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Compulsive Reading

Aug 31

The importance of buying lightbulbs

by billygean

“So I’ll move £450 over,” I say, “and then we’ll try to delay paying for the car.”

“Yes,” MindReader says, entering some numbers into a calculator. We are very poor.

“And then next month I need to work -”

“Billygean,” MindReader says.

“Yes?”

“Stop…” His blond hair catches the lights in our living room.

“What?” I say.

“You’re getting out and about a bit more,” he says. Indeed neither of us has really mentioned the improvement in my health, as until now every high has preceeded a horrible dip. “And you can eat pizza at the moment… And well, things are good, aren’t they?” he says.

I see the subtext is stop finding things to worry about.

“Thank you,” I say, and feel the warm weight of his arm around my shoulders.

***
I reverse park the car in Sainsburys quite successfully and venture in to buy light bulbs. A silly mission really, but an important one.

When you’re sick, you’re also not very independent. And indeed even if I wasn’t sick I have never experienced independence like driving myself to wherever I want to go.

I have found it hard to be happy about anything these past few months. Anything except perfect health is unacceptable. I spoke to someone a few days ago who’s 6 years on from her glandular fever (so bad it landed her in A&E), and she said with a shrug that she’ll still avoid walking far. Yet I think of her as entirely recovered.

It’s interesting. Now I can drive I can do almost all the things I want to do. Obviously this has coincided with what I truly hope is the end of this bad patch. But still. What illness? If it doesn’t impact your life, if only because of a driver’s licence and not improved health, does it any longer cramp your lifestyle?

I walk across the car park in the sun and think of Miserable-Billygean in April and May and June and July. I think of Billygean of next week or the week after and hope she doesn’t relapse. She will think of Billygean-now and wish she had savoured it more, this not-feeling-ill, and more importantly, this hope that this good patch might last months or even years. It is a scary old thing, getting better.

Tomorrow I will go to the library by myself and linger over books. Soon I will drive myself to Swanhurst park and feed the ducks. Soon i will drive to Solihull to buy a bathbomb. Or drive to the office to earn some money. Or to Aldridge, Kings Norton, London, to see friends. I will do what I want to do, soon.

And until then, I resolve to enjoy walking across the car park, sun on my face, to buy my lightbulbs.

illness MindReader Positivity

5 Comments »
Aug 26

Third time…

by billygean

I guess I have never done things by halves.

Many people dispense with glandular fever in a month and get on with their lives.

Many pass their driving test first or second time.

Me? Well I’m in my third year recovering from glandular fever and just sitting in the car ready to take my third driving test.

I have a serious, SERIOUS case of nerves. In hindsight, I do not think I have sufferered from exam nerves before, not even when I said the law lords were going to stone me outside the library after my contract exam.

I haven’t eaten, I haven’t really slept (not even when MindReader stroked my hair and spooned me), I have a churning, churning stomach, and I just read the number plate wrong.

“Which is your car?” The Examiner says. He is called Atul. He seems much nicer than Richard Richardson, who failed me because I twatted my wingmirror, and Alan Slurch, who failed me the second time because I did very little right. Hello both, if you have googled yourselves! I couldn’t help but use your names because they are so very ridiculous.

“That one,” I say pointing to the silver car with the learner plates.

Then I look around just as he tries to get in it. They are ALL silver with L plates.

“Er actually… it’s that one,” I say.

Atul gives me a kind of disbelieving look and I apologise. “I’m really nervous!” I say, my clothes soaked with my sweat and the pouring rain.

“Please try to relax,” he says when we get in the car.

He’s quite young and has nice big brown eyes and I take some deep breath.

He asks me about the power steering and I get the question completely wrong.

I have never taken an exam where one mistake is failure. I have also never taken an exam where you don’t WRITE AN ESSAY. Oh alright, except ballet exams, but as long as you didn’t fall over you’d be alright.

We pootle around. I definitely hesitate and I definitely stick my nose over the give way line.

He makes me do a turn in the road and I stall the car. I am becoming slightly light headed (given that I got up at 11am YESTERDAY I think this is fair. Internet, why don’t I sleep?).

“Please relax Billygean!” he says.

I feel like crying. I see a kitten and focus on it for a few seconds.

We finish the manouvre and we pull up at a junction. It is THE JUNCTION from my second test.

I see the stop sign, the thick white line. I hesitate at least twice and then boot it. No cars. I checked.

“I hate that junction,” I say to Atul.

“Mmm,” he says, clearly thinking I am a nutter.

As we drive along I keep up a constant stream of chatter to myself. Mostly focussing on what I am doing and trying not to listen to the voice in my head going YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE FAILED! DON’T FUCK IT UP NOW! It is quite hard to concentrate with that going on in one’s head.

I say things like “what are they doing?” and “I am just going to signal now…” and “proceed with caution…”. Most things crazy people outside Woolworths yell.

Towards the end of the test, he makes me parallel park. He stops me when I think I am only halfway through my Type A get-as-close-to-the-kerb-as-possible exercise, and I think right… Well I’ve failed.

We go back to the test center, and he tells me I have passed.

I tell him to bugger off and then, for some reason, clap him on the back.

Dad I can't drive

13 Comments »
Aug 24

The one where I reintroduced gluten

by billygean

MindReader and I are planning our meals ready for a food shop. It is a sad activity borne out of a lack of funds at the moment.

“And when do you start on the gluten?” he says.

“Thursday,” I say. Exactly 14 days before my biopsy. As of the 10th September 2010 we will know if Billygean really is Coeliac.

My nutritionist thinks a definite diagnosis either way is good. I had been putting off reintroducing gluten because I am not 100% at the moment and might attribute a health dip to that. But, alas, if I get a diagnosis I will get better treatment for fatigue related to coeliac disease which is totally different to the treatment for CFS (i.e. none!). And if I get a negative diagnosis… I can eat doughnuts.

“Pizza on Thursday?” he says with a faint smile.

“Hell yeah, Dominoes!” I say, holding my hand up for a high five. MindReader laughs.

“What will you have?!”

I think for a moment. “I can’t even remember the toppings…” I say. The last time I ate any wheat was November 2008, and that was for only four days. The last time I ate it with any regularly was May 2008; alarmingly over two years ago.

“Then what?” MindReader says, moving onto Friday’s box.

My mind goes blank. What do people eat that isn’t chili con carne, stir fry and jacket potatoes?!

“Weetabix for breakfast…” he says, remembering a Billygean I confess I have forgotten. “Sandwiches for lunch.” He fills up all the boxes, full of all of my favourite foods that I can barely even picture let alone imagine eating.

I confess my eyes well up with tears.

“It’s quite cool that, basically, no matter what happens – I have to eat these things for at least two weeks,” I say.

We finish the food chart, and make a shopping list.

“Now,” I say, heading to the kitchen. “I want a taster of gluten before I begin… Because eating four portions in one day without knowing what it’ll do to me scares me.”

“Mmm,” MindReader says.

I pull out a piece of Millionaire’s Shortbread. It is oozy with caramel and cracked chocolate topping and sweet shortbread base.

I meet MindReader’s eyes. I swore 18 months ago that I would never eat wheat again, such was the effect it had on me. But things change.

I eat the whole thing. It is unspeakably lovely.

And now, there is nothing left to do but wait.

diet illness

8 Comments »
Aug 21

Wherein MadFather is right on the money

by billygean

MadFather and I are driving, as ever. I have had more driving lessons than everybody in the world put together. Fact.

I come off the big roundabout at our exit and check my mirrors. We are no longer endlessly doing test routes and are instead practising harder things.

The road widens into three roads.

“We’ll turn right next,” MadFather says.

I stare in front of me and drift slowly into the left-hand lane.

“Um, Billygean,” MadFather says.

I come to. “Yes?”

“What goes on in your head?”

I smile sheepishly. “Not sure!”

“You know what I think it is?” he says.

I pull over on the left. It starts raining.

“I think in your head, there are canaries tweeting, monkeys picking fleas off each other and dogs balancing balls on their noses.”

I smile. “Sounds about right.”

Dad I can't drive

2 Comments »
Aug 17

His eyelashes would look good with some mascara on

by billygean

“I rang E-on with our metre reading,” I say to MindReader while brushing blusher over my cheeks.

“Hm?”

“They said it was so high we owe them £66 more!”

“Oh!” he says. We were on a money-saving kick and were convinced we had been paying too much for our electricity. Guess not.

I decline to mention that a bath costs 70p (apparently). That’s £4.90 per week!

I reach for my eyeliner. Not there.

“Have you borrowed my eyeliner?” I say without thinking.

MindReader stops sorting the washing and stares at me. I feel my face heating up.

“No, I put it straight back,” he says after a moment.

budget MindReader

3 Comments »
Aug 12

Do I write about clocks more, or poo?

by billygean

I read the sentence in my book, and re-read, because the lamplight is very dim. I sit bolt upright in bed.

“MindReader!” I say.

MindReader, was who spooning me, looks confused.

“Yes?”

“Can I read you a sentence of this book?”

“No,” MindReader says. To be fair to him, I say this every time I read a remotely good book. But how can you not want to read aloud when somebody describes ironing as ‘hot cotton labour’? So perfect!

Anyway.

MindReader pauses for a moment and I lie back down facing him.

“What’s it about?” he says eventually.

“Time.”

“Ah.”

I have had my fair share of difficulty with the notion of time. MindReader and I even fell in love over the clocks going forward (indeed, look at the entry after it!).

“What is it then.”

I read aloud from my book. “‘Helen arrives at 10pm, Chicago time. She checks the clock. It is only 8pm here. She is younger.’ SHE IS YOUNGER?” I say to MindReader.

“No. No no no.”

“It says… LOOK!” I thrust the book into his face.

“it’s not time travel,” he says. “If you ask any more questions about time…”

“Yes…”

“Well. I am going to take the piss out of you for hours.”

MindReader Tick Tock

5 Comments »
Aug 11

My second ever driving test

by billygean

The sun is setting, grey-pink, as our car ambles up the street.

“Is this it?” MadFather says.

He is indulging me. We are trying to find the school outside which I failed my driving test.

“This is it,” I say, giving a shudder as I remember the distinctive clunk of my wing mirror twatting another car’s. At 9.30 on a Sunday night, the road is silent.

“It’s, um, quite a wide road!” MadFather says. His blue eyes look mildly disbelieving.

I pull up on the left and get out of the car; the outside air neither warmer nor cooler than the car. It is still summer and I wear only a vest top (well, and jeans). I sit on the kerb.

If we were in a movie, we would be smoking roll-ups.

MadFather sits next to me and I remember the time we sat by the canal when I was sick last year (how weird, to talk both in the past and present tense about an illness).

“Nervous?” MadFather says. He picks up a tiny pebble and rolls it between his fingers.

“The thing is,” I say, looking at the peach-coloured sky, at the black buildings silhouetted against it. “Driving tests and lessons are normal things to worry about.”

“Mmm,” MadFather says, leaning his weight back on his wrinkly hands.

“Though I’m no less neurotic about them…” I say. I remember vividly when I was too ill to read a book last summer telling myself I would never worry about anything once I was well.

“It would be good if you could drive yourself places,” he says. “Give you more independence.”

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s only walking that really wipes me out. So I could do almost anything I like.”

The truth though, is that after the other test was over and I failed, I went back to being chronically ill. And for a moment in the run up to the test I didn’t feel so.

MadFather pats my knee and tells me to go and practise bay parking. We get up and walk towards the car.

***
I approach the Stop Junction cautiously. Adrenaline is pumping so that I don’t feel remotely tired, even at 8.20am.

“Turn left here,” the examiner says.

I pull out, too fast, and see the car too late.

“Fuck,” I say as I put my foot down. The car behind still slams its brakes on and honks its horn.

“I think you probably knew you failed from – er – what you said…” the examiner says later.

I bow my head in the car and in the back my dad lets out a small sigh.

Sometimes, it just doesn’t go your way eh?

Dad I can't drive illness

4 Comments »
Aug 3

Wherein holidays are good

by billygean

Norfolk was a sunset as we left Birmingham, my bare feet on the dashboard of the car listening to David Gray’s A New Day At Midnight because it is the best sunset-driving song.

Norfolk was a snog in the service station while MindReader ate a KFC and I looked on enviously.

Norfolk was a silent wet village, black as black can be, as our car pulled slowly into the driveway, the pinkish gravel prickling under the wheels. Norfolk was that hot, musty after-the-rain smell.

Norfolk was a day at the beach spent building sandcastles, MindReader vigorously applying sun-lotion to his fair skin even though it was cloudy. Norfolk was giggling as I shrieked at a miniature train and giggling even more as the conductor thought I wanted to flag it down. Norfolk was a farm shop, an abbey, a candleshop. Norfolk was sitting on a bench in the sun eating an apple. Norfolk was napping. Norfolk was an old pub, full of smelly wet dogs. Norfolk was sipping wine as the black rain lashed the pub windows. Norfolk was MindReader telling me about each and every house he’s lived in, and smiling that the last three have been with me. Norfolk was – ahem – putting a traffic cone on my head on the way home. Norfolk was also (apparently), me taking my trousers off as soon as we got in the door, though I don’t remember this.

Norfolk was nursing a hangover in the bath, smiling ruefully. Norfolk was a day with MindReader’s friends, nosing round their enormous house, barbecuing posh food and watching their dog swim in their fragrant green ponds. Norfolk was driving through another sunset, the scattered clouds like a thousand toddlers’ footprints on the sky.

Norfolk was a lazy day; enforced by MindReader. Norfolk was watching two and a half hours of Come Dine With Me, only getting up from our cuddle on the sofa for snacks and drinks. Norfolk was a three course meal, more wine, more giggling.

Norfolk was packing, waving goodbye to the house, insisting MindReader pose. Norfolk was let’s just quickly go to the beach before we leave, finding a beach and having the most breathtaking afternoon. Norfolk was an expanse of white and blue. Norfolk was paddling, rockpools, sandy barefeet on the dashboard of the car and MindReader driving home with wet shorts.

Holidays Love Story

4 Comments »
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