THE IRON MAN

London-sister visited today with my little niece.

I decided to use the time to make her a CD single for her birthday, with two recordings from 1994 - 'Junk' b/w 'Touching The Sun'. In the end I decided this was a daft & vain idea, they are lo-fi demos and my musicianship had yet to flower - but they are quite special songs to me (I have uploaded them to http://www.reverbnation.com/thecelebratedmrk if you would like to hear them)

I spent a long time equalising 'Touching The Sun', the pertinence of the lyrics that ended up echoing round my head amused me -

'Is it Winter or is it Spring? I don't know, no-one tells me anything,

Someone sighing, in my arms, it's too cold to remember anything' 

Touching The Sun

I aborted the CD-single idea and had a little sleep. Later on London-sister rang to say that when she had arrived today the iron was plugged in next to the TV for no good reason. When I go away I already hide the iron, but I'm going to have to start being its master full-time. She generally unplugs it if she leaves it for a second (any irritation caused by her fondness for unplugging everything is vastly outweighed by the safety benefits), but in this instance she was probably just trying to change channels or something and her wires got severely crossed.

Actually, I think we might have three irons if I scout about the house - I will establish which is the best and put the spares in the garage. Mum can still iron - when we can find the ironing board. It was missing for over a week until it turned up this morning - she had hidden it under her bed.

The past few days have been very pleasant - I went to London on Saturday afternoon (Mum missed her medication due to miscommunication, first time in ages) for a break, and came back Sunday afternoon.

OUT OF ONE NIGHTMARE AND INTO ANOTHER AND AN OTHER AND OUT

If I needed more evidence that I now need to be here and awake in the morning this was it, being the first time that I hadn't woken up in ages (I went to bed and to sleep early, but was plagued by terrible recurring nightmares, meaning that I didn't get any unbroken sleep until 6am). It is also, sadly, a sign of her close we might actually be to the point where she can't be left alone at all.


Mum didn't wake me until eleven and was very flustered. I had checked that there was money in her bag before bed (£15 left over from yesterday, no sign of the wallet) but this was now gone. I gave her the last ten pounds from her stash and we drew up the list and she left the house - however, she didn't let the door close, instead checking her bag one last time just outside the front door with the door sitting on the latch.


I could see this from where I was sitting on the sofa, so got up to check, and met her on the way back in. She told me there was no money, so we put the bag on the side in the kitchen to check - I was surprised to find there was now no money in the bag, neither the £10 from today or the £15 from yesterday.


We got everything out of the front pocket to double check - there was no sign of today's £10, but yesterday's £15 was there all along, wrapped thickly and tightly in used (for nose-blowing) toilet paper. When the wallet is missing (I should be looking for it now really, but legs feel like jelly) she has wrapped the money in the list before, but wrapping it in tolilet paper is one step closer to being lost.


What was worse was that she simply wouldn't let me take the money out of the toilet paper at all. We wrote £10 on it, but this could mean anything, I hope she finds it (I should have gone with her, but like I say my legs feel like jelly).


12.40pm
Mum got there and back in record time, with all the shopping. It doesn't seem possible - I wonder if she got a lift one way? I just sat down to write the previous sentence and local sister has arrived. I'd better go and say hello.


12.50pm
Mum sat down on the sofa to drink tea and I used the time to look manically for the wallet, money and advent calandar without getting Mum involved (she can't remember what she's looking for, but once involved in a search sometimes can't forget that she is looking for something, even when the thing is found. which can make her restless and more things can get lost as she moves them round in the process)


I found £10 and the advent calandar, but not the wallet.


There is an ongoing discussion between me and Local-sister as to the best way to handle the increasing frequency with which things are lost . Until the past few weeks I was very much behind having one of everything and keeping good track of it, but I now feel it would be better to have many identical bags and transparent wallets, and smaller denominations of cash, as by the time we have assembled one of everything the first thing we found will be guaranteed to be missing. Guaranteed. I just want to be able to send her to the shops and then look for missing things, without Mum getting involved in searching.


Either way these are all temporary plans. The clock is ticking.


2.20pm
The clock is ticking right next to my ear, the clock Local-sister bought in to remind we when 'Murder She Wrote' began.


I don't feel sad, just ill and tired. A fortnight ago I would have felt sad now, but Mum has not said she wants to die for several weeks. The reguarlity and lucidity with which she expressed this immensely increased, corresponding with the beginning of the Mirtazapine tratment, whether on not the drug was responsible, but now she seems happy again overall - with the excpetion of odd days like Monday. Now she veers between being too happy too wish this and not lucid enough to express it. Either way, and whatever the cause, she seems content for the time being. It could  equally be that her overall happiness has increased because of my response (and that of 'the team'). Initially I became depressed myself - which, of course, made everything worse - but I pulled myself together and increased the level of care as inconspicuously as I could - it could be this, or this and the anti-depressants (or either, or neither, or both) that pulled her out of this pattern of suicidal ideation.


The clock is ticking. Tock. Tock. Tock. Tock. I move it, but it is still all I can hear.


After Local-sister left I cooked up a lasagne ready meal with chips and salad. We had apple pie and ice-cream for dessert. A lovely meal in  front of the telly, there was no sadness or agitation from either of us.


We watched two dramas that Mum likes, 'All Saints' and 'Doctors', both set in hospitals. Both of them dealt with the theme of euthanasia. The former was fairly black and white, the person was old and in agony, with every disease in the book - they were clinging to life by a thread and suffering terribly.


The latter was very different, much more interesting. An eighteen year old boy had recently lost the use of his arms and legs and had booked himself in to end his life in Switzerland. He was completely sane and rational about it and would probably make the same decision in six months - yet nobody suggested the obvious compromise of a cooling off period, giving him some time to adjust.  Cheap scriptwriters.


Mum was very vocal in both programmes, speaking about people's dignity, she is very firmly in favour of choice, as she always had been. During the second programme she said 'I think my mother went that way'. I said she had died at home in bed, of cancer. Mum said she had refused further treatment and wanted to die at home. Hm.


The clock is ticking, it is all I can hear. I take the batteries out.


This is one of the big questions I have spent my life addressing and researching .Nietschze was a proto-fascist and would have had the schizophrenics and people with learning difficulties, the people I work with and care for, killed. Without blinking an eye. Quality of life is more important than quantity, its true and there is much wisdom in his work. Yet he was also in favour of eugenics and was arguably one of the thinkers who made WWII possible. That I echo his work and try to solve these paradoxes is stated in the title of my book 'Beyond Truth and Fiction', echoing his volume 'Beyond Good and Evil'.


The clock is not ticking, but I have run out of time, I am going to Local-sister's for dinner and to take round some birthday cards. If you found this interesting and would like to read some more on a similiar theme but from a broader perspectvie and in a more provocative style try this link -


http://jesterspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/04/gospel-according-to-joker.html


Last night I contributed a post to a thread at indigosociety.com, 'What's Your Most Peaceful Dream?' -

"That's an intersesting question. Being of the revolutionary spirit most of the dreams I can recall are about The End of Time, perhaps I have peaceful dreams but don't remember them, you've really got me to scour memory. Ah!

Ah - I had a dream twenty years ago, when I was sixteen - I was in my bedroom in my Father's house, somehow we had acquired a plastic tray filled with an array of single doses of experimental psychedelic drugs in various capsules.

My father took one of the pills and I experienced his hallucination - I was a skull, floating in the void, and all my teeth were rhythmically jumping to the centre of my head and then back into place - over and over and over again.

Then I took a different capsule - I was lying down, again in the dark void. A bubble of light was forming around me, like a new moon progressing to full moon. I was in agony. The suffering became more and more unbearable as the illumination increased, as the circle of light came closer and closer to fulness. The pain was the most excruciating when the circle was almost complete - I wished that I would die and thought I surely would - yet when the circle was complete the torture terminated abrubtly. I was in a state of grace, of full illumination. The sense of peace was overwhelming, like nothing I had felt before, and it went on and on for what seemed like a blissful eternity. Mmmmm.

The more aware an individual becomes aware the more suffering and conflict one perceives. It is not until one sees the whole picture that the greater purpose can be understood and the conflict reconciled. Its bizarre yet elegant how all dreams make sense on both a microcosmic (personal) and macrocosmic level."

x

MORE RAIN

10am
I've decided to start posting to this blog in earnest again. I began keeping it as I felt like I was bottling things up (hence the enquiry I posted about counselling). I stopped because I thought no-one was reading it, it had started to feel like speaking endlessly into a dead phone, or trying to fill a dry lake by pissing in it, if anything it was making things worse . However, when I discovered Sarah (my ex) had been following it religiously - this made me feel retrospectively a lot less isolated, just knowing that someone was there with me as the events unfolded. It also gives me a stronger sense of the passage of time - if I don't reflect on them the days can just blur into one.

Nor is it practical to write it in big chunks, as I have been doing - I didn't complete last night's entry until 1.30am, so didn't manage to wake up until 9.30am. Mum is getting up later than she was, but its still about half seven.

I found Mum in the kitchen making us both coffee. I arrived just in time to stop her from adding tea-bags to the sticky brown liquid in the bottom of the cups. She'd probably have remembered that the hot water goes next if I hadn't arrived and distracted her, but I had to stop her filling up the remainder of the cups with more milk while the kettle boiled. I try to be discrete and soft when offering this kind of assistance, but its tricky, particularly when you're ill and have only just woken up. She was becoming a little short and fractious following my interventions, so I took a step back - she immedietely grabbed the jug of milk and poured the whole lot into her coffee. I stepped forward and she shrieked at me and waved her hands.

'It's not a problem, Mum, yours is just a bit cold, that's all, we'll put it in the microwave'.

We put together a shopping list - eggs and milk. I thought I had a moment to use the loo while she drank her coffee, but I could hear the door going the moment I sat down. Fortunately I had not started, so was able to intercept before she shut the door beind her - with her bag and money which she had forgotten. This time she thanked me for the assistance.

Got to go, shes at the door now.

11am
Mum had already eaten, so I made myself some eggs while she made herself another coffee. This time I just let her fill the cup with cold milk. Unless she does something dangerous its better to just let her get on with it. She's not with it today, not really agitated like Monday, but not finding things easy or enjoyable. She shrieked at me yesterday too, when I brought her some bread. She had cooked the eggs and bacon perfectly, but was pulling faces as she chewed great spoonfuls of 'I Can't Believe it's Not Butter', sat on her plate where her toast was meant to be.

She pulled the same face today as she tasted the cup of cold coffee she had prepared. She didn't shriek, but quietly poured the cold coffee into a pan, then placed it on the stove and waited. When she turned her back for a moment I turned the stove on and sat down to watch 'In The Night Garden' (basically  Teletubbies without the televisions on their tummies).

Mum joined me a minute later with a steaming hot cup off coffee.

'That looks like a nice latte, Mum'.

x

I'M LEAVING SO SLOWLY I'LL NEVER DISAPPEAR

Three out of the past four days were really lovely days - which isn't bad going really, though I've got a cold.

When Mum shines? She simply sparkles, like a little girl, and her delight is mine - then I smile & sometimes shed a single tear of joy. When she is not happy? I force a smile and try not to cry, yet all the while the little boy inside bawls and bawls - between the serried sobs and gasps he screams 'I WANT MY MUMMY', a tired refrain, 'I WANT MY MUMMY' - yes, I know she's here, but it's not the same if you have to hold the tears inside and she doesn't even know your name, 'I WANT MY MUMMY!' - yet, somehow, it is the same - it is the same voice that heeds me now that comforted that little lost Nero's grazed shins, here I am, Mummy, here to give back what you gave me, all those warm embraces in an uncertain world, here I am,  we are the same, I see the same drop of The Divine peering out through older eyes, I have my Mummy. There's some sacred symmetry to this divine tragedy, I have my Mummy, I have my MUMMY! - I have come home.

On Sunday, in the torrential rain, Mum's friend Ruby and her mother came. Unscheduled visits are not always welcome. I had met Ruby briefly as a child, but otherwise did not know them, and was uncertain when Mum told me they were coming if it would be unsettling for her or a treat. Despite the monsoon and getting lost on some ill-advised and poorly planned adventure, it turned out to be a very welcome visit indeed, they had that reserved British demeanour and civil tempo she finds easiest to meet.

I listened to them chatting from my room. Through the door you hardly tell Mum was the wrong'un amongst the sane, it is nice when she just slips in and feels normal. Sometimes she can tell when people are treating her like a child, it serves as a constant reminder of her secret shame. They were drawing maps and telling her how to get to Hoddesdon on the bus, her former fondly remembered home. Of course, there is no way that Mum could manage this, but I left them to it. I could not blame them for assuming she was more able than she is, she was on form, but I did feel slightly insulted - I am here all the time, if it was possible for her to get on a bus on her own wouldn't I have shown her how by now? What do they think I am, her captor? I am being silly, that is not how people think.

I joined them at the end of the day, they were doing a jigsaw. Well, Mum and Ruby's mother were - Ruby looked disgruntled and grunted 'I don't like jigsaws', so I engaged her in conversation while the puzzle people sorted sky and straight edges from the grass and The Lion King's mane. I was quite embarrassed when they left - I had not seen anyone in days so all the words inside came out too fast, compounded by the fact they were neighbours and familiar with another of Mum's friends, a lodger who had been like a father to me and I had not seen since way back when.

Monday morning. The sun didn't come up, such was the rain. This was the bad day,  the day the little boy inside had to cry 'I WANT MY MUMMY' in vain. The monsoon was still ensuing when Mum's German friend came. She took her to a craftshop, which I thought Mum would like, but Mum came back with nothing, and was shaking, shaken, breaking, broken - for the rest of the day.

What happened? I don't know, yet, I'll ask.  German friend had to rush off and left me with this mess, I am not blaming her, she is lovely, but I would like to know what happened out there. Perhaps nothing happened, bad days will be bad.

How can I describe it? Jittery is what she was. Fractured. She was restless, moving from one thing to another - but sometimes this is okay, this was different. What am I trying to get at? I could be wrong but I think it was fear. She seemed like someone who had just had a traumatic experience, but it didn't go away. There was no way of getting back to a safe spot, every new place was contaminated by some looming fear with no name, even the sofa with telly and tea, even here something was wrong. Usually the idea seems to be to change the subject if things start to seem threatening to her, now I was trying to keep her on one subject, she was unsettled. I made an arrangement for her to visit Local-sister, hoping that a brisk walk in the cold would clear her head, but she was still a little wrong on her return. Perhaps it didn't help that I accidentally sent her out in mismatched shoes. I tried to get her to stay, but she wouldn't forget she was going, though she kept taking her woolies off and on which delayed things. I should have gone with her but I have a cold and it was freezing out there. Why didn't I go with her? I'm a bastard.

It had subsided, but there was still something wrong on her return. I made her tea and snuggled with her on the sofa, at last the little boy inside had his mummy. We watched Doctor Who and she was almost back to normal, but there was still a small cloud of unidentified frightening memory lurking at her shoulder when she went to bed.

In the morning she was my precious little girl again, all delighted smiles and dewdrops.

'I've got something to show you' she said.

I got up and went into the front room. It was a single muddy child's glove with rubber fingers that she had found whilst shopping, placed with pride amidst a gathering of small plastic animals. Yes, it's lovely.

Tuesday and Wednesday were lovely. Monday was just plain wrong. I looked at some pictures on the internet, 'this is your brain' & 'this is your brain with Alzheimer's'. Maybe another important bit of her brain had imploded, whipping another long trusted component of her psyche away from under her feet. Maybe it was because the sun never came up, maybe just she got out of the wrong side of the bed.

I remember a song I almost wrote. I should write it now, with Sarah (my ex) who admired its melody ten years ago. I should finish it with her, it meant nothing at the time, this is what it was for. How did it go? I think:

So wise and so pure, she opens the door

She's leaving so slowly she'll never disappear

So hold me, my dear, and I'll make it clear

I'm leaving so slowly I'll never disappear

x

DIAGNOSIS MIRTAZAPINE

In case anyone was wondering Mum has started taking a Mirtazapine a day to keep the blues away. I was concerned as her appetite is haywire, sometimes having triple helpings, sometimes refusing to eat an entire meal - but she seems substantially  happier to receive visitors, and more positive about their visits when they have gone - I'd say she just seems slightly more 'with it' and contented overall. I think in the long-run it might have bought us a little quality time.

I am also happier, but I am not taking my anti-depressants, they make me feel sick. I am tidying and sorting, letting my librarian side take over. I still have the relentless urge to create, but sometimes it gets overwhelming - I will return to the creative projects when everything else is in place.

LAND OF THE LIVING

As you've probably gathered from the last few entries I kind of crashed last week - emotionally and physically. While there was a building sense of desperation I felt I had more or less kept it in check until Thursday

THURSDAY

On Thursday night some old friends came to visit. I met them from the station and had one drink with them, then came back here. I didn't mean to stop here long with them, just check up on Mum - the plan was to go out for a meal or a drink. But as the strength drained from me the thought of going out in the torrential rain seemed more and more impossible, and as my mood darkened they seemed more and more like strangers.

Mum had been in a funny mood all day and wasn't respondng well to our dropping in. Throughout the day she'd been very conscious of her disappearing faculties, as evidenced by all the things that keep disappearing. This climaxed while my friends were here, and I spent more time with Mum during their visit than I did talking to them - cooking dinner etc, but mainly looking for the special remote.

Earlier, when she went down this route,  I had tried to change the subject - but she had been too lucid and dogmatic, insistently carrying on and on about how she was learning from her mistakes and was going to try harder. Perhaps it would have been easier if I had just agreed, but I didn't want to encourage her to be less forgiving of her symptoms. I didn't contradict her, but tried to reassure that it didn't really matter if we lost things occasonally - 'they always turn up' etc. (which they do). Now the remote was missing there was no point trying to change the subject - as soon as it was forgotten the desire to watch telly would make its absence keenly felt again.

While all this was going on I was bottling up a lot of feelings, my memories of how Mum was and what she meant to me as a child were much fresher and rawer than usual, for the more ambling & introspective style of this blog had leaked into my writing & thought, leading me to engage more deeply than usual with the past (I am still most comfortable living in the present moment).

The remote eventually turned up in Mum's bedroom and she made me give her a hug for finding it (though it was me who spotted it really). This was a good hug for me too, while Mum needs and craves physical confirmation now in a way that the more ascetic and catholic (and frigid) Mum of the past did not demand, she often still finds it hard to ask for what she needs, which can be frustrating, particularly when I am not really in the same kind of denial as to my need for pyhysical affirmation, and right now my Mother's hug was exactly what I needed, and it was nice that she was the one directly asking for it.

\the hug made us both feel better, but back in the sitting room she was carrying on again about how she was going to make more of an effort and how she was learning. Now the remote was back I just said 'yes' and helped her find a programme sufficently engaging to distract her. I sent my friends back to London and went to bed - for a very long time.

FRIDAY

When I did raise my head on Friday Local-sister descended on me first thing (first thing in the late afternoon, that is). I think she was trying to be supportive but I was in too much of a state to pretend to respond positively - her criticisms, however contructive they were intended to be, just made me feel significantly more useless, hopeless and pathological, as did her helpful suggestions. I was  perfectly aware that these were good ideas - but the good ideas of the past had already become burdens, my to-do list weighed down with practical strategies for my holistic well-being, each bullet-point a weary reminder that in reality I currently possess neither the inclination nor the stomache to voluntarily enter situations requring social engagement - even when I am not bound up in the business of crying from a seemingly bottomless well of tears.

As I lay there bawling Local-sister encouraged me to go the pub tonight, in the same breath telling me that I was the saddest person she knows. Suicide is not an option to me, for I have long a long-held, deep-set sense of a greater purpose that makes it impossible, and a new-found sense of responsibility to my Mother - if it were not for these factors I would certainly describe myself as suicidal upon her departure.

I arranged (begged) for Sarah (my ex) to come and see me on the late train. That she agreed to heed my distress signal/ This made me feel a degree better in itself and I managed to collect myself sufficently to help put Mum at ease, warn her that Sarah was coming, and put her to bed. I collected Sarah from the station and we went to sleep.

SATURDAY

Mum was pleased to see Sarah too, or she did a very good job of pretending. In the afternoon me and Sarah went shopping in Bishops Stortford for some tights. I persuaded her not to go back to London in the evening (a sacrifice, she intended to go to a good friend's birthday drinks, another event that I really could not face) on the grounds that I needed her to make sure I got to a music thing on Sunday (an event that I decided I could face, with Sarah's company, not being primarily social in its function). In the evening Sarah cooked a lovely vegetable soup with Mum. I felt better, but in the evening I just wanted to watch telly and cry - I was not yet ready for another barrowload of practical suggestions and criticisms, and I had to spell this out to Sarah, which was quite hard.

SUNDAY

The music thing was distracting and we went back to Sarah's afterwards and watched endless bad telly and played with our cat - I finally felt some comfort and nurture.

I spoke to Mum in the evening, she had had a minor incident with her dinner - when she couldn't remember how to open a tin-can she had taken it to a neighbour to open. That was it. It took her a lot longer to explain than this.

MONDAY

When we awoke on Monday morning I had calmed down enough to talk things through with Sarah.

It was lovely to discover that someone had been reading this blog, even waiting for my entries in it. While the writing of it was in itself therapeutic - for a time - there came a point where it began to feel like pissing in the wind. I did not intend this particular confessional to go unread and it was a relief to find that someone else had been through the past few weeks with me, feeling what I felt as I felt it - for this is where the therapy lay, in the opening up and sharing of my feelings - in the absence of any readership I had increasingly felt that I was opening up my dressings and scratching my wounds alone as they became increasingly septic. To know that I had not been alone after all? This made me feel very much less isolated and I felt able to talk. When I got back Mum was pleased to see that I was feeling better and it was good to be home.

TUESDAY

After her visitor left in the afternoon (they went to the zoo) me and Mum walked to the butcher to get some chicken to breathe new life into Sarah's vegetable soup. It was an invigorating walk and we had fun cutting up the chicken together and cooking it, the meal gave a focal point to the evening.

WEDNESDAY (Today)

I am still sleeping too much. Yesterday I went to bed at 7, when Mum did, but didn't sleep 'til 10. It was a broken sleep and I didn't wake up until 9.30am. Mum arrived back from the shops shortly after- not that she had actually bought anything. When she realised she had no money with her she had borrowed some from Local-sister, who works in Local-cafe in the mornings - but apparently had decided not to return to the shops anyway. I am sleeping too much - but I am not conflating my weariness with emotional factors. While my stress and procrastination are at the root of my exhaustion, having let myself off the hook, for the moment, I am left with a residual physical fatigue.

After cleaning up a large sheet of plastic she had found, Mum spent the rest of the morning delightedly drawing. She is doing a free-hand enlargement of the teddy bears she traced two weeks back with the guy from Crossroads, it was lovely to see her doing this off her own back and finding such pleasure in it.

I've not done much practical this week, apart from tying up a few financial loose ends yesterday and enquiring about therapy - but, as I said, I've 'let myself off the hook'. I know I can't just bottle out of engineering any changes to my situation forever, but you cannot imagine what a relief it is not to be burdened with the expectations I have been placing on myself. I have gained a certain weightlessness in my decision to just ignore the proliferation of endless ever-growing lists - for the time-being.

Until now I hadn't really felt like re-engaging with my work, either, so I ended up spending most of the day hiding from Mum's visitors in my room, trying to focus on Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library #18 and listening to music. I fell asleep again doing this in the afternoon, while Mum's visitor from Crossroads was here, and was woken by Local-sister. She's putting in extra effort this week, but its making it difficult for me to get out of my room, as I don't really want to see her at the moment (I know she wasn't trying to get at me, but I was very vulnerable on Friday. I feel accused, belittled and misunderstood - while the hurt might not be reasonable it remains very raw).

When I was sure that my sister had gone I came out, it was only six'o'clock, but Mum had already turned the television off and was getting ready for bed. Like every night we spent a little while looking for Mum's blue hot water bottle. Some nights we find it, others we don't. When we can't find it I show her where she keeps her spares, and offer to lend her the pink fluffy hot water bottle cover to use with it. Sometimes she takes it, but usually she declares that it is 'too much' - so I show her where the string and tea-cloths are and she assembles the kind of make-shift hot-water-bottle cover she prefers.

I let the search go on a little longer than usual tonight, as I had not seen her this evening, and I was half hoping that her bag and purse would turn up in the search. She didn't leave them with the visitor who took her to the zoo on Tuesday, as we first thought, and they are still missing - as I can't lay them all out ready it is doubly important that I go to sleep now and set my alarm, so that Mum doesn't end up going to the shops unequipped in the morning - again.

She was all set for bed when I left her, but she came in a few minutes ago with a tea-towel with its corners tied - tied in such a way that it was clear that this had been one of her home-made hot-water bottle covers on a previous night. I said as much to her, and she became  flustered, explaining that while the tea-towel was admittedly tied in exactly the way she did it that it was definitely not her who had done it - the tea towel was being presented to me as evidence that someone else had used and then lost her hot-water bottle. For an easy life I managed to agree that this was possible, but couldn't help but add that I didn't think anyone else tied tea towels to their hot water bottles quite the way she did. The strategy of 'just agreeing' falls apart a bit when it comes to her blaming people for things - if I just agree with something like this and then change the subject it is fine for a minute, but - while so many important things refuse to stick at all - she fixates on certain irrelevant things, & would in all likelihood return in ten minutes with a list of specific allegations as to who might have stolen her hot-water bottle. It is easy to agree that my sister's partners are 'husbands', for it is a cosmetic detail that neither sister is married to their partners. While this was a borderline case, agreeing that local sister has stolen or moved her money or making a false confession that I have, for example, is clearly not such a black and white issue - as these are exactly the kind of things that she doesn't forget and will make our lives difficult if not resolved correctly.

Anyway, goodnight.

In my dreams
I forget
what baffled me

I'D LIKE TO ENQUIRE ABROUT TRANSPERSONAL COUNSELLING

Having let things get on top of me this past week I have decided to be more pro-active on looking for some counsellling...


"Dear Marie,

I have recently come out of a relationship lasting over a decade, after being made redundant from an FE college where I taught IT. When I lost the band and my flat I reigned in the 'lost rock'n'roll prophet' lifestyle to become my senile mother's carer.  


I am an alternative writer (www.jester.me.uk), musician (www.reverbnation.com/thecelebratedmrk), designer and thinker of some scope, trying to integrate the best of my psychedelic revelations regarding the nature of Self into a drug-free lifestyle, while dealing with issues of loss & addiction and maintaining a loving, caring environment for my Mother. 


I look forward to hearing from you. Josh x"