round to writing a blog post in advance, and I was interring both parents in a part of Sussex that is startlingly free of any internet or mobile phone coverage last Saturday so it kind of slipped my mind. More on that story … next week.

Interring the old dears …

As you know, the last couple of years have been quite worrying and my writing muse was having a go slow. When it threw a loop, eyebombing is how I solved my need for creativity; tiny, cheeky, sanity-saving acts of micro creation. No matter how burned out and miserable I was, it was straightforward enough to stick a couple of googly eyes to something and snap a quick photo. Also, there was the added thing that it might make someone laugh and even though I wouldn’t see, that gave me a little buzz.

Picture of an ornate frame with eyes stuck on it so it looks like father Christmas

Oh ho ho

So, yeh. With things really stacking up over the last year, it seemed a good time to have a go at this book because it’s a different kind of creativity. One I actually still had.

Oooh and here’s the blurb!

Eyebomb, Therefore I Am

Step into a realm where inanimate objects come to life and a simple pair of googly eyes holds the power to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. This book invites you to immerse yourself in the whimsical and hilarious world of eyebombing; the art of sticking googly eyes on unsuspecting inanimate items to unleash the joy within.

As you turn each page, you’ll find yourself smiling at the quirky personalities that emerge from everyday articles ranging from lampposts and traffic signs to automatic hand dryers and even dinner. The juxtaposition of the ordinary and the unusual challenges societal norms, reminding us to embrace new or different things, and look for humour in the unlikeliest of places.

Whether you’re a fan of street art, a lover of comedy, or are simply seeking a joyous escape from the mundane, this photo book is sure to leave you grinning from ear to ear. You might even end up stashing a pack of googly eyes in your own pockets and having a go at eyebombing yourself.

So there we go. If you think you’d like to have a look feel free to go here to investigate further: Eyebomb, Therefore I Am on Kickstarter

And yes! OMG! It’s embedded it, Mwahaharhgh! You can watch the vid! What a scream!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hamgee/eyebomb-therefore-i-am-a-photo-book-of-funny-street-art?ref=1sxan3

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Tagged as author blog, Eyebombing, eyebombthereforeiam, eyebombtheschoolrun, good reads, humour, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, M T McGuire new releases, new book releases, new books

21 Jan 2024 · 7:25 pm

Aftermath …

Well, since we’ve talked about my lovely mum dieing, we may as well go on to talk about her funeral and the general aftermath. I wrote, possibly the longest eulogy on earth, except there was so much more I could put in and my brother wrote an equally lengthy one, my nephews and nieces said things, and my son read the lesson. The rain fell out of the sky like someone emptying a bucket over us but strangely, nobody really cared. Not even my poor uncle, who can’t walk without assistance but made it all the way up the church path because I forgot to get the wheelchair out of the church room! What a plank!

One of the important things about a funeral, I think, is that it should be a celebration. It’s like a send off where you laugh and tell stories about the person you loved. It’s how I was taught to do them and I find them enormously cathartic, done that way. So Mum was carried in to Lord of the Dance, because she’d always said she wanted that at her funeral but the priest pointed out that the words are a bit hard core. They are actually. So she got her wish without the hard core words. We tried to keep it short. And failed. We had a requiem mass because that’s what Mum wanted, she was always very disparaging about anyone having ‘a hymn sandwich’ as she and Dad called it. Mwahaharhgh, except she wasn’t because she wouldn’t have criticised anyone who’d decided to have one, she just didn’t want to do that for any of her rellies or have us do it for her. We found a whole bunch of lovely photos of her which I’ve uploaded to her memory wall because loads of people couldn’t come. We also got the service recorded. Originally we were going to try for a live stream but the signal round the church is even worse than it is round my parents’ house so it was loaded onto the web afterwards.

Slight hiccup when I went to the cupboard to borrow Mum’s dark blue coat only to discover that my brother had already taken all but a single puffa (which was even mankier than the one I’d brought with me) for the Ukranians. Luckily we found some kind of embroidered affair upstairs in Mum’s wardrobe. I put it back when I was done and now I’m slightly regretting it. I’ll definitely nick it next time I’m down. It absolutely threw it down with rain. My poor friend who came from Worcester took five hours to get home, and another friend who was about an hour up the road took two and a half hours to get home. Joy.

How does it feel now?

Kind of weird, if I’m honest. There’s still an absolute metric craptonne of admin, forms to fill in stuff to scan, copy and submit, and an absolute gargantuan raft of other shite. And I’m skint. As ever. And will be for some time because … probate. Obviously we’ve had to take anything worth nicking out of the house as well, and put it in storage and then we’ll have to bring it all back when we get a date for the probate valuation. Head desk. Oh well.

Apart from that though …? It’s hard to explain but, this last ten years as I’ve shared my frustrations at my complete inability to write books at a reasonable speed and my all general ineptitude with you lot, it’s been quite a struggle. A lot of the time, this blog was all I could write. The eyebombing helped of course. That was a bit of a win. But the thing about dementia is it’s sad. Even when the person is quite happy the way Mum was. I’ve been sad a lot of the time for the past eight or ten years and the five before that I was just exhausted.

We have a memory page for Mum with a link to give to the Dementia Society (Admiral Nurses) because they were incredibly kind to me when I rang their helpline which I did, in pieces, several times.

Picture of a lady in a chair reading a newspaper

I love this picture of Mum.

My godmother and I were chatting today and she said she’d looked at the page, and the pictures of Mum and found it very distressing to see the last one, at Mum’s 90th birthday celebration because she felt, looking at the picture, that a lot of Mum had already gone. It’s probably true. At the end, Mum was like a tiny flame, a pilot light compared to the brightly burning, vibrant personality she had been. It was hard to watch her like that, although, since she wasn’t in distress, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.

Mum was so energetic though. Back in 2015/6 when this all started, I would go and stay with my parents and I would help Mum around the house, being a spare; running to fetch things because I could move faster, cutting stuff up for her because her hands were too arthritic. I had a small child but I would still come home exhausted after a few days trying to keep up with my nearly 80 year old mother. I remember Mum’s annoyance when, aged 77, her doctor suggested that perhaps it was time to stop digging potatoes herself and that maybe she should ask someone else to do it. I also remember when she was embargoed from going to that part of the garden because her panic button wouldn’t reach there. I arrived one Wednesday and found her arranging flowers, including some flowers from a tree that was well into the verboten zone.

‘Have you been down to the fruit cage?’ I asked her.

‘No, no. Not at all,’ she said.

She laughed like a drain when I pointed out the blossom and told her I’d got her bang to rights.

Sorry, none of this is really how it feels is it?

In truth, I feel as if I have lived the last 15 years of my life in twilight. First with a small child although that was uplifting, even if it was exhausting, and then with my parents. One of the hardest aspects with Mum was that there was no ‘sane’ one. Whereas with Dad, I knew exactly what to do because Mum was his soul mate and his best friend. She knew him so well that she understood exactly what he would have wanted us to do, had he been mentally equipped to decide. Except that it does get more complicated than that because the person with dementia changes so instead of putting the others round them at the centre of the world, they centre on their own needs. And those needs change. Case in point Mum, who went from ‘the minute your father goes, I’ll downsize to a nice little bungalow and then we won’t have to worry about money because it’ll see me out.’ To, ‘the house MUST stay in the family at all costs.’

Go figure.

Also, I’m not quite sure what was worse, watching Dad’s suffering or watching the effect it had on Mum, so having a sane one to consult did have a downside. The good thing was that Mum had given me a perfect demonstration of how caring for someone was done, so it was straightforward enough to just do what she did for Dad, for her.

I miss her though, and I will for a while, but when I think of her, I see light in my mind’s eye. Kindly, gentle light. And peace. So that’s grand.

Rain soaked town … Long passage of doom. I dunno. Go figure.

I have her engagement ring. It means a huge amout to me because it meant so much to her, but also because she meant so much to Dad, so it’s kind of the love of both parents rolled into one. At the same time, it’s also a lovely thing, and I am delighted with it on an asthetic shiny-thing-appreciation level which actually makes me feel a bit guilty. (Now I can hear the voice of Dad in my head telling me there’s nothing wrong with thinking it’s a beautiful ring because he thought it was and so did Mum and that being able to appreciate the ring in both respects is nothing to be ashamed of. Nonetheless …) My ring size is N and a half. Mum always joked about having hands like shovels and massive knuckles. I never thought she did until I tried to wear her ring. It was U and a half! I could have worn it with gloves Lord Vernon style … on the outside. Mwahaharhgh. When I picked it up from the undertakers, I put one of those plastic things you can get on it to make it smaller. It was two weeks before I could bring myself to remove it so it could be altered. But I knew that if I didn’t get it altered soon, I’d gesticulate and it would ping off somewhere and I’d never see it again. So I went to one of the lovely jewellers in town. I got it back on Friday. I’m not sure I’ll be taking it off again for a while.

Sometimes, on sunny days, I imagine my parents’ drawing room. I see the way the sun shines through the windows casting bright slanted oblongs of light across the wooden floor. I hear the birds outside. I see the ashes of the most recent fire in the grate. It’s a lovely room. Sitting in there is like being hugged. No wonder that house has only had three owners since 1911. It’s a bit special. It feels kind. Perfect match for my parents really.

What next?

Nothing much for a while. We have the interment of both Mum and Dad’s ashes on 10th. Which reminds me, I must pop down there and rescue Dad from Mum’s desk. We’re going to drop him off at the undertaker’s for a quick holiday so they can pop him into his casket and Mum into hers. They’ll be interred at the school where Dad worked, next to several of their much loved friends.

On the writing front, there’s not much. That’s fine. I didn’t write a thing for three months after Dad died. And then it only built up very slowly. I’m not expecting anything much there, although I will welcome it when it does start up again. Which reminds me. The eyebombing book’s on its way. I’m launching it on 7th February and the campaign will be live for 15 days. Hopefully I’ll hit my target of five purchasers but if I don’t I’ll just have to chalk it up to experience. It’s good to try these things.

Other than that. It’s drifting in limbo until probate’s done. And as for my newfound freedom … that feels as if it’s not going to come true. We’ve inherited a house miles away from either of us and not enough money to keep it going, unoccupied, for more than a few months. Something’s bound to go wrong, it’ll burn down … or thinking about it WWIII will start. Yeh. That’s more likely. Just as my kickstarter goes live they’ll have some massive, hideous war and it’ll fail because we’ll have all fried (hey, guess what? I never catastrophise, not at all). But it does all feel a bit weird. Like I’ve crept under the radar of the fates. It can’t last. I’m going to get rumbled.

After some years where I’ve found it difficult not to feel that, if life is a gift, there were parts of mine that were definitely a dog turd in a paper bag, I’m standing on the brink of a new kind of existance where I might, possibly, have some time and mental energy. Part of me feels it’s one I don’t deserve, or at the least, that I’m not going to get away with it. A simple, straightforward life feels like one that isn’t possible, moreover like one that I’m not entitled to. A big part of me is waiting for something to come piling out of left field to make certain sure doesn’t happen. As if things aren’t allowed to go right for me. I suspect this is part of the process after anything that’s been a bit of a long schlepp. Or maybe it’s survivors’ guilt messing with my head.

Mwahahaargh! As you can see, I’m still the same gargantuan melmet I ever was. Melmet: someone who is such a plonker they are a melt and a helmet, ergo, a Melmet. This is one of my son’s words and I think it’s brilliant. I can also put it into my books as I’m sure Big Merv will be calling The Pan a ‘melmet’ and can even explain that it’s toolbit and melt, which means I can get away with it because even if helmet is a bit rude, toolbit isn’t. Mwahaharhgh!

So there we are. And now McOther has arrived with a glass of sherry and I must take a sip or two and then head off to collect McMini from his boyfriend’s house. So that’s me for this week.

In the meantime, if you are a friend of the family visiting and you want to visit Mum’s memory page, you can do that here:

Memory Page: https://elisabethbell.muchloved.com/

Playback of the service: https://visual-memorials.co.uk/elisabeth-bell

If you are not a friend of the family, you’ll not be interested in those but you might be interested in my forthcoming release: Eyebomb, Therefore I Am which is launching on Kickstarter and then will probably be available from my website (because I might have some copies left). If you’re interested in that, you can follow the campaign and it will let you know when it launches. I now have the princely sum of 36 followers on it, although I suspect they are mostly people who have absolutely no intention of buying the book but want to make the algorithm think it is popular! Mwayaharhgh! My mates being kind basically.

Eyebomb! Thereofre I am.

Anyway, if you’re interested in having a look you can also see a preview of the campaign which I have now finally finished! Yes! Even also including the video.

You can find inks to those below:

Follow and get warned when it goes live here.

Have a sneak preview here

10 Comments

Filed under General Wittering

Tagged as an author with children, author blog, death, dementia aftermath, Eyebombing, M T McGuire, M T McGuire new releases, off topic

26 Dec 2023 · 7:52 pm

The end …

This is weird. I’m posting to wish everyone a happy Christmas, although it’s so long since I’ve written anything that there may be no-one here!

But also because, if anyone is still likely to read this, there’s something you need to know. You see … my mum died.

Yep, exactly three weeks ago yesterday, my brother and I became orphans. It’s sad in a lot of ways, obviously, but strangely, the main thing about Mum’s death so far has been that it really wasn’t sad. Poignant? Yes. Beautiful perhaps, and moving, oh yeh. But sad? No. Not really.

Mum on honeymoon taken by Dad.

I’m going to tell you about it, partly because it always sets my head straight to write these things down and partly because there’s an outside chance it might help other people.

It all started on Saturday 2nd December. The carers rang to say that Mum seemed groggy and was looking a bit blue. We agreed that she probably had a chest infection. I told them that Mum had left instructions for this and that she would want to be at home. They understood but also had to walk the line as professionals so they dialled the out of hours doctor service at 111. 111 sent a paramedic who wanted to take her to hospital.

The carers rang me and put the paramedic on so that I could say no. But when she spoke to me, she explained that Mum was not about to die but needed access to pain meds and antibiotics which she would not get until Monday and that while letting her die at home was one thing, and perfectly possible if she was about to die, this wasn’t actually a life threatening situation. She totally got about Mum’s wishes, her own mother having been the same. It’s just that. In her view, Mum was going to get better, anyway, ergo denying Mum access to antibiotics for two days was actually just a bit mean.

So I let her go.

This is the bit where I experienced some of the crappy aspects of the NHS.

The paramedic with Mum told me that casualty wasn’t busy and that I would probably get a call by 2.00pm but if I didn’t to ring at five. In the event, I rang at 2.30 and got nowhere but that was fine, they’d said five so I waited and tried again then. I got through to a nurse who told me she hadn’t been allocated to Mum but went and asked the nurse who was how she was doing. Apparently Mum was through triage and in ‘major’ whatever that was. They were waiting for a doctor to see her a second time and she was settled and comfortable. I rang again at 7 and failed dismally to get anywhere. Actually, I failed to get anywhere every time but every three or four goes, I’d throw myself on the mercy of the lovely ladies on the switchboard who would try to help. A couple of times they managed to get me through to different people who could ask a nurse to find out if there was any news or look at a database, which did, at least, have the basics of were Mum currently was in the system.

Nobody would answer the phone without help from Becky and Wendy on the main switchboard who deserved a medal because they were fucking golden … and later, in the night, Jacky.

A bit like the bit in Red Dwarf where Rimmer says, ‘You can’t scare me I’m a coward! I’m already frightened.’

The only actual doctor I spoke to in that time was an arrogant bastard with the bedside manner of a particularly unsympathetic cyberman. I pity anyone in dire straits, in casualty, who got him. He told me to get off the line because he had an urgent call coming in. The fucking knocky prick. I asked him how I was supposed to find out about my Mum. He told me I’d have to go back to main. I asked what the hell was main? He said that was the main switchboard. I asked him how long he thought I’d been trying to get someone to answer the goddamn phone and why, having finally made this major breakthrough after twelve fucking hours, he thought it was fair to ask me to go back and start again (only without the swearing). He said tough and hung up.

So that was that.

I went back to ‘main’ and threw myself on Becky’s mercy (or it might have been Wendy). I explained that I lived two hours away that my mother was seriously ill but I didn’t know if she was just seriously ill, or dying and NOBODY WOULD FUCKING TELL ME. I told her I’d been trying to get news on Mum for nearly 12 hours, that she was a dear person but she had dementia so she might be frightened and confused and no-one she knew was with her, and that I’d been told she’d be there for a couple of hours … AND that, had anyone bothered to tell me how long they were actually going to keep her sitting around on her arse with … whatever it was that nobody would confirm or deny to me was wrong with her … I would have jumped in the car when it happened and been with her from about eight bloody hours ago.

Except that, also without the swearing. Indeed, I was actually really polite about it, but laid it on a bit thick because I did want her to hoist in that I was only asking all this because I was desperate. She managed to find a member of clerical staff in casualty who was prepared to answer a phone and able to access the database. She made me wait while she spoke to the woman and told her she had to talk to me. Then I was put through and I found out that Mum had been admitted with a chest infection and was now in the emergency level. I said nobody had called and this lady said the next of kin was listed as Dad. I said I was a bit surprised as he’d died three years ago and Mum had been to hospital since, and she said, get this, ‘Oh, I see. So you haven’t changed the record.’

I? That’s right. It was all my fault. I pointed out that I’d given the paramedic my number and she said that no-one had passed it on. Since she was actually prepared to speak to me and give me information, I didn’t get as antsy as I felt or ask her how come the database hadn’t been mentioned the other time Mum had been to hospital since Dad had died, or why this was suddenly my fault.

Finally at 9.00 pm I managed, with the help of Jackie, another lovely switchboard lady at the hospital, to talk to a nurse on the emergency floor. Mum’s nurse was on her break but this one was kind enough to go and find out how she was for me. She also apologised and said that I’d probably have to ring the following morning to get any sense out of anyone. She confirmed that Mum was admitted, receiving treatment, sleeping peacefully and in a bed. Yes it was serious but no it wasn’t life threatening. So there was that.

Mum in the pink jumper in the chair at the back celebrating, being 90. The reason all the other chairs look small is because those blokes are all over 6ft. My uncle there on the right, he doesn’t sit down, he folds up.

It took until 2 o’clock on Sunday afternoon to get proper news of Mum but at least they were nice about it this time. She’d had breakfast and was responding well to the antibiotics but would probably be going up to a ward rather than straight home. The nurse also told me that Mum had been sleeping most of the time so probably wouldn’t have noticed time passing or got bored and confused the way I’d feared. Her care team also said that. One of Mum’s lovely care team went in to see her and phoned me so I could have a chat to her, which was wonderful and a huge relief as she was very much herself and, if anything, a bit more switched on than usual.

I went down on Monday to see her. At this point we were still expecting to move her so I popped in at her house. The gardener was there and wondering what had happened so I had a chat to her and I discovered the carers had looked out some chicken thighs for Mum’s lunch on the Saturday so I cooked them in the oven for myself and roasted a bit of cauliflower. I decided I’d have cauliflower cheese next time I was down (Wednesday). There were quite a lot of chicken thighs but I cooked them all and gave the gardener some to take home.

When I got to the hospital, Mum was in a ward. And this is where the NHS was absolutely bloody golden. Hats off to Byworth Ward. They were lovely. Yes, as compassionate, kindly and attentive care goes they absolutely smashed it out of the park. The staff there were wonderful. Watching them look after some a lady with quite challenging dementia they were so patient and so sweet with her that it made me want to cry. When I arrived, the first thing they said was, ‘how lovely is your Mum?!’ the second thing they said was sorry for the way I’d been kept in the dark. They said Mum was knackered and sleeping a lot but that she’d been very chirpy when she’d arrived on the Sunday afternoon. She woke up enough to be pleased to see me and then slept most of the time but that was fine, because she knew I was there, so we just chilled together. I’d brought my knitting and spent a couple of hours hanging out with my mum, knitting, relaxing a bit actually, patting her arm every now and again so she knew I was there and chatting to her when she woke up.

The staff told me that my phone had no voice message and because it didn’t say it was me, if someone did ring and I didn’t manage to pick up, they couldn’t leave a message because it would breach confidentiality rules. This was absolute news to me so thanks O2 for your arbitrary decision to delete my voice message. I can only assume it got deleted when I renewed my contract but the Vodafone one never used to disappear so I wasn’t ready for that. Weird. I recorded an answerphone message as I sat by Mum’s bed.

One of the care team went in on Tuesday and I visited again on Wednesday with my brother. I made us a cauliflower cheese and added some macaroni, mainly so my brother would have something to eat for supper as he was staying over, but also because at 6ft 4, he’s a big unit, so he does eat a lot. Mum was much perkier but still a little frail and sitting in a chair by the bed. She was still quite tired and a bit confused, but the staff were lovely and she seemed cheerful, so I felt confident that she was in good hands.

My brother visited again on the Thursday and he thought she looked even frailer at that point but the prognosis was still that she’d get better and leave and certainly that if it went the other way, she’d be in there for a while before anything happened.

I cocked up Friday, so she didn’t have a visitor, and the person I’d arranged for Saturday was one of the care team and couldn’t make it at the last minute because one of her other ladies was ill and she had to stay with her. I made doubly sure someone was going on the Sunday and got ready to go down on the Monday either to visit or help her move.

Sunday morning, as I was getting ready to go warble in the choir at church, a doctor from the ward rang saying that Mum was very ill. I explained that I was over 2 hours away, 3 in that day’s weather and that my brother was 4 hours, how bad was it? Did we need to come? The doctor said it was a bit up in the air but that if she carried on deteriorating the way she had over night the outlook was not good. If the worst did happen, and I wanted to see her, I should come now.

I rang my brother who was about to attend his goddaughter’s confirmation in Wales and we decided that since he was outside the church, he’d better carry on with that and come after.

As I joined the M11 it ground to a halt. The whole journey was a bit like that. Oh and it absolutely pissed it down, it was more like driving a submarine than a car. I drove faster than I was comfortable with but I still didn’t exceed 60mph. It was that soggy and the roads that waterlogged.

A still from my dashcam in one of the clearer bits …

Luckily in the many bits where the traffic stopped, it was just caterpillaring as it slowed for patches of extra heavy rain. As I joined the M25 from the M11 the doctor called again to check we were on our way. I explained that we were and she said that Mum was fading quite fast. Which was a bit stark.

I thanked her and then remembered that I’d booked Mum holy communion, so I rang the ward and asked if they could get the chaplain to give her the last rites, instead, as it was important to her. They did and Mum was awake and conscious, and bless her heart, still thinking of everyone else first. She gave the chaplain a message to give to the ward staff. She said that her son and daughter were on their way and if she went before we arrived to please tell us not to worry because she’d be quite alright. God love her. I didn’t find this out until later but it was a wonderful thing to say and even more wonderful that after two years of not being quite sure, most of the time, what our relationship with her was (only that she loved us) that she knew exactly where I and my brother fitted in. They gave her a cross and taped it to her pillow. The chaplain sent an apology via the ward staff that they are all stamped ‘Bethlehem’ at the moment because it’s Christmas. It’s on my desk.

The cross …

There was a bumpy moment when one of the carers rang me. I was over the bridge stuck in a traffic jam near Clackett lane by this point, pretty much in the exact same spot where, three years before, as I sat in a similar traffic jam, the same carer had called me to say my Dad had died.

However, luckily, this time, it was just to say a group of them had arrived and would stay with Mum until I got there. The gods were smiling, the traffic kept moving and I kept creeping closer to the hospital. Would I make it? Would my brother? I had no idea.

The car park at Worthing Hospital is notorious for filling up extremely fast. On the Wednesday, when I’d visited with my brother, I’d noticed a spot where I could use the raised surface of speed bump to mount the kerb and get my car onto a small patch of grass, next to a wall where it was out of the way. Yes it would get clamped but it wasn’t actually blocking anything so I could Break The Rules to save time if I had to, without being a selfish bastard. There are advantages to driving a car the size of a peanut.

When I arrived on that Sunday afternoon, at 2.30, the car park was absolutely rammed. I didn’t even bother to scope for legitimate spots. I headed straight for my kerb mounting area only to find that there, right beside it, was a single, free legitimate spot. I flung the car into it and ran for the ward, saying a small prayer of thanks to the almighty as I went and then giggling because I remembered that Wendy Cope poem, ‘Jesus found me a parking space! Bang the gong and praise Him.’

The carers were there, I said hello and then I Did The Thing. Yes, like Dad, my poor mum had to sit through me telling her what a fucking legend she was and how lucky I was to have her as a Mum. And yes, I cried because … tension … and also relief that I’d made it to say good bye. And because I couldn’t help it. She laughed and said, ‘Oh Mary!’ and I laughed too because I was being a fecking eejit and we both knew it but at the same time, I meant it and we also both knew that because it was the last time I’d get to say it, it was important that I did.

So then the staff asked about treatment. Did I want them to give Mum more intravenous antibiotics? I had plenty of time to think because her next dose was due at 11.00 pm they told me.

‘Will it make her better?’

‘No, I’m afraid not. But some families prefer to have more time with their relative.’

I remembered how Mum had been when she’d had pneumonia in 2012. She’d told me afterwards, that it was ghastly and that she’d felt terrible and if Dad hadn’t needed someone to look after him she ‘would have gone then’. Her words.

‘Will she suffer, will she be in pain?’ I asked.

They explained that she would feel short of breath and feel tightness and pain in her chest but that she could have morphine for that. I remembered a friend once telling me that having pneumonia was like trying to breathe through a straw. It didn’t sound pleasant and I didn’t want her to have to put up with any more of it than was absolutely necessary.

‘So basically, are you saying antibiotics won’t do anything but she’ll just take longer to die, so she’ll be in pain for longer?’ I asked, just to check.

A beat. ‘Yes.’

‘Then, if it’s not going to help, that’s just prolonging her suffering. Please don’t let her suffer any more than she has to. This is about making her comfortable and relaxed. Plase stop everything that is extending her life and just carry on with things that are going to ease her pain or help her breathe.’

So they took out the drip, because it wouldn’t help her dry mouth and she’d be more comfortable without the cannula in. They kept the oxygen because that was helping and they told me they would give her morphine as soon as she or I asked. They said they’d carry on turning her because that would ease the pain and obviously they’d keep changing her pad.

She was breathing through her mouth and it was drying out. The carers showed me some ointment to put on her lips with a nice brush thing that would feel pleasant and explained how to wet the inside of her mouth with tiny bits of water from a cup, or a toothbrush. Then they went.

Mum wanted me to make sure that the people in the care team who joined her after she made her will got the same as the others, and after they’d gone, I promised her I would see them right.

She took off the oxygen line and tried it without for a bit but didn’t like it and decided to put the line back in. I helped her do that and they fixed it up for me so it was working, but at a lower pressure which wouldn’t dry out her throat so much.

She was very sleepy but would wake up for a few minutes here and there and I’d tell her that I loved her. While she slept, in case she was drifting, half awake, rather than sleeping, I’d reminisce about things we’d done as a family; holidays, day trips, parties and of course, the time she and I had turned out a perfect apple suet pudding together … on the kitchen work surface, because we’d missed the dish. And how my husband came in and caught the pair of us, crying with laughter like naughty kids, as we tried to fix it. Mum was holding the dish under the edge and I, with rolled up sleeve, using my forearm as a giant spatula, was attempting to coerce the pudding across the formica surface to the edge, the plan being that it would make a short fall into the dish, hopefully landing the right way up, without compromising its structural integrity.

It hadn’t really bothered to get light that day, but darkness closed in outside anyway. Mum slept more and was awake less as the day wore on. I kept getting the water wrong. I used the wrong cup and made her cough, then it kept running out of the side of her mouth, down her chin and onto her chest. So I spent a lot of time apologising that it must be horrible and cold and making jokes along the lines that I was a shit nurse and that I wasn’t going to be admitted into the Royal College of Nursing any time soon. She laughed at first and then as she became weaker, it was a smile and finally just an imperceptible lightening of her face.

At one point she tried to sit up a bit and speak, so I put my arm round her and propped her up so she could. She said, ‘I love you darling, I love you very much.’ I just hugged her and told her I loved her too and that she was brilliant. That was the last full sentence she said to me.

Her voice sounded incredibly croaky and I remember thinking that she must have a horribly sore throat and that I must step it up with the water, which I did. We had a bit of a giggle when they gave me her shepherd’s pie to eat because she was too weak to swallow safely. I went to the loo and when I came back one of the nurses had left some packets of biscuits for me. They got the tea trolley in and gave me a cup of coffee. They were absolutely lovely to me (and my brother when he got there) as well as to Mum.

Mum was very peaceful, the staff remarked upon how relaxed and unafraid she was. They’d given her a little cross when she’d had the last rites or Extreme Unction as I prefer to call it because that sounds like some kind of superpower and is much funnier. I kept doing the water thing, at first asking if she wanted more each time she woke up and waiting for the, ‘yes please,’ but then I just put it into her open mouth with the toothbrush. She would usually suck it but towards the end she hadn’t the strength to do that. picture of the south downs dappled with sunlight and shade

My brother arrived and she tried to sit up a bit. I think she wanted to say the same thing to him as she’d said to me. He doesn’t think so, but I do. I missed my cue though and didn’t twig and pass it on for her. Mainly because I thought she was also in pain, which my lovely bruv thought, too, and I was concentrating on that. I suspect she had lost her voice by that time. I took her hand in mine and asked her to squeeze if she wanted morphine. She did. So we got some for her.

We held her hand, and stroked her face and told her we loved her, did the water thing and the lip stuff and chatted to one another. By 1.30 am, my brother suggested that we go back to the family home and get some sleep. I didn’t want to leave her but she seemed very peaceful, her breathing very regular, and as my brother pointed out, if it took a while and we were with her the next night, we’d need some proper zeds in for when it really mattered.

We consulted with the nurses who said it would be a sensible decision and that’s when they passed on the message she’d given them, via the chaplain, that we were not to worry if she died when we weren’t there.

There were some other quite challenging patients, people with Alzheimer’s with disrupted sleep patterns and I explained that while I had every confidence that they would make regular checks on Mum, if she was in pain and called out, they might not hear her straight away, or they might be with one of the other ladies and not be able to come at once. We agreed she should have some more morphine as that would see her through until 7.30 am and we’d aim to come back then.

Sometime around five they turned Mum and one nurse went off while the other primped her pillows, did the water in the mouth thing and made sure she was comfortable. She noticed Mum’s pulse was quite weak so decided it might be time to call us in. She went to get the other nurse to see what she thought and when they both came back, Mum had died.

Sunrise Over West Sussex, 1996 by Christopher Aggs, Worthing & Southlands art in hospitals project

We went into the hospital to see her, and I dunno, give her a hug one last time while she was still warm and it felt as if there was still someone there or at least, hovering close.

It was 11th December.

My brother and I spent three days at Mum’s house, going through her stuff. We did the desks first, which was hilarious. Mum had kept all our school reports and we found all his letters home from boarding school asking why I never got a star at my school, ‘Mary, you got full marks for that test but your handwriting is too untidy to give you an A so I’m afraid that’s an A minus, no star for you this time.’ (Or any other fucking time to be honest because my handwriting was always too messy for me to get an A. But that’s what school was like in those days. Luckily the only people who didn’t value the neatness of my handwriting over what I actually wrote were the examiners who marked my O and A level papers but I digress.)

We also got very giggly about Mum’s photos, we used to have to wait ages for her to take one and then she had a tendency to line it up wrong, that was mostly the camera rather than her but bless. And then we had an old friend round for dinner. It was interesting trying to cook vegetarian, because though my brother is, I’m not at all, but we ate a lot of roast veg and we had cheese and eggs with us so all was dandy … and we’d gone down there equipped with wine, which was great.

It being Christmas post, there was fuck all I could do about telling anyone by that time other than phoning a lot of people, including the local undertakers who knew both my parents well (Dad was church warden and Mum did the flowers) and who are lovely. Turns out there is a new vicar, who comes over as one of those rather difficult Christians who’s rather big on the ‘thou shalt not’. How he’s ended up at an inclusive church with its roots in the Oxford movement is beyond me but hey ho.

Luckily Mum was too infirm to get to church by the time he arrived and he never visited her, so he’s no clue who she is. As a result, he won’t be having any input into her funeral other than issuing the odd bizarre diktat to make sure we all know that the church building belongs to him and he’s in charge. The rest of the team are as lovely as they ever were. They quite clearly loved Mum to bits and it’s one of them who is doing the service. So that’s grand.

So there we are…

Looking back on it, there’s a waiting phase before death, a kind of state of grace people go into and if I’d thought about it, I’d have seen that Mum was in that on the Wednesday, I’d have known, and maybe visited on the Friday, too. Maybe … I dunno.

Am I sad? Well … yes but also … no. My overwhelming emotions are gratefulness and joy that I had such lovely people as parents. Mum was totally OK with dying. She’d told me less than five weeks previously, a propos nothing much, that I did know, didn’t I, that if she died, she’d be quite alright and I was not to worry. Other good bits … having been really quite batty for a week or two, she’d been very switched on for my last five visits. And even when batty her perssonality and generally lovely demeanour was unaffected.

Regrets? Not really, I wish I’d got the cue to ask her if she was trying to tell my brother she loved him, and I regret that my last two visits to her at home I was running round like a blue arsed fly, first showing some people over the house, then with the photographer (both times pretending they were surveyors come to look at the roof). I’d been going to make sure that on the last visit I really made up for that, but she was in hospital that week.

The fact is, Mum was about to leave her home forever and go to Shrewsbury, because it was time, and because we’d run out of money and had nothing left to pay the care fees other than the house. Mum and Dad’s furniture was all brown stuff and is therefore worth about five pence a pop if that. If we’d sold everything in the house, we might have covered care fees for a week or two. Instead she died while she was still living in Sussex, in the same house (even if she wasn’t there at the time).

Other positive things … Well … the move might have worked, but if it hadn’t it would have broken my heart as well as Mum’s. I’d have had a hard time coming to terms with it, even though there was no other option. As it is, I didn’t have to break my word to her. I didn’t have to move her. I never had to hurt her and I never have to worry about her any more. We get to do her funeral on home ground, where the highest numbers of the people who knew and loved her have the easiest access, if they want or are able to come and with Britain’s loveliest undertakers. I am incredibly grateful for that. And although she was still living in it when she died, we had conditionally accepted an offer on her house, which might help hurry up the paperwork.

It doesn’t really feel real. I suppose it won’t for a bit. But it did feel peaceful, and full of love and right. For the first time since 2012 I can say that I know, categorically, that both my parents are absolutely alright. That’s about the best Christmas gift of all.

Meanwhile at home, I’d bought a handful of presents but otherwise there’ve been no presents, no cards, indeed, not much of anything as we were busy taking anything of value out of the and into storage. We’ll have to put it back to get it valued for probate at some point but at least, for now, it’s safe. And all the Christmas malarkey? Well … there were some crackers in Mum’s cupboard, so my brother and I had a box each. I sang in the choir for midnight mass and we relaxed. McOther gave me a book to wrap up and put under the tree for him. He’d already given me a fitbit and McMini had already spent his Christmas money on stuff that arrived by post the previous week. He received a hefty wodge of christmas money from his grandparents but that was it.

When it comes down to it, all the gifts and the trimmings and the shit aren’t really so desperately necessary to make it work. It seems the Beatles were right. Love is all you need.

And on that rather schmultzy and trite note. Happy Christmas … a day late … because … this is me writing this, after all.

The end

Congratulatinos if you’ve made it this far. Weighing in at a hefty 5k, there are novellas out there and entire film scripts that are shorter than this post.

If you want some Christmas books, I’ve two available for your delectation; one reduced drastically to 99 American cents or British pee and another free. You can find them, in ebook or audiobook format until December 30th on this here page here:

https://hamgee.co.uk/christmas https://hamgee.co.uk/christmas

17 Comments

Filed under General Wittering

Tagged as author blog, death, dementia, dying (not in comedy), M T McGuire, off topic, registering a death, sad

21 Oct 2023 · 12:00 pm

Balls … all of it.

Well, it’s been a long time and I suspect most of you have wandered off, assuming I have disappeared off into the ether.

Nope, like a bad smell, I never go away, I linger. I have just … yeh well, to be honest I’ve completely lost the plot. I wouldn’t say I’m actually burning out yet but let’s say … we’re on the red line and there’s definitely an alarming aroma of burning oil and hot metal. Hence my stepping back. So having not blogged for a long time it’s time to catch up. Yes. You know what you’re going to get now, don’t you? That’s right. An entire sodding book. Mwahahahrgh. Jolly dee then. On we go.

You want to know how my life’s going right now? Here’s how it’s going.

A few days ago, as I was walking up the garden path, minding my own bleedin’ business when a sleepy wasp fell out of a tree and landed on my head, at which point it got stuck in my hair and the little bastard stung my face. Worse, the breeze kept blowing my hair, plus—now incandescent—jabby stingy wasp, back at my cheek. As I flapped at my hair to try and keep the wasp off me, and at the same time, shake it free, I inadvertently batted my glasses into the shrubbery. Then of course, I couldn’t find them because I wasn’t wearing my bloody glasses. Luckily McOther heard me effing and blinding, took pity on me and found them for me, although he had to put on his reading glasses first or he wouldn’t have been able to sodding see.

Finally, after repeated bouts of ‘the Wasp Dance’ the pesky insect in question fell out of my hair and landed drunkenly on the patio. I’m afraid I was very angry with it and trod on it.

Welcome to my world. Shit like this happening the whole. Fucking. Time. Shit so fucking bizarre you couldn’t make it up; day, after day, after day. I really should write more of it down.

So that’s set the tone. Now you know what you’re in for with the rest of this. Mwahahahrgh! I can’t say my life is lacking in comedy it’s just that it’s the kind of stuff that, if I put it in a book, would have reviewers saying it was too slapstick and unrealistic to be true.

Mmm.

The evidence would suggest that, here at McGuire towers, we are some kind of fucking masochists, we have had the fullest room in the house re floored. Why the fuck did we do that? This has involved us moving shelves, about 300 books and about 8,000 LPs a table, a sofa, a doll’s house, a printer, a LOT of curtains and Lord knows how much other shite into different parts of the house.

When the LPs are leaning against the wall along the length of 3 metre room double thickness, you know there are rather a lot of them. Said room is also full of boxes of books, tables, there’s a doll’s house and all sorts of shit. Not to mention a sofa blocking the door so you can’t actually get into it and a giant set of shelves all but blocking the hall.

The room being re floored is also a main thoroughfare. Think, central hall. So to get from most of the house to the kitchen we have to go up the stairs, along a corridor, and down the back stairs into the kitchen instead of along a hall and through a room, because we can’t walk on a newly tiled floors because … glue.

To get to the utility room and the freezer we have to go outside into the pissing rain, round the side of the house and in through the back door. To put the cat to bed … well … he’s having to sleep in another room. He’s doing really well—because cats don’t like this kind of stuff but he hasn’t run away—although I suspect he’s not enjoying it. There were many set backs. It was meant to happen two weeks ago but other jobs over ran and the chap couldn’t get to us until this week.

On the up side, we can access all rooms without having to actually climb in through a window. Frankly, the state things are, I call that a win.

Unfortunately, having the entire house becoming more and more discombobulated over a period of several weeks (because that room has taken a long time to clear because it was packed well above it’s plimsoll line with shit, anyway) has left me astoundingly arse about face. I have no fucking clue which way is up. Or at least, even less fucking clue than I usually have. On the up side. They’re done. And though we can’t walk on it tonight. Again. It will be dry tomorrow and—pending a quick once over with a mop—finished.

Then it will take us another three weeks to move all the shit back again.

No. We’re not going to.

We’re going to sort though the shit and sell/bin it. That’s kind of OK except I have so much fucking shit to sort though and get rid of and now it looks like I might be adding Mum’s to the mix because we all know how brilliant I am at cataloguing and tidying things up or selling them/giving them away. There’s a reason my rather fabulous collection of plastic tat has been languishing in 39 boxes above the garage since we moved here 15 years ago, instead of on display and it’s not all about lacking the room.

(Yes, just in case you need this spelled out. I’m shit at those things. Really, astoundingly, gobsmackingly, special-super-hero-attribute levels of shit, so my life is going to be an unbounded joy for the next six months/year but hopefully things will fuck off and leave me alone after that.)

On the Mum front. Mum is running out of money. The people who are supposed to be getting continuing care for us appear to have stopped doing whatever it is they do and I’ve chalked 4 grand of her cash up to experience. My interactions with them are very different to that of Mum’s carer, who recommended them to us. She said they couldn’t do enough to help, my experience is they have taken 4 grand of Mum’s cash and can’t do enough not to. I’ve paid 4k and it seems their job is to tell me what to do and wait until I do it for them. I did think, for that kind of eye watering fee, that the carers and I were going to provide the information and they were going to collate it.

No. Maybe the precedents they will use to prove their case will make the cash worth it. Maybe but it’s worrying, when the key reason I went to them was because I knew I was too burned out to collect the information required and navigate the process on my own in the time we have available.

The way things are, I am, indeed, too burned out to chase this stuff up myself and they aren’t doing it either. They do not volunteer any communication. I have to contact them, they take two or three days to reply to emails, and it’s not possible to speak to anyone on the phone, you have to leave a message and then they call you back, usually during a doctor’s appointment, or while you’re driving, or on the loo or in an area of stupendously sketchy mobile phone coverage.

I asked how it was going and they said they were waiting for medical records and asked me to send a document I’d already sent. I did so and chased up Mum’s doctor. They then contacted me to say they were still waiting for the records. I said I’d chased and asked them to let me know when the records arrived. Next port of call, chase them again and then, presumably, chase it up with Mum’s doctor.

Having employed them because I needed someone to do this shit for me, to take the admin out of my hands because I’m too slow to do it they’re just sitting there making me do it all. Indeed, it seems I’ve lumbered myself with a double layer, and a stopper between myself and the care board that is slowing things down rather than speeding them up.

Ho hum. So yeh. It’s probably actually taken longer than it would have done if I’d done it on my own. Head. Desk.

A learning moment then. Chalking that one up to experience. I’ve sent them heaven knows how many documents, in certain instances, several times. You wait. I’ll get a lovely email from them tomorrow now and feel really guilty for writing this.

No. I won’t. Although they say it takes 8 weeks to process after they’ve received all the information and I think Mum’s doctor is dragging his feet signing off the medical records, because he’s absolutely swamped with admin.

Meanwhile things are progressing slowly with identifying a possible learning issue for McMini. I am hoping to get an assessment for visual processing which is something that is relatively straightforward to sort once it’s identified. He’s burned out and I don’t think he would be burning out from school if there wasn’t something making life extra difficult for him. His intellect is razor sharp, which makes it all the more difficult. As I understand it, burn out is one of the tell-tale signs of a learning thing.

Other Mum news. OK, so … the continuing health care company may yet come through, but Mum’s financial reserves are unlikely to outlast the time it is going to take. That means we have to sell the house. Talking to one of her carers the other Wednesday, she confirmed that Mum doesn’t really know where she is anymore, which means we can now move her. So she’s going to my lovely brother. Not to live with him but to a home near him which is opening up, quietly, bit by bit, and which specialises in dementia care. We were looking at next year but Bruv has to do the do during the school holidays and I should be there to help too. If I am going to have Christmas at Mum’s with her that means, the way our holidays and trips abroad fall, that it would be June 2024 before we could move her. Too late. We’ll have run out of cash. Or just after Christmas. Except, if I do that, it will have to be the first week in January or Bruv is back to work and as a teacher, with school holidays, he can’t really ask for time off during term time for this.

But … we are going to McOther’s folks in Scotland for New Year and we can’t cancel that because they are 5 hours away, they can’t travel and with Saturday school, holidays and half terms are the only times we can go.

So … the only other time is the beginning of the this school holidays … which means I needed to drop everything last weekend and belt up to Shrewsbury to look at the home, which was lovely, luckily. It was lovely to see Bruv, wife and kids too and heartening to meet the staff and see the home. I genuinely think Mum will be happy there.

Having given the home the green light, we’re moving her mid December. Then we have to clear the house and sell it. I have to do stuff like cancel the phone and broadband contracts and get the garage cleared (it’s full of stuff that belongs to someone else). Bruv and I have to decide a) who gets what and b) what we might sell to pay care fees.

It’s been interesting, as at one point I was looking to meld Mum’s broadband and phone into one. This would be £20 a month for both rather than £30 for each one. However, where the utilities (except the broadband) were all with one company; SSE, that company is now defunct so it all went to Ovum or OVO or whatever they are. They then divested themselves of the phone account to a company called Origin broadband. I rang Origin but in the long chain of passing accounts from one operator to another something has changed the account name. It’s no longer in Mum’s name it seems, or at least, when I gave the account number and they asked for my account name for ‘security’ and I gave mum’s name, as printed on their welcome letter, they said I had got it wrong. They asked for a title. There isn’t one so I said Mrs. That was not the correct salutation apparently. I then suggested ‘hello’ which is what it said on the welcome letter. That was also wrong. We tried two different spellings of Elisabeth; the way she spells it and the usual one but that wasn’t right either. So nobody at Origin can actually access my mother’s telephone account … because it’s not in her name. So that’s a joy to come when I try and cancel the phone.

Dealing with Origin I spoke to a lovely lady in South Africa (she used ‘just now’ and had the accent) and we did have quite a giggle about it as she tried 101 different permutations of Mum’s name to get in but we failed in our mission and she wasn’t able to help. We had to give up which is a little ominous.

I guess I just write to them and cancel the Direct Debit with the bank, but they are now dealt with by a call centre in India (even though Mum chose a special account specifically to have her telephone banking handled by a UK based call centre). The folks in Bombay or wherever it is are actually lovely but it’s a terrible line, a lot of them are really soft spoken so even I have trouble hearing them and they are far more interested a perfect administrative record than any meaningful customer service — jeez nobody does admin and minutia-driven bureaucracy like a this lot I wonder if they’re handling BT’s help line as well — so I’m not sure how far I’ll get with that.

Meanwhile, I’ve been getting vaguer and vaguer. I know dementia is my destiny but I was hoping not quite yet. Two weeks ago I bought an air plant in the market. I know I had it with me at the check out shortly afterwards in Marks & Spencer’s because I remember picking it up and taking it outside but somewhere between M&S and home I put down the bag it was in and failed to pick it up again. I literally don’t know where I lost it. I only remembered I’d bought it two weeks afterwards. Arnold’s pants. What a bell end.

In health news, because I am one eighth French, which means that if you ask me how I am I WILL tell you … I have finally been to the doctor properly about my aching hands and while I suspect they are a bit arthritic, the main problem is carpal tunnel. The sore arm I have been experiencing when metal detecting for the last year and a bit which has suddenly become permanently painful … that’s tennis elbow. So I’ve had that for over a year and the carpal tunnel since 2015.

Ah.

Nice to know I’ve been looking after myself. Mwahahahrgh!

On the upside, both those things can be fixed with physiotherapy. Excellent. So long as I haven’t fucked the hands up too badly in the intervening 7 years since they started. I had been to the doctor before about the hands but they said it was arthritis. My bad, though, I should have been more articulate about the type of pain. I didn’t really think about it until it got really bad. Then I realised it wasn’t responding to the same things as my arthritic bits do.

So that’s a joy. But hopefully a fixable one.

There are Christmas events too! Please do feel free to come and visit me at the St Edmundsbury Cathedral Christmas Fair on 23rd – 25th November, 2023. Woot. I will be the one dying on my arse while those around me sell stuff feverishly hand-over-fist. I’m busy prepping for this, I have to order some eyebombing calendars, a couple of books and some cards. I also have to decide whether I’m going to visit a local cafe, clean the mirror in their loos and take another photo of the eyebomb I did there so it looks better as a Christmas card than the picture I have already.

Oh ho ho

Right now it’s the spit of Father Christmas but you can really see the dust. I thought writing Oh-ho-ho! in red or drawing a silly hat on it might help. I dunno.

Events! Norcon! I never blogged about Norcon! It was fabulous this year. Sorry not to post. Although no Nigel Planer selfie this time because he wasn’t there. Pity as I loved his book and was hoping I could buttonhole him and tell him. It has a similar feel to mine, which was heartening. So yeh, would have loved to have talked to him about that. Never mind. Can’t win ‘em all. Maybe next year. I sold a lot of books though, at pre covid levels. Which was lovely.

Ditto McMini’s most recent gig. Jeepers but he has gigs springing up like mushrooms all over East Anglia, including a Friday here and another on the next night in Norwich which will be a bit hard core for his perennially knackered 55 year old mother even if it will be fun. I should add that I sell the merch so it’s like doing a small event. I’ll get used to it though and the last gig I went home to entertain dinner guests and other people sold the merch for me!

Where was I? Oh yes. Events. A few weeks after Norcon it was time to take part in the first ever Fringe Literary Festival, here in our very own Bury St Edmunds. They had a short story completion: Fast Forward, for flash fiction up to 500 words. I put the start of an incomplete series in (one of the many things I’ve managed to get half way through but is now too complicated to complete until the emotional load is lighter than it is now). OK I condensed it a lot but if you want to listen, it’s here. Although there’s a lot of background noise. Sorry about that but the stories were read out in venues around Bury which was brilliant but less easy to record cleanly. Not that it mattered! As always, I was stoked to hear it read out. Here it is anyway.

So there you have it. Things are very, very hectic. I have a talk about burnout on 7th December. I’ve been working on it all year and I am cautiously optimistic that I will get it done in time but it’s tough because I’m … well … burned out. Mwahahrgh! Even more burned out than usual! As for writing, have I written anything new? Have I bollocks? Sigh. Maybe LIFE will fuck off for a bit next year and I’ll get a chance.

Ho hum, onwards and upwards? How have you been this last three months?

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Tagged as author blog, author blogs, author parent, comedy fantasy fiction, dementia, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, K'Barthan Series, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, off topic, writers, writing

15 Jul 2023 · 12:23 pm

Modern life is rubbish!

This is a blog post I wrote a couple of days ago. I’ve wrestled with my conscience as to whether I should actually post it. Mainly because it’s only going to worry people. I promise we’re all OK, but I do need to vent sometimes. This, being my blog, seems as good a place as any to do that. So it comes with a <rant mode> warning. Naturally, it’s written with a mental voice I use specifically for ranting which sounds like John Cleese doing Basil Fawlty going off on one. If any of it makes you laugh, that is the correct reaction. It is meant, foremost to amuse, but also to inform a bit in that it does genuinely feel like that sometimes.

Since the entire tirade genuinely reflects the way I felt at the time I wrote it, I think that, in the interests of full transparency, I should publish it. And also because I haven’t written anything else, so here it is.

[Rant mode] Modern life is rubbish!

A famous Blur album from the 1990s but also, sadly, very true for me. Or perhaps if I’m honest I should say, I am rubbish at modern life.

Aroogah! Aroogah! Whinge warning!

OK so I’m going to go on a teeny bit of a rant here, because in many respects, I’ve had a pretty rough time of it lately, and since this is my blog, I can sodding well do what I like. But I have a burning question right now and it’s this.

Why am I so unsuited to modern life? Because despite having been invited to sit the mensa test, it counts for zilch since I’m as thick as pigshit when it comes to certain, more mathematical strains of logic. I write numbers back to front and upside down (and add them up that way too) I often mange to look up completely the wrong hymn in church—because I read the number back to front—and my organisational skills are negligible. I couldn’t organise a fart in bed but the most galling thing is that despite knowing this, I still haven’t hit on a way to learn how to be organised. It just … doesn’t.

Then there’s the Mum stuff. The perfect storm of every single thing at which I am shit. I have skills. Are they any use to me for this? Of course they’re fucking not, I need the jot tittle and iota of formfilling and box ticking down pat and frankly, I suspect I’ve more chance of getting to the moon by putting car springs on my feet and trying to jump than I do of bossing that sort of stuff.

Mum’s mortgage money is dwindling astonishingly fast so I am trying to get some help from the NHS with her care costs. Yes, I know, I’m in the UK and the NHS is supposed to provide healthcare free to all at the point of need and yes, it does … except that some aspects of healthcare are more free than others. When you have dementia, it’s classed as a ‘social’ illness and dealt with by social services and presumably mental health services. It is a mental illness but at the same time, it isn’t because the causes of dementia are physical; strokes, bleeds to the brain, or neural diseases like Alzheimer’s, Lewy bodies, Motor Neurone etc which are all caused by physical factors, even if medical science doesn’t always understand why they happen, it’s a physical factor, not a mental one, which causes these outcomes.

Unfortunately, the NHS changed its classification of dementia back in the late 90s and for a whole swathe of people it was too late to plan for any healthcare costs, they just had to hope they wouldn’t need them. Worse, if those people did try to offload some cash after diagnosis, they stood the chance of being had up for avoiding care fees which is called deprivation of assets and is considered to be a criminal offence.

Some folks were lucky and they didn’t get dementia or they died fairly soon into the journey. My parents weren’t. One of the diffiiculties is that, for example, Mum has a house and the logical thing to do, from the point of view of death duties, would be for her to make over the house to us but continue to live there but even if she does this in a way that is compliant with UK tax law, then, since her dementia diagnosis, it would be a criminal offence because that would be trying to leave something to her children rather than spend the last of her and Dad’s assets on the healthcare she was promised for free until it was too late for her to do anything about it. Oh, and because the fact she and Dad have spent around £900k on care fees, to date—that’s right, close to ONE MILLION QUID—one million quid I didn’t even know they had, it still isn’t enough because the bastards want to make sure they strip those assets thoroughly, family antiques, pictures, the house, it’s all got to be sold to pay for care costs, or you have to make over the house to the authorities if they are going to pay (there may or may not be a cap on how much they can take for this. I think it depends where you are).

Yep, if you want to be tax efficient with your will, or try to avoid paying every last penny you have in care costs and give something to your kids … well … if you’re dying of cancer that’s OK. If you have a benign front temporal lobe brain tumour that presents very similar symptoms to the ones Dad endured, that’s OK, but if your affliction is associated with dementia then no. I’m sorry. If you try to do it, then, it’s a crime. Remember people, the D in dementia stands for destitute, and as far as the state is concerned, if you’re not destitute by the end of it, they’ve done something wrong. You’re supposed to surrender everything to pay for your care fees, suddenly, it becomes an actual crime to leave anything for your children or grandchildren.

Because we’re lovely compassionate people here in the UK and when our government screws over our citizens it likes to do it properly. Dementia isn’t a long grinding and hard enough road on its own, oh no, the government and the NHS like to ensure they make it as shitty for everyone concerned as possible. Why help one dementia patient when with a few deft tweaks to the care system, you can ensure there are more and double the assets you strip from the afflicted. Twice the money. Chancellor rubs hands together. Excellent.

As you can see, I’m not bitter or angry about this. Not at all.

Seriously, though. I genuinely don’t give a shit about my inheritance, that’s gone, although I do care about my brother’s half and that he gets nothing as well. What does make me angry is that it’s cost me pretty much everything; the never ending, grinding awfulness of it all has sapped me of any meaningful ability to write books and with that my purpose. It’s cost me being a decent mother, it’s cost me being an attentive wife, it’s cost me keeping in touch with my friends and wider family because it’s such a massive drag on my mental energy that I can only just keep in touch with a few folks. I guess we could just stop with, it’s cost me my happiness in many respects, or perhaps my contentment because in terms of stress, time, sadness, love, pain and god knows what else, it’s blown away any semblance of concentration and mental capacity I had (yes! Stress gives you brain fog, who’d have thunk it). It’s cost my husband and son because they feel it too, and they’ve seen me cry, many times and in my son’s case, at far too young an age. It’s cost my brother and his wife and my nephews and niece just as much.

I fucking resent the price we, and thousands like us, have paid because the illness our parents have endured has the wrong name. It does, indeed boil my piss. Mwahahahargh! I try not to think about it too much.

And fair due, when I say they take ‘every last penny’ they do generously leave you the last 23k. Except they don’t—and it’s not—because there’s a sliding scale of help beyond that and the full package doesn’t kick in until you are at £14k … which, to put this in perspective, is about 9 weeks of care fees.

Anyway, the amount of form filling! As you know, I am always a tower of strength when it comes to form filling, says she, with deep sarcasm. Did I mention that looking after Mum’s finances, healthcare and general wellbeing is a perfect storm of every single thing at which I am shit? And so was Dad’s. And it’s been going on for years and years, and years. And I am so, so fucking tired of my entire life being about trying to boss an enormous collection of all the things I am emotionally, physically and mentally least equipped to do. And Oh Lordy I took McMini to a consultation with a counsellor today and we fleetingly touched on the whole dementia dementor that is sucking away my life and I actually nearly wept. It caught me completely broadside because I thought I was through all that.

Not quite. Clearly.

The other day, I was listening to a programme on BBC sounds about dementia and they were so fucking upbeat.

‘Do you know carers everywhere save the government over £11bn a year?’ they said (or something along those lines). ‘Aren’t you all marvellous?’

Yeh the same way clapping people is so much better than giving them a pay rise and we don’t save them the money, they take it from us.

And I was sat there in the car, bundling along the M25 (it was flowing well that day) shouting,

‘No! We’re not fucking marvellous you absolute pus wangle! We’re fucking desperate, and lost and we have NOTHING left to give and NOTHING left to fight with! And no-one fucking gives a shit! And while I’m shouting at the windscreen like this, worrying the person in the car next to me,’ MTM turns, gives the nervous looking woman in the nissan micra a thumbs up and waves. ‘Can I just mention what it costs US? Everything. Fucking everything. Let me repeat that! It costs us every. fucking. thing. Our social lives, our hobbies, our capacity for coherent thought, our health and in some cases our sanity or our actual fucking lives.’

OK so I appreciate that sounds melodramatic but sadly, it’s true. One demented relative, and you are surrendering to years of sleepless nights and brain fog. Think new baby for years, and years, and YEARS until the lack of sleep kills you.

In a horrible irony, do you know what the result of that level of stress, for 15 years, was for Mum? That’s right. Dementia for her too. What a kindly joy! Thanks God you absolute get. The woman who said, ‘I don’t really care what happens to me when I get old, so long as I don’t lose my marbles.’ is losing her marbles.

Thank you, you to whichever clusterfuck of cucking funts made that decision back in the 1990s because thanks to your intervention she has, indeed, lost her fucking marbles.

Bastards.

Yes! I’m sure I’m entitled to all sorts of benefits and help and Mum gets it, what there is, but I’m too exhausted to look into it. And when I do, it’s for people spending 36 hours a week on care. If you have a part-time job that you can no longer do because of the strain of looking after your demented relative, that means you’re not eligible. If you worked during the school day, you’re not eligible because that’s not 36 hours. It’s a fucking shower! And I’m just running a house, a care team and a life from afar. I’m not even one of the poor bastards at home doing it 24/7 with no let up, no relief and no fucking hope. Waking up every hour all through the night and trying to persuade their demented relative to sleep because they are so … fucking … tired. People with dementia can live a full and happy life but it costs their loved ones everything. And nobody gives a fucking toss.

Then there’s … ugh … other stuff. Other stuff is a bit patchy to be honest. Everyone has a Draco Malfoy (look it up if you don’t know) and McMini is no exception. There’s a kid picking on him at school and for a while a lad who was a friend at one point was joining in, which made it extra specially hurtful. The ex friend has stopped now, thank goodness, but the other lad has continued. Luckily McMini, who was bullet proof on that score, and then very suddenly, not bullet proof, seems to have rediscovered his armour and ceased to care about the Draco Malloy in his life. Long may that continue.

Though the school is being brilliant it’s been tough for him. Hence the counsellor (psychotherapist who does counselling) and I arranged for us to meet to see if a few sessions would help. Things are a great deal better but I still want rule in or our whether or not Mc(not so)Mini might need a few handy coping strategies. Mainly because I doubt I’d be here now, in quite the same form, had I not had a lot of CBT at the beginning of this fucking dementia nightmare. And while he’s coping fine now, the kid who picks on him is still picking on him. So I set up an initial session to meet and see if the counsellor could help.

The first session was on Tuesday.

I forgot.

Jesus, Mary, Joseph and their fluffy donkey. Fuck me but I’m a fucking dickwad.

You know what. A few years ago I did an intelligence test, the result was a bit like a spider with 8 zones of intelligence and scores for each. Basically, I scored a solid top 80%-90% in seven of the eight areas. However, in one area—numeracy and certain mathematical logic—I scored below 20%. In an IQ test I scored one point off genius level (on paper, I’m well thick on screen) yet for everything that matters in wrangling my and my mother’s day-to-day existence my fucking enormous teflon-head brain is of absolutely fuck all use. The only thing my intelligence achieves is a keen awareness of how lacking I am in the one single form of fucking intellect I actually need. There are people out there with such severe cognitive disabilities that they are unable to live independently who are smarter than I am in the only area that anyone counts.

All my life I’ve railed against the stupid fucking bigots who say that the only intelligence that counts is mathematical intelligence and discount everyone else whose abilities aren’t a carbon copy of their own as ‘stupid’ because they’re too unimaginative to see the worth in any other kind of intelligence. I heartily loathe those people who aver that only one kind of intelligence is the arbiter of all intelligence and that without it you are thick, much as I heartily loathe the way the morning people have managed to fit the entire world to the way they function and have convinced us all that being a night owl (a logical evolutionary step to ensure some of the tribe was always awake to keep watch) makes you some kind of morally bankrupt deviant.

Sadly, modern life and educational standards are set up for mathematical logic, and nothing else, and it’s amazing the number of people who, when I suggest that it’s possible to be intelligent without being mathematically intelligent, will agree but then basically say, no. Engineering and construction and most stuff runs on maths or is designed using maths they argue. Therefore our world is built on maths and it is the apogee of all intelligence. I completely get that. I get that it’s important.

But we don’t all need ALL the maths to just … you know … live. I mean, for starters, if everyone in the village has one kind of intelligence and is brilliant at building the bridges, who’s going to do the fucking cooking? Rishi’s barking plan about maths until people are 18 … well … it depends what they teach. But trying to get people like me to understand advanced trigonometry isn’t going to happen, no matter how many times you try and drum it into me. It’s just a waste of everyone’s time.

Nobody insists we all play an instrument to grade 8 level and shames anyone who can’t as an inferior or a second grade person. Some people aren’t musical. Nobody gives them any grief. Some people aren’t mathematical. Newsflash. That isn’t a fucking crime. Why this ridiculous insistence that mathematical intelligence is the only thing that matters? It’s bullshit! Surely, unless they want to be a theoretical physicist then, so long as a person can manage their finances, or parse a spreadsheet/find an expert they trust to do it for them that’s all they need.

Yes, we need to understand certain mathematical basics to get by but the way they go on. It’s like saying that only one colour matters or that only one musical note is important. And what will making people who are useless at something keep trying—and failing at it—do for their confidence.

‘You have so much to give, and so much talent but that counts as nothing because this one tiny facet of intelligence (that you’re shit at) is the only thing that matters.’

Is that a healthy message to send to our kids? From one who received it loud and clear at school throughout their entire fucking childhood let me assure you that it’s very much not.

The other day, when I forgot that session with the counsellor for McMini, I hated myself: truly fucking hated myself in a way I’ve managed to avoid since the CBT I did to deal with just this kind of negativity when I was first trying to look after my parents and navigate the absolute craptonne of admin they seemed to generate. Fact is though, I’m just a massive fucking white elephant. I know I am. Normally, I can look away and carry on living the lie that there is some actual fucking point to my existence but yesterday. No.

It’s so hard to be bright, really bright, in a whole arena of disciplines which, while perfectly valid, are discounted by modern culture as worthless, it’s even more frustrating to be smart, but, at the same time utterly, crushingly, mind-numbingly thick at the only subject by which the world gauges intellectual worth … and filling in forms … and admin. Oh I know it’s a them problem (and the fact that I care is a me problem) but it’s fucking galling. It’s not that maths isn’t important, it’s that not everyone is going to use it to an advanced level, not everyone will need to and more to the point, not everyone can. Making them try for years is just going to make them feel shit about themselves and as we all know, miserable people beget misery.

Actually if you want to appreciate what trying to force people to study something beyond their ceiling does just read this. Read this to see just how shaming people who are bad at maths makes them feel. Read this to see how giving people the impression they are stupid or somehow morally lacking, because they are less able at something you can do easily makes people feel.

It’s this idea that because some people are engineers or scientists and are using maths to define space and time, or build bridges, we should all be doing it. It’s like saying that every single person in existence should be made to write a book. It’s like saying, ‘oh we’re having a bit of trouble with the new covid vaccine, MTM why don’t you have a go?’ and being surprised and upset when I can’t crack it. It’s saying that we should all be carbon-copy geniuses (geniai?). It is, quite frankly, a bit fucking mental.

Most of us need to do a tax return, manage a budget and possibly manage a business. Yes, it’s important to know that. We all need to. But just as important is showing people who are less gifted at maths useful stuff like the kind of logic required to parse a spreadsheet that’ll do that maths for them.

It seems a trifle unfair that the zone of intelligence, out of those eight, around which my entire chuffing life revolves is the one in which I sit in the bottom 20% of the population; remembering things, administrating financial matters, filling in government forms correctly, dotting every I and crossing every T as stipulated, and in a timely manner, not being able to see how my situation fits a standard box, sitting waiting on hold because I’m over thinking it.

On top of that, my startling lack of smarts—in the one area which dominates my existence—makes life such an uphill struggle that I have nothing left for anything else after I’ve finished with it all. That’s really where this whole sticking eyes on things cropped up. Because I wanted to write. NEEDED to write, but after dealing with all the shite, getting it wrong, doing it again, missing bits off and cocking it up, all while watching my father and then my mother slowly disappearing in front of my eyes; all while taking their hands and walking beside them as we made our way together into the dark … after that I had nothing left in the tank. But an eyebomb takes a few minutes, little or no energy. I still get to be creative and it cheers me up.

Hence the marked absence of any new writing so far this year. Or last year to be honest. Of course, that’s also the reason I’ve been concentrating on the eyebombing book. Because it’s a different kind of creativity and an easy win … except I did an event on Saturday and there was very little interest in it live … so to speak which was rather worrying after it looking like people were interested online.

This is the first book I’ve talked about on social media where people have demonstrably shown an interest but … The price was definitely too high. Nobody was countenancing paying £18 for the hardback and £10 was clearly too steep for the paperback too. I might try a smaller size and see if I can produce it more cheaply and charge £7 for the paperback and £10 for the hardback. I guess the trouble is that it’s still too expensive to produce a colour photobook for a price that anyone’ll pay. It may be that I need to aim it at a more deluxe audience … gulp … but then the photos should probably have been better. Yeek!

Bummer. It looks like I might have produced yet another turkey.

Never mind. I guess you can’t win ’em all… or any of them, it seems. I should give up already, but that would be easy, and I NEED to create things … and I’m pig-headed. Onwards and upwards.

[/rant mode]

Here’s something a little lighter …

Something for that person who has everything: Eyebomb, Therefore I Am

Picture of books about eyebombing displayed artfully

Step into a realm where inanimate objects come to life and a simple pair of googly eyes holds the power to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. This book invites you to immerse yourself in the whimsical and hilarious world of eyebombing; that art of sticking googly eyes on unsuspecting inanimate objects to unleash the joy within.

As you turn each page, you’ll find yourself smiling at the quirky personalities that emerge from everyday objects ranging from lampposts and traffic signs to automatic hand dryers and even dinner. The juxtaposition of the ordinary and the unusual challenges societal norms, reminding us to embrace new or different things, and look for humour in the unlikeliest of places.

Whether you’re a fan of street art, a lover of comedy, or simply seeking a joyous escape from the mundane, this photo book is sure to leave you grinning from ear to ear. You might even end up stashing a pack of googly eyes in our own pockets and having a go at eyebombing yourself.

To find out more and be informed when it goes on sale, join my eyebombing mailing list by clicking on this link:

https://www.hamgee.co.uk/ebl

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Filed under General Wittering

Tagged as author blog, author blogs, author parent, book marketing, dementia, dementia emotional cost, dementia fiscal cost, full time mum writing, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T McGuire, Mary Fails at Modern Life, massive rant, rant, trying to be a writer

2 Jul 2023 · 6:36 pm

Eyebomb … everything. Publishing news.

Well, that was a hell of a week. In a good way. I’ve shared most of what’s been going on on social media. Normally I don’t do that because … spoilers! This time, because I keep forgetting to write my blog I just thought … sod it! And of course, now here I am, remembering to write my blog, so while last week, you kind of missed out, this week, you get duplicates. Sod and his chuffing law eh? Picture of air freshener canister eyebombed

Since some of this is a recap, I’ll try and make it brief. On Monday this week, the test copies for my next book release arrived. This is a bit of a departure from normal in that it’s a book about eyebombing. As you know, in order to make my posts more interesting I use my own photographs. As you also know, unless you’re new to this blog, those photos tend to be eyebombs done by me. I was hit by copyright trolls a while back so I am hyper-careful now about having any posts on either of my sites that are not my own photos.

For some time now, people have remarked, here and there, that I should make a photo book of my eyebombs, but until recently, the costs of doing so were prohibitive — we’re talking £20 wholesale cost to me for a 30 page book. Or the production side of it was too complicated — as in, I’d need to use some proper publishing software and didn’t have any or know how to use it, so I’d probably have to pay a designer, which I couldn’t really afford.

These two barriers to entry suddenly fell this year when I discovered affinity publishing suite, which is like photoshop used to be. No crappy subscription you just buy it. It’s also just as powerful and, woah! I could afford it. Second, a new player has arrived in the print on demand market which is a bit more user friendly and their costs are keener.

Though still a little unsure as to whether I could make a decent fist of designing a book myself, I had a go. It wasn’t bad so I tweaked my proof copy and sent off for 20 or so which I will put on sale at the St Edmundsbury Cathedral Summer Fair next Saturday, to see if anyone is prepared to pay ready money for them.

I think for world wide sales on this one, I am going to do a kickstarter, mainly because there are a lot of book fans on there and it seems a good place to connect with them and I’m not having much success connecting with book people elsewhere.

This week, flushed with the joy of a new HUP product in my hands, one that had been, frankly, a bit of a shot in the dark but which I was surprisingly pleased with, I went to a street art exhibition at my local museum with a friend. At the end, in the foyer, which is also the shop, I wanted to eyebomb a box on one of the shelves and eventually decided that since I was on CCTV it might be politic to ask. The person on the desk said, ‘I knew I recognised you! You’re the eye lady!’

I’m wtf? I thought. ‘Uh … yeh …’ I said.

They were delighted for me to eyebomb the box and when I said I’d been tempted to eyebomb the exhibition space they said,

‘Oh you should!’

Yeh that is a Banksey behind there …

And the long and short of it is that friend and I went off and had lunch and then we returned to the exhibition and I stuck googly eyes on a lot of things … although I did avoid the actual exhibits. So then I asked if they thought my book could be put in the shop while the exhibition was on and they gave me the name and email address of the curator and said that I should definitely ask. Which reminds me … I must … you know … ask the curator. Doh. They may well say no, after all they are probably someone of taste and discernment, but even if they do, being encouraged to ask felt good.

So all in all, a good week.

I can’t quite explain this, but I seem to have found my art related creative mojo again. I’m guessing that now McMini is older I’m not using all the drawing art centre of my brain (which is totally a medical thing, obviously) to interact with him, be patient, find ways to cajole him into doing the boring stuff like getting from a to b within a certain time frame etc and also into answering question like ‘Is rain God having a wee?’ although to be honest that’s one I asked, he told me that he’d noticed that puddles disappear after rain and he thought that some of the water must go back up into the sky. But yeh, he’s smart and he used to ask a LOT of questions which I would always try and answer if I knew. And was a genuine delight for the most part, but it did tend to use most of the drawing creativity so if I sat down and actually tried to draw it felt like pulling teeth. It’s rather wonderful to have found it again.

Yesterday I knitted a wine bottle sock for someone. Didn’t finish it in time but it is finished now. I’m also working on a display stand for the eyebombing post cards I’ve had done. Yes there are seventeen cards as well (I’m nuts). I’m making this with card, and a lot of glue, and some spray paint. It’s fun and I haven’t had the resources or energy to do anything like this for ages. Perhaps I am finally post menopausal rather than peri, only the brain fog has lifted substantially over the last six months or so and I am getting acquainted with a MTM I haven’t seen for years; the dynamic one who has a bit more energy and who could, occasionally, remember her own flicking name.

I’ve also been taking Lion’s Mane supplements … don’t laugh … well alright, do, if you want to. But after starting Magnesium L-Theonate and suddenly discovering I could sleep through the night, I thought I’d give Lion’s Mane a go because it’s supposed to help with brain fog. I seem to remember someone said it was good for ADHD (which Mum always reckoned I had) in that it helps ADHD people focus and get organised.

Holy shit! First impressions suggest these things are gold. I have been so fucking on it this week it’s unbelievable. I have done stuff. I’ve made phone calls! I’ve remembered to do things … well … except email the curator of the museum to ask about putting my book in the shop but … you know. I’ve remembered to do quite a lot of things and I’ve procrastinated way, way less! Which is golden. So that’s been a hell of a thing.

At the moment there’s been a lot of Mum stuff so it’s been hard to write … although with the amazing ~~Ruthless Efficiency pills~~ Lion’s Mane pills I’m now taking, maybe I will be able to get back to that soon. In the meantime, I am building the kickstarter and I will make a special kickstarter edition which will list the names of funders in the back and have a couple of extra pictures and t’ing.

So here we are, and a book that I only did because the writing is a bit stalled and I needed an easy publishing win, seems to be rather more popular than my Real Books. Mwahahargh! For example; I’m now understanding, for the first time, how it feels to publish a book people actually want and it’s amazing.

Normally, when I bring out a book, apart from a few of you guys and the nutters in my fan group on Facebook, most people just smile with a slightly glazed expression and say, ‘that’s nice dear!’ Three quarters of the people on my mailing list haven’t even read one (God knows what they’re doing there but that’s another story).

This time, holy shizz! They’re asking when it’s coming out, where they can buy it, how much it will cost … I’m suddenly understanding what it feels like for other authors and why they are so enthusiastic about what they do. Hitherto, my relationship with publishing has been a bit like an addict’s with the substance to which they are addicted. I write because I love it and I have to and I need to share it. Also, a select few people do love my books … when they read them. But the when-they-read-them part is a huge problem because people only tend to read K’Barthan stuff as an absolute last resort, when every avenue of other reading matter has been exhausted and they are literally desperate … so desperate they’ll read anything … and then having finally had to read one of my books, they write and tell me that it was on their to read list for seven years and they read it in a sitting, have read all the other books I’ve written in a week and how come I’ve only written ten? And why aren’t there more? And they want more K’Barthan crack nowwww!

There is no middle ground.

So … yeh … eyebombing. Waaaaay more popular than my actual bona-fide books. Who’d have thunk it? You live and learn. Right now, I’m just enjoying the ride.

Eyebomb, Therefore I Am

Picture of books about eyebombing displayed artfully You didn’t think you’d escape without me giving the new book a plug did you? Ha! No chance. It may not be on sale yet, but when has that ever stopped me!

Here’s the blurb.

Step into a realm where inanimate objects come to life and a simple pair of googly eyes holds the power to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. This book invites you to immerse yourself in the whimsical and hilarious world of eyebombing; that art of sticking googly eyes on unsuspecting inanimate objects to unleash the joy within.

If you are interested you can sign up to my eyebombing email list. At the moment very little happens when you do this, although I’m hoping to send out a series of eyebombing photos at some point. The main impetuous, though is so I can tell people who want to know when the book finally drops and where they can get a copy. So you’ll hear when the kickstarter is launched, what’s in the fabulous kickstarter edition and you’ll also hear when the normal version goes on sale afterwards … and if I do any appearances selling it. To find out more and be informed when it goes on sale, join my eyebombing newsgroup by clicking on this link:

https://www.hamgee.co.uk/ebl

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Filed under General Wittering

Tagged as author blog, eyebombthereforeiam, eyebombtheschoolrun, M T McGuire new releases, new book releases, new books, trying to be a writer

21 May 2023 · 6:47 pm

We’re not at home to Mr Cockup. Oh no, no, no, no.

Except we so smecking are. Mwahahargh!

Picture of an amber warning light for an automatic gate with plastic googly eyes on it to make it look like an irritated face.

Yes he’s a bit fucked off.

I was going to do a post about writing this week—and accompanying things—but the accompanying things got a bit out of hand and so I’ve gone off on a completely non-writing related tangent.

Do you remember a refrain from the Blackadder II episode where he’s made Lord High Executioner?

‘We’re not at home to Mr Cockup!’ he tells his team. And they fuck it up, of course, and Baldrick says, ‘Shall I prepare the guest room for Mr Cockup, my lord?’

Yeh, well … Mr Cock-up seems to have taken up permanent residence in the spare room and his omnipresence has affected most events this week. Sadly this time, my inefficiency has impacted on my ‘work’. I put ‘work’ in quotes because we all know that I don’t have time for a real job, since what I do is look after Mum and be a mum. My writing ‘career’ is the thing I pursue in the few minutes a week that I laughingly call, ‘my spare time’.

Here’s the thing.  For the last, I dunno how long, the cunningist of my most cunning marketing strategies has revolved around the crack dealer’s school of marketing. Give them books, get them hooked and then make them pay. To whit, I have been handing out cards … these cards … (see pic).

picture of two business card-sized flyers advertising free books.

The QR codes send people to a page where they can download The Last Word (top card shown) or join my mailing list (other card shown) and grab a copy of Nothing to See Here… In case, like me, readers can’t get the QR code reader on their electronic thingy of choice to work, there’s a link written out longhand as well.

When I changed ISPs a few months ago, I lost my website. I’d run out of space and there wasn’t enough room on the server to back it up properly … except that I didn’t realise that and so when I got the new site up and running and tried to upload the backed up file it told me to piss off.

On the face of it, this wasn’t so bad. I have an earlier back up which contains most of the material I’d want to keep. Also, I used a lot of orphan pages; that is blanks with information about my books etc but without the menu and distractions that might make people browse away before they’ve properly assimilated how fantastically brilliant my books are and ponied up for one. Phnark.

Those were stored on my computer. I composed and edited them in a very ancient copy of Dreamweaver … 2004 ancient, to be precise … and put them backwards and forwards using the ancient Dreamweaver’s integrated ftp. As a result I was able to upload those to the new site and so most of the stuff in my automations should be working as usual. But things with Dreamwever are getting a bit shonky—it being nearly 20 years old and that—so I’ve been attempting to use an alternative.

Anyway, because I’m so organised and efficient (oh ho ho) I made a list and started downloading the code for all the pages I wanted to use … except that then, I suspect, I saw a shiny thing, or something happened with Mum, or McMini needed a lift somewhere and I got called away, and when I returned, I thought I’d finished. What distracted me is immaterial, the point is I hadn’t finished the job that I thought I’d done.

Yes, it turns out I’ve been handing out these cards like confetti and sending people to my site to download a free book to read and all they get is a 404 error.

Mmm, well done MTM. Bellend of the week award anyone? Ah yes, that would be me.

Balls up discovered, I have now put it right and the page for people to go to when they click the QR code is back in position. However, my gargantuan cockwomblery does not end there. Oh, no, no, no …

It now transpires that the QR code on my mailing list sign up cards points people to a sign up page with my list provider rather than on my site. I did these cards when I had artwork but in advance of publishing the book so I had to guess what I’d call the landing page with a view to making it later—when there was a book there for people to download and I’d written an onboarding sequence. I duly made up a name for the landing page, which involved the working title of the novella rather than the one it actually has…

Can you guess what happened next?

That’s right. I forgot to make that page. I forgot I’d made the link. I forgot that was where the QR code pointed but I had the cards printed anyway. Once again, the helpful QR code was taking them to a page that said oops but this time, rather than an oops page hosted by me, it was hosted by Mailerlite.

Mmm. My professionalism knows no bounds.

Bollocks.

In order to have a neat link, I used a link shortener.  Needless to say, in the interim, the link shortener in question, Bit.ly, has drastically reduced the facilities of its free account so I can’t just make a new one for bit.ly/hupbook or whatever because I’m only allowed to use the ones bit.ly gives me, you know; bit.ly/1f*5hio;avew or something equally catchy and easy to print correctly and remember. So what did I do? Well, I just duplicated the signup page I have, and renamed it with the name I used when I made the original link. Simple! But also. Ugh. Head desk.

As you can see, my marketing’s been just peachy this week, say I with such leaden irony that if I decide to move this sentence I’ll need a special, heavy-duty winch. Then again, perhaps my … er hem … marketing prowess has been kind of OK because I can tell myself that I’ve fixed a long-term problem that’s been extant since mid January.  Which makes this a win. Obviously. Snortle.

How did I not spot this problem earlier? I hear you ask, except I probably don’t because I expect you’ve nodded off by this time, but as usual I’m going to pretend, for comic effect, that I did. Er … hang on … oh yes. How did I fail to spot this? Well the QR code isn’t the only thing on there, I have also written out the link … except … it’s a different link which goes to a real page which does exist and will allow them to sign up and download the book. Not a total disaster then but kind of weird, all the same. I’ve left it like that for now because an alternative means changing the artwork.

Going forward (not a phrase I like but probably the best one to use here) people can at least sign up to my mailing list or download a free book with those cards, now. They probably won’t but that’s not the point is it? The point is that they can.

It’s been one of those weeks this week.

Similarly, I ordered a new case for my phone. I needed a wallet case because I like to have a single card in there and be able to go out with just my phone without being caught short of cash. Also, if my wallet’s nicked and I have to stop everything else I can still pay for things in a shop and get cash while I’m waiting for them all to arrive AND I can still buy stuff if I go out and forget my wallet.

However, I couldn’t find any companies that made them for my phone initially and had to buy a normal case—this is me, it has to have a protective case of some sort because otherwise, I’ll smash it. Although even with the protective case I smashed the phone-before-last on day two.

The case it has is great but I have to take it off to plug in a USB stick to download my photos, and as I’m doing the eyebombing book at the moment, I need to keep moving eyebomb pictures from my phone to my computer so, as you can imagine, this has become a sizeable point of pain. I have google drive but anyone who’s ever tried to download anything more than one photo at a time from Google Drive will know a) what a palaver it is and b) that when it compresses the photos into a zip file it leaves three quarters of them out. Massive, MASSIVE ball ache. The USB storage stick is way easier, even if you have to keep taking the phone out of its ruddy bastard case each time. That’s how eager Google is to ensure you don’t bother and pay for extra storage. Money grubbing bastards.

Sorry, where was I? Ah yes.

Having ordered the case, it arrived two weeks later from China and I discovered I’d inadvertently ordered one to fit a Pixel PRO rather than a plain pixel. When I put ‘custom wallet case for google pixel 6’ into a search engine, I have to be very careful that I check the results are not for a Pixel 6 Pro, which is bigger, because no matter what I do, it lumps them all together. I also get annoyingly irrelevant ‘sponsored’ results from companies who don’t make a custom wallet case for a pixel at all. I know I had the right one initially but the internet dropped, I had to reload the page and I didn’t realise it had defaulted back to pixel 6 PRO again. Bastards. That said, it was so rubbish that when it arrived I was almost glad it didn’t fit.

Needless to say, only one other site offering a Pixel 6 (not pro) wallet case popped up on my search results, but apparently they’d changed some vital parameter to ‘custom’ that made BT parental controls ban them. Or perhaps it was because they’re called hairy worm, phnark. Uh yeh … I guess it could be that. Sometime, long ago, in the dim, dark, distant past, we put parental controls on our BT internet access because … you know … McMini.

However, that was eight years ago. We are out of contract and neither of us knows our BT password so we can’t change it. I tried to get this back off BT but was unable to because it was confidential information. So confidential that once it’s been lost, they can’t even tell the actual account holder what their own password is. Likewise, if they spell your name wrong, they can’t change it. I might be able to tone down parental controls via the wi-fi router and I will probably try at some point in the far future, when I’ve nothing better to do.

Alternatively, it might be that only McOther can do it because he’s the account holder and being his mere wife means I’m not secure enough. I did have a secondary account and password which I could do this stuff with but those no longer work, probably because I haven’t used my BT email address, ever.

As far as the account goes, I think there has to be one default email address but we can’t get in because … password … and they can’t send it to us because we can’t get in to read the email. Anyway, they’ve spelled our surname Maguire, the ignorant tossers, so they can fuck off.

Hmm. Sorry. Not ranty or anything today am I? I’m just in a grump because my son has very generously shared his cold with me. Back to my long and rambling story. I just know you’re on the edge of your seat. Mwahahargh!

Luckily, I have data on my phone so I just used that to bypass BT’s draconian system by using my data and my phone, instead. I did try to report it as an error but obviously I needed to know my account name and password for that. Considering I uploaded the artwork, positioned it and chose the text colour using my phone I am actually quite chuffed. See picture attached.

Mmm … K’Barthan swag.

Nothing much else has happened this week other than my opening what, I suspect, is going to be the most gargantuan can of worms. I asked about getting Mum a care assessment for a continuing care grant; mainly because one of her carers’ grandfather had been given it and she told me that, in her professional opinion, he was no more in need of help than Mum. Her mother, who is also on the care team, agreed. I asked what they did, and apparently another family member had contacted an agency who’d done it for them.

Armed with this information, I rang the agency in question but they told me that if Mum is able to speak she isn’t bad enough. The chap there seemed to think that non-verbal was a key factor and told me to come back when she reaches the pureed food stage. I’m a bit confused by that because if she needs help to stand, go to the loo, wash, dress, cook, clean and can’t even use the phone or turn the telly on by herself then surely that’s 24 hour care.  To be doubly sure, I rang the Admiral nurses helpline. Sadly they don’t cover where Mum lives so they won’t be able to help with the process but they were able to advise me and said that yes, Mum definitely had needs that made her eligible for Continuing Care.  Next, I got through to social care at the council who thought I should contact her Doctor. I guess what I really need to find is the local social services number for her and get a social worker on her case. I’m not 100% sure how that’s done, as with Dad I seem to remember it happening automatically. I’ll have to look up his notes and see if I have a number for them from then.

Essentially, Mum needs a care assessment first from the right team. Apparently you can call and ask for one of those any time. Then the results of that are scrutinised closely and financial help awarded … or not. The trouble is, nothing says who you call to get this initial care assessment sorted.  There are parameters and a procedure, but to the outsider looking in the vaguaries of the system are very difficult to understand, at best and at worst, it comes over as deliberately opaque, whimsical and arcane … Mum ticks most things on the list but, as yet, I’ve found no concrete information as to where the starting point of the system is. As a result, I’m not sure who to contact to have the care assessment done. It’s a NHS team, who does the assessment for the actual application, but I have no clue if we need a ‘normal’ assessment first from social services. I’m guessing we do, although I’ve found a thing that says a district nurse can arrange this, too so I might see if I can get the carers to liaise with them.

There are two agencies who will apply for NHS continuing care on behalf of people, and a law firm with the most ridiculous name on earth—they’re probably really good but the name screams cold-calling ambulance chasers. The only one of these august bodies that quoted a price for their work charged £2,500 and some suggest as much as £6,500 depending on what they have to do. I will have to think about whether it’s worth that. No, it’s definitely worth it, for my sanity, to pay someone else to do it for me because this will be a grim project to try and undertake on my own and, like all the Mum stuff, is a perfect storm of everything at which I am shit.

In the meantime, I’ve started filling out the form on the website of the other agency. I’ve already stalled at how much Mum has spent on her care … well … you know … apart from, ‘everything’ but some of that was the day-to-day costs of running the house. She has a state pension so there’s that on top, as well, though so theory, it’s actually a bit more than everything.  Everything with brass knobs on? I dunno.

What I don’t understand is this; while I appreciate that they aim to make it hard for people gaming the system, it would be quite nice to set it up so the people who needed this particular part of the system would have some blind clue as to what, exactly makes them eligible and how it works. There are lots of really clear accounts that explain what will happen when you are already in the system and what the steps of the evaluation are. But how to start the process? Absolutely fuck all.

Carers looking after a sick relative who are seeking continuing care for them, or people who are sick themselves and need continuing care … they’re not exactly endowed with an abundance of energy for administriviatitive shit because they have a craptonne on their plate and are already nearly broken. I should imagine many of them will never get money to help with care, money to which they are entitled, because they are too fucking ill and their relatives too fucking frazzled and burned out to even begin to work out how to fucking apply.

Fuckity fucking fuck! Preparing the guest room for Mr Cockup then, even, also as we speak.

Ho hum. Onwards and upwards.

Astonishingly cheap ebook and audiobook alert …

Yes. Spoil yourself with your good taste (Ambassador) and a wonderful free book. Mmm hmm. If you are looking for a fun novella—to relieve the considerable tedium you may be experiencing after reading this blog post, for example—or if you’d like to listen to an audio book in the car, or at work, or on the commute and you are just fresh out of ideas for fabulous newness … well, you can fix all those things by grabbing a free book.

This book.

Small Beginnings, K’Barthan Extras, Hamgeean Misfit: No 1.

It’s free to download in ebook format from most of the major retailers (except when Amazon is dicking with me) while two and a half hours of glorious K’Barthan audiobook deliciousness is a mere 99p or c from Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Spotify, Apple and Chirp (if you’re in the States). It’s also free to download from my web store.

If you think that sounds interesting and would like to take a look, just go here.

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Tagged as an author with children, author blog, dementia, full time mum writing, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, off topic, trying to be a writer, women in sci-fi, women writers, writers

7 May 2023 · 10:04 pm

Coronated … and some

Not, entirely what you think it is, this one …

OK, so it’s been a long time, there’s been a fabulous holiday, an equally fabulous author event—the Indie Author Book Fair in St Ives—which genuinely was wonderful by the way. There’s been rather a lot to do in the garden and for Mum. As a result, I’ve walked a little closer to burn-out than I’ve wanted to, hence, no blog. But this week I’ve done a little writing, I’ve had a lie in and I have another one on Monday and things have been a bit more relaxing and quite … interesting so I thought I’d share them with you.

McOther and I have decided to have a new floor in our kitchen. See picture. This involved having it re-tiled, which, in turn, involved removing everything in it. I had no idea how much stuff we had in the kitchen and conservatory until it was strewn liberally about the house. Yeh. Now I know. Another factor was that there were times when we couldn’t walk on the tiles, and that involved one rather hairy evening when we couldn’t access the oven. Take away pizzas for us that night.

Then there’s the weather. The kitchen table, the island from the middle of the room, the dishwasher and the fridge were outside on the patio. Entirely fortuitously, I’d been buying a plastic greenhouse from Wilco last week (£40 and they last about 7 years) and I noticed they were also selling plastic sheeting. Wrap this round fruit trees over winter and they escape the dreaded leaf curl. With that in mind, I’d bought some. Seven metres to be precise. We opened it up, draped it over the white goods and table, and hoped it wouldn’t rain.

Speaking of rain, the forecast was good but only for a short while and of course, there was a bank holiday, so in order to ensure they got the full amount of work required done in the day, the tilers arrived at 7.30 am sharp on Tuesday. I had to forego parents’ swim, which I was a bit nettled about, so McOther could go to his bought-and-paid-for French class but actually it was lucky I did as they needed various cupboards emptied, the larder being one of them. It took a while but I managed to remove it all in time for them to put the first layer of gloop down for the tiles to go onto.

Over the three days they did sterling work and did different bits at different times so that, after the first night, we could walk into the kitchen etc. However, the weather was beginning to look a bit ominous. On the second night, half of it was grouted and could be walked on, the other half was glued but not grouted so if we went on there we had to step in the middle of the tiles only ~~–yes, because otherwise the bears would get us! No! Not because of the stupid effing bears you daft fucking tart~~ where was I? Oh yeh, because otherwise, the tiles might move.

McOther went to collect McMini from school and looking outside at the ominously gathering clouds I realised it might be going to rain. The white goods and the island were back indoors by this time, not where they should be but on a part of the floor which was now set and solid. The table was nestling happily under the (now) folded-in-half polythene sheet but there was a bamboo chair sitting out there, with a foam cushion. It’s more of a cat hammock to be honest, one of those round bamboo cup and saucer ones, I think the technical term is a pappadum chair. It was open to the elements but I realised I could put the bamboo bits of the chair on top of the fridge and dishwasher and the cushion on top of those. It was tricky because there was only one tile in the ‘walkable’ half next to the double doors but I managed it and got the two bamboo bits in. Brilliant, now for the cushion.

As I brought the cushion in, I passed an old plant pot which was on the windowsill. The pot contained a dead plant and a lot of very dry earth …

Can you guess what happened next kids?

That’s right. I caught it with the cushion and it fell down. The saucer in which it was standing smashed and the horrible dried out compost went all over the fucking floor.

Which bit of the floor d’you think it spattered over? The bit that was already grouted and dry or the bit that was only glued? That’s right, kids. The bit that was only glued. And where d’you think the earth went? Where would it go?

That’s right, into all the cracks of, fucking, course!

For a moment, I stood there motionless. Had that actually just happened?

Of course it sodding well had.

Fuckorama.

On the upside, to my left, on the windowsill, I spied the hoover.

On the downside, it’s a handheld jobbie and works for 10 minutes on a charge … how much was left? I glanced at my watch trying desperately to work out how long it had been since McOther departed to collect McMini and if I had enough time to clear up the mess before he came home, saw it and went into orbit.

I started with the dustpan and brush, sweeping up the bits from the middles of the tiles because lord knew I didn’t want any more of it going down the chuffing cracks. Then I got hoovering carefully sucking the crap out from between the tiles without pressing down on them. The clock was ticking but I was making excellent progress, indeed, I was nearly there. Would I manage to disappear all this shit before McOther returned …?

Of course I fucking wouldn’t.

I was down to the last three tiles when I was suddenly conscious of a wave of extreme disapproval so solid I could almost feel it as a physical pressure. Yep. McOther was home and yes, predictably, he was absolutely incandescent. To give him his due, he understood what I’d been trying to do and realised I’d the best of intentions so he didn’t shout at me and he wasn’t angry with me per se. He was just a very silent, tight-lipped, angry man about the whole situation for a considerable time afterwards.

My mistake was to try and make each bit perfect before moving onto the next one. I should have just bodged it all, and then kept primping at it until the whole thing was perfect. That way, it would have looked clean enough for him not to notice and I could have just hoovered up the bits he didn’t see after he’d gone to bed.

He is aware that a lot of this kind of stuff happens which he never knows about. Because he doesn’t need to be distressed unnecessarily … although I often tell him about it afterwards. Beiong caught in the act, or telling him, at the time, as events unfold is never a good idea. Unless something’s gone wrong that transpires to be unfixable.

The floor is fine by the way. I got every last scrap of that bastard compost out of the cracks. I’m just grateful it was dry.

Other crowning glories …

Yeh, in case you didn’t notice there was a coronation in my country this week. Anyone who has read my books will know I have a bit of a thing for arcane ritual. When my brother and I were small we used to draw the curtains to make some proper dark, light candles which we’d stolen from the cupboard downstairs (our poor parents) and then parade around, dressed in sheets, singing ‘plain chant’. Mostly a limerick about beans done in thirds. Yeh, this is why McMini’s eccentricities don’t faze me as much as they might.

Anyway, what I’m saying here is that I do love a bit of arcane ritual and a coronation promises to be as bizarre and arcane as it gets so I was agog …

It didn’t disappoint.

Oh and I absolutely loved it by the way, I thought it was really good, but a) I’m a very high church Anglican so I love all that wandering around in cloaks with people holding bits of them out of the way for you so they don’t flap your frilly bits into the holy stuff and knock it flying, or, heaven forfend, spill the consecrated bits so you have to spend the next ten minutes licking any and every piece of consecrated material off the floor. It’s a bit like James Brown being ‘helped’ onto the stage for an encore in his purple cloak; glorious, glorious theatre.

Yes, a coronation costs a lot of money, but it also keeps thousands of people in jobs, god knows how many crafts people working, a whole shit load of heritage crafts alive plus, farming, animals, plants etc are preserved. Remember everyone taking the piss out of Charles for talking to the trees and banging on about conservation and global warming. Yeh who’s laughing now? And considering the other shit the State funds and how much that costs, whinging about the cost of this is like ignoring a suitcase of money behind you and instead, choosing to chisel at the 50p piece someone’s stuck onto the pavement with superglue as a joke. I’ve used that metaphor about going after ‘benefit fraud’ instead of making corporate monoliths who run the world (and government) pay more tax but it’s a good metaphor for this, too, so it’s staying.

While we’re here, the people who run this world are the super-rich and giant companies, who through the sheer weight of their riches and ‘regulatory capture’ (or mates in high places, as the rest of us call it) get round the rules do what they like. They do what they do to earn more money and nothing gets in the way of that. Even though they are richer than three quarters of the actual nations on this planet people like Bezos, Musk, Trump et all (I’ve chosen these three at random) appear to have no notion of anything but swelling their coffers and little regard for the people whose work feeds their greed.

Politicians are supposed to care for their people but very few of them do. At the moment, we have a man among those glitterati who does genuinely appear to want to help people. OK it’s a King Man, but like his mother before him, he’s one of the few in high places who come close to caring and he’s the only person among those top flight glitterati who has anything like the power and newsworthiness required to make other people think. Or at least, one of only a handful who can who appears to actually want to. And it’s a shit job. I’ve done the whole goldfish life and it’s not easy if you aren’t cut out for it and he had no choice whereas I did. So yes, while I am mostly socialist, I don’t buy the non-monarchy line. I don’t vote for any political party regularly as I vote for my principles, and the party that gets my vote is whichever party is the nearest fit with those principles at the time.

MTM steps off soap box. Right. So I watched the coronation. And I enjoyed it.

Highlights …? First, the way the King and Queen were smiling at people as they processed, in slow state, up the aisle, it looked like the odd grin at people they knew or recognised and it immediately gave the whole thing, ridiculously formal as it was, an upbeat informality. Yeh. I know, but that’s how it came over. It was a bit like attending the wedding of a couple who, you just know in your heart, are going to be very happily married. It’s formal, there’s ritual and you want the theatre to go right for them but they are clearly very comfortable with each other and the machinery around them. That kind of thing.

Then there’s Penny Mordant parading around with the Sword of State like some avenging Valkyrie … but she’s fresh from day release to Olympus for work experience and still wearing the uniform. She had to do a lot of gym work to hold it up for that long, apparently. That was a belter of an outfit too. I think Penny silently stole a big part of the show, but not too much, merely … enough.

The blessing of the crown, watching the Archbishop hold a 2kg lump of jewel-encrusted metal aloft in front of him for what was, quite clearly, a lot longer than he found comfortable.

The anointing? Woah. He takes off his clothes, goes behind a screen and actually strips off … in church? That’s … a hell of a thing. He gets dabbed in various places with holy oil, including his chest, so you can stop snickering at the back because it’s only his top he takes off. It’s church though so he must get fucking cold. I was particularly intrigued to see that medieval style clothing is very similar from East to West.

See what I mean?

I couldn’t find a social media post to share of him wearing it and the belt, and I daren’t share anything else, so this will have to do. But once he had the belt on then, stick the right kind of Saracen helmet on him, and he could have stepped out of Saladin’s court from a Ladybird book about the Crusades in these duds. Or an illustration of medieval Chinese noblemen.

So … what do we learn from this? That, if we go far enough back everyone wore a dressing gown.

Three changes of costume though! THREE! He swapped the very lovely red Nehru jacket, which I rather coveted in a closet New Romantic kind of way, for something very, very gold. And reminiscent of something you might see worn by a Mongol lord in a medieval illustration, or a full-length figure off a medieval coin.

And did I mention it was very gold. And very heavy, presumably. If it had been lead then, come the apocalypse, I reckon it could have been used to shelter several people from radiation. And it was very medieval but at the same time, because it was so spangly, there was also that dash of 1960s Klingon about the glitteryness of the fabric which merely added to the mystique.

And also Dr Who. As they cleared the screens away, for a few minutes, there, I wondered if our new King is also a Timelord.

Although Timelords are based on historical costumes from the medieval era, principally Venice (the 1970s and 80s ones at any rate, lean heavily on that portrait of Doge Lorenzo Loredan which is from the 1400s but it’s as near as dammit).

Sorry, gone off on a tangent there.

The throne (snortle) … the revered 700 year old—or is it 800 years old—throne which has been defaced by generations of school boys at Westminster School.

Also gold. Of a different kind. Comedy gold. Because … really?

In my Dad’s house, at Lancing College (Gibbs) the very junior boys didn’t have an individual study, there was, basically, a cube farm, which was called a houseroom and everyone in their first two years had a cubicle in there. Except that in the second year some of them moved up to ‘the settle’ which was this ancient wooden bench in front of the fire. After that they then went on to ‘a pit’ which was an individual study. There was a kitchenette off to one side of the houseroom with a grill and a hot plate, which enjoyed a regular supply of milk, butter and sliced bread but if you were a member of ‘the settle’ you could toast that bread over the gas fire. The room perennially smelled of beeswax polish and toast with a hint of gas (from the pipes not the boys although there probably was a bit of both).

‘The settle’ was covered in graffiti. Every boy who’d been through that house had gouged his name deeply into the wood until the whole thing was knobbly with graffiti and there were names, on the names, on the names and very little plain wood anywhere. I’ve no clue if it’s there now. I hope it is. Likewise, I’ve no clue if everyone carved their names in it but one of them was singing in the choir at the coronation yesterday. My dad would have been so proud.

Thing is, The Settle … that’s at Lancing College. It wasn’t founded until 1848 and I think the present site was built in the 1860s (but don’t quote me on that). My point is it’s not that old, so it’s not quite such heights of vandalism to gouge your name into the settle as it is to gouge it into the throne upon which Henry VIII was crowned.

Word up, I did not expect the actual Fucking Throne of Fucking England (Yes that’s its full title. You didn’t know that did you?) to be the Westminster School equivalent of ‘the settle’ in Victorian times. Mainly because as stated, the Fucking Throne was over 700 years old before the little bastards even got carving. Except that, clearly the Westminister School equivalent of ‘The Settle’ is exactly what it was.

Holy. Fucking. Fuck! There is something joyously ironic about this. If I’d written that into a book, it would be dismissed as a bit over-the-top. Mwahahargh. Not. So. It was also, clearly, horrifically uncomfortable, especially to a man with an arthritic back who suffers from sciatica. You could see him shift position and wince every now and again.

Then there was ‘the giving of the presents’ I dunno what this bit was really called but … the special attributes. No, not eyes in the back of the head, a thimble, box and ring of state but … WAIT! Hang on! There WAS a ring of state. Mwahahahrgh! But I don’t think it was shrink-to-fit. And a bible, and some spurs, a sword, The Orb (no relation to the 1990s popular music combo) a sword and a couple of rod things which he has to hold in each hand so he’s got nothing to save himself with if he falls. Yep, if he trips over a dog or something with that lot on, he’s going to go flat on his face. And there’s the whole discombobulating effect of having one hand gloved and one hand … not.

Which reminds me … One glove!? One giant, beautifully embroidered, 1950’s-style-motorcycle-gauntlet-type glove. All this phaff and he only gets one? Where’s the other fucking glove? Did they drop it? Imagine being the bloke with the cushion. Shit I’ve dropped one somewhere. Fuck! Where is it? I’ll have to go back. Shit! No time. Oh no! Wait! There it is! Bollocks that security bloke’s just tripped over it and kicked it under the organ. We’ll never get it out in time. Shit and there’s my cue. What do I do? What do I do? Fuckity fuck! I’ll just have to blag it with one for now, go back and find the other and hand it to him in a quiet bit later on.

Imagine him riding his Norton in full regalia, the golden cloak ~~dragging along behind him~~ billowing out behind him in the wind but miraculously, without taking his head off, because this image is for cinematic effect, rather than real, with only one fucking glove on? What the …?

What happened? Were the glove makers like me at school? Was it this kind of conversation?

‘He wants two. You know that right?’
‘Shit! No! I didn’t see that part of the brief.’
‘It was over the page.’
‘What?!!! Noooo! I didn’t see that …’
‘Bummer mate.’
‘But now what do I do? He’s supposed to wear them to-actual-morrow! I can’t make another one in time. What do I doooo?’
‘Search me mate.’
‘OK, calm. Breathe … there’s nothing I can do, there’s no time to make another one now, I’ll just have to face the music; give him the one you have made and explain … Maybe he’ll understand.’**

So there’s the poor guy with one glove, and one not-glove, and rod, and staff and clothes that are made of solid gold and weigh approximately one metric tonne*.

*OK probably not but you get the gist and it sounds funnier.
** I know it’s a hawking glove but admitting that ruins the comic effect, such as it is.

Putting the crowns on. Again, I was completely riveted by this bit. First trying to get it on to the King’s head. ‘Careful! You’re going to crick the poor man’s neck. He’ll have neuralgia for weeks!’

Also enjoyed that Queen Camilla, who always strikes me as a down-to-earth, hands-on, practical kind of person, had to pretty much sit on her hands, they kept coming into shot as she instinctively went to put her crown on, herself.

At some point, I’m not sure when because I went to the loo, the King seemed to have changed clothes again and put on a purple silk jacket which I would have coveted even more greatly than the red one as a New Romantic/Goth-in-colour teenager.

A thought about crowns … I can’t work out if Crowns look quite cool or absolutely fucking ridiculous. I noticed the King was wearing a different one when he came out onto the balcony, I’m thinking, his mother’s. But it wasn’t gold, presumably it was lighter, because the gold one weighs a fucking tonne and he’d have ended up with a stiff neck for the next ten weeks***. Poor man, he probably has anyway. But … they do make your head look really big. Or maybe I’m just not used to such tall hats. I dunno.

Crowns … to make your head look REALLY big.

***OK 2kg/5lbs but you get the picture

The coach. Yeh. That looked horrendous too. There were all the others moving smoothly along, meanwhile you can see the finials on the four corners of the coronation coach bobbing up and down as it crested the tiniest bump. They must have been about ready to hurl when they reached the palace. No wonder they arrived in a different one. Graffitied the Throne may be may be, but it’s not the great-white-telephone kind of throne, after all.

No wonder the poor man asked for quiche for Coronation lunch. Comfort food. That’s what he wanted. And after all that malarkey I would too. Jeez. I suspect all they felt like doing was to go to bed early and sit there in their PJs, with the telly on, eating a cheese omelette each off a tray. I sincerely hope they got to do that … you know … if they wanted to.

For many reasons, I think the best photo of the whole day has to be this one.

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Tagged as author blog, ChazIII, Coronation, humour … probably, M T McGuire

12 Mar 2023 · 12:44 pm

Come with me on a journey through my exciting life!

Obviously, I use the word, ‘exciting’ advisedly, the ironic implication being somewhat the reverse.

This week, I have mostly been … running around like a blue-arsed fly! As previously implied, it’s not exciting and sadly it’s not even that funny either. But this is my blog, so I can do what I sodding well like, which means I’m going to tell you about it anyway.

On the Mum front … more admin popped up, just for a change. There is so. much. admin. Ugh. Never mind, it is what it is. I can’t fix that. It’s dealing with it in the most effective way possible that counts.

A few years ago, Mum very wisely decided that she would put all the bills with one provider. At the time this wasn’t the cheapest way but from the point of view of suddenly having to take care of Dad’s side of the admin for the first time in about 50 years while, at the same time looking after someone with dementia (Dad at that point) it was worth paying a little extra for the reduction in hassle. From the point of view of someone who takes to this sort of stuff like a duck to quantum physics and is now looking after a mother with dementia, I regularly give quiet thanks for this decision.

However … the company that looks after her electricity, gas and phone had been taken over by something called Ovo, yes that’s OvO people not OvUM. Needless to say, I can’t remember their bloody name because all I can think of is ovum. Yes well … moving on. We’ve been waiting to have our account ‘switched to Ovo’ for some time, inhabiting an uneasy limbo between the two which made it tricky to do anything. However, I reckoned we’d finally achieved splash down because something had happened to the direct debit so Mum suddenly owed them money. When I checked Mum’s post on Wednesday I discovered a welcome to Ovo letter with a phone number to ring to sort it out.

On, on… probably …

On the up side, despite the fact that all the operators were busy helping other customers, I only had to listen to a hilariously 1920s version of the Blue Danube before someone answered. I got someone nice, as well, which always helps. Her english had a slight midwestern twang and she kept calling me ‘ma’am’ so I suspect she was in India, or possibly Singapore or Thailand? It was all very straightforward though. Mum needs a smart meter but one of the carer’s partners, who fits them, had recommended waiting as long as possible … except that then the whole takeover thing began and we got stuck in the twilight zone between belonging to the old company and being absorbed into ~~Ovum~~ Ovum. Shit! I’ve just typed Ovum twice. Bloody Hell! OVO chuffing buggering OVO. Er … yeh. Sorry about that, where was I?

Right yes, ringing Ovo. I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to speak to them about Mum. I had special dispensation from the old lot but as we had a bill and I suspected this was because the Direct Debit hadn’t transferred over from the old supplier to the new one, I wasn’t certain the special dispensation would have transferred either. As a result, I saw no point in making things complicated so I did the usual trick of fraudulently pretending to be Mum so I could circumvent the security protocol without having to wait however many days it was for them to process a copy of Mum’s power of attorney or speak to her so she could give them permission to talk to me (which would have been difficult with her in Sussex and me in Suffolk). While I was on the line, I managed to book the installation of a smart meter on Tuesday, even better they have sensible slots so instead of 8-12 and 12-6 which involve a large gap when staff levels are thinner and I have to get an extra person in to make doubly sure that there’s someone available to deal with the engineer, they had a slot from 10.00 until 1.00 and from 12.00 until 2.00, which fitted into the right time frame for us and was surprisingly sensible and accommodating of them.

A quick message to the carers’ chat while I was on the phone and the engineer is now coming to fit a new electricity smart meter between 12.00 and 2.00 which is the time when there is absolutely guaranteed to be enough folks about for someone to take care of the meter ~~man~~ person. Even better, if Ovo turn up before 12.00 or after 2.00, Mum gets £30. Jolly dee … probably. So much could go wrong but … I’ve done my best.

I have also managed to end up running the bank account for McMini’s band, because I’m a special kind of stupid. That shouldn’t involve much, but this week I was busy sorting out T shirts to sell at their next gig. I managed to get more money, and therefore more shirts, by having the band member friends and family put our orders in up front. So that’s grand. I’ve also managed to set up a paypal account for the band with a Gmail address. Next step, when the money pours in after the gig, if it does, get an iZettle so we can take card payments.

Other news, this week, I went to a gin tasting with a group of ladies from Parents’ Swim, at McMini’s school, along with a wider group of folks, who I tend to run into when they’re walking their dogs on the school site and I’m going for a walk if the swim is cancelled, or I’m looking for mushrooms, or if I’m simply passing the time before the traffic dies down a bit and I can get home quickly (I see zero point sitting in traffic for 40 minutes when I can go for a 40 minute walk, get all my exercise in for the day and then drive home in ten minutes).

The tasting was in the bar part of the concert venue in my home town and was billed as being gin and ‘nibbles’. Naturally, all of us being either menopausal or a little older, we knew what our priorities were and a lengthy discussion ensued as to what ‘nibbles’ comprised. Would it be enough to absorb a substantial amount of gin? In the end, we decided it was probably canapes and as a result we all ‘lined our stomachs’ before we went with the kind of hearty fare designed to absorb large quantities of alcohol. The event started at 6.30 so the McOthers and I had supper early; spag bol.

It was absolutely lashing it down with rain, the kind of rain that would look far too unconvincingly heavy if you saw it in a film. I had to do that thing where you need to hold your coat out in front of you or the water runs off and soaks your trousers, leaving you with cold damp thighs all evening. I still got a bit damp but on the whole, it worked. I took photo of the town in the rain which I was quite pleased with, and also a picture of water running down the street because I thought it looked abstract. It does.

Rain soaked town … I think this would be a new Grongolian development if it were situated in Ning Dang Po.

Squigly lines and dots or running water?

Imagine our surprise, and possibly a little consternation, when we arrived to discover that it was a seated event and there were tables set for a three course meal. We started off with a cocktail that contained a lof of gin and an even greater quantity of Campari and probably some more stuff as well. On repairing to the furthest table from the others, so my laugh wouldn’t deafen people (I have had people on adjacent tables ask to be moved in restaurants before now) we then proceeded to get the giggles repeatedly about the fact we were going to have to do a Vicar of Dibbley and ~~three Christmas dinners~~ two suppers each.

We were immeidately identified as the Naughty Table so when two members of another party couldn’t make it, we were given their cocktails which we shared amongst ourselves.

The gin was fab by the way, the company is called the Heart of Suffolk Distillery and they have three gins out at the moment, the first was called Betty’s Gin, the second Rosie’s Gin and the third Ivy’s Gin. All were a bit of an eye opener as they were so much tastier and more aromatic than just … gin, but I liked Rosie’s Gin best, with Betty’s a very close run second and Ivy’s third. All of them were head and shoulders above what you’d normally expect in way of flavour, aromatics and general deliciousness. I bought a bittle of the Rosie’s becuase it had really lovely coriander kind of undertones and was delicious served with tonic and a strawberry floating in it.

The dinner was, indeed, three courses and was very good and luckily not too huge, although it would have been plenty on it’s own, without the large helping of spag bol I’d imbibed first. There were three little eats for starters; avocado mouse with a delicious home-made taco, a sort of salsa thing and a parsnip puree washed down with a lovely herby aromatic gin called ‘Betty’s gin’. It was followed by a kofta with some really good home made slaw and some ham croquette things, couscous with pomigranite seeds and a bit of curried parsnip soup on the side. This was served with Rosie’s Gin which was equally herbal and aromatic but where Betty’s was rosemary, this was definitely coriander, it would have been fab with a light thai curry. Pudding was a lemon tart with rasperry coulis served up with Ivy’s gin, which was more gluveinish in aroma, I could definitely smell cloves, and taste them too. McOther wouldn’t have liked it.

It seemed a waste not to finish everything so we drank all of the gin and I cleaned all three of my plates and the others did pretty well on theirs, too. Nom. But also sort of bleargh. Even now, two days later, I’m slightly feeling it … says the woman who bought a massive cake in the market this morning and snarfed it with lunch but … you know.

Next up we thought we might try doing pottery.

The following morning, in a somewhat debilitated state, hangover-wise (it took me until this morning—Sunday—to recover fully) I had to go for a blood test at the hospital. I didn’t get up in time to drive, it takes about 40 minutes that time in the morning, especially when some of the roads were flooded. I also left it too late to walk which meant the electric bike. It was still throwing it down so I put on my waterproofs and set off, aware that I’d only really left fifteen minutes for a twenty minute journey.

Unfortunately, I discovered that my usual route was blocked with an enormous puddle, however, there was no time to go round so I just had to plough on through and hope it wasn’t too deep. Needless to say it came up to the bike’s axles but somehow even though, when the pedal was at it’s lowest point, the tops of my boots were well below the surface of the water, none got through my waterproofs. I did pedal as fast as I could of course which may have created some kind of vacuum induced waterproofness … (is that a word?) I dunno. I arrived in time for the blood test. The check-in thing didn’t work but I managed to sort that anyway and apart from misreading someone else’s name and blundering into one of the bays while some poor chap was having a blood test it was more or less OK. Then I came out.

It was snowing.

A lot.

Never mind, I thought, it’ll stop in a minute. So I started off home. Pumped by my success on the way, I took the quick route which entailed going back through the enormous puddle. Once again, the feet stayed dry but the waterproof trousers caught on my pump, ripping it out of its holster. It disappeared into the murky depths with a plop. Since the water level would have been just below my knees if I’d put my foot down, I had to leave it and chalk the loss up to experience. If I go back in drier weather I might possibly find it … who knows … mind you, it’ll probably have tadpoles in by that time. As I exited the enormous puddle it began to dawn on me that snow is fucking painful when it hits your eyeballs at high speed. It was blowing a hoolie and I was riding into it as fast as I could, which was about 15mph with maximum electronic assist. The journey sounded like this.

‘Ouch!’ pedal pedal, ‘Fuck off!’ pedal pedal, ‘Ow that fucking smarts you fucking fuck!’ pedal pedal, ‘Fucking snow! Fuck! Owwww! Fuck!’

It only took me 10 (very unpleasant) minutes to ride home, but because snow on the eyeballs is so painful I was riding squinting out of one eye for most of it. By the time I arrived, I looked like this.

Lovely.

With all this extra eating, how is the eating thing going? Well … my weight this morning is 11 stone 8lbs and on Tuesday it was 11 stones 4lbs. Then again, it’s fairly arbitrary at the moment because two days before that 11.4 weigh in, I was clocking in at 11 stones and 7lbs. I have concluded that water retention affects this and some of it’s also about how much food there is in the system. For the most part, if I eat 1600 calories a day or more, the weight loss stops. If I hit my protein targets, it slows down. If I aim to hit my calorie target I get nowhere near my protein target.

At this point, I’m more concerned with which clothes I fit into and since there hasn’t been much change on that score I’ll not worry. I probably ate about 1750 calories yesterday and I was absolutely stuffed.

Other news this week. I am moving to a new ISP which means I’ve kind of broken my hamgee.co.uk website, on a temporary basis, though, I assure you. I need to do a couple of final steps in set up this morning and then, when the name servers are pointing to the right place, I need to reinstall the SSL certificate. After that, hopefully, everything should work again. Next steps after that will be to slowly rebuild it. I’m afraid it will probably be glitchy for a while.

And finally … once again, the chance to grab 12 hours of fabulous audiophonic joy for 99p (or 99c) continues … if the link works.

Yes. If you like cheap audio books, Few Are Chosen is on sale for all of March 2023. After that the price goes up again. As always, I’m cutting my own throat here. It’s 99c on Apple, Kobo and my own website. For anyone in the States, it’s also 99c on Barnes & Noble and Chirp (which is USA and Canada). I’m trying to walk the line here between offering a bargain from time to time and turning into a kind of audio DFS where there are only five days or so in a year when there isn’t a sale.