Glimpsesofcolour

Yes, I’ve got another of them coming up.

Monday: morning: appointment with son’s keyworker at school, at start-of-school o’clock which is before I usually get up.
Evening: talking about my book to the attenders of the AGM of the local Christian bookshop.

Tuesday: morning: back to the ear nose and throat hospital, lugging my C-PAP machine, to get it re-fitted and get some advice on getting used to it. Frankly I’m not holding my breath (well actually I am, that’s why I need the machine!), and would really like to see the doctor to talk alternatives.
Evening: Chair the first church business meeting since the summer.

Wednesday: morning: Appointment at a local hospital to get the result of my MRI scan – which I confidently expect to be insignificant.
Afternoon: Appointment at dental hospital in central London to discuss the polyp on my tongue and whether I can have it removed.
Evening: Key Stage 4 information evening at son’s school. Which will probably, as usual, be a lecture from the head on how important it is to get our kids, especially boys, to do their coursework and homework. He should try that with my boy…

Thursday: As far as I know I have no appointments on Thursday. Hooray! Friday I hope to go off on retreat for the weekend – providing I can find time to book it.

Can I get off now please?

Typing notes just now for my talk on depression next Monday (to the AGM of a local Christian bookshop) I started to type an explanation of bipolar disorder, saying that it used to be called ‘manic depression’. To my great amusement I found that I had in fact typed ‘man depression’. Is that something like ‘man flu’? Or is it a form of despondency suffered by single heterosexual women? (and possibly gay men?).

The sun is out, the sky is an almost cloudless, pale blue; it is a perfect day. So, in the course of tidying up my bedroom before the cleaner comes, I went to open the top light of the window a little further to get the fresh air. Whereupon I spotted a perfect, currently uninhabited, spider’s web stretching from the window to the frame. Its erstwhile occupant may never return, but I hadn’t the heart to break it. It might just be wanted… and also it was beautiful.

Latest from Freecycle: someone is offering a ‘6ft extending dogs lead’. I suppose if you happen to have a 6ft extending dog, this could come in useful!

Yes, you guessed, there is nothing worth reporting. I am tired. What’s new?

Now I have a stinking horrible cold, and so I can’t even attempt to use the C-PAP machine. Part of me suspects this is a psychosomatic ploy on my part to avoid using it – but then even I can’t produce psychosomatic germs.

My son’s Citizenship homework is to find out as much as he can about Jean Charles de Menezes. I can’t help feeling it’s rather adding insult to injury, to be shot dead by police when completely innocent, and then to be put on the GCSE syllabus…

Last night I confidently strapped on my mask, set the machine, took my final half a sleeping tablet and settled down to sleep. No such luck. When I hadn’t gone off after an hour, off came the whole caboodle and I settled down to my unsatisfactory sleep – hey, at least it’s sleep, as opposed to no sleep at all. I seriously suspect I need to make a hospital appointment to explore the alternatives, such as they may be.

Then today my morning, in which I was going to do something useful, though I hadn’t yet decided what, went pear-shaped because my former cleaner visited to quote texts at me and exhort me to pray. Bless her, she is a simple soul with simple faith, and you never know, she could be right. After all, the ‘prophecy’ she received that she would get married did come true, though that had as much to do with my recommending a Christian dating site to her as anything.

Anyway, it has been salutary to reflect on what she goes through, living every day with Sturge-Weber Syndrome which has made her half-blind and with half of her face covered with a large port wine stain (yes, I know it seems a bit mad having a partially sighted cleaner, but she used to do a thorough if slow job). My troubles don’t seem so bad in comparison.

Well, I finally made it through a whole night with the monster machine wheezing not-very-warm air into my nasal passages. At least I slept most of the night, though with some lurid dreams about being on a sinking ship. I managed this by dint of earplugs (which almost block out the noise) and half a sleeping pill. I hope to repeat the feat tonight, but as I only have another half sleeping pill left, this may not be the final solution. Hoping that one more night will get me acclimatised enough to manage without the pills, which are in any case addictive so I don’t like to take them very often. Wish me luck.

Walked up the road yesterday afternoon, in what turned out to be very pleasant weather, to another ‘Grösste Fest Aller Zeit’ (biggest festival of all time… not). As part of Heritage Open Days, the Methodist church was having a Victorian day to inform people about the background of the big Victorian house next to the church, which they have recently turned into a community centre. As always with their events, it was beautifully done, with exquisite flower arrangements in the rooms, delicious and cheap cream teas, and the spectacular gardens (including ancient copse) to roam in. There was also Victorian entertainment – songs, poems and monologues (inevitably, we had Albert and the Lion, as well as The Charge of the Light Brigade and Byron’s ‘The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold’).

However what I really wanted to see, and arrived just in time for, was a talk by Maurice Collins, the collector, on Victorian and early 20th Century gadgets and appliances. He had a wealth of wonderful gizmos to show us, and we had to guess what each of them was for. Ones I remember include the Codd bottle for sparkling drinks (from which we get the term ‘codswallop’), the nit comb cleaner which looked like a miniature Bullworker, a ’sanitary hair puffer’, a secret camera hidden in a cosmetic bag, an air-operated candle snuffer and a rotary nail-buffer which was very ingenious and allowed the user to polish both hands at once. There were also various items one can still get today, such as a dynamo torch, and a projector clock (one that projects the time on the ceiling), known for reasons I will leave you to surmise, as a ‘brothel clock’. Often the major difference with today’s doofers is that what was then powered by clockwork or a wind-up handle, is now electrical or electronic.

It was a fascinating and entertaining hour, and if you are in London, I strongly recommend you visit the exhibition of his collection which is currently at the British Library.

Sadly, I was too tired (having tried the mean machine again the night before) to go to the vocal concert I had planned to go to in the evening. Oh well, I’ve got a CD of the group.

Sorry, but I really can’t face writing up the whole saga of my attempts to use a C-PAP machine (one of those mask things that keeps your airways open while you’re asleep). Suffice it to say that I collected it (and was instructed in its use) on Tuesday, tried it Tuesday night but gave up trying to get to sleep at 4.00 am and took it off, tried again for an hour and a half Wednesday night, took it off again and then needed a sleeping tablet because I was so wound up, decided not to try it at all last night (Thursday) because inadequate sleep is better than no sleep at all, and am trying to decide whether to have another go tonight. Quite apart from the sensation of sleeping with a plastic mask on, it also makes a wheezy noise and air escapes in all sorts of unexpected places and keeps me awake by blowing on my arms. I am on the brink of ringing up to make an appointment to take it back – apparently there’s a sort of jaw-displacing gizmo you can get instead, which doesn’t sound too much worse than the ‘bite raiser’ I already wear at night to stop me grinding my teeth.

I could also go on at some length about the iniquities and indignities of public swimming baths, but I don’t want to go there. Indeed I shan’t be going there again – am considering joining a cheaper gym. As for the cognitive behaviour therapy, which started last week, the jury is still out. Do I sound like a grumpy old woman? That is because I am. I also have a sermon to finish, which has far too much material in it and still manages to say not very much.

PS Oh no! I missed my blogiversary! (at least I remembered to have a child…)