The Return of the Chaise Longue of Death ™

I know I have mentioned this before but I have very basic dreams of spending at least a day of my life not feeling ill or tired.  Sadly it is not to be today.  It will probably the day I drop down dead, knowing the bitter irony of my life.  So today I am sure to survive, because today I woke up feeling like I should strap two Chaise Longues of Death (TM) onto my feet and use them as roller skates.  I have the headache from yesterday along with a sore throat and a frozen shoulder.  If I were a horse they would have taken me out into the field and humanely shot me through the head by now.  As it is, I soldier on bravely.  Bravely but irritably.

Luckily it was a nursery day today.  I packed Oscar off and scrabbled home like a rat up a drain pipe, into the pjs and onto the sofa.  I had dreams of reading lovely, lovely books.  Instead I was a very good girl and read horrible but necessary books, for the next essay.  I managed to finish the entire of Melvin Burgess’s cheery little novel, Junk.  It’s not nice, not nice at all.  It is however, brilliantly written, and well deserving of the many literary prizes with which it has been sprinkled.  It is not a book I recommend for under fourteens, unless they are very precocious, dealing as it does with abuse, prostititution, homelessness, teenage pregnancy and of course, heroin addiction, and all of the above in a graphic, no holds barred kind of way.  On the other hand it was exquisite, compelling and beautiful, in an incredibly troubling way.  I wouldn’t recommend giving it to your granny to read either, by the way.

I have read it before, many years ago, but had forgotten how amazing it is. I am now re-reading Philip Reeve’s dystopian fantasy ‘Mortal Engines’, set in a future time in which London is a mechanized city, roaming above the smashed remains of a rotten earth, preying on other, smaller cities and stripping them down to ensure its future survival.  Despite its ‘1984’ish overtones it is much more of a rip-roaring adventure story, and the first of a quartet.  I have yet to read the others, but this first foray is not bad at all.  How I’m going to weave heroin addiction and mechanised futuristic cities cannibalising each other together into a harmonious whole is, at the moment, slightly beyond me, but I am sure it will all come together in the end.  No wonder I have a headache.

Other than that I have done not very much at all, opting out of dinner in favour of a trip to the chip shop on the way home from buying Oscar a new pair of trainers (with three children we average a new pair of shoes for one or the other of them at least once a month. It is his turn), and turning for solace to a quite delicious bar of milk chocolate with salted almonds in that the very kind J sent me for passing my driving test.

I am slightly further forward with the M.A.  Jason has agreed to pay for it, bless him.  I have decided I will pay him back for it.  This is something I want to do entirely by myself, just for me.  It seems important.  I just have a few more questions for Roehampton.  I called them today but the help staff were out doing training, so I have e-mailed them.  When I hear from them the application form will go in.  As of September I should be a student again.  I haven’t owned an NUS card for over twenty years.  That will be odd.  I am still not buying a futon, nor Doc Martens, and I am definitely not going shopping at Iceland though.  I am too old for that crap any more, and drinking pints of cider just makes me want to chunder.  It’s going to be champagne and chocolate with salted almonds all the way.  Standards must be maintained.

The children are having an alarming conversation about piddling.  I must go and intervene.  Farewell for now.