The singing coconut

Today is going to be a funny one. A few weeks ago we signed up for something called the Biobank research project. Apparently it's some big national project into how healthy we are and perhaps why we are not. It's looking at thousands of people and you have to go for a two hour session. My friend Elisabeth, her of the recorder advice, went last week and they had her on the torture bike and everything. I am in a quandary about whether I should claim disability and escape such horrors or bite the bullet as I will have to go through it all with Dr Rolle in Dresden again in a few months time if the chemo and the recorder do their stuff and I am back to my fighting fit status. Being all modern they have sent me a reminder by email and by text, if I twittered I am sure they would have done so too; it's nice to feel wanted.

Actually over the last few days, I have felt better than I have felt for ages, I don't look better as my hair is definitely on the way out. I am so glad I went for the coconut look last week at the hairdressers as it is now more successful than ever and I will soon be the less than proud owner of the full blown version . But as I plan next weeks chemo stay - it's on Monday to Wednesday as long as they have a bed - I can run up stairs repeatedly, as I do repeatedly as I keep forgetting things, without collapsing into a heap. Last night I bellowed out at least two whole rounds of Nymphs and Shepherds, try it if you need to improve lung function, in front of, and indeed with, friends Chris and Denise from over the road. My only worry is that this will be their abiding memory of me: a tuneless but enthusiastic coconut warbling " in this grove, in this grove lets sport and play, lets sport and play" etc etc.

I suppose it could be worse.

A tale of two lunches

On Tuesday we went to out local co-op supermarket and had the £2.99 pensioners' special, double egg and chips; the eggs were cooked freshly and perfectly and there was that wonderful moment when you pierce the yolk with your chip and then do it again and again and again.

I think if I could choose my last meal it would be egg and chips; that or the meal we had yesterday for our anniversary. It cost getting on for 40 times as much (one of the advantages of having my particularly dreadful form of cancer is that you can treat every occasion as if it will be your last and spend, spend, spend) but lasted probably 10 times longer and well it too was perfection; so much so that I said to Stewart that it was the exactly the right meal meal for an anniversary as each course was almost as good as sex. I will leave you with that thought and simply copy and paste the menu, with the sommelier's choice of wines, so that you can feel the flavours and taste the passion, or you could just pop and have some egg and chips, it's just as orgasmic and a lot cheaper!

Tasting menu

Portland crab meat, Severn & Wye smoked salmon,

avocado mousse, red pepper jelly, tacos

Sauvignon Blanc, Shaw and Smith, Australia 2008

~

Seared hand dived Ross Shire scallops, Avruga caviar,

tender stem broccoli, orzo pasta, seaweed butter sauce

Champagne Ruinart (1729) Reims, France
~

Home-salted cod fillet, caramelised cauliflower risotto,

coriander, cauliflower & apple salad, curry oil

Alsace Gentil, Hugel, France 2007

~

Seared duck liver, date purée, aromatic couscous

Cordun Cut, Reisling, Clare Valley, Australia 2008

~

Duo of Aberdeenshire beef: braised cheek & fillet,

parsley roots, truffle & parsley salad, red wine sauce

Le Cigare Volant, Santa Cruz, Bonny Doon Vineyard, USA 2004

~

Camembert aged in Calvados, almond, apple, & lambs lettuce salad

Poire Granite, Normandy, France

~

Carrot & walnut cake, white chocolate creamy,

salted caramel ice-cream

Tokaji Aszu, Hungary 2004

Coffee with multi-coloured macaroons and scrummy chocs were served in the lounge and we both dropped off while we waited for our taxi - I told you it was just like sex.

The answer to life the universe and everything

Just changed my profile and moved a year on to mark our anniversary and am hoping I will be doing it as a matter of course for many years in the future. Forty two years eh, so why did I marry so young and how have we made it last so long? In answer to the first question well why not? I really didn't see it as some sort of surrender of my youth and freedom; but a real leap forwards into the only thing I knew I wanted to do at that time. Also there was absolutely no chance of just moving in together in working class Birmingham in 1968, or of going on the pill until you could show them your wedding banns. So much for the swinging sixties; we had spent three years having a fantastic time avoiding anything that might get me pregnant - lessons that have served us in good stead ever since - but it was getting a bit wearing. We didn't have to save as the whole wedding only cost about £50, so why wait?

I can't say I have ever regretted that I was married when I was at university and in those heady days when life did start to swing in the 70s; I was and probably still am hopeless at saying no so I would have been in all sorts of trouble I am sure; and after all I had all that my peers were running around feeling angst about.

Next question how have we made it last? Well God knows and I have no helpful tips for others. I will list all the ways we are different and all the ways we are not and you can draw your own conclusions.


Differences:

* I see the glass brimming from the top; he sees it with a few dregs in the bottom

* He worries about everything and I worry about very little

* I think money is to spend NOW and he likes to save for the future - for the rainy day of course

* He reads around the subject, reads books about physics and stuff and I skim the surface of millions of novels

* He was mostly bad cop and I was mostly good cop when bringing up the kids; boy did they notice when we reversed roles!

Similarities

* Religion - none

* Politics - socialist

* We like the same art, films and telly

* We love to eat together

* We love the same places

* We have the same friends

* We adore our kids and grandkids

* We are both terrified of being without the other one

So on that note off I go with slightly less hair, yes it's starting to shed, to eat my way into more memories and to start the journey into year 43.

Stars and sparkle

We were supposed to be going to Wales today as my February chemo treat and also to celebrate our anniversary. Two days in a country house hotel with good food and a spa. Very uncharacteristically I checked the weather forecast on Sunday and deep snow was predicted for the Welsh marches exactly where we were going. So we cancelled or maybe postponed is the more optimistic way to put it. That of course gave me the excuse, as we were saving so much money, to book to go to our favourite Birmingham eatery, Michelin star and all. So tomorrow tasting menu with Sommelier's choice of wine here we come and as we tuck in we will be quids in too.

This time forty two years ago I was stuffing vol-au-vents and making bunting. It was a big wedding over 120 people but done very much on the cheap; my dress was made by my nearly mother-in-law for £1.50; she and my Mom and my aunts and cousins made all the food, my brother and my mate's cousin were the band and my Dad made sure there was enough Asti Spumante and Ansells to keep us happy all night long. You could hardly notice that my Mom never spoke to my Dad, he had left five years before, or that my bridesmaid was six months pregnant.

I had read that the bride should have a long hot bath on the eve of her big day so I brought forward my weekly ablution, yes those were the days! Unfortunately someone noticed this unseasonal use of the immersion heater and turned it off so the bath was not the bath of my dreams, but tepid in the extreme; unlike my groom's ardour of course although he was on the third night of his stag week and was a bit the worse for wear too.

It was freezing cold on the day and the hairdresser got my parting crooked but the sun shone and the Asti sparkled; 42 years on we are still sparkling now and then and I get to have a bath, as hot as I like, every day.

Boxing clever

It's a red letter day today in our house, not because I still have hair and feel OK although that is a lot better than expected, but because at last the enormous cardboard box full of other cardboard boxes that has been sitting, through snow and rain, in our front garden since Christmas (yes that is two months this week) has been demolished and is in the back of our car waiting for its last ride to the tip.

You will recall that we were away for Christmas having my blobs removed in Dresden but the festivities went on, for some of the family at least, in our house. Luke and Aleks (third son and his wife of only 10 months) are madly in love with Harry and Danny, so far their only nephews on our side. At Christmas this passion expressed itself in the purchase of the most enormous dinosaur seen this side of the Cretaceous period. Joe, second son, after whom the dinosaur was quickly named, was in charge of the house over the festive period. He had attempted to put the box his namesake arrived in outside on cardboard recycling day, filled on my distant instructions with all the other boxes of all the other toys Danny and Harry received. Unfortunately the recycling operatives saw through this cunning plan and either couldn't or wouldn't take it, so there it has sat ever since. It just seemed too big a challenge for us to take on but this morning out I strode with my roll of plastic bags and it was demolished and packed away in a trice.

I hadn't met Joe properly until last week because he had just sat minding his own business in the play room at Jess's house. I sat in there playing with Harry on Pancake day and do you know Joe is utterly charming just like his human counterpart. He has also given me food for thought. You see he responds to you. If you sit in the room with him and start chatting he will turn his head to you and wink his eye. If you actually address him head on he will whirl his head around, flick his tongue and utter sounds, luckily all of the time looking like the benign cuddly end of the triceratops family, if they had one.

I know this is verging on the very weird but perhaps I should contact the manufacturers to sound them out on a new business opportunity, namely Gran/Mom in the Corner. So they make a perfect facsimile of loved, but not very well, family member, programme in a few of their favourite facial expressions and responses to various conversations and off you go. As the loss gets easier or the model dustier you could just wheel it out say on birthdays or at Christmas and finally when you couldn't stand it any longer off it could go to the tip like its box before it. In big families like ours you get multiple sales you see and it would be interesting to see if each ordered a different model, saying and doing different things.

I am not sure about proposing the same thing for husbands and wives as that is bordering on the pornographic and I don't think the manufacturers would be up to the subtleties and psycho drama required in the average relationship. But who knows what the next few years might bring in model technology and if it does happen remember I thought of it first, so there, and why did it take two months to move that ******* box and no thank you I don't want another cup of ******* tea.

Skeletons

Apparently we have won a gold medal in the Winter Olympics. Although when I hear that it is for something called the skeleton at a place called whistles, or is it whistler, I wonder if I have slipped into an alternative reality. Perfectly nice young woman on the news last night and it seems all she had to do was lie down and try and hang on while a very slippy world rushed by and do it faster than everyone else. I think I may have been training for that all my life; certainly the last 18 months or so have felt very close to zooming down the slippery slope; with lots of apres ski and mulled wine thrown in of course.

Strangely I didn't get the usual gripping lump in my throat when they showed her Mom cheering her on and eventually giving her the celebratory hug. I think it may have been because said Mom was decked out like a tea cosy and as warm and wonderful as they are I have never had much empathy with them.

Morphing from sports news into fashion comment then as it is London fashion week and I have to keep up with the trends. Off the catwalks I have noticed a sad decline in winter wear this year; although as I never pay much regard to what is in or out probably it has been going on for decades. We have had a lot of snow this year and we were in very cold Dresden in December and surprisingly cold Dordogne in January. In all these places freezing temperatures are sadly no longer a trigger to get out beautiful long coats and furry (fake of course) hats. Instead there is the universal, unisex duvet look, sometimes declining to the tea cosy of our skeleton champion's proud Mom in Whistler (yes of course Whistler's Mom!). I call it sad, now we have some decent snow and icicles and stuff, I want to see women in astrakhan, in camel, in alpaca; in magnificent sweeping dress coats, bearing muffs and men in greatcoats or capes, sporting earmuffs and frozen moustaches. OK I fell in love with Omar Sharif in Dr Zhivago forty years ago and I have never been the same since.

Anyway I look like the Michelin man without recourse to a puffed up jacket so as it's snowed again overnight, today I am dragging out my very old, very long camel coat. I will make my own fashion statement and like Amy Williams on her luge I will do a death defying lunge into the whiteness; even if for me that only means walking round the corner for the paper. As for the skeletons the only ones I have thus far are securely locked away in cupboards, along with a few tea cosies and of course, my candle, still burning brightly for Dr Z.



PS I have not been able to get into any emails since yesterday morning, maybe its the weather! so if you have been, thanks for emailing and I will answer when the thaw sets in.

Last rites

A year ago today it was Fred's funeral. Fred was my step dad, he married my Mom when she was my age and gave her 30 years of lovely ordinary, very loving life. He was funny, absolutely honourable and mildly disrespectful of authority. He missed being 92 by 13 days and we all loved him to bits. He looked after my Mom for five long years when she became ill and did it wondrously. He thought I was OK in his last days and so did I.

We did the usual things at the funeral, well they are all a bit unusual really but usual for our funerals. We don't give the vicar much to do, or in the case of my Dad, the humanist chappie. I manage to get through something I have written, Sam recites a specially composed poem and then plays his whistle as the curtains close (not the Swannie whistle mentioned yesterday, this is his more refined penny whistle!). We sing a hymn or two, or in the case of my Dad, the "Red Flag", and play some music that they liked; for Fred it was Maria Callas and then Richard Tauber singing "We are in love with you, my heart and I". We have flowers because we love them and Jess takes them away afterwards. Then it's back to ours for champers and sister-in-law Andree's magnificent Tarte Provencale.

The trouble is I am an event organiser and once an event organiser always an anal retentive scheduler. So getting round to the inevitable what about the next one? It was odds on going to be mine or Stewart's anyway. Stewart has for years been telling the kids what he wants which includes Sam and Joe playing "Lonesome Road Blues". We hardly ever get through a family gathering without that request being repeated and in more compliant times they even had to practice it! I am fully intending to keep the funeral directors waiting, although the chap at the Co-op in Hall Green has become almost like a member of the family and he's getting on a bit.

No I haven't planned anything because the story isn't over yet but I think my kids will know to scour the hard drive for my last event folder and there will be sitting budgets, stage schedules, speaker briefs and maybe even an evaluation form. But for a long time before that I will be downing the champers and the Tarte on a pretty regular basis because I wouldn't want to miss a good do now would I?