There are two people particularly for whom I feel a particular desire to catch up with, both infact having been a significant part of my life for a period and both currently overseas.
One of them it is reasonably obvious why I’m missing them, the other less so, and I’m not even sure she even gives me a second thought these days. I just want to be in a position where we can spend time together again doing nothing in particular. We never had a great deal to say to one another but that never seemed to matter, it was just nice* spending time together on our own**. Even more recently when we’ve caught up with one another there has still been a sense of understanding there without words needing to be spoken.

Hmm - I also need to work out what it is that keeps my brain racing at night and is preventing me from sleeping as I think I’m going quietly insane from it…

*Where “nice” means relaxing, comfortable, joy inspiring, right.

**By “together on our own” I of course mean time spent where it was just the two of us.

This wasn’t one of those days.

However I opened the paper at random and lo and behold there was my horoscope for the day:

“Someone’s pushing all your buttons at the moment - the wrong ones that is. You might feel that you’re sparing their feelings by not telling them how wrong they’ve got you - but can you really afford to let things continue like this? If the answer is no, then don’t put off that conversation any longer”

While in general I don’t believe in horoscopes I also don’t believe in co-incidence so I’m taking this as a cosmic boot up the back side to get myself sorted out for better or better

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. Well let’s see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.2) Italicise those you intend to read.3) Underline the books you LOVE, or strikeout the books you read but didn’t like.4) Reprint this list with your take so we can try and track down these people who’ve read only 6 or less and make them read.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen*
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams**
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith.
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane and Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

*We did the Mayor of Casterbridge for English GCSE rather than this but it has put me off reading the “Great Litereature” ever since because it was so dull. To my mind it was a second rate story told in about 50% more words than was necessary and then picked to death my a vulture of an English teacher trying to extract additional meaning where there was none to be found.

**I listened to the radio show and have read most of the other books but not this one.

So: 21 read and 7 that I would like to read. Not too bad then.

I slept disastrously last night with lots of vivid dreaming involving my being injured or dying. My entire head feels like it’s on back to front, I can’t concentrate on anything and I feel so damn tired. It was an enormous effort to get out of bed this morning and I can’t get enthused about anything.

I think the time may have come to be honest with myself that this isn’t “just going to go away once I sort my life out a bit” as I’ve been telling myself for the last five years or so.

Right now I could really use a hug and some downtime.

The most perverse thing is that the reason I am feeling that way? Nothing. Complete nothing.

I need to find something to fill the gaps. I’m operating mostly on autopilot at the moment. Eat-work-eat-bed, I know that I need this period to get myself straight and financially stable again, and I’m building to get somewhere I want to be, it just hurts so much being where I am at the moment, remembering where I was and looking to where I want to be.

But nothing begets nothing and the longer I sit around with nothing to do, the more I feel like doing nothing. Still I get a holiday next week and I can’t wait to get away with friends again

It’s been a while since I last communicated with you. It’s nothing personal, I just haven’t felt like writing much recently.

Life is okay. Nothing much happening in general. Some recent highlights which I shall post about when I have the energy.

I’m still here though and I should hopefully have more reason/inclination to post in the immediate future.

Thetallone

In truth questions represent a “possibility matrix”. By asking the wrong question or in the wrong way we actually communicate a lot more information than we gain.

If we have an unknown we first have to establish if we really want to know the answer. We weigh up the pros and cons of askign the question, we spend ages working out the best way to ask the question.

And then when it comes down to it we realise that, no matter how much we might want to know the answer, if we care at all for the person concerned we can never actually ask them the question.

I have appeared to have stabilised my vasculitis so that it no longer hurts.

This is a good thing.

I shall update more when I return from Manc.

*I have yet to stop taking the steroids so this may be only a short-term respite…

To start with I just thought it was a quick case of vasculitis as I slowed down and let the stress off.

Not so…

The first treatment of steroids had the desired effect and knocked the vasculitis back and all was well. Then the following evening it came back so I hit it a bit harder and again it responded.

Then I had a couple of days clear before it came back again - much to the annoyance of all (especially ‘rents) who couldn’t understand why it was coming back. So over last weekend I hit it with a full dose of steriods and it immediately became apparent why it was coming back as I was laid low with flu-like symptoms*.

Missed work on Monday with the lurgy and had to live through the progressively worsening vasculitis from weds onwards to make sure the bug was well and truly gone.

Sunday was unpleasant to say the least - the combination of no sleep and pain and cold meant that I spent an uneventfull day dozing in the living room in front of a roaring fire. Took another dose of steroids sunday morning and waited for them to take effect.

Took more this morning and touch wood so far everything seems to be responding in the correct way and no sign of the lurgy returning.

Here’s to a few weeks illness free

*The steroids help the vasculitis by supressing my immune system - with an increased risk from infections as a trade-off.