My throat started hurting at about 3pm and now I am lying in bed shivering and feeling like someone is drilling into my throat and ears.

Tomorrow I have one of those days at work where you just can't, under any circumstances, not be there; namely, 100 artists turning up to collect their work and no-one except me knows where all the paperwork is or what the procedures are.

Fuckity fuckity fuck.

And then morelearning's relatives turn up on Friday and I am supposed to be being the hostess with the mostest and cooking them top notch meals in a nice clean tidy house (it isn't, yet).

I can't be ill i can't be ill i can't be ill i can't be ill!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am ill.

Bollocks.

It's 8.22am. What are you doing still here distracting me?? I need to get out of bed now!!! Stop reading my blog and go to work!! Tsk TSK.....

me and morelearning?

renee zellweger & kirk douglas.

apparently.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Picture the scene:

I have worked my bollox off ALL WEEKEND and today, I have £1,500 cash in takings from my arts event which I need to pay in to our Cashiers, who close at 5pm. It is 5 to 5, so I ring them and explain that I am still frantically cashing up but will bring the money down within the next few minutes as I don't want £1,500 kicking about my desk overnight. Eventually I trot down three floors clutching £1,500 in my hot, exhausted little mitt.

Cashier [sighing heavily]: Another late night for me, then.

[It's 2 minutes past 5 !!!!]

Sixpence: Sorry, I didn't want £1,500 sitting in my desk overnight.

Cashier: Well I hope all the coins are in separate bags.

Sixpence: Er.... No.

Cashier: Well it will be coming straight back to you then! We can't deal with it unless it's in bags!

Sixpence: I am the Arts Development Officer. What would I be doing with cash bags? I have put it in separate envelopes for you. See?

Cashier: It has to be in bags!!

Sixpence: Look, you jobsworth fuckwit, I have been working all weekend, I am contracted to work 22.5 hours per week and in the past 5 days I have so far worked 37.5 hours, including Saturday and Sunday, with no lunch breaks. Today, for example, I ate my lunch standing up in 4 minutes and 32 seconds. I also run my own business and have a life. I am so fecking knackered that every single one of my limbs and sensory organs feels as though it is about to pack up and/or drop off. Give me a feckin break here. This is not an event I am doing for my personal enjoyment; it is a Council event. Would it be too much to ask that you, the Council Cashiers, could put the £1,500 takings this event has generated for Council coffers in bags on my behalf? I'm so sorry to keep you hanging around but I do really appreciate your help.

Cashier: [grumpily] Well, if my dinner's cold when I get home I'll blame you. [puts money in safe and goes home, while Sixpence finally gets to leave work at 6.15pm]

I can't stop bloody crying. I wish I could. I just feel so sad all the time about the divorce. It's not that I want to change things, just that I feel so much sorrow and loss about what has happened.

I've hardly ever felt this low, crying all the bloody time. Maybe when the environmental health officer left and maybe when R left. As a general rule I don't get depressed because I don't really believe in it. I took anti depressants once in my life for one week but they made me feel weird so I stopped. I usually prefer to just plough on through stuff.

I'm not really sure what the point of me is. I'd always tried to believe that even though I can't be a mother (being a parent would at least give me a feeling that I had some bloody function in existing on the planet) I was an intrinsically good person who was at the very least making people around me happy to some limited extent - but now I'm just making people unhappy. Mr Expence, KF, my family, Mr Expence's family, morelearning's family, even to some extent morelearning himself, because let's face it if he'd never met me he'd be tucked up at home now with his kids, who he loves more than anything on earth, in the next room.

I know this sounds dismal and sorry for myself but it's my current mindset and I'm struggling to break out of it. I dreamt about Mr Expence, I dreamt we were in a car, I told him stuff I wanted to say, we had a hug. I spent 12 years with him, and I am someone who feels things (everything) very deeply, walking away from someone that I love is hard for me, even if it is towards something better.

I just feel so much loss, not just the marriage but my whole life[style], a lack of continuity, which I am finding difficult. Although I am someone who has the courage to make major changes in my life I am also aware that I am often a rigid inflexible person, I like things to fall into a nice neat pattern and I get panicky if they don't.

I'm just so tired, which isn't helping, my freelance work which is important to me has completely gone to pot because I've been so frantically busy in a part-time 'proper' job I don't even want to be doing.

I want to be in control of this house and feel useful but I've been so busy and exhausted I can't be at the moment and that's frustrating me too, even though morelearning is being fantastic of course and sorting loads of stuff out.

Spending time with morelearning's little 'un is wonderful, really wonderful, but that's hard for me too on lots of levels and I'm finding it difficult to acclimatise even though it's a really positive development in my life.

I know that I feel stuff for morelearning that I didn't feel for Mr Expence, but I also had 12 years of stuff with Mr Expence that I don't have with morelearning yet, and that's partly what I mean when I say to morelearning that I feel sad about the stuff we haven't shared and the years we can't get back. I want us to have instant history instead of teetering and tiptoeing over all these uncertainties.

I do have the 'wisdom to know the difference' but the serenity is more of a challenge. Still, at least writing this blog has stopped me crying for a few minutes. I feel bad whingeing on because I do have positive things happening in my life. I am so very much in love, which surely counts for one hell of a lot.

...did no one tell me that I was walking round half the day with not one but TWO buttons on my shirt undone, displaying generous portions of my admittedly delightful cleavage to nearly 100 members of the public who had come to register their artworks for an exhibition?

You would have told me, if you'd been there. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you?????

It's 8.15am on a Monday morning.

I am watching Peppa Pig.

This is a new experience.

Friday was the last day of school half term for morelearning, and he scored FOUR (count 'em!) goals in five-a-side, and he had TWO poems published in a magazine, and I finally got my 60 page report that I've been working on for months off to the people who have been eagerly awaiting it for months, and we had an unexpected visit from morelearning's brother in his HGV, and sausages for tea.

Saturday night I was introduced to morelearning's best friend on his flying visit from the USA, and consumed lots of wine, and a jolly time was had by all... as evidenced by the large number of people on whose blogs morelearning commented "Parsnip" when we returned from our alcohol-fuelled jaunt last night (sorry!! He asked me for a random word and I gave him one [a word]. I did try to stop him blogging it...)

TODAY we had little 'un here and decided to buy him a Big Boy's Bed since he is averse to the travel cot currently situated in Little 'Un's Room.

Morelearning and I don't generally have a great deal of luck on our Furnishing The Rented Abode Shopping Trips, which usually follow the whole-world-is-against-us theme that we've been battling with since mid-August.

But today we purchased, in rapid succession:
*1 single duvet & pillow (£9 the set)
*Two sets of duvet covers
*1 very nice single bed with mattress included at a jolly reasonable price and the lovely chap delivered it to our very door less than 4 hours later.
*2 fitted sheets, 2 mattress protectors and one of those exciting rugs that has roads and roundabouts depicted upon it, since little 'un took a fancy to it in the shop.
*1 sizeable late lunch in Pizza Hut.
*Baby bathing stuff and a toothbrush which little 'un immediately because very attached to. ("Open it!" "When we're out of the shop" *immediately runs as fast as little legs will carry him towards shop doors*)

Then we returned home and the nice man brought little 'un's bed and now morelearning is enjoying a rare bath to soothe his aching, post 5-a-side, goal-scoring muscles.

And tomorrow for the first time little 'un is being allowed to stay with us overnight. Yay!

O, the glorious wonders of the sausage-and-fried-egg-sandwich I have just made myself.

The crisp, warm, melt in the mouth white of the egg and the luscious yellow yolk gently oozing through soft white bread. The faint undertone of garlic from last night's cooking because I couldn't be bothered to wash the pan up before I fried the egg. The meaty, fat filled yumminess of cold sausage. The lovely spicy tang of morelearning's chutney (not a euphemism; it's chutney, and it belongs to morelearning and I stole it because he stole the other sausage).

And all accompanied by ice cold orange juice.

*sighs with bliss*

Just think of all those poor vegans out there who can't even begin to imagine what I am tasting right now. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Was rudely awakened at 6.30am when morelearning pulled my pants down - and then promptly fell fast asleep. (Or maybe he was asleep when he pulled them down??)

While I, being a chronic insomniac who can't get back to sleep once woken up, have lain awake ever since.

Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!

And to add insult to injury, the old coffee jar is empty, and when I tried to open the new coffee jar - being a bit Feeble and a Girl - I couldn't get the darn lid off.

Humph!!

Highlight of my working* day yesterday?

*(there were other highlights at home)

The following comment on a monitoring form returned by a group that had borrowed my display boards kit.

Under 'Any other comments?':

Possibly some simple erection instructions would not go amiss.

And you know who the group was?

The Parochial Church Council!!!

Shocking...

Am completely snowed under in the 'proper' job due to a major week-long event starting next week. I hereby submit to the jury Exhibit A, to wit, yesterday's Things To Do list:

Anyway. In the midst of the crappest of crappy, frantic, exasperating days, which involved discovering that 500 of the wrong flyers had been sent out, members of staff being randomly rude to me because I don't know about stuff that was discussed with the person whose maternity leave I'm coveirng for, people arriving an hour early for a meeting and then having a go at me because I haven't got their documents ready, and so it went on, to the point where I almost couldn't go on, and then, right then, right in the middle of all that, an email arrives that makes me laugh until I cry.

It was this:
You are invited to:
FREE SUICIDE AWARENESS & PREVENTION TRAINING
9.15AM - 4.30PM 10 November

And it goes on:
If you have contact with people who are at risk of attempting suicide or self harming, such as carers, vets, farmers, young men, or those suffering from isolation or depression, then this training is for you.
The day consists of a mixture of workshops and delivery by facilitators who specialise in mental health and psychology, and looks at the myths and attitudes towards suicidal behaviour.
Places are limited to approx 20 per session, and are likely to be over subscibed. If you know of anyone that could benefit from this training please contact me: Social Inclusion Officer, Rural Community Council.

Vets?????????? Young men?????????????
What about Arts Development Officers??????????????????????? We don't earn as much as feckin vets and we aren't as... er... young as young men.

The bit about being over subscribed made me laugh as well. Am I a sick puppy??

Been sat here like a muppet nosing around at other people's blogs and completely forgot I'd made myself a coffee.

Never mind. I end up drinking it lukewarm most of the time anyway.

Woke myself up having a bad dream about my niece crying.

Am in pain. Somehow, and I haven't a clue how, managed to do something (what????????? when?????????????) to my right ankle. Have been trying to ignore it for past 2 weeks but it appears to be getting worse.

And it's not even my Bad Ankle. It's my one remaining Good Ankle. My Bad Ankle doesn't work properly since I jumped off a shed roof onto a moving swing for a £2.50 bet with my 10 year old nephew in 2003. Admittedly had I known that I would be left with permanently limited movement in one leg, spend months in plaster/on crutches, have to endure unpleasant and largely fruitless operations, and get addicted to Countdown as a result of spending months being forced to reside 24 hours a day on the sofa, I might have done different. Like, say, negotiating him up to £3.00.

So you can probably imagine why I am getting a little nervy about my Good Ankle playing up. I need that one!!

Speaking of only having one that works......... I don't think I ever told morelearning that Mr Expence was blind in one eye.

How low can you get - stealing a blind man's wife?

Here's mine:

Is it very childish of me that every time I get in the lift at my new place of work and a voice says "going down" it makes me smile?

Have gone down 3 times this morning.
Once when requested to do so by a charming man, and twice of my own accord.

currently listening to this. prize for first to get it.

skip a life completely,
stuff it in a cup.
she says, money is like us and time
it lies but can't stand up.
down for you is up.

YOU don't count, onelouder2. Not that you ever bother commenting on my blog, you just read it. *tuts grumpily*

c'mon c'mon the prize is waiting.

Dear Ms K Sixpence [not my real name, btw!]
It has come to our attention that we have not been billing you for your BT Broadband. You will be pleased to hear that we do not intend to recover charges for the time you have been using the service so far. We do need to rectify this situation and apply normal charges for Option 2 max with a 12 month term to your future bills as from 11.10.06.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or enquiries.

Yours sincerely.
Andrea Maddison.
Billing Recovery Team.

One of the poets has pulled out of the Arts Council funded tour we've spent the last 18 months planning.
I spent Sunday night working in order to get the draft Executive Summary of a report I've been working on for months to an organisation before their Board meeting on Monday, and I've had a really arsey email back from the Manager basically arguing with everything it says - and that's before she's seen the rest of the 60 page report.
I haven't heard from my brother and I want to know he's ok.
I'm fed up with this whole crappy divorce emotional stress and Mr Expence still hasn't sent me the feckin marriage certificate which he stole and there's loads of official stuff I can't do without it.
The bath has mould growing in it and clumps of fluffy hairy stuff are accumulating in every corner.
I have a really major arts event kicking off next week in my 'proper' job and I have been working my bollocks off.
I also have six freelance contracts on and I am working my bollocks off.
I send feckin emails and nobody listens to a feckin word I say. Am I talking to myself?
I have just eaten a Cranberry & Raisin Cereal Bar which is not very easy to do when you are sobbing.
I have to tidy and clean the whole house today because there are Poets coming round this evening and as we know they are all consumptive types who will pick up TB from my filthy pestilent household as soon as look at it.
The 'promoter' who is supposed to be 'promoting' the event I'm performing at next Tuesday has just texted asking me if I have contacted the venue to arrange bar times, staffing etc. Excuse me? Isn't that YOUR job? I have never spoken to anybody at this place. I have no idea who to speak to or even what their number is. How exactly would I have sorted this out??????
The fellow co ordinator who is supposed to be helping me co ordinate the poetry tour refuses to do any work because his girlfriend is expecting a baby.
The fellow co ordinator who is supposed to be helping me complete the 60 page report has gone to California for 4 weeks.
I am sick to death of everything and everyone (except morelearning) and I wish the whole world would just FUCK OFF and be crap to someone else for a change.
And I've got hairy legs as well. And I am sat here wearing my pyjamas and my coat considering running off to Devon or North Wales although Devon would probably be better because my legs are bare (shortie pyjamas) and it can get chilly in N. Wales at this time of year although the hairy thing will probably help in terms of providing a soft downy layer to protect me from the Elements.
Will somebody please beat the world off with a big stick and make me a cup of coffee and tell me I am ok. Please. Thank you.

Well, the weekend went ok. Mummy Sixpence said that morelearning was "a very nice man". I think that constitutes a thumbs up.

Daddy Sixpence was a miserable fecker but nowt new there.

My brother went public with his announcement about leaving his wife for another woman and me and my mum spent half the weekend on the phone to my 2 nieces and nephew in Denmark who were all devastated. So it wasn't a particularly easy weekend.

Spent a long time on the phone to my 16 year old niece who I'm especially close to, who was saying all the stuff about the 'other woman' that morelearning's daughter has been saying about me. It was quite hard to listen to. I pointed out to my niece that the other woman could be someone just like me and she said "that's different". But it isn't.

We watched old super8 footage of me as a baby and morelearning now knows that the big hair is genetic since he has seen video evidence that I was born with a full head of Seventies hair.

And he's out teaching tonight, and I miss him.

One of the tasks (Oh! the Glamour! the Intellectual Challenge!) of my part-time 'proper' job here at Market Randomtown District Council is loaning out an exhibition kit to groups in the community who like doing that sort of thing - display boards, lighting, stuff for hanging pictures etc.

A very confused-sounding receptionist just rang me to let me know that my "expedition equipment" has been returned.

I shall retrieve it forthwith, that I may abseil from my escape hatch later...

My brother in Denmark chooses the weekend I'm bravely introducing the-man-I-left-my-husband-for to our parents to announce that he's leaving his wife because he's met someone else as well....

...thereby reducing my mother to a hysterical state of weeping and muttering something about "the Queen had a year like this".

Boy, is this gonna be a fun weekend.

Taking morelearning to meet my parents this weekend.

Wish me luck!!

I don't think Mummy Sixpence will be a problem - I think she'll be more nervous than morelearning. And besides, you can't not like morelearning, because he's a genuinely Really Good Bloke - if a little bit quirky and random

Daddy Sixpence could be more difficult, though. He was very close to Mr Expence because they shared a passionate love of Computers.

Any tips for introducing the-man-for-whom-one-left-one's-husband to one's parents would be gratefully received...

My teenage diaries got unearthed in the house move, and I dug them out of our garage at the weekend.  Thought I'd see what I was doing this day in the past, but I appear to have had a teenage-hood full of profoundly uninteresting October 9ths.  This one from 10 October 1991 was interesting though (I was 20).  The other day morelearning was amazed when I said I wouldn't want to do uni all over again.  I think this kind of stuff explains why.

Explanatory note: It was a misconception among my student pals that I "had money".  This is because I had spent the year before uni working, on a salary of less than £4,500, and saved every penny I could while also paying my parents rent, and I then used this money to pay off my overdraft at the end of every term (until the last one, when it ran out).
Clare was my self-harming housemate.
Sharon was my best mate at school - also a self harmer.

Thursday, 10 October, 1991
What a fucking shit night. Paid £6 to go and see Blur. It was fucking shit. All dressed up too. Afterwards got annoyed about people always asking me to lend them money and Clare told me to fuck off. 
Well well what a fucking state. Clare started smashing her room and herself up.  Of course I had to go in and cope with it. I mean why the fuck do you think I didn't want to replace Sharon.  This is ridiculous.  Couldn't hack it.  Left Emma with her & came back to bed (after clearing up the broken glass).  I don't want to have to cope with it.  A long while later they came & woke me up so that Clare could "sort it out" with me - which meant tell me how much I'd upset her when I said about the money earlier.  Fucking hell!  Ended up screaming at each other again & she left.  Probably asleep now.  I don't know what to do.  Fucking typical.  Her sleeping me crying. 

So, would I want to go back?  Er, no........ 

.......makes you tired.

Today, lit fans, is National Poetry Day. To which end I shall be performing live (poetry, boys, poetry) in Coventry at 6 o'clock this evening.

To celebrate, I shall honour thee with one of my poems. Normally I just post my tripe on my blog, but this is one of my 'proper' ones.

*Dons poetic stance* *then remembers it's a humourous poem and sits back down*

Bedfellows (a moral tale)

He says, you are a woman of loose morals.
Not true, I say. My morals are tightly
coiled springs. I unleash them upon myself
with painful regularity.
It’s a form of self-depreciation
I particularly enjoy.

Why then, he asks, put yourself through this?
Ah, but that warm sliding feeling
of flesh on flesh, I say, that opening
of self to self, that sharing
of sweat and oxygen and saliva. Besides,
it gives me something to write about.

He frowns. But you’re so miserable, he says.
That’s because, I reply, sex and poetry
are unhappy bedfellows – although they wear
the masks of two lovers sleeping. One requires
far too much emotional investment
and the other leaves me sweating.

Copyright me, and if you nick it I will personally come round and break all your fingers.

Fan mail to the usual address, ta.

...really despicable?

Is telling you that's what I'm doing even worse?

Mr Expence has cancelled a direct debit from what used to be our joint account on an insurance policy that was in my name only, and which I wanted to keep (as it's worth £110,000).

We agreed the direct debit would remain where it was until the transfer of my share of the house went through to him, because it basically meant that if I died before the transfer was complete, the mortgage would still get paid off.

I got the letter notifying me the transfer was complete yesterday... so I went into the joint account to change the direct debit to my own account and guess what... it's not there any more.

I don't need to say anything else about this really do I? It speaks for itself.

On the plus side I do now have a five figure sum in my bank account from the property transfer thing.

Jammy Dodgers, anyone?

I roll up at the staff car park at 9.35am this morning, swipe my little access card, and the barrier lifts half way and then promptly drops down again with an ominous groan.

I try again, and exactly the same thing happens.

So I press the “help, let me in!” button which magically links me to an unknown person indoors (apparently), and they obviously press their magic button repeatedly because the barrier starts lifting half way and then dropping again for at least 4 minutes before the unknown person realises IT’S NOT WORKING.

At this point I would happily have reversed back down the teeny tiny one way street and gone to the pay and display car park next door, were it not for the queue of car-driving staff, all equally late to start their morning’s duties serving the good people of the district, that has built up behind me.

So I ask the nice girl in the car behind me whether this is a regular occurrence and whether she knows what to do, and the answer is ‘no’ to both questions.

So I phone Customer Services and say please for godssake let me in, I love my job and I’m desperate to start work and they say Yeah, we know, we can see you from our office window and we’re trying to sort it out.

About 6 minutes passes and then a lone female exits the staff entrance and approaches us. Her first question to me:

“Have you tried your swipe card?”