Billygean.co.uk

Tomorrow is my birthday.

Tonight I have got DRESSED for the first time in 9 days to mark the occasion (and possibly because MindReader’s coming over in an hour and he perhaps deserves to have a girlfriend who wears dayclothes) I feel absolutely knackered from opening my drawers and am going to go and have a lie down, but still! Clothes!

I am trying not to be too bleak. I have perfected the art of napping (3.25 – 5pm), not shouting at MindReader and MadFather when I need help getting up the stairs, and feeling sorry for my body and its low platelet counts and other complaints so that I do pretty much whatever it tells me to. Today, it needed expensive Covent Garden Co. soup. What can you do but obey?

Also: it’s hard to be bleak when you received 20 birthday cards today alone, and Haribo sweets through the post

Well I did get to sleep (at like SIX) and slept til 1:30pm which was slightly surreal. By the time I got up MindReader had driven to Birmingham, sat a three and a half hour exam, and driven back again.

He has now gone until Sunday when he comes back to take me to have an ULTRASOUND on Monday morning. No I am not pregnant (I would have told you readers before anyone!); the Doctor is obsessed with why I get urinary tract infections almost constantly. I told her it’s because my body’s a bit preoccupied fighting something else off at the moment – but no – I have to go and drink FOUR PINTS of water and NOT PEE all morning!

Also ALSO, last night I stayed up for so long watching the ceiling that I actually crossed paths with MadFather who got up at 5:30 to go to London. I asked him conversationally, in my midnight and his morning, where his relaxation CD was (probably best not to ask). He handed me a few CD packets to look through. It was not there.

When MindReader got back this afternoon he said to me, “Why did you have 5 CD stacks around your bed last night? I thought you’d cracked!”

Thanks!!

“Okay,” I say, sitting up from my duvet. “So I roll the dice, and whatever letter it shows, you have to fill out the list with things beginning with that letter. So for the first bit of the list, ‘things that are sticky’, you fill it in with a word beginning with that letter.”

“Right,” MindReader says, a hand casually on my knee.

“And if you can think of something alliterative,” MadFather says, “you get two points.”

I roll the 26-sided (!) dice.

“The letter is F,” I say, sipping my tea and feeling exhausted.

I start the timer and begin filling in my list. I leave out things that are sticky. The next item is famous landmarks. I write Figi before later learning it is a place. I then write ‘fasteners’ under ‘things that fasten,’ because I am a lawyer.

“How are you writing so much?” MindReader whispers.

“I am struggling with cosmetics,” I say. “I can’t think of ANY.”

“Sticky cosmetics?” he says.

I stare at him.

And then we both realise.

“I’m not supposed to be thinking of 12 things that are sticky, am I?” MindReader says.

I am unable to contain my laughter. “What the fuck is on your list?” I say, wiping my eyes.

“Figs, fresh figs, foals (when they’re just born), faeces,” he says.