How did you see in the year 2000?

AS NYE 2019 rolls around, I'd like to tell you how, 20 years ago, I saw in the new millennium.

By mid-1999, I was a wreck. An alcoholic and coke fiend who'd hit bottom. My low point was not as bad as it is for some, but I think I can safely say that it was harsher than it was for the person I once heard in an NA meeting who described reaching desperation when she had to sell one of her polo ponies.

I started going to NA meetings. Whatever I feel about the 12 Steps, I'm pretty sure those meetings saved my life. I got clean, made friends and got some structure back into my life. Come December, I was ready to party with my new pals in the Fellowship. So I decided to go to the NA New Year party.

Me on 31 December 1999, before the stuff happened.

On NYE, I went to an evening NA meeting at Notting Hill in London. A bunch of us were heading straight from there to the party. As we turned onto the main road at Notting Hill Gate, an ambulance blue-lighted past us, sirens blaring. "Wouldn't want to be in one of those tonight", I said. How we laughed! (You can probably now guess where this is going.)

We arrived at Conway Hall to find the party already in full swing. And there, sitting at the side of the dance floor, was a girl I'd met before and found rather alluring. At the time, I was 28. She was…well, let's just say MUCH younger. Legal in my country, illegal in others. I found myself dancing with her. I had been dancing gingerly, due to an old skiing injury that sometimes made my right knee click out of place. But, eager to impress this youth, I began throwing some wilder shapes. It wasn't long before I felt the familiar crunch in my knee. I blanched and receded to the side of the hall, dragging my useless leg behind me. She carried on dancing.

"No worries," I thought. "I'll just do what I always do – click it back in and carry on." But would it click back in? Hahaha! No it would not. Eventually, I decided there was nothing else for it – I'd have to call an ambulance.

The friends I'd arrived with were nowhere to be found as I sat outside the main party area to wait for the ambulance. Two chaps I'd never met before sat either side of me with their legs out, to prevent anyone from bashing into me as they hurried past.

The ambulance came and took me away. I was on my own in the ambulance, and then on my own in a cubicle in A&E. I was thoroughly miserable. The staff at A&E took a shine to me (no doubt because I was the only sober patient they had) and decided to cheer me up at midnight, by bringing me a cup of tea and putting some party popper streamers round my neck. It helped a bit.

On 1 January 2000 I had surgery.

The moral of this story is: don't laugh at people in ambulances and/or try to get off with jailbait. Karma is a pitiless bastard.

On the other hand, I have a more memorable Millennium Eve story than most people. So I win. SCREW YOU, KARMA!

An everyday tale of suburbia

During a heatwave several summers ago, I bought a tent to sleep in on the nights when the house was too hot for comfort.

I pitched it again a few weeks ago. Well, I say “pitched” - the pegs are flimsy pieces of metal that come out if you so much as cough in their general direction, so I didn’t bother with them this time. My body weight was enough to keep the thing stationary when I was in it. It’s been gently free-ranging around the back garden since then.

Here it is, making friends with the shed. (Yes, I know we need to get the mower out.)

Earlier this evening, Mrs McGingersnap and I were sitting in the living room, enjoying each other’s company in the traditional manner (ignoring each other while interacting with separate screen-based gadgets), when we heard a strange “phhhhfffrumph!” sound coming from outside.

We looked at each other.

“What was that?” I asked.

Even as the words left my mouth, I knew the answer. I jumped up and ran to the patio door.

Friends: not only was the tent no longer in our garden, it wasn’t in our next-door neighbours’ gardens either. Or next-door-but-one’s. Nor was it in the alley behind our house. Mrs McGingersnap has been up and down the streets and into the local allotments.

It is gone.

I wish it well in its bid for freedom. No doubt it’s on its way to a festival. I just hope it doesn’t get caught in traffic - and not for its sake.

My arse is cancer-free!

I thought I'd write a quick post to wrap up the series on anal cancer. I realise I've given a big old spoiler with that title, but most of you reading this will already know I've been given the all-clear.

When the oncologist told me, I felt like I'd lost 12 stone (and I was only 7 stone 4 to start with). Allow me to depict my sense of relief through the medium of gif:

via GIPHY


It's been a strange old time though. After breezing through chemoradiotherapy in ridiculously high spirits, I started feeling low about a month after treatment ended. Going to the bog no longer felt like passing hot coals, and my undercarriage was no longer sporting blisters. But I was knackered all the time (even more than usual) and my brain felt like candy floss. I got frustrated. I wanted my life back.

I'm still knackered all the time. My brain still feels like candy floss. I still want my life back.

I'd also forgotten that, horrible as it is to have a serious illness, it doesn't half give you a sense of purpose. Since I found out the treatment was successful, I've felt enormously relieved (see gif, above), but also quite a lot like this guy:

I'm glad I don't have to run any more, but MY ROAD HAS GONE!

In short, I'm grateful to the doctors and delighted that I'm cured, but also feeling exhausted and, well, a bit rudderless.

This too shall pass, as the wise ones say. Or, as I say, you'll survive everything till you don't. And I've survived this, so screw you, anal cancer. And thank you to everyone who's followed my story on this blog.

Dildoes on the NHS

Today's title is currently top of my list of phrases I never thought I'd type, but it's true. The National Health Service has provided me with a set of multi-sized sex toys.

They slot into one another like pornographic matryoshka dolls. And look! They even gave me a bottle of lube! Better still, they come in a discreet white case for convenient portability. Simply pop them in your handbag and head on out to the opera. Or a fetish club. ANYWHERE!

OK, OK, so officially they're "dilators" rather than dildoes, and they do serve a legitimate clinical purpose. Pelvic radiotherapy can leave you with scar tissue in the lady parts, making you less...what's the word? Stretchy? Accommodating? Anyway, the point is, if left unattended your front bottom may end up being unable to withstand anything wider than a small pipette. (No, I don't know why you'd insert a small pipette in there either. It was the first image that came to mind. Leave me alone.)

So, you start with the smallest of your State-provided plastic friends and send it into your pleasure garden for a bit of hokey cokey. Repeat until you're ready to move up to the next size. And so forth. In time, you should be able to resume a normal sex life, as well as (hopefully, if treatment worked) a normal toilet-going existence.

Luckily for me, my radiotherapy plan didn't involve zapping me from the front, so I shouldn't be too badly affected in the love tunnel department. I still reckon I should give my new toys a go. Even if (warning: over-sharing ahead) I couldn't cope with much more than a small pipette in the first place.

Sunburn where the sun don't shine

First things first: I'm now on morphine, so please lower any expectations you may have. The sole reason I still know my arse from my elbow is that only one of those things hurts. I'm currently spending my days getting zapped at the hospital, asleep, off my knockers on painkillers, or smearing various ointments on my undercarriage. So it's an exciting life.

The blister finally burst, but it's still giving me grief. Anyone who's ever had a popped blister (which, let's face it, is everyone) knows how raw those little sods can be. And mine was a size that - as an old buddy of mine said when she saw a picture of it - made it not so much a blister as a flotation device. 

The morphine is helping. I was alarmed, however, to see this warning on the packaging:

I'm hoping this message means "It doesn't, but our lawyers told us we had to say this", as opposed to "Take too much, and this will happen to you":

Wicked Witch GIF from Melting GIFs

Anyway, I'm very glad to have the pain relief, because the effects of radiotherapy are akin to having a nasty case of sunburn and I'm certainly feeling those effects now. I even looked in the mirror today to see how my poor little rear was faring. I shan't traumatise you by telling you how it looked. Also, for no particular reason, here is a picture of a baboon.

I have eight more sessions to go.

My response to this: Yay! Only eight more sessions!

My arse's response: Oh God. Eight more sessions *whimper*

The other day, The Independent ran a story about a jellyfish that has a transient anus. I wish, my friends. I wish.

About those non-existent blisters...

Last week began splendidly, with a gift from one of my cousins.

Yes, I know it needs a wipe

I enjoy drinking from this. It makes me feel like I'm some sort of hero simply for attending hospital and lying on a gurney with my junk on display.

By 3am on Saturday morning, however, I was acting like a proper ninja, crawling round my house on my forearms and knees, in the dark. Walking from the bedroom to the bathroom was too painful. Which brings me to the title of this blog post. Those blisters for which I searched fruitlessly the other week were, it would seem, not non-existent at all, just undergoing a slow teleportation from The Dimension of  Blisters. In the middle of last week, they arrived en masse. My favourite was this one:

It's actually grown since I took this photo. It's started to move up my ankle. My oncologist thinks this is because the pressure I put on it while walking is forcing the lymph upwards. I have a different theory: the blister has learned that, impressive as it is, there is a structure capable of holding legendary amounts of liquid just above the top of my leg, and it has decided to make a pilgrimage.

It was the combination of blisters and general foot pain that led to me slithering across the landing in the middle of the night.

I called the Cancer Centre's 24-hour hotline. They told me to stop taking the chemo tablets and invest in yet another cream.

I'm now able to hobble around with a single crutch. When I saw my oncologist today, she was pleased about this, but still classified me as having Grade 3 hand-foot syndrome. Apparently, Grade 3 is as high as it goes. I thought the oncologist said it went up to Grade 4, which made me gape.  GRADE 4? I pictured someone with water balloons for feet, bouncing down the road, praying for them not to pop.

I put my mistaken belief / mishearing down to fatigue. Not that I'm getting muddled or anything, but when the receptionist asked for my surname today, it took me a good five seconds to remember.

No, don't tell me - I know this one

For now, they're keeping me off the chemo, which is just as well, because the radiotherapy is producing unpleasant effects of its own in the underwear department. I'll save that for next time.

  

Side effects!

When you embark on any kind of medical treatment, you run the risk of suffering side effects. It gets fun when the doctors prescribe you something to counteract the side effects, then you get side effects from that medication, so they give you something for those side effects, which also has side effects etc etc. This happened to me when my first transplant was failing: I went from high blood pressure to diarrhoea via water retention and gout. Good times.

So anyway, I wasn't surprised when I was told that both chemotherapy and radiotherapy have side effects. There are the obvious ones, like sickness and diarrhoea, but there are also some unexpected ones, like a craving for artichokes and a sudden passion for tiddlywinks. OK, I made those ones up. But I was told that the chemo I'm taking can cause soreness on the palms of your hands and soles of your feet.

When I heard this, a subconscious, non-rational part of my brain responded thus: I have never heard of this and it sounds implausible, therefore it definitely won't happen to me.

A few days ago, my feet were hurting. I searched them for non-existent blisters. Had I developed amnesia and forgotten about attending a fire-walking event that went horribly wrong? 

I didn't clock a thing.

It was only when this crevasse opened up on my thumb that I realised the thing that definitely wasn't going to happen to me definitely was happening to me.

Lesion caused by movements in the tectonic hand plates, which are definitely a Thing and not something I just made up

I'd asked one of the radiotherapy staff about managing soreness (albeit in a rather different part of my body) and he'd suggested "double bass". I asked if he meant Diprobase. No, he said, and repeated the name of the recommended cream: double bass.

I've met a double bass. I'm not smearing one of those things up my crack.

My Facebook friends have recommended Diprobase or red-top Neutrogena (ie the full-fat version, as opposed to the semi-skimmed blue-top variety I have in my bedside drawer). So they're on this week's shopping list. 

I shan't bore you by telling you all the side effects I'm experiencing, but I will say this: buy shares in Imodium now. 

Cancer treatment begins and I may be a world record holder

Treatment started on Wednesday with a syringeful of chemotherapy solution. It was this colour - 

- which was nice, because it matched my cardi. 

Seriously, though, when someone puts something that colour in your veins, you know it's toxic. You just hope it's killing the right bits of you.

Afterwards, I headed downstairs with a bagful of chemotherapy tablets, to have my first radiotherapy session. And this is where my proud moment occurred.

The team will only give you pelvic radiotherapy if you have around 200ml of liquid in your bladder, so they make your drink about half a litre of water 45 minutes before you're due to get zapped. Before switching the rays on, they take a scan of the area, to check everything's as it ought to be. 

I lay on the bed/table, surrounded by space-age machinery. They scanned me. I waited.

Then I waited some more, passing the time by imagining that said machinery was going to put me in stasis so I could carry out a very important space mission.

Eventually, the nurse came through. 'Your bladder is ginormous,' she informed me. 'Do you think you could fill two cups of wee and come back?'

I told her I could. I have not had children, so - to steal a Victoria Wood quote - I have a pelvic floor like a bulldog clip. Stopping mid-flow? Pah! Piece of piss (almost literally).

When I returned, they showed me the scan. The screen was entirely filled by my bladder. However, when they plonked an ultrasound wand on me to check how much liquid was left in there, I still had around 800ml. One-and-a-half cups later and I was ready to go.

This means that, when I initially hopped on the bed, I had around 1.5 litres in there. I have a 2 litre bottle of Pepsi in the kitchen. The idea that I can hold 3/4 of that in my bladder makes me feel both proud and disturbed. HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE? It occurs to me that what I thought were my breasts are in fact the rest of my organs, shoved into my chest by a land-grabbing bladder. Whatever - I feel I ought to contact whoever took over from the McWhirter twins at the Guinness Book of Records and ask to be included in the next edition. 

Computer says no. Well, it might do. We haven't looked at it.

I was meant to be at the Tears for Fears / Alison Moyet gig at the O2 this evening.

The hospital called me yesterday, telling me I had to go in at 12.30 today to pick up my chemo tablets. It absolutely had to be today, they told me, because there were no other free appointments before I start radiotherapy. (You can’t just pick up your tablets. No, you have to have an appointment where you’re lectured for an hour on how to take them.)

I have very low energy to start with, so was concerned this might affect my ability to get to the gig. Also, I have to get up and go to the hospital tomorrow morning for 4 hours of blood tests. But I accepted the appointment. Of course I did.

I turned up at 12.30. My appointment was at 13.30.

I waited.

There were no tablets for me to pick up because the doctor hadn‘t written the prescription. And the reason for that is because they won’t know what dose to prescribe until I‘ve had the tests tomorrow WHICH THEY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN I WASN’T GOING TO HAVE UNTIL TOMORROW BECAUSE THAT INFORMATION WILL BE ON THEIR SYSTEM.

So I’m at home, instead of having a joyous time with musicians I loved back in the 80s.

Fuck cancer. And administrative incompetence.

And you'd like that tattoo where, Madam?

I knew I was going to have a tattoo before I started radiotherapy, so that the people with the ray guns would know where to attack.

Given where the cancer is, I thought the tattoo was going to be in a place that meant I would only be able to show it off if I:

1. learned to twerk in downward dog pose;
2. went clubbing;
3. with my pants off,

and that the tattooing process was going to be eye-watering.

It turned out that none of this was true. I am relieved and yet saddened by this loss of anticipated comic material. I have a tattoo at the top of each thigh and one, um, about half way between the two, on my [insert euphemism of choice]. They're not even interesting tattoos. I was hoping for Japanese symbols that I thought meant "serenity" but actually meant "wanker". They're just dots.

So, apart from the palaver of trying to get a cannula into me - nurse #1 failed and nurse #2 entered the room to find me furiously doing press-ups in an attempt to make my veins pop up - my CT scan and tattooing were unremarkable.

Radiotherapy starts on 13 February. It's all starting to feel a bit real now.

Close encounters with the oncologist

...of the nitrile-gloved kind. (At least she had short fingernails.)

So - I've had my first consultation with the oncologist. Apparently, my tumour is fairly small. Mr Botty-Slicer of St Thomas's Hospital cut most of it out last December, so there's just a 2cm thing left in there. That makes it a Stage II squamous cell carcinoma. Get me with the lingo, eh?

The oncologist is, I think, eastern European. I could be wrong, but judging from her accent and the fact that I can neither spell nor pronounce her name, that's what I'm going with.

She is lovely.

She spent ages showing me my scans and explaining treatment options to me. My body contains enough kidneys to feed a family of five, so they won't be able to use the standard radiotherapy / chemotherapy treatment on me. It might kill off the only one of those kidneys that I actually need. (I'd be quite happy for someone to take the other ones away and keep them in the freezer. Seriously - they're just taking up space.)

The doc explained that, instead of the usual cocktail of chemotherapies and radiation blasts, I can only have very focused blasts and probably only one of the chemotherapy types (and possibly not have any chemo at all). The usual treatment has a 90% success rate. It's difficult to say how much my chances will be affected by the less severe treatment plan I'll need.

The alternative, I was told, is to have more surgery, which would result in me needing a colostomy bag. I considered that option for a good 12 milliseconds before saying "Dear God, no - are you barmy?'

The colostomy option awaits me if radiotherapy is unsuccessful. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. I don't need that as a new party piece - not least because I never go to parties.

We ended the consultation with her examining me, because no consultation about this condition is complete until someone's poked you in the chocolate starfish. Like I say, at least she had short fingernails.

I hope this doctor is going to use antibacterial hand-wash before seeing the next patient  

Next stop: CT scan on Friday, when they will be tattooing the place they need to point their ray guns at.

New year, NEW DIAGNOSIS!

Hmm. It seems I didn't write a single blog post last year. Not to worry - I have a new subject, bursting with enough humour for a series of posts. WARNING: may also contain trauma. Hopefully the latter will be short-lived (and I'll be long-lived.)

I've got anal cancer. I'm seeing the oncologists this Thursday, who will - I hope - give me some indication of when I'll be starting radiotherapy. I'm looking at five weeks of butthole irradiation, accompanied by a low-dose chemotherapy pill. Apparently, this won't cause my hair to drop out. Which is good, because (a) it's winter and I need head coverage, and (b) I don't have the cheekbones for bald. 

Those of you scooting over from my Facebook page will know most of this already. In fact, these posts will primarily be for those of my Facebook friends who asked me to write updates.

I won't have anything to say until after I've seen the oncologist. In the meantime, here's a picture of me, indicating the location of the mutant cells.

They're in there somewhere, the little buggers.

I dream of being somewhere as chichi as Fawlty Towers

Tomorrow morning, I was planning to donate a small piece of my uterus to the NHS. This would have required me to leave home at an hour that is not so much godforsaken as one that God has shunned and is really rather sorry he ever invented. To ease the pain of this early start, I booked a hotel room close to the hospital.

Unfortunately, the operation had to be postponed.

After I explained to the nurses that I'd already made a (non-refundable) hotel booking, they managed to get me a pre-surgery appointment for tomorrow morning, so that I wouldn't lose the money I'd forked out for the room.

So, tonight I am in a hotel near Paddington station.

Good points about the hotel:

1. The receptionist. He is the only reason I haven't fled this foretaste of eternal torment to seek out the comfort of a damp bench.
2. The wifi. It's free and pretty fast. Which is just as well, because the TV reception blinks in and out (and nobody wants that during David Attenborough).
3. The bed. It hasn't broken. Yet.

Now for the bad stuff.

The aforementioned receptionist informed me that I was on the fourth floor. Naturally, there is no lift, just a winding series of narrow stairways. The receptionist kindly offered to carry my bags for me. I am not proud. I said yes.

The first thing I noticed about the room was that the bed takes up about 75% of the floor space - and not because the bed is big.

The second thing I noticed was that it was a bit noisy and a lot cold. On further investigation, I discovered that this was because the sash window cannot be closed, due to it missing the fastener that allows you to shut it properly. You know, insofar as sash windows are capable of shutting properly. There was just a lonely-looking screw sitting there, helpless to prevent the force of gravity from pulling the upper pane open.

As a bonus, someone had left a half-eaten cake in a sandwich bag on the ledge outside the window.

I looked into the en suite bathroom. It is, to be blunt, a cupboard.

You may notice that a certain piece of bathroom furniture is missing from this cupboard. I know I did. I panicked. WHERE, FOR THE LOVE OF ZEUS, WAS THE BOGATORY?

The answer, it turned out, was "In another cupboard across the landing". There was a bonus here too: the last person to use the toilet appeared to have eaten a lamb dhansak and neglected to inform the staff that they hadn't cleaned up after themselves. Probably because there was no toilet brush. Probably because there wasn't enough room for one.

I told the receptionist about the window. He apologetically explained that he wouldn't be able to fix it but promised to put a heater in the room for me. This he duly did, schlepping back up to the fourth floor while I went out for a stroll.

I returned to a toasty room. Feeling mildly cheered, I decided to take a shower and have an early night.

I rapidly changed my mind after I started running the shower. As soon as I turned the controller away from the "cold enough to preserve a mastodon" setting, the water slowed to a sad dribble. If this place has a water pump, it is incapable of getting hot water to the fourth floor. Perhaps it feels too old and knackered for such crap.

Well, me too pal. Me too. Some people (read: masochists) may find a cold shower deliciously bracing, but I wasn't one of them even before I got all middle-aged. Besides, who wants bracing at 9.30pm on a Sunday?

I ran my greasy hair under a "probably about right for keeping your milk fresh" setting and decided to have a cup of coffee from the grubby tray on the bedside table that was not at the bedside. It was next to the door. (In fairness, that is quite close to the bed, but only because it is impossible for anything in this room not to be.)

I looked behind the not-at-the-bedside table for plug sockets.

Nothing.

There are only two plug sockets in this room, semi-concealed behind the wardrobe. I ended up boiling water with the kettle balanced precariously on the duvet. Like so.

I have now drunk my instant coffee, got the window as close to shut as I can, and am preparing to bed down. 

I tend to need several bathroom breaks during the night. Naturally, I did not bring a dressing gown, because I was expecting a fully-equipped en suite.

I don't know if the people in the next room have similar bathroom habits.

If they do, I hope they don't mind seeing me in my pants.

An unlikely saviour

I was in my late 20s. I had spent my youth as a good Christian girl but, having lost my faith and moved to the den of vice that is London, I decided to do all the things that good Christian girls don’t do.

Among other things, this involved a lot of drugs, legal and otherwise.

One drug that was still legal at the time was GHB. I loved it. It gave a nice buzz and, I was told, increased your metabolic rate. For a young woman who liked getting high and worried about her weight, it was ideal. I mean, it’s basically a cocktail of paint stripper and drain cleaner, but who cares? IT GETS YOU HIGH! IT KEEPS YOU THIN! (OK, so it also gives you terrible acne, but two out of three ain’t bad.)

Because one of its effects is a raging horniness, GHB was sold in sex shops. I spent an inordinate amount of time (and money) in one particular sex shop in Soho.

Billy was one of the guys who worked in the sex shop. He was in his late forties, greying, moustachioed, and with a Yorkshire accent heavy enough to anchor the Knock Nevis.

The Knock Nevis: heavy anchor required.

I adored him. He adored me. We chatted while he worked and went to the pub together during his breaks.

Billy watched me as I went from a giggling, tipsy customer who came into the shop with her buddy, to a more haggard and heavy GHB user, to a solitary shopper who slunk in asking where the nearest coke/crack dealers were.

One evening, he took me to one side. “Rachel,” he said, “you’re a nice girl. But I’ve seen a lot of nice girls come in here, who’ve ended up living on the streets, selling their arses for a fiver. That’s where you're headed.”

And that was the most frightening thing anyone has ever said to me.

Billy wasn't the first person to express concern about my drug use, but coming from someone who had worked for years in the heart of Soho, it meant something. He knew what he was talking about.

Billy stopped serving me GHB and refused to tell me where the local dealers hung out. He instructed everyone else in the shop to do the same.

Me? I stopped drinking and got clean. Billy’s words played a large part in that.

A Double Row of Shaving Brushes

He bought fourteen of them: seven for him, seven for his wife.


'What?' he said. 'They were on special offer.'


'The only problem, darling,' his wife pointed out, 'is that they're identical. How will you know whether or not the bristles you're running over your face in the morning were lathering my armpits eleven hours earlier?'


He pondered this, stroking his (smooth, stubble-free) chin. 'I shall label them' he announced, and immediately left the house in search of a stationer.


That afternoon, he lined up the brushes in two neat rows: a mini-platoon of brushes bearing a small red sticker, facing an equal number of green-stickered comrades.


His wife nodded approval. 'Red and green. Like it,' she said. 'Which am I?'


'Whichever you like,' he replied. 'I avoided pink and blue,' he added. 'I know how you feel about pink and blue.'


'Quite right. Thank you.' His wife picked up a green brush. 'I'll take red,' she announced.


Neither the stickers nor the rows lasted long:  wet hands rapidly wore away the coloured dots, and his wife had never been one for keeping things tidy. So he was never quite sure where his morning brush had been. And, despite several furtive Google searches, he never worked out how common it was for women who objected to pink and blue also to shave the many, intimate body parts that his wife did.

Earth addresses the Convocation of Planets

Hello. Yes, Earth here, Sol system. Sorry it's been so long since I attended the Convocation. I've been feeling ill; got some sort of autoimmune condition. Nonsense happening all over my crust.

Oh don’t worry, it's not catching. The pathogens – well, I call them pathogens but they're really part of me, I'm afraid – haven't learned to jump that far. Not yet, anyway.

What's that? Oh yes, quite right, Moon, they have jumped to you. I'm afraid they've got you in their sights too, Mars. Yes, that thing rolling around and tickling you? That's made by them, but it's not one of them. Well yes, I suppose it is entertaining for you, given there's nothing else going on in your part of the system, but believe me, you wouldn't want billions of the creators of that little vehicle swarming all over you. It's a nightmare. Luckily for you, they're a long way from being able to survive on you for any period of time, even if they've managed to land things on you. Well, I say that, but they move very quickly. It only seem like yesterday they climbed down from the trees – my beautiful trees! – and started walking upright. Which was a bad idea; I thought so at the time. Their spines clearly hadn't evolved for that kind of movement. Mind you, them moaning about their back pain is the least of my worries.

I realise this is difficult for most of you to relate to; you're largely lumps of rock or gigantic balls of gas. In fact, has anyone else evolved conscious life forms? Just three of you? And how are you finding it? Yours did what? Oh dear, I am sorry. Yes, I can see the hole from here. And they're gone now, you say? Gone where? Oh, just … gone. That's rather sad but, you know, probably for the best.

Pardon? Right. So yours went through a phase like mine but got past it? So what are they like now? Fewer, but peaceful? That's nice – gives me a bit of hope.

And what about yours? Just started making tools, eh? Oh you are in for fun.

Look, most of them are all right. The ones that don't walk upright – there's loads of them, different kinds – they just get on with their lives, reproduce and die. Well, OK, a lot of them eat each other, but sadly that seems to be part of the system I've developed. I really didn't mean to. 

Even most of the upright ones are decent enough, though they're not very nice to the not-so-upright ones. Arrogant, really. It's just that there are so many of them, and they have a tendency to huddle in tribes and look at other tribes as if the others were a disease and they were the immune system. So they attack each other. 

What's that? Oh, mostly with words, which is unpleasant, but also with laws, which is more unpleasant. But the thing that really worries me is when they attack each other with weapons. That's painful. And they create new, more powerful weapons all the time. Excuse me? Yes, exactly – the sort of weapons that did that to your face. I really am sorry about that, by the way. Does it still hurt? Good lord – right down to your mantle? Blimey. Well, I'm glad it's getting better. My lot appear to have pulled back from that for the time being, but – as I say – they move very quickly and things are changing all the time. So who knows? I can't say I relish the prospect of that kind of pummelling.

But do you have any advice? How do I get them to understand that they're all a part of me? Yes, please, by all means – if yours have moved beyond that phase, tell me what you did. Oh. Right. You let the violent ones evolve out of existence. Lots of casualties along the way. Hmm. And how long did that take?

Ah. I see.

No, no, it's not that I think they're going to destroy me completely, though they probably could. It's just – I'm not sure they'll last that long.

So what now?

Even being here feels like an admission of defeat. I tell him this, in his Harley Street office, when he asks me what I want. I tell him I've spent half my life trying to accept my fat face, and I've failed. So I'm here to find out about buccal fat removal. I'm not sure whether it's the right procedure for me but I'd like to discuss options.

From what I can tell, Mr [X] is a respected cosmetic surgeon. His CV – with qualifications from both Oxford and Cambridge – is simultaneously intimidating and reassuring. He sits in an armchair at right angles to me, legs crossed, his posture relaxed and confident. He has my registration form in front of him, my extensive list of medication scrawled in tiny letters to fit into the space provided. He knows I'm a transplant patient, on a bucketful of pills that suppress my immune system and interfere with wound healing, together with a supporting cast of other pharmaceutical delights.

He hands me a mirror and asks me to point out the parts that bother me. The familiar feeling of disgust rises as I lift the glass to my face. I'm braced for this: after all these years it's as automatic as a knee-jerk reflex. I draw a circle around my incipient jowls with an index finger.

Mr [X] kneels in front of me and pushes my cheeks upwards with his hands. 'Would having this shape be enough, or do you want less fullness higher up too?'

God I look good. I should hold my face like this all the time. 'I'd be happy with that,' I tell him, 'though it'd be nice to be thinner further up as well.'

He takes the mirror from me, puts it back on the table and resumes his pose in the armchair. He tells me what buccal fat is, describes the procedure for removing it, the results of the operation (variable but subtle) and the risks it entails. The infection risk would be significantly higher for me but, in any event, buccal fat removal won't give me the result I want. That, he explains, would require a combination of a face lift and liposuction. He goes into some detail about this, too, before telling me that he would be unwilling to perform the operation because, with my level of immunosuppression, the risks would be too great.

'Well I guess I'd better grow a pair of ovaries and accept that I'll always have fat cheeks,' I say. 'Or become anorexic,' I add, 'but that doesn't really appeal. I like food.'

Mr [X] smiles warmly and rubs his own (gloriously slender) cheek.

I stand up and thank him for being forthright and professional. We shake hands. As he opens the door, he tells me he won't charge his usual consultation fee. 'We've only had a little chat,' he says. And I suppose we have, though our conversation was far longer and friendlier than my rendering of it suggests. I am touched and surprised by his largesse.

It is raining outside, so I put up my umbrella and start walking back to Charing Cross station. I joked with the surgeon about anorexia. What I didn't tell him is that I was anorexic in my twenties, with a sideline in bulimia on the occasions when I actually had food in my stomach to puke up. My eating disorder was driven in large part by my desire for a thin face, but even when I was a dangerously underweight five stone ten, it was still disproportionately large. Had I bleached my hair and worn black and white stripes, I could have got a job as a belisha beacon.

It is rush hour: the streets of London are filled with people scurrying through the downpour, using umbrellas and hoods to protect themselves. Others improvise: in a doorway, a woman smokes a cigarette, an upturned Prêt-à-Manger bag jammed on her head as a makeshift hat. I weave through the crowds, lifting and lowering my own umbrella to avoid stabbing eyes out with the spokes.

Why can't I accept my face as it is? I wonder.  Am I really that shallow?

It's an unsettling question because, on this issue at least, the evidence points to a resounding 'Yes'. And that's not how I like to think of myself.

I know I'm not monstrously disfigured; I simply have a plump face that time and gravity are beginning to drag earthwards. I hated my cheeks ten years ago, yet I know that if I look at photographs of my 35-year-old self, I think I look okay. Unfortunately, that doesn't help: I was unhappy then, and retrospective approval isn't going to change that. By the same token, knowing that a 55-year-old Rachel may look approvingly at photos from 2016 doesn't make me feel any better now.

How can I learn to accept this? I ask myself. It is not a foot-stamping rhetorical question; it's a request to my subconscious for aid. Our reserve option – the one we'd trigger only if all else failed – we've just been told it isn't viable. So what now? Help me figure it out.

As I reach the Garrick Theatre I hear a loud voice followed by cheers. I glance towards the noise and glimpse a crowd in Trafalgar Square. Probably something to do with Brexit – I hazily recall there was to be a pro-Remain rally in central London this evening. So much turmoil in the world around me and here I am, consumed by a pseudo-drama concocted entirely by my own mind. I am too tired for self-recrimination, but also too tired to join the demonstration. I keep walking.

My train pulls out of the station and stalls halfway across Hungerford Bridge. The driver of the train in front of us is having trouble closing the doors, so we're stuck here until he moves. Meanwhile, in my head a train of thought starts inching forward.

Maybe what I need to accept is not my fat cheeks, but that I will never be happy with them. Perhaps I need to accept that I may always feel a degree of revulsion when I look in a mirror.

It's a depressing prospect, but at least it sounds achievable.

The driver in front of us has solved his door problem and we're rolling again. So is my train of thought.

If I can accept the disgust, then maybe I'll be able to get some distance from it, see it as nothing more than a series of thoughts, emotions and sensations. And perhaps that, in turn, will start to loosen this noxious plant, however deep its roots have grown.

A glimmer of hope lights up. It is dim and my gut tells me not to cling to it, not to snuff it out with expectation. But it's a possibility. Maybe.

The train has picked up speed; raindrops lash against the windows and commuters sway as we lurch around bends in the track. I try not to cry, but a few tears squeeze out and start trickling. I wipe them away with a tissue.

Sadness, disappointment and hope mingle. 

It's still raining, but we're moving.

Buffy goes to Highbury

It was largely agreed that Miss Woodhouse's party was a resounding success, right up until the moment when a large object smashed through the drawing room window and landed with a thud on the buffet table.

Emma's face was crestfallen as she hurried over to the mess. 'No no no,' she thought to herself. 'This is not at all the impression I wanted to make on Mrs Elton.' Fragments of glass were strewn across the carpet and a sharp breeze entered through the now uncovered window. 'Does nobody appreciate how hard it is to get a glazier in Highbury?' she muttered.

Her startled guests made their way over to the buffet table. They were led by Mr Elton, who pointedly avoided looking at Harriet Smith as he passed her. Before long, the crowd had gathered around the object whose intrusion had interrupted their evening.

It was human in shape, except that it was far larger than the average man, with green and scaly skin, and large spikes on its back and elbows. 'I say,' exclaimed Mrs Elton. 'My friends in Bath will be most amused to hear about this. I never expected such extraordinary entertainment, Miss Woodhouse.' Emma's face fell even further, and she looked to Mr Knightley for assistance.

'I shall fetch a broom,' announced Mr Knightley. 'Come, Miss Bates, you shall aid me.' He strode from the room, followed by the spinster who, for once, had no comment to offer.

The partygoers were so intent on the strange sight before them that nobody noticed when a young blonde woman entered the room clutching a small sharp stick. The woman pushed through the throng and examined the scene.

'Excuse me,' said Emma. 'Who are you?'

'Hi. I'm Buffy.' She gave Emma a sheepish smile. 'I'm really sorry about the mess.'

'Do you mean to tell me that you are responsible for throwing this dummy through my window?'

Buffy frowned. 'Dummy?'

Emma held out her hand towards the buffet table. 'This thing.'

'Oh that. That's not a dummy. Well, he wasn't the sharpest tool in the cupboard, but no – that's a body. Of a demon.'

Mr Elton drew back and, forgetting for a moment that he was not a Papist, crossed himself.

Emma sighed. 'Don't be ridiculous, Miss … Buffy. Do you have another name?'

'Summers?'

'Miss Summers. I demand that you explain yourself. Preferably without resorting to absurdities.'

'Right. I was on my way here, to this party, when I found this guy outside. Anyway, we got into a fight, I kicked him, and he flew a lot further than I was expecting. Never mind though, he's dead now.'

The body on the table groaned and raised its head. Emma and her guests drew back and gasped. Buffy raised her stick and stabbed the creature in the throat. It let out another groan and its head fell back onto the table. 'Like I say, dead.'

'But what are you doing here?' asked Emma.

'She's from the former colonies,' said Jane Fairfax.

'That would explain her outlandish attire,' added Mrs Elton.

Buffy shot a withering glance at Mrs Elton. 'Hey, corset lady, I want your opinion on fashion, I'll ask for it.'

Harriet Smith smiled. 'I rather like this Miss Summers,' she said.

Emma crossed her arms. 'I'm still waiting for an explanation.' 

'Right. Quick version: I've been sent here to kill a vampire. I hate to break it to you, but one of your guests here is a creature of the night.'

Emma raised her eyebrows. 'So let me get this straight. You kick a half-dead demon through my window and now you want to kill one of my guests. I can see why you have to turn up at parties unannounced. I can't imagine you receive many invitations.'

'Oh, you'd be surprised,' said Buffy, and began peering at the people standing around her. She walked slowly towards Mr Elton, narrowing her eyes.

'I recently had a very bad experience with a clergyman,' she said. 'Had to cut him in half with an axe.'

Mr Elton laughed nervously. 'You can't possibly think that I'm a vampire,' he said. 'I'm a pillar of the community.' Buffy's eyes narrowed still further. Mr Elton continued: 'Really, young lady, your search will be much more fruitful if you look to people who are less – respected, shall we say.' His eyes sought out Harriet. Buffy's eyes followed.

Mrs Elton sighed. 'Truly, Miss Summers. Do you honestly believe my husband to be a craven, blood-sucking beast?'

'Yeah, I do,' replied Buffy. 'But he's not a vampire. Just a weasel. You're safe for now, preacher boy.'

Buffy moved on and crouched next to Mr Knightley, who knelt on the floor, sweeping up the glass. He stood up, brushed himself down and held out a hand. 'Mr Knightley,' he said. 'Pleasure to meet you.'

Buffy shook his hand. 'I see you got the clean-up job,' she said. 

'It's really no trouble at all,' he replied, 'I do like to be helpful.'

Emma walked over from the table and touched the man's sleeve. 'My dear Mr Knightley, you've cut yourself.'

He looked down. 'So I have. Not to worry. I shall clean myself up later.' He smiled broadly, his perfect teeth glimmering in the lamplight. Only they weren't entirely perfect.

'You been sweeping up with your mouth?' asked Buffy.

'Excuse me?' said Mr Knightley.

'Only I can't help noticing you've got blood on your teeth.'

'Oh dear,' said Mr Knightley. 'I was hoping it wouldn't come to this.' His forehead furrowed; his eyes turned amber and feral; his still bloody canines grew until they protruded below his lips.

Mr and Mrs Elton fled from the room; the remaining guests huddled by the doorway. 

'Where is Miss Bates?' cried Jane Fairfax. 'We must find Miss Bates.'

Buffy punched Mr Knightley in the face, then kicked him in the chest, sending him careening into the opposite wall. He got up and charged at Buffy. A flurry of punches, kicks and chops ensued. The flurry ended with Mr Knightley holding Buffy in a close grip and preparing to bite into her neck. Her stick lay on the carpet behind Mr Knightley, far out of her reach. Harriet picked it up and kicked Mr Knightley in the back of his right knee. He let go of Buffy and fell to the floor. Harriet threw the stick to Buffy. She caught it and plunged it into the vampire's heart. He exploded in a cloud of dust.

Buffy rubbed her hands together and grinned at Harriet. 'Thank you,' she said. Harriet replied with an awkward curtsey.

Miss Fairfax entered the room dragging a barely conscious Miss Bates, who was mumbling to herself: 'Always thought him such a gentleman, terribly handy with a trowel, shall never recover from the shock…'

Mr Weston coughed. 'Indeed. I should never have believed it of Mr Knightley,' he said.

Emma's face was more crestfallen than ever. 'And yet, only now, I realise that I loved him,' she cried.

Buffy sighed. 'You were in love with a vampire? Tell me about it, sister. Been there, done that, actually got two T-shirts.'

'I suppose I ought to thank you,' said Emma, 'but whatever shall I do without him?'

'Not bleed to death when he's thirsty, for a start,' said Buffy. 'Look, I know it's hard, but you'll find a way. I had to send my boyfriend to Hell once. That was tough. I mean, he came back and it was all OK in the end, which I don't think is going to happen here, and I'm really not helping at all, am I? I think I'll just – you know – shut up and leave.'

Emma sobbed.

'Back to the Americas?' asked Jane Fairfax.

'Something like that,' replied Buffy. She jumped onto the table and threw the demon's body out of the window. 'Oh, one last thing,' she said, turning around.

'What?' said Emma.

Buffy pointed at Harriet. 'You. I think you should have this.' She tossed the sharp stick; Harriet caught it and stroked it gently. 'You could save me a lot of work in the future by hanging around graveyards at night. Just be careful.'

'Why thank you, Miss Summers,' said Harriet, but it was too late. The young blonde woman had leapt through the window and disappeared into the night. 

Yoga troubles: a straw poll

The scenario

You are at your very first yoga class. You felt a little queasy on the way into the leisure centre but now, sitting on your mat, you feel really quite vomitacious.

The teacher asks you if you have done yoga before. You say no and explain that you are feeling a little unwell and may have to leave. She asks if you are worried about something. You shake your head, even though the truth would be "yes, I'm worried I'm about to re-enact the pea soup scene from The Exorcist".

As the yoga teacher makes her way to the front of the class, you are overcome by a fit of dry-heaving. You get up and fetch your bag. You are still retching, only now it is not so dry.

Question 

Which is the greater social faux pas?

A. Dashing out of the class to make sure you get to the toilets in time, leaving your mat for somebody else to put away?

B. Rolling up your mat and puking on the studio floor?

Readers, I took option A. I think it's safe to say I was not in a position to make a good first impression. I have, however, learned two things:

1. I care far too much about what strangers think of me.

2. I need to stop buying coffee from the Costa machine in our local Co-op. Seriously, it's not the first time I've felt grim after drinking that stuff.

In Praise of Hopelessness

Friends: if you ask me to meet you and I say no, it isn't because I don't want to. It's because long experience has taught me that unless I can get to our meeting place within half an hour, chances are I won't be well enough to come and I'll let you down. Or, if I do make it, I'll need a couple of days to recover.

If you know me (or have read the rest of this blog) you'll know I've had three kidney transplants. I've never had very much energy: whether this is connected to my kidney problems, 25 years of immuno-suppression or is something entirely separate, I don't know. But it's got worse over time. I sleep 10-12 hours a day - sometimes more. When I'm awake, I'm mostly foggy-headed and tired.

I've also had back pain for the last 15 years or so. Despite spending thousands of pounds on different treatments, this too has got worse. There's nothing structurally wrong with my back and the pain specialists at my local hospital say that I'll probably always have it. The exercise regimes prescribed for me sometimes reduce the immediate pain but have not produced any long-term improvements.

At this point, I'd like to say that yes, I know I have a lot to be grateful for and yes, I know that many people have things far, far worse. Including some of the people who are likely to read this.

But the pain and the tiredness have increasingly restricted my ability to live the life I want. When people say "I hope you feel better soon", I know they mean well but it feels like yet more pressure to achieve something that I have been chasing fruitlessly for almost two decades.

So I'm giving up hope.

To devotees of positive thinking, this sounds defeatist.

It really isn't.

I'm giving up hope because I'm tired of bashing my head against the walls of reality and blaming myself for being unable to punch through. 

Because I'm tired of fighting to maintain a hope that is tantamount to delusion.

Because as long as I'm gazing over the rainbow and dreaming of Oz, I'm not making the most of Kansas.

Because as long as I'm yearning for the landscapes beyond my prison walls, I'm not seeing that my cell is actually quite spacious and comfortable. I'm not seeing all the things I could do in here. I'm not contemplating the possibility that, even if I can't do very much, maybe that doesn't necessarily mean I'm a waste of space whose life is worthless. (My mind really rebels against that idea: THOU SHALT ACHIEVE, DAMMIT!)

Because sometimes the best way to hold things together is by letting an unsustainable reality fall apart.

And because, sometimes, giving up hope is the most optimistic thing you can do.