Billygean.co.uk

WELL. I am sorry about that. I have no idea what happened. I, too, got the random blank page and began contacting my hosts (who were RUBBISH). MadFather put my ftp details into an ftp thingy (technical term) and it all worked and last night I woke up at 5am and decided to try just… republishing. Et voila! Cheers, blogger.

I have had 66 emails from readers telling me it was down. It’s nice to know how much I matter.

My recovery continues. I have now successfully trained body into sitting up most days from about 7pm which means pubs! restaurants! bowling! late night coffees! Most days I can also do one or two things in the day, so, yesterday, I walked to the shop, baked and then went out for a quick shop and a coffee. Some days I feel almost normal. Some days I don’t get it right and my body responds by vomiting. But there you are.

MindReader has some stuff going on that I don’t really want to talk about on here, maybe not yet anyway, and it has resulted in a few tearful nights (mostly me, because I am a selfish girlfriend!). It seems as if it has been one thing after another since we started out. Firstly Mike was quite upset about the whole thing, and then I moved in with housemates and I was unhappy, and then MindReader had surgery, and then I got sick, and then MadFather lost his job and got depressed, and then … well, I was still in bed ten months later. Life hey? But enough of that, because MindReader is mostly still smiling lots and being sarcastic, I just wish I could wrap him in cotton wool, away from the storms.

I think you’re probably up to speed.

I am wearing my beautiful new skirt and standing in a bar that is playing thumping music. It appears I cannot quite get enough of socialising now I can do it (a bit).

“Billygean!” one of MindReader’s friends says. “It’s so good to see you.”

“I know,” I smile, as he hugs me and I remember what people other than MindReader and my very close circle of visitors smell like.

“What happened?” he says.

I give him a don’t you know? look.

“Oh MindReader’s told me bits and pieces – glandular fever – but god’s sake, ten months!”

I smile. “It knocks some people about a bit. I had to lie down for 6 months. Now I lie down a bit less.”

“God. I had skin cancer ages ago. They thought it had spread, but it hadn’t.”

And I realised it is exactly as Dooce said. Every crisis you go through can be summed up in three seconds.

I got really sick, and then I started getting better.

And it’s true.

“I am not going to leave you,” MindReader says, “but I don’t want to be in a relationship where we fight like this.”

“What does that mean,” I say, my voice sharp, like lemons.

His eyes snap open and then close again, a venus fly trap. “Nothing,” he says. “Just that I hate this.”

“There is a difference,” I say, days later, lying in the unusually warm October sun, “between knowing you have to do a good job at work and being warned that you have to do a good job.”

“I know,” he says, his blue eyes looking dark and velvety. “I didn’t mean it like that. I was very upset.”

But MindReader doesn’t do upset.

I took a walk today, in the amber, slanting autumnal sunshine. It has been 6 days since I snapped, griped, or guilt tripped. I have been deep breathing, remembering MindReader’s scrunched up face, realising it is the illness I am angry with.

All the leaves are turning. Red ones, like flags against the sharp blue sky, yellow ones with singed red edges like embers glowing.

And, as they change, it is exactly as if I am slowly changing with them.

HomeFriend’s daughter is chatting away. She has been travelling, and wears associated pashmina, bracelets that tinkle, and baggy trousers. Oh to be 18 again.

Her friend apparently fell off a waterfall in Nepal and broke her leg.

“Plus we went to a rave last week in Cambridge,” she is saying. “My friend went on her crutches.”

“I thought she wasn’t weight bearing?” HomeFriend says, sipping her tea.

“She’s not. But it was – like – not sidetrance, it was more jungle so more chilled out. So she just held on to the speakers.”

I glance sideways at MindReader. “I feel old,” I whisper, and he squeezes my knee.

“MindReader did law,” HomeFriend says, and I feel my spine stiffen.

“Oh yeah?” HomeFriend’s Daughter says. “How is the whole law thing? I’m not exactly looking forward to it.”

I open my mouth, and then I look from her to him, and back again, and close it. My neck goes bright red, and the red creeps into my face.

“Oh,” he says. “It’s okay, peaks and troughs.”

I sit next to him in silence, looking at nobody, my eyes fixed on a point in the middle distance. Tears prick my eyes.

MindReader says something more about the workload but I have stopped listening. There is something in his shoulders, his very still hand on my leg that understands.

But still.

“Erm, excuse me,” I say, and leave the room.