Anxiety

Haven’t posted for a while as we’ve been on holiday in Cornwall, plus I haven’t been feeling quite the ticket.

Cornwall was lovely, as always. I mean, the weather let us down a bit as always, but the company was great. Family and close friends, including six childless 20-somethings who thought that Logie was a scream, and didn’t mind spending whole half hours pinging the back of the door spring ‘BOING’, or pouring water from an egg cup to an icecream tub to a measuring jug (in the requisite squat position).

He paddled in the sea, tried to steal various spades and ate about six meals a day – at his normal mealtimes and ours, which always fell in between.

He slept in our room, so I often had that 5am Hobson’s choice. You wake, with a need to wee of about 50%. If you get up and go to the loo, you are 75% likely to wake him. He is then 90% likely not to go back to sleep. The chances of you returning to sleep, whilst needing this wee, are about 25%. But you give it a go. For twenty minutes you have a really good stab at convincing yourself you don’t need to go that much, actually you almost drifted off just then, and if you lie in this particular position the pressure on your bladder honestly isn’t that bad.

Then you get up and go to the loo.

Sometimes you manage to make it back to bed without him opening his eyes, but then you lie there, listening suspiciously to his every breath. You know he is listening to you too, waiting for further proof that it is getting up time. You lie aggressively still, furiously urging yourself to go back to frigging sleep.

Then your husband whispers that he needs a wee too, and all is lost. But at least it’s not all your fault now. Maybe adult nappies are the answer.

Logie has just learnt to say pees, as it happens, and dack u, which represents something of a breakthrough. However, the former is more of an indignant command, and the latter usually comes through a mouthful of biscuit, with his back to you as he’s already walking away. And there is no sign of sorry.

His gorgeous godmother Jules, one of the aforementioned 20-somethings, was especially funny at this age with these words. When asked, upon demanding something, what the magic word was, she would reply “Now!”.

 Despite all this loveliness, my nerves have been a bit worn down and my old friend anxiety has popped in for a bit. There are specific reasons for it – which is a good thing, as often there aren’t, and presumably once they’ve abated it will go away. But I’ve had to fess up to having crossed a line in the mental health stakes, so I steeled myself for a visit to the psych place.

It is very hard to be positive about the experience. But I shall try. I did eventually get to see a doctor the same day, which is a big improvement on their previous record. And he did prescribe me a pill. And it helped tremendously. And those are the things that matter the most.

But the hours I was there were pretty soul destroying. First of all, I saw the duty nurse. He looked like the sort of man who tries to sell you a dodgy sim card in the market. The experience of explaining my symptoms was a bit like ordering a takeaway from someone with not brilliant English. He asked me questions, I answered them, he relayed them back to me slightly wrong every time, without any hint he understood any of the words I was using or what I was really talking about.

I cried a bit. He didn’t seem to notice. He asked if I’d thought about harming my son, and whether I was hearing any voices. I tried not to mind – these are routine questions that they have to ask. Never mind that they make you feel even more appalled that you have arrived at this point.

 Later, as we went down a corridor to the doctor, we passed the social room. It contained some fat, sweaty, glazed over people in tatty armchairs. It was humid, and a small fan turned pointlessly in the corner. They had a resigned air about them, as if they knew that this was the pits, but it was all they had.

I used to be fat and when I was depressed I used to find it very hard to wash my hair. I didn’t really want to talk to people. So I don’t consider myself any better, or feel anything but sympathy for them. But dear god, don’t let me be like them again.

As it happens, I’ve been feeling a bit better since this visit. And I thought it would help to write it down. So let’s hope that things continue to pick up. Pees.

Psychiatrists

Want to know my favourite headline from the recent Olympic coverage?

“Jeremy Hunt hits woman with his bell end.”

Genius.

I’m not going to write more about the games (though WELL DONE the rowing women), or the opening ceremony (stage school robs a bank and the entire BBC costume department) because it seems to annoy some people.

So instead, I thought I’d list some things that people do that annoy me:

·         Read my phone number, which starts 07710, back to me, by saying “Oh seven seven one zero”. Why the inconsistency? The extra syllable? Deeply baffling and irritating.

·         Talk you through a recipe, that you didn’t ask for, and precede and follow it with the words “It’s just SO easy!”. You’re not going to remember it, in fact you deliberately tune out while they’re speaking. Tell it to someone who can’t cook.

·         Crimes against myself. What is the answer to the following question – “Who wants to go to the swings?” What is the missing word – “Will you marry ...?” Me should never be replaced by myself. It is strangely objectivising and painfully ignorant. Apprentice hopefuls, take note.

·         Say “I’ll be honest with you”. No don’t. That’s why I asked you a question – I was hoping for a lie.

·         Use the expression “And I’ll tell you for why”. Especially when followed by “Right now”. Right now? What an honour. I usually expect a written answer by post when I go up to a shop assistant for advice.

·         Be all dark ages about e-mail addresses. I’m afraid this normally applies to my father’s ilk. When e-mail first started, I was working at The Economist. My address was lucytallon@economist.com. I used to have to bite my tongue several times a day on the phone, as it was virtually impossible just to say it, or even spell it, without someone asking “No dot?”. NO! If there was a dot, I would’ve SAID ‘dot’. But I kind of wished there was a dot, despite the extra syllable and the spoiling of simplicity, to stop people like you asking that question. And don’t get me started on “All one word?”. Or even “All lower case?”.

Oh dear, I still can’t get the opening ceremony out of my head. I liked the queen and Mr Bean. But many of the references were lost on me, eg all that Slumdog texting jazzhanding. It didn’t help that I was asleep quite a lot. But was there a hidden meaning behind the whole thing?

I thought about another possible coded meaning on Monday, after a routine appointment at the shrink. This time it was a woman – I seem to have seen a different one almost every time since moving onto the NHS – and I was reminded of the really bizarre female psychiatrist I used to see a couple of years ago.

She wasn’t one of those ordinary shrinks you can quite imagine having a family, knocking back a glass of wine as soon as they get home and complaining cheerfully about their day. The type whose friends say “I still can’t actually believe he’s a psychiatrist” and carefully position next to their most annoying other friends at dinner parties, in the hope they’ll secretly pass on a diagnosis the next day.

She spoke very quietly, didn’t laugh at any of my jokes, spent far too long writing things down (and spelling them wrong, I might add) and had a slight, fixed smile, as if she thought I might lamp her at any moment.

Jon came to one session with me, and could barely wait til we we’d left the building afterwards before exclaiming, disbelievingly “Did you see her jumper?!” Apparently it had a picture of a cock on it.

Now I admit that this seems quite unlikely, and I didn’t notice it – I just thought it was ugly and homemade. But Jon was adamant it had a phallic image stitched into it. Which probably says more about him. But ever since, we have wondered whether it was a sort of test.

Maybe someone ought to send one to Jeremy Hunt.

Summer cold

I am so thrilled to see the sun.

Honestly. The true benefits of fresh air and running around become more apparent to me every day – I now realise they’re not just for the old-fashioned, or skint. But crucial for the mothers of small boys who just want to be outside, transferring stones from a watering can to a flowerpot and back again.

Or jumping in a muddy puddle, if not trying to drink it, or at least sit in it.

Water is endlessly fascinating to Logie. But we can generate that ourselves – we don’t need any more from the sky just now thanks.

Nextdoor’s fishpond has the greatest, magical pull. At a jubilee barbeque he threw our neighbours’ fish slice in it. Splosh. Where it has remained ever since, despite valiant efforts to rescue it, one of which included a magnet borrowed from school and a homemade weighting system.

So I can’t wait to start enjoying the sunshine. Unfortunately we couldn't do so yesterday, as Logie and I have very boring heavy summer colds. He also has a cough. As he had a temp, he couldn’t go to nursery (of course, naturally, quite right, much better for him, and the other children, not a problem at all). So we spent the whole day cowering inside, like gremlins who’d melt in daylight.

Also: napping fitfully, watching lots of Peppa Pig and Britain’s Next Top Model, whinging quite a lot, thinking we wanted things to eat then deciding we didn’t when they were in front of us, looking beseechingly at eachother (‘You’re normally the person who makes me feel better – why are you punishing me?’) and practically weeping with relief when Jon came home specially early at 6:15.

The highlight of our day was a visit from the Sky man – who deleted all the programmes from our Sky+. I didn’t even have the strength to get up my usual head of steam. I just muttered "That's a shame" darkly, and slightly louder a second time, but the significance was completely lost on him. Logie then handed him my flip-flop as a thank-you present.

The only really bright thing to come out of this episode is an experiment with a new cream, to prevent that sore patch developing under a runny nose. Which Logie got so badly last time I’m surprised there weren’t flies buzzing round it. Anyway, we’ve been trying something called Siopel, and it seems to be working. You can get it over the counter, but it’s pretty outdated and unpopular because it has peanut oil in it.

Speaking of old-fashioned, I’ve also been reading an historical novel. It’s not very good, but I like it. It’s a comfort book. I can’t bear it when people slag books off – usually ones they deem too lowbrow to be worthy of them – “Wasn’t it awful? Soooo badly written!”. Because, newsflash, you could just stop reading it! Life is too short to spend your precious leisure time on something you don’t enjoy. That’s the great thing about eyes – you can switch them off.

Anyway, this book is about very posh people in the 1930s, who spend most of their time drinking fearfully expensive champagne and thinking about the placement at their next dinner party. One character goes down to her (2nd? 3rd? 4th?) home in Devon with her two little girls and leaves the baby boy in London with Nanny. Then she has to rush back because the baby develops measles, so she asks the Devon housekeeper if she’d mind hanging on the girls for a few days and the chauffeur will come back to collect them.

I don’t quite know why I mention this. I don’t know why I wrote it down. I just can’t process it.

But back to the present, in Action (the i is optional). Even though we’re feeling marginally better today, and have another gaping day to fill, we don’t much feel like going outside. It’s too bright, and sort of questioning, and undeniable. And we are fuzzy, and fractious, and unpleasable.

But I won’t hear a word against the sun. It’s lovely to have it, at last, and I am poised to give a very stern, old-fashioned, outdated look to anyone who dares complain about the heat.

Testosterone

Here's a quiz for you. Don't you just love a quiz?

We even had one at our wedding, which I'm not sure I should admit to. Especially as in subsequent years, more than one person on the winning table has admitted they cheated (iphonically). And those who love quizzes sure hate cheaters.

But it was partly the best man's fault for making it too hard. (He also slightly misfired his speech, bringing out various props that included a dog muzzle.) One wants to average about 7/10 in any quiz, for reasons of morale.

Though no one's spirits ever flag at A Wedding!, not withstanding shoes that hate feet, pre-dinner post-fizz blood sugar fandangos and being forced to 'have a dance' with the faintly creepy friend of someone's parents.

Anyway, it's just one question. Which of the following scenarios has nothing to do with testosterone levels?

1) The involuntary grunt that my husband emitted last night whilst watching 'Engineering Giants'. They were showing the outer layer of a 747's fuselage and explaining that the slight dimples you could see would be pushed out and smooth at altitude.

2) David Cameron revealing to a bunch of Glamour-reading women at Downing St on Thursday morning that he never wears a watch or a wedding ring. (NB it wasn't an inane event – I was there.)

3) The territorial roar that Logan does around other children. The hitting’s not quite so bad now, but he is rather menacing. When his friend Florence came to play on Thursday afternoon he did a lot of standing right behind her, threateningly breathing biscuit breath into her ear. And occasionally bumping her gently with his tummy, in the hope that she might fall over.

The answer is none of them. Probably.

Science says that making proper hot chocolate, in a pan, and bringing it to me in bed just before watching a programme about building planes proves that all is normal on the male hormone front.

I daresay some women also find it interesting that ‘in an industry where safety is paramount, even a toilet is a highly-engineered bit of kit’. But a man in safety specs explaining how he has 'an ear for the perfect flush' does leave me a bit cold.

Who cares whether Dave wears any metal between his wrists and fingertips? It is MEANINGLESS. The only reason people get het up is they think it’s another posh stick with which to beat him. (Ooh, Prince William doesn’t wear a wedding ring either, it’s a toff conspiracy!)

My husband wears both, but it does fox me why he has to take them off to bath Logan, especially as his watch is waterproof.

For a while now, I’ve been hanging onto a factoid that a friend told me – at this age, boys experience a surge of testosterone unlike any other apart from puberty. So Logan’s caveman aggression could be chemically explicable.

Sadly, I just looked it up on the internet, and this surge actually happens at the age of four. Not one and a half. So we’re back to just-trying-to-communicate, frustration or auditioning-for-Braveheart-2 explanations. It’s not a quiz I’m very good at.

Pleasurable pain

You’ll be relieved to hear that I have finally found a decent masseur.

Have I mentioned my bad back? I keep forgetting to tell people.

You know it’s a really good massage when you start fretting about it ending. When the thought of them stopping is so unbearable, you feel an uncontrollable urge to say “Look at my watch! You like it? I’ll give it to you, if you do another ten minutes”.

It seems that the only people who can manipulate my body effectively are men. I regularly take my clothes off for my osteo, and now I might be forming a new massage habit. Though I might have to develop a reverse bank fraud habit to fund it.

As I was face down earlier, I found myself wondering about said masseur’s girlfriend. Or partner. Or flatmates. How handy would it be to have someone at the other end of the sofa to unadhere you during Veep.

And when he did this thing to my neck at the end, I thought perhaps I ought to double-check the rules on bigamy in the borough of Ealing.

Some of it was quite hurty, but in a good way. Oh dear, this is getting awfully 50 Shades. But it was as if he somehow knew exactly where to [insert non-shady verb] his thumbs.

Actually, ‘somehow’ is bollocks. If you’re good at your job, you should know about muscle maps. I qualified as a massage therapist yonks ago, though I never did anything with it. It was when I was coming out of an epic depression, and needed a no pressure (no pun) way to occupy myself.

I thought it might be useful in the bedroom department if I ever snagged a boyfriend again, but it’s never really been in my repertoire cos it’s too hard work. The only man I’ve ever massaged is my Dad, for my coursework, and that was pretty weird.

Let’s rapidly move on to something more wholesome. Logie is doing the Big Toddle today. It’s a charity walk for pre-schoolers. The nursery is dressing them as superheroes. Gorgeous.

However, we were meant to gather sponsorship for them. I find this a bit of a moral maze. On the one hand, we’re all fed up with endless requests from schoolchildren and midlife-crisisers who have got into triathlons.

But sponsoring a one-year-old? He doesn’t understand what it’s for, it won’t teach him to strive or bask in our pride. We could just chuck in £25 ourselves.

On the other hand, the competitive part of me doesn’t want him to be the only one without several names on his form (which we’ve lost). And I know the photos will be supercute. Cleverly, nursery won’t be collecting any guilt money for a few weeks.

Perhaps I could hit up godparents and neighbours, and then do a Barclays on his sponsorship fund, creaming a bit off to pay for another massage.

Stigma

These are the things that I want from a holiday:

·         A lot of food – esp unnecessary bread with proper butter before each meal

·         To be mildly drunk for all of the PM hours

·         To read several books, preferably on a sun lounger, at the same time as the above

·         More than eight hours sleep a night, with my special neck pillow that I haven’t left at home

·         For my child to do loads of fun activities, occasionally with me, but mostly supervised by somebody else

We had a lovely time in Suffolk. But we didn’t have enough of the last two.

It would be terribly out of character for me to focus on the positive (beautiful  grounds, 2.5 days sunshine, all that bread), rather than the negative (decorative shutters instead of functional curtains, therefore Logie woke at 5am every day).

It would also be churlish to admit it seems slightly unfair that I’m not on honeymoon with my brother and brand new sister-in-law (or without them, frankly, so long as there’s decent bread) in Italy.

So I’m going to move on to something else, quite serious for a change.

Time To Change is a campaign which does excellent work in tackling the stigma around mental health. Remember that brilliant advert with Ruby Wax? “1 in 5 people have had dandruff. 1 in 4 have had a mental health problem. I’ve had both.”

They’ve done a survey revealing that a quarter of young people say the stigma attached to their mental health problem has made them want to give up on life.

Just think about that. It’s bad enough having depression, or an eating disorder, or hating yourself so much you take a knife and cut your arm. But being made to feel so ashamed of your illness that you contemplate checking out is unspeakable.

And that’s the bit we can do something about. So next time you come across a teenager with a mental health problem, please treat them kindly, but like a human. As you’d want to be treated yourself if you were ill for a bit. It shouldn’t define them.

And definitely take no notice of anyone who whinges that their holiday wasn’t luxurious enough.

Husband headache

“You can write a blog about my poorliness, if you want” said my husband this evening. As he polished off the rest of Esther Walker’s best curry in the world, which I made over the weekend. It’s really been touch and go for him all day.

Last night he had a headache. He never has headaches.

It had nothing to do with playing cricket for several hours on Saturday, without much water, then drinking a sociable amount when we had friends for supper. And definitely nothing to do with drinking a very paternal amount for lunch yesterday, because it was fathers’ day (I prefer the apostrophe there) and the novelty of being able to order wine by the litre at Union Jacks was more than he could resist.

This morning he was too ill to get out of bed. Too weak even to sit up. “I can’t move!” came the forlorn voice from under the duvet. Logie bashed him on the head with his milk beaker to make sure, but it appeared to be true.

To be fair, I think he did have a bug, or at least dehydration.

Although today is Monday, he didn’t have to go to work, as we are on holiday this week. We’re going to Suffolk for three days tomorrow, then to Kent for my brother’s wedding.

“What shall we do?” asked the invalid.

“Don’t worry, I’ll do all the packing.”

“Should I go to the doctor?”

“Only if you think you’ve got meningitis or a brain tumour.”

I could actually see him weighing it up. It’s not his fault – living with a hypochondriac like me for three years is beginning to infect him.

Later that morning, I rang to check whether he was still with us. He confirmed that he was, though he was too weak to fill his glass with water. However, he thought he might just manage some duck paté, sourdough bread and a scotch egg for lunch, seeing as I was in the deli next to the osteopath.

On the way home, I stopped off at nursery to have a conversation with them about Logie, who has become a bit...oh, what’s the PC word...boisterous...lately, with other children. By which I mean he mugs them.

It peaked on Friday, at a friend’s house, when he repeatedly went up to both the other toddlers, hit them hard, preferably with an implement, and took their toy. Sometimes they didn’t even have a toy. And then he smiled. That afternoon, he attempted to push another boy off the climbing frame. We had words. He smiled.

But apparently he doesn’t do it at nursery. Interesting that, isn’t it? They have given me some of their lingo to try, eg “Please put that loud voice away” and “Look at your friend’s face – see how sad you’ve made her?”.

So we’re pretty much all packed. Jon has gone back to bed, because he fears he’s regressing apparently. I asked him if they were painful childhood memories but it didn’t raise a smile – he was too ill probably. I also asked if he had any tips for my eleven readers about his malady, seeing as he was so keen for me to write about it.

“Have a fairly good wife,” (he actually said “very”, or so he claims), “alternate paracetamol and ibuprofen, and rest.” To his credit, he then did the bins and recycling before returning to his sick bed. As a special treat he was granted permission to watch the rest of the county twenty20 in bed – I don’t normally allow cricket in bed unless it’s an international.

I stayed downstairs to watch Smash and write this. As I opened my laptop I got a text message: ‘I would be delighted to help out by eating a yog fanks pls next time you visit xxxxxxxx’. One minute later: ‘Can I have my yog soon please? Xxxxxxx’.

I took it up. “Oh, haven’t we got any blueberry ones?”

Roll on, happy holidays.