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.

Get it?

Child on train: Mummy, my friend Saffron has two mummies, because they have less beans.

Jam and Jerusalem

Tonight, E and I went to our first WI meeting. Somehow (I'm not quite sure how), we got talking to people about the penis cake I made for a friend's birthday. And somehow (I'm not quite sure how), I got talked into recreating said cake for the upcoming bring and buy sale.

Frankly, if they're not already referring to me as 'that awful penis cake girl', it's a miracle.

I wish it could be Christmas every day

Not really, but I would like more tinselly glittery decor. I have finally taken down my Christmas decorations - yes, yes, I know - and now everything looks bald and drab. Is there any real reason why tinsel isn't an acceptable year-round home accessory?

Oi! Dick'ead!

Just heard a builder with the thickest cockney accent yelling up to a co-worker on some scaffolding.

"Oi! Dick'ead! I got you a flapjack! It's organic!"

Roots

They've pulled up a large section of paving slabs near where I live, uncovering the lattice of surface roots from the nearby trees. It looks pretty, but at the same time somehow raw and painful, like a flayed body exposing its network of veins and arteries.

Cheese 1 - morbier

Being utterly skint until payday at the end of the week, my first cheese was selected through a simple choice between cheese I couldn't afford to buy and cheese I already had in the fridge.

It's a softish cheese. Not as hard as a cheddar, but not as squidgy as brie, with a layer of ash through the middle. Light but tangy. You know, cheese-like, after the fashion of cheese.

Who bloody suggested this cheese lark? Much as I enjoy eating the stuff, do I really have to review them all? Won't a list be sufficient? It must be painfully obvious already that I have no idea what I'm talking about, and no lexicon of cheese-tasting terminology. This is going to be a really long year for you, of reading my inane lactic burblings.

The results are in

You lot are weird, that's all I can say. Here, therefore, is the rather peculiar list of things you have selected for me to do this year:

Make a stop motion film with taxidermy animals - First step, get all my mutant ducklings back from my friend. Second step, hunt down that music from Benny Hill. Third step, find out how the hell to make a stop motion film.

Learn to pick locks - I have a vague memory of an email sent to me years ago which mentioned a place where it is possible to learn this. I am already following that lead, like a bassett hound.

Every morning look in the mirror and tell myself "Meg, you are beautiful. You have many people who love you, and I love you too" - Did it this morning. Felt like a dick.

Design and fabricate a piece of furniture - Maybe a footstool or pouffe of some description. That sounds easyish.

Make a great hat out of underpants - What is wrong with you people? Why would you do this to me?

Run through a field naked - Again, why would you do this to me? Have you seen me naked? That is not a body made for running without significant support. It has been pointed out that I will be at a wedding on a farm in the summer, so that will probably be the place where I end up giving myself two black eyes and twisting my ankle in a rabbit hole.

Go a week without wearing make up - This is actually the scariest one of all. Apart from at Burning Man and Nowhere, where I feel fairly secure, I haven't voluntarily left the house without make up since I was a young teenager.

Learn mindful meditation - I've been hearing a lot about this lately. A number of people (and not just woowoo hippies) have reported finding it very good for mental health problems, so I'll be interested to see how this goes.

Eat a food I’ve been afraid of trying - My immediate thought is soft shell crab. I'm always put off by foodstuffs which involve eating an animal's innards and bones - like whitebait - but soft shell crabs also look like deep fried spiders. Bleurgh! Anyone know where they do good ones in London?

Try a new cheese every week for the year - I'm going to need to find some little cheese shop somewhere. Am I limited only to cheeses I've never eaten before? Must seek clarification from the suggestor, but I'm looking forward to this one!

Vote now

Alrighty then! My quest for bucket list suggestions has come up with 20 items. I am listing these below. Please comment, email me, fb me or send a carrier pigeon* with your three votes, and I will do the top ten this year.

Do a 10-day Vipassana silent retreat
Go a week without wearing make-up
Learn to make a hat
Make a great hat out of underpants
Learn Kung Fu
Learn to pick locks
Knit a pixie hood
Learn parkour
Make pasta
Design and fabricate a piece of furniture
Run through a field naked
Eat a food I’ve been afraid of trying
Go up in a glider
Join Gothic Valley WI
Learn mindful meditation
Try a new cheese every week (I will add ‘for a year’ to make it a goal)
Every morning for a year, look in the mirror and say out loud “Meg, you are beautiful. You have many people who love you and I love you too”
Organise and run a project at Burning Pub
Make a stop motion film with taxidermy animals
Write a comic

*late additions*
Hunt, kill, butcher and eat an animal
Take up yoga for six months

If you desperately want to add another item, tell me and I'll put it in as a late entry.

*No, I won't stuff your pigeon. Probably.

Change

A lot of the things I removed from the bucket list were cut for being too difficult to pin down. Actions such as forgiveness and acceptance for example. How would I really know if I had ticked them off? After all, I know how capricious I am. I might think I've forgiven someone, then three years down the line they'll say one little thing and I'll be furious with them all over again. So all those items had to go.

But the biggest cut was the line that read 'adopt a child'. At the time when I started writing this list, I was pretty young, and yet already aware that I didn't feel any great biological urge to pass on my genes. And so the logical conclusion at that time was that, when I decided to start a family, I would give a home to a kid who needed it rather than making one from scratch.

Fast forward eight years, and it has become clear that the conclusion may have been incorrect. It's not just that I don't feel the need to further my genetic line, I simply don't feel that I want children. Who knows, maybe that will change in the future. Maybe I'll meet someone special and want to raise 'our' child, or maybe some ticking time bomb of hormones will explode and I'll suddenly become desperately broody - I am approaching 30, so it's a dangerous age - but as time goes on it looks increasingly unlikely.

It's a surprisingly difficult thing to tell people. Despite the advances of feminism, it is still built into the make up of our society that the great aim of womanhood is to become a mother. People think you must be a real hard-nosed, unfeminine, kid-hating bitch if you don't want that for yourself. And I'm no kid-hater. I like most children (not all. I'm sorry, but some kids are arseholes, just like some grown-ups). I love my little nieces more than anything, but I also like giving them back to their parents. For one thing, I know I couldn't do anything even close to the amazing job my brother and sister-in-law do at raising sproglets, but mostly, I just like my life the way it is. And so the item had to go.

P.S. If it's 20 years from now and you are my kid reading this, please don't think you aren't wanted. Just think how much I must have wanted you to change my mind.

Updated bucket list - and new project for you to help with

101 Things to do before I die - an updated list with some changes.

1. Learn to blow smoke rings
2. Throw a drink over someone
3. See the Aurora Borealis
4. Have dinner at the Fat Duck
5. See a glacier
6. Have my photo taken nude and like the result
7. Finish my book and have it published
8. Give 50 pounds to a busker
9. Go scuba diving
10. *Try an oyster*
11. Become fluent in another language
12. Swim with sharks
13. *Go to a Pride parade*
14. Take a ride in a hot air balloon
15. *Write a script*
16. Learn to drive
17. Skydive
18. Eat something I've grown myself
19. Learn to juggle
20. *Go to Torture Garden*
21. Volunteer at Burning Man
22. Wallpaper a room
23. Read every book listed in ‘1001 books you must read before you die’ 
24. Learn sign language
25. Own a bath big enough for two
26. *Smash a plate on purpose*
27. Send a message in a bottle
28. Have a library room in my house
29. Own a snake
30. Stay in the ice hotel
31. *Try caviar*
32. *Ask someone on a date*
33. *Stop having to order enough takeaway that they won’t realize I’m eating alone*
34. *Learn to knit*
35. Fly first class
36. *Start a blog*
37. Go a year without forgetting a single relative’s birthday
38. Live in another country for a year
39. Learn to salsa
40. *Get a degree*
41. Get a masters degree
42. Get a doctorate
43. Send a hand-written letter
44. Make jam
45. Visit the pyramids
46. *Give a dinner party*
47. Go white water rafting
48. Learn to cry on cue
49. Have a food fight
50. Be debt free 
51. See a manatee
52. Go into space (and take my dad with me)
53. *Have afternoon tea*
54. Work in a job that I love
55. Hold a koala
56. Complete the Times cryptic crossword without help
57. Go skiing
58. Spend 24 hours solid in a pub
59. Go to the Galapagos islands
60. *Mudlark on the banks of the Thames at low tide*
61. *Get a massage*
62. *Own a stuffed animal (taxidermy, not a teddy)*
63. Go to Mardi Gras
64. Take singing lessons
65. Go to a shop and try on wedding dresses a la Muriel
66. Learn to spin fire poi
67. Celebrate the Day of the Dead in Mexico
68. *Change somebody’s life for the better*
69. Hitchhike
70. Kiss underwater
71. Learn to play poker
72. Go to an airport and get on the next available flight, regardless of destination
73. Stand on the equator
74. Swim with bioluminescent plankton in Puerto Rico
75. Take a holiday on a canal boat with friends
76. Have enough cats to cross the line from ‘cat-lover’ to ‘crazy cat lady’
77. Find the perfect bra
78. Visit the Sistine chapel
79. Do a cartwheel
80. Give somebody flowers for no reason
81. Go to Iceland
82. Learn to ride a motorbike
83. *Be kissed under mistletoe*
84. Become a regular in a pub and have a ‘usual’
85. Learn the proper use of English grammar
86. Deliver a crushing comeback when insulted instead of gaping in disbelief like a stunned trout
87. Write a love letter
88. See penguins in the wild
89. Run (or more likely walk) the London marathon
90. Take a picture every day for a year
91. *Go to Glastonbury festival*
92. Take horse riding lessons
93. Organise a grown-up sleepover 
94. Put on pyjamas, get into a show bed in a shop and see how long it takes to get chucked out
95. Busk
96. Travel on the Orient Express
97. Live independently for a whole year
98. Couchsurf
99. Do stand-up
100. Write my will
101. Do ten things somebody else thinks I should do

Note number 101. I am now taking suggestions. It could be something that you think I would enjoy, or something you think it is important I learn or experience. Please make it specific to me, not too expensive (unless you're paying!) and make it something that can be resolutely ticked off.

Resolutions

1) Grow back my missing half eyebrow.

2) Never again use glue to attach masks to my eyebrow regions.