Now I do hope you all have a very very happy new year.

These are my new year's wishes to you.

WISHES!

So. 

I wish you lots of nice food and drink including fun nibbly things like Cheesey Footballs or Twiglets and alcoholic things like Gins and Tonics or Champagne. And if you do not drink, I wish you freshly squeezed orange juice, or whatever you would most like really.

I also wish you lots and lots of laughing, maybe generated by ridiculous games or ridiculous people or just lots of general hoo-hah and silliness.

I wish you Interesting Stuff. Stuff that you find Interesting. It might be archaeology or physics or kittens or soft furnishings. I quite like the yoof. They keep me on my toes.

And also I wish you curiosity, calm, joy, love and snoozing. 

And of course, tea.

On reflection, 2008 has been a teensy bit challenging. But right now, right this second, I feel kind of okay about that. 

It is probably because I am still in bed.

Do the thing! Do it!

There is a lovely thing!

It is here and it is made by the brilliantness that is Stray. She is making a film. She is often doing exciting stuff like that.

ANYWAY. Go! Look! It is about things that matter! Like puppies and tea and fields!

Also, I was 30 yesterday. And hub made me eggs benedict. And it was really very tasty.

Bye-eeee!

Whirlwind-ish.

BOTTOMS!

I am back.

Yes I bloody buggery am.

Unfortunately, I have little of substance to say. Other than we built the weird cat a ladder-plank sort of device to help her escape from our outdoor "patio" (small square of concrete) into the heavenly wilds of the wilderness beyond (flat above's garden).

She has not used it yet. It is disappointing.

Life continues apace. I have developed hysterical headaches as a clear message to myself to get some sleep and spend more time watching rubbish telly. Unfortunately this does not fit too well with two jobs, a post graduate studying doodah for which an essay is shortly due, and beginning a placement in which I (I!) must counsel youth.

As if I knew any stuff at all.

In the meantime I am reading books called things like "Working with Adolescents: a Contemporary Psychodynamic Approach", desperately browsing (can one browse desperately?) the internet for presents for hub's 30th birthday, closing my eyes and sticking my fingers in my ears about the approach of my 30th birthday (one week's time!) and trying to deal with my extreme pissed-offness at the increasingly hurtful behaviour of my sisters (including promised presence then sudden unexplained absence at aforementioned birthday frolics).

Oh I am nothing but a write-as-you-would-vomit dear little thing today, aren't I just!

PS. The funeral was, well, y'know, as funerals are. I did read. And I was glad of it.

Holding

Well.

It has been a strange week. Granny's funeral is this Friday and so all week I have had a sense of having to hold something. A big wodge of feeling. And it has been strange being away from home, from mum and dad while this big thing is happening. Everything is on hold until I go back.

I am trying to decide whether to read something at the funeral. My youngest sister is going to, and there was a suggestion that all three of us should. I would like to, but at the same time I am afraid that I won't do her justice, that I won't find the right thing to read, and that I will fall apart like a blubbing fool in front of the entire WI (the entire WI will be there. Oh yes they will. She was a stalwart of the Women's Institute, my granny).

So today I am mulling it over. Wondering what I could read. What I could say. How I could express just a tiny bit of who she was and what she meant to me.

It is crazy really.

In other news, I am making a casserole. And the weird cat is making very weird noises.

Feeling a teensy bit overwhelmed.

And very sad. My granny died you see. And she was lovely. A bit batty, but lovely.

She's been poorly for a while, she had had two heart attacks this year, and then had another yesterday. She slipped away this morning.

I am spending time floating around in my memories of her, and realising everything she gave me. This includes our shared sense of whimsy and an unwavering belief in the existence of fairies.

I feel lucky to have had a granny like her.

Updates

Hello peeps.

It's been a while, I know.

Things I have been doing include:

1. Frantically editing short films with yoof in them.
2. Reading Freud case studies.
3. Listening to neighbours arguing about scaffolding.
4. Wondering why the weird cat has started weeing in corners.
5. Fretting about Christmas and the mother-in-law situation.
6. Appreciating the Autumn sunshine.
7. Driving to the middle of the Bath countryside for a hen weekend.
8. Realising just how young people in nightclubs are.
9. Loving my therapy,
10. Browsing flats on the interweb.
11. Revelling in half term.
12. Fighting the horrible hormonal effects of a new pill.

So.

The landlord situation (if you could please read "situation" with a french accent, it would be most helpful, since that is how it is pronounced in my head). Although he has now increased the rent only by a tiny bit that actually won't kill us, I think we are still going to keep out eyes out for somewhere else. We don't feel quite safe here now, and also (with the encroaching winter darkness) it is becoming clear how very dim it is, being a basement flat and all. And Miss Tickles don't do terribly well with dimness.

The mother-in-law situation is the same. She is still outrageous in her claims and actions. But now her mum (hub's nana) is very ill so it's a bit more complicated. Really I think we are trying to work out ways we can keep her in our life without her being entirely draining and destructive. Hub is ace and strong and only very occasionally furious. I am proud of him.

I have had a tricky few weeks with the lady-hormones. I went to the doctor because I have started suffering from menstrual migraines, and she advised me to try the mini-pill. It was all okay until around period time and then I suddenly turned into a churning mass of anxiety and weird night sweats and not sleeping and head all strangely leapy. It is over now, thank heavens, and I am holding in mind that the doctor did say it would take a while to settle down.

Bloody buggery hope it does though, because it was really terribly yuck.

I am loving my course and finding it intense and challenging and thought-provoking and glorious. And also prone to inducing a peculiar variety of psychological hypochondria, whereby we learn about something and then immediately diagnose it in ourselves (it is a course-wide phenomenon, and not just me... We are all as sensitive and wonderfully loopy as each other). Anyway. It is good, and I am slowly feeling more confident with it all. Also discovered that telling people that one is training as a counsellor/therapist means that they immediately tell you their dreams.

What else....

The weird cat has started weeing in corners.

It is weird.

The Man

I like to think the best of people I come into contact with. I look for reasons that might cause people to behave in destructive or painful ways, I am interested in where they are coming from, I genuinely believe in human vulnerability and the bollocks we construct to help ourselves through that.

But sometimes, I wonder if I am wrong.

Sometimes, when hub is railing against the man (as he can often be found doing) and I am saying things like "Well maybe the man just hasn't had a very good day", or, "Maybe he had an argument with someone he cared about last night", sometimes, a little tiny shadow of doubt trips across my consciousness, scattering question-mark shaped confetti as it goes.

Sometimes I can't help but consider that maybe the man is doing really quite well actually. And can have chinese takeaway whenever he wants. And can afford to go to his friends' birthday parties. And has enough money to have, say, a dog.

Maybe the man is sitting comfortably on a sofa somewhere chuckling to himself.

The last week has been very odd. The landlord raised our rent by 10%, then when we said there was no way we would be able to stay, he lowered it a bit. Then when we said that actually we needed a bit more time because giving us a week to decide what we wanted to do felt a teensy bit like short notice, he lowered it again.

Which makes me think that everything he said last week about fixed rate mortgage coming to an end blah blah, cost of replacing the boiler blah blah, forced to do it blah blah, might not really have been entirely accurate.

I feel shaken by this. And we still don't know what to do. Because we have to let him know by 9am on Thursday otherwise he will "retract all offers" and while we can afford the rise in rent as it now stands, and we know we still want the flat, we're frankly not altogether sure we want the landlord.

I feel oddly naive.

A bit of a mug.

I just want to feel safe, y'know? Secure and settled for a bit without the fear that things are going to be pulled from under our feet at any second.

But I'm not sure I trust that man anymore.