That would be me.

I’ve told you that I’ve done that standard stupid human thing of getting through the crisis—in this case the immediate aftermath of Peter’s stroke—and then when everything else is beginning to find some tentative stability . . . going to pieces.  In my case of course the manifestation of disintegration is the multiply-blasted ME.  I’m just about getting the hellpack hurtled . . . and the rest of the day is horizontal, in spirit anyway.*  I’m getting out of bed at what is nearly a responsible adult hour in the moooooorning but it’s not doing me much good;  the first two or three hours are a blur, which means I’m still having trouble getting down to the mews before lunch to take Peter shopping.

At the moment I may have an hour or two around midday that are not too bad and then it’s all downhill again.  Yesterday I was already pretty marginal by the time I had to leave for service ring at Forza . . . so I didn’t go, telling myself that this should at least mean I could pull myself together enough to go to church last night.  Nope.**  By the time I would have had to leave to go to St Margaret’s I was definitely not safe behind the wheel of a car, not to mention the whole ‘sitting upright in a chair’ thing once I got there.

But today . . . today was my first voice lesson in a month.  I was not going to miss this if I had to yoke the hellpack to a sledge. . . .  Nah.  Wolfgang knows the way.  And a good thing too.

I’m paying for it now and I’m trying to make no plans about tomorrow.  But I’m still glad I went.  It’s been interesting, in that I-could-have-done-without-knowing-any-of-this-way, trying to sing, these last few weeks, the noise I make, or not, and the stuff I’m willing to have a go at and the stuff I’m not willing to have a go at—this latter is not about the technical difficulties, which are just technical, but the emotional ones:  I’m not in the mood to sing anything I’m going to have to inhabit.  Just doing warm-up today with Nadia tweaking and adjusting as she does, I could hear some of the last three weeks coming out.  So could Nadia, of course.  But . . . as I said to her, I wanted to come today because singing is good for morale, but also my voice wanted to come, because it knows she’s its friend and me, not so much, lately.  It’s very odd, this having a voice.  That even with the ME, once Nadia had found where I’d hidden the key to the jail cell and let my voice out, it was . . . there.

* * *

* Hellhounds are cool with a horizontal hellgoddess.  Hellterror not so much.  And she’s a lot easier to suppress on your lap than your chest.  She’s as big as you are, on your chest.  Eeep.^

^ Also she’s a solid little hellspawn.  When she bounces on you you know you’ve been bounced.+

+ . . . I’ve just wasted about fifteen minutes of my . . . well, zero-brain time can’t really be wasted because the implication is there’s something to waste.  Anyway there’s a series in the Sunday GUARDIAN, which is to say the OBSERVER, called ‘why it works’ and every Sunday there’s a photo of a celebrity and some member of staff does a more or less tongue-in-cheek run down of why the look ‘works’.  Generally speaking it never looks like a look to me;  mostly these people look like celebrities being more or less dorkily aware that someone is taking a photo of them and they’re celebrities so that’s why they’re wearing what they’re wearing, including if it looks like something they picked up at Oxfam five minutes ago.  Especially if it looks like something they picked up at Oxfam five minutes ago.

This week it’s Marc Jacobs.  People who don’t spend all their more or less spare time hurtling hellcritters and ringing bells may know who Marc Jacobs is.  I didn’t till just now when I was trying to find a link to the ‘why it works’ page.  Now that I know he’s a frelling clothing designer I realise that the ridiculous coat he’s wearing is actually a fabulously expensive designer creation and not a rather adorable piece of over the top kitsch.  I’d wear it—I’d’ve seized it instantly if I’d found it in Oxfam.  It’s fuzzy plush, like what stuffed animals for kiddies are made of—at least I hope it’s fuzzy plush and no real animals died for this—with rainbow stripes.  Cootchy-coo.

Anyway.  He’s walking his dog.  And his dog is a (standard not mini) BULL TERRIER.  YES.  And furthermore it’s a coloured bull terrier, not a white one.  Coloured.  Like someone we all know# and love, although I think Marc’s is brindle and white rather than tricolour.  And it’s strolling along with its head down looking away##, and the ha-ha funny why-it-works caption goes:  The dog.  ‘No pictures!’

NO.  WRONG.  If this dog ever finds out its photo was taken unawares, it will be crushed.  It will be devastated.  Bullies LIVE to play up to any opportunity that presents itself###.  And here was an opportunity and it MISSED IT??!  This bullie may feel itself obliged to hunt down this photographer and deliver a little lecture, with the famously evil, varminty little eyes shooting out laser beams and a certain shark-like smile much in evidence.

Oh, and Marc is carrying a little green bag of dog crap.  Yaay Marc.  Either that or a seriously ill-designed man-bag.  I prefer to think it’s dog crap.

# And some of us have the bruises to prove it.

## In what I admit is a rather un-bullie-like posture—maybe it had had a hard night sitting in celebrities’ laps and drinking champagne.

### And one had better present itself fairly regularly or the bullie in question will be forced to create one.  Ask me how I know this.

** When you’re choosing a church you don’t really think in terms of how often your frelling ME is going to prevent you from driving that far.  Although maybe you should.  The additional aggravator in this case is that St Radegund, from which I am two garden walls over at the cottage, also has an evening service but it’s earlier than St Margaret’s.  I’m still deluding myself I’m going to make it to my own church when St Radegund’s service starts.  Feh.