Turn it around, mix it up a bit and a new view

I've decided for this post to turn things around, examine the stuff going on and take a look at things from another point of view. Following my post about having to stop taking soranifeb (I'm on the Sorce drugs trial) for a couple of weeks, I thought it was only fair to flex my glass half full side of myself. The Me which reframe's and looks at the brighter side of situations.

If you don't know what's be going on you can take a look at the post by clicking here

• Firstly I've always known what a wonderful bunch of people I hang out with on Twitter and Facebook, but the positive comments, page views and tweets have blown me away. Sometimes I forget how absolutely fabulous you all are, and take you for granted. You really made a difference and made my feel so lucky and loved.
• I also got a chance to chuckle at the sensible, bizarre and funny comment from brother too (let me know what you think!)
• Okay, so I can't take the tablets for a couple of weeks, but there are benefits to that too! No need to stress about taking them out with me.
• They have to be taken on an empty stomach, so two hours after food or one hour before, as close to 12 hours apart as you can. Sounds so easy doesn't it? I love my food, I've found it hard. Say no more. But for the next two weeks, if I want a snack before bed, or a hot milky drink I can!
• No more alarms on my phone to remind me to take the morning dose at 11am. Excellent!
• Hopefully by giving my body a break from the drug, the side effects will subside too. My feet won't hurt anymore and I can go for a long walk. I enjoyed them so much when I was recuperating after my hysterectomy. The dog is going to love me again :)
• My swollen tummy will go down and trousers will fit again (just in time for the Christmas party too!)
• No more stomach grumbling noises and anxious looks to make sure the toilet is free.
• No more mad dashes to the loo at all times of the day. Maybe I can attend a whole meeting without excusing myself (the worst meeting I had to leave twice in hour)
• I can unpack my 'in an emergency replacement clothes' bag for a while too!
• Maybe my energy levels will increase; I can give the gym a visit or two and stay awake past 10.30pm
• Also the pins and needles in my feet at night will subside, no more wiggling to wake them up.
• I can post and link up with Michelle's reasons to be cheerful linky, I've missed you!

And the best reason? It's given me the chance to look properly at the situation; it's not the end of the world and do what I do best and see the silver linings.

I'm angry; but I'm still Me

I had to visit the oncology department today and I'm pissed off and angry that I've been told to stop taking the trial drug for a while.

'A little break from the drug' they've said. 'A chance for your body to recuperate and recharge' they've said. 'Two weeks off and we'll review it when you come back for your CT scan results. You can have upto 3 weeks off at a time if needed, it's not a problem' they've said.

It all makes sense. My sore feet are very very bad apparently (I've gotten used to them) The dodgy tummy and constant diarrhea is a classic symptom of toxicity, but again something I've accepted and made a joke of.

But I still feel like I've failed.

My plan, my big scheme, my coping mechanism with all of this cancer crap, was to try my very best. To give the drugs trial my best shot and stay on it for as long as I could. To give myself the best chance of making it work. For me not to get a recurrence, for it not to come back. For me to help others in a similar situation by taking part, no matter how hard it was going to be. For there being something worthwhile and meaningful from getting and then fighting cancer. By taking part in the trial and maybe in the future, people, having this drug as a regular and normal therapy. You know, just to make a difference.

So being told I need a break from it feels like I've failed. It feels like my body has let me down. Again.

I'm coping mentally. I'm back at work and functioning well. My brain hasn't let me down. My sense of humour is still there. My go ahead attitude to it all is still intact and raring to go. Throw anything at me, you horrible nasty disease, I'm ready for you. My smile, which gets me through most things, is still there.

It's just my body which isn't coping. It's causing me to get infection after infection. Pain. Losing my hair.

It's let me down.

It's like Me, you know, the bit which makes me, Me, is striding confidently along to reach the destination with determination and a 'can do' attitude. And my body, the muscles, tendons, bones, heart, lungs, fingers and toes are cowering in a corner, whimpering saying 'leave me alone, I feel crap and you can't make me go with you'

But I suppose I'm thankful that the bits I have a conscious control over are co-operating and staying strong and positive.

The bits that are breaking down, I have no control over. I can't force my stomach by sheer willpower to stop developing a stomach ulcer. Or order my fingers and toes to stop suffering from nerve damage.

I know it's daft that I feel I'm letting myself down. I'm just thankful my will power is still intact and willing and able to fight on. Albeit when my pathetic body has had a little rest!

So although I'm angry about it, I am grateful for the small things. I'm still Me.

Meal Planning Monday w/c 26th November

Guess what? I lost 2 lbs last week! Yay! Plus I had chocolate everyday, so an even better bonus! It still surprises me how much a difference planning can make.

Onto this week, which is going to be a little harder as I away for work and not back home until Thursday. So it's restaurant food for me.....eeeek! I'm taking breakfast with me (cereal and fruit) so I won't be tempted by the cooked in oil breakfast and will try and be good for lunch with baked potato to fill me up. Dinner will be the harder one, but will go for the healthier option of steak and salads. Wish me luck!

So the rest of the meals will be

Butternut squash soup with wholemeal roll (inspired by Nigel Slater)
Scotch eggs, wedges and salad (about 3 syns)
Ratatouile and spicy couscous (syn free)
Chicken thighs with roasted root vegetables

Lunches while at home will be left overs from the night before with a chunky salad.

For more inspiring weekly planners, go check out At Home with Mrs M, there  are some amazing plans on there!

Will report back next week, with hopefully at least a pound lost

E-mail from my brother: Chickens and other dead things

Hi Fay,

How's it going?

This week I've been mostly thinking about our chickens.  We've got new arrivals in the form of four new little chicks two white ones and two speckled grey ones- everyone say "awwwww".  We didn't really want four new little chicks but with the ability for the chickens to go and hide anywhere when they go broody we've got to keep an eye out and obviously this time we failed.  Those chicks should have been a decent omelette or two egg fried sandwiches, but no, Mother Nature has to thwart our culinary plans and deliver up four little cute chicks.  You make me sick Mother Nature.  So to cut a long story short we had a broody chicken that we needed to find out where she was and this explains why I went under the house.

Now our house is a hundred and two years old and made of wood.  The method of construction was to simply put in load of pad stones down and then put posts on them to which the rest of the house could be nailed onto.  You can (and some people do) move their houses by disconnecting the water and electricity, jacking the house up and moving it onto a giant flatbed truck leaving the pad stones in the ground.  But what this also means is that you have to have a good skirting board around the bottom of your building to stop chickens, children, dogs, killer clowns and other miscreants from getting under there and laying eggs, getting stuck, pooping dog poop, jumping out to murder us in our sleep and other undesirable things.  Our skirting boards are a bit patchy around the back (i.e. missing) and it's here where I believed the chicken had got in.  I deduced this by watching the other chickens skipping in and out of the gap like they were a bunch of scallies and the hole was the entrance to an Iceland on the last shopping day before Christmas.

So I put on my overalls, got a torch and slide in under there like a Vietnam Tunnel Rat hunting Charlie.  It's dark under there obviously, it's got cobwebs and it's got spiders, so it's not great to begin with.  It's kind of like sliding under a bed in search of something you've dropped; it's claustrophobic, difficult to move and breathe and has the added psychological horror of being underneath a whole house rather than just a piece of furniture that if you get stuck under you're semi-confident you can shift it off yourself.  So I'm under there for bit when I find the corpse of Sparkles, the speckled cockerel (father of the two grey chicks I'm sad to say).  I have to admit I wasn't expecting that and may have uttered a naughty word.  Normally I like my chicken coated in KFC batter but this one was rather inconsiderately coated in a thin film of chicken death and nightmare fuel.  He was lopped over on his side, his two eyes milky white zombie style and staring at me, some bugs crawling over his feathers, basically pretty horrible.  First thing I thought was could I leave him to decompose under there?  Sure he'd start to stink but the smell would go after a month or so.  Second thing I thought was that I was a man goddamit and I had to deal with this like a man.  So I did.  I crawled out, got some gardening gloves on, respirator, hard hat, goggles, sprayed on some Lynx and then got a metal rake just close enough to hook the corpse out without me being closer than four feet to ol' chicken-zombie-death .  Once out I heaved the body over into a paddock and buried it where it fell.  Well it happily fell into the ditch, so I didn't have to bury it at all.  Result!  It's almost as if I planned it that way.

I'm thinking the ditch might be the best place to dispose of all our animals.  Get some sort of air compressor and plastic pipe to shoot the guinea pig corpses into it when they die.  Maybe I'll set fire to them as they leave the muzzle for some added wow-factor.  Maybe I'll rig up some sort of collapsing ramp for the alpacas.  Hell, I'd even get dumped in there, I don't mind.  Actually I've given a lot of thought to how I want to go.  Basically have you ever seen a sci-fi film where some team of explorers find a derilict space ship and when they get to the bridge they find a skeleton of the pilot still clad in his spacesuit, grinning into the void?  See when I'm very very old (100 at least) and Juliette has (a) left me or (b) left me for dead, I'll have the house to myself. I'll set up some direct debits, dress the living room up to look like the bridge of a space ship, put on a space suit complete with helmet and then just sit in the captains chair and watch Deep Space Nine re-runs.  Then two years later when someone comes round to ask if I want the grass cut as it's getting a bit long, they'll call out the police who'll break down the door, come into the living room and find my skeleton in the space suit grinning into the void.  And they'll be like "What the f*ck!!?!?"

Maybe I can dress the rest of the house up too while I'm at it.  Hang some WWII gas masks in the hallway instead of pictures, put some pickled eyeballs in jars and stack them in the bathroom, hang hundreds of baby boots up from the ceiling using 8mm film roll showing 50s holiday camp footage,  build a little shrine to Tony Hart under the kitchen sink, you know, regular weird stuff.  The new owners will thank me because then, and only then, will going under the house seem not quite so scary when old Foghorn Leghorn checks out under there.

Take care,
Love Mark xxx

E-mail from my brother: Teddy bear hat and possible career change edition

Hi Fay,

How's it going?  I very much liked the picture of you wearing a teddy bear hat.  I reckon you should make a teddy bear balaclava so that your face looks like it's inside the teddy bear's open mouth. If you stitch some angry eyebrows onto the teddy bear's face you can make it look like it's swallowed you in an angry teddy bear wrathful way.   Or you can make a balaclava that looks like a Batman mask.  Or a Spider-man mask.  I think that would be awesome.  From the neck down, normal, from the neck up, Spider-man and/or Batman.  Ironman balaclava could be a big hit too, or you could do a complete balaclava face mask that makes you look like Barack Obama, Jamie Oliver, Adolf Hitler or maybe something even more fun like Peggy Ollerenshaw from Hi-de-Hi.  If I could knit I'd make one for you, but I can't.  Sorry.  It'd be in the post otherwise.

This week we had Sam's 2nd birthday and "naming ceremony".  We felt sort of duty bound to do a naming ceremony because we did one for Eva.  However everything in New Zealand is so less formal that getting dressed up and doing something like we did for Eva didn't fit right.  So instead we ate vegetarian food and said a few words while we planted some trees.  I insisted we shoot fire arrows into a bonfire to de-hippify the event a little.  I think the event went well.  Even when the father-in-law miss shot his fire arrow and nearly set alight his terylene action slacks.  Oh how we laughed.

Last week we had the alpacas rounded up and taken away to have their winter fleeces cut off.  It's been so long since we've had them in their harness' that it took me nearly an hour of them spitting and kicking before we got them ready to be taken away.  The lady who sold them to us arranged the shearing and she popped by afterwards to see how things were.  I told her about the problems with the kicking and spitting and to my surprise she said I should spit and kick back.  Really?  Apparently if they kick, you have to round house one of their legs from out beneath them.  Brilliant!  Someone walking over the hill gets to see me going all Chuck Norris with the alpacas in the paddock AND I get to spit in their faces on their way down too.  I thought having alpacas would be boring but it's totally not true.

I did the Ohaupo Fireworks display last Saturday night.  Basically it's a chance for our group to dress up in our medieval gear, demonstrate medieval fighting and shooting and charge the public for some have-a-go archery.  The weather on the Saturday was pretty bad so the turn out was slow to begin with.  This meant we could do some demonstration archery which is way more fun than trying to teach a six year old how to shoot.  Seriously it's hard work sometimes.  You have to start off by finding out whether the kid is left handed or right handed.  I do this by asking the simple question "Which had do you draw with?".  This is in case the child in question can't write yet and doesn't know if they're left or right handed.  The number of blank stares I get like I've just asked them to name all of the seven dwarves in their ascending height order.  Then I get kids who hold up their left hand and I say "okay, you're left handed" and they say, "oh no, I draw with this hand," and they hold up their right hand instead like they've just remembered that Christmas falls on a Tuesday this year and not a Sunday which is what they first thought.  Or some say "I write with my right hand but I'm left handed."  What the f....?  My patience is pretty much all used up on my own kids so when it comes to other people's off spring I'm biting my lip and having violent Walter Mitty fantasies when dealing with them.

Get them with a bow in their hands, arrow nocked, bow drawn and ready to fly and you get kids that let go of the bow rather than the bow string (try to imagine that for a moment).  Sometimes we get kids that let go of the string by letting it down so painfully slowly that the arrow drops at their feet (you've just got to pick it up and offer them another go).  Then you get kids that just completely fail to let go of the string like they've got super glue on their fingers.  They're at full draw, their arms are wobbling under the strain and they just can't let go.  The advice of "Let go of the string!" soon wants to become a Gordon Ramseyesque "For the love of God, pull back on the string and then let the f*cker go!  What's your f*cking problem?  Let go of the f*cking string, it's not hard to f*cking do you arsehat!  Let the f*cker go!  Let it go!  Stop f*cking clown dancing and let the f*cker go!  Pretend it's red hot and let the string go!".  Spit would be flying into their tiny face by now.  "F*cksake you tiny mothef*cker I'm dying of old age!  Are you f*cking with me?  Are you f*cking with me?  Get off the range, get off the f*cking range you useless sh*t.  Go practice letting go of things.  Try a rock first, pick one up and then drop it.  Work yourself up to an apple or maybe an orange, progress to a tennis ball and then come back when you can drop a bag of shopping.  Now f*ck off out of it YOU USELESS, USELESS, TW*T!"

But I'm not allowed to rant at them.  Not after the last time anyway.  Juliette has suggested I work as a classroom assistant but I've always said "no".

Actually the hardest part was during a demo shoot after we started shooting two or more arrows at the same time off the same string.  You'd explain that archers did this to make it appear that there were double the number of archers on the field.  After a while this kid came up to the barrier and caught my attention.   You see I'd just shot two arrows at once and although they'd hit the target they weren't great shots.  They never are because with two arrows you're splitting the energy from the bow  and ... no, no, no come back, I'll stop being all "technical".  So anyway this kid stares me straight in the eye, pauses and says "Better to succeed with one arrow than fail with two".   I could totally see his point, I was of course new to this archery business what with having done it longer than he'd been alive, but on the other hand I just really wanted to say, and I mean this sincerely from the bottom of my heart, I really wanted to say "F*ck off, Yoda."  But instead I smiled politely, tussled his hair and said "oh, you" in a fond way and then spun kicked his legs out from under him and spat on him like an alpaca.  I didn't really of course.  Not after the last time.

I'm not a nasty horrible person really, as I said sometimes you want to say or do something when you know you shouldn't.  Anyway got to go, those alpaca goolies won't kick themselves black and blue on their own.  Take care and speak to you next week.  Hey, how about an alpaca balaclava?  Awesome.

Love Mark xxx

Meal Planning Monday w/c 19th November 'I'm Back!'

I'm back! After a few weeks off (which may have been a couple of months, whoops) I've decided to get back onto the Slimming World plan. A big part of it for me, is to be super organised to avoid failure, so At Home with Mrs M's Meal Planning Monday is ideal.

My plan this week is to have porridge or weetabix with fruit (my healthy B), a good lunch like egg or mackerel salad with cous cous or pasta and as Syn free a dinner as possible. This will leave me Syns to play with which I can use for chocolate, my lifeline in times of stress. I've worked out one Milk Tray chocolate is 2.5 Syns each, so I can easily have four every day. Result!

Onto this week's meals, in no particular order

Ratatouille and roast chicken with spicy couscous (syn free)
Pasta bake with mozzarella (syn free, cheese healthy extra)
Sweet potato curry with rice and vegetables (syn free)
Cottage pie and vegetables (syn free)
Chili bean burgers, slimming world chips and salad (syn free)
Omelette and wedges and salad (syn free)
Baked potato, beans and cheese (syn free)

I've already cooked the ratatouille, pasta bake, curry and cottage pie. Everything's safely in the freezer so no reason to fail.

Do you think that's enough planning? Have you got any top tips I can use to make this a successful week?

Wish me luck and I will report back next week

Email from my brother: toddler wigs (don't ask, just read)

Hi Fay,

How is it going? I'm typing this while smelling a bit of sick. Not my sick, Sam's sick. I took the kids to an indoor play area after picking Eva up from school today and gave them both an apple in the car as a snack. That's an apple each of course, I couldn't ask them to share the same apple in the car any more than you could ask Ronald McDonald and Colonel Saunders to share a Burger King Quarter Pound Double Cheeseburger, at a Pizza Hut.

Anyway Sam has a tendency to get over excited after running around a lot and puke up and that's what he did on one of the indoor play area's bouncy castle/Krypton Factor assault course combos that seem popular these days. Of course normally I'd clean the puke up with one of the wet wipes from his change bag but for some reason Juliette transferred the contents of old unisex change bag into one of her old handbags. As a result I tend to leave the thing in the car as not even I have such a low level of self awareness that walking around carrying a handbag is something I'm comfortable with. So instead of being able to use a wet wipe I downed the last of my latte (one sugar please), popped open the lid on the cup, scooped up the apple chunks into the paper cup, threw it in the bin, wiped up the remaining mess clean with my sleeve and then rolled both my sleeves up. Tadaa! Juliette asked me why I didn't just ask management for a cloth but where's anecdote in that? Anyway I've still got my sleeves rolled up and I still smell of puke. It's appley with a faint hint of vomit.

I thought Sam might be extra tired tonight too what with all that running around but it took ages for Juliette to get him to sleep. I gave him no more that forty minutes for his day time nap as well so he was nice and knackered. When I woke him up at midday I tried to get him to stay awake by taking him to check the post (always a favourite). I popped him on my shoulders and he slumped over my head and fell asleep because he was still too tired. I thought I must have looked like a sidecurled Orthodox Jew but instead of ringlets hanging down over my ears I had toddler arms.

They've both woken up with nightmares lately so maybe it's something they've watched? Peppa Pig doesn't pull her punches when she's tackling those hard to stomach nitty gritty subjects I can tell you. "Mr Dinosaur is Lost", "Daddy Loses his Glasses", "Windy Autumn Day", "Traffic Jam", "George Catches a Cold", it's got more edgy story lines than Eastenders sometimes. Come to think of it maybe it was that time we watched Jaws.

This week I'm nearly close to finishing the modifications to my medieval gambeson. If you don't know what that is it's a padded jacket used as basic under protection for chainmail. I bought one ages ago and had to go for the XL size due to the room I need around my shoulders to draw my longbow. As a result the rest of the gambeson (i.e. the sleeves) were in proportion to the XL size which meant the sleeves were so long you couldn't see my hands and when I raised my arms up it lifted the shoulders up too and my head disappeared. Brilliant.

I took the sleeves off, tailored them to the correct size, put in spiral lace ups under the arms so that I can put my arms in and tighten them up and put lacing points inside the main garment so that I can remove the sleeves if need be in hot weather. Thing is it's all padded and quilted and has a gazillion bits that needed sewing but I can't run it through a sewing machine because it's too thick. So it's been painfully stitched by hand. Juliette's been looking at me doing this work and has casually wondered where that peg bag I promised to make her is. Her lips said "Where's my f*cking peg bag?" while her eyes said "Read my f*cking lips". That's an old joke, she didn't swear at me at all, it was just implied.

To be fair now it's been over a year that I promised to make her the peg bag and I actually did. However I ripped it adding some fancy stuff like a shoulder strap and a gizmo for keeping the bag open while taking pegs in and out and I couldn't be bothered to repair it. It's in the garage under a pile of rat sh*t. Still Christmas is coming up, so, peg bag ahoy ... It's the thought that counts I always believe.

Anyway, take care of yourself, I haven't included any mickey taking about being bald this letter for change as I thought you could do with a break.

Love,
Mark xxx

P.S. You can of course borrow Sam any time he's feeling sleepy.

Email from my brother: pirates, nether regions and lovely grapefruit

Hi Fay,

How is it going? I read that you've got a crease mark across your forehead from your scarf. Have you tried looking at some pirate websites? I mean actual pirates, not the ones that download illegal films and stuff? Because pirates wear a lot of bandanas so must have the same problem. Jack Sparrow for example never takes his head scarf off at all so he must have one hell of a crease. Just saying.

I started writing this e-mail in some discomfort. Due to the wet weather and lack of drying opportunities I'm down to my last pair of boxer shorts and those are the ones I received from Eva last Father's Day. They're gold with little rosettes and silver cups all over them. Inside each rosette is the legend "No.1!". Anyway the boxers are also about two sizes too small for me and so my nethers feel like they've been shrink wrapped. I've been wearing them all day, in some pain as I bent over and repeatedly stuffed all the washing into the tumble dryer so that I don't have to wear them again anytime soon. The boxers are so tight I feel like I've been flossing my bottom and all the rosettes on the back now say "No.2!".

This week Eva went back to school. Turns out they have four terms here instead of three so they have another ten more weeks before the big six week Summer/Christmas holiday. I'm trying to get back into the swing of making her packed lunches but to be honest I can't be bothered most of the time. I keep reading articles about super keen parents who make their kid's lunches up to look like characters from Seseame Street or Looney Tune characters. My solution is to make up a normal lunch and pop in a picture of Big Bird or something on top. You get the same effect right? Open lunchbox and see Road Runner, surprise! Eat lunch. She's five so will probably be just as happy. Tell me I'm wrong.

Sam got upset because his plastic grabber toy was found broken in the car. When he's strapped into his seat he likes to use it to grap the handle over the door but he can't grab anything now that one of the pincers has snapped off. I tried to explain that although he can't grab anything one pincer still works so he can still beckon things to come to him with it. He's just not happy with the concept for some reason while I'm astounded at the Zen'ness of the grabber vs broken grabber concept. There's a metaphor or something right there because the grabber is only a foot long where as your useful beckoning range is line of sight. I'm thinking I need more sleep. (Uses broken grabber in general direction of bed).

While I'm on the subject of Sam his new favourite word is "no". Or rather "nah". He babbles away and suddenly there's a clear as day "nah" like he's a bored teenager. "Do you want to read Postman Pat, Sam?", "Nah.", "Do you want to read Peppa Pig, Sam?", "Nah.", "Do you want to eat large amounts of unhealthy chocolate, Sam?", "Na....uh-hu.", "Well Sam ... NAH!". I don't know if it's the broken promise of chocolate that makes him cry or my doing a victory dance and chanting "Su-cker!" to the tune of The A-Team theme. When he learns to talk some more he can tell me.

We're back on the 5:2 diet where two days a week we limit our food intake to 600 calories. It's supposed to be healthier but the only thing that's healthy is my appetite. There's no weight loss either. The only thing I've lost is my will to live. We bought a book on the diet but it's been sat on the side unread for nearly two weeks now. It's like neither of us wants to read the book because if we do that we're going to find out we've been doing it wrong. Six hundred calories!? No, it should be five hundred. One calorie over and you might as well eat pies for all the good it'll do you. Six weeks of it now, brilliant.

I'm also currently brewing some grapefruit wine. It's going to be horrible, I know it, Sam knows it. He helped me pick the grapefruit from our grapefruit tree. No one likes grapefruit and yet it's the biggest fruit tree on the property. It must have a couple of hundred grapefruit alread hanging off it's unwanted branches. Anyway the grapefruit wine is going to be horrible because Sam helped pick them. He's a short lad so he thought it might be easier to throw some in that he found on the floor. Some rotten ones got in, I know it, Sam knows it. I'll send you a bottle when it's ready, it'll take your mind off your forehead crease problem. Everyone's problems go away when you're sh*tting through the eye of needle. Also the grapefruit wine is going to be horrible because it's made from f*cking grapefruit. QED.

Take care,
Love,
Mark xxx

It's the little things

When was the last time you did something for someone else, just because you could. Just because it felt like the right thing to do?

I came back to my desk after a week working away to a package.

The note inside read

'Welcome back to Virgin Media from Hugo and the Legal Team'

And I giggled and then cried.

Late last week I'd taken a call from Hugo and rather than blag it, I'd confessed to have taken this particular project over after being off sick. I didn't know the answer to the question but would sort it out. This led (don't ask, it was a long chat) to us both saying a woolly hat makes all the difference when you're bald. Not something a year ago I thought I'd be empathising with a total stranger about.

And this lovely man, this guy I'd never met or even spoken to before, took the time, not to mention money, to send me a gift. His gift really touched me, it made me laugh, it made me cry. He'd really listened, connected and taken the time to do something. It made me feel a little bit special. Oh and very warm.

If you haven't already guessed it, I'm now the proud owner of a new hat, a Paul Smith woollen hat to be exact.

And I love it!

It's inspired me to keep my eyes and ears open, to be able to make a little difference to someone else. Because sometimes it is just the little things.

Email from my brother: two in one day

So behind with these, I've decided to published two in one day! Post two of four for your delectation. Enjoy
------------------
Hi Fay,

How is it going? I read that you've got a crease mark across your forehead from your scarf. Have you tried looking at some pirate websites? I mean actual pirates, not the ones that download illegal films and stuff? Because pirates wear a lot of bandanas so must have the same problem. Jack Sparrow for example never takes his head scarf off at all so he must have one hell of a crease. Just saying.

I started writing this e-mail in some discomfort. Due to the wet weather and lack of drying opportunities I'm down to my last pair of boxer shorts and those are the ones I received from Eva last Father's Day. They're gold with little rosettes and silver cups all over them. Inside each rosette is the legend "No.1!". Anyway the boxers are also about two sizes too small for me and so my nethers feel like they've been shrink wrapped. I've been wearing them all day, in some pain as I bent over and repeatedly stuffed all the washing into the tumble dryer so that I don't have to wear them again anytime soon. The boxers are so tight I feel like I've been flossing my bottom and all the rosettes on the back now say "No.2!".

This week Eva went back to school. Turns out they have four terms here instead of three so they have another ten more weeks before the big six week Summer/Christmas holiday. I'm trying to get back into the swing of making her packed lunches but to be honest I can't be bothered most of the time. I keep reading articles about super keen parents who make their kid's lunches up to look like characters from Seseame Street or Looney Tune characters. My solution is to make up a normal lunch and pop in a picture of Big Bird or something on top. You get the same effect right? Open lunchbox and see Road Runner, surprise! Eat lunch. She's five so will probably be just as happy. Tell me I'm wrong.

Sam got upset because his plastic grabber toy was found broken in the car. When he's strapped into his seat he likes to use it to grap the handle over the door but he can't grab anything now that one of the pincers has snapped off. I tried to explain that although he can't grab anything one pincer still works so he can still beckon things to come to him with it. He's just not happy with the concept for some reason while I'm astounded at the Zen'ness of the grabber vs broken grabber concept. There's a metaphor or something right there because the grabber is only a foot long where as your useful beckoning range is line of sight. I'm thinking I need more sleep. (Uses broken grabber in general direction of bed).

While I'm on the subject of Sam his new favourite word is "no". Or rather "nah". He babbles away and suddenly there's a clear as day "nah" like he's a bored teenager. "Do you want to read Postman Pat, Sam?", "Nah.", "Do you want to read Peppa Pig, Sam?", "Nah.", "Do you want to eat large amounts of unhealthy chocolate, Sam?", "Na....uh-hu.", "Well Sam ... NAH!". I don't know if it's the broken promise of chocolate that makes him cry or my doing a victory dance and chanting "Su-cker!" to the tune of The A-Team theme. When he learns to talk some more he can tell me.

We're back on the 5:2 diet where two days a week we limit our food intake to 600 calories. It's supposed to be healthier but the only thing that's healthy is my appetite. There's no weight loss either. The only thing I've lost is my will to live. We bought a book on the diet but it's been sat on the side unread for nearly two weeks now. It's like neither of us wants to read the book because if we do that we're going to find out we've been doing it wrong. Six hundred calories!? No, it should be five hundred. One calorie over and you might as well eat pies for all the good it'll do you. Six weeks of it now, brilliant.

I'm also currently brewing some grapefruit wine. It's going to be horrible, I know it, Sam knows it. He helped me pick the grapefruit from our grapefruit tree. No one likes grapefruit and yet it's the biggest fruit tree on the property. It must have a couple of hundred grapefruit alread hanging off it's unwanted branches. Anyway the grapefruit wine is going to be horrible because Sam helped pick them. He's a short lad so he thought it might be easier to throw some in that he found on the floor. Some rotten ones got in, I know it, Sam knows it. I'll send you a bottle when it's ready, it'll take your mind off your forehead crease problem. Everyone's problems go away when you're sh*tting through the eye of needle. Also the grapefruit wine is going to be horrible because it's made from f*cking grapefruit. QED.

Take care,
Love,
Mark xxx

Email from my brother

I'm a bit behind with posting these, but I can't deprive you of them any longer. Here is number one of four.

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Hi Fay,

How's it going? I checked your blog before writing this but don't know if anything extra is happening with you or that now you're back at work it means you're busy. Or that I've skimmed over your blog and missed something important. At this point I'm going with the first option.

I couldn't speak to mum and dad last week either because I was away on an SCA weekend (Society of Creative Anachronisms) at Pirongia and they let me know what's going on with the family. I managed to rope Paul (my nephew on Juliette's side) into coming along for the day on the Saturday at Pirongia. He's eight now so is enjoying things quite a bit. He managed to come second in his first ever contest for the junior archery and won a leather bracer (a leather arm protector that stops the string of the bow from hitting your arm). Only last month prior I signed him up as my fletchers apprentice on a Contract of Indenture where by I get first dibs on "anee wynnings from archeree tournaments, hastiludes and chance bets at the butts". I can actually spell but the contract was written in olde English and stained with tea to make it look really authentic. I believe my marriage certificate uses the same modus operandi.

The upshot is that I've always wanted another leather bracer and contracts are contracts, so... His contract lasts for "seven yers and one day" so I should be able to skim off his winnings until 2019 at least. Result!

I came joint second in the adult archery contest and managed to talk my way out of a shoot out for the first place. You see the core archers all practice on the third Sunday of the month and we belong to the (fictional) household of Geoffrey Wulf who is under the employ of the (fictional) constable of the Tower, Sir Alan de Boxhill. Sir Alan de Boxhill actually existed back in the 1370s but doesn't "exist" now so to speak. He's like a figurehead boss, the Colonel Saunders to our archery KFC.

So any win by a household archer is a feather in the cap for household, right? So after three separate rounds of speed shooting, distance shooting and animal target shooting the marshal in charge had three archers on equal points because we all won our rounds. However the first round was one by a household archer, the second round by a non-household archer and the last round was won by me the oldest household archer in town.

Because it was near lunch I said that rather than do a shoot out to decide the winner perhaps the winner should be the archer who among us scored highest in the rounds they did not win. I did this because I knew that the other household archer would definitely win this way because he shot really well in the second round. Following this? Don't worry, I didn't either and I'm seriously not kidding. I knew that if we did a last shoot out where winner takes all there was a possibility that the non-household archer could snatch victory from a lucky shot, so I angled it to make sure the household gained all the glory. Not me, the household. Understand? It was not about me.

Ha! Who am I kidding? What actually happened was that I thought we were shooting to decide the final third round placing because I thought I was out of the competition as a whole. It was only after lunch that I realised I had a chance at shooting for first place for the whole shooting match (if you pardon the pun) and talked the marshal out of it. However later on I did managed to pick up the prize "Resplendent Peacock award for best Light Combat (archer) or heraldic appearance" because of my kit. I take solace in this because if you're going to be a f*ckwit might as well look fabulous while doing it.

It's the last week of the school holidays here before they launch into term something or other. I have no idea how school terms work. I was told they got two weeks off for "half term" but two weeks sounds a bit much. I was also told that they have four terms rather than three. All I know is that next week things will get a whole lot easier with just Sam to look after. Don't get me wrong, Eva is lovely on her own and Sam is lovely on his own but put them together is like water and potassium, it's like the Incredible Hulk and Jack McGee, it's like Baileys and Lime Cordial. Those two do not get on and they can not get on for hours without a break. I don't know where they get it from. All I know is that without Tom and Jerry cartoons where I can sit them down for ten minutes, in silence I'd be ... hang on a minute.


Take care,
Love,
Mark xxx