Actually, this is quite relaxing. Actually, NO IT IS NOT. I feel like I've got a deadline and if a day goes by, like this one has tripped nicely along I start feeling GUILTY, yes GUILTY. I'm too old for guilt. Gabs was asking if I had written my blog, yesterday, when I had been to Fleetwood Market with Susie in the morning, had Gaby, Iris, Erik and Mike join us at lunch time, looked afer Iris when Erik went for his jabs and collapsed in heap in front of telly with Ian in the eve. No, I lie I read the end of, 'Why be Happy if you can be Normal' a 2011 publication and sort of follow on from Jeanette Winterson's first novel, 'Oranges are not the only Fruit'. It was a brilliant read. Thank you to friend Hilary who gave it me as an Xmas present.

Jeanette was adopted by Mr and Mrs Winterson. The Wintersons were Elim Pentecostalists. Mrs W particularly had a fondness for the book of Revelation and all things to do with the END, the geat trump. I think that today she would be seen as being seriously deranged and with the intense scrutiny that adoptive parents have to endure now she wouldn't have passed the first post. But this was 1960 - for some us that doesn't seem so very far away?

I emerged from that book with a great sense of gratitude to my parents and that will surprise some. Mine was not an entirely conventional childhood. It was a very lonely childhood and one where I was not really part of the 'family'. My presence had to be minimal. There had to be no evidence of me downstairs, satchel, school books, toys or clothes - all of me had to be encased in my bedroom. That was Ok that was a safe place, usually, but not private it was open to invasion. If I was downstairs I had to be silent and not draw any attention to myself. I was a mouse. At meal times, the worst ever - I am in fact sitting at the very table now that I sat around more than half a century ago - I would be regaled with general knowledge questions, capitals, flags, rivers, kings and queens and worst of all MENTAL ARITHMATIC. If I failed to answer swiftly or correctly I had missiles aimed at my head. Not terribly good for the digestive system. It was fearful and terrifying. My mother watched helplessly, my grandfather looked very awkward and I just cried and that annoyed my father further. Bad stuff.

I hoped to goodness that I would never be a parent in that mould; I didn't succeed entirely but God did I agonise about my frailties. I don't think my father ever agonised, I rather fear that he enjoyed his bullying. So, that's glimpse into a nanosecond of my childhood. For goodness sake why be grateful ??

 I think it was the belonging bit, knowing who I was, who the parents were what my origins were and belonging to every bit of it. I hated 'belonging' to a father who was a tryant and a bully. I hated belonging to a mother who instead of helping me when I asked, told me instead to 'ask Jesus'. A mother indeed who wanted more than anything to be in heaven with Jesus, seriously worrying for an eight year old!! You can't 'unbelong' to these people that you may sometimes despise dreadfully. I'm afraid you've just got to get on with it - warts and all. Things hapen to you, bad things, worse and appalling things much worse than mental arithmatic being flung at a dumbo  ( slur on elephants! ).

So, I didn't have Jeanette's experiences or anything like then. I didn't have a great hole where there should have been a whole - the absence of proper identity, the knowledge of being unwanted for whatever altruistic reason. So, I am grateful for the misunderstandings of my young parents because they made me, and I cannot be unmade, I am what I am. I sort of like what I am, mostly.

Tight Lycra Boy has been out again today - he loves it. He's a blur of black and yellow, wasp ?? I did notice that the new vests have disappeared and yesterday's was back on. More training required obviously. I was asked, politely, to do some ironing this eveing while the world's leading lyric tenor ( as he calls himself) was at choir practice, but as you, dear friends can see I have not move from the computer, But I shall now as he'll be in in a jiffy. Can I get the ironing board up in time and look hot and steamy? No hot and steamy is not the look I want at this time of night !!!