Billygean.co.uk

Compulsive Reading

Nov 6

On more progress

by billygean

It’s been ten months since I last saw a train.

The weather is just the same, but the station is totally different. The signs are now digitial – the next train will be appearing in 5 minutes. Baffling.

The train pulls up. It is pink, and not a Virgin train. Four people next to the windows have laptops. I feel a little like I have been in a coma. Which, in a sense, I have.

I catch the train to Birmingham (and the bus to the station before that), and all the shops have moved. I am a tourist, a visitor as I wander down the dark streets lined with unfamiliar shops. And, if familiar, somehow glossier, more efficient, selling things I hadn’t thought of yet.

I see MindReader’s blond head coming out of his office. I stride towards him, bags in hand. “Hello!” I say.

“Billygean,” he says, his face crinkling up. “You’re in Birmingham.”

We get a coffee, holding hands at the venue of our first date, and shop until we want to stop.

illness MindReader

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Nov 3

Conversations in the kitchen

by billygean

“Make sure you check on the spuds, too,” MindReader says, about to close the door. I love that he calls potatoes spuds.

I am cooking on my own. My ability to stand up for a while, combined with the restless boredom that only the end of a chronic illness can bring, means I have – shock horror – taught myself to cook a bit.

I say a bit.

“I can’t,” I yelp.

It’s true. The barbecue sauce (containing fennel seeds! Fennel seeds.) is very complicated. I am chopping fresh garlic, measuring out soy sauce and simultaneously frying onion. I am also de-seeding a chili and roasting vegetables.

Suddenly I am very hot.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the misted-up window. My hair is huge and full of humidity.

“You can,” he says. “Just check them every five minutes or so to check they’re not – you know – burning.” A slight pause, just long enough to indicate perhaps he doesn’t like burnt dinners.

“Okay,” I say. “Every time itunes selects a new song, I’ll check the potatoes.”

“Okay. And then toss them a bit, in the olive oil?”

“No. I can check them; I can’t guarantee I’ll act on it. Okay?” I frantically crush the garlic and throw it in a pan.

He smirks slightly. “But then they might go funny…”

“So I just – toss them?” I say.

“Yeah – just – ” he gestures tossing a pan.

“You would toss them. I might turn them all very slowly and autistically. Which I don’t have time for.”

Radiohead comes on.

“Fair enough.”

baking disasters illness living in sin MindReader

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Nov 1

Pondering doing this

by billygean

I dash across Birmingham’s black streets, slick with rain, my shopping bags banging against my legs.

MadFather and I have started the Christmas shopping early, because MindReader is away tonight, and I was feeling festive and (dare I say) energetic and begged.

“So,” MadFather says. “It’s November, what’s your plan?”

We do this every month. September’s plan was to be able to go to a pub if I rested the day before and the day after. October’s plan was to be able to go to a pub every day if I wanted. I now resemble a human being from about 6pm every day, so October has been successful.

I open my mouth to say that I want to be sitting up all day by the end of November.

And then other responses get tangled in my mouth. I remember reading Things I Want My Daughters To Know in the bath, a wet patch of black ink on my thumb. The mum dies, leaves her daughter a series of letters which I devoured on my side in bed, being spooned by MindReader last night, my eyebrows raising further and further as I thought -

This could be my book.

And so it has occured to me: if I do not write it soon, someone else will.

These are, I think, the last months of my illness, and then, food shopping and work and dinner parties will take over and it will drop further and further down my list of recent documents, eventually dropping off altogether.

“Well it’s National Novel Writing Month,” I say to MadFather. “So who knows.”

Dad illness novel

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Nov 1

I did not, as suggested, go as a "famous hermit"

by billygean

Last night, I went to a house party. With alcohol and other people and not always available chairs! Plus, we “popped into” Asda on the way there. Popped in! Not: went to Asda and lay down all day but: went to Asda on the way to a house party.

Hurrah!
Me, as a half hearted cat, in that I wore what I wanted to, but added ears and whiskers.
A friend, MindReader and I

illness MindReader

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