Brennig Jones (and friends)

I have no excuse for you.

My lack of blogging is inspired purely by sloth and apathy to the art of writing.

Indeed, the art of doing anything that doesn’t involve sleeping and eating has been a bit of a stretch over the past couple of months.

I have received a letter from Aber Uni about my ‘pace of progress’ or lack thereof.

I have received 4 missed calls and a voicemail from my gym asking if I’m ok.

I now have shares in Dominos Pizza and Costa.

OK, I don’t, but I should!

And as for the Reading List – well.  It continues to grow.  But I can’t be arsed to add the books that I’ve read to it.

Mainly because I’ve forgotten.

I have italicised those books I started reading and gave up on, or didn’t even start reading and gave up on.

I did finish the ‘Depression’ book by Tim Cantopher.  Very interesting indeed.

I have read the Paul McKenna thin-making one too.

When I’m eating now I think ‘I should be eating this much more slowly’ and ‘I’m full so I should stop eating now’.

Thinking, my friends, is not the same as doing!

I have an arse the size of Canada.

I’m fine about this though.

Well, maybe ‘fine’ is a bit strong.  If I were to draw a picture of myself, it would be similar to an image of the Tasmanian Devil cartoon when he goes into mental mode and spins all over the place.

Because I feel as though, even though I tend to spend my evenings doing bugger all, that I’m constantly trying to keep up with myself.

That probably makes sense only to me.  And it sounded better in my head.

I need to have my brain scraped.

There’s so much clutter up there that it’s pushing out the stuff that I need to get by.

On the plus side, my fingernails are less bitten lately.

My thumbs and thumbnails, however, have had the shit chewed out of them today.

It’s completely unconscious.  Until the thumb starts to hurt and bleed.  Then I berate myself and hark back to a few moments before when the nail and thumb were intact.

Then I spend far too much time looking at said thumb and urging the skin to grow back more quickly, so that it doesn’t hurt anymore. And doesn’t look like I’ve chewed it.

It’s not nice, is it?

Reading this you’d think I am not happy.

That’s the weird thing, I’m pretty happy at the moment.  Certainly, when the lights came back on (i.e. the sun graced us with it’s presence) a couple of weeks ago, I was a different person to the one who has spent the last few months moping around and wondering what the fuck is wrong with her.

I had a gloomy day on Friday.

But I blame that on a lack of sleep and one glass of red wine with a meal.

I should just not drink.  And sleep more.

Blimey, if I slept any more than I do, I wouldn’t hold a full-time job down!

I haven’t killed any members of the public recently, or even wanted to.  This is a very positive thing, I think you’ll agree.

I have had a couple of job interviews, both unsuccessful, and applied for a few jobs that I’ve not heard anything from.  My lovely colleagues have expressed a certain amount of gladness that I’ve not got the jobs I’ve been interviewed for, because they love me so.

Well, I am very lovely, of course.

And one wise colleague has told me to stop wasting my time applying for jobs and stay with them, and spend the time concentrating on my studies instead.  This may seem like ‘stating the obvious’ to some, but I needed to be told.

She also said that I try to do too much at once.  Bless her.  She should follow me home when I try to do nothing at all.

But in a way, I think she’s right.  I want everything and I want it now.  And if I don’t get it right away, I keep it in the background and move onto the next thing that I want.  Adding another ball to the many that I’m throwing around in the air, in the vain hope that I’ll be able to catch at least one of them at some point.

Here’s an example.  The whole book thing.

Last week I returned at least 10 books to the library.

Out of those 10 books, guess how many I had read?

None.

I had started about 3 of them.

But then the Jodi Picoult book I’d reserved came in and I thought ‘now is the time to streamline, and concentrate on something’.

So I returned the 10 books and 3 dvds I’d taken out less than a week ago.

At least 2 of those books were ex-library stock that I’d bought.

Anyway, this is a constant cycle of mine.  I see a book and think that I have to have it.  Immediately.  It sits in my house for a while.  First in the lounge, then next to my bed.  More are added to either pile.  Then one day in a fit of tidying I pack them all into a re-usable Waitrose bag and take them to work with me to be redistributed among the Oxfordshire Library Service.

One day I will realise that I will never read all of the books I think I should, or even those I want to read.  It’s just impossible.  Unless writers stop writing, or the internet stops working, or the television broadcasting service dies, I’m never going to read everything.

Why does that thought scare me?

*Chews thumb-skin until there is nothing left but a bleeding stump*

So.

It’s not going too well.

This whole ‘I’m going to read all of these books this year’ project.

Like any other project I start with gusto, the enthusiasm has quickly worn off and I’ve fallen into my old ways.

Which means I continue to pick up more books from the library, at least one a week, usually more.

Tonight I sorted through the previous additions to my list with a vague recognition of desire, but they are no longer as exciting, due to my new plunder.

Here is my guilty secret.

I like Stephen King.

I’m so ashamed.

I mean, it’s ok to go through a phase of reading Stephen King as a teenager, in that kind of transition between child and adult (at least before Teenage books got their own genre and writers), but I’m a 30-year old woman girl.

Anyway, I spotted his latest epic on Friday and had to have it.

Some girls have to have handbags.  This is my equivalent.

I started reading it as soon as I got home.  Which is unknown for me, because I usually plonk the telly on and become a zombie.

It did send me to sleep, but that’s more of an indication of how tired I was, rather than the content.

It’s pacy and gristly and interesting.

It’s called ‘Under The Dome’; when I described the premise to Bren he immediately said it’s like ‘The Simpsons Movie’.

Which it kind of is.  Only with humans.  And more gore.

I think it’s about a million pages long, judging by the size of it, and I’m only about 150 pages in, so maybe I’ll get fed up of it soon.

But at the moment, I am really excited about it.

How sad is that?

The list of books posted previously is all but a faint memory now…much like that distance-learning course I started nearly three years ago and got 2 modules into and mediocre marks for…

*digs out books and module information to remind self of current assessment details*

Better dust it all off I suppose.  I need to do that whole Susan Jeffers ‘Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway’ instead of just feeling the fear and ignoring it in case I don’t measure up.

Hmm.

Babbling now.

It’s because I’ve cleaned.  It makes me happy.

Or the furniture polish-sniffing makes me high…

This very disturbing CCTV capture comes from the Russian city of Perm (no dear, it’s not a hair style).

It shows what we’ve all done, just jogged across a pedestrian crossing to get to the other side in a hurry.

Except this time, the bus behind that car has had a brake failure and…

p.s. What I find really interesting is that in Russia it’s OK to video a street scene, whereas if you try that in London and you’ll get the Plastic Police (PCSOs) on your case telling you that you’re not allowed to do that here

Soph was away on christening duties yesterday and although it was a tough call, after much mental wrestling I decided to take K to Blenheim Horse Trials; I’d blagged a pair of VIP tickets and was looking forward to all the frills, perks and niceties that normally accompany VIP status at a world class equestrian competition.

We arrived and, like a well-practised team (which we’re not!), K and I flipped straight in to reconnaissance mode and cruised through the trade stands. Then we headed for the VIP marquee/enclosure where coffee and carbs may have been deployed.

We arranged to meet back later; I went off to walk the CIC*** cross country course and K went off to do whatever it is that women of an equestrian inclination do at these things.

At 12.30 K and I hooked up back in the main arena where we watched a lecture/demo by Graham Fletcher (one of my boyhood show-jumping heroes), which was followed by the CCI*** show jumping.

Sorry, I mean we *tried* to watch the lecture/demo by Graham Fletcher.

Mobile phones.

Didn’t the guy on the tannoy say ‘Switch your fucking mobile phones off’? Well no, he didn’t quite put it like that but take my word for it girls and boys, the message was implicitly the same.

So why did Old Welsh Bag rock up on her electric invalid carriage/chair thing, stop almost right in front of us (because we didn’t want to actually *see* anything, did we?) pull out her prehistoric mobile phone (the size of a concrete block), press numbers, put it to her ear and utter the words: ‘GARETH? IT’S ME. WHERE ARE YOU? I’M IN THE MAIN ARENA. ARE YOU OK? HANG ON, SHE’S HERE.’

At this point Old Welsh Bag handed the concrete block mobile phone to a Less Old Welsh Bag (daughter?) who continued the conversation in marginally quieter tones.

Marginally quieter, but just not quiet enough. We all knew what she was telling Gareth.

Now then, you won’t know this, but throughout the course of the afternoon Old Welsh Bag and Less Old Welsh Bag telephoned GARETH six times.

Six. Fucking. Times.

It would be far too easy of me to pick on Old Welsh Bag for many things (having the telephone manners of a person with no manners or consideration whatsoever, smoking cigarettes near people – therefore not giving anyone a choice on whether or not they wanted to smoke her exhalations too, smoking at all when she was clearly massively overweight and, judging by her laboured breathing, extremely unfit), so I won’t.

Instead I will simply say that neither she, nor Less Old Welsh Bag had any great power of vision, for if they had they would have seen everyone nearby glare scornfully at them for the first three calls and collapse in giggles of derision for the last three calls.

However, lack of consideration and poor telephone manners weren’t the pinnacle of this pair’s achievements.

When, later in the afternoon, we were watching the last 15 competitors of the CCI*** perform the competition’s deciding show jumping rounds, Old Welsh Bag determined that she’d had enough and wanted to leave.

So she threw her electric invalid carriage thing in to reverse and…

BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP.

Yes, it had an audible reversing alarm, just like an HGV lorry. Because, obviously, one of those electric invalid carriage things is the same to drive as an HGV lorry.

I don’t know how the beeping alarm affected any of the competing horses out in the arena, but immediately, it scared the fuck out of everyone nearby in the VIP enclosure.

However our expressions turned from terror at the initial aural pollution to abject horror at her obvious lack of consideration and thence to giggles and outright guffaws at the comedy of the situation.

But oh, what a shame that the enjoyment of about a hundred nearby people was completely ruined by the total lack of consideration of Old Welsh Bag and Less Old Welsh Bag at a spectator event.

The moral of this little story is that having VIP tickets is not an effective barrier against the stupids; they’ll still find ways of getting to you.

Somehow.

My gold credit card was cloned last week.

The utter bastards who did it have tried to rip me/the credit card company off to the tune of £1,450 by some very dodgy transactions, but unless something very nasty falls out of the woodwork, no-one is going to lose any money because we nipped it in the bud before all of the transactions could be processed.

The inconvenience to me though, is high. I recently booked flights, accommodation and car hire in Italy for next week, and I’m totally confused as to how those things stand. Are they good, do I have to make them again? My gold credit card has effectively been electronically shredded so all of my regular arrangements need to be changed too – Amazon, for example, needs to be updated, and there are a couple of transactions outstanding with them that are probably going to get caught up in the fallout. I made a charitable donation to a friend/former colleague on that card last week, is that payment going to get bounced?

I have another credit card to use, and that’s fine. It, like my gold credit card, has a stupidly high credit limit and it, like my gold card, has its balance zeroed every month; so it’s not as if I’m suddenly put in a place where things can’t continue to occur, I’m not in a place of financial hardship or even difficulty because of what’s happened.

It’s just the faff, the inconvenience of having to make so many changes in so many places to so many online profiles, and having to check back with so many people as to whether this payment or that payment has gone through or not yet been processed. And this faffing, this needing to make changes was, of course, inflicted upon me by ‘people’.

Sometimes I hate ‘people’.

I’m struggling to remember what I did before the internet.

Because I have lived in a pre-internet world, as difficult as that is to believe now.

Indeed, I’m struggling to remember what I did before computers.

In the dark, mostly dank, recesses of my patchy mind, I can stretch back to the Spectrum ZX.

What was before in my life?

Dolls.

I had a doll called Holly. Because I got her for Christmas.

She was bald.

Well, she had a moulded head, so it looked like she had hair, but she was hair-less.

Anyway, this wasn’t going to be a ramble about me playing with dolls.  Although, it’s funny, because I loved my various dolls (Sindy dolls, Cabbage Patch Kid, Tiny Tears, Holly…etc), but at some point I decided, actually, dolls are all very well, but if you think I am going to have an *actual* living, breathing, pooing, screaming baby, you can bugger off.

But, I was going to blather about t’internets and stuffs.

Because I have been home from work since 6pm.

That’s 3.5 hours.

Yes, we’ve eaten.

No, it did not take 3.5 hours to prepare/eat/wash up.

What have I been doing?

From the moment I set foot through the front door I switched my laptop on.

It’s like an instinct.

I switch it on straight away, before I’ve even taken off shoes or dropped bags or shut my car door or shut my front door, I switch it on to give it time to load up.

It’s forward-thinking.  Or just plain sad.

I have various things to do when I go online.

Like a routine, if you will.

Gmail account.  TweetDeck. Facebook (usually to lose a game of Scrabble to my cousin). Bloglines.

After this there is the ritual plugging in of the iPod and updating podcasts and stuff.

And finally I look up stuff that I’ve had in my head all day.  Random stuff, usually lyrics or a book title or a tidbit of a fact I overheard and want to find more out about.

Since I work in a library, you’d think I’d have all the resources at my disposal to do the fact-finding while at work.

But it’s just easier to hop online and do it, isn’t it?

I’ve become so lazy.

Anyway, this really was going to be a short ramble about the fact that I seem to spend all evening plonked in front of my laptop doing, mostly, fuck all.

If I were writing this Great British Novel I intermittently decide will one day spill forth from my chewed fingertips, then I’d perhaps feel a sense of accomplishment.

Or even if I were trawling the various online news sites, like Bren does, I would feel as though I were learning something.

But no. I read stuff about what other people are doing.

Which is basically like an online version of watching Big Brother.  Almost. Only without the birds tweeting in the background when someone swears.

Oh, I forgot another part of my online checklist. Checking my Aberystwyth e-mail and networking site.

It’s not a daily thing, but I do check it.  God knows why, since I’ve done no study for months, apart from one mad instance in Costa first thing in the morning a couple of months ago when I decided that a business plan can surely not be as scary as I seem to think it is, so started to make some notes.

And haven’t looked at whatever it is I wrote since.

Perhaps I check it in the hope that someone from Aber has e-mailed me to say ‘Hey – no need to bother doing this silly Managment Module that you seem to not be doing, we know it’s total rubbish, so just skip ahead to the extra geeky stuff like Cataloguing…we’ll just give you an A anyway!’.

Anyway. Again.

I need to not be so obsessed with what everyone else is doing.  Hanging on their every tweets. And blog posts.

Because spending 3.5 hours in front of a laptop and coming away from it with not a great deal, except perhaps the memory of a funny YouTube video or well-worded Tweet, is just not a good way to be spending life, is it?

Must write something.

Must write something.

Dammit.

Why do I feel like writing something when the index finger on my left hand hurts because I chewed the nail too low, and the index finger on my right hand hurts because I gave myself a blood blister thing by pressing too hard on an aerosol spray can?

Am having an iPod Shuffle evening.  And skipping many many songs I seem to have accumulated.

But, I might want to listen to them in the future, I just don’t want to now.  So I will probably keep them on. It does need a clear out though.

So many things in my head.

Number 1: Library Studies.

Oh good, that old chestnut.

I’m totally taking studying stuff to work tomorrow. I have no official date on which I last looked at books about business plans and suchlike, but I reckon if Bren had stopped shaving on that day, he’d be tripping over his beard by now.

And I keep going to the Aber webpages about the module and torturing myself with people’s comments.  People who are working on their business plans and essays and not enjoying or understanding any of it.  But at least they are further along than me!

Number 2: The Great British Novel.

Oh good, that old chestnut. Again.

I can’t even remember where the initial few pages I wrote are saved.  They’re up on a website, and everytime I think about editing it (because the writing is so completely self-conscious and rubbish) I’m nowhere near my laptop so can’t go into the original document to alter it.  And I’m usually at work, so it would be completely wrong to save another draft there…even on a memory stick.  I mean, really.  I should be ‘working’ not ‘working on the Great British Novel’.

Alright, so I shouldn’t be Tweeting either.

Number 3: My brain.

What? That shrivelled up old chestnut? (see what I did there?)

Yep. When I said there were ‘so many things in my head’, I wasn’t lying.

However, my brain is such that once I’ve started writing anything, and then get distracted, all these many things that I know are in my head, all turn to mush and make no sense.

And then I wake at 3 in the morning thinking ‘Ah, that was the insightful thing I was going to broadcast to the world.’

And promptly forget it again.

Number 4: Work

I was in a fairly good mood at work this morning.

I know – call the newspapers – Sophie in ‘Good Mood’ shocker!

But then this woman came in.

And didn’t seem to understand the point of the security gates.

So, let me explain it how I see it.

We have ‘In’ gates and ‘Out’ gates.

You can’t go out of the ‘In’ gates, unless a member of staff releases a lock for you.

And a member of staff will only do that if the customer has been stood in front of them the whole time, i.e. they just popped in…Mostly people walk round to the ‘Out’ gates anyway, without being asked.

So this woman dropped some books off, was served by a colleague and was slightly arsy about a fine incurred.

Then she went and browsed  in the children’s area with her daughter.

She came back to the ‘In’ gates about 10 or 15 minutes later, shoved her daughter through and started to try and force them open.

I politely said that she would need to go round through the ‘Out’ gates (because it’s just so far!).

She snipily told me that she didn’t have any books and thought it would be easier to go this way, hence wasting the time she could have been walking the few extra steps to the ‘Out’ gates and to freedom.

I explained (politely) that the gates are there as a security measure; I just know that if I’d let her out that way, she’d be the one who decided to rob the entire Children’s DVD collection or something (no, I didn’t say that to her…).

Anyway, this is all nothing, right?

I mean, what do I care about some snotty woman?

But I really took umbrage at her attitude towards me. I took it all personally.

And here I am still going on about it – I’ve already moaned to Bren about it.

It doesn’t matter how many stupid bloody self-help books I read, I can’t stop myself taking every tiny little thing to heart and analysing it to death.  Then analysing my reaction to whatever it is to death, and then stewing over it until my brain can take no more.

There are so many other things my head continues to analyse, but if I write it all down here, the internet will actually explode, and I don’t want to be responsible for the end of mankind…

So I shall venture to bed…which is probably still warm from our illicit afternoon movie snooze…

I have become a particularly adept waster of time over the past month.

Indeed, there is a certain amount of irony in this tale.

The last time I was out of work for a month or so, it was to help ease my work-related stress and depression. And I promised myself never to return to administrative-related work again. Since it was that which has brought me down.

The time before that, I took up smoking.

I was in Australia. Not that this is a reason for smoking, mind you. I was broke. And for love nor money, I could not get a job. Nothing. As well as taking up smoking (the house I was sharing had one of those big front porch things, perfect for an evening cigarette), I eventually answered an advert constantly catching my eye in the free local music mag. In complete desperation, might I add.

I went along to a backstreet of a funky Melbourne area, was ‘interviewed’ by a lovely girl, probably about my age, if not a little younger, and asked whether I would like to have a topless photo taken?

I took her card and said I’d think about it.

I thought ‘nude modelling’ meant just that. Life drawing and suchlike.

Not a discreet, pay-per-view, naughty-photo website. Yes, you may be provided with a digital camera and can take the photos yourself. And you may get $200AUD for those selected for the website.

But, really? I don’t think I could have done it.

I certainly wasn’t doing any topless shots on that precise day – my bra had been rubbing in between my boobs and there was a nasty bit of eczema there as a result.

How humiliating would it be to be turned down by some cheesy pseudo-porn website?

Anyway, that same day, I was in Blockbusters looking for a film to have a good wallowing cry to, and my phone rang.

Victoria Police.

Oh my God – how had they found out? And I knew the website was cheesy, but was it also illegal??

Ah. A job you say? Oh yes, that one I applied for months ago.

Do I want it? Can you give me your home address so that I can personally deliver some flowers and a big fat sloppy kiss, maybe even with tongues?

That’s a yes then.

Hoorah!!! Let’s hire a comedy film instead. Bring on the expensive snack foods. And stop that terrible unemployed smoking habit.

Anyway, I got lost there. There was some irony mentioned previously. The irony being that my more recent bout of unemployment, prior to this one, was to sort out my depression.

This current period of unemployment, soon to be over, has driven me close to the edge of said depression once again.

I had a day last week. A day of eating until my stomach could feasibly have actually exploded. Like that bloke off of ‘Seven’.

Only I wasn’t force-fed on canned spaghetti.

Instead, I feasted on four cream cakes, one immediately after the other. Many packs of Caramel Snack-a-Jacks. Alpen Light bars.

I buy in all of these so-called healthy snack foods…and then defeat the object by eating them by the dozen. With added cream cakes.

And all this before 11am.

I’m exaggerating when I mention depression.

The tablets continue to regulate that. As much as I should come off them after 2 years or so, I’m terrified of the result. Because of days like last Friday.

At least I could see it for what it was though.

A very bad PMT day.

I watched the entire BBC series of Pride & Prejudice.

Probably not the best thing to do in that state of mind. I was practically hallucinating by the end of it, and imagining myself wandering around in bonnets and long boob-defining dresses. Exclaiming ‘Mr Jones’ everyso often to my bewildered beau.

Anyway.

If there were a graph plotted showing the Ever-Changing-Moods-Of-Sophie over the past month, it would look like a child’s picture of waves. A constant oscillation of highs and lows.

Up until last Friday I had been pretty steady, veering to the ‘High’ side of the scale more often than not. Because I had purpose. Unpack, sort the house, explore the area, find cafes, drink coffee, continue drinking coffee, try cakes, deal with admin side of things – address changes, post, driving licence etc etc.

But then everything seemed to be done. Sorted. As much as it could be. Instead, I just had things to worry about which were beyond my control.

Cats pooing in our garden and then coming to our French windows and having a nose to see if we saw them do it. Laughing in our faces in their smug catlike way.

No wheelie bin. Still. Not even the promised refuse sacks so that our rubbish will be collected if put out with the other wheelie bins. Continual trips to the excellent recycling/landfill facility about 5 miles away.

None of these things are life-threatening. But when you are me, and more importantly, me without a job, they become nemesis’ who cannot be defeated.

Especially the cat with the gammy eye – he seems particularly smug at his pooing finesse. And has an even smugger lack of regard for the ‘Cat-a-Pult’ spray I have squirted everywhere in an effort to put them off. Bastard. He’ll have another gammy eye if I ever get quick enough with my spray gun.

Anyway.

I start my new job on Monday.

I’m sure that I’ll be on here complaining about it soon enough. Hating the public, and wishing to be away from them.

But I will come back this post and remember the feeling of desperation. The need to be back amongst it all.

In the meantime, I’m off to make a cuppa and watch a film.

(Got to try and enjoy these final couple of days…haven’t I?)

Not for a very long time either!

The Monty Python West End musical ‘Spamalot’ features a sketch based on the original Monty Python TV sketch ‘bring out your dead‘ which features a medieval serf trying to pass off an old man as the corpse of a plague victim (because the people of the time were paid for the plague corpses they produced).

People who go to see Spamalot and buy T-shirts from Ye Olde Rip Offe Shoppe can buy shirts that are emblazoned with the words ‘I’m not dead yet’.

I feel as though I should be wearing mine today.

The schedule of events goes like this – and bear in mind this is all one day – Saturday:

00.45 – vomit and onset of stomach pain

01.30 – pain in every position

02.30 – massive spike of pain. I may have cried for an hour or so

02.45 – stomach became distended and hard

05.00 – went for a walk to try and ease the pain

09.00 – rang NHS direct who did the sharp intake of breath thing and said they’d get a nurse to call me

09.15 – nurse called, did the sharp intake of breath thing and said I should speak to a Doc

10.20 – Doc called, did the sharp intake of breath thing and said I should get to hospital

11.05 – Arrived at the Royal Alexandra hospital in Redditch

11.10 – Seen by duty ‘out of hours’ Doc who diagnosed any of three possible problems, chronic gastric blockage requiring surgery (the exact quote was ‘if it’s that you’ll be seeing the surgeon later today’) or a chronic gastric blockage treatable by non-surgery methods (that was my favourite) or a stone (of the non rolling variety) also requiring surgery. I told him to proceed as if it was option 2!

11.30 – given two shots, one for the pain which almost made me pass out a couple of times during the consultation, one to relax my internal organs. Then given pills, told that things could take up to an hour to work and I should make myself as comfortable as possible (ha!).

12.00 – re-inspected by the Doc – feeling non-vomity and slightly better internally but stomach still as hard as a rock

12.30 – re-inspected by the Doc – still non-vomity, much better internally but worryingly stomach still distended and still as hard as a rock. Doc said the last two things will go away over a week or two. Gave me a box of pills, said I was very lucky as he had me down to be under the knife by 15.00, and instead he shook my hand and sent me on my way.

13.05 – arrived home, crawled in to bed, spoke to The Lovely S to allay her fears, dozed

The evening passed in a blur – I was that tired.

This morning I ate breakfast (porridge and a cup of tea) and medication.

This afternoon we went to see the horses, fed them apples then met The Outlaws (The Lovely S’s platinum parents) at a pub where they bought us lunch (I had soup and dessert).

We all came back home where more cups of tea were followed by a slice of birthday cake.

My stomach is still distended, still hard but I’m not in the least bit of pain and – importantly – I’m keeping my food down.

Tonight is Top Gear followed by A Long Way Down. The former is compulsive viewing, more on the latter in a moment.

I’ll get things ready for tomorrow, go to bed and – ironically – get up in the morning and go to work as if nothing has happened this weekend.

And all I’ve got to show as evidence is a box of hospital-issued medication, a distended stomach and a general lack of sleep.

Weird.

Meanwhile elsewhere…

Right, Long Way Down (BBC2, 21.00 Sundays).

I have a book to review – actually I have two books to review – by a young author called Sam Manicom.

One of his books is his version of ‘A Long Way Down’ – his story of his motorbike journey through Africa – whilst the other book is his version of a motorbike trip through Australia and Asia.

I’m looking forward to reviewing them both – but it’s safe to say right now that unlike the over-moneyed, over-protected, fully-cocooned celebrities who are currently starring in TV’s celeb-love in ‘A Long Way Down’, Sam Manicom made both of these journeys without the hugely expensive backup teams in 4×4′s.

In our contacts to date Sam seems to be personable young author, in the excerpts I’ve read Sam’s work seems very promising.

Time, coursework, the 9-5 and life has stopped me from reviewing his books so far, but I’ve got a clear plan of getting them both done before Christmas.

I’ll let you know how it all pans out but…

Even though I’ve only skimmed his books so far – I’m already recommending the books ‘Into Africa’ and ‘Under Asian Skies’ by Sam Manicom as alternatives to the completely unrealistic ‘A Long Way Down’.

B.

To get from the point of normal healthiness last night via the terrible pain and sickness starting just before 01.00 – to where the indescribably agony was ended in the local hospital over 12 hours later – is a journey of harrowing detail, continuous body-wrenching pain and much illness.

I shall gloss over the details save for the turning point – two injections and a bunch of medication administered by a very considerate emergency hours GP at the Alexandra hospital in Redditch.

I never want to go through that again, I really did think I was either going to expire painfully today or do myself in, in an attempt to end the agony and secure a different kind of release.

Now, however, I am back home in bed.

The horses remain unseen but if I’m up to it I’ll sneak in a visit to them tomorrow.

B.