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I got to thinking about my life the other night, it seems 3am in the morning is the time to do it, when the rain is drumming on the windows and my husband is gently breathing and fast asleep. I thought about my early life at the Beeb and the friends I had in the eighties and wondered what they were doing now.  We used to have long lunches and take picnics into the fields around the OU and sit and laugh and talk about everything. One of my friends Suzette had a gas mask collection, another Ian, used to come in wearing dungarees and no tee shirt - guys were fitter in the 80s!! There was Mikie who had amazing black curly hair and only ever wore black, Leslie who was after Mikie, never knew if they got it together or not, and me. I never had any money in those days and lived on Mars bars and Twixes. One of my friends from that time Babs, now lives in France and is restoring an old Napoleonic fort.  I guess everyone else is sprinkled across the media like sugar on a cake.

I miss my job, I miss the responsibility of it. I miss meeting famous people. I miss being a female Tekkie.
People I have been in a lift with when I did my meet and greet job with the Beeb were Charlton Heston,
Tony Curtis, Charlie Drake, Frazer Hines, Jonny Ball, Khalid Aziz, Patrick Stewart, Jenny Agutter, Craig Charles, Danny Jon Jules, Richard Burton and his brother!, Sophie Aldred and many many more. My brain is still bunged up with flu germs - just as well or I could go on about this all day!

It's a pity life is transitory because I still haven't got to grips with everything yet. So much more to do.

Anyway I have an interesting parcel that's just arrived - so you have been let off for today!

Flu Flu Sick Sick Flu

Corny I know but what else can you say when you have a head full of cotton wool and your legs don't work better today though because of bigger doses of painkillers. I looked at the box this morning and thought there's enough perscription drugs here to kill a rising superstar. Anyway spent the morning filling in my new phone book and phoning friends - as I had the phone book handy!!

I'm hoping my legs and brain will work in some co-ordination by the weekend as I have a 40s re-enactment to do.  I am as white as a sheet and even scare myself when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Missed an interview at Oxford that I am annoyed about - but perhaps it wasn't meant to be - and that was fate taking a hand.

So onwards and upwards and possibly outwards as I am living on toast as I can't really be bothered with much else. Oh well time to get on with the few things I can do on the computer like paying bills.

Have you noticed though that if any big companies owe you money they take an age to repay it?

C'est la vie ma amies. Au revoir a demain.

Here I go again!

Well, haven't written for a time, been busy, bought a new car took the sports model back, wasn't me.  Smart expensive and terrified to leave it anywhere. Now have a 4x4 Red workhorse that I have christened Ruby.
It has such a large boot that we can sleep in it. Made for picnics and loading lots of stuff into the back of.
We used it to take all the booze up to Sulgrave for our party.  What a fabulous time, laughed my head off got very drunk drinking champers like lemonade danced all night to a fab band and Stuart provided enough food to feed half of Oxfordshire - we both took stuff into our places of work. Our friends were wonderful and danced and ate and drank and laughed and danced some more.  Later that week I had an audition in front of 130 women of the WI and I am waiting to hear if I am going to be put on their list of  speakers for next year.

Was supposed to have an interview at Oxford University today but have had flu for two weeks since the party and now feel sick and dizzy, aching all over, today has been the best day of the two weeks and I'm still not great. While I was waiting for my audition a women ran out of the hall and threw up - great - just what you need before you go on to speak to a hall full of people.

Now I know how she feels.  So I'm going to quit while I'm ahead.  Speak again later if I ever get rid of this thing.

Writers block

There you go.

My life at the moment....

Got an interview with the WI in October to speak in front of 100 women about my new book and women's lives in the English Civil War.Tried to buy a house but as I don't have a permanent job the mortgage companies wouldn't lend to me.

My son is still not speaking to me, having broken yet another olive branch held in his direction.
Makes me sad this, as he led us a hell of a time during his teenage years, I saved his life twice, once when he drank so much he stopped breathing in his sleep, and the second time when he was into drugs at uni and we dragged his skeletal body from a stinky mattress in a run down part of town and brought him home and looked after him. He would have lost an eye from a tooth abcess if I hadn't forced him into the dentists chair and paid for it to be fixed for him.

We helped him move 3 times, paid deposits on his flats, helped him out with thousands of pounds, paid for him and his girlfriend's degree celebration, and her mum's flights from Japan, supported him mentally, physically, and financially. I held him in my arms many times while he cried - most recently - and I think this is the real problem, when he phoned us at one in the morning just before he got married and told us that he didn't want to go through with it. His on off relationship with this woman led to me having a heart attack from stress.

I know I shouldn't write this sort of thing on a public blog, but it breaks my heart that he told me I broke up our loving family, just because I stood up for myself against his cool auntie, who has done nothing for him, but get him drunk and let him sleep on her sofa.  There is no forgiveness in him.  Loving family?  When I was being stalked and needed help where were they then?  When I had a heart attack my friend dropped everything and drove from Stoke to Cornwall to be with me - where was my sister then? He has always forgot my birthday - only sends mothers day cards when pestered to do so, in the past only visited to borrow money or have problems solved - when I needed my money back, he ignored me, when I asked to visit more than twice a year, this loving son of mine's now wife said they were too busy. When we needed help to move he never offered.

Where was the love from him?  I can only remember three presents that they gave me - a pot of flowers which was nice, with lollipops. I don't eat sweets.  A tin of Japanese sweets - I don't eat sweets, and a set of plastic bowls that stack.   As for my sister his auntie with whom he now sides, she wrote to my husband trying to break us up, telling him my life was all lies. I have all the paperwork to prove her wrong.  She was ten and a half when I left home so what does she know about my life? My father had died when she was about eight. My mother died when my sister was 15 and I had to adopt her to stop her going into a home.
If it wasn't for me she wouldn't be where she is today, I was the one taking time off work to drive her to all the nursing colleges, I was the one hugging her in the middle of the night when she was screaming in fright.
At 25 and newly married I had no money - but a teenager and all that comes with it.

I miss my family, I forgive my sister for being so horrible to me, she's lost her memory twice, and this damages the brain, so I'm told. My other sister I don't even know if she's dead or alive, but I'm sure she's travelling the world looking for somewhere to live that has English tea and no geckos. But my neices who earn more than me, to whom I gave expensive perfumes or gift vouchers and holidays in my Cornish cottages for Xmas and birthdays what do I get from them?  cheap plastic scrunchies that their mum borrowed back and never returned.

So I have no family not a jot - no-one - nada - nothing.  For all the horrible and destructive things they have done, I forgive them.  I'm not going to my grave holding grudges. 

But I would like to see my son before I go, the son who made me laugh so much I couldn't breathe, the witty clever chatty boy interested in geology and the Spice Girls, the son who loved to dance at parties, to see his beautiful strawberry blond hair blowing in the breeze of a Cornish summer while he let me take a photo of him in his wetsuit with his surfboard in our garden with the rolling Atlantic ocean over his shoulder in the view.

I would like another chance with him.

Strange Tides

I've been thinking a lot about the past and the future, something my Shaman told me not to do, and I was feeling better when I didn't do it. It's like addiction for me though and I want to solve the problems of the past and the present and the future. But it overwhelms me and I feel like I'm drowning.

The book is frustrating as I'm between contracts at the moment so don't really have much of an income, but the pictures I want to use all cost a fortune, so I'm a bit stymied and I'm having to illustrate the book myself with the front cover being done by Andy Evans who has done many book covers before.

I always think money is like the tide, it comes in and goes out with amazing regularity, and for me at the moment the tide is way out!

I have spent the whole morning paying bills, well, at least I can still do that!  I just wish the tide would come in again and sweep me off my feet with it's great abundance.

Time to move on

Clearing out rubbish and selling everything to allow us to shed the past and move on.