Moolies

...and relax

Cait you must learn not to post when you're feeling up against it. Although of course it actually makes posts more dramatic, it doesn't exactly help in any way does it.

Ok. So practical upshot of the upheaval and shocking news yesterday was:

1) Do what you can today, I thought, then just leave it until next week - it's not killer, you just need to get it sorted. What's the point in keeling over in worry
2) The blood results are the key to the whole thing. Therefore they are my priority. I can't actually decide anything until I know whether I'm in the clear anyway. If the results are positive then it's overworked and oversubscribed St Georges whether I want it or not.
3) Phone the Doc's surgery next week and make an appt with the Nurse Practitioner to do all the tests that should be done in week 12, and make sure I get a record of them to take to the hospital
4) Phone St thomas's ante-natal clinic and ask them if it's possible simply to talk to a midwife on the phone for a few minutes to get some practical information and start helping to put my mind at rest (it's the not knowing *anything* about how it all works within the NHS that is driving me utterly crazy).

And lastly, get in touch with the NCT and find out about *their* ante-natal classes *right now* so I can get on a waiting list or get signed up for the right week etc now - although it's early it just means I have less to worry about.

Bleh. Still, not feeling too bad today, except for the constant hayfever sneezing and accompanying blips (ladies - you know what I'm talkin' about) happening despite strenuous muscle exercises which should stop that happening! (me arse). And my Mum came up today, imparting much useful folk knowledge after having survived three of her own.

Oh, I phoned the Secretary at the blood clinic a second time in the afternoon and she was very apologetic for not calling. Apparently they haven't had half the test results back but they're coming and she'll give me a ring to arrange the appointment when they do. Nice to at least know. She did say something reassuring which was along the lines of "Believe me, if the health reasoning was such that you needed those test results as a matter of extreme urgency, you would have got them by now. It's not as pressing as you think at this moment".

Or words to that effect. So felt a lot better.

Meanwhile, the weather is absolutely baking hot in sunny London town today. Bodes well for the summer. Of course, a baking hot summer while I'm sweltering, waddling and overheating is hardly attractive as a prospect but there you go.

I do not need this.

St George's hospital is so oversubscribed, they can't see me until week 18. WEEK 18.

I said to this fucking midwife - well what am I supposed to do? I need to discuss my fucking options. I need to see if I can have it at home, if the anti-coag blood stuff comes back as clear. I just want to discuss my fucking options with a fucking professional. I do not want to be sat here trying to make up my mind about one of the most extraordinary things that is going to happen in my *life* on my *own* with my only support being a fucking book. What about booking in to anti-natal classes? What else do I need to know? They're not taking my weight, my fucking blood pressure - ANYTHING.

When I said I wanted to discuss birthing at home she more or less didn't even want to know. She said I need to talk to St Thomas's and I could just about piss off. Well - jesus... I need to talk to someone about a home birth, not make the bloody decision on my own!

Fuck fuck fuck I'm all upset now. Why is all this shit happening to me. Fucking typical typical typical that it should fuck up when I'm involved.

The blood clinic didn't call back yesterday and I called them again this morning and they were on answerphone so there's no information coming from them.

I Really Do Not Need This Aggro. And now I haven't even got my own Doc to help, I've got a completely overworked bloke who doesn't know me, cocked up getting the referral letter to the ante-natal clinic in the first place and I don't trust as far as I could throw him. So it's almost pointless turning to him for any assistance.

Help save Fantagraphics

Totally forgot to say this.

Buy some Fantagraphics comics online from them today.

Sounds like they may have been partially screwed by the same distributor going phut that really screwed up Top Shelf last year. Fantagraphics is a *powerhouse* of a publishing place. Not only is it the home of Robert Crumb but more importantly (to me at any rate, not being a Crumb fan - I know, so sue me) Dan Clowes of "Eightball" fame, "Hate" which is a godlike glorious thing and "Love and Rockets" which is one of the best comics ever written.

So not only must they not go under, but they must also be saved for their championing of newer artists like the gross and repulsive Dave Cooper, who I love. They're a brilliant company.

YOU WILL PURCHASE COMICS NOW! LINK THROUGH AND BUY!

Back at work

Back at work and bleeding slightly yesterday at the hospital, or rather - old bleeding. A slight secretion.

Another this morning.

Stressed out about it? You fucking betcha. In hospital yesterday I stood, in time honoured fashion, scratching my head nervously asking "Why would that happen?"

"Oh, it is nothnig, it is very normal for his point in your pregnancy"

It may be normal to *you* mate...

Other news: the blood clinic very kindly phoned me up this morning and said all the right things, and said we will call you back. Then they didn't. Which is nice. Still no word on the modwife fucking front so that'll mean ....nnnnggggg an appointment at some time next week one would fucking hope.

Loathe that this is happening. It makes me very angry and stressed. Thank God I can actually deal with it in a sensible fashion, however.

Meanwhile in even more different news:

The weapons of mass destruction within Iraq appear to solely be cluster bombs delivered by the UK and US. Sadness and disgust. Sadness and disgust.

Scan shenanigans

Blimey.

Full story below.

At this end:

Monkey teeth, monkey head.

He's looking straight at the camera, after giving us a virtuoso disco dancing display earlier.

He's really real. It's a bit bizarre, frankly.

Note: there's also a video of the scan, but we're lacking a DV camera at present to do the digitising through, so I can't give you a link to that file.

Also please take note that I absolutely promise the unborn dancing champion that your privacy is not going to be constantly invaded by loads of cute / completely embarrassing pics of you up here all the time. While you're in me however, you have the right to remain silent on the matter.

Oh, he's also 100% fit as a fiddle. I however, as part of a pioneering test have discovered that I may have a tendency toward pre-eclampsia, which is brilliant to know this early on. So yet more tests.

Still no word from the blood clinic. I am definitely now phoning them. Also no word from the St George's Midwifery dept for an appt with them. Aaargh. Why is life so difficult.

Vaguely funny thing: during the scan, Mackay asked a lot of questions about cystic hygromas, and I was busy reassuring him saying "Don't worry, when it grows in the womb, it grows out of all control - you'd really see it" and the lass looking after us said "Oh, do you work here?". Presumably, people with illnesses don't usually start talking about them knowledgably. Which is a shame. Anyway, I knew we had no Cystic Hygroma worries because it's not congenital. It's... whatever the other word is that is the posh way of saying it's a one off genetic abnormality.

Mackay has decided the pre-birth name for Person X regardless of gender is Horatio. Ratio for short. I think "Sprog" is preferable!

Tuesday, all's well

Week 12.

Still no word from the blood Doctor about the clinic visit I'm supposedly having next week. I suspect another round of slightly more difficult phone calls.

I am just not well. I slept most of the weekend, took theday off sick and said I'd work at home but I can barely keep my brain together to watch the Powerpuff Girls.

Meanwhile, amusing to see that a weekend where people were asked to go and visit a uniquitous American coffee house and take photos (because apparently they get very uppy about people taking photos on the premises) resulted in a weekend of people who ordinarily go in to the aforesaid place grudgingly because it has wifi or just plain (bad, by all accounts) coffee, going in not only willingly, purchasing products but also taking each other's photos, grinning away and posting them on the web!

Perhaps the whole thing was a plant on behalf of the company in the first place - you never can tell with marketeers these days.

Johnny Cash, etc... musical musing

As is fitting for a day in which I am beset by coagulation and snots in all orifices of my head, I have been listening to the American Gothic of Johnny Cash's "American" album/s (I actually only have one - the Solitary Man one). Whilst some of the songs work, and some don't, it's worth getting the album if only for the extraordinary, hairs on the back of the neck rendition of Nick Cave's "The Mercy Seat". If anyting, I much prefer it to the Cave version. This, much more sudbued cover is of an old man, almost relieved at last to be taking off the burden of the pathalogical life he has lead, the tattoos stretched and wrinkled with on his knuckles. Cave's is an angry, bitter, gritted teeth entry in to the afterlife. Both men astoundingly holding on to the assumption that they are now shuffling off the mortal coil to embrace heaven or an afterlife as opposed to Hell.

I'm now listening to an old Cave live album, and whilst his songs are great, he does pale in comparison to Cash as an emoter, or teller of tales. I was saddened recently to hear that June Carter had died. Not only was she a great singer but by the sound of that BBC report, she provided the rock that kept Cash from falling on many occasions. His illness being so pronounced now, such a major loss in his life will be difficult to get over. I'm supposing he won't be long for this world.

I don't really want to be writing his obituary early, and I'm hardly qualified to do so, but it's a measure of the man that so many good people hold his work in such esteem and have him as a major influence. There are not many american singers who can so powerfully draw upon that very central-european blackness of the soul.

Anyway. He's a good man.

A man

Was being chased down Turnmill Street by a loosely connected newspaper. Two men in fact, one, a wiry, tiny bloke with a face like a rat, short black hair, tanned as a gypsy, kicking the conversational newspaper away from his feet. He seemed to be acting as minder and lookout to a much larger lad who was not too furtively attaching club A3 posters on cardboard to lampposts, swiftly yanking them, already half stapled out of the courier bag, wielding the stapler like a gun. 3 quick snips and on to the next, but before he went, dutifully taking a picture with a digital camera he had been provided with to prove he had been doing his job correctly.

The club looked *terrible*.

Meanwhile, after phoning the Doc's at 11 yeterday, they still had not bothered to look at the fax machine or moved on the letter sent through with URGENT written in a box to add emphasis at the top. Explaining the whole deal twice over the phone and asking please, please could you call me to let me know the outcome of course they didn't. An hour or so later I called again. Bright and breezy, "Oh, ante-natal said they'd be getting in touch".

Bullshit am I waiting for any such nonsense so I phoned myself and they weren't going to be looking at any faxes received that day, they only work a day in arrears. So I cajoled and was terribly polite. Hence, an appointment will be arranged with a midwife at some point next week and I now have my first official scan at 11.15 on Wednesday morning, although I am double booked so there will be a wait.

I say first official because when we thought I might be losing it, we had one to check then, and saw a tiny, ovoid lump of blood and tissue, in the middle of which was the 3mm long concept of a child. This time around, it will have grown to about 60mm long, and rising.

Apparently there are now fingernails and movement. Swimming around. Even drinking amniotic fluid for added nutrition, *and* extraordinarily, the creation of its own hormones through a tiny pituitary gland. Lorks.

Meanwhile I've been having what feels like a stitch just above my crap left ovary for about 3 days now. I'm sure it's nothing but it does disturb me not really understanding what my body is doing when I have spent my whole lifestime getting to know its nuances.

I want to extend this a little actually because I had to buy myself new trousers yesterday. New trousers with elasticated waists or just a larger size than normal. I find this phase of the pregnancy quite psychologically disruptive. It's as if it is a "phoney pregnancy", waiting for the real thing to happen. No outside signs except for the fact that I am suddenly fatter and having to buy fat people clothes, which is very disquitening after a lifestime of trying to avoid such a circumstance (the contant battle - to stay in size 34 trousers).

Given that this is an entirely new experience I'm quite willing to listen to these ludicrous reactions and at least let them vent a little. I find myself worrying about being fat after the birth. Perhaps I wil magically transmorph in to a middle aged Irish mother, physique wise? The vision doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.

Neither do my stupid aches and pains. As it is, my body is not the most robust of physical specimens - my lower back is weak, my ovary is knackered, if I wasn't careful I'd be diabetic... Jesus what a weakling. After the birth I almost expect to be an invalid!

Anyway. just me, werritting again. Hmph.

Werrit

It disturbs me how much like my mother I can become.

The ante natal clinic still haven't been in touch from St Georges and neither has the blood clinic.

I just tried to phone St Georges to find out when the appointment is next week, having phoned the Doc's yesterday and they just rang and rang. Having made the stupid mistake also of calling from my desk and suddenly realising that I had to say "antenatal clinic" in to a phone before I could rush to get anywhere private.

Hmmm. And my beloved application has died on me today, which is nice. Many pissed off Managers mailing asking what the hell is going on. Sometimes when I'm depressed I feel like we're flogging a dead horse but I'm so determined to get it past this period.

Myeh. I'm really, really overtired and depressed and worried today so don't take any notice of me.

Oh... God, I've just remembered why my mood is so fucked. I had a truly awful dream last night during which I was bleeding really heavily, but it was... if I can remember correctly, it was as if I'd missed 3 periods so it was that much "stuff", rather than that I was miscarrying. I woke up incredibly stressed.

Later I dreamed that Sally Phillips was making my tea out of cornflakes and cheese, in a kind of tower, and that I owed her £212, which she thought was £450 for no apparent reason. You see, dreams - they really tell you deep stuff.

UPDATE later in the day:

Well. It transpires that the lovely new overworked doc *didn't* send the anti-natal clinic the letter they need to give me an appt. They've never received anything, and they'd never heard of me when I rang. So, they said they'd accept an appointment request over a fax.

Of *course* when I phoned the surgery it was closed, so I had to send a fax over and will have to ring them again first thing tomorrow and ask them if they received the fucking fax and act on it as a matter of urgency purlease since last time I sent an urgent fax they didn't bother putting it in front of the Doc for 2 days.

CUNTS!

Blimey

Some bloke linked to my moaning ramble, amazingly. Someone I've never heard of and have no idea who he is. How very weird.

I take it all back! I'm never going to mention it ever again! Heh.

Actually, being as how I'm such an insecure type, I feel a bit bad that I named Clay in the middle, as if he was some kind of main contender - if that's how it came across I didn't mean that. It was only his revelation about Pepys that made me a bit non-plussed. I talked to him about it briefly at EtCon. I think Phil had a good point in his comment, but... sometimes I think I'm just very boringly pragmatic or something. I don't know.

However. That wasn't what I was going to say in my - horror of horrors, second update of the day (that doesn't happen too often thank God) but what I was going to say in a slightly wailing kind of way was I really do think I can't wear my nice if slightly scruffy brown cord trousers for much longer!!! They're beginning to get uncomforetable to the point of the occasional twingy yelp around the waist. Something tells me that is not good for me or sprog.

I don't know what is making me so defensive about the idea of moving in to preg sizes except for the fact that I *shouldn't have to yet*. This is very unnerving. I have put on loads of weight specifically on my front like some big cushion, but I haven't been eating more. Where's it all coming from? Has my digestive system become hyper efficient?

And on top of all that I am now exhausted and at home, which means hopefully I should be in bed within about an hour. It being 7.40pm, that's lots of lovely sleeeeeeeep up ahead.

Hmmm. I wonder if I will disappoint anyone who read that post and then they'll realise that all I really want to do is chat in real terms about the day to day shenanigans around being up the duff?

Oh yes, and Warren E. joined Friendster. He will, I'm sure, soon discover the complete nothingness of the application. But it does mean that I've now seen a proper photo of his big mate Matt Fraction. The world becomes ever smaller.

Week 12 is now 2 days away.

For God's sake let me sleep

What is it about hotels.

The world over, I cannot sleep in hotels. Aberdeenshire, Santa Clara, Paris, Leeds.

And so it came to pass that at 1am Wednsday morning I was buried in my pillow, desperate to try and relax enough to conk out, having only had 5 hours sleep the night before, and knowing i was getting up at 7.

No sleeping drafts may pass my lips, no dodgy remedies. I may only toss and turn, and beg for sleep to drift over me. Eventually. When it decides I've had enough.

The misery, as always is the upcoming train journey which means I will not get any sleep then either.

On a different topic: today has been an "emanation" day thus far. The pattern is approximate but roughly follows: 2 days of nothing, then a slight attempt possibly about half way through the third day, then 4th morning real pain and abdomenal yowing before the - oh, heaven bloody sent (as opposed to scent) relief of getting rid of the train carriage sized object that has been slowly travelling through my system for the previous 3 days.

Believe me, I'm very glad I stopped trying. The food has been a bit dodgy up here though - goats cheese and vegetables but no real hardcore wholemeal earthenware roughage. Quite a bit on the egg front too. So consequently, if this morning was the agony of day 4 and the ecstacy of relief, then we're looking at the weekend before anything else rears its ugly head.

What a delightful and fascinating topic!

Hmm the Goats cheese qualified as "soft cheese" I think. It being Chevre. But Jesus christ, does the whole population of women in France give up soft cheese for the duration of their pregnancies? I sincerely doubt it. Anyway, it was chevre or nuttink, so I was a bit lumbered.

...must....resist....

No, I just can't not say it.

Here are my thoughts on blogs. I don't pretend that this is a coherant argument. It tends toward the reactionary, in as much as it is my gut reaction to the endless fucking stream of blether and pondering...

And since much of that endless stream comes from people who I rather like as people, this is not pointed at anyone in particular.

The basis of my... objection is that the continuing tidal wave of blah, of meandering nonsense talked on and on and on about Social Software (ie: 90% of the time an excuse to talk about blogs) is not producing *anything* of substance as far as I can see. Here are the main points:

1) Social software is not new. What we're actually talking about here is communications software. if you strip away all the bullshit regarding the applications, what we're actually talking about is probably a large number of internet friendly non-web email based communication mechanisms which make their portability to other harware much easier (phones, pda's etc) or a tool for making online diaries.

2) Look up the definiton of diary. A blog is a diary. I was quite amazed one day to be having a Haddock discussion on this subject with a bunch of boys who all do blogs and absolutely refused to accept that what they are doing is publishing a diary! I strongly argue that the term "blog" moves the concept of publishing a daily update as far away from the word "diary" as possible because these guys would *loathe* to become associated with something so... so *personal* and dare I say it - feminine? Like - egh! We're geeks! We talk endlessly about geeky things, we don't talk about our actual lives - good god no! What we do is spend time making lists. Ahhh a boy pursuit. How comfortable for us to accept this new definition.Therefore it must be perceived differently to a diary. It cannot be the same thing, oooh no.

Because, you see - if it's a "blog" then it affords a multiplicity of conversations. Rather than an email list purely being an email list what you can update from any-old device because it's so lo-fi it now becomes a "Mo-blog". Rather than a blog being a handy CMS so you can do your personal publishing (note -and *that* is the bit that's actually important) it becomes a plethora of plug ins and tweaks and twiddles and god-knows-what one can endlessly investigate and spend time on.

The question I have is - there is such a mini-industry of pontificating going on here - who is it actually for? It apears that it is actually for a bunch of people who all vaguely know each other, scratching chins together and pouring out mile after mile of "stuff" - as opposed to meaningful and worthwhile ideas or content. I was thinking about the guys who created "Hiptop Nation". I fucking love it. I go down on my knees and worship at the feet of the guy who just thought - hold on, if we do X then we can.... cool!

And they just did it.

Scratching chins just don't do it for me.

Clay Shirky, who is a charming and lovely person, described the feeling of amazement he had when Phil did his Pepys project. He realised that blogs were going to be here for the next ten years.
I was amazed he felt so revelatory about it. Producing a diary interface / cms to allow people to publish their personal blether is a killer app. It is an online easy way of producing the same bumf people having been doing for millenia at home in their notebooks piled up under the bed; their lockable pink quilted hardback books with "My diary" written on the front in which future embarrassing horrors can be scribbled. Obviously publishing a diary online is a completely different proposition to writing in detail "My fantasy snog with Jamie in class G4" but that goes with the territory. Once it had been organised, it ain't never going to go away. It may not publish in exactly the samw way in ten years but the concept will be with us in electronic publishing ad infinitum.

Anyway. to recap. The main points again:

-Blogs are the masculinisation of a form which has traditionally been created offline by generations of women - and obviously politicians (of course men have written diaries, but the general overview would tend toward seeing it as a female form of personal communication, I would argue. hence the phrase "Dear diary" for example - try saying that and not thinking of it in a female voice)
-Can't we just accept that it's not that revelatory and concentrate on the content or more importantly: what happens next
-There's more to bloody social software than blogs - they are a just one form of it! If you counted how many email groups there are on Yahoo Groups, Smartgroups, MSN communities and not even to mention majordomo, mailman and the rest then christ, can we not accept that communal communication has made more of an impact on our lives?

And lastly, I just wish we could stop being so fucking smug about it by accident. The tech community does this, and in some cases - particularly with back end scripting languages or the like I can accept that a degree of "in-the-club"ness is almost inevitable. But the "blogosphere"??? Who came up with that fucking phrase. Whom does that represent? Not me, I can tell you that now. Not the tens of thousands of Live Journal users; not the many, many individuals who have maintained their own personal experience sites for years. Even saying the word repulses me slightly. Look up bleedin' blogosphere on Beeb news or the Guardian site. You will find endless references to this ludicrous phrase which actually is referrring to a group of people - the aforementioned chin scratchers who inhabit a very small but reasonably vocal part of the personal publishing fraternity.

As a last thing about sites like this and why I think the content is way, way more important than the application used to actually post, is the sadness I felt when I saw that Justin Hall had given up the mad, anarchic sprawl of Links.net and had resorted to MT. What we should look at with MT and the like is the ability to *easily* munge the front end to make it look as individual as it possibly fucking can. Even on a daily basis - or a mood basis... anything you want to do as an end user. I was genuinely sad to see it - but then it's inevitable, because it's convenient. I'd created myself a reasonably handy diary site in... whenever it was, 1997 or whatever but it just became too much hassle to twiddle all the links and make sure the whole thing kept clunking along. FTR it never did completely. Anyway, so that's where if there *is* a discussion to be had about blogs, we should be saying - ok, so how can we make this so fucking easy my 63 year old Dad could pick it up from scratch and not have to put up with me arranging to have it made for him.

If you had a few buttons that could move things around, change colours, upload backgrounds etc on a daily basis - now that would rock. It's the utter uniformity that frustrates me.

Or... we leave the broadening of the form to baton grabbers - people who will business-ise those great initial ideas, whose job it is to do that, and then look for something *new*. Something that actually makes sense to spend brain time pondering, instead of the aforementioned hours, and days of pointless musing about 1 medium sized application type that only constitutes 1 part of a massive variety of different communication new media.

Gawd, I'm completely spent! Now I've said it and I won't say it agin, like. Because it's far too dull to keep reiterating.

Gone public

I told Haddock I am pregnant. Which necessitates this thing being more public that it has been (ie: read by Fiona, Danny and Yoz).

Which is interesting.

Meanwhile back to the task in hand, which is wondering if the bloody hospital/s have written to me with my appointments for blood analysis and 1st stage scans etc. I would be willing to bet cash money that when I get back from Leeds they won't have done and I'll have to do a load of phoning and hassling. Grrr.

Funny pains last night and - shock news - going to bed at 11 meant waking up at 4.30. Only because it was a hotel room I then couldn't get back to sleep at all. Horrible, horrible, horrible. Yes - the pains were funny muscle pulls if I lay in a certain position and moved in a funny way. I'm not too "full up" at the moment (regular readers will know what I'm referring to!) so it wasn't down to that.

Anyway. So, apart from complete tiredness, I seem to be ok.

*****Yawwwwwwn*****

These are a few of my least favourite things. Plus: sleep weirdness.

the inexhaustive list of things that make me feel ill:

-Mackay cooking bacon
-Mackay cooking sausages
-Mackay switching on the deep fat frier
-The thought of the deep fat frier
-The thought of chocolate
-The smell of wet tea leaves
-The smell of anything to do with fish products of any sort but particularly shell fish
-The thought of chips
-Rich cake
-Wine (this I can overcome by willpower alone for things like yesterday)
-Thinking about Indian food (this is very distressing)
-Cigarette smoke, dope smoke and the like
-Rather annoyingly, the thought of my nice black sesame Japanese brown rice crackers

....more to this list when I've thought of it.

Unnervingly, the smell of chicken nearly turned me on the other day, it smelled so delicious. But, I never said I didn't like meat (with the current exception of bacon and sausages). As long as I don't suddenly lose my memory and start ravenously munching my way in to dead bird flesh... what a delightful way of off-putting it.

Justin Timberlake sounds like he's been speeded up in the studio. Do you think he actually has a voice? I think he's a construct.

*Yawn*. I'm so tired. I don't really know that I should be. Ohhhh yes. I've discovered something. I automatically wake up approx 5 hrs - 5.5 hrs after I have fallen to sleep., and find great difficulty in trying to get back to sleep / dozing fitfully until it's time to get up. I realised this given that I timed myself when we went to bed pretty late last night (oooh, nearly 1) and woke up just after 6. When I go to bed at 10 at present, I wake up around 3.45.

I read something recently about people who wake up after 5 hours but God knows where it was. I will research.

...and after the wine... the song

...Yes of course I was concerned that I had drunk over a glass of wine, despite the fact that I'm sure no harm was done.

So we went for a meal, mooching around in Soho trying to find a decent place. The end destination was a newish Moroccan restaurant on Greek Street which looked lovely from the outside and the food was delicious. The only slight problem was the poufs and cushions. It looked like a souk-esque relax and flop about type place but in fact the seating was desperately uncomfortable! But - oh, the food was lovely. And we ate too much. 3 plates of mezze each then a mail meal *then* baklava. Oh blimey.

It did strike us as strange that we were eating there on the day that Al Kaida had decided to blow up half the Moroccan capital. What are their tactics? So soon after the "war" on Iraq, they say "Oh, remember us? Your actual enemy" and concentrate on a continent which can fall prey to attack more easily - and it's a western tourist destination. Very similar to the Bali bombings. So the answer is: stay in your homes, people of the liberated west.

Anyway. Then we went to see The Dirty Three for the second time in a week. At which point with some deep regret I realised that at least for another few weeks, I cannot stand up for 3 hours in a sweaty room full of smoking people without feeling like I'm going to pass out.

But what a fucking great gig though. Warren Ellis (yes, it is strange that he is called that) is ... a perverse violin playing God of a front man. I mean, it's all wrong: he's an ugly, gangling bloke with straggly hair who wears ragged tshirts and a grey cardigan, buttoned up all akew. He tells stories in between all the songs that ramble on, and on. He plays with his back to the audience, in some sort of unholy communion with the other two, except... his energy is explosive. He makes the violin whine, sing, complain, weep, sigh, scream and shout and good god, the concentration and strength he pours in through the bow, he must get through them like broken pencils.

And as for Jim White. If he hadn't discovered he could drum then God knows what would have become of him. The man *is* drumming. Mick Turner is a great foil for these two mercurial nutters, a calm, quiet and patient presence, judging and watching to see what they want to do with the next improvisation around a theme they all know well, whilst Ellis stomps, kicks, shouts and drags this gorgeous wrenching music from his violin, and White, with his fluid, concentrated energy manages to look in complete, confident control whilst the drums and various percussive rattles and plinks build, and build in to a crescendo of magnificent virtuoso riffs and breaks.

They're so good they make me laugh out loud. There are very few people who I've had that response to, and last night, hilariously, after an intense last song, Ellis stood there, back to the audience his arms out, Jesus fashion: violin in one hand, bow in the other, theatrically spent. I laughed and laughed and like everyone else, roared because this may be the last gig they do for a long time, apparently. It wasn't so much adoration from the audience because it was in the old Camden Monarch - now the Barfly, a tiny venue. So you can't really hero worship someone doing their thing ten feet away, you join them in the energy and excitement of the performance and you play your part. By shouting and clashing your hands together as hard as possible.

I could barely see Jim White, which was a shame, I love watching him play. He's extraordinary. But in any case, about 3 songs in I had to leave Mackay in the main throng and go and sit down on the stairs, I felt so weak. How bloody annoying. Made it back in for the encore though.

Mackay loves them and managed to put up with the whole sweaty thing with a big grin on his face. I meanwhile am always reminded of the love/hate relationship I have with gigs. I love gigs, I just hate everyone else in the room. I accept the stupidity of this position, but I'm sure that most everyone else feels the same thing. Standing, knackered and overheating while 3 people smoke around me then someone lights up a joint, making me want to be sick all over whichever poor bastard is standing in front of me. What is there to like about that situation?

Anyway - what a lovely, lovely day.

I'm just researching the Nick Cave dates in June. He's playing the Hammersmith Odeon, but there's no sign anywhere of what the lineup of the band is. However the first dates are at the end of this month in Germany, so it's very likely that Jim White and Warren Ellis will be playing in the Bad Seeds.

God knows.

Anyway!

On a different note entirely, today I have very tender pains on my right hand side around where my right ovary is. God knows why. Nothing negative appears to be happening so I hope it'll calm down and say "That's that" shortly, in a Punch Drunk Love kind of way.

A grand day out

Well the lovely James had pitched up in to "Winos" (a daft wee list for those of us with an interest in wine) whether anyone wanted to go to a Decanter Italian wine tasting day. Mackay and I said, yep, sounds like a nice idea. So it was all arranged.

Stupid me, I forgot that James has memory even worse than I have in some respects. He entirely forgot and double booked himself. Not only that but it appears that he didn't actually buy the tickets! For, when Mackay and I turned up, our names were not on the list.

I'm very good at doing middle-class friendly non-plussed. The woman on the door let us in.

This is part 1 of the day's events - if I were you I'd ignore this bit. It's basically me writing up some wine notes so I've got them somewhere I can find them again.

We went far too late in the day, but I had felt absolutely awful on Friday night (partly due to Mackay's frying of sausages and the smell pervading the whole flat because he hadn't opened the window - ugh) so we slept in until an unfeasible time of the day. So when we went, we had an hour and a half to get around about 70 exhibitors or something insane! So we picked and chose dependent on several factors: 1) Are there so many people around this table we will feel awkward and stand there like eedjits; 2) Which area is it from; 3) Do they have nice labels. Not necessarily in that order.

Therefore, rather than give you a run down on everything we tasted (gosh, how interesting that would be) I'll give you the few gems that came up:

1) Gini. They are from the Verona area. We saw a gorgeous looking golden desert wine on their table and headed for it, always on the lookout for good desert wine. Although we don't drink that much of it, a little goes a very long way. Plus it's moving in to the summer months and I tend to think of nice white wines more around now. Not that I can drink much of it (long story). Ok - here's the wine:

Renoblis - Recioto di Soave DOCG 1999. My tasting notes are always a bit lame, having absolutely no trained sense of taste. This is what I wrote: "Absolutely delicious, gorgeous raisiny smell, very thick and puddingy". We thought it would go well with an incredibly fruity pudding, like Summer pudding or something like that. Anyway, it was bloody lovely.

We tried precious little Chianti, which was curious. However, one we did try was from the Baron Ricasoli, Castello Di Brolio.

Now they had very similar names - we tried one that was priced at £26, and one at £12.50. Unfortunately for us the cheaper one tasted very harsh after the posh one. So the good wine was:

Castello Di Brolio Chianti Classico, 1999. Note here is awful! "Very smooth, lovely". Er, well done for the info there. However, they're easy to get hold of in the UK: Enotria Winecellars Ltd - 020 8963 4820. It's well worth it, it was incredibly lovely stuff.

Good "drinking" wine - I have to say it was nice stuff but wasn't astounding (I say this, and of course it'll turn out to be unbearably expensive) was from the Castello Del Tericio, from Tuscany. They only brought the 1 wine, Tassinaia, 2000. It had great body and presented well - didn't need aging. It was the kind of wine you'd have as your second bottle of still decent stuff after having had for example, that Chianti first.

There was a lovely Soave from the Veneto area. The makers were Pasqua Vigneti & Cantine. Apparently it's imported through PLB Wines (01342 318 282) and it's only around a fiver a bottle. I think we'd never get through enough of it to justify buying a case before it went past it's best but it was the *perfect* summer wine, I'm telling you. My tasting note was "Very lovely roasted honey smell, very light and smooth". It was fantastic for the price.

One which was ageing very well - already had a nice complexity in it from a 1997 vintage was from Aldo Rainoldi, a Lombardy are wine maker. the < a href="http://www.rainoldi.com/vini_2002/sassellariserva_in.html">Valtellina Superiore DOC Sassella Riserva. It had that heavy duty but not too tannic smell, a little "farmyardy" which just yelled "Drink me with Roquefort" to me (not being a beef eater). It was 100% Nebbiolo grapes wise (I wish I knew more about grapes). It's imported by Van Duuren Wines... who I know about for some other reason I can't remember... anyway.

The other wines we concentrated on were the Sicilians, given that we've had great experience with Nero D'Avolo before now and the difference in taste given the heat I find very interesting. And I tell you what, we found one that was - bloody hell, full on punch in the face strong, not harsh, full and whopping great flavour to it. "Il Moro" (what a great name). From the Valle dell'Acate. It's imported through La Caverna Ltd (020 7354 3738) and it's a real belter. My tasting notes, lame as usual state: "Brilliant, tasty, perfect stuff". Which I'm sure will serve me well in trying to describe it to others.

They asked me to try another wine of theres which tasted... interesting enough but had an extraordinary aroma - I couldn't work it out for a moment, but it was strawberries in sweet vingar or something like that. Very peculiar. Anyway, it might have been more interesting in the general run of things (probably) but it just wasn't a big "pack em in" sort of thing.

So that's it really. Except to say that the Gini woman looked down her noses at us in such a miserable way I really wondered if she wanted anyone to buy her wine at all. Daft cow. it's a real shame Steve couldn't go, but I am just about to get on the mailing list for other Decanter events in the hope that we don't miss the next one.

More adventures in the internet trade

So Upmystreet was sold. And most everyone seems to have been made redundant. At the moment it's all a bit confused as to who is still there and who isn't, but I think generally speaking there are a whole ton of extraordinarily talented people available on the market.

The most rotten thing is sitting on the outside of it, watching your friends going through all levels of nastiness - and there's almost literally nothing you can do about it. There's nothing going here that I know of, really. Well, having said that I just looked it up, and there are a few bits and pieces so you never know. Maybe it'll help, God knows.

On another tack altogether I am now thoroughly brassed off with and sickened by bloody calcium bloody indegestion tablets. If I ever see them again after this bloody pregnancy I think I'll hurl on the spot.

Skinny or meaty?

At the doc's on Monday a very stern African doctor (whose name I have misremembered as the current president of Zambia's. This is entirely wrong and bad of me) who has taken over my usual doc's patients whilst she is on pregnancy leave looked very strongly askance at me when I mentioned that I was a vegetarian.

-You are a vegetarian? You must eat properly!
He didn't really listen whilst I explained my "protein with every meal" policy, my supplements etc, etc.
-You must get plenty of protein, calcium
Yes, I drink milk and have eggs, I would be eating fish but I can't stomach it at the moment.
-Because you know that the baby will be very small if you don't eat well.

... come again? Eh?

That sounds like a damned good deal to me. Less protein! Less Calcium! Bring on the 5lb baby!

Offspring

Sad to say I spent some time watching Star Trek last night since Mackay has decided to record the 6 episode marathon TNG sessions that are on Sky every weekend (rather record than watch, so you can fast forward through the ads).

(Note that this is quite a.... pfft. 'Personal' entry I suppose)

However, they have got to the stage of some rather good episodes, include a Q one, and more interestingly, the one in which Data creates himself a daughter, Lal. Lal, as we are told during the episode, is Hindi for “Beloved”.

Beloved is a word I use often to describe those most close to me.

Anyway, it’s a beautifully written and played episode, marred only by the lumpen, grumpy and very old-school acting of the Marshall, or whatever his name is, who wishes to remove Lal to a Star Fleet base for analysis and development. The lass who played Lal did a lovely job.

In the same way that I cried during Lilo and Stitch because it was about creating love and family out of nothing, I curled up on the sofa and cried for a large percentage of the episode. I blame my hormones, of course, not the fact that I’m such a soft nit.

Then afterwards, I could not stop crying, and I realised how much it had touched a nerve relating to last year, when I lost what I felt deep inside was my daughter. From inside me. That incident had a profound effect on me and I will never deny her the space that she deserves in my heart, for me to remember and grieve. I know she was never born. I think it’s not too understandable unless you’ve been through the experience but in the time it took for me to look at the two blue stripes on the plastic stick, I’d fallen in love with her. I felt magical, as if I’d been blessed and was carrying a goddess. Almost as if, if you pulled back my eyelid you would see white light emanating from within, and I emitted a golden ready-brek glow. Almost as if I had a neon sign above my head simply saying “Wow”.

In eight days she went away and in those eight days I wrote her letters I intended her to find when she was old, that would fill her with embarrassed happiness. Neither of us were in a position to know that there was something terribly wrong, and that my body would reject her.

I think I never really understood what grief is until she died. As well as that, the experience gave me a profound incite in to why people believe in heaven or an afterlife. When someone you have unconditional love for is suddenly wiped off the slate, the ludicrous swiftness of that action simply does not make any sense to you. The emotional commitment you have made to that person, the devotion you are willing to give them – and for them to suddenly not be there? This is madness, you think. I could feel her in the ether around me. The essence of her – as if, if I could reach out and grab her spindly, fairy thin umbilical I could reel her back in and everything would be fine again. This was – of course, a temporary aberration, and of course everything was going to be alright again. Of course it was.

But of course it wasn’t. Everything in one’s logical brain tells you what has happened, but your emotions are refusing to listen. To an extent they always will. Eventually, you accept that they are gone, but somehow not that they are no more. Hence Heaven. Heaven for many people may not be the selfish act that I once thought – the insurance policy that means you’re happy when you die instead of being a miserable atheist doomed to complete closure. Heaven may be the rationalisation of those irrational thoughts and emotional responses to grief. Instead of my darling, beloved girl being a disembodied whisper; the memory of the idea of a lovely person (she was a goddess, remember? So she was bound to be), she would have risen up in to the heavens and been happy in a different life. Ok, so she’d look a bit weird n’all being only about 4mm long and having no real brain or limbs to speak of but at least she’d be happy.

The Lal episode neatly sidestepped the whole afterlife question by having Lal’s experiences and responses to them downloaded in to Data’s brain, so her presence does stay in a literal form, as opposed to an emotional response form. A bit of a cheat, but then the episode dealt with enough ethical issues and emotions in one 45 minute slot (interspersed with adverts for deodorant and cars).

Now that my latest un-born offspring is almost twice her age and hasn’t died, I am growing increasingly frustrated with myself that I don’t feel the same way. Again, from a purely logical perspective it makes perfect sense, I’m trying to protect myself from being hurt. But – doesn’t he (or she – my feelings aren’t so strong on this one, so I’m not so sure) deserve to be loved in the same way? Given that I hope this record will be here for years to come, I want to point out to my at-present unborn beloved just how much love is waiting for you on the outside. When you get round to discovering this, and not being entirely embarrassed by the contents, you will of course already know what a gentle and lovely man your dad is, and hopefully I will have been reasonable at guiding you through some of the pitfalls in life, as well as instilling you with a love of Laurel and Hardy.

So whatever you do, don’t feel jealous of your sister-that-never-was. Given how short her tiny life was, I have to try and fit in 65 years of loving and memories in to the 8 days I knew she existed. And I’d never done it before at the time, so I hope I'm forgiven.

A postscript to this is that just after she was due to be born, I bought myself a solid silver ring as a memorial to her. It's very basic, it doesn't look like much although the massive hallmark on the outside does seem to have a picture of a bear in it, which is quite appropriate for a wee (very wee) baby. I became pregnant the very next cycle after I'd bought the ring. So there you go.

(It's not that I'll try not to write about this - if I feel the need to I will, of course. But... one cannot continually look back. I think of her every day. That's enough).

An idea

Leslie whilst talking about an old Beau said to me that apparently if you write things down - in terms of wanted objectives for the future there is in fact a statistically significant % jump in terms of that actual thing coming off.

This she recalled whilst saying that she came across said beau's "list of things what I want to achieve and when" one, and found it most bizarre.

But, in the hope that this statistical significance malarkey may lead to something, here goes.

At the end of the MBA, which I have barely mentioned (I have an MBA. I graduate proper-like in June. I'll talk some other time about its various meanings in more detail some other time) I talked with Stephen Regan, a very grumpy but smart Economics lecturer with whom I had an... interesting (ie: bristly) relationship about how to continue studying Economics once the MBA had finished.

Cranfield University school Of management is blessed with an exceptional Economics dept. not really from a research p.o.v.- which is a shame in a way, but somehow they've managed to gather together exceptionally gifted teachers. The aforementioned Stephen Regan, Sean Rickard, John Glenn and Joe Nellis. All idiosyncratic and amusing in their own ways (either purposefully or otherwise). But the point being - they all had enormous, vital enthusiasm which was and is entirely infectious.

Anyway. Given my background with anything to do with maths, the chances are I was going to loathe Economics. Instead, it was presented as a lovely, organic, slightly (ie: very) geeky system of levers in which where one is pulled, another acts way further down the line - it's very architectural in that sense and so it appeals to my spatial awareness type of thinking. Quite apart from the fact that no one really knows anything. It's all conjecture - sure, you can do the maths but.. now i forget (you see how bad my memory is), I'll have to look it up but I think it was Keynes who pointed out that the great unknowable is the way the public can sway economies through reaction to external stimuli. He said it in a far groovier sentence than that, I'm sure.

So my point is it's fair to just sit there and argue the toss for hours. Which I love, obviously. If it wasn't for the maths, Economics would be 100% the subject for me. As it is, it's 65% the subject for me. But I'm determined to keep going with it.

Hence my question to Stephen - did he know of any courses in London or evening lecture series run by the LSE or... anything? He said in all earnestness, "Yes - you go and do the Economics and Social Policy degree at Birkbeck for 4 years, part time, the first 2 years'll be a breeze, you've donme it all already, then you go to work in Geneva".

Cough, splutter... Stephen? I don't think you get this. I've just given up 2 years of my life nearly breaking myself in to small pieces in the stupid belief that I could stop myself from getting bored at work. Now you're saying give up another 4 years????

And so I scratched my head and walked away. Then I continued scratching my head. Then I went and looked up the course. Then I mailed them. Then i became pregnant and thought - oh bugger.

But then I though, well - I don't do it this year but what does that mean? It's 2 nights a week, apparently. At present, to be honest, I don't know what it all means but there's a little voice continually playing out saying "You know you could do this - if the first 2 years are a piece of piss you could even miss lectures and explain it to the guys at college". Everything in my job suggests a more European way of thinking, and why the hell not have an objective. For once in my life.

So here's the deal - the idea is at present to start the degree next year, in September. And see how it goes. not put deep, nasty amounts of pressure on myself - just see how it goes. the whole Geneva bit sounds interesting but then so do many other things and even if Geneva wasn't the final destination, who knows what it could be.

So there you are. I've written it down now. Who knows, it might happen.

Going to Doc's in a moment. nothing particularly unusual going on, however.

All together now...

Last weekend on VH1 there was a (no doubt) repeat of their "Eighties Day" video collection. I had it on in the background whilst doing some work. Fascinating and undoubtedly interesting as it was, the selection of tunes deemed to demonstrate the breadth of music available or liked during the eighties was mortifying.

It put me in mind of the old idea I had for a sit-com, around which the muse was - what are old peoples' homes going to be like when we are old? If they are to be relatively similar to now, then the living torture will be of visiting entertainers coming along with amps doing sing-alongs. "Come on everybody! Sing along with me! Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand... hey!"

AAAaargh. I think I'd rather eat my own flesh. As Phil pointed out in the week - will we even remember what bands are, or what songs we liked, at that age? What age are we even talking about. Eighty, ninety, one hundred?

There are two other alternatives, I believe, to the above evilness. One is a dilapidated council run building of row upon row of old people turned regularly, paint and plaster peeling from the walls, all of the old folk sitting with their VR helmets enjoying being a rock star, a film actor, having sex with Britney Spears or just going for a walk, a la Edward G Robinson's ultimate Soylent demise. The smell of damp wouldn't matter so much as these folk disappear in to oblivion hardly caring what happens in the outside world. (Surely ravaged by some awful chemical viruses and world war science fiction scenarios by then).

The other alternative was the basis for the sit-com. A bunch of older friends who probably hadn't seen each other in many years meet at a friend's funeral and realise that one of their friends, a little frail, is being bullied by his/her offspring in to going to a home (either one of the above scenarios will do). They decide to band together, not merely to rescue said old mate from the home (cue bizarre James Bond-at-ninety action sequences) but also to sell their own individual residences and pool all their money to buy a 6 bedroom house and live together, along with various home help types as necessary.

If I think of the kind of people I know who might end up doing that, the role reversal seems to be a good premise for laughs: raucous music played far too loud because you're going deaf; children visiting almost embarrassed by the mayhem whilst grandchildren think it's hilarious and brilliant to have relatively punk grandparents and their mates - and so on.

Andy Riley brought me down to earth with a bump when he said: right, that's the sit - where's the com?
Er... look, don't complicate a great idea, ok??

Personally, I think the idea in itself actually stands up rather well - pooling resources in such a fashion and sharing home help expenses, sharing with people you know you're going to be able to row with or not without major consequence... I can't think of a better way to spend my time when getting to stage of dribbling incontinence. Imagine the self-loathing generated in a home full of people you really don't like much, or being alone.

I met with a very nice woman who works for Help the Aged the other day. She said to me "I've only worked there 6 months and I tell you what, I really don't want to get old - it's bloody terrible".

That's good then.

Aha – what the hell happened there.

It’s Friday a week after my return.

Well, in truth what seems to have happened is that everything has become normal. Sickness? Part of every day life. Not going to the toilet for 2 days then letting loose the Titanic? Pah. Yesterday’s news. So week 9, she says, perilously close to taking things for granted, seems to be coming to a close and week 10, hitherto unknown territory since I haven’t looked it up in my Queen Charlotte’s book yet, will be swiftly upon us.

Week 10. It’s astounding really. I seem to be becoming more fascinated by the length of time this thing will be going on than the actuality in terms of anything like future planning. 10 weeks… 2 weeks more and that will be 3 periods I’ve missed. 3 lots of iron still in my system. 3 waxings and wanings. Only another 6 months to go then and Jaysus, if I know one thing it’s that time is a damned speedy athlete. So it’ll be 5 months at work given the legalities of the thing. That’s really not long. After that – our lives change forever.

In theory.

Getting to that last hurdle strikes me at present with the same sense that I feel some bemusement when flying. Of course I am flying; of course I will get to far-off-destination X. But – for god’s sake, do you expect me to believe that I’m stuck in mid air 35,000 feet up above the surface of the planet on which I live? Are you bonkers? Of course I’m pregnant, of course I’ve got a human being growing inside my belly. I know the facts. What on earth do you mean, I’m going to have a baby? Are you insane? They’re alive! They’re real! They’re not me feeling sick and not being able to eat basil!

Anyway.

I’ll tell you some more things in a little while. But I’ll upload this first in order that Fiona ha something to read in a spare moment.

In flight film musings

Forgot to put this up the other day because I was jet lagged to hell.

"Live Forever" was on as a documentary on the flight back. In fact, so was "Bowling for Columbine" which deserves more discussion but I'll do that on another occasion. I wanted to chat away about the peculiarity of having a lot of the music I like put in to a documentary as if it's ancient history.

So much of it was missed out too, the ommissions were nonsensical. They talked about Spike Island, but what about The Happy Mondays? They were incredibly influential on the whole culture at the time - the north v south thing, the idea of "working class hero" bands - well, scratch that - they were portrayed in the music press as working class yobs who happened to make music. Oasis almost consciously went out of their way to state their working class credentials. (I don't think the Mondays really gave a toss about anything). The crass comment Noel Gallagher makes part way through along the lines of, "Well, I don't want to make a big thing about it but Blur aren't working class are they? They've never done milk rounds or worked on a building site. Therefore my soul is purer" (mostly that's half remembered except for the purer soul line which was so bizarrely memorable). Well Mr Feckin' Noel Gallagher. I've got the apparently besmirched soul of a middle class person and I know what a fucking milk round is like, it's not something to boast of as if it makes you somehow a better person.

At the end of it all, there only really remains a critical judgement as to how good the music is. And Blur, in any review must come across as smarter, more musical, more interesting and even experimental. But I betray my own "south East of England" broughtens up. It seems obvious to me though that Blur and Radiohead said more to me than bands from elsewhere given that they were both Thames Valley bands, singing about things that were common to me as well. What is also curious about Blur, not so much Radiohead is that Damon Albarn always sang in a Thames Valley voice. Even Thom Yorke, bless him, sings in an American twang and Liam Gallagher does a mid-atlantic. I was watching the video to "Song 2" which played after the documentary and was struck by the music, which seemed if anything to be a homage to Nirvana but how Damon Albarn's voice sings over the top in a strangulated London yelp. He ain't never going to be a great singer, that man.

When I was younger, I ran in to a few of these bands either in Manchester or London, sometimes vicariously through my then friend Gina. Blur's first gig at The Boardwalk in Manc was absolutely bloody awful. I'm glad I was working the bar that night, it saved me having paid to see them, they were dire. The next Manchester gig at the Hacienda wasn't much better. Then they went quiet whilst they recorded "Modern Life Is Rubbish" and I saw them again down south at The Old trout in Windsor. Fuck me, they were a different band. Damon Albarn had suddenly found intense charisma and was an exceptional front man. The tiny room-at-the-back-of-a-pub was pogo-ing to a man. Gina was there, I remember, and the band were at that point going through a phase of extreme alcohol consumption due to skintness. Later they'd do coke instead and become awful people to be around. God, I've just had this awful memory of being in the Groucho club one night for some comedy thing, most of Blur being there and one of the women I was in being propositioned by Damon Albarn who said something intensely embarrassing like "I'm the singer from Blur, do you want a shag?". Ummm... no, tell you what, we'll give that one a miss, you twat.

It was only much later that I realised that I'd also seen Oasis's first gig in Manchester. Local bands used to basically do pay-to-play at The Boardwalk on Sundays, and invite record company people as well as their mates and parents. Oasis played one such Sunday when I was on the bar. I have to shrug my shoulders and say - well, I can't remember a bloody thing to be frank! They can't have been that exciting.

I have a hell of alot of very strange memories of Manchester. I want to do something with them one day. Perhaps the thing to do is write them out as memories, see what actually siting down and remembering brings back, and see what can be transferred in to other media or at least story form.

Not least the sheer panic of being chased up and down stairs in Hulme by a gang of men who would not give up, or seeing a gunfight whilst waiting to get in the Kitchen (an illegal club in one of the crescents in Hulme - now long since bulldozed I fucking well hope. They'd knocked 2 flats in to 1, it was just stoner hell to be honest). But very many mad, bad and dangerous other memories too.

Anyway. Sweet to see Phil Daniels looking all young and chipper in the ParkLife video. He's got such a good face, and a voice so distinctively gravelly. He was in the cast of Time Gentlemen Please, as was my beloved. Anyway, what ultimately struck me about this doc was just how fucking good that band were / possibly still are. I mean, the cocksure confidence of the ParkLife album: jesus, no wonder they were arrogant at the time - they knew they had British pop-rock by the testicals. I absolutely refuse to disavow them just because they became popular. Much as I couldn't bear to go and see them for a while, for all the teenage girls throwing knickers at the stage, last time I saw them, when they did all the singles in running order - oh it was a fabulous, joyous romp of a gig.

Jerry Springer - reviews at last!

The Guardian

Google news has the most extraordinary array of worldwide English speaking newspapers who all seem to have sent representatives or put it into their gossip columns.

Hurrah!

In other news: had about 3 hours this morning of not feeling sick, accompanied by cramps on the way in to work. The creeping horror of paranoia engulfed me for the first time properly in a while until I got in to work and checked everything was fine. Now of course I'm feeling extremely nauseous and isn't that lovely.

Here we go again

Back at work.

Sick, sick, sick... and that's not just the feeling in my abdomen.

I didn't do a week update thingy did I. We're now past the start of week 8. Nearly on to week 9. Apparently Week 9 is the peak of nausea after which it begins to subside.

PLEASE LET IT BE TRUE.

Updating this from earlier on - yes, I am still teetering on the yawning chasm that would be sticking my head down the toilet and heaving endlessly for about ten minutes. But, I wanted to point out that the Queen Charlotte Hospital Pregnancy Book rocks. I caught up on the last couple of weeks and what's been happening last night.

Apparently constipation is a result of progesterone - yes, the same progesterone that is relaxing my bladder muscles and making me pee almost enough to invite comparisons with the Pissing Boy statue, is also making my colon relaxed and isn't propelling waste products out of me at the speed it ordinarily would. Bastard! How dare it! Apparently the only answer is to drink more fluid to prevent the fluid being leached out of your shite (how delightful).

I'm now looking at the soup I bought for lunch with increasing trepidation but realise I.Have.To.Eat.