Billygean.co.uk

We are at OldHousemate’s wedding. I lived with her for three years at University so it is sort of momentous. Well, as momentous as weddings can be when you attend one a week.

“I need a wee I need a wee I need a wee,” I chunter to MindReader. We have just sat down for the reception.

“Go after the bride and groom come in,” he says, looking only slightly exasperated. You may laugh at me on this blog but he has to deal with me ALL THE TIME.

“No because then the food might be served and I need to be here to check it’s gluten-free!” I say. It is stressful. “I’m going now,” I say, and dash off to the loo.

On the way back, I see OldHousemate and her HUSBAND waiting to walk in. I dither for a moment and stand with the catering staff. Probably since I have already harassed them 11 times about wheat flour, they look at me like I am a complete moron. Which is up for debate.

OldHousemate makes a sort of motioning with her hand. I’ve got time, I think.

SOMETHING WENT WRONG, THOUGH, because at that moment the Master of Ceremonies announces the bride and groom.

SO WE ALL ENTER TOGETHER.

TO THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE.

All the photos of the bride and groom have ME ON THEM. Looking horrified.

I dash to the table and sit down. I am bright red.

MindReader is crying with laughter.

“Just my luck!” I say feebly.

“Not bad luck!” MindReader says. “Most people would wait!”

“But -”

“100 times out of 100 in that situation you WAIT!”

And for the rest of the night that was all anyone spoke about. Complete strangers knew me as the girl who came in with the bride and groom.

“Thanks for that Billygean,” OldHousemate says, brushing by in her white dress. “That made our day.”

I look up. “Are you joking? I completely stole your thunder!”

“No! It was just classic Billygean. It was GREAT.”

“Did you move the bin?” I say, coming into the living room. “It’s facing the other way.”

“Nope,” MindReader says, looking mildly amused.

“OH my God. The filter keeps coming out of the kettle and bing left on the side in the kitchen and neither of us is doing it! And sometimes, early in the morning after you leave, I hear this phone ringing. it sounds like an office phone and it rings ALL THE TIME and nobody ever answers it. It’s haunted – our flat’s haunted!”

MindReader is laughing to himself. He holds his hands up. “I moved the bin.”

MindReader is not a very emotional person.

Well actually that’s not quite true. He probably is, he just doesn’t proclaim things like he feels like Emily Bronte when it’s thundering, or that he is feeling Very Sad when the cake turns out burnt and rubbish, like I do.

That Sunday I woke up late, walked around some pools and lakes with MadFather, and it was actually quite liberating to not check my phone all the time. Obviously I couldn’t leave it at home because of the wonderful GPS maps that lead us on a lovely walk! Oh, beautiful iphone! You are worth the interest rates I am paying on my overdraft(s)!

I went to BathShop for the afternoon, sorted soaps and smiled while I served customers. I left BathShop in the early evening, the weather warm enough for just a black dress and flip flops. I walked past people drinking, stood at tall metal tables outside trendy pubs, and someone puffed a plume of smoke right into my mouth. I don’t dislike it; it reminds me of holidays and festivals.

I glanced at my phone and saw the voicemail flashing. It was simply lovely, as clichéd as it sounds, to hear his voice again, his profuse apologies for the total lack of contact.

I got home, made two coffees and tidied the flat.

He came in with a massive grin on his face. And, even though he didn’t say anything, when he put his arms around me he took a big lungful of the scent of my hair.

“What would you like to do today?” MadFather says. I shrug. I am feeling slightly better – thank god, thank god – but I am supposed to be going on a hen night out and the thought of walking across Birmingham and staying awake fills me with dread. I phone and cancel, and try not to feel like it is June 2008.

“Try and go on a little walk?” I say.

We end up near a rural, pretty part of HomeTown, about a twenty minute drive from our house.

“I’ve never walked this way along the canal,” MadFather says, pointing, so we set off. We see some lupins, and he tells me about a Monty Python sketch. We see an entire field of wheat which I pose by.

MadFather stops suddenly. “Is that -?” he says.

I look up, and, incredibly bizarrely, OldestFriend and her fiance are stood in front of us.

“But – you live in London!” I say, incomprehensibly.

“What are you doing here?” she says.

“Just – walking,” I say. “You?”

“Same.”

We part ways and MadFather and I laugh about coincidences. We deicde to loop around the road, not walk back down the canal.

OldestFriend and her fiance appear to have the opposite thought. We bump into them again. Clearly it is meant to be.

“What’re you doing for the rest of the day?” OldestFriend says once we have stopped laughing.

“We’re going to go to the Hungry horse Craft Centre!” I say.

“Ooh!” OldestFriend says. “Ooh!”

And that is how we end up in a children’s cafe painting ceramic mugs.

I should probably say here that in year seven at school (age 11/12) OldestFriend and I were in different classes. Unbeknownst to the other we both decided to make a Boyzone tape rack in woodwork. The Boyzone sign is half a white stick man on a black background and vice versa on the other side. Needless to say mine was a muddle of grey, a very badly drawn stick man, and the logo itself wasn’t even a circle so the tape rack rocked. I remember hating the other person who had done the same tape rack but so, so, so much better.

I think we realised at about the same moment when OldestFriend saw my tape rack in my room one day and said “it’s YOU!”. And that’s sort of how we became friends.

From thereon, she drew all my things for me in art. She is now an interior designer.

We sit down in the cafe and I order some drinks. MadFather looks amused and bored and exchanged a glance with OldestFriend’s fiance as they check the wimbledon score together on the beautiful iphone.

I faff about and draw some awful drawing on my mug until the woman kindly suggests I use a TRACING BOOK.

I do not point out that my artistic talents do not even stretch to tracing.

I draw a sunflower and present it to OldestFriend. She stifles a laugh. “It looks like – it looks like a cat on a pole!” she says eventually, erupting. She re-draws the circle for me, because I cannot even draw around a coin.

I spill some paint, which MadFather mops up, while also helping me to choose which brush to use. I paint the inside of my mug yellow, and the woman remarks that it looks like somebody has weed in it.

I draw a monkey, which OldestFriend re-draws, and then I paint inthe wrong part so I have a monkey and its foot about an inch away, which has to be washed off by the woman, who thinks I am a complete moron.

I draw a bumble bee, and leave its wings white which I have since realised won’t show up as ANYTHING on the final mug, except a black and white stripy non-circle.

Eventually we take our mugs up to the till. OldestFriend’s mug is a perfect replica of her cat, the handle being the tail.

“Is this of – some significance?” The woman says, picking up my mug with its assortment of slightly deformed, mis-sized animals.

“Um, no…” I say.

She looks at my kindly. “Well, at least you had a nice time,” she says.

She looks at OldestFriend’s mug. “Now this is beautiful! Don’t those colours go well together!”

I catch OldestFriend’s eye and hide a smile.

“Now you just need to bring this back next week when you collect them,” the woman says to me, “though I think we’ll remember yours.”

OldestFriend’s espresso cup

“So,” MadFather says. “How are you feeling?”

“Bit crap,” I say, and give a sniff. “But not too crap to function. Just – you know – warning signs.”

I look out of the window and mentally work out how many hours until MindReader’s return. I haven’t heard a thing, which is oddly familiar. Indeed he went away for about this long – with no mobile reception – pretty much on this day last year.

“Shall we do this work then?” he says.

The legal work at home has picked up slightly. I nod and open a document. We work on it for hours, and a few hundred cups of tea later we send it off.

It is satisfying, for us both, to do achieve something and to finish it and relax at 7pm.

We go to the cinema (My Sister’s Keeper: good, but why must they always change the ending?), I get home and have a fabulous bath and light a few candles around my home bedroom.

I miss MindReader, my heart says, and I imagine telling him about my day. As it is, I don’t even know if he got to the deepest darkest bits of Wales okay.

I sit up straight and look at the flames. This time around, I can walk, or run, and be paid to do work at a desk. This was unthinkable last time around. Furthermore, I am me again. Not a brief extension of a boyfriend who could walk just fine, but me, with my own normal worries and likes and dislikes.

This time, I think, there will be no crying, no hysterical text messages, no matter how bad my health gets. This time, it will be different.

MindReader, MadFather and I are fruit picking. MindReader is about to go away for three days, and has taken some annual leave to do fun stuff.

I am half-distracted by fears of a cold. That slight heaviness, body protesting at walking, sore throat. Sigh.

MindReader’s arm encircles my waist as he pops a raspberry into my mouth. I kiss him, full on the lips.

“This one’s green!” MadFather says, a few rows of raspberries along.

This sort of inane outburst is quite common for MadFather.

MindReader and I turn to look at him.

He blows into the stem of the green raspberry.

“What…?” I say.

“I’m just making it ripe,” MadFather says. “You have to blow really, really hard.”

“Oh,” I say, thinking.

“That’s why it’s called blowing raspberries,” MindReader says.

“Ohh, I SEE,” I say, and go about picking some green raspberries ready to blow.

I stand up to see MindReader and MadFather silently laughing.

“Oh,” I say, “OH.”

MindReader and I are at the BFG. It is moments after I consumed four free-from cakes.

We are surrounded by little people. They are constantly walking along the rows of the seats, so every few seconds we both have to stand up (and I therefore have to eat more).

“Erm,” I say. And stop, and think quietly to myself.

I knew the BFG was a children’s book. And looking back I actually think I have seen this particular performance when I was about 11. And yet – I didn’t put two and two together that this might be a performance for children when I ordered it for MindReader’s birthday. Because it was his favourite book AS A CHILD.

I sigh. “Sorry about this,” I say, as the lights dim and some adults appear on the stage, doing that annoying shouty, stampy thing where they overact and pretend to be children but actually appear to be slightly retarded adults on acid.

“Baa baa black sheep,” MindReader sings under his breath.

I’ve been trying to think – and write – less about this illness, partly because of what Stranger said, and also because currently, if I’m late, people assume I’ve collapsed which is actually quite a pathetic state of affairs.

But then – it really is not as if I am 100% healthy and just dwelling on my illness. Every now and again, something happens – and admittedly with decreasing frequency – that spooks me, and even though I haven’t missed a shift of work yet, I think, THIS, THIS might be the time that I do. Every time.

And believe me the things that happen are not niggles, or mild feelings of lethargy. I think I got glutened at that wedding last Saturday. Monday was unable to do anything, Tuesday and Wednesday slept for 13 hours each night, and now the old light headedness has kicked in.

I was using my discount in BathShop and suddenly all I could think about was food. And all I could see were black sparkles in the corners of my vision. I ate a 200g bag of prawn crackers and FOUR free from cake bars before I felt okay enough to walk home again.

And now I have to be brave and go to work for 6 hours, when yesterday one hour’s walking caused that. needless to say I am taking a lot of food and hoping to sneakily eat some every time I get sent downstairs to do things like washing the moulds the bath melts come in (my favourite job!).

But. And I know this is rambly. But sometimes I am tired of being brave. I suspect MindReader thinks I freak out too often and therefore have a lot of days where getting through the day is an achievement. But sometimes, it IS. Back in 2008, I thought all this would be over when I could sit up all day, or walk for two hours. It turns out, the road back to health is a rockier one than I first thought. And that, fundamentally, is UNFAIR.

I mean. It’s ridiculous isn’t it?

It is ten past eight on a Monday morning. MindReader and I have had breakfast together on a weekday for the first time in 18 months.

I walk up Church street, past the cathedral and through the flower beds. I had almost forgotten what the early-morning air was like. Somehow crisper, almost autumnal-feeling. I draw my cardigan tighter around myself.

“Billygean?” a voice says.

“Oh – hi!” I say.

It is OldLawFriend. She was in my year, and now she’s a lawyer, evidentially on her way to the office for 8:15am.

“You’re looking well!” she says, and I smirk.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Are you – you know – basically all better now?”

I squint into the sun. I am on my way to BathShop for the second 8.30am shift this weekend. I do not feel great, but, at the moment, I am doing it, and, as MindReader says, I should actually be quite proud of having just the one job let alone two.

“Basically,” I say. “It took 18 months.”

“Congratulations,” she says.

We chat some more, about non-contentious probate and a department of personal damages. And then I go sort my soaps out for the customers and smile slightly.