Lazy Sunday Afternoon...

... It's getting embarrassing. Up til yesterday I hadn't written a single card, and since Thursday they've started pouring through the letterbox. Including a hand-delivered one from people whose address I don't know*, and even one thrust into my hand by a mate in town yesterday morning. As usual, they are getting blu-tacked up across the mantelpiece, as I never quite get round to putting up ribbon or Sensible Stuff on which to affix them.

So today I set aside the Whole Day to do nothing but write cards. Not that I'm writing that many, its just that they won't stand a chance of getting anywhere in time if I don't send 'em tomorrow. Obviously that freed me up to have a pyjama morning, catching up on blog-reading. And having a few more mince pies. Then it looked quite nice and warm out so I threw on a heap of garments from the pile on the floor and headed out into the garden to put the bulbs in.

     

That may be a tad late, but not as late as New Year's Eve which was when I got round to doing them once. Yep, I'm all about the optimism that post-December 22nd means we get longer days again, and it'll only be 6 weeks or so before some snowdrops and daffodils start poking through.

While I was out there prodding about with the bulbs the 12 year old asked if we were going anywhere - erm, no. Though we could go out for a walk if he wanted... he decided he didn't want, and miraculously the 14 year old came out with me instead. He's just started back at school again, and is being confident about doing things again. I suspected that conning me into upgrading his phone to a blackberry had something of the ulterior motive about it... whereas him having internet on his phone now gives him no reason not to visit our relatives over the christmas holidays. Win-win.

*Before we went out I wrote 2 cards and put in my handbag, just in case, including one for the people whose address I don't know. And strangely enough, who did we bump into on the way home...

Glitter And Grit

Thank you for all your lovely comments about Bertram, Norris and Glittery Mary.... they probably WILL end up hanging around way past January ;)

Heaven knows what anyone will make of my blog if they end up on it after searching "Paperchase".

(Mightily pissed off, and not able to find what they were looking for,

if the non-rise in followers yet ever varying and odd search phrases in the stats are anything to go by). 

****************

On non-glittery matters, I am banging on doors of routes to help the 14 year old, and have spent much of the day on forums and on the phone - tomorrow I have to write to the director of education outlining the many and dismal failings so far for which he/she has to take responsibility, in order to snowball this thing.
And the jury is out about getting a social worker involved, but I'm doing that too.

Diagnosis

Friday. An appointment at 2. Which always means that I do zilch with the rest of the day, using the getting ready, and getting to, as the "thing to do" for that day. It was with the psychiatrist who I succeeded in bribing the 14 year old to see 2 weeks and 2 days before. 2 days and 2 weeks of me wondering what she'd concluded from the mere hour (and bulging file of notes from other professionals) that she'd seen him for. Seen his anger, irritation, resentment...

There was a mix-up. I was supposed to have been at her other hospital. Not the one I'd had the previous two appointments in. No, one that I didn't have an address for or even a written appointment confirmation for - she'd just looked at her diary on-screen and given me a date to be there next. Only there was evidently not here, it was actually there. The receptionist took 20 minutes to decide to tell me I was in the wrong place, and hopes of progress fell through the floor. My assertive bolshy streak took over - was there not a way to ensure that the psychiatrist and I could have this meeting, albeit over the phone? There had to be a room I could use? Seeing as I couldn't get there now in such a short time, and she wasn't going to get over here? Phone call arranged, I was put into a room full of open files. Which I did not peek at. I just read a wallchart detailing what they do if parents refused to medicate their ADHD children.

She rang through, apologising profusely for the appointment mix-up, and I burbled apologies about making assumptions about where it would be. Then we ran through what she felt about the 14 year old.

Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Did she mean Aspergers? Yes, she did. Leaflets would be sent, letters written to the school, referrals to other services made. It confirmed what I'd long thought, so it was a relief, maybe I hadn't been a paranoid parent all these years.

But it hadn't been recognised until now - it often is hard to diagnose - so the 14 year old has been having a tough time for a few years, and has cut himself off. What now? How was I supposed to tell him there had been a "diagnosis"? That he has a recognised disability?

I got outside the building and any sense of relief, validation, vanished. I don't know what the future holds for him; maybe he won't ever get a job, am I going to have to tell his future partners? Maybe that's nothing to do with me...

Today I told him. I opened up the conversation with "if the school could give you a bit more help, what subjects would you think you'd like to concentrate on?" He named 3. I said maybe we could look at whether we could get that to happen, having another meeting with the school to see what they could offer him. Then I sort of wove into "well, you know that woman we went to see the other week? The one who sees quite a lot of people your age? Well, she thinks..... and that would mean you could get a lot more support". He told me to go away.

Ballroom Dancing, Blur and Bad School

A while ago I kept banging on about the Pixies, since when I don't think I've mentioned music much. One of the things that gets me to put a cd* on is to drown out the awareness of the low-level noise coming from our neighbours. The random amateur carpentry games their 4 year old plays, the accelerating vocalisms of their baby. Not the shouty lady who rants at her husband, who we recently discovered has taken to peppering his gujarati with "fuck off". 50 years in this country, and the local dialect is rubbing off on him... No, we are blessed not only to live in a terrace, but one in which the party walls** on either side are Very Thin. So I'm listening to Think Tank, the massively vermillion-fabric'd cd Blur did about 9 years back. Damon Albarn and Kristin Hersh's voices are always good to re-tilt the axis in a mad day...

Because it has been one of those. Back in the swing of the World of Work, with a morning where the recent training actually came in useful in a fairly heavy situation, and where I'd got the 14 year old off to school. By bus for the first time. All good so far. And then his school sent an automated text that he'd got a detention to do that lunchtime... no explanation. And possibly the best way to ensure his continued enthusiasm to attend, with a less than 50% attendance so far this month.

No one at the end of the phone knew anymore than it was for "failing to follow instructions". Yes, that's why he's not been at school for the past year, etc, etc, and why he's under their monitoring... By now already late for the afternoon session I was working in, I got hold of someone who was able to tell me he'd walked out of school 2 hours previously. Although fairly confident his homing instinct, and desire for a quiet spot with his computer, would guarantee he'd be at home, I excused myself and went straight home to see what was what. After which I calmed myself down by catching the tail end of a programme about the coachload of ballroom dancers who'd been called in to be in the Magical Mystery Tour film.






* Too old to be trained to use an iPod. That's for when I'm 80. And I usually forget about 6Music.

** To non-Brit readers, that's a technical term for the bricks 'twixt you and the neighbours. Not a wall covered in lurex, Twister mats and balloons.

Time Flies

No, that is (probably) not a new species of nuisance, buzzing, insect. It is that I have just done a Proper Day's Work for the first time in months, not counting the rather rubbish 2 days of training at the World of Work, which were short bursts of relevant and some utterly irrelevant corporate speak, intermingled with hanging around in corridors being told off for being noisy and critiquing the free buffet. Therefore, it is suddenly 17.43, even though it feels like I only just got in, and I've had to quickly put the oven on. The 12 year old is in a pie-mood, so its some packaged vegetarian interpretation of cornish pasties tonight.

Another bizarre but not-unexpected start to today - especially if you include the dream I had about watching the clock tick by past 9am and not being at work on time - with the 14 year old refusing to go to sleep last night, probably til around 1am, then me waking him at 7am so we could set off at 8.15. Wide awake but acting catatonic, blanking me. How do they do that? Decided not to talk about the situation at work unless anyone asked me - I think someone believed me when I said I'd been away, working on my tan. I still have to pin my boss down to explain it all, and give the official piece of paper, from the gp and all.

Today's Mission...

... was to come home with an

The 12 year old's been moaning that I haven't written about him lately.

So here is a bit all about him and his amazing pasta sauce that he's making at the moment. Hence the onion.  He made some earlier this week, but owing to the fail that was me sending him in with narrow-necked container for it, much of it remained on the school worktop. The sauce that made it home was lovely though.

*********

And here are some photos of today's Weekend Wanderings, in Derby. There would have been some more close-ups of this statue-infested building, but there was an outbreak of sibling scuffling and we had to move on sharpish. People were looking.

I liked this spirally thing. But not the traffic light

A lot of lamp posts 

A window display all about invention and stuff

Thank You...

... to you lovely people, for the really sweet comments on my last post.

Things are heading in the right direction again; the boy has made it into his new school 5 days out of the past 12. Albeit random days, with some digging in of teenage heels along the way. I trotted off for a fabulous head massage at the hairdressers earlier this week, found a jacket and two more cardigans in the charity shops, and have just generally rediscovered life without these silly panic attacks.

Meanwhile, under my job description of Being A Proper Parent And Giving Tesco All My Disposable Income, the new series of Big Brother has been banished from the house on school nights, on the grounds of general tabloidy dodgy morals, as well as being on Far Too Late and so forth. But we have just had a peep at tonight's eviction show and realised there seems to be some confusion*:

                                                                                                                                                                                   

                     Sean from Corrie

  

                Brian Dowling

*or maybe I should have gone to Specsavers.

A Black Hole...

...is where I've been. The back to the World of Work lasted for 2 days, while trying to juggle the 14 year old's life, and I'm now signed off with "acute reaction to stress". Not a route I thought I'd ever go down, but hey...

I'm taking things easy for a bit - lurking rather than posting, not buying things, not doing much. But did walk up to the top of an excellent hill in Nottingham at the weekend, and then found the most amazing cafe with a teeny, narrow wooden staircase up to battered leather chairs with another gorgeous view.

I'm looking out my window over the gardens, with a pure blue, unblemished sky, thinking how mad it is that there can be so much bad stuff going on around the world with a sky as beautiful as that.

The Day After Tomorrow...

... is Back To The World Of Work. Although seawater getting into the streets of New York over the past few days does seem a bit familiar too...

What have I done to prepare for re-entering the World Of Hectic? The life that is getting myself into a fit, presentable and coherent state, and managing to prise 2 similarly prepared offspring out the door at an unholy hour of the day? Which I have not had to do since early June? Well, not that much really.

• Last night I dreamt that the 13 year old's friend, who will also be at his new school, was driving a milk float whilst trying to learn Polish by linguaphone. The friend has autism, and the multi-tasking was not going well.
• Tomorrow is the day the 13 year old becomes 14. Having a birthday the day before going back to school is a bit bleurrggghh at the best of times. It being the day before, when he hasn't got a settled sleep pattern, a teetering inclination to go to the new school anyhow after dropping out for a year, etc, is perhaps not the best day to fill him with chocolate, birthday cake 'n' all that. Luckily he hasn't discovered booze or drugs yet...
• So we have a Sort Of Plan. Yesterday we went out and did some lovely spending on things that currently make him happy - hoodies, lego, lunch... so we can spend tomorrow a bit more quietly (but still stuff ourselves with cake). And I will keep my fingers crossed.

As for myself, my sort-of plans to sell, sell, sell lots of vintage loveliness during the summer panned out into procrastination, as I ignored the plastic crates piled high that prevented me from getting to my wardrobe area, and thus forced me to create even more piles of not-put-away clothes. Not a good scene. All that I managed to tick off the list was some speedway badges from the 70's, a wooden chair, and a book. Not much of a dent in the mess that has overtaken my room...

With typical good timing I have, at the eleventh hour, gone into decluttering overdrive, and decided Its All Got To Go. Now. I've spent 2 evenings brutally sorting out what to get rid of. 3 bags for the charity shop, and a 4th ready to fill today of more stuff I don't wear.

Oh, and I did some stupid thrifty fence mending on Saturday too - which involved creating a support for a rotten fence post out of a plastic dustbin filled with bricks from a skip. The neighbour is American, and likes his yard Tidy. Part of his fence leaning into my garden was not doing it for him. And given the hurricane conditions over his homeland, I thought having the fence nice'n'straight would give him a bit of zen. 

So I'm a bit tired, have muscle fatigue, and will probably oversleep on Thursday. Or not be able to sleep a wink in a blitz of over-exhausted insomnia.

Breakfast At Heston(ys)

Got to share this. I have just tried to jog the 12 year old into having breakfast... there is no milk. This is due to me not being able to carry any with the groceries yesterday, owing to having already bought a pack of floor tiles en route to the supermarket.

Therefore, the breakfast options are as follows:

• Toast. He's not a fan.
• Cereal bars
• Dry bowl of cereal - its the yummy mini weetabix-with-sticky-choc-bits, so I can vouch for their nibbliness.

Or my suggestion..... a bowl of said cereal, to dip into a bowl of ice cream. Could be quite nice, and who doesn't love ice cream, particularly at 11am?

I have just been yelled at, and accused of trying to feed him something Heston Blumenthal would come up with....

(Heston is it m'lad? Now then, how gross can I go when it comes to dreaming up your dinner tonight???)

*****

Post-script - he is having a fried egg sandwich

Square One

After The Triumph Of Wednesday (and subsequent Appointment With Bucket of Wednesday night) the boy was much better yesterday, and fed up not being able to go to day 2 of the new school.

He felt much better yesterday, and behaved himself by getting to bed at a sensible 9pm. In fact, he was up at 6.30 this morning, bright-eyed and functioning. With 2 lessons this morning that he was looking forward to doing - art and drama. I was going to do the bus journey with him as he was a bit apprehensive about it being crowded. Hell, we would have gone by taxi again if need be..

So, it could only go downhill from there? Oh yes, indeed. Back under the duvet, pretending to ignore me, refusing to respond to praise, deals, ultimatums.... I've got a Bad Feeling about the outcome on day one of term in September.

It has brought me down so much this year that the only thing to keep me sane is to fight fire with fire. To keep my own life going - hence when he won't leave the house I still go out to meet friends for coffee, go thrifting, keep doing an interesting, challenging and exhausting job with other peoples' kids, blog about bad diy... right now I just feel like making sure that by the weekend that the crew in charge of News International will be out of work.

Catching Up In A Hectic Week

Thought I'd put up a little post, in case anyone thought I'd gone awol...

A major triumph chez Trashsparkle - the pale, skinny 13 year old boy who last autumn elected to withdraw himself from the wider world, in person and electronically, went to his new school today. It felt like a fluke, and at any second this morning it could have gone the wrong way, but he got there. It's been a horrible, angst-ridden, stressful three-quarters of a year, with a nice line in banging your head against the brickwall that is the mental health/education welfare/school system sector of life. He spent his breaktime and lunchtime alone, and my heart goes out to him, and he was so shattered he was asleep by 7.30. But he loved it.

All I've got to do is remember whatever it was that worked this morning and get him back there on the first day next term. And to learn to love ironing shirts...

Lounge Revamp, And A Letter Written

Today I have mostly been Quite Busy, if that includes time lurking on here and time spent gauging the nation's reaction on twitter to last night's Home is Where The Heart Is programme. Colin and Justin are now the New National Treasures. Alex James, with his own bootcamp-on-the-cheese-farm, apparently is Not.

After that the nagging file of paperwork pertaining to various authorities' interest in my parenting skills needed to be addressed. I whipped off a letter to Chief Meddler our key-worker and requested that they circulate my points to the relevant people in order to update the 13 year old's by-now-very-weighty file.

I followed that one up by deciding at midday I could perhaps get away with a quick snooze on the sofa before 60 Minute Makeover, but changed my mind and stuck to Today's Great Ambition of tarting up the lounge.

Remember this bit of unpainted wall?


 ...umm it had been like that since last year.

 It now looks like this:


But not as dark as this. Its just the room faces north and the lighting was pants by early evening. This is merely for photographic proof that the wall is Now Finished. Its dulux urban obsession, 17 shades lighter than the grey I used 2 years ago.

From the colour proportions being, most-used first, darkest grey, white, black, metallics, and a bit of purple and green, its now going more "washed-out-coastal" - mid-grey, white, cream, metallics, black and purple'n'green.

The room's being lightened up largely because this little baby came home to roost at the weekend, from the boyfriend's office, and she just didn't look right in such a "night-time" room. Besides which, there's no other space in the house for her:

Ex-stock purchase from Royal College of Art, £35, back in the days when I wore red lipstick and got taxis.

And then because the leylines that run through TKMaxx propelled me through the doors yet again on my way home yesterday, I found this beauty:


TKMaxx, £8 from £19.99 because of a tiny scratch. And yes, the shade is leaning but thats because I changed the original dumpy flared shade for this one.

I'm keeping all this though:

Thank you for the encouraging comments re technical tips. Lord knows what's made me now start a twitter account - I'll never work out  how to keep up ;)

Busy Week

At last some lovely holiday time! Its practically Summer Holidays Part 1, with this gorgeous weather (plus once term starts again its only 48 early school-mornings til the Real Summer Holidays start)

Of course the beautiful hot sunshine has seen me become a laundry bore - averaging 2 loads out on the line each day, with the 2nd lot usually left out overnight to get Proper Baked all morning until the next lot is ready to go out. Yawn.... fascinating, eh.


But don't worry, I'm not fixated enough to do any of this:




The Unnerving Experience of Friday is slowly receding. Nastiness personified in the form of NHS well-meaning... I've been busying myself all weekend - de-junking the loft and have even made myself sort All The Photos That Have Ever Been Loaded Onto The Computer into folders. How organised is that!

We're going to Kent and London later this week; this is something the teenage recluse is ok with doing so I'm leaving the London itinerary up to the kids. Although I'll try to fit in a detour to where they lived as babies, the buzzing gorgeousness of Columbia Road. 2 cameras should ensure some photos get onto the blog. Albeit one with a temperamental battery, and a lost charger for the other one, so I should manage a fuzzy shot of some sheep and an oast-house or two, and someone's feet.

One Thing I've Learned This Week...

...is that psychiatrists don't have a sense of irony.

Its Getting A Bit Iron Curtain

Mildly, well actually incredibly traumatic rest-of-day, after the Alan Titchmarsh incident. The psychiatrists came round at midday. They spoke to me, but not the teenage recluse who declined to be involved. Not content with the fact he's so far perfectly happy to start a new school in 4-and-a-half-months, they want to put some very serious wheels in motion. Compulsory hospitalisation (or sectioning, I believe, to you and me) was mentioned, as was having him put into care, or even put into the care of his father. At this stage things got beyond ridiculous, as they clearly have not taken on board that he hasn't seen them for 14 months so why would that be a better option? What a system I seem to have caught myself, and him, up in. One body of people tell me that he is very bright and they can see no reason for his non-attendance at school (erm, that would be the social difficulties, duh). Maybe they do their training by watching back-to-back episodes of Grange Hill? Then this lot today confirm, as much as they can by observing him through a solid wood bedroom door, that they would say he is on the spectrum and needs urgent cognitive behavioural therapy in order to learn to get by without mirror cells, receptors, whatever.

I'm doing other internet stuff, not involving diy catastrophes or celebrities in spandex, so will be making sure things don't escalate into the realms of totalitarianism. Further waffling on here about those 2 subjects and other distractions will have to be humoured. Failing that, we'll be leaving the country.

An Inappropriate Piece Of Television

My morning has been scarred! Its all my own fault. Last night I was watching Escape To The Country. Purely for geographical research purposes*, as my distant rellies come from Ceredigion. Learning to say and spell that is very celtic indeed. OK, thats enough ooh la la; the ancestors were, allegedly, from Aberystwyth. I say allegedly as the trail goes cold in South London, with a David Jones. Haystack, needle anyone? For all I know I could share dna with Tom, Gethin and Steve. What a deeply disturbing thought...

So, back to this morning... the 12 year old kicked me off blog-perusal as his computer was doing some Important Technical Stuff, and feeling a bit screen-deprived I swanned off into the front room and switched the tv on. Totally forgetting about which channel I'd left it on last night. I got a short, sharp burst of Groundforce. With it being cable it was before the infamous hissy fit from Alan Titchmarsh which preceded his departure from the series. Which meant it was back in the days before a stylist made him and dopey-but-loveable Tommy have Big Boy Haircuts, with gel and everything; they were still sporting their pre-fame Village Idiot haircuts.

Anyhows, better pick myself up from that untasty encounter and brave the women who will pinpoint my slovenly ways as being at the root of the teenage recluse's chaotic lifestyle




* though that Jules Hudson, with his clean little face and pink cheeks, is a bit of a fitty. Not my usual type at all.

A Kitchen And A Catsuit

Thursday

• Found unfilled hole in wall after men had gone, where dishwasher pipe had been taken out. Big enough for assorted minibeasts, and possibly a blackbird or two, to enter the house, so out with a bucket of mix-it-yerself external filler.
• Hoovered a bit.
• To make the walls look less like Al Capone* had been round, filled all holes left by removal of cupboards and shelves so from a distance they look better.
• Cooked pizzas - but blaming relocation of oven, rather than not keeping an eye on the time, for the fact they got ever-so-slightly burnt.
• *Do we like the Al Capone-esque bullet points?

Friday

• Felt that it was impossible to go to work as I was aching all over, from pre-refurb moving of EVERYTHING and from the generally unrelaxing hovering I had been doing during Thursday. Note, that is all-day HOVERING, not hoovering... my plan to retreat to the front room to watch sneaky and copious amounts of 60 Minute Makeover et al was scuppered by The Men putting 3 massive toolboxes in there, preventing access to sofas as the room Is That Small and from the constant leaving open of the front door. And it was too cold to sit outside in the garden away from it all. Instead I alternated between hovering with the laptop in a corner of the dining room, and blitzing the 12 year old's room.
• Pulled myself together and went to work, as I was being a bit of a wimp and really had no excuse for trying to slack off.
• Loitered around the market on the way home, resisting anything I'd have to find house-room for in my newly-discovered Less Is More mode, and bought necklaces instead.
• And bought a new drainer rack for the sink - the boyfriend says the sink is a caravan one. T'is not, so there. It's just spacially economical.
• Set to cleaning underneath of the 2 existing wall cupboards with white vinegar. Easy.
• Put all the mugs into a cupboard. A whole cupboard. This is worrying.
• Moved the kettle. To nearer the sink. This is an improvement on previous foot mileage.
• Put the clock back up.

Saturday

• Went off by train to a large swanky shopping centre - ok, it was Westfield, as the teenage recluse was up for going out, following the Amazing Success of the mid-week new school visit and voluntary haircut experience.
• Had calming expectations of snapping up some nice ovenware, to progress the new kitchen.
• Impressed by the poshness and design of the toilets. Better than yer average encounter.
• Swooned in Schuh, luvverly shop with fabulous, gorgeous, ridiculous erm... shoes. And excellent sales staff. Window shopping for me, as we were buying converse for the teenager.
• Sales staff experience reversed altogether in New Look. Very Couldn't Be Bothered ethos. Not good. Hoodie and t-shirt purchased, for 12 and 13 year old respectively.
• Which meant bags. Argument about who was carrying them. Not me.
• Shopping fatigue kicking in, further arguments about where to have lunch.
• Re-discovering the stereo effect that is walking in between 2 children and both of them talking to me at once.
• Lunch then ice creams. Neither of them would hold my ice cream, so no popping into charity shops. In truth, I was scared to, in the Less Is More frame of mind, as Where Would I Put anything I might have found?
• Finally, I bought something - a mini-tube of handcream. £1.10. I am cheap to take out.
• Wasted by the time we got back so flopped down with the papers, then cooked dinner whilst re-siting the cutlery drawer. So many useless, forgotten things in there - many, many beer bottle-openers and random vegetable peelers. Will have a cull. Another day.
• And then watched Mama Mia. Which was worth seeing, if only for Colin Firth in a tight blue spangly catsuit at the end. Why had I never known about that?

update:- following The Great Blogger Outtage of May 2011, I noticed the colin-in-a-catsuit photo I could have sworn I'd originally posted had gone. I had to search high and low to get this pic; I am starting to suspect that Mr Firth's People may have issued some sort of retrospective super-injunction to suppress said images of Their Man. Were Mr Firth's People and the blogger outtage mysteriously linked while the former scoured blogs for any incriminating evidence???

Dreams, Then Real Life

A strange day.

Stayed up til stupid o'clock, catching up with peeps in blogland and went to bed at 1, falling almost straight into a bizarre helter-skelter of a dream (conspiracy to kill a long-ago ex-boyfriend, and accidentally incriminating myself by leaving an enormous bra at the scene were the gist of it, as well as it featuring the usual strands of trying to run a bath, and trying to phone work but getting the numbers all wrong). Woke up at 5 after hearing some sort of bang, then lay there for ages retracing the stages of the dream... finally went back to sleep just before the alarm beeped me awake again.

The 13 year old hurtled out of his room - he'd been on twitter and had picked up the news about Japan. Say what you will about a boy who's opted not to leave the house or see anyone since October, and who has led to my various run-ins and dealings with an enormous range of the public sector re his lack of education, the reasons wherefore, etc,etc; he's a social media genius, very savvy about the world, and a total delight to be around (most of the time - he's a teenager... you know how it is...). Trouble is, he doesn't like, or understand the need to pretend to like, actual people. And with him refusing mental health appointments and refusing to see the psychologist, a diagnosis of any sort is not on the cards. Hmm, Houston we have a problem...

Totally awful news, on such a massive scale. You really just feel very humbled, and lucky, to live in a part of the world that's relatively safe. Touch wood. And more than anything you just feel helpless at not being able to do much more than to feel truly sorry. I hope the UN can do as much as possible, as quickly as possible, and stop bickering about whether to get mob-handed with Gaddafi.

*******

ps Musically, I know I've been remiss lately in not waffling on about the Pixies and other great bands on the Trashsparkle playlist. At the moment Sparklehorse features very heavily, and, as much as possible, very noisily. RIP Mark Linkous, who died a year ago this month.

Life In A Day

After 9 days of waking when we damn well want to, instead of when a digital beeping clangs our senses into wakey-wakeyland, its back to early starts. The 11 year old snoozed and snoozed and snoozed some more, then finally got outta bed, droopy and lagged. I marvelled at it suddenly being light again in the mornings... how did that happen.

Fast forward an hour, and he's checking his hair, grumpy that he's the only one who has to go anywhere today. Well, I would if I could, but my talents are not required at the World of Work today so what can I do but have an Official Day Off? I have a LIST to keep me busy, and a lot of ways of avoiding doing any of the things on it.

Tomorrow is the Day We Find Out how the 13 year old will spend the next 4 years.... if he gets a place at the media-friendly school he might hopefully go back into the system. Alternatively, if he's allocated a place at the chav hell on the hill, then its time for me to get clever with the gcse curriculum.... So by tomorrow morning I will need the password I created when I did the online application many many months ago.  This is somewhere on a bit of paper in the cupboard of doom. I spent yesterday afternoon shredding many, many archaic and redundant ex-important pieces of paper, but failed to find it. Will have to rely on it being something easy-peasy that I use for most other passwords when I log on tomorrow...

Another thing on this list is to find a way of wriggling out of a 2nd mobile contract my phone provider seem to think I wanted. Saving myself £8.50 a month is a big incentive to seeing this one through, but I don't feel bouncing from one call-centre to another is going to be much fun. Or productive. Even if I speak to someone pretending to be called George.

All this tidying up and chucking stuff out is causing me to lose weight. I am staggered about how I have lost 4 and a half pounds since December, given the truckload of mincepies I ate over Christmas, and the amount of chocolate I eat on a daily basis. High metabolism has a lot to answer for. A sinister cholesterol level is probably one of them.