...Mum AND Dad.

Wherever they are, I hope they're together and happy again.

...suspicious minds.

I found this photo on the munificent Twitter (via @Reddit, submitted by Biddooo - it depicts Biddooo's niece, presumably the one on the left. The explanation was "They do NOT trust each other").

It is now officially my favouritest thing on the internet ever. The more I look at it, the better it gets.

It just keeps giving and giving. Click to big and see for yourself.

Thanks, Twitter. Thwitter.

...the hospital.

There are better, and worse, places to hang out.

...my niecey.

Actually, so was yesterday.

Yesterday, she cheered me up by buying me a surprise present (see above, and in fact click on the link to be swept, Narnia-style, into David & Goliath's wondrous universe).

"I just HAD to buy it - it's so YOU, Aunty," she said, and she wasn't wrong.

She also cheered me up by taking part in a heptathlon this weekend, because she'd never done one before and thought she'd give it a go.

Today, she is Kent heptathlon champion 2011.

My niecey rocks (AND rules).

(PS: This is a different niece to the one who is a rising ballet star. I have a whole heap of ultra-talented nieces. They are no doubt inspired by their fabulous aunty.)

...Tesco's Guy.

We met in the pub for a catch-up.

He's still as funny, still as quirky, still as disarmingly honest as he always was.

He tried to kiss me at the end of the night, but that was probably just the booze.

...the M4.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

One - you get me home to Cardiff, for a few precious days.

...changes.

Ever since I plucked up the courage to tell Dad he was abnormally wired, magic has been happening.

We are getting along fine now - first time ever. The difference is, simply, I can now tolerate his quirks.

I am glad I found this sense of resolution before it was too late. He is becoming increasingly frail these days.

Yesterday, he asked me to move his bed downstairs into the lounge. I had to move out half a hundredweight of ornaments, extraneous furniture and other such junk to make room for it. It was great. Dad now has a trendy bedsit arrangement going on.

He hasn't mentioned if he considers this to be the beginning of the end.

...casually mentioning to my dad I thought he might have Aspergers Syndrome.

He took it well.

Not.

Thank goodness for beautiful things. This lovely image of Kikazaru, the no-hearing monkey, was found at the splendid netsukeonline.org which has more monkeys than you can shake a stick at, which has got to be good.

...boredom.

Coincidentally, at the moment I am reading this book.


(That's another homemade postcard, by the way.)

...pyjamas.

Stayed in them all day.

Disgraceful.

...A&E

My dad's face swelled up this morning, for no apparent reason.

Then it kept swelling.

We should've been at the ballet.

We went to the hospital instead.

...nice tits.

Blue tits. Great tits. Coal tits. Even a pair of Long Tailed tits.

They all flock to my dad's garden.

I put food out every day.

I love the birds, me.

...stress.

Yesterday was a good day; today was a bad day.

Nuff said.

...B&Q.

Pansies. Chrysanthemums. Michaelmas daisies. Primroses.

It's about time Dad's garden had more flowers and fewer weeds.

...nearly-famous nieces.

Squeeeeeeeeee!

My niece!

On the BBC News website!

(In a good way. She's the lead in Chocolat.)

So chuffed.

...taking it to the garden.

Once there was a shed.

Then there was a rotting wooden structure loosely supporting a cornucopia of tree, ivy, bramble, holly, honeysuckle, old birds' nests and convolvulus.

Now there is a shed again.

It took half a day to cut down the tree - the saw was blunt and rusty. If only I'd had a chainsaw (and some petrol for the bonfire), I could've dealt with all of Dad's long-neglected garden in no time.

(And his house.)

...sanity.

I'm at my dad's for three weeks solid, while my sister is away on holiday.

It hasn't been too bad, so far.

I've been making myself do pleasant things - things that are easy to overlook when you're otherwise engaged chewing on life's gristle.

Going for long walks in the golden evenings and finding kittens to play with. Picking up a sketch pad and a biro for a quick doodle. Sneaking an hour in the garden with a book. Dedicating a night to watching repeats of QI on Dave (I love Johnny Vegas, I think he's beautiful).

In a mad world, pleasant things rock.

...body language.

Even while my head was going 'stop it, you're over-reacting', my feet marched me into my doctor's surgery where my tongue blurted out that I'd just about had a gutsful of my dad.

I'm now on the waiting list to see a counsellor. I need to find out why I keep letting him take over my life.

...postcards.

Last week I signed up for the rather wonderful postcrossing.com, and today I finally found a postcard suitable for my first recipient, two-year-old Hessel from The Netherlands.

I was inspired to join by this article. The subheading's right - it is difficult finding a card with a decent image. In the end I had to go to the gift shop of the National Museum as all the local high street offerings were horrible.

I've struggled with the thorny problem of postcard-buying for most of this year: promising to send Tesco's Guy occasional postcards from Kent, I discovered the offerings on display in Medway tourist outlets were just as horrible as the Welsh ones.

So in the end I made my own.

Hessel, though, will be receiving a postcard of this.

I hope he likes it.

...inner London violence.

Martin Luther King Jr once said, "A riot is, at bottom, the language of the unheard."

He also said, "Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness."

I hate those stupid fucking fuckers.

...being singluated.

We were together for nine brilliant months.

It was great but there was always something missing. Every time I tried to get closer to him emotionally he would freeze up, visibly uncomfortable. We were so good together in every other way I tried to ignore it.

Then, in a bad mood about something else, I couldn't ignore it any more, and asked a question I already knew the answer to.

...sadness

No matter how much I try to focus on the benefits, spending time at my dad's really gets me down.

I feel like the life is being sucked out of me.

...slugs.

In the early hours of this morning, I remembered I'd forgotten to put my saucepan of soup in the fridge.

So I went downstairs to the kitchen.

Barefoot.

(You know where this is going, right?)

By the cooker, I stepped on something wet and very, very squishy.

I can't bring myself to describe what I saw when I looked down, and despite scrubbing my foot repeatedly with soap and very hot water the 'exploding slug' sensation didn't go away.

I scraped it up with an over-large handful of tissues and threw it in the bin.

Then this lunchtime, I found another one of the buggers carving an identical course across the kitchen floor.

I don't know if it was the same one but it was very unexploded.

Do slugs self-repair, like Terminators?

I removed it to the garden with a dustpan.



(If you would like to watch a video of a slug chewing off its own penis then please do visit Brooke's website. It is where I nicked the above pic from and it is fascinating, and vaguely yet disturbingly kinky.)

...soup.

Home-made leek and potato.

Yum.

(No Clangers were harmed in the making of this pottage.)

...close encounters of the bird kind.

With a pair of secateurs in my hand, I am mighty.

Overgrown gardens quake in my presence. Brambles scream and run away.

This afternoon, while I was brutalising a privet, a robin came and sat with me among the branches.

It studied me inscrutably from less than an arm's length away.

It serendaded me softly as I continued to prune.

Later, when I'd cleared the ivy and dead leaves and pine needles out from under the bush, it hopped down to inspect my work.

It approved. It found a juicy centipede, and held it up for me to admire.

[This beautiful image was found here at FreeMages]

...spring.

It's no longer just around the corner.

It's bloody well here!

...pining.

Damn you, oxytocin.

I can't wait to get back to Cardiff tomorrow and it's all your fault.

...old friends.

I was expecting to find my Beatles singles in the red singles case I retrieved from the loft.

Instead, I found some very old friends.

May I introduce Oliver Squeak and Little Ted?

It surprised me how thrilled I was to see them again.

(I wonder if they know where my Beatles singles are?)

...cataloguing.

I'm at my Dad's.

It's the end of the day.

I've fed him. I've done his laundry. I've showed him how to send emails (again). I've stacked the dishwasher. I've put the rubbish out. I've listened to his Daily Mail stories. I've made sure he's taken his pills and that he's happy in front of the telly.

Which means it is the perfect time to fetch my old records down from the attic, retire to my room, and enter them all on a spreadsheet.

Ooooh yeah.

...rain.

I wasn't singing.