Sitting here discussing my worries with myself, since I can't find anyone else handy to listen. Problem is though, I don't half bloody argue.

My ex husband never understood that what I needed was a hug and listening to and reassurance. Perhaps I don't make it very clear.

I had an ex boyfriend who, funnily enough, had the same birthday as ml, who said to me:

"The way I look at it is, we might be lucky, we might not. I don't love you for your childbearing ability; I love you because you're amazing."

He was only 23 at the time, but he got it spot on. And I'm fed up of people telling me to look at the positives.

1. Hot lemon juice & honey, mug of (half drunk, so far).
2. Box of Tunes (blackcurrant flavour).
3. Superdrug Vapour Rub (cheaper than Vicks and just as pungent). Not the most exotic substance I've ever had smeared across my chest, but there you go.
4. 1 Bog roll (used up last of box of tissues this morning. And not on my nose either Hello darling! )
5. Box of Veno's (Chesty Coughs).
6. Mobile phone.
7. Remote controls (TV and stereo).
8. 1 plate with breakfast remnants (cheese and mayo sarnie).
9. Debit card (bad news: just been shopping online...)
10. Laptop (obviously).
11. Literature (Nabokov's Lolita. I'm ploughing my way through, but keep diverting myself with short stories because it's frankly disturbing. I know that's a bit like going to see Titanic and then complaining about the sad ending, but... it's making me feel even more ill).
12. Selection of slippers, fluffy bedsocks etc. And my pyjamas, which were mysteriously removed in the dark hours. Currently wearing dressing gown instead.

You'll be pleased to hear I'm going to have a bath now. That should pass an hour or two.

*sits back and waits for applause, congratulations, awards for Noble Efforts In The Face Of Adverse Brain Capacity, etc etc*

Regular readers will know that I have had many a tussle with Orange, or as they have previously been fondly described in my blog, ORANGE WANKERS. (See Orange tag).

Having finally managed, God knows why, to take out an 18 month contract with them for Dolphin 25, I get a bill today and discover that for the past two months they have been charging me for Dolphin 35.

My contract was agreed over the phone, so I don't have a single shred of evidence to support the fact that this wasn't what I ordered (as they say in the finest eateries).

So... I drop my marmite sandwich in a blind insane rage and phone Orange "customer services"... and after being on hold for about TWO FUCKING YEARS I get through to someone who says their records say Dolphin 35 and it's an 18 month contract so tough luck (in not so many words).

Cue Sixpence getting very, very angry. And if you can picture Sixpence trying to shout when I have a chest infection so severe that I can barely breathe/talk/eat, then you can imagine the husky-voiced, sinister rage that ensued.

Sixpence: I am NOT paying for a contract that I DIDN'T TAKE OUT! [pauses to cough consumptively for ten minutes] I WON'T PAY IT!!!
Orange: Hold on while I look into this.
[Fifteen minutes later]
Orange: We will 'downgrade' your contract to Dolphin 25 but it won't come into effect for another month.
Sixpence: It isn't downgrading, it's what I asked for in the first place! And you won't put it into effect next month, you will put it in place NOW and you will REFUND me what you have OVERCHARGED me for the past TWO MONTHS!!!
Orange: I'm afraid I can't do that.
Sixpence [gasping for breath, lungs creaking and groaning like a garden shed in a hurricane]: Put me on to your Supervisor NOW!
Orange: Hold the line, please.
[Ten minutes later]
Same Orange person: We will refund you £10.
Sixpence: What about the other £10?
Orange: Hold on.
[Ten minutes later]
Orange: Ok. We will refund you £20 and your next bill will show Dolphin 25.
Sixpence [wheezing through cloud of Vicks and Venos]: Can you put that in writing to me please?
Orange: Oh. I'll need to ask helpdesk.
[Ten minutes later]
Orange: No, we can't, sorry.

That was a quarter of an hour ago and I am just about calming down now. Thought my darn bronchial passages were going to explode with a combination of green mucus, fury and shouting.

Anyway. I suppose it's a result of sorts, but I won't ask you to pat me on the back, since that would probably result in a shower of green mucus on the duvet.

Have a nice day!

1. My budgets at work being overspent. Apparently. And they're not even 'my' budgets. I'm just the temporary stand-in!! How can I have spent all the money??

2. My tax return. Need I say more??

3. Trying to fix our internet at home so that I can complete my tax return.
Call 1..........
BT Callcentre in India: The problem is with your landline.
Sixpence: The problem is not with my landline, because my TiVo recorder has made a successful phone call this morning. The problem is with my broadband connection.
BT Callcentre: You are not understanding me. The problem is with your landline.
Sixpence: No, I really don't think so.
BT Callcentre: I am not giving you false information!
Etc.

Call 2.........
Morelearning: Take the black thing out of the white thing and then plug everything that's in the white thing back into the other white thing.
Sixpence: The black thing won't come out.
Morelearning: Just pull it!
Sixpence: I am pulling it!
Morelearning: *sigh*
Etc.

It's working now. Morelearning was better than BT. Hooray for morelearning!

The joys of compulsory corporate health and safety training.

Managed to wriggle out of the last one, but they got me this time by grassing to my Head of Department that I hadn't booked a place.

It's hugely reassuring when a corporate trainer begins his session with the phrase: "Some of you are important."

He then commenced to thoroughly stereotype every member of staff present with enormously embarrassing assumptions, e.g. (pointing to bloke wearing overalls) "You probably use dangerous equipment", or (pointing to young bloke sitting next to me) "You probably haven't got kids", or (pointing to middle aged female) "You've probably used a typewriter in the past".

We were then bombarded with a series of questions along the following lines:

"How would you like a permanent disfigurement, hmmm? And you - how would you like to be injured so badly you can't work for the rest of your life? Eh? And what about you - how would you like to lose a limb or two?" And so it went on. I could not help but surmise that that the ridiculous rhetorical question has, in fact, limited purpose in a health and safety training course.

Having all agreed that we would prefer not to be injured, disfigured or die (surprise!) the corporate trainer then launched into his presentation. This was projected on to a screen at the front, so that we could all enjoy its liberal peppering with the random and indiscriminate use of question marks and other grammatical devices.

Already running half an hour over time, we completed a Fire Safety Questionnaire entitled "The Burning Question" (oh, help me God) and were then subjected to a Fire Awareness video filmed circa.1983 ("oh no! my excessive use of hairspray has caused a blaze which has spread to my non flame retardant shoulder pads!")

Unfortunately I didn't get much sleep last night and my colleague sitting next to me was forced to nudge me a couple of times when my head nodded during the riveting film entertainment.

Something better to do? Moi???

my cats.

That's MumCat. She's 13 but she's teeny teeny tiny.

I know I need to accept that I'll never see them again but every now and again I just want more than anything to give them a big fat furry cuddle and hear them purr.

Sorry to be a sad, soppy, cat person, but there it is.

Been away all week doing that Writing thing wiv me writing pals Parka, Octavia and Ferret (to whom I am universally known by the moniker Filth. I have no idea why).

We went to Sandsend near Whitby where we rented a beautiful cottage dirt cheap, because nobody goes to Whitby in January. Even the goths were thin on the ground.

We ate lots of delicious food here:

and on Wednesday night we ate at the Moon and Sixpence (for obvious reasons - highly recommend it too!) and stopped to look at this view on the way back:

(sorry about the blurring - it was windy!!)

and I slept here:

and spent a lot of time sitting here:

looking at this view:

causing Parka to create the following Haiku in my honour (has had to be edited slightly, for legal reasons):

Filth in the window
Did you know she's a poet?
Her jugs are so big.

And yesterday we went here:

And a good time was had by all.

But it was very, very, nice to come home.

in Kibbleslop church

is not good enough for Rachmaninov

Apparently

I have to go to work tomorrow.

On a Saturday.

Being as I work wiv da communitee, like, when a group interested in becoming a voluntary music promotion society in the village under my artistic jurisdiction known as Kibbleslop* says that please would I come along and offer them my extensive expertise, and the only time they can meet is a Saturday morning, I am not allowed to say "Are you having a fecking laugh? Saturday morning, my arse" because of that bit in my contract wot says something about The postholder may be required to work anti social hours from time to time.

But that is not my immediate concern. My immediate concerns run thus:
1. I must tumble dry the wet washing currently in the machine. This means that first I must remove the dry washing currently in the tumble dryer which means I need to empty the dry tumble drying currently in the laundry basket and put it away before I can do any of the above.
2. I must staple together all the pieces of information I kindly resourced that I considered may be of interest to a group wishing to become a voluntary music promotion society in Kibbleslop into useful sets instead of lots of individual pages since I was in too much of a rush to do so when I hastily photocopied them this lunchtime because I was trying to get home from Market Randomtown in order to finish a major freelance report which I have now submitted (hooray!!) to my esteemed colleagues at the County Council with an email saying "Here's the fecking 60 page report, and don't bother coming back to me with a note saying if you pay me for another 2 days will I do a bit more work on it, because I never, under pain of death, want to see the feckin thing ever again and since one of you is not speaking to me because you fancy me and are pissed off that I left my husband for morelearning instead of you and steadfastly refuses to provide any of the information I need as a result, it has not been an easy task and I am sincerely sick of it." I didn't put it in quite those words, of course. What I actually said was that it had been a privilege working on the project and although there were still some gaps in the report I regretted that my available time on the project had now ended and I needed to hand it back whence it came.
3. I must try and sleep tonight despite having just slept for 3 hours on the sofa (bad girl!) Although (gropes wood... I meant the desk, filthy) my insomnia is much improved since moving in with ml.
4. I must get up at 8am tomorrow, on a Saturday, and wash my hair.
5. Morelearning has gone and twanged something in his thigh and is virtually unable to stand, let alone walk, which is causing me some concern since I am buggering off to Whitby for a week on Monday with some of me writing pals, and if he's not better by then I have visions of him never quite making it as far as the fridge and I might come back and find him collapsed and wasted away on the laminate floor, the last few crumbs of a tube of Pringles (cheese and chive flavour) scattered across his starving lips.

And now, to the tumble dryer. Anon, fair cohorts.

*It's not really called Kibbleslop. But that's a good name, don't you think?

wasn't really my Uncle. He was actually Nanny B's uncle, which made him my great great uncle, and now I think of it there might even have been another great in there, but I'm not too sure.

Nanny B's real name was Freda Blanche Maud, followed by my mother's rather extraordinary family name which I can't repeat here due to its uniqueness. Freda Blanche Maud sounds awfully ostentatious, but she spent her days turning her hand to the market garden like everybody else did - everybody else being my grandad, Herbert, and his brother Reggie and his brother Reggie's wife Mary. It was my grandad and his brother who founded the market garden where my uncle (my real uncle) still grows the finest tomatoes in Norfolk to this day, although that won't last forever, as he has two daughters who aren't that much interested in tomatoes. He offered to train my second brother up to take it on, but my brother always had one eye on the distance, even before he met the Brazilian babe, and wasn't really up for the idea. This means two things. Firstly, my mother's extraordinary family name will die out when the older of my two girl cousins marries, assuming she will, though my auntie worries endlessly about her because she "won't settle". My younger girl cousin is already married to an American service man, and living in Italy, presenting my uncle with some challenges, since it was hard enough getting him out of Norfolk as far as neighbouring Suffolk once a year to celebrate Nanny B's birthday, which was 2 days after Christmas. Nanny B always spent Christmas with us after Uncle Sam died, and we celebrated her birthday on 27 December long after she died, but this annual family gathering stopped when I stopped allowing my mother to host Christmas because she got too tired, since coming to Leicestershire for a family gathering proved to be stretching my uncle's wanderlust that bit too far.

The second thing it means is that my grandad's market garden will get sold for £1.5 million of prime housing land, and my two cousins will be rich ladies. I suppose that might help her land a husband, but who knows.

Back to the point, then. Uncle Sam always used to be there when we had Christmas at Nanny B's, before she started coming to my mum's, way way back. I remember that Christmas was the only time of year we were allowed into the Living Room at Nanny B's, for the sole purpose of opening our presents. The rest of the time, everybody lived in the middle room which you walked through to get from the back door and the kitchen to the stairs, and which contained a dining table and chairs, a huge sideboard, a 'painting by numbers' picture of a ship done by my uncle when he was young, two green armchairs, a pouffe reserved for Fluff (Nanny B's favourite cat), a TV, and a fire (always lit). This was not a large room, and I have no idea how we all fitted in. The Living Room, on the other hand, had a slight, unlived-in chill about it, but it was where the piano was kept, which made it special. The same piano is now downstairs in ml's and my rented house, sadly untuned, but I was playing it on Saturday anyway.

Uncle Sam had pure white hair and jet black eyebrows, and a hollow sort of face with deep set gorgeous eyes like my brother Jonathan's. Between his fingers there were yellowish brown stains which I was endlessly fascinated by. Uncle Sam said that these came from smoking cheap cigars when he was in the war.

He died when I was about seven, I think, and I was talking about him to ml tonight, and I just remembered that I really loved him. That's all.

Night night.

Back in June when I was having the worst time of my life, I had an email from someone I considered a friend which ran thus:

No offense [sic] chuck, but it sounds like you could have picked somebody better, [Yes - 'cos of course I just went out and 'picked' somebody, anybody, as opposed to falling madly in love with a specific person!] like somebody single. You see his position is quite good from his perspective, he can go out for a fling, then back to the wife and kids. [Thanks for your support!] If I were you, I wouldn't expect much from him, or wait too long, but like I said, I don't know much about these things, [really?] just what I heard other people saying over the years. I don't want to be hypocritical by condoning what you did... [trying to get out of an unhappy marriage, you mean?] I hope you can understand...

Needless to say, I didn't reply.

Just had an email saying:

Hello,
Not heard from you for a while. How's things? Did you have a good Christmas and New Year?

Not heard from me for a while? Now whyever could that be, I wonder? Because when I was splitting up with someone I'd been with for 12 years, was it your considered opinion that what I needed most was people who would(a) stand by me, believe in me and support me while I made the most difficult, painful and traumatic decisions of my life or (b) tell me I was Bad and Wrong?

Well. it's a mystery, ain't it?

Now, I'm not pretending that the timing of things was ideal or that seeing morelearning before either of our other relationships had ended was morally acceptable behaviour. But the fact is that shit happens, and a lot of people who knew me (including my ex-husband, I suspect) knew that my marriage was going to end sooner or later, and it just so happened that I met ml sooner rather than later.

And the truth is, I've been through so much this past 6 months that I just ain't got time for judgmental people who care more about their own moral rectitude than my happiness. Like my oldest friend's husband, who's "a bit funny" about the situation (my oldest friend's words, not mine). Anyone who really knows me knows that I am a kind, loving and giving person. I'm not perfect and I did a lot of stuff that contributed to my marriage getting fucked up. But perhaps it needed to be fucked up, because it wasn't right for me. And I've only got the one life.

Here endeth the rant.

My beauty therapist is not coming back from her maternity leave!!!!!!!

What am I supposed to do now?

Nobody tints my eyelashes like she does!

The selfish cow.

So that's that then.

Thanks to Abilene!

I am... something I can't tell you.
I will... not get my tax return finished today. Or possibly even started.
I want... morelearning to come home soon.
I see... that it's dark outside my bedroom window, 'cos I haven't drawn the curtains.
I need... a kick up the arse, usually.

I just did the first things that came into my head. I hope that was what you were supposed to do.

I tag...
Blondie82
Donnyblogger
Sapped
Moltsplace
GoingSomewhere

I have uncovered a hitch in my busy schedule.

Remembered that since ml's dad, Big K, is coming to stay tomorrow, I somehow have to squeeze in tidying & cleaning the house.

Trying to work out how to balance the 'Bedrest Under Medical Advice' thing with ml coming home exhausted from first day of term and probably not wanting to be presented with a list of domestic tasks.

So. Does this sound like a fair division of labour to you?

SIX (sitting on arse at home, but medically challenged):
Tidy up.
Put some laundry on.
Remove inch deep layer of Christmas tree needles from front porch before it's too dark to see them.
Clean the bathroom.

ML (will already have done a day's work):
Mop kitchen & bathroom floors.
Hoover stairs.
Sweep the laminate floors.
Wash up & clean kitchen.

Any views? Should the last one on ml's list go on my list instead?

that yesterday's stubborn floating turd has finally disappeared around the U-bend!!

I swear the little bastard must have been hollow.

I decided that Breakfast should be no.1.

A Raisin & Chocolate Geobar - in case you were wondering.

*picks crumb off pyjama top*

Littlun this morning (pointing to my pyjama trousers - with Weetabix-covered fingers): Jamas!
Sixpence: Yes, I'm still in my jim jams, not like you.
Littlun: Not jim jams, Sixpence. Jamas.

Silly me!

since I am confined to bedrest Under Medical Advice:

1. Have bath (that's allowed isn't it? I feel like a right scuzzbag).
2. Have breakfast. Or should that be no.1? Decisions, decisions.
3. Faff about a bit with the various entertainments in reach of my bed (easy, tiger - I meant laptop, TV remote control, reading matter etc.)
4. Put laptop to constructive use and venture into the hell and torment that is my tax return.
5. Weep because I can't understand the questions on the tax return.
6. Phone tax return helpline for advice.
7. Weep because I can't understand the advice given by the tax return helpline.
8. Stop weeping in order to have lunch.
9. Decide I can't bear to do any more of my tax return today.
10. Faff about until it's time for Countdown.
11. Watch Countdown.
12. Sort out some laundry.
13. Welcome home beloved from first day of term madness.
14. Soothe beloved's ruffled brow.
15. Make beloved some tea.
16. Sit on sofa under blanket with feet up until it's time for bed. Again.

Thanks for all the kind messages folks. Walking a bit of a medical tightrope at the moment but been back to hosp again today and things are ok right now. But because my body is doing weird stuff I am under medical instruction to Behave Myself whilst they monitor what's going on.... including NO DRINKING and NO RUDEY BEHAVIOUR!!

As regular readers will know, the latter is a particular challenge since me and ml can't keep our filthy hands off one another from one minute to the next!!

*drums fingers in frustration* [on the desk, you pervert!!]

*sigh*

hoping things are better tomorrow.

They might not be, though.