Not really fishing, of course. I don’t think I would much like fishing. I have gone metaphorical fishing.
For wild metaphors.

Details below.

Hello.

I’m Anna. I have a blog here - or used to.
It is called ‘little red boat’, and is meant to contain light hearted observational conversational posts.
But sadly itI hashave fallen by the wayside. Become rubbish. Fallen over.

So now we have to stop for a little tiny bit.

(more…)

[It was requested that since I haven't got time to post the finished things, I post some of the half written things hanging around my desktop and documents folder. Well, you asked for it. That's all]

I’ve been spending a long time with recipe books of late. Not really as cooking aids, more as unadulterated porn, really.

Sitting on the sofa, flicking through the pages of another brightly coloured flickbook of rough hands rubbing breasts with herby butter, proud aspargus tips in rolled in salty parma condoms; gargantuan birds, legs akimbo, waiting to be stuffed good and proper - with the smashed lime, coriander and lemongrass pulp that sits at the forefront of the photo.

Currently poor on time, money, still fruitlessly trying to lose weight (I don’t like fruit), and still as shit at actually COOKING as ever, I don’t actually make the recipes. But I really like reading the books, and, of course, getting slightly overexcited and dribbling a bit over the photographs.

I don’t know why I’m thinking about cookery books. No, wait, I do.

I came across a recipe for something that I wouldn’t ever make, and it reignited an utterly pointlss conversation that I seem to have on a dishearteningly regular basis.

To whit: wrapping meat in other meat just seems Weird to me. And other concerns.

I like my meat, don’t get me wrong. Unashamedly, almost unreservedly, I loves me my meat.

So, you know, chicken wrapped in thinly sliced smoked ham - I can see why you would, flavourwise, but, you know, conceptionally, it’s just like stuffing a small feathery thing inside a larger - erm - pig thing, and then lumping the whole sorry thing in a hot oven for 18-20 minutes.

I can come to terms with that slightly better than with sausages wrapped in bacon, though. That’s surely nothing so much as a shoddy attempt to rebuild a pig from scratch, isn’t it, though? It’s like playing god, but kind of method-playing god as a cross between Dustin Hoffman in Rainman, a Blue Peter presenter, and Chewbacca.

- Sorry, the next paragraph was scheduled to appear here, but has been delayed by me getting led off thinking of my devising a feature film updating the classic stories of Frankenstein and Animal Farm, but together, and led by Exactly the character described above. -

In fact, quite apart from wrapping things IN each other, which is by far the most cardinal sin, I’d go as far as to say that serving parts of the same animals in the same dish is quite odd.

And putting Chicken and Egg on the same plate is just unthinkable in all manner of ways. Because quite apart from the multi-generational thing - what do you Eat First?

You would think there might be a limit to the unlikely quirks, unattractive qualities and frankly unpleasant personal habits I would choose to display on this, my personal site with name emblazoned all over it. But no, after this many years, I still don’t seem to have run out.

Some part of me is bizarrely proud of this fact.

Another part of me wants to stick the first part of me’s head down a toilet and flush. Repeatedly.

I realise the old “Meh, I don’t like estate agents” schtick is a tried and trusted routine - and take my word, I’m not planning on attacking them as a tribe - as a people I respect them as much as I respect every people. But for some reason, the ones I meet seem to be going out of their way to be actively dislikable.

[It was requested that since I haven't got time to post the finished things, I post some of the half written things hanging around my desktop and documents folder. Well, you asked for it. That's all. This one's from my drafts folder since about 17 months ago.]

Perhaps it’s the extended amount of time they’re forced to spend hanging around in doorways waiting for prey must do something to the disposition. Meaning that even when their quarry turns up On Time, they treat them like someone who is ‘bothering’ them, rather than someone to whom they’re supposed to be selling something. Dislikable for so many reasons, they really, really are.

And yes, it may be only in little ways, but I hereby call upon you, estate agents of Brighton - representing as you both your people (the Estate People) and the people of the your city - and ask you why. Why?

Why do you turn up to meet a couple, why would you ONLY talk to one half (The Male Half) even when both halves are asking questions and the female half is clearly a bolshy little madam who seems to be making decisions. Why would you think that was going to let you some houses?

Why would you ask a pair of thirty year olds to provide names and addresses and bank details of guarantors even though they’ve not been students for several years, and have been financially independent for even longer?

Why would you choose not to wear deodorant?

Why would you receive requests from people who were looking for a two bedroom place next to the station, and arrange to meet them in a one bedroom cupboard near a station … IN THE NEXT TOWN?

Why would you think a handshake like an angry plaice fillet was going to make you come across as a win-win personality?

And why in the WORLD would anyone ever think that suit didn’t make their gonads look like …

[And at that point I clearly got lost for a metaphor and went to bed]

[It was requested that since I haven't got time to post the finished things, I post some of the half written things hanging around my desktop and documents folder. Well, you asked for it. That's all]

See, the great thing about having hardly any self-confidence at all is that people have to try quite hard indeed to insult you with any real efficacy.

So someone says to you:

“You know what? You’re ugly”
And you say
“Yes! That’s true! I AM really quite unattractive. And you know what’s more? I smell. I don’t know why, I must have forgotten to put any deodorant on after the gym this morning. But I really do stink bad. This is fun. Your turn!”

Or they say

“You’re thick, you know nothing.”
And you say
“Also true! People don’t seem to notice as often as they should, but I’m thick as pigshit. Anything you feel you can tell me to enhance my appalling education, please, you should.”

Or they say

“You’re fat”
and you say
“You have a point. I am far more overweight than is currently acceptable in society. And it’s really horribly distributed as well. ALSO, I’m not even a pretty fat girl. I’m an ugly one. Seriously, ask that lady over there, she knows, she just said. Was there anything else?”

And they say “Um. You can’t write. This thing you do is shit”

And you say “Well, thank god you noticed, it really is absolutely terrible, isn’t it? The problem is, of course, I’ll never be as good as this person, or that one, and overall, I’m just very poor technically, my vocabulary is fucking dreadful, overall, yes, I’m a complete waste of space. Yes! Do you want to do it instead? You’re probably a lot better at it.”

…

I’m sitting here thinking, and to be honest, I’m finding it hard to think of anything that people can tell me that could ACTUALLY insult me, if that’s what they’re trying to do. And the more my profile is raised by one thing or another, the more I realise that that is something people want to do, so in order to help them out, I should probably find a way for them to do it the easiest and most effective way.

So I think the easiest way to insult, if you Are looking for one, is just to go for the ‘bad wordplay’, ‘lazy cliché-ridden copy’ - actually even then I’m pretty likely to agree with you. Hm. Just wait until I say that I think something is good, that I did. I don’t feel brave or confident enough to say that very often, so wait until I do. And THEN point out that someone’s already done it, but better. It’s still not really an insult, though, is it?

Sorry, I will think on, and come back to you.

(more…)

I was going to say ‘those’ weeks, but it isn’t like ‘that’ week, ‘that’ week was all right. But it is like those other weeks, when lots of things happened at once on top of all those other things and it was like this. One of these.

It is weeks like this when I wonder if I should just stop the blog for a bit, while I get this candle-burny-both-end thing out of the way and start living life properly again (and DOING things and not just running and typing and sleeping and things, but…)

but I just wanted to say hello. And I haven’t forgotten you. I have a desktop full of half-written posts, some sad, some happy, some silly, ALL half-finished, but I promise I’ll finish one as soon as I get all the Other Things out of the way for this week (usually Thursday).

In other news, yay.

A couple of points this week at which I have done a mental tally of the train-hours till I hand in my Season Ticket

— Running to the station from work at night.

— Feeling the unsecured broken seat wobble under me, threatening to scoot out form under, leaving me in a pile on the suit next to me’s knees and digging my nails into the window ledge just in time.

— I am sitting on the late-running 19.14. At the first stop, a woman gets on, sits down opposite me, and pulls out the world’s largest apple, and starts attacking it like a particularly bucktoothed squirrel. At the next stop, a corpulent chap sits next to her and cracks open a beer, spreading a fine spray of cooking lager over the assembled crowd. A well dressed woman sits next to me, and I am glad …
… Until she flops open the flap of her bag, starts peeling waffer-thin slices of ham out of a packet, and slowly poking them into her mouth…
The train smells of ham, cheap beer, and the noise of teeth ticking through horrid taut appleskin and crunching through horrid crunchy appleflesh. The train is so late I get off and get on the next.

— Watching the rain lash against the window, and realising I’ve left my lunch on the arm of a sofa 35 miles in the opposite direction to that in which I am currently miserably rushing. And my purse.

— On another train. After an undoubtedly tiring day out, two children are annoying their father.

And the rest of the carriage.

He is a nice man, it seems, if slightly weary himself, and so we all breathe out as he catches the attention of his brawling two and motions them to listen, as he has found something for them to do.

“Here” he says “Take my phone. You can play with the ringtones.”

 
 
So that’s 2hrs20 on a good day, give or take half an hour for delays and slow trains, times the amount of days left before I leave my job, which leaves us with …

There were some links, of which you may have been aware, or you may not, in which case I should probably not have mentioned it, down the right hand side of this blog, on the side bar, and they have disappeared for the time being.

If you have never noticed them and do not care whether they are there or no, best to avoid reading this post, really. It will most likely be dull.

(more…)

Last week I was sick, and I wrote about it here, and there was some kind of consensus both in the comment box (readers) and on the phone (mother) that I should round off the experience by making a visit to the Doctor on Monday morning.

There are two reasons that this did not happen.
1) I was quite clearly better and
b) You haven’t met my doctor.

My doctor, as I think I’ve mentioned before, is a no-nonsense South African woman with a businesslike ‘Dahn’t Fack With Me and dahn’t waste ma time’ style that I admire in a GP. In the few times I’ve been to visit her, I’ve generally been impressed with her willingness to cut the crap and get this over with, and I like to think that she’s equally impressed with my ability not to be over 90 and/or addicted to heroin, which I imagine sets me apart from around 85% of the rest of the patients in her busy inner-city surgery, or it does as far as I can see.

She always seems slightly exasperated when I go in there and there IS something wrong with me, so you can imagine that the prospect of booking an emergency appointment just so I can walk in there and say …

“Hello Doctor! I was sick over the weekend, but now I’m fine, and there WERE little bumps all over my tonsils, but they totally aren’t there any more! Look!”

… fills me with an almost indescribable dread.

Also, I just don’t like bothering people much. At all. If I can just get by in life without causing anyone any trouble, or anyone really noticing I’m there, that suits me fine.

You’re talking to a woman who, the one time there WAS actually something wrong with her (the first time I dislocated my shoulder) lay on a gurney in a hospital corridor reassuring nurses that she was ‘absolutely fine, thanks! Great!’ (in fact) every time she was asked; until they worked out that she wasn’t because she started gibbering incoherently then passed out from the pain. Which I then apologised for as soon as they gave me some drugs.

So no, I didn’t go to the doctor over the throat infection that had gone away by the time I could have. If you had met her, you would think this entirely fair.

(for those with time on their hands, I will illuminate after the ‘read more’ sign)

(more…)

I’m trying to think of something to say. I’m trying my hardest, and I haven’t been able to think of anything in all the long four minutes i have been sitting here thinking.

Here are an assortment of things:

1) I am getting to be more of a boring foodie with each passing month that passes, I think, towhit:

- People are learning not to ask ‘How’s yours?’ at any restaurant in which we are eating - in the knowledge that I will, in depth, tell them.

- One of the main points of planning for my impending freelanceness is ‘What I can cook for lunch’ (I am currently fantasising about variations on an omelette theme)

- The other day, I went out for an important lunch meeting. Directly on my return, my beloved emailed to ask how it went? “How was lunch, then?!…” he wrote.
“It was brilliant” I replied. “They have swordfish on the menu, now, served on a bed of beetroot and a green salsa, and…”
It took him three emails to find out whether I’d actually had a conversation over my lovely food.

2) I hate Scrabble. I’m trying not to, but I quite clearly don’t have the right type of brain or patience for that shit. Never have. I am trying VERY hard (four games this weekend alone) but am too shit. And also too competitive.

3) I don’t point to a lot of the professional writing things I do from here often, because I’m trying to keep the two separate. And I do so hate to appear self-indulgent … but … (there was clearly a but coming, there…) … but the other week I did a ‘classic’ version of the weekly Music Video Deconstruction Column I do - it was of Duran Duran’s Wild Boys. Anyway - the thing I found funny enough to find worth mentioning here was that this week I noticed that it had been linked to from the myspace blog of … John Taylor … JohnTaylorwhatwasinDuranDuran. From Duran DURAN! I know! He FAMOUS!

So. Mainly amusing in that some of the fans in the comments below seemed to think it was John actually seriously explaining what the video meant (even though he did say it wasn’t, and attributed etc). Still. It’s possibly the closest to fame I’ve ever been…

4) I am going to try and think very hard of things that I can tell you that wil be up to the high standards I hope you expect.

Things that aren’t, of course, about having the wind or boring things about ingrown leg-hair. Or being on telly (believe me, if any of you happened to have seen me on television this past weekend, I know for a fact you’ll be as embarassed about admitting you were watching it as I am about admitting I was on it) or ill-fitting shoes or overnight trains or burnt thumbs or US Entertainment magazines to which I have developed an unfortunate addiction.

I will think of these things, and then I will report back to you directly. It is very VERY important that these first few weeks of the seventh year of little.red.boat don’t see a substantial drop in quality. Else you will NEVER see me re-elected! As, you know, A Blog.

Um. Tum te tum te tum.

(Toddles off to bed. Still with nothing interesting to say…)

As mentioned briefly the other day (just in the comments I think) there was a sad-looking dog on the train the other day. I was trying to describe the look on his face to myself, in my head, and when I realised what the look looked most like, I pulled out my diary to write it down. And then, having nothing else to do, I kept writing.

So it doesn’t strictly make any sense, and it’s peppered with tangents, as is my brain, but I did just transcribe it straight out of my Moleskine without tidying it up any, because I wanted to. So there we are. Anyway: in my terrible train writing, it says this:

Sitting on the train with one of those dogs with one of those squished and enormously sad-looking faces (but then, how would you feel if someone squished YOUR face?). I realise he looks like nothing so much as a proud king of an alien super-race of spacedogs that has only just discovered his home planet has been destroyed.

Coming to Earth for a secret interplanetary spacedog conference a good matter of years ago, he had booked into - from what he could see on the internet outernet anyway - the finest alien-canine vacation apartments London had to offer. It was some surprise, then, that after only his first night at The Battersea, the turning of the door handle, that he had presumed was going to lead in turn to a pleasant uniformed chambermaid turning down his dog-bed, actually led to him being turned out of his room into some kind of mobile kennel, and subsequently, turning INTO the beloved Chief House-animal of the Anderson family. Of Hove.

Of course, Xanimytrax Hildaygron the Third had missed his people. In the 627 earth years since he ascended to the throne (sorry, I should mention here, that’s 847 Human Earth Years, which is of course 4521 Earth DOG years… or a year and a bit on the planet Xanimytrax Hildaygron III was from. In fact, in the eyes of his subjects, Xanimytrax Hildaygron III - or King Conker as they called him - was a mere pup) sorry, where was I before I opened those brackets? Ah yes.

In the long/ridiculously long/relatively brief time King Conker had ruled over the planet of Winalot 5 (depending on what species you were) he had been considered a wise and considerate ruler.

He had put into place many socially caring practices; free meat-flavoured biscuits for primary age puppies, municipal robot poop-scoopers cleaning the streets of every town. More than this, he’d negotiated a tense but lasting truce between his race and the neighbouring Postie-People of Planet N16 9JW (although, to be fair, from the other side’s point of view it was more often referred to as a ’strike’).

He missed his people. He missed his official duties. More than anything, he missed his wife, Princess Fidoyanxiansnuffyrexia - or ”Rover’ as he would call her in the privacy of their royal apartments.He had only known two years (820 earth human years, of course, or 6782 earth-DOG-years) before he’d come on this silly conference, he remembered.
But he loved her as much as they day he had first met her; at a Speed-bottom-sniffing-event organised as a mixer for all the young aridogcracy of the royal court of Winalot 5.

Sometimes he wondered what was happening at home, but in the daily routine of stick chasing toy-chewing and tummy-tickling, he found that it slipped increasingly often from his mind.

Though it might seem cold and callous to forget one’s home and family so soon, it is not surprising, really, given the tedium and extended earth life-span of King Conker’s particular race of spacedog. For, it had to be said, though The Andersons (of Hove) were a perfectly pleasant host family, the fact that it had taken them quite so long to wonder why the family pet had been the family pet since before anyone could remember (actually since 1842, but who’s counting?) mark them out as possibly not the crunchiest meatbiscuits in the bag.

King Conker hadn’t thought of home for a while, in fact, until this morning. He’d boarded the train to London with a mild feeling of fret - he’d over heard the Mummy Anderson saying to the small girly brown-haired Anderson that they were going to take a trip to see Great-Nana Anderson, and see if SHE could remember who first had brought their beloved dog into the family home - and everything had been going fine…

Until he’d heard a noise that chilled the very sweat on his quivering nose.

Mummy Anderson put her hands over her ears and pulled a painful face. But what sounded like interference on the train driver’s radio to everyone else was in fact a transmission pitched to attract the attention of any listening spacedogs. Sure enough, several in the carriage pricked up their ears, and, with confusion and dismay, listened to the message contained in the crackle that followed.

War had been raging, it said, And Winalot 5 was gone. King Conker felt lost. Alone.

But then, he hadn’t spotted

[I'm really Sorry, the train arrived at Farringdon at this point, and can't remember what I was going to say. You can see I WAS trying to draw to an end as we got toward work, I just ran out of time]

Here is a close up, though, to make up for it. See?! He DOES look like an Alien Spacedog who’d just discovered his home planet had blown up. Which is very cute for one train ride - but you wouldn’t want to live with it, would you?

I mean, you’d just be a bit like ‘YES, all RIGHT, your home planet got destroyed, we GET it, what exactly are you thinking we can DO about this?‘ and then give them another biscuit because you felt bad about shouting.

Anyway. There is the story about the sad-looking spacedog I saw on the train. If nothing else, it’s reminded me that I just need to sit down and write without purpose every so often. It’s so enjoyable, and sometimes I just forget, you know?

Jesus, that’s one grumpy pooch.

[* No, now I think about it, that now sounds like an ENTIRELY inappropriate title for this post. I don't know, that's gratitude for you. You do what you can for the dying art of the portmanteaux, you love the portmanteaux, and in return? Well, sometimes it loves you back, sometimes it makes you end up with a word like you've done a little sex wee in the middle of polite conversation. Still. It's up there now, eh? Best just get on with it, I suppose.]

Locked in on all sides by lockers in the communal changing room, underneath the blaring of some godawful family fightfest on daytime television, we were all trying our hardest to get on with dressing and moving on to the rest of our day as if nothing had happened.

Which (strictly) I suppose it hadn’t.

Or hadn’t really. Nothing much had happened, it was more a case of what should happen NOW, and … I should explain:

See, it’s taken a while to break the back of my shyness, and there’s not much I can do about my remaining hurdle:
I still don’t know what to do, half naked, when half-naked people talk to me.

That’s why, in the women’s-only gym I regularly go to, and generally feel very comfortable in, I was presently sitting taking longer putting two shoes on than some who had a train to catch should really take.

I was stuck in a thick treacle of half-naked etiquette. See traditionally, half-naked conversation is something I might only have with people I’ve had sex with. If then. And we hadn’t had sex, this lady and I. Oh no no no. Not even slightly.

See, she had said ‘I like your [item of clothing] where did you get them?’
And I’d said ‘Oh! Thanks! I got them at [suchaplace]‘
And she’d said ‘Oh really because I’ve bought some like it at [somewhere else]‘
And I’d said ‘No, you should try [suchaplace], they’re a bit more expensive but they’re dead good’
And then we slipped into an uncomfortable silence full of items of clothing we hadn’t yet put on.

Or I felt like it was uncomfortable, anyway.

See, other people are FAR more relaxed with semi-nudity. It’s quite, quite normal. to be comfortable. This lady certainly was. Her family probably wandered around naked or something, possibly only making an adjustment for really special guests, and even then just tassels.

Ours? Well, we didn’t do that, really. What with our house doubling as a meeting venue and a busy office and drop-in centre, it wasn’t terribly appropriate. I don’t believe the human body is an ugly thing, by any means; I was just taught that there’s no shame whatsoever in being completely and utterly as fully clothed as the day you were born. (the day you were born once they’d put some clothes on you)(and maybe a hat).

But still, having been going to the gym for the last year and yada yada yada, it wasn’t that I was shy about having been merely semi-unclothed and in conversation - at least not as much as I would have been this time last year.

It was more that I didn’t know whether to say goodbye.

I mean, it was very nice of her to have started a conversation with me, but if I left first, I was going to have to be brave and say ‘Bye!’ out of politeness if nothing else, wasn’t I?
But what did I say? Just ‘Bye!‘?
Or ‘Bye then! Don’t forget, shop at Marks’ for those special control pants! Bye!‘? Or - and god, this was the option I dreaded coming out of my mouth most of all - ‘Bye! Nice meeting you!‘?! Meeting? We hadn’t shaken hands or anything, we’d not been introduced by a respected joint acquaintance or at least two members of family, for the love of Emily Post … Meeting? It was barely meeting at all.

But still, she’d been nice, she’d reached out, we’d had conversation, I should acknowledge that, surely? But but but now we were wearing clothes, we were civilised, removed from the common leveler of towels and mussy hair, and into the world of, well, work, and trousers, and smart jackets, and anyway, is that what you DO?
Do you speak after such a brief ‘brief’ conversation, or is it just one of those speak-and-go things?
Would she be mortally offended if I simply stood up and grabbed my bags and went, having at least put in that effort at her end (although I was very nice too, but still that was then, and this was now)?
Should the one who took the initiative the first time take it the second, or should the other, or should…

Luckily for everyone, at that moment, I sneezed; unexpectedly, and quite loudly.

I waited.

Nothing.

“Oh well that’s that, then,” I thought. “If she’s not polite enough for a gesundheit, then she can wave farewell to her nice goodbye. I was TOTALLY prepared to be civil, but if that’s the way it is? Tut tut tut …”

And scuttled out of the changing room, laces flapping.

LIVE BLOG NOW OVER! READ THROUGH FOR THE FULL REVELATION! IS ANNA DEAD? WHO KNOWS?
(Though admittedly the posts above may, in time, be a bit of a givaway)

Since I’m not ill that often, I thought I should probably keep a good clear record of it. Especially as, according to my interweb self-diagnosis, I only have a matter of hours to live.

So it’s probably worth recording, so that not only can we document my descent into, you know, utter infirmity and that (before a possible miraculous recovery, a la every episode of House ever), but also, if I do die, then we have a pre-written last chapter for the ‘Oh, GOD, she was a mildly popular blogger and then she DIED and we were ALL really SAD‘ retrospective book.

So. Ahem. My descent to my present deathbedness (retrospective) and continued updates as I slowly crawl toward death/miraculous-recovery (at the hands of the haggard but undeniably fuckable Hugh Laurie).

10am, Thursday: Anna makes her weary way into London. She is annoyed at her somewhat out-of-proportion hangover from Wednesday night, and puts it down to forgetting to eat anything. Boy, she feels poo.

2pm, Thursday: Anna tries to remember the last time being hungover involved not being able to swallow.

4pm, Thursday: Eventually, having reached the same temperature as the inside of a spicy-chilli-topped baked potato, Anna suddenly leaves the office for fear of destroying the carefully air-conditioned atmosphere enjoyed by her colleagues.
(That was sarcasm. We work in a slow-cooker. That wasn’t causing the sweating though. Well, not the extra sweating. That was the fever)

5.30, Thursday: Anna arrives home and goes to sleep.

8.00, Thursday: Anna wakes up and moves to a position under a blanket on the sofa, shivering and sweating and watching a recorded episode of Heroes. The possibility of her being a superhero with a special skill of ‘bursting into flames while sweating’ is touted.

9pm, Thursday: House is on. Various diagnoses are immediately seized upon and Anna’s symptoms seem to fit them all. She has Lupus! No, it is not Lupus. It is NEVER Lupus! Has she not learnt this by now?
What about a tumour? Or perhaps a collection of non-malignant tumours around the inside throat area, caused by crack-pipe-usage. Except without the crack. And the pipe. And more ‘exposure to contagious colleagues over the last few weeks’. But otherwise very similar.

10pm-10.26pm, Thursday: After an extended period of lying on the sofa shivering and saying ‘Meh. OW. ow. ooooowwww. sniff. OW.‘ every time she attempts to swallow (not anything in particular, you filthy motherdusters. Just, you know, ’swallow’) Anna is sent to bed for being annoying.

3am: Anna wakes up. The seagulls are all shouting outside. Although her fever has gone down, she cannot sleep. Looking at the packet of empty packet of “Suparacetamol!” or whatever it is called, and realising it has around three espressos worth of caffeine per capsule, she gives up and lies in the dark feeling sorry for herself instead. Swallowing hurts. Head hurts. Tummy hurts. Ears hurt. There is no more paracetamol. This represents and ALL TIME LOW (of the rememberable past)(bearing in mind how bad her memory is, this is not necessarily very long).

9am Due to the continuance of the death-disease, Anna fails to go to work.

11am: First round of self-diagnosis on the internet, after discovery of strangely coloured lumps covering surrounding area of throat cavity.

It is discovered through the use of medical ‘googling’ tests that Anna has a rare disease normally affecting only children under five years old in North America. Weirdly, though this is contracted by coming into hand-contact with infected stools in the last 6 days, and Anna can’t remember touching poo for a MUCH longer time than that, it is the obvious diagnosis. She begins to look worriedly for unsightly blisters on her feet.

11.04: There aren’t any. Relieved, Anna goes back to sleep.

3pm: On waking, it is discovered that the miscoloured lumps have turned into hurty blisters. This leads to further google-diagnoses, and the patient is presented with a shortlist of Tonsillitis, Common Cold, AIDS, Flu, or the Plague.

4.30: Anna is very vomitous. This would suggest a possible confirmation of tonsillitis diagnosis, but is also strongly indicative of paracetamol overdose, which frankly isn’t out of the question.

5.30: After welcoming weekend houseguest, graciously describing to weekend houseguest where she can find her own cup of tea in the kitchen, and duly dispatching weekend houseguest out for a healthy walk, alone. Anna, much weakened by the role of ‘gracious host’ goes back to bed, moaning quietly.

7.30: Houseguest arrives back. Anna moans slightly louder, until Lemsip appears.

8.30: Beloved takes houseguest to pub. Fever starts coming back. Anna feels quietly sorry for herself.

10.30: Houseguest and beloved return. Houseguest and Beloved nod sympathetically while regaled with tales of the dreadful fever and subsequent fitful sleep they missed while at pub.

12am, midnight: With everyone gone to bed, Anna, restless from too little activity, too much sleep, and too hurty a swallowing mechanism lies on the sofa in front of a shopping channel feeling miserable. There is no doctor appointment till at least Monday. And even then, it won’t be Doctor Hugh Laurie-House. Apparently, he is not really a doctor.

12.30: Being sensible, Anna goes to bed.

1.10am: Realising the pain is too much and the struggle to not wakeup her beloved too great, Anna takes herself, her bastard throat, and some kind of cuddly blanket off to the sofa.

4.50am Anna gives up trying to sleep on the sofa, though not after discovering where they’ve hidden Larry Sanders in the schedules after all this time. ITV4, sometime between 2 and 3, apparently. Throat hurts too much too sleep. Still, dragging her sorry self up the stairs, she settles down and is pleased to doze off into a successful sleep.

5.23am: For a grand total of less than 26 minutes.

9.34am: After a good number of hours managing to sleep peacefully next to the grumpiest flip-flopper in Brighton, Anna’s beloved leaves her finally snoring unhappily, and goes off to Mr Boots the chemist, where he buys some decaffeinated paracetamol. And some cherry flavoured chloroform that you spray directly into your throat.

11.51: In a fit of Stubbornness, Anna joins her beloved and the lovely houseguest in going down to watch the Pride parade go past the bottom of the road. Sadly, all the lycra, sequins and showtunes (Musicals being the theme of this year’s festival) cannot cure the lurgy, and …

1.23pm: … after less than an hour of bare chests and disco hits she is forced to crawl back up the hill to bed. Sniff. Death now surely cannot be far from her now.

(Although I am a bit hungry. For the first time in two days.)
(Which might account for the weakness, I’m thinking)

Still. Woe is me, etc. Think of me kindly, when I’m gone.
And make sure I get a good publisher for the post-mortem anthology, yeah?

6pm: After an afternoon of classic British romantic films of the 1940s, Anna decides she is bored of being almost dead and makes like a healthy person. This involves Pimms.

11am, Sunday: After a full night’s sleep - brought on by a heady mix of alcohol, lack of sleep the night before, and that nice cherry-flavoured chloroform spray stuff my beloved brought me - I awoke, and found myself to be miraculously, and phenomenally, NOT DEAD.

SUNDAY NIGHT ROUND UP

And I continued not being dead ALL DAY!

Yes. In a shock event bound to be baffling the medical establishment for years to come, the blisters that yesterday coated my throat like angry broken seashells - if that’s a thing - had abated, deflated and were now pretending to be little more than grumpy gravel.

That’s right, I either have the constitution of an ox, or Jesus. Because like an ox, I take lots of vitamins that help fight off diseases, and like Jesus, I was struck down with a sore throat and on the third day got better.

Thanks for being here for me in the dark times, people.
Publishers, call off your dogs of post-mortem memoir acquisition war.
I am now officially Not Dead.