So I’m going to Glastonbury festival, If you’re going, you might find me in a big tent in the ’something’ field with “Iona” written all over it.
If not, I’ll see you when I get back.
I’ll miss my little red boat. And I’ll miss you.

In the meantime, here’s my guestybooky thing.
Or you can e-mail me…
tell me how your weekend is, all that kind of stuff.

Be well, and happy, within yourselves. I’ll see you next week.

Mothers, as you value your Infant’s life, we beseech you never to drug it to sleep with Syrup of poppies, Laudanum, Paregoric, nor any opiate. Oh! How your hand would tremble if you were aware, that when you give these rain-congesting doses, you are slowly poisoning and destroying your child. Yet such is the fact. Well may they be called quietings. Nothing is so quiet as death.

Well, that’s you told. While sick I was given a pamphlet to read. ‘Every Mother’s Book’ or ‘The Child’s best doctor’ ‘containing the best means to cure’… by Albert Fennings. (Author of ‘Fennings’ Everybody’s doctor’) Published around 1900, or 1900 and something.

So, in between sleeping, I’ve been learning how best to take care of my (imaginary) turn of the century child.

Milk is the only natural food for an infant; it should therefore have no food but from the breast, until the teeth appear. Nothing else contains nourishment. Therefore to stuff the baby with paps and slops

which is a sentence I’ll be trying to use in conversation in the next couple of days

is to deprive it of the most strengthening food; for if its stomach be filled with pap, there cannot be any room for food.

And I’m sure if any of us knew what pap was, exactly, we’d be avoiding it like the plague. Apart from those with dairy-free diets. Who’d be ingesting ‘pap’. Like… the…plague…

And then there’s the whole worms thing…

Children may be suspected of having worms when they have the following symptoms - a pale face, with hollow sunken eyes; itching of the nose…

‘Being some form of supermodel may also be suspected at this point…’

… and fundament; nasty breath; changable appetite;…

see above. It’s funny, Dr Fenning recommends, for this particular complaint, several things.
a) A dose of Olive Oil
b) cold boiled milk with a teaspoon of brown sugar
c) a teaspoon of treacle an hour before breakfast, to bring them away with the stools
d) Inject occasionally, with a squirt syringe, a little sweet oil up the fundament.
e) “Fennings’ Worm Powders”

Come to think of it, for a fever, Dr Fenning recommends for a fever ‘Fennings’ fever powders’ and for a rash ‘Fennings’ cooling powders’. I’ve a notion that this isn’t an objective medical periodical at all…

His advice on Infant Exercise, however, fits all the criteria for innuendo-filled pisstake, if you remove the right words…

Exercise. -the only exercise of the …. is the dandling of the handler, and its own lusty cries.

It should however, with the hand, be briskly yet softly rubbed all over its little body twice or three times a day.
After a few weeks have passed, it may, for a short while, be ready for a daily roll on a carpeted floor.
After some months’ rolling, the ***** will gain much strength, become ambitious, and with more or less success attempt to stand upright. Do not now interfere and do mischief; all its efforts should be its own - they are natural. When it has proper strength, it will please you….

That sounds to me like a sex manual for beginners. I may be wrong…
But I’m usually not…

“diagnosing a control freak”
I’m only the 60th option on the search engine request?
only 60th?
I demand a recount.

Last week, in a meeting, an important point was being made.
These meetings go on. Quite a while, they go on, and there are always a couple of us determined to
a) get out of there and
b) have as much fun in there as possible.

It’s not very possible.
But if you don’t see some light in these things, how do you get through them at all?…

So the man with the kilt, the serious man, the man with the inpenetrable Scottish accent is making an important agenda point.

The prolem with the point he is making, is that in his accent ‘pianist’ sounds improbably like ‘penis’.

I’m sorry that I have to explain that before we start. God knows that if I could talk you through this blog, a lot of it would be extremely funny. And extremely shorter.

Anyway… the point is, that “before you start” you see “you have to be sure of your pianist”, apparently. You have to have “got hold of your pianist well in advance” and “made sure that your pianist is aware of the job in hand…”

I don’t remember any more. I was on my chair. Holding my nose, trying not to laugh, tears coming out of my ears, I couldn’t hear anything but;
“If you have to grab your pianist at the last moment, at least let them know the spaces you want them to fill…”

0898…

I have a friend who, whenever he has broken up with a girlfriend, phones me for advice and commiserations.

The only problem I have with this, apart from the fact that he’s always dumping women, and god knows that can’t be good for your karma, is that he always uses the phrase “I’ve left her”.

He has never, as yet, lived with a woman.
He has been using this phrase since he was sixteen.
You’re sixteen. How do you leave your partner?
Where do you leave your partner, more’s the point?
Pizza Hut?

Her house?

On the bus? You’ve left your girlfriend on the bus?
How careless. Have you tried contacting the lost property office?

No-one has ever, in my life, sent me flowers.
If this cold kills me, which it may, I request that you do not send flowers to my funeral, it is too late.
Whinge. Moan.
Yes, I’m talking to you.

Have, in fact, fallen over.
Mental stubborness techniques - “Tough on Colds - Tough on the causes of colds” - just havenn’t worked at all.
Or, subconciously, I’m not ill at all but taking everyone else being ill as an excuse to get much needed rest.
Who knows.
All I know is that, at the moment, there are five minute periods while I’m not asleep.

And I’ve now been awake for four and a half minutes.
I should get away frrom this thing before I get key-marks on my forehead.

I’ll be back later…
*falls off chair*…

Yesterday I cried because someone made a loud noise. It was a loud noise I was expecting, at exactly the point I was expecting it. In fact, I was there when the loud noise was ordered, I saw them preparing to make the loud noise. It really, if we’re being sensible here, should not have been that much of a shock. Not really. But it still jolted me enough to make me cry.

And the result of my leaky brain runny word incontinence problems are all over this page for all to see.
And therefore need no explaining.

The reason they’re stuck together is because, I’ve realised, when I’m tired, I talk a lot. And when I talk a lot, I lose words, names, and threads. And when I do that, being tired, I get all flustery and frustrated. And then I cry.
Which is silly.

That is all.

Not they didn’t deserve it, like…

On saturday nights we welcome the guests, serve them dinner, and be nice to them after their long days of travelling.
It’s the smalltalk capital of the world.

Usually I have patience and am able to be sweet and nice. Usually.
Well, most of the time.
Sometimes, anyway.
No, actually, usually.

But not this week. This week I was spoiling for a fight. I sat at the table exercising the ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy of conversation, (I’m going to make three reasonable attempts to make conversation with you, and if you’re going to be surly and monosyllabic with me, then we shall just give up, alright? Obviously you don’t actually say this to someone. That would be rude.), everything was biting at my nerves, every question was annoying, every answer worse.

Pretty much as soon as I sat down, I had this conversation.

Lady guest, too much eye-make up, twin-set, pearls; The bell didn’t ring.
Me; Yes, it did.
Lady; Well, I didn’t hear it…
Me; That may be so, but it did. Look. They’re going to ring it again.

Bell; DUNK dunkdunkdunkdunk dunkdunkdunkdunk!

Lady; Well that’s why I didn’t hear it. They said a bell would be rung. That bell doesn’t make a bell noise.
Me; Of course it does.
Lady; No it doesn’t, it goes ‘dunk dunk dunk dunk dunk’. That’s not a bell noise.
Me; Look. Just because our bell doesn’t conform to your fixed, preconcieved notions of the kind of noise a bell should make, it doesn’t mean that it “doesn’t make a bell noise”.
Lady; But it doesn’t make a bell noise!
Me; It’s a bell, right?
Lady; Well, yes.
Me; And it makes a noise, yes?
Lady; … Yes.
Me; So that noise, by process of deduction, would be ‘A Bell Noise’. Wouldn’t it?
Lady; …….yes? …
Me; Yes. Well, I’m glad we have that straight. Would you care for some more salad?

I got worse later in the meal.

Or better. Depending on who you are.

I’m me, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. So better, then.
There was also the argument with the lady ‘from Berlin’… but I’ll come back to that later.

Nothing’s getting done. Not effectively. Cleaning, the main thing. Not being done well at all.

Packing, for my holiday, again, a dead loss. Planning, for my session on tuesday. That’s not going anywhere, let alone efficiently.

Sentences, well, spoken sentences, (that’s as in ’sentences that are spoken’, not ‘well-spoken sentences’, although, having said that, it amounts to the same thing) they’re not being done effectively either. Sentences, I mean. Oh, I said that.

And it’s because I’m tired (or sick, or whatever), and my brain is refusing to play. I seem to be working on 12% capacity.
I have the attention span of a 4-year-old. I have the mental agility of a beanbag.

I spent 4 hours yesterday basically wandering around the craftroom in circles. Trying to clean.
Every time I picked something up to put it away I would get halfway across the room before I noticed something else that needed putting away and put the first thing down in order to put away the second. And then I would do the same thing from the second to the third. And then I would find that the place I needed to actually put away the third thing was being occupied by the first. So I would pick the first thing up and move it toward the place it needed to go, leaving the third thing in an interim place in the meantime.
I was doing laps.
For four hours.

And although after those four hours everything had been handled, carried and put down six times at least, the room was only marginally cleaner.

So I sat down and talked about scars for the rest of the day and drank tea.
It was, in the circumstances, the most effective thing to do. And it made me feel a lot better.

It also reminded me of lots of stories I’ve not told yet…

Actually, it might be illness. The nice thing about lots of people living close together is that you experience life as a social animal, the need to communicate properly, and the importance sharing things - like, for example, diarrhea.
Once one person gets a nasty infectious sick-bug, everyone gets it, one by one by one.
(This happened also at Christmas.) (Happy Christmas.)
This week it has happened again.
Somebody brought it.
Somebody caught it, and like a true Christian soul, they shared it with their brethren.

I haven’t got it yet. I can only assume this is one of the perks of agnosticism.

At least, I don’t think I’ve got it. I have, you see, as I think I’ve mentioned before, my mother’s attitude to sickness.
I refuse to get things. I haven’t got the time. Illness is weakness and I will not be weak.
Don’t get me started on colds. I sound, and I realise this, like the would-be dictator of a small hot country.
A small hot country with no viruses allowed. None.

It’s a stupid attitude to being ill. I know that fine.
And I know that my body is fighting desperately with sickness.
I know this because I keep being a bit sick. And because I’m sleeping and sleeping and sleeping, any opportunity I get.

The other thing that I know that being in denial is all well and good; I’ll be able to work for the next couple of days, do sessions, sing, take the kids to the beach, etc, but as soon as I let my guard down, as soon as my official holiday starts, it’s quite likely that I’ll fall over. And fall sick.

I really would prefer that *not* to happen.
I wouldn’t mind, but I’m spending the weekend somewhere where you have to shit in a bucket. I was hoping to spend as little time as possible with the buckets. Don’t make me spend my holiday with poo buckets.

head full of posts pending, but the world is full of sleep and work and tiredness and ill.
as soon as I have ten minutes not filled with sleeping or ill or work, I’ll get around to feeding my boat.
now I need to go and be sick.
bad anna. bad.

Rain stops play at the summer solstice bonfire.
Or rather, rain stops bonfire.

We sat on the beach to wait for the dawn and then an hour before the dawn the Rain started coming.
We thought it would stop.
Rain coming.
Rain coming.
Rain.
Rain.
We were wrong.
It wouldn’t stop.
And so we walked home, as it got gradually lighter and the solstice dawn happened behind a bunch of clouds.
And I’m all wet. (0898…)

That was my friend’s way of indicating an innuendo.
He would quietly add “0898″, like it was the beginning of an advert for a sexline.

“And I’m all wet” “0898…”
“I need to lie down” “0898…”
“My Bag’s rattling.” “0898…”

Whatever it was, whatever it was, the simpler the better, it was suddenly innuendo.
Of course. Because we’re British, and that’s what we do. That’s what we do best.
Instead of football. Not football. Certainly not football, unfortunately. Instead, we do innuendo.
We do that. We should make that a sport.

A woman walks into a bar and asks for a double Entendre.
So the barman gives her one.

Funny? No? Funnier to british people?
Does it matter? Do I care? Do i need my bed? Mm.

I have all sorts of lovely things to write about the light tonight, and the dancing, and the fact that I got chatted up twice, but at the moment, I’m all floppy (“0898…”) and I want desperately to sleep.

It’s 4.25.

I’m having a problem with shoes.

Right shoes. Not shoes which are ‘right’ or ‘correct’. Just right shoes. For your right foot.

I’m running low. I’m running out. I’m running dry on the whole ‘right shoe’ side of things.

I have my left-foot-for Camouflage Converse sneaker. The right-foot-for one is somewhere in my studio. Somewhere. I don’t know where. It’s hiding. And I can’t find it. And it’s camouflage.

I have my left-foot-for walking boot. The right-foot-for one, however, I do not have. A loud American stole it, and has put it somewhere ‘comedy’. I do not not know where, in this instance, is funny. I do not know where my walking boot is.

I have my left-foot-for sandal. The right-foot-for one, on the other hand, (on the other foot) I do not have. It is in a large and hairy patch of nettles. And thistles. Nettles and thistles. In a sandal-kicking contest, my aim went awry and my sandal flew off the designated playing area (road) and into the rough (patch of large nettles and thistles). I could not go in after it, as I was half barefoot. I have to go back when I have two shoes. One for each foot.

I have my left-foot-for wellington boot. There are daffodils plated in my right-foot-for one. I do not know why I still have the left-foot-for welly. I should probably wang it.

I have two slippers.
Both slippers have holes. I cannot wear them in public. The hole in the right-foot-for slipper flaps like an angry hippo everytime I move. There is more comedy than covering in my slippers.

It’s times like this when I wish I had two left feet.
(baboom).

Seriously though, I am considering chopping one of my legs off.