RIP Terry Pratchett

It’s strange to grieve for a person you haven’t met. I’ve never gone in for celebrity culture, so have never mourned from a distance, but today I lost one of my heroes, and I feel oddly bereft.

 

I was about 8 when I read my first Terry Pratchett. We were on holiday in France, and my voracious appetite for books was unsatisfied by the number I’d brought. I did attempt to keep myself going by reading the Wolves of Willoughby Chase over and over, but in the end my dad was forced to give me one of his – Guards Guards. As soon as we got home I began working my way through his Discworld collection, and have since done so more times than I’d like to say. One of the first things I did when I moved out of my parents’ home was buy my own set of Pratchetts, and I’ve religiously added to it as every new book came out. He’s the only author I allow myself to buy in hardback, because I’ll be damned if I’ll wait for the paperback to come out.

 

As I grew up, the series seemed to grow up with me. What started as funny adventures morphed into sharp socio-political commentaries, and the more I learned about the world and its literature, the more I understood just how clever this man really was. Every book is packed full of references, and I’ve never tired of that ‘ha!’ moment you get when you recognise a caricature or twisted quote. You can usually trust a fellow fan to share a certain irreverent sense of humour, not to mention a love of a good Pune, or Play on Words, so I suppose it’s unsurprising that so many of my friends number among them. I met a woman seven years ago, and we had completely dismissed each other until she quoted Pratchett and I finished the line. He has a mention in the speech I’m giving at her wedding next month.

 

Such a brilliantly corkscrewed mind should never have been struck by anything as mentally debilitating as Alzheimers. Sad as I am that the world has been deprived of his genius, I’m glad he went before it had a chance to reduce him to something he wouldn’t have wanted to be. I just wish I could have been a fly on the wall when Death came to collect him.

 

I'll be raising a glass of scumble to Sir Terry tonight. It's ok, it's made of apples. Well......mostly apples.

2014 bucket update

I achieved a lot from the bucket list last year. In part due to my trip to Iceland, and in part due to the amazing 30th birthday celebration my friends organised, where I spent the day completing set tasks from the list, and being rewarded with other items from the list, all followed by an amazing party. It was one of the best days of my entire life.

So here's the round up:

3. See the Aurora Borealis - Cor blimey, what a show!
5. See a glacier - also part of the Iceland trip. Those babies are cold.
8. Give 50 pounds to a busker - The cash for this was one of my birthday rewards. I gave it to a man who busks at Victoria station, who I've walked past at least once a week for a long time. He plays the guitar and always has a friendly smile.
27. Send a message in a bottle - Another birthday reward was a pretty bottle and some writing paper. The message was thrown into San Francisco bay.
49. Have a food fight - This was one of my favourites from my birthday. I thought we were done for the day, and D and I were heading home through the park to get ready for the party, when we came upon a small group of friends with what looked like a picnic. I was confused.....we didn't have that much time before the party, where there was going to be food, so why a picnic? Then the first cake was thrown, and I twigged. So much mess, so much fun!
71. Learn to play poker - Yep, I know my straights from my flushes from my full houses. Now if I could just stop looking so darned pleased when I draw a good hand, I'd be fine.
80. Give somebody flowers for no reason - Yet another birthday task. I picked out a random lady on the street, and presented a bouquet. She was chuffed to bits. I really think we made her day.
81. Go to Iceland - Well duh.
94. Put on pyjamas, get into a show bed in a shop and see how long it takes to get chucked out - a long time, it turns out. Longer, in fact, than we were prepared to wait. Kudos to Debenhams staff for being completely unfazed by two girls in onesies messing up their displays.
95. Busk - This was the only challenge from my birthday that I came close to refusing to do, but I womaned up and stood on a street corner in Camden and told a story. I didn't make a whole lot of dosh.

And of the ten things my friends voted on:
Every morning for a year look in the mirror and tell myself "Meg, you are beautiful. You have many people who love you, and I love you too" - I think this was supposed to boost my self-confidence, but there wasn't a single day when I didn't feel like a dick doing it, particularly those days when I was sharing a bathroom or otherwise audible to other people.
Run through a field naked - This was surprisingly fun. I picked the last day of a weekend-long wedding celebration for some friends on a farm. The intention was to just discretely run around the little cluster of tents belonging to some of my closer friends, but as soon as they started whooping at me, everyone turned round, they started whooping too and it was all very public. Strangely liberating though. It felt good.
Go a week without wearing make up - I spoke about this here. No. Just no.
Eat a food I’ve been afraid of trying - Softshell crab. Creepy, crunchy, innard-filled spider-like things. Yeurch. They taste bloody great though, it turns out.

Try a new cheese every week for the year - My favourite. I'll dig out the list o' cheeses at some point and post it up. 52 cheeses is not too many cheeses.

Missing, presumed dead

I have a missing parcel problem. It was supposed to arrive today, and it didn't, and I can't get the delivery company to acknowledge the existence of the tracking number I've been given. Or indeed, get the sender of the parcel to respond to me with a correction to what is clearly an incorrect tracking number.

None of this would be any great catastrophe if the parcel didn't contain a rapidly thawing weasel corpse.

I mentioned I'd taken up taxidermy, right? Actually, maybe I didn't

*flashback*

I'm carefully holding the tiny mouse flat. I've been instructed to cut a straight, shallow line down its belly, but the resulting incision looks like it was done with pinking shears. My first thought is "This isn't as gross as I expected". The second is "Oh crap. I'm really not good at this". Somehow I manage to peel the mouse without pulling off anything essential, but when it comes time to sew him back up, there is clearly a problem with the shape of his new, cotton wool body. His skin sags in some places like a sodden droopy nappy, and stretches tight in others like a fat man's waistcoat. I suddenly remember that the last time I stitched an animal was when I sewed my hair to a beanbag frog in home economics.

*flashforward*

The weasel is destined to join the gradually swelling ranks of my taxidermy army as my first chimera; a quail winged, seraphic mustelidae named Weaselangelo. Having named him already, I feel guilty that he is stranded somewhere, on a van or at a sorting office, missing out on his stoatly destiny. I'll feel even worse if I don't manage to recover him. The parcel office keeps packages for 18 days before disposing of them. Can you even begin to imagine the smell?

made up

Well I did it. I went a whole week without make up. I went to work every weekday, and out six evenings out of seven. And yet, I don't feel particularly proud of the achievement.

As expected, I was repeatedly told by acquaintances and colleagues that I looked tired, or looked like shit. I was even called an ugly butch in the street, but then that happened a couple of weeks ago too, when I was wearing make up, and both blokes were clearly nutters, so it doesn't count. My friends, conversely, either didn't notice or thought it suited me.

Nobody else's response bothered me as much as my own. I hated every single second of it. I felt exposed and shy, as though my social skills had regressed about ten years. And I felt ugly. I know that's a terrible thing to say,   but I'm trying to be honest. If I spoke to my friends the way I spoke to myself in the mirror last week, I wouldn't have any left. So why on earth does my brain think it's acceptable to speak to myself that way? Clearly that needs to be addressed at some point, but not right now. For now I'm back behind my mask, where I'm safe from my own cruelty, and I think I'll stay here until things settle down a little.

The hardest task

This week I will be attempting another of the ten challenges set by my friends. To go a week without wearing make up. Those who know me well will realise how difficult this is going to be for me. Since they voted for me to do it, it seems safe to assume that they thought it would also be good for me.

It hapens that over the last couple of weeks, my facebook timeline has been full of pictures of my female friends, barefaced for the no make-up selfie trend that is doing the rounds to raise breast cancer awareness. I have looked at every one, and thought how lovely that person looked, all natural and scrubbed, but the thought of doing it myself makes me feel queasy and dizzy.

It sounds like I'm a terribly shallow person, and I suppose I am to some extent, but I have hated my face since I was a teenager. Objectively, there is nothing wrong with it. It's a normal, plain face with ordinary features, but there are days when it doesn't appear that way to me, when the thought of other people looking at me horrifies me, and I am terrified that they will laugh at or ridicule me. Unfortunately, my possession of an overactive 'mad-magnet' means that they not infrequently do.

I have caked myself in make-up since I was old enough for my mum to let me, but it wasn't until my early twenties that a therapist suggested I was showing symptoms of body dysmorphia. By that stage things had got pretty bad. I was covering mirrors, cancelling appointments and suffering from panic attacks. A combination of excellent CBT and talk therapy helped me more than I had anticipated, and I struggle a lot less than I used to. There are rare days when I even feel reasonably pretty, with my make-up on, but I still don't voluntary or comfortably allow many people to see me barefaced.

I realised that, when I was making plans to complete this task, I was looking through my diary for a week when I had nothing on. No dates with friends or trips out, and preferably a week I could take off work. Basically I was trying to cheat. To tick it off technically, without actually letting anyone see me au naturel. Well I reject that. I'm going to be bold. This week I am in work Monday to Friday, I have two birthday shindigs, two theatre trips, and a drinks date, and I will be doing it all sans slap. My heart is racing just thinking of it.

My new fridge magnet

Check, check, check and check

I've had a very successful weekend, both in terms of having had a wonderful time, and of ticking off items from the bucket list.

I went to Iceland (check!). Go. Seriously, go. It is such a beautiful country, and the people are incredibly friendly. Sure, it's pricey, but it felt worth the money. The landscape is bizarrely stark and beautiful at the same time. At first the flats almost look like the Yorkshire moors in winter, until you realise that what looks like dirt and scrub is actually laval rock and lichen. And then there are the mountains, rearing up from nowhere with their bold streaks of black mass and gleaming white snow, an improbably huge glacier (check!) bulldozing through infinitesimally slowly.

In addition being lucky enough to see the Aurora Borealis (check!) on our second night there, we also saw geysers, a frozen waterfall, stood on the brink of a tectonic plate and miraculously failed to acquire any ice based injuries. Pretty much the only negative is that the whole place has the lingering odour of rotten eggs; a side effect of the sulphurous thermal springs.

Oh, and I ate soft shell crab (check!). That stuff is good!

Northen lights

The Aurora Borealis is a thing of glory and wonder. How do I even find the words for this? A fine veil sleeting across the sky, rippling and dancing in this intense natural light show. I was so struck by how much beauty there is in the universe, I stood and laughed in pure joy. It's like a mist of phosphorescent water, a sheet of the finest spray from a waterfall, ebbing and flowing. It's beautiful beyond my ability to articulate. I can see why people used to believe they were glimpsing heaven.

Not again!

I was on a blog hiatus during the Great Passport Incident of last year. Basically I succeeded in losing said passport the day I was due to go and visit Spike in Copenhagen. She kindly refrained from killing me, either then or in the succeeding few weeks when I continually failed to get my arse in gear and apply for a new one. Eventually she went so far as to download the forms and email them to me, and the new passport arrived on the last post day before our next trip. The course of true Meg never did run smooth.

Fast forward to yesterday, and I'm packing for today's planned trip to Iceland. I go to the desk to get my passport and.....nothing. it's not there. Frantically I search every bag I own. Even those I haven't used in years. Every pocket of every coat, every shelf, every 'safe place' I can think of. Nothing. How can this be happening again?

Cue panicked facebook message, because a crisis just isn't a crisis without a bit of embarrassing public hysteria. Much use of exclamation marks and caps lock. Many suggestions from friends, in levels of helpfulness ranging from 'calm down' to 'somebody needs to go over there and slap her'. Somebody probably did.

Furious with myself, and barely holding back tears at having let my friend down yet again, I eventually gave up, texted my manager to say I would be in work after all, and went to bed in the kind of shivery, nauseated state of anxiety I haven't felt since I finished my last uni essay.

I left my bed this morning, and commenced my morning ablutions with a heavy heart. Then, suddenly, a beam of light shone from above, angels seemed to sing, my subconscious awoke, grudgingly raised its head and said "Passport? Didn't you show that for your DBS check for that Christmas volunteering? Isn't there an envelope with that stuff under that pile of books by the wardrobe?".

I leapt out of the shower and ran dripping to the pile of books. YES YED YES! Throw things in bag, throw clothes on body, throw text messages at Spike and my manager, throw self in direction of airport.

I'm writing this on the plane. I think I might have a nap now. I'm bloody knackered.

Molly

My cat died yesterday. She escaped when I was taking out the rubbish and, after a prolonged search, I found her in a puddle in the gutter a street over. The short walk home, sobbing, clutching a wet, furry body to my chest, felt like it took about an hour. 

Molly was possibly the most irritating cat in the history of the world. Her appearance in my house as a tiny bedraggled kitten, flea-ridden and emaciated, pretty much set the tone for her existence. There was the summer when she brought in a seemingly never-ending series of huge wood pigeons in varying degrees of disembowelment, the night she gave birth to five kittens under the kitchen sink as a mental patient broke into the house, the time she stuck her nose into a tub of hair dye and dyed her face purple, and the many death defying leaps from first floor windows so that I had to knock on assorted neighbours’ doors and beg to retrieve her from their gardens. 

All this, and yet, dammit I loved that stupid cat. Ok, so maybe she was wantonly destructive, and attacked half the people who tried to pet her, and maybe she was so thick that she’d happily stand in the litter tray and poo over the side, but how could I fail to love a cat who crawled into my dress to sleep, because that millimetre of fabric was just too far away from me. Who licked the tears from my cheeks when I was sad. Who always wanted to be the big spoon when we snuggled, however uncomfortable it made us both.

RIP Molly. No hunting cherubs, even if they do have wings.