Billygean.co.uk

Compulsive Reading

May 30

Reasons to love mindreader number 3

by billygean

MindReader got a free Wii today, which he has brought round to my house, because he is charming. We – MindReader, MadFather and I – are playing Wii Golf, and in the midst of somewhat of a relapse (ALWAYS when I blog about getting better) it is almost as good as the real thing.

MadFather is taking his shot. MindReader, who is standing at the foot of my ‘bed’ takes a sip of his tea and then his eyes go rather wide. Laughing, he lifts up a foot and shows me his socks which are covered in the sticky debris from my greeting card making fiasco.

Something in his not when we live together expression makes me snort with laughter and my drink goes down the wrong way. He smiles at me as he reached for the Wii Remote Control to take his shot.

I cough and cough and splutter as I clear my airway. And then I get the hiccups. I must admit I have rather shriek-ey hiccups which make me laugh and I roll around in my bed of pillows as MadFather and MindReader play Serious Golf, trying to stifle them.

I take another sip just as I hiccup and the WHOLE PROCESS starts again.

MindReader turns around, his eyes all crinkly. “Some decorum on the golf course, Billygean?”

illness MindReader Reasons to love MindReader

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May 28

But do remind me when I’m well to go to London

by billygean

“You know what she said though?” I say to MindReader, ranting from my pillows.

“What?” he says, looking slightly alarmed.

“She said, I’m so envious of you watching TV whilst we all revise.”

“Bloody hell,” MindReader says, knowing what I would have given to have sat these exams. “Ignore her.”

“Hmm.”

I scan my friends on facebook. One of them has announced she is going to London to watch musicals and shop.

My voice catches in my throat. I have been patient. I really have. I have not cried much during May at all. But the reality is, 28 more days have passed; the leaves are painfully green on the trees and, although I can go out and touch them which I could not do 28 days ago, I am still NOWHERE NEAR normal. I observe how my body has gone from being able to sit up for twenty seconds, to twenty minutes, but only if I lie down for the other 23 hours and 40 minutes of the day, and I wonder how this will become 8 hours, 10 hours, a whole day out. Will it take more multiples of 28 days?

I was an academic, someone with a scientific background, and then a lawyer. I cannot help thinking like this.

I breathe a few times. I thought, 28 days ago, how would I know I was better, if I couldn’t manage to sit up to test the water? People reassured me I would know. And within 28 days I was on walks, high grass licking my bare legs, making drinks and dragging the dustbins down our drive.

I breathe deeply. You have made progress, I think. This was ALL you wanted one month ago.

“You alright?” MindReader says.

And to my credit, I do not cry. And the bitterness passes.

illness MindReader

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May 27

Conversations about mindreader

by billygean

The message window pops up on my screen.

“Hi,” K says. K is a girl I lived with in my first and second years of uni.

“Wow,” I say, “long time no speak.”

“Is it?” she says, and I see what’s happening immediately.

“Been reading my blog?” I type, smirking.

“Always!” she says.

I pause. It is slightly surreal for someone to know everything you’ve done in the past three months while you have no idea what they’ve done.

“Just waiting for the engagement announcement,” she types.

I almost spit my coffee out.

“?!” I type.

“I just know.”

“Elaborate.”

“You just seem happy. Trust me it’ll be soon. Life crises are as good as time in a relationship.”

“I see,” I type. “I’ll tell MindReader.”

MindReader

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May 26

On blogging!

by billygean

“That was AWFUL,” MadFather says, walking in the door and shaking rain drops off his head.

“What happened?” I say from my bed on the sofa.

“I sat in traffic for HOURS,” he says, “and then I got there LATE so the security people chased me around the supermarket asking when I was going to leave.”

“Oh no,” I say, my heart twinging as it does every time MadFather turns on the sympathy.

“And then I couldn’t get the things on your list, I couldn’t find any nectarines so I thought to myself, ‘I know -’”

“Do you think like that?” I say.

“Like what?”

“Like, ‘I know, I’ll do this.’”

“Well – yes,” MadFather says, looking hurt. “Why?”

“Because this way my readers will know it’s not my dialogue that’s shitty.”

blogging Dad

3 Comments »
May 24

How to : please me

by billygean

DoctorSister has made me a mound of pillows at the OTHER end of the sofa. This is so I do not expend any energy – you know, SITTING, because my body is not okay with that – whilst we are playing Pictionary.

She throws the dice.

“DoctorSister,” I say, “hold on. I need some analysing doing.”

She gives that nice gritting teeth Doctor smile and says, “sure.”

“Well,” I say. “I’m as sick as on my birthday, aren’t I!”

My Birthday is a sort of benchmark – when I was too sick to serve myself Chinese food from off the table one metre away from me and when my dark circles under my eyes made me look rather like a bat.

“No,” she says simply. “You were getting worse then. Now you’re getting better.”

“And,” says MindReader from the floor (for I now share a sofa with my pillows), “you’ve not been lying down all day.”

“Plus,” DoctorSister says, with the most important point, “you’ve got a great tan.”

illness MindReader

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May 22

Huff

by billygean

According to the Department for Work and Pensions, I have proven I am sick.

Which is good.

Apparently, I have not made enough national insurance contributions to be entitled to ANY money now, even though I am broke and too sick to work. Silly me; I got sick too soon in my life. Remind me next time to pay a year’s worth of lawyer’s contributions and THEN get sick.

This system really disturbs me. I have been ill since January and only now do I have an answer. And it’s a no. What if I lived alone? What if I had a mortgage? It does not bear thinking about.

One more reason to vote liberal democrats.

Huff.

grumbles illness

1 Comment »
May 21

Wherein I listen to my body, as ever

by billygean

I tear open the letter from Jay Jay frantically, my eyes scanning the words on the page.

“Diagnosis:” it reads, “post viral fatigue.”

Well, we knew that I think, scanning the rest of his words.

“I have assured the patient and her father that fatigue and exhaustion following a viral infection is common although frustrating and,” I gasp, “I fully expect the patient to make a full recovery in the coming months.”

Tears of relief prick my eyes as I tie my shoe laces. I lock the back door behind me for the first time in months.

The sunshine warms my skin and the slight breeze dries my newly washed hair.

It takes 200 metres for me to begin feeling the pin pricks of dizzyness, exhaustion, symptoms so tiny that only someone who knows her body very well could detect them. As I turn towards home my phone rings.

“Hi,” MadFather says.

“Hi,” I say excitedly. “I’m NOT IN THE HOUSE.”

“You what?” he says.

“I was feeling better so I’m on a – very short – walk,” I say.

His pause is so long I check whether he’s hung up.

“If I’m not knackered from doing this tomorrow I could do it every day,” I say. “I would no longer be housebound.”

“This,” MadFather says finally, “is the beginning of the end.”

Let’s hope so.

Dad illness

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May 20

This doesn’t mean you can stop sending birthday messages in the comments box below

by billygean

“I am watching the abortion bill,” I say on the phone to MindReader.

“Oh right?” he says. “Exciting.”

And he probably means it, because he did a politics degree and can stay awake during The West Wing.

“I don’t really understand it, though,” I say.

“No?”

“Who is the nose? And the eyes?”

MindReader’s laughter is so loud I have to move the phone from my ear.

“I believe that’s the ayes in favour and the no’s against,” he says, before adding, “fucking hell…”

blonde moments MindReader

1 Comment »
May 19

My beautiful milanese watch

by billygean

“Hi there, it’s Selfridges Swatch department here,” says the voice on my mobile. Finally, I think. My watch broke weeks ago and I was wondering if the watch had stayed in the rusty old drawer they’d put it in when MindReader dropped it off.

“Hi,” I say. “How’s my watch?”

“Have you got your order number?”

I roll my eyes. “My boyfriend – er – lost it,” I say. It is quite difficult dating someone similar to I am.

He puts me on hold. I drum my fingers. Apparently the order number is quite important.

“Found it,” the man says, coming back on the line. “It’s actually – as is common with skin watches – not repairable.”

“Oh,” I say.

“The good news is we can offer you a new watch from here or order a new version of your watch?”

“I’d like my watch,” I say very quickly. We are very attached to each other. “Except,” I say, “I had loads of links taken out in Milan,” a smirk, “where I bought it, would you be able to do that?”

“Suppose so,” he says.

“Except – I can’t come and be measured.”

“Why?”

I am taken aback. “I am – not very well,” I say.

“What’s wrong with you?”

I pause.

“Problem – ongoing problem… chronic…” I say, letting my voice trail off.

“Right,” he says. “It’s fine anyway, I’ve got your old measurement right here.”

He pauses.

“How small are your wrists?”

grumbles illness MindReader

No Comments »
May 19

Dear Body [2]

by billygean

I have given you 12 hours’ sleep last night. Multivitamins. So much fresh fruit and veg that I am now pooping MORE THAN ONCE A WEEK, iron tablets so said poops are black, and only one cup of coffee per day despite the withdrawal headaches.

Now, acting on recent advice and despite MindReader SNORTING as I ordered it, you shall be taking blue-green algae and are going for a food intolerance test.

Now will you please get well!

Billygean

illness MindReader

2 Comments »
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