Calm down, dear ...

No real need to cover your ears and blush today, people, as the Swearing Queen of Godalming is (relatively) under control. Or - which may be more likely - too drained to shout. Thank goodness for calming pills, eh. Anyway, you'll be pleased to hear that I finally got the all-important operation code last night due to a combination of (a) my very talented and totally lovely sister-in-law-to-be Googling it for me (thank you, Sue - I was way too stressed to think of that, doh!); (b) the Clinic finally ringing me up with a list of possible codes; and (c) the Consultant (well, gosh, I must indeed have sounded desperate ...) herself ringing me up and suggesting that I didn't have to have either the D&C or the ablation, and could in fact just have the Laporoscopy and the Hysteroscopy, but she'd discuss it more with me next week. Lordy, but it's getting more complicated by the minute (not least due to her rather snippety comments about my nice GP's "interference" - then again, dear, at least he's had the decency to read my medical notes, and no-one else round here has). Anyway, I'm keeping calm (deeeeep breaths and humming ...) and I'm not going to think about it till next Thursday. I'm fully convinced I'll opt for just the 2 operations however. Let's minimise the fiddling around is what I say.

Mind you, Lord H was lovely when he arrived back from work to my tale of woe and pain last night. He said I should have rung him - actually I did try a couple of times but was too stressed out to speak so didn't complete the call. Lord H's response was I should have rung anyway and I didn't have to speak - he would have known it was me by the wild and desperate sobbing. What a hero, eh! And, no doubt, just one of the many things Today's Company Secretary has to deal with in a normal day, ho ho. It does however take us back to the days when we first started going out together in our 20s, a decade when I spent most of my time in emotional melt-down bewailing my fate. Ah, same old, same old then. He probably thinks all wives are supposed to be Basket Cases ...

Anyway, inspired by angst and misery, I have come up with my first poem for a while, so hell there's always a silver lining. Somewhere.

My fictional life

I’m planning a fictional life.
It’ll be much better
than the one I have.

In it, I’ll always be calm
and kind and blonde,
with teeth I don’t have to struggle with.

Everything I do
will turn out well
and I won’t have to spend

countless hours trying
to make things happen,
sending messages to people

who never respond, waiting
on the phone
for the canned Mozart

to end, repeating information
that no-one listened to
when I said it first –

– or second –, being invisible
to waitresses or at bars, grunting
at a too jolly dentist, or chewing

the carpet and spitting.
Yes, I’m planning a calm,
kind, blonde fictional life.

I highly recommend it.


Oh, and another good thing has come out of yesterday: one of my transatlantic blog readers, Dale Estey, was very chuffed to learn the phrase "arsed off" and will now apparently be using it on a regular basis. Happy to help, Dale - and thank you for letting me know!

Meanwhile, today has been astonishingly calm. I slept late, had a lovely long bath and didn't actually get dressed until midday. Lordy but I needed that, I can tell you. I then drove to Sainsbury's in Godalming to get the essential chicken-and-lemon wrap, without which my Fridays are shot to pieces, and was just walking up to the shop when this charming lady-of-a-certain-age accosted me in the politest manner possible and asked me where her car might be. She was so terribly sweet and nice that I decided against running away, screaming "you are a mad woman - please don't hurt me", and instead spent several actually rather life-affirming minutes making sure her loaded trolley didn't escape and seeing if she recognised any of the vehicles. We worked out between us that it was probably a beige-coloured Citroen and then - ye gods and put out the bunting! - we even found it, hurrah! Weirdly, it was the most normal conversation I've had with a real-live person all week. I didn't know you could still have those kind of chats these days. So thank you for that, Jeannie (and nice to know you've got a sister called Anne too ...)!

Also astonishingly, I've finished the scene in Hallsfoot's Battle that was one of the many things I was struggling with yesterday, and am on to one I might even understand more. So it's now at the grand total of 42,000 words and I have an inkling of a plan for the next page. Now, there's a novelty for sure.

I've finished reading Douglas Houston's poetry collection, The Welsh Book of the Dead. Some great poetry in there, and I thoroughly enjoyed a larger proportion of poems out of the whole than I usually do. Much larger indeed. Most of all, I was blown away by the villanelles and their delightfully humane precision. Anyone who can do more than one villanelle that's worth reading is highly rated in my book. I've only done two in my poetic lifetime, and one of them is a bit dodgy. Houston's a veritable Villanelle Master. Definitely recommended and I shall be looking out for more of his stuff.

Today's nice things (ye gods, it's back!):
1. People's kindness - much appreciated, I can tell you
2. Lord H
3. Poetry
4. Baths
5. The mad - but charming - car woman
6. Writing
7. Houston's villanelle expertise.

Anne Brooke
Anne's website