Wanna die!

Day 14

Urgh!

Have got some horrible bug.

Throat is a war zone, ears under attack, skin a minefield, head about to explode.

Shit.

Dream houses

Day 13

Last night I dreamt about a house. This is the least unusual statement I could make, because I dream every night and always have, often about houses. Each morning, before I rise, I replay my last dream fragments to myself, securing my memory of them - failure to do so leaves me feeling strangely dissconnected all day, with the sense of missing something important about myself, that is nudging at the back of my mind, always just out of reach. I don't much care for this experience, so when I dream, I pay attention. Oddly, just before I sleep, as my head hits the pillow, the previous night's dream fragment will come back to me then, every time.

When my hormones were more imbalanced than they are now, I used to have horrible nightmares on a regular basis. My husband got so used to me waking up in tears he learnt that reassurance needed to come before tea. Once when I had dreamt that he had left me and didn't love me anymore (good old abandonment issues, la la), he didn't even ask what was wrong, and just leant across saying "I won't and I do". Fabulous! Now, luckily, I am much more likely to dream about houses.

At night, I live in a succession of wonderful, interesting, glorious houses, with lots of rooms and swimming pools, and amazing views, all sun-drenched and colourful and enriching. Sometimes when I wake and it's cold and drizzly and dark, I can feel a bit deflated. I live in a lovely house, mind you, in a beautiful city, with terrific neighbours, so I'm not complaining. But the feelings that I have in my dream houses are the best bit - I am always safe and happy and comfortable and fully alive. As I build My New Life I am mindful of this. The space I want to create for myself is one where this is how I feel, as a natural consequence.

I like to interpret very powerful or recurring dreams as I think they are a great way for our subconscious to communicate with us. I believe my house dreams symbolise the possible futures that I have - all those unused rooms, and beautiful spaces are my unexplored talents and my unrealised potential. I am being told in a lovely and graphic way, that there is more to me (as there is to all of us) than I have let myself be so far. I am being encouraged to spread my wings, to stretch further than I am used to, to dare to be more.

Last night's dream was different though - the house was oppressive and distracting, and I felt tired and frazzled there. Upon waking I immediately asked myself "what was all that about?" and received a surprising swift answer - 'set your house in order'. So today I have done just that - I have worked on my book and completed the drawing for the 'blue' picture, even though I had a thumping headache again (life does like to test us). I did not allow myself to be too distracted, or to prevaricate, or to let my illness dictate the terms of my day. I hung out my flag, set out my stall or set my house in order - call it what you will. Today IS My New Life, and - wherever it leads me - I have to just get on with it.

Tomorrow I will paint in the 'blue' picture. For once I feel able to say this without adding "if I feel well enough". Tomorrow I will do it. Yes.

How to handle a headache

Day 11

Yesterday was a bit of a write-off. Went to bed the previous night with a headache, woke up with a headache, kept headache all day, stayed on sofa. That's the shorthand version. The longhand one includes various attempts at pain-killers, which only added on a groggy dizziness, fierce, burning nausea, and a constant hangover feeling whilst barely reducing the headache. Still feel a bit side-swiped from it today.

So, I ask myself, why am I manifesting such debilitating conditions? How does this fit with My New Life? Am I unconsciously finding ways to stay in the old one? When will I start creating myself as the healthy person I have described in my Inspiration Book? Searching questions that deserve honest answers, so here goes.

Did I feel 'let off the hook' yesterday? - No, I don't think so.
Did I feel frustrated at not being able to get on with things? - Yes, to some degree.
Did I feel guilty or a failure for being so firmly immobilised in my old, ill life? - Well, the thought tried to come up from time to time, but I pronounced it rubbish once I recognised it.
Did I let it get me down? - No. Not this time.

What was different this time? - Well, I really tried to refute negative thinking every time it presented itself - not easy when your head is that woolly and painful, but not impossible either. I kept remembering the pictures in my Inspiration Book and focusing on them. I repeatedly tried to evoke feelings of gratitude for the things I already have, like my husband bringing me anything he thought would help, and leaving me alone at all the right times, or for my guinea pig Barry, who let me cuddle her for ever so long and held in her pee the whole time. I focused on being in the moment and happy, whatever my situation, and not let the pain cloud my thinking or decide my state. I gave myself permission to be where I was without guilt ("you should have looked after yourself properly") or self-pity ("your life is shit") or predictions ("things will never get any better") or just plain stupidity ("you're a burden to your family").

Truths can be hard to hold on to in times of stress - physical, mental or emotional, but truths there are, nonetheless. Spending the whole day with a headache does not mean that My New Life is out of my reach. In fact, spending one whole day re-focusing and fighting negative thought patterns is damn good practice and time well spent, even if it did feel shitty to go through. My New Life can sometimes seem to be about things I want to tick off a list - concrete, visible, actionable markers. But to be successful, it needs to be about more than that. It has to be about HOW I do things, and where I am coming from when I do them, as much - if not more than - the things themselves.

So maybe it wasn't the write-off I first thought it, and what looked like immobility, or even a step backwards, was the exact opposite - a step in the right direction and a signpost for the future. I sincerely hope impatience doesn't stop me from taking the time I need to move forward consciously, and with grace. I need to be able to walk before I can run, and that is important because in My New Life, I fully intend to run.

Hard work, happy car

Day 9

When I got in from Book Group last night, Steve - who rarely asks me for anything - requested a favour. Would I clean and polish my car today, with his help. The state of it is obviously bothering him, so even though I'd rather stick pins in my eyes, (cleaning cars is rather on par with the ironing in my book), I said yes,of course. He said "we'll do it together, and chat and play music - it will be fun", which is the spiel I always give my children when I'm trying to coerce them, so I knew I was beaten.

In the days before I had nerve damage in my feet and could wear high heels and nice shoes, I had a small collection of them that I looked after beautifully. Like my clothes, (which never had a dragging hem or a loose button,) they were always perfectly polished - any scrapes in the heels filled in, re-heeled the second they needed it, and stored with fitted wedges of tissue paper inside. I suspect men often think about cars the way women think about shoes. For me a car is just a way to travel from A to B without getting your shoes dirty.

Before I had a car (coming to driving very late in life, as I did), I thought I would take proper care of it - the inside would be immaculate, and not an embarrassment to offer someone a lift in and it definitely would not smell. There would be toys for the children and tissues for the adults in proper containers hanging from the backs of the seats. NONE of these things have come to pass. If I want a tissue I ferret under the mound of parking slips in the side pocket, until I find the one I last used to clean the window. I only take it through car wash when I absolutely have to, and I get my son to clean the inside of the windows so I can see out, by offering a small cash reward whenever he has run out of fags, (filthy habit - he deserves whatever he gets). Thank Heavens my self-esteem is not tied up in how well I look after my car, or what other people think when they have to get in it.

All of this, of course, offends my husbands 'car' sensitivities, and baffles him as well. To be frank his is not a huge, great deal better, but I recognise he has a very different love for whatever he is driving than I will ever experience. This is one of those lovely differences between most men and most women, (though obviously not all - I'm not that stupid).

I grew up in the seventies, where women were madly burning their bras to show there was no difference at all between them and men. Thank God they did because otherwise we still wouldn't have equal pay and equal rights. But being equal does not necessarily mean being the same, and I say "Hurrah" for the differences. Two year old girls will form fifteen-word sentences with the correct syntax, while two year old boys will disembowel your video and head-butt the wall. Teenage girls will giggle a lot and over-analyse everything, while teenage boys will grunt, whack each other over the head, and get on with it. We often like shoes and beautiful love-story movies more than men, and they frequently like football and car chases more then we do. Phrases like 'chick flick and 'boy toy' are not a coincidence. Ever was it thus, I suspect, as our genetic conditioning wires women for wide-ranging multi-tasking social skills, and men for highly focused, non-distractable hunting.

So I'm really glad my husband likes cars, and knows about computers and other stuff with plugs on, because then I don't have to. If the price I pay to keep him happy is to clean my car once in a very blue moon, then that's fine with me.

So I'd better go and do it then.

Lazy days

Day 8

Today I am being a cultured individual (which fits nicely with My New Life), but is another way of saying that today I am pootling about, doing nice things. We should all have days like this - they are life-affirming. So already I have visited four art galleys with my friend Diane. She and I have just finished the same art course and are now adrift, trying to find a way to progress our work, and make it something that provides an income. I am putting that off for a while in favour of finishing my kid's book, which I'd already put off to do the art course (are we noticing a pattern here?).

Tonight I am joining a book club for the first time. I feel that this makes me a modern, renaissance woman and am looking forward to an evening of intelligent dissection and female sisterhood. If it turns into a drunken riot of gossip and giggling, so much the better. This would be post-modern, obviously.

The book we are discussing is 'The elegance of the hedgehog' by Muriel Barbery, and I loved every word of it. I find words, in and of themselves, such a joy. Words like Ephemera, Plasticity, Crumpet and Herbacaeous are quite fabulous. I'm more inclined to Weep than to Cry, to Saunter than to Walk, or to Desire than Want. The particularly lovely thing about this book is that is has been written beautifully, twice! Once in the original French, then again as a work in it's own right as the translation. Hats off to you, Alison Anderson, for keeping the poetry of the prose as important as the weaving of the story.

In My New Life, I will find more books that move me as much as this did, which I will read aloud to my family, as I once used to do. Reading can be such a solitary activity, but I find if something really resonnates for me, I always want to share it. When I read Terry Pratchett, I spend half the time giggling hysterically on the sofa, and the other half chasing people around the house saying "listen to this bit, it's brilliant...". When one shares ones joys in life, we are really sharing ourselves, allowing others to know us, to see into our hearts, to know what moves us, ignites us, inspires us. I love this - in My New Life, I resolve to share more.

Hellish hormones and the God factor

Day 7

The thing about hormones is that they're like computer viruses - on the outside, everything looks ok, then you try and do something and it all goes belly up. After nineteen years of gradually gettting mine back into line, the menopause has hit, and proved the existance of God - He is definately a man, who has been dumped, and has a vengeful sense of humour. No other way to explain it.

Sad fact number 1 - Chocolate does not always get you through, despite what it says in the movies. Though it is quite nice to be given some after you've had to apologise for yet another un-deserved outburst, and it's still only ten o,clock in the morning.

Sad fact number 2 - It isn't everybody elses fault either. Even though they are driving you up the wall (and somehow they wait to pick this day to do it), they are not causing the way you feel, they are only adding that 'final straw'. Not their fault.

Sad fact number 3 -My mother did not know this - everything was our fault, and in the days before Post Natal Depression was known about, and PMS years away from being discovered, she had only her feelings to go on.

Sad fact number 4 - Feelings are not always that accurate at this time because, as I said, wobbly hormone levels = human computer virus.

Check it out - you wake up feeling rotten and nobody has done anything yet, then the cat pukes in your shoes and world war three breaks out in your head. My advice - wait a few days and if you still think everything in your life is a disaster and everyone you know an insensitive moron, then your feelings are probably worth listening to. If not, try to cut them some slack on the bad days.

My mother was not a bad person, but she wasn't a good one either. She spent her time as a wife and mother raging at the world for all the terrible injustices it (by which I mean us) was heaping upon her. She never thought to apologise. She never tried to undo the damage that she did. Her own sense of self-worth was so buried and destroyed that self-blame was unconsionable to her. She could never allow herself to take responsibility for her actions as it would have been too much, so everything was our fault, constantly. Even bad weather, apparently.

I remember she used to say "When you're grown up and have kids, they'll do to you what you've done to me, and when you come to me for help I'm going to laugh in your face". I used to think "you're the last person I'd go to", but one never answered my mum back, so I just internalised my feelings into stupid thoughts about my own lack of worth instead. It's what kids do.

Roll forward many years and I have some understanding now of the turmoil she must have gone through. I still can't condone her actions, nor do I believe I should, but I can empathise with her condition. I hope I've done a little better than she did. I hope my children manage to do better than I. My husband has had to tolerate several hours of my roller-coaster emotions to day and he's gone to do the grocery shopping while I write this. I apologised again before he left. He will probably bring me back chocolate, even though I didn't ask, and we are budgeting carefully. When he asked me this morning what was wrong I shook my head to indicate 'nothing'. "It just is", I said.

A big, fat moan about Hormones

Day 6

All I did was have a baby - a beautiful little (well big, actually) bundle of noise and puke - and my body went absolutely crazy. So did my mind, for that matter. They call it Post Natal Depression when it should be entitled a 'life-destroying, marriage wrecking journey, into a hell you never knew existed'. I'm not exaggerating, truly. The words 'hormone' and 'balance' got a bitter divorce and moved as far away from each other as possible. For the first year the NHS tend to offer anti-depressents and the looney ward at the hospital, which (surprisingly) doesn't help everybody, then - if you don't recover - they really don't know quite what to do. So then you enter a new profession called being a Guinea Pig.

In this new role, you should be prepared to travel - from one cure-promising expert to the other, and have a flexible attitude towards possible treatments, because you will be expected to try out a great many. You should develop good editing skills about your symptoms as no expert wants to hear the whole story, only what pertains to their specialist field. And while all of them are well-meaning and wanting to help you, their disappointment when they fail to will leave you with the guilty feelings, not them.

Your partner will be bombarded with newspaper articles about miracle cures, and pressure from friends whose wives had something absolutely the same, guaranteed, and they took a pill or had an injection, and it went away. So you will go along with it all, for the sake of your marriage, your children, the life you once knew, and the desparation you feel in the wee, small hours that is becoming overwhelming, (even though you know in your inner being, that what you need is a more holistic alternative). But you're a one-income family now and the NHS is what you can afford.

Roll forward many years and to some extent, you are still paying the price for all that messing around with your body. I've now had some kind of nerve damage in my feet (or a problem in the pain recognition centre of my brain - nobody knows) for about sixteen years, and walking is difficult but standing is worse - I can manage about ten minutes before the pain really kicks in. So when I say that the 'useful thing' I chose to do yesterday was TO STAND UP for over TWO HOURS and do THE IRONING - well .... I think you get what an achievement this is, especially when you consider what I think about ironing. So today, I am a hero to myself, which is nice.

The 'fun thing' I chose, was to play with my karaoke until 12.45 in the morning - all the oldies and lots of Karen Carpenter and Billy Joel. Bliss. I used to be able to sing quite well, once upon a time, but if you don't sing, the muscles don't get exercised and then, one day you try and you've turned into a croaky old bag who can't stay in tune. Which is perfect for karaoke so happy endings all round.

Will commit to finishing my lovely Inspiratioon Book today, but other than that, I'll see how it goes. When Insomnia visits she likes to make sure you get your money's worth, and stays a few days at the least, so am feeling on the ropey side. The trick today will be to turn negative moods and thoughts into positive ones, so I am not a drag to my family and to myself. I will count my blessings as often as I can - it may be an old cliche, but I find gratitude humbling and uplifting. I may be tired and hormonal, but that is small potatoes, as they say, in the grand scheme of things. (Am noticing that I am beginning to ramble on in an increasing number of old sayings and platitudes, so will stop now before I burst into a rousing chorus of "Always look on the bright side of life").

All the reasons why

Day 5

Why am I writing a blog? This is a forum for people who are doing marvelous things and have stunningly interesting lives (which I clearly do not), or who live in remote places, or are famous and fabulous and witty and wonderful, none of which applies to me outside of my own head. For some of us, isn't it just a diary that we are so up ourselves we think other people will be desperate to read? Well yes, a little bit. But I realised that for me it is also a question of accountability. Let me explain.

I have just spent two years at college where, however ill I was, the tutors still expected results from me. I had to produce the work in order to pass. I had to push through, so I did. Sometimes it was a delight and a doddle, but most of the time it was heavy going, and I've spent most of the last three months just recovering. College was wonderful, life-affirming and worth it, but now I feel a bit rudderless and limp. EVERYTHING can be put off 'till tomorrow if I feel really rough (see the fate of the ironing), and I no longer have deadlines to work to that aren't set by me and therefore, on the flexible side. But a blog means I am putting my intentions outside of my own little world, and though nobody is actually looking, it's possible that they might. And I don't want to look a fool in front of too many imaginary people by getting absolutely nowhere, and wimping out of creating My New Life.
So there it is - accountability. A way to keep myself more on track. And nobody ever has to read this, there just has to exist the possibility that they might. Isn't technology a wonderful thing?

Woke up feeling very leaden though, so will make RESOLUTION NUMBER 5 to counteract this. Today I will do one fun thing and one useful, practical thing. I will not just slob out with the Sunday rag. I will push through. I will go one step further than I feel capable of at this point, and that will be one step down the road of My New Life. Could do with a cheerleading squad in a box somewhere chanting "Go Be-ev, Go Be-ev!" for me to open when needed. Will make do with an imaginary one (like my imaginary reader, only louder).

My New Life begins

Day 1

I have chosen today – it starts here. My New Life. The old one was taking me nowhere, which for a long time was the direction I was quite happy to go. It’s not that I feel ready – I most assuredly don’t – but that I have waited long enough. My New Life should contain health, success and happiness, by which you can conclude that I feel ill, unsuccessful and bored. “Don’t we all, sometimes!” I hear you ask, and you’d be right, but with nineteen years of chronic physical and mental ill-health behind me, ‘ill, unsuccessful and bored’ was the definition of the good days. Desperate, suicidal and exhausted to the point of immobility were the usual characteristics. But now, as they say, I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, and so today I start My New Life.

Those who can, do, those who can’t, teach, and those who lay on the sofa all day like I do, make lists.

Practical To Do List

• Make a shopping list and buy food. It’s got to be healthy because when you’re in my position food is one of the few things you can really enjoy, and this is not the time to drop standards. It also has to be cheap because we are on the dole. I can manage the planning and the shopping, but when it comes to the cooking I often don’t have the energy to move – so RESOLUTION NUMBER 1 is to cook what I have planned.
• Clean out the Guinea Pigs. Barry, Roger and Sandra need this and the compost heap (which is actually a festering, fly-infested, slimy mass) needs it too. I have a completely unfounded belief that the muck accruing in the compost bin will become fulsome, dark, rich, nutrient-releasing mulch by the time it is full, just because I am being good and eco-friendly and filling it up rather than adding another black plastic sack to a landfill. Every time I lift the lid the evidence would suggest that I am creating something that men in orange boiler suits and masks will have to remove. RESOLUTION NUMBER 2 is to carry on regardless and live in happy, smug denial about this.
• Do the ironing and finish the laundry bits that Steve always leaves unfinished (which are always mine). I quite like the washing because machines do it for you and all you have to do is press the odd button and refrain from kicking it when you press the wrong one. Ironing on the other hand – what a waste of my life that is. An iron is not a machine that does it for you, it is one of those gadgets that fool us into thinking they make our life easier. I shall watch ‘The Wire’ while I iron – the TV is a machine that genuinely makes your life easier AND you only have to press a button.
• I need to do one thing today that is about creating My New Life to be healthy, successful and happy. Where do I start? I shall clear my desk ready to re-paint the blue picture of ‘I am Red’, the children’s book I am conceiving. This is of course, intended to be a worldwide hit, translated into fifty languages and a staple of every infant and nursery school in the known world, but it can’t be any of those things if I don’t actually finish it. So……… this is the big one – RESOLUTION NUMBER 3 ………(deep breath) ……… is to finish the book by Christmas.
• Oh my God.

Day 2

What a brilliant day. I have just finished RESOLUTION NUMBER 2 and the Munchkins are in a clean cage. I just love my guinea Pigs as they are grandchildren substitutes and I am one of those people who were born broody.

It started when I was four and my sister was brought home, just one day old - my mother on a stretcher having discharged herself early, holding the tiny bundle with the livid red forceps marks still keen on her neck. My sister Caron stole my heart completely, and I sat on the top stair desperately seeking every opportunity to sneak into the room to gaze at her. Constantly chased out by the midwife who wanted mother and ‘baby’ to rest, I remember a seething resentment and hatred of the woman, and an even more dogged determination to get in to be beside MY BABY. I always thought of her that way – she was mine – and when nineteen years later I had my first real child, my lovely son Joe, I knew the feelings coursing through my soul were just a re-run of that first, initial bursting forth of pure, maternal love.

And so now, Fidget the cat, Barry and Sandra, my guinea girls, and Roger, my handsome but impotent (neutered) guinea fella, fill the gap.

I also managed to construct the food list and to clear my desk. Needless to say, the ironing went untouched – big surprise. I might force myself to do that tomorrow as a way to get out of cleaning the bathrooms or hoovering the stairs, which are almost as bad but you don’t get to watch ‘The Wire’ whilst doing them.

I am surprised at how much I prevaricated about cleaning my desk. There is definite trepidation about setting out on a new work course. A clear desk means I have no excuses, and though I am not a lazy person, I do currently have chronic fatigue syndrome among other things, and so commitment is something I have learnt to have rather a flexible attitude about, in order not to be crushed by a constant sense of failure. Before I was ill I could decide I wanted to do something and then I would just do it. Since I became ill, I’ve been lucky if I can manage two things I said I’d do per year. Not a great record. And so I find myself a little paralysed with the anticipation of taking on something that needs to be followed through, and even baby steps are loaded with import. But this is My New Life, and so I must find ways around this if I am to succeed in creating something different from the last nineteen.

It is, however, a brilliant day and this is because I am on my own in the house at last. Sam is at college and Steve, my other half, has started his psycho-babbler course today. It’s only one day a week, but, OH, I feel free. I got so excited when I awoke that I immediately tried to squash it with feelings of guilt about looking forward to Steve not being there but it just wouldn’t work. It’s not about Steve – it’s about being alone – about having my own space.

As a child I was a latchkey kid. My mum was a teacher at a school further away, so my brother and I would meander home any way we chose from our respective schools, playing with friends in the back alleys and walking them to their houses first. Sometimes going in to see their pet rabbits or ferrets, and playing on the swings, before trotting up the side alley to the house and letting ourselves in through the back door. The silence of the house was calm and safe. I would make myself toast, trying not to singe all the hairs of the back of my hand as I lit the grill. I remember being very frightened of that but the toast was worth it. And then it was all MY TIME. When mum came home later, in a cloud of exhausted recrimination and blame, the yelling would start and the peace and calm scurried away until the next day. So yes, I like a quiet, empty house – it is a treasure to be savoured.

I believe that what you can visualise, you can create, and I am nothing if not a very visual person. I am going to my lovely clean desk to make an inspiration book, filled with pictures of all the things that are going to characterise My New Life. I can look at it every day to keep myself on track, and add to it if my direction changes. Is this more prevarication? No, I don’t think so, actually – I think we should all take stock from time to time, and I find it easier to be specific if I have something concrete that I can see in front of me, rather than an easily forgotten wish list at the back of my mind. So, RESOLUTION NUMBER 4, is to compile an inspiration scrap-book.

Day 3

What a wash out. The annoying thing about Chronic Fatigue is the friends it likes to have around for company sometimes. That brittle bitch Insomnia turned up last night, knocking on my door after three and a half hours sleep and only leaving at seven thirty so I could doze for half an hour before Steve got up. Hauled myself around the house in an aching, spaced-out daze, unable to do anything very much and just nodding vacant agreements to anything Steve said. Lovely man had the sense to buy me cheer-you-up orange lollies. I ate two, straight off.

We have friends of our own that pay us surprise visits – Serendipity dropped in yesterday. When Steve signed up for his Psychobabbler course six months ago, he had no idea how he was going to fit this in around work, as it would mean having to take off every Thursday. He just knew that somehow he would find a way, and that he had put off doing this for far too long. He’d supported me doing my Art course for two years, and now it was his time. At 58 he couldn’t put off changing his life forever, not with his heart condition and all. So, with no current job, and the knowledge that contracts for three/four days a week are more than slim on the ground, he put his faith in the Universe To Provide, and tootled along to his first day. All was going along nicely, lots of sitting on floor cushions sharing and doing bonding exercises, when the centre manager called him aside and told him he had no place reserved as he hadn’t paid. Well he had, of course, and he had to show them on their own computer before they accepted it. This still left a problem as he was one too many people, so they offered him a place on another course, same thing, slightly further away, but on a SATURDAY!!! Brilliant! Perfect! Now he can apply for a much wider range of jobs with no restrictions and no drop in salary. Yeehar!

Day 4

Life is so much nicer when you’ve had some sleep. RESOLUTION NUMBER 4, the inspiration scrapbook is coming along nicely. I am writing “Thank You in Advance For..” on all the pages, because the best way to get the Universe To Provide is to visualise yourself as already receiving and beam with gratitude. That old song ‘Don’t worry, be happy’ is truer than you think. I might even get to the ironing today.

The pages I have completed in my scrapbook feature the clothes I want to get. As a child I had play clothes for everyday wear, and clothes ‘for best’ that you wore to Sunday School and such like. The play clothes were practical, always second-hand, and therefore, never chosen with me in mind. They were hand-me-downs from my numerous and lovely cousins, or job lots gleaned from jumble sales. I still love charity shops and vintage clothes to this day - I am less familiar, however, with the concept of going out and buying new things that suit me and fit me and don’t need altering or upgrading in some way. My wardrobe resembles a nest built in a hurry with anything that came to hand. In My New Life, I aim to be closer to the Bower Bird than the Cuckoo (who doesn’t build a nest at all), and choose beautiful, colourful, gorgeous clothes, with exquisite taste and forethought. I will have garments that suit me and fit me and go with other things in my wardrobe, and make getting dressed in the mornings when Insomnia has visited, and her mate Fibromyalgia has punched me in the back and all down my legs, a treat and a pleasure.

Of course, we need an income first.