Food and verse

So, yesterday I went to Larndan with my brother for the Taste of London Festival at Regent’s Park.

I have pictures. I have not up/down/round loaded them yet.  It will happen.  Probably not today.

My brother bought the tickets for this event months ago.  It has been arranged and eagerly anticipated for about as long.  I, in my usual inimitable fashion, managed to be not very well.

We all waited with dread to see just how not very well I was going to be.  Well, I woke with a pounding head, grumbling ovaries, a killer throat and slight shakes. I get the shakes if I haven’t eaten enough, if I am too tired, if I am about to combust with a migraine.

I took shit loads of pain relief, ate everything in sight, filled my bag with all the rest of the pain relief we had in the house and set off anyway, having a stern word with myself on the way.  Having already been mightily pissed off about missing a play I didn’t get a chance to see last year and now missed this year, I was going to do this thing if it killed me.

And the way things were shaping up, it very well might.

We made London in good time and my pain meds were beginning to kick in.  Regent’s Park tube was fecked, so we got off at Baker Street.  It was only a five minute longer trot round the park and we got to see lots of tourists standing on each other’s heads at the doorway of 221B Baker Street wearing deer stalkers and having their photos taken looking like idiots.  It was worth the extra five minutes just for that, despite the fact that the heavens were about to open.

It poured on and off for the entire afternoon, which is not ideal when you are at an outdoor event.  Nevertheless, we are British, so we soldiered briskly on, ignoring the weather.  We shunned umbrellas, and people trying to sell us those rubbish rain macs like the ones you get on the Log Flume at Alton Towers.  We are made of tougher stuff.

We were very impressed at the number of women tarted up to the nines in pencil skirts and four inch nude heels, plodging round gamely.  I was glad I’d gone for jeans and Converse boots, although slightly sad that my previously pristine turquoise boots are now turquoise with more than a hint of mud.

Uncle Robber had paid for VIP passes.  This meant a free cookery book.  I cannot pass comment with a critical eye as yet, due to the fact that I have only looked at the pictures, but the pictures were very nice.

It also meant free champagne.  Laurent Perrier, which is not my favourite, but I forced myself.

I realise as I type this, how utterly pretentiously wanky and middle class I truly am now.  If you had asked me twenty years ago what my favourite champagne was I would have looked at you like you were a total twat, and probably smacked you round the head with a copy of Socialist Worker.  Now look at me. My fridge is full of Rachel’s Organic Greek Yoghurt, I have a cupboard full of cous cous, quinoa and bulgar wheat, I collect pottery and I have a favourite champagne (Veuve Clicquot yellow label, thanks).

How the soiled have risen.

I don’t know if the mighty have fallen. I haven’t risen enough to touch the hem of their garments.

I digress.

We got a free champagne tasting class too.  It was short but interesting.  We had three different types of champagne (all Laurent Perrier, obv.) and three different canape style foods to go with them, so we could see how to match champagnes to different courses with a meal.

Like that’s ever going to happen in my house.

I have not risen that far.

I did learn some cool stuff about champagne though.

• I like really dry champagne, and the first champagne we tried was the extra brut, which means extra dry.  It was crisp and sharp, which I liked very much. Apparently they cannot make extra brut every year because it depends how much natural fruit sugar is in the grape year on year.
• The champagne we had was a mix of different grape varieties, chardonnay and pinot grigio.  Despite the fact that pinot grigio is a red grape, you can still make white wine from it.  The red colour only comes from mixing the skin and pips of the grape in with its flesh. If you want it to remain white, you simply remove all the flesh and just use that.
• If you pinch your nose shut before you smell the wine you are about to taste, and then open  your nostrils as you are practically in the glass itself, it gives you a really intense hit of all the flavours in the wine.

It was really fun.  I didn’t anticipate it being so much fun. It has made me want to find out more.  I can’t really afford to get into serious wine tasting at this point, but it may be something for my later years when I am not in charge of three small children and a car.

After our wine tasting we went off to try some different foods, and soak up the wine a bit.

As well as stalls selling their produce, of which there were plenty, there were also stalls which were micro versions of famous restaurants like Gordon Ramsay’s Maze, Marcus Wareing’s Petrus etc.  Each one did three different dishes which you could pay for with the currency of the show, known as crowns.

There were about forty or fifty different micro kitchens and we roamed far and wide. As you would expect the queues for the better known places were ridiculous.  I did see the top of Gary Rhodes’ head for about two seconds before a ravenous crowd descended.

We stuck to less well known places and tried some delicious foods.  I had a glorious strawberry mousse type dessert with basil sauce and mini candy floss at a place called: ‘The Modern Pantry’.  Uncle Robber had suckling pig with truffle shavings in a bun at; ‘Launceston Place’.  We ate Jamaican jerk chicken at a place I can’t remember the name of, which is a shame because it was delicious.

I had Heston Blumenthal’s salted caramel and popcorn ice cream from the Waitrose ice cream cart.  That was good. As was the Italian frozen yogurt lollipop covered in pink chocolate in the shape of a heart I ate.

We tried some glorious aged Parmesan from one stall. They had three different ages, all of which were amazing in their own way.  We tried to buy some, but they seemed horrified and told us that they were only there to promote it.

Weird.

We also tried toffee vodka, which was really rather delicious, albeit fierce.

I nearly succumbed to an amazing Lavazza coffee machine. It made a mean espresso and you could have the machine in any one of about forty different colour ways, which impressed me even more.  I wanted a purple one.  Plus they were really dinky, slightly larger than the average four slice toaster.  What wasn’t to like?

I only didn’t because I couldn’t be bothered to drag it round all day.

So, we had a great time, and left slightly early to avoid the crowds.

On the way home we went to the British Library and visited their fabulous Science Fiction exhibition, which had a Tardis in it, which I touched (squeal!).  I also designed my own alien which then beamed up onto a huge projection on the wall (double squeal), and got to send virtual space postcards to lots of people (triple squeal).  After a small rest and a drink at Peyton and Byrne’s tea room, which is right by the most impressively beautiful book stacks, that even my non-reading brother thought was cool, we sloped off to St. Pancras.

We were early for our train and I side tracked us into Foyles, where I picked up a copy of Being Human which is the third volume in the Bloodaxe poetry anthology which begins with Staying Alive and Being Alive.  The first two are two of the most precious and lovely books I own, and I was totally unaware of the fact that they had published a third volume, so when I found it I was at the till as quick as a wink.

As an aside. I paid £12 for my copy in Foyles.  I’m not sorry about this, as I enjoyed it on the train home, but if you buy it on Amazon it is currently £7.90, and if you buy all three volumes you can have them for about £23, which is a steal.

If you have these three books and The Rattle Bag and The School Bag edited by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney you really have the entirety of what is fantastic about poetry in your house.  If I had to choose just one it would be Staying Alive, but then I haven’t done more than dip excitedly into Being Human yet, like a demented, word loving wood pecker, so I’ll get back to you on that.

Then a truly delightful thing happened, which is when you meet someone who feels the same way that you do about a book.  The man behind the counter was as delighted to sell me the book as I was to buy it from him and we had a great five minute chat about the other volumes and how they were the best thing that has ever happened to modern poetry.

We both went our way feeling more joyful and generally buoyant.

So, it was a good day, despite the quantities of pills I had to eat to maintain my equilibrium, and when I got home I started my period, which, despite the discomfort of today, has been a blessed relief, and means that the end is in sight for the next two weeks at least.

I am practising gratitude for that.

Feeding Time at the Zoo

Uncle Robber and I went to the Taste of London Festival yesterday in Regent’s Park.

We did not get home until late, hence the lack of posting.

I will be waxing lyrical on matters food related shortly, but first I must share with you a lovely snippet I overheard on the train going to London yesterday.

Two elderly women were sitting across from us having a wonderful gossip about life, the universe and everything.  They got onto the subject of where they had lived prior to their current homes. One had lived in Kings Lynn in Norfolk which is not far from one of the Queen’s residences, Sandringham.

They were discussing which bits of the house and grounds you could visit and all things royal.  I was only half paying attention at this point, as you all know how I feel about matters of royalty.  I did dial in for a wonderful anecdote though, as the lady who had lived there said:

‘Once I was in Kings Lynn Marks & Spencers when I bumped into the Duke of Kent…’

Her friend gave an appreciative squeak, which the lady acknowledged and then carried on to say:

‘Yes. They do let them go out and about you know.’

I imagine the minor royals, all penned up, probably in the walled vegetable gardens at Sandringham, roaming round, pulling up carrots with their teeth until the day the head keeper unbolts the door and lets them out for a brisk trot and some gentle exercise.

A Rage in Harlem – Book Post

I ought to be clever and make myself a separate page on this blog where I can stick book reviews and thoughts.

I’m just too bone idle to fiddle around with it for the moment. I may well get around to it one day, but in the meantime, if you’re not bookish, the last post might be considered vaguely amusing, and if you are bookish, stick around.

Amazon Vine, the cool, Amazon bit that sends me free stuff every month to review, sent me a copy of Chester Himes’s classic crime novel; ‘A Rage in Harlem’, to review.

I used to absolutely love crime novels.  I went through a phase where I read little else, shortly after I emerged from the bowels of university life.  I think it takes most of us that way.  I had a friend who was a lecturer in Eng Lit, and when he gave up his job, he spent six months sunbathing in his back garden reading Dorothy L Sayers entire oeuvre several times over.

And there’s nowt wrong with that.

Anyway, back to; ‘A Rage in Harlem’.

I didn’t know what to expect really.  Most of the black authors I’ve read tend to be more modern and rather aware of the burden of having to write under the label of being a ‘black author’.  I’m thinking of Toni Morrison here in particular. I love her work.  Beloved is one of my favourite books of all time, but you cannot get over the fact that it has an agenda.

Himes probably has an agenda too.  I imagine that when he was writing these novels, in the Fifties, from Paris, where he escaped to after being sick of being persecuted for his colour in the USA, that they were daring, and shocking and caused waves, politically and socially.

The trouble is that these things date, and what once shocked us, or wowed us with its newness, loses its shine.

So, what to make of a book that is now probably historical, rather than edgy?

Well, I loved it.  I absolutely devoured it.

I read the whole thing in a day, and if I didn’t have so many books waiting to be read I would have gone out and bought the entire rest of his work and read that too.

Surprisingly, it is set in Harlem, and tells the story of an innocent, god fearing man, duped by the infatuation he has with his girlfriend into scraping together his life savings and putting them into a get rich scheme that turns out to be a scam.

Not seeing that his girlfriend is in on it, he tries to get back his money, rescue his girl and save his reputation, all the while sliding deeper and deeper into the mire.

The book is funny, dark, savage and hugely entertaining.  If you like Elmore Leonard or Damon Runyon, this is the kind of book for you.

Things Oscar and I have talked about this week

1. Death

Death is a hot topic in our house.  Tallulah goes to a Catholic school.  They’re very keen on death and suffering, and she loves a bit of trauma, so we’re always having to hear tragic stories of death, with a lot less emphasis on the rebirth thing than the official party line would like.

Oscar will go in September. I think he’s limbering up. As it is we are rather a macabre family anyway.  He likes to ask lots of questions.  It is not easy answering questions about eschatology with the dawn chorus and no coffee available.

This week’s recurring theme was his wish to avoid the finality of death, or what he calls; ‘The end of days.’  He said very cheerfully this week: ‘Mama. I think that when we get to the end of days, we just go back to the beginning and start again.’  I said: ‘That’s a nice idea.’  He said: ‘Yes. Is it true?’ To which I had no suitable answer that soothed a four year old pedant.  He has sprung it on me in several versions over the week.  All my answers, and my woeful failure to be utterly prepared with notes and a clipboard have been a sore disappointment to him.

Perhaps school will handle this better. I hope so.

2. Poorly Children

This subject is linked inextricably to the whole death question.  He is fascinated by poorly children.  Whenever he is unwell himself we have to have a forensic examination of all the facts, symptoms and possible causes and cures of whatever it is he may have.  He is making sure he is fit enough to last a long time before the end of days.  Having a mother who is permanently attached to the CLD on a very short lead is not comforting to him at the moment.  I do not get quizzed overmuch about my ailments because it is a true fact that I am ‘old’ and therefore I am unlikely to have much time left before the end of my own particular days.  There is nothing much to be done about that.  Which is nice.

3. Gravity

Oscar is very interested in gravity.  He wants to jump over the house.  Dada has told him that if he flies to the moon he will be able to jump over the house, because there is no gravity on the moon.  The problem is that he cannot jump high enough off the ground to get to the moon, so that he can jump over the house.  Confused much?

I know I am.

He likes to bring this topic up quite regularly. I like to shut it down quite regularly.  I do not want to go to A&E any time soon, despite the fact that it would be excellent for his research on poorly children.

4. Sharks

This came about because we were talking about different ways to get to Canada.  Oscar told me that Canada was in another world.  I explained that he meant another country, to which he nodded and said, ‘Yes! One that is in the sky.’  I then had to explain that just because we use aeroplanes to get to other countries it does not mean that they are in the sky.  In fact, with the exception of the fictional land of Laputa, I cannot think of any countries I know of which are in the sky.

He was quite disappointed by this news.  I felt sorry that I had to be the one to break it to him.  It never occurred to me that this was where he thought all the places we have visited were situated.  I am quite tickled by this.

I explained that it is possible to also get to Canada by boat, but that we do not do this, because it takes too long.  Oscar nodded sagely and said; ‘Yes, and because we might get eaten by sharks.’  We then had to go into a long explanation of how sharks cannot get into or onto boats.  He explained that they did not need to (oh most stupid of mother’s) because they can just bite a whacking great hole in the side of a boat instead.  I then explained back about how shark’s mouths are the wrong shape (with reference to James and The Giant Peach), and won many points for being cool, shark knowing mama.

He is still not convinced.  I caught him trying to talk to Tallulah about this, and how he was concerned that some sharks would be so big, with such amazing, flip top jaws, that they can just unhook their jaws a la snakes, and chomp the boat down whole.

I feel we will be revisiting the shark subject for some time to come.

5. Babies

We had a visit today from our friend, Diane.  Diane is expecting a baby. In fact, she was due to have her baby today. Luckily for my nerves, she declined to go into labour at my house.  I think she was a bit disappointed. It’s been a long and arduous haul for her and she has quite had enough now.

I know Oscar was disappointed. He would have loved to be in on a birth.

He loves me to tell him all about how he grew in my tummy and how he was born. It’s a story he never tires of.

Diane let him feel the baby move in her stomach, and he was most impressed.

He said: ‘I used to move like that in mama’s tummy. I was very busy.  Sometimes I was swimming about, which is why she had to drink lots of water, so I could swim properly.  Other times I was building a shed….’

There was silence while we digested this information.

Then he continued:

‘And when I had finished building the shed I built myself an oven.’

 

Listen up Girlfriend

I have inappropriate children.

This is because I am an inappropriate mother.

I do not have time to censor my output.  I do not have time to make sure they are watching Tikkabilla or soothing, age appropriate programmes.  It means I can only watch things after half past eight at night, and by then I am too tired, so they watch a very motley selection of programmes.  They read things they shouldn’t.  They know language navvy’s would be ashamed of.  They listen to all kinds of things.

I have double standards.  I abhor Barbie.  I hate Bratz. I think Hannah Montana is the devil’s spawn.  I dislike Disney with a feeling that makes me feel slightly sick in the back of my mouth.  I think Build A Bear workshop is built on the Hell Mouth. Reading Horrid Henry is one of the few times I am forced to think that book burning might be good.  I dislike Jacqueline Wilson, and Tracey Beaker in particular like I dislike nits.

I am quite vocal in my feelings about these things. My children know this to be true.  I do not stop them from reading or watching or having these things though. I have this theory that if I don’t let them do it now, when they are young enough to get over it, they will be the only thirty year old’s with Hannah Montana duvet sets in the Western hemisphere.

It all has to come out one way or the other.

I try to balance this with the more outre fare they are exposed to.

I am not quite at the point of letting Oscar read American Psycho.  There are limits to what they are exposed to.  Rather broad ones compared to most parents I expect, but limits nonetheless.

The other thing I do, when we watch or listen to something new that is ‘too old’ for them, is to talk about it with them.  They are all fully conversant with the idea that television is for the large part; ‘not real’, and that these are people being paid to go to work every day and dress up and make believe, just like they do in the garden for free.  As a result, Oscar does not find things like Dr. Who particularly scary. Mostly he finds it boring, and when the exciting bits are finished with, he wanders off to play in another room until he hears a spectacular crash or an ‘oooh!’ when he will come running back in with eyes like soup plates.

We range far and wide in what we ingest culturally.  Recently we have been having a bit of a moment with Queen’s back catalogue.  They love Queen.  All of them love all of it.  It is great.  They know all the words to Fat Bottomed Girls, and we are currently learning Killer Queen.

I have been getting them to listen to Kirsty McColl recently.  Tilly has been cursing me as she goes round the house singing: ‘There’s A Guy Works Down The Chip Chop Swears He’s Elvis.’

Today we branched into The Smiths.  Tallulah was telling us about Pentecost, which she is studying at school, and how it is a celebration of the Holy Spirit as a light in the world that never goes out.  I got her to listen to this:

Then I put on one of my all times Smiths’ favourites, ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’

I just cannot help loving Mozza.  He has these ridiculously pompous songs which are really clever and funny, and so utterly, ridiculously miserable, and then they have all these lush string arrangements and spangly bits.  A bit of The Smiths is a wonderfully cheering thing.

So, I was feeling particularly smiley after this retro moment.

Then later I heard Tallulah warbling about the house singing her version:

‘Girlfriend in a cobra, I know, I know it’s serious.’

Well, quite.

I should think that’s probably far more serious than being in a coma actually.

That girl is destined for greatness.

 

Further Gloom

Thank you for all your kindnesses despite my whinging.  You are all lovely.

I did not post yesterday as I started the day with a headache, and ended the day with someone trying to stab me through the right eye with a blunt bodkin.  This meant no theatre, no nothing except finally falling asleep on the sofa after having read Oscar his bed time story with only one eye open.

Arrr Harrr Harrr Harrr etc.

Being a pirate story teller is crap.

I fell asleep after thinking; ‘I shall just shut this other eye for a moment, and when the stabby pains stop I shall do great things.’

I woke up four hours later, completely confused and totally convinced that I had had a stroke. I must have lain on my left arm for the entire time I was asleep and the tingling sensations in my fingers and numbness in my upper arm were absolutely convincing symptoms.

I leapt up, which wasn’t entirely helpful on the head stakes, and then staggered into the kitchen where Jason was hanging out with his friend Lee.  I enquired blearily as to whether they thought I had had a stroke.

They looked at me and said: ‘Go to bed, you fool.’

So I did.

I woke up this morning with only a teeny, tiny headache, no period, despite ovaries which are setting up their own percussion section in the Broughton Astley Symphony Orchestra, and left side of my throat covered in the abscesses I get when I am stressed up the yin yang and my immune system is being a bottom feeder.

I am just ignoring this.  There are only so many aches and pains I can keep track of at any one time, and frankly I’ve got enough on.  My diary is full. FULL.

I had a dream that the police came to my house to arrest me for driving everywhere with my brakes on.

They should have given me a medal, surely?

I will go to this bloody food festival tomorrow even if I have to liquidise every morsel that passes my lips and be carried round like a sack of potatoes by my long suffering brother while blood gushes from my ears due to me being upside down.

So there.

Whinge Alert

I have made my mind up.

I am going to make another appointment with the doctor.  And I am going to insist that she does something.

I don’t really care what it is.

I feel so tired, and so sore, and so heavy. I am eating for twelve. I have still not started my period.

I have a bet with myself.  It will either be tomorrow, when I have a hot date with Andrea at the RSC, or on Friday, when my brother is taking me to London to the Taste festival in Regent’s Park.

This is my birthday present from him.  We are both very excited about it.  There is champagne, and food, and food, and champagne, and it should be brilliant.

It should be, unless I spend the day in agony, or bleeding through my ears.

Either is possible.

I don’t know if there is anything wrong with my hormones, or whether it is something else, or whether it is just because I am permanently exhausted and my body never gets a chance to catch up with itself.  I have no idea. It may be all, one or none of those things.

I just know that today I have spent large amounts of time not doing very much and feeling like I have been hacking my way through the jungles of Borneo with a machete.  It is quarter past nine at night, and I am contemplating going to bed instead of any one of a number of delightful and/or pressing things I need/want to do.

I am bored of writing blog posts that tell everyone how tired I am, or how pre menstrual I am, or how menstrual I am. Or even how post menstrual I am.

I am bored of being clumsy because I am tired.  I am bored of always, always, always having to explain to the children, or my family, or my friends that I am ill.

I always seem to be fucking ill.

I make a joke of it with the whole; ‘I was born in the wrong era. I’m a Victorian consumptive, pass me my chaise longue’ thing, but it isn’t really funny. It’s just crap.

I have been told that I do too much.  I have been told that I should relax more, be less stressed, sleep more, exercise.

I get it.  I really do.  Basically what you are saying is, that if I were a different person altogether, I wouldn’t feel like this.

Sadly for me, I’m not.

It’s easy to tell people to change. Not so easy to do.  I am a stressy person, always have been.  If I could turn off my stress head, I would have done it by now.  If I could stop having panic attacks every night before I go to sleep, and waking up with nightmares six nights out of seven, I would have done it by now.  I’m not entirely unaware that it’s not helping.

And as for slowing down.  I don’t have a job. I have a very helpful husband. I have three, mostly delightful kids.  My actual stresses in real terms, are probably considerably less than most ordinary people go through every day.

I’m just not mentally very good at dealing with it all. But I don’t know how to change that.

And yes. I used to be married to an NLP master, life change guru, who filled my house with everyone from hypnotists to Reiki masters and every other alternative, hippy life style management type person you could ever hope to meet.  So if I haven’t done it, I know someone who has.  My spiritual path is so well worn it has cats eyes and a motorway services on it.

Everything helps for a bit.

Nothing helps for a lot.

The hormones, if that is what it is, and my gut says it is, are really not helping my already rather tenuous mental state.

So I am going to see what she can do.

I know you are all way ahead of me on this one.  But do understand that it takes a lot for me to go to the doctors. My relationship with the medical profession has not been the smoothest, and I use the term profession rather loosely in connection with many of the issues I’ve had.

So, the fact that I already went about three weeks ago, means that making another appointment has been something I’ve been finding mentally rather challenging.  Which I know is counter intuitive, but that’s the way I am.

Nevertheless, today, when the sun was shining, and the world was beautiful, and great drifts of roses clustered the paths and drenched the air with their dusty, soapy scent, and I watched the swallows and swifts skimming the sky, and I felt like closing the curtains on it all and going to sleep for a year, I got fiercer with myself.

I am booking an appointment tomorrow.

Juicy

Mrs Roody has been seduced.

She has come over to the dark side of the blog,

or in her case, the pink side of the blog.

Go and read all about it here.

She is much more fun than me today. She is talking about strawberry murder.

Me, I just moan and talk about men who smell like stink.

RUBBISH

This morning I felt better.

This was good, because when you get up at 6.45 a.m. with your children you do not need to be feeling worse.

No.

You definitely need to be feeling better.

Plus, I was going out with Michelle to eat lunch for several hours, and when I have such an important appointment on my agenda, I do not like to be forced to cancel it on the grounds of ill health.

It makes me want to stab the CLD (TM), with a knitting needle in a squeaky manner.

Anyway, I bobbed off to my all day luncheon, and very nice it was too.

We plumped for Carluccios on the grounds that their pastries looked good when we walked past and it wasn’t quite lunch time, but we wanted to start eating anyway.

The only hiccup came when a couple came into the restaurant when we were mid way through our actual lunch (not our pre lunch, lunch), and the man smelled so badly of extremely stale, extremely old, extremely warm and pungent urine, despite looking like a respectable civic minded human being, and not an old tramp eating scrambled egg out of his shoe, that we were forced to move tables.

It was truly terrible.

We had to have a mid lunch hiatus to overcome our feelings of wanting to hurl.

Still, after a brisk ten minutes at the far end of the restaurant we womanfully picked up the pace and shunted in the rest of our lunch and some dessert.

Then we rolled home like barrels with feet to pick up our respective children.

By about four thirty my cramping had come back big style, and I sit here with my knees drawn up and a hot water bottle wedged firmly against my midriff.

It is rubbish.

It is particularly rubbish as this is only PMT.  Just vicious, killer pmt that sucks, big, hairy bollocks.

If it were a smell, it would smell like the man at lunch time. That’s how rubbish it is.

 

More Books

I’m glad I did my running away yesterday.

The weather has been truly awful all day, pouring rain, gusting wind and greyness as far as the eye can see.

Added to that is the fact that I woke up with lower back ache. By mid morning this had progressed to cramping in my lower stomach.

What joy. I feel another wrestling match with my insanely hormonal body is about to unleash itself upon me.

I spent the majority of the day wrapped in a blanket on the sofa, taking paracetamol and codeine and nursing a hot water bottle.

On the up side, the weather was so filthy it wasn’t much of a hardship to stay snuggled up in the warm.  Plus I got a lot of reading done, and caught up with some telly I had sky plussed from about a hundred years ago.

Jason and the children looked after me, and when they were bored of looking after me they went to Wagamamas and ate lunch. I did not feel left out because mainly I was feeling too sick to want to eat, and I also didn’t want to move.  So it was all good.

I am feeling somewhat better now.  I think the drugs are working.

I have been reading off my reading list.  This is rather naughty, but as the next book on my reading list is Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, which, as its name suggests, is going to be miserable, and is also the size of a large house brick, I decided to treat myself with a bumper crop of library books.

Over the last few days I have finished reading Simon Pegg’s memoirs ‘Nerd Do Well’, and Jo Brand’s, ‘Can’t Stand Up for Sitting Down.’  I loved Pegg’s book.  I am a huge fan of Spaced, Hot Fuzz and Sean of the Dead, so it’s all good.  I also love Jo Brand, but thought this follow up volume to; ‘Look Back in Hunger’, was rushed and not half so entertaining as the first volume.

Today I read Meg Rosoff’s; ‘The Bride’s Farewell’.  I love Rosoff’s writing. Her first book in particular, ‘How I Live Now,’ was absolutely breathtakingly brilliant.  Although she writes for the young adult market, there is nothing young about her writing. She is compellingly brilliant.

This book is set in the past, in a vaguely Victorian era in which the threat of the poor house looms large, and there is always the problem of what to do with a young woman who does not fit into the wife/mother role.  Pell is a young woman who runs away on the morning of her wedding to the local blacksmith’s son, unable to accept the fact that he will rule the household despite the fact that she is the more competent and able half of the partnership.

The book is strong and compelling and very romantic, but not in a gushing way.  I loved it.  But if you want something grippingly good you should definitely read; ‘How I Live Now’, first.

And now I’ve been cultured, and managed to watch Mark Lawson interviewing the ever fascinating Tracey Emin, I’m off to watch Glee and pretend to be fifteen again.