Take Off Your Running Shoes

Things you don't predict...

Many things I figured would be ddifferent in a wheelchair: people making a particular effort not to talk over my head; being just the right height to press the Wait button on the traffic lights and so on, but one wheelchair effect I missed out, namely that I wear a hat to synagogue and when I lean my head back to look out from under the brim at the people desperately trying to include me in conversations, well, that perfectly fine-fitting hat (previously) now goes sliding right off the back of my head.

Enter one Pamela Savery complete with:

- the perfectly chic, perfectly on-trend colour for this season, which is also cut close enough to the scalp to disguise newly falling hair and not slip off mid-gossip.

For those of you who read this blog, this piece is a little out of date - it's about when I was ill in the summer, not the last episode just two weeks ago.....but the feelings are the same, I'd say. Also, the drawings are lovely - so worth buying the actual hard copy of the newspaper today.

I'm always impressed how quickly Guardian readers respond - ther's already been loads of activity on the Justgiving site.

I'm off to hospital today for more blood, so looking forward to seeing the site again at the end of the day. Meanwhile, has anybody at all spotted the elusive copies of TOYPD anywhere in the vicinity of a Marks and Spencer????? I keep sending the children on recces into the tasteful lingerie sections, but nada, nada, nada. What is going on?

No, John Lewis definitely don't stock them...

Following what I thought was surprising news that the only way to get a wheelchair is via the Red Cross - and most of them don't loan the wheeled devices out anymore - a correspondent writes:

As regards the problems you encountered borrowing a wheelchair, well Cheshire County Council, after consulting no one, has withdrawn their equipment loan scheme which had operated for years, and this and other unwelcome `cutbacks` led to near anarchy at a meeting held last week. We have local poet laureates in Cheshire, the replacement of stiles with kissing gates for the disabled – just how they could reach them is not mentioned, and yet essential `services` are disappearing by stealth- grrh!

TOYPD is a university syllabus!

A friend says she was having a browse through the courses on offer at City University and Take Off Your Party Dress is on the recommended reading list for the narrative non-fiction course. We have graduated!

Is it possible to make any money out of writing?

"Yes," I say here. You, the bloggees, and all the donors to the CTRT appeal are the proof.

Thank heavens for the wheelchair

I am so glad to have the wheelchair, which is the difference between being able to get out or having to stay in. To start with I wasn't sure I'd be able to get one - at the hospital I was told the only way to get wheelchairs is through the Red Cross, but all the numbers I phoned had a message saying, "we no longer hire out wheelchairs". Then I asked Barnet Council who promised to get back to me, and never did.

But then all I had to do was jsut say the words, "I need a wheelchair" to the great nurses at the North London Hospice, and they pitched up with one the very next day. It is an antidote to depression. Although I am still getting odd looks along the road as I do my half-walking/half-being pushed routine ("Hallelujah, she's cured!" "Oh, no she's not!" "Oh, yes, she is!")

Celebrity Visit

A-list bedside visit - book royalty came over to perch on my couch (where I now live in the daytimes, bolstered with reams of cushions) with me: one Francesca Simon, creator of Horrid Henry.

Needless to say a 10 out of 10 bedside visitor, (and I could write the reality TV show, "America's Next Top Bedside Visitor" and believe me, Tyra Banks' scathing comments on skinny models doesn't come close to me on sickbed ghouls, otherwise known as those who haunt the sick without decent gossip).

I will say though that I was someone put out to hear her say she would be arriving by tube, on the spurious excuse that her husband has done his ankle in, and needed the car more than she did. "But Francesca," I said, between gritted teeth, "If I'm actually having book royalty to visit, I would like the royalty to come by limo at the very least, not (teeth really gritting hard here) pitch up at Hendon Central tube station." Oh well, perhaps, it's some funny English aristocratic thing...although she's American, you know.

Anyhow, I was mollified later on when she did a very fine rendition of the Nappy Song, and also a two-minute riff about how next time she'd turn up complete with feng shui adviser, reams of publicists and hair and make-up people. Good, then.

Irina's Day One, and I Go in a Wheelchair

Leaves are falling off trees, I'm losing my hair - yet again - also in drifts, floating down, but we are now also employers of one Irina, who moved here from Romania five years ago, and is now studying her UK citizenship booklet ready to apply for nationality. (Have you come across this booklet? It's all about Saints George and Thomas and Stephen etc). Yes, Elon has a nanny, one of the hordes of East Europeans who answered my ad; not a single reply from an Australian or a New Zealander - let alone anybody from the UK. If Irina wasn't working, she'd watch the Discovery Channel all day - she loves the forensic science programs. For now though, she's with us, mornings and evenings (and it's a difficult call for a nanny, because that dreaded beast, the mother, is around in the background all the time too), and she's lovely and bright and extremely kind. So: job done.

Today was my first day out of four walls in forever...we took the wheelchair out to Elon's school to pick him up. Anthony and Irina took turns pushing, and every so often I got up and walked as well, which made it all look like one of those on-stage evangelicals ("she's cured, she's cured"). Thought being in a wheelchair might bring forth all sorts of different viewpoints, but in fact all I can say about it really is that it's extremely comfortable, particularly when you feel your legs buckling.

Babes

"I hate breast cancer," Elon said, yesterday afternoon around 4pm.

"So do I," I said.

Irresistible

...winter, fur lined crocs here...and heading your way....!!!!