Help! I Lost Me......

The interesting thing about death is how it makes you feel.

My father passed away last month and since then, I haven't felt like I know who I am, what I'm doing or where I'm going.

The funny thing is, I struggle to remember a time when he wasn't ill. 'They' had been telling us he had six months left since I was about sixteen, so to have had him for an extra twelve years was great. I don't think I ever believed that the day would come that he wouldn't be here any more, and although it wasn't the biggest shock in the world, I still feel as if none of this is real and I've spent the last four weeks dreaming.

Some days I feel so empty, I don't want to get out of bed. These low times are interspersed with periods of extreme hyperactivity, where I run round like Speedy Gonzales at ninety miles an hour, multi-tasking like there will be no tomorrow.

It's like I'm lost and looking for a way back to the entrance of a vast labyrinth. If I can get there, everything will go back to normal, and I'll be able to feel like a person again. I've never really been one for 'fitting in' but at the moment it's like I'm watching the world, rather than being a part of it.

I've been avoiding my friends.

I haven't meant to but I know I've been doing it. I've managed family gatherings but when it comes to spending time with the people who know me best, I've been really struggling to face them. Maybe it's because in some part of my head, I know that they'll be able to see clearly that everything is not right. I can't paper over the cracks so well with people that can see through me like I'm glass so I avoid all contact with them because that way, I won't have to face how empty I feel.

I refuse to go to a therapist or doctor.

I think that the prospect of either being encouraged to take drugs, or talk about my feelings with a complete stranger is even more daunting that the idea of facing this on my own. You can read lots of information about bereavement, and it all pretty much says the same thing. It will make you weird for a while. It will hurt for even longer. But, in the end, all of this will go away.

What it gets replaced with, I'm not sure............

Stand and Deliver!

I've recently spent a week in lovely Benidorm, Last Bastion of the British Empire.

You may well turn up your nose, but I found it to be one of the most relaxing holidays I've ever had. It was like it was 1989 all over again, the Land That Time Forgot. Cheap cigarettes, cheap beer and so much tacky entertainment I was spoilt for choice all week. It was also incredibly clean, the Spanish were super friendly and when I attempted my broken efforts at the local language, merely chuckled and spoke back in such perfect English, I was embarrassed by my dulcet Hampshire slang.

It is also possible to enjoy a Full English Breakfast there for about twelve pence (okay, I'm exaggerating again but it was Super Cheap). As you dear reader will be aware of, a Full English Breakfast is essential for any English tourist with a chronic hangover.

Obviously I was VERY SHOCKED on returning to Blighty and being charged SEVENTEEN POUNDS for two breakfasts (with coffee) at a Motorway Service Station.

In the olden days, men with masks and guns would halt the progress of carriages demanding the frightened passengers hand over either their money or their life. This was how I was made to feel on Monday morning. I was Very Hungry Indeed and as I had spent a week existing on fry-ups, was not quite ready to give them up before my return to work and the inevitable diet that would ensue. I don't understand how they get away with it! Surely Motorway Service Stations are not THAT expensive to run. The other shocking thing was that it was packed. Many people were trying their best to enjoy their breakfasts, safe in the knowledge that they now had no money left for their proposed day out.

At least Dick Turpin was honest in his intentions, he never (as far as I'm aware) referred to his dastardly deeds as a 'Welcome Break' to his victims.

British Telecom

Filthy. Thieving. Bastards.





nuff said..........

Help!!!

I'm getting married in two days!!!

The getting married is very great but the ORGANISING that has been continual and never-ending for the last 6 months has been rather stressful!!!!!!!

Hence my overuse of exclamation marks.

I can't wait :-)

I might have some time to get back to writing after this.........

I'm an Internet Junkie.....

I've been spending way too much time on my computer lately.

First there was the blog.
Now there is Facebook.
There is also BBC News 24, The Times Online and the Southern Daily Echo (which I read because I find the comments people leave hilarious rather than because I really care about local issues).

I'm starting to worry that in between my constant love affair with my computer, the scarily large number of books I read(as highlighted in the last post) and my late night addiction to DVD Box sets, I have stopped actually talking to other people.

Maybe that's a good thing. I haven't pissed anyone off (to my knowledge) for at least a week.....

A Little Aside From The Masterpiece....

Many Thanks to Toadee for this interesting little piece (please view his excellent musings by following the link on the side menu)-

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE. (I've put mine in red)
4) Reprint this list in your own journal/blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I've read 48 of these...... And frankly, not all of the one's I've read were all that good. I would advise burning Jane Austen. Cloud Atlas is a lovely book, am a huge fan of Dickens, and Daphne du Maurier and Alexandre Dumas Rock!! This list is missing 'The Wind Up Bird Chronicle' by Haruki Murakami, which is the most beautiful book I've ever read. Read more people, it's okay, we won't tell anyone!!! :-)

Chapter Six

The coffee was bad. I'm no expert at coffee, I'll happily drink the instant stuff when I'm at home but in any other circumstance, I'd have set the cup back on the chipped saucer and left the coffee for somebody with a stronger stomach than mine. Or the drain, which is honestly where it belonged.

This, however, was not a normal day. It was not even a normal week and for once, I was relieved to be doing something Different. Michael sat across the table from me, the bright green eyes that had somehow managed to hypnotise me into agreeing to have a horrible coffee with a complete stranger were still fixed on mine, so I hung on to my cup like a security blanket and enjoyed the heat emanating from its murky depths, if not the acrid taste.

"I don't do this often." he smiled again, and those green eyes crinkled at the edges ever so slightly.
"Neither do I." I replied, and returning his smile I continued to wonder how this had happened. Don't get me wrong, I've had plenty of dates before. There have been lovers lost over the years but I'd never picked somebody up off the street. Actually, he'd picked me up when I'd almost smashed my face into the kerb and then, after a bit of small talk, he'd persuaded me to join him in the greasy spoon cafe that was situated, somewhat ironically, three doors down from the doctor's surgery. Hence the bad coffee.

The conversation meandered along a little awkwardly for a while longer and as we made our excuses to leave I found him pressing a slip of paper into my hand.
"In case you'd like to join me for a terrible coffee again." the green eyes sparkled and he leaned in, his lips barely grazing my cheek.
"Goodbye, and thank-you." I stuttered. It was as if he had read my mind but then he looked pretty human and the coffee really did appear to have been made for somebody with the constitution of an elephant.

I wouldn't call him.

That had been just a little too strange and on any other day, I'd have brushed myself off, thanked him and headed straight for the car. It must have been the lack of sleep and the general feeling that I was headed towards some sort of disaster that had made me behave in such an uncharacteristically reckless way. I stood in the doorway of the cafe, the smell of frying bacon wafting around me and out onto the street, calling people to the temple of the fried breakfast in a way that no fancy advertising could compete with. He didn't look back once. I watched the back of his head, light brown hair, disappear into the distance as he headed towards the busier end of the street, people milled around him looking lost and soulless in the way that every city centre shopper does. Just one more bargain. Just one. And then he was gone.

I breathed out. I hadn't even realised that I had been holding my breath until then. There was something familiar about Michael. I wondered if we'd met before, maybe he'd been one of Anna's friends. There's been many over the years and he was good looking enough to have been part of her crowd. Anna didn't have ugly friends. As I started walking towards the car park, I resolved to ring her as soon as I got home. I'd brush over the trip to the doctor, I wasn't ready to explain That part of my day but at the very least it would be like old times, the both of us giggling over a boy.

And for just a moment, I forgot about the nightmares that had been chasing me. Just for a moment.

Chapter 5

"And then I woke up!"

The lie tasted bitter in my mouth but I hadn't slept properly for nearly a week and I needed the tablets that I knew the Doctor would prescribe for me if I didn't sound like a nutter. I couldn't face telling this stranger ,who I only ever saw twice yearly for my check-ups, that the face in my television had been Real. My home had become unfamiliar territory, I had become unable to enjoy the time I spent there and, worst of all, my lack of sleep had resulted in my Being Noticed at work.

For the first time in my life, I had been pulled into The Office to talk about my Poor Performance. I had fumbled my way through some sort of excuse about Family Issues and, luckily for me, my boss was extremely understanding. She kept getting my name wrong throughout our Chat, but apart from that she had been full of kindly suggestions. Apparently there was a company psychologist on the fifth floor and Everybody went to see him. I declined, probably a little too vehemently, and insisted that I would be back to normal within a few days.

So here I was. My palms were sweating and I hoped that the Doctor would not want to shake my hand when I left the room. He kept tapping the computer keyboard on his desk as I told him all about the 'nightmares' that I felt were being caused by 'pressure at work' and my 'strained relationship with my mother'. I couldn't work out whether he was buying it or not, he made very little eye contact and I've never been much of a liar.

The chair I was seated in squeaked every time I moved. This was a disaster. Even the family photographs on his desk were glaring at me in an accusatory way. I shouldn't have come here. I should have gone to the psychiatrist. I could have told the truth, and then, at least when the men in white coats came to take me away, I wouldn't have felt like a filthy liar.

After what felt like hours, he pulled a piece of green paper from the gray printer on the shelf behind him, scribbled on it and handed it across to me.

"These should help with the lack of sleep. If you need more when they run out, phone my receptionist and she'll organise a repeat prescription." he grunted.

My ordeal was over and I had been successful in my quest for sleeping tablets. I felt like a prizefighter after twelve rounds in the ring. I was so surprised at the ease in which I had won my battle that I wasn't really concentrating as I hurried down the concrete steps outside the clinic. As I stuffed my slip of green paper into my over sized leatherette handbag, I somehow managed to twist my ankle. My right hand was jammed in the bag, and as I began to fall, my dark woollen coat billowed out and wrapped around my left. I was falling, and just as my face was about to smash on the kerb, a strong arm wrapped around me and hauled me back from the brink of intense pain and probably the largest dentist bill of my life.