Me and Diogenes

I know it should be 'Diogenes and I' and it's upsetting my OCD to just leave that title but leave it I will.

HELLO there, so here we are again then eh?  There's so much to tell including my future death festooned in monkeys, the lobster -v- shrimp costume argument, the having to lose at least half my body weight (she exaggerated) in a year and oh, I dunno, the thing I've picked to talk about today! 

...the rest will follow in due course.

So, yeah - gosh, where do I start.  Hell, I'll just jump right in.  Remember about 18 months ago when I went totally nuts and ended up on meds and seeing a shrink?  I did mention that over here didn't I?  I can't be arsed to look back over my previous posts but it was around the time I went totally mental and turned up at someone's 40th birthday party crying and in my dinner covered pyjamas and no shoes?  Yeah, if you are going to do 'break-down' you have to do it in a totally memorable way.  The thing is, the people at the party were so nice they completely ignored these minor details, welcomed me in and gave me food.  I calmed down a little bit - food always fixes me, but was gently lead to see my doctor the next day.  The upshot was that together with the meds I had to 'see someone'.  Someone who wore Hush Puppies to be precise. 

Back to the present. 

(I pulled myself out of the mire by the way......well, I thought I did.  That, it would seem, remains to be seen!)

So, I'm sitting in my litter strewn car waiting for a heavy rain shower to stop.  A piece of paper had fallen out of my bag and in my boredom I picked it up and after a cursory glance realised it was some notes I'd made at one of the 'Hush Puppy' sessions.  It was weird, I'd pretty much forgotten everything that had been discussed and I think I only attended twice before buying the bald dog and feeling much better.  The piece of paper had stuff written on it which Mr Hush Puppy had told me were his early thoughts about what I'd told him about myself and how I was feeling/behaving and he'd told me to go away and Google this stuff so we could discuss it at our next meeting.  I remember that I couldn't be fucked to do it so cancelled the next sesh  and as you know, Derek the bald dog turned up next.

I'd written one phrase at the bottom of the page.  One phrase which the Hush Puppy guy had said was very significant and I needed to look into it for discussion.

The phrase?

DIOGENESE SYNDROME

I Googled it in the car and told my housemate (The Tidiness Nazi) about it when I got home. 

Me: .....so, what do you think?  That cheeky Hush Puppy wearing bastard INSULTED ME!

Tidiness Nazi:  So he said you are on the foothills of developing some sort of squalor and self neglect syndrome?

Me: YEAH, the cheeky bastard!  Granted I can admit that some of the symptoms listed ring slightly true - the whole apathy, social withdrawal and lack of shame thing.  That's got me ALL over it but the rest can fuck right off!

T.N: It says something about poor reasoning and stupid decision making too doesn't it?

Me:  ....your point being?

T.N:  Oh, I don't know.  Shall we start with the plan to dress up and climb the Himalayas dressed as a fucking lobster despite being a lazy fucker who hates walking or doing pretty much anything?  Then there was your plan to become a worm baron with the largest worm farm in the whole of the UK?

Me:  That was an eco venture!  It's not my fault the worms turned out to be scary.....

T.N: Well, I think that the fella might have had a point.

Me:  ....how rude!


So I called my mate Bison in order to get some proper sympathy and reassurance that I wasn't permanently broken!

Me: .....so what do you think?  I've been properly insulted!

Bison (can barely talk for laughing): Ha ha ha ha ha, you've gone wrong and it's official!  You've got a 'syndrome' named after some ancient Greek bloke who went nuts and lived in a barrel!  You'd LOVE to live in a fucking barrel, go on ADMIT it!

Me (not helping my case): I will admit that after reading that bit I did get lost in thought about how snuggly and cool it would be to sit in a massive fuck off barrel on a big soft cushion with a blanket over me just listening to the conversations of other people in the street without them knowing I was there....

Bison (still laughing!!):  This is hysterical.  Some bloke told you to look into a syndrome he was concerned you had started displaying tendencies towards and you couldn't be arsed, which is one of the symptoms and now you are offended?  HAH HAHA HA HA HA HA HA....you've joked you were going to end up as a crazy old lady

Me:  ....shit. 

Bison: Just remember, I'm supporting you through the medium of laughter (starts laughing again)

So next I spoke to my cousin Bakes who, when I told her about Diogenes, pissed herself laughing too!  What the hell's wrong with 'Team Sketty'?  They're shit man! 

Me:  I should go and punch that bastard in the face for saying that I was turning into a Crazy!

Bakes:  .......(long pause)......isn't that one of the symptoms?

Me:  Shit.....


So there you go, 18 months ago some bloke decided I was on a slippery slope towards turning into the type of person who might walk around town dressed weirdly with a bald dog in a pram collecting newspaper with which I could wrap up and neatly stack my own faeces.  Well guess what Mr Stupid-Hush-Puppy-Know-It-All?  I've applied for the funding through the Cycle to Work scheme to get a bicycle with a basket on the front to put my bald dog in SO THERE!

...and on a totally unrelated note - here's a picture of the lobster (or possibly shrimp) outfit I'm getting:

IT LIVES

Yes, it's been a while hasn't it?  A bloody long while but heck, here I am back like a bad penny.  What is a bad penny any way?  Don't answer that, I just Googled it and apparently it's a counterfeit penny that you need to try to dump on someone else sharpish.  There you go, bet that nobber Pepys was never as informative as this!  Then again, he'd have been on the ball and given an accurate historical account of the opening ceremony of the London Olympics.  I can't be arsed - we've got telly now; Future People - watch that!

So, where have I been? Well, I sort of went totally mental and had a break down complete with medical intervention.  Yay me - I guess we all have to lose our minds at some time.  Fortunately I've now swapped the Prozac for this:

-  Derek

 Yeah, Derek.  I am currently in the process of re-launching the ol' stalled due to madness comedy career with this bald freak as my partner. Here's the plan; I'm learning ventriloquism so we can argue and he can voice a re-jigged version of my inner arsehole posts from over here.  I figure your pets see the stuff you wouldn't want anyone to know and if I can get him to wear a foil hat with an antenna we'll be cooking on gas!  This plan is almost as good as my worm farm one.  Yeah, that was the plan to have a Sketty's Eco-Worm Emporium bucket of worms in EVERY household.  Problem was, when my own worms arrived I very nearly shit myself - they weren't the passive lovely brownish calm English worms I was used to - they were ANGRY looking red things from Australia.  Fuck me, I almost had nightmares, and so ended my dream of becoming a millionaire worm farmer...

So, I'm guessing you nosy bunch of buggers want to know what caused the ol' breakdown.  Well, I'll try to tell you in such a way so as not to sound too much like a drag.  In fact, let me quickly post another picture of Derek to make you laugh first:

...Well, I went back home at Christmas knowing my Mother was feeling a bit tired and crappy so it would be a quiet affair.  She was dead within a month.  Shocking enough in itself but we'd been to Niagara and New York visiting rellies in October and she'd been fine.  Cancer.  So that left me with no parents, no siblings, no bloke or kids of my own.  It's a sobering moment to realise you are, in essence, totally alone in the world.  Hang on, before this gets too maudlin let's have a Derek break...

Greedy thieving little bleeder

So, here we are - a diary of comedic musings and I've just killed the mood.  Ok, I am happy to share the funny side of the death of my Mother with you.  I tried to do this before now but at last I am ready and I hope people can appreciate that whilst death is tragic for those left behind, in all darkness there is humour to be found.  My top 3 moments of misery laughter, in reverse order:

3.  When I was finally told that the end was near myself and 3 of my cousins held an overnight vigil.  We'd been told there were probably only hours left so we sat alert around the medical bed which was downstairs in the living room.  We were waiting for the end to come and so spent hours reminiscing about funny family shit to pass the time. As the night drew on and we all got more and more tired the talk ran out until we were all just sitting in the semi darkness in silence.  It was tense, detecting every change in her breathing and holding her hand.  Suddenly the silence was punctuated by the sound of THE most enormous fart I've ever heard.  There was a gasp of horror as the other 3 people in the room looked from my Mother to the only guy in the room who was looking sheepish. 

"Oh my God, RAY!"

"Erm, I don't even know what happened, it just sort of came from nowhere.  I almost feel I was possessed"

"Possessed by a fart?"

"Well yeah, perhaps Grandad's spirit is here and took over my body....."

Not only was that THE single worst excuse for a fart that I have ever heard, if true, it is one possession they never experienced on Most Haunted.  After the solemn atmosphere had been broken,  one by one the remaining Watchers felt able to let off gigantic farts of their own.  We prayed that my Mother was in a sleeping state and could neither hear nor smell the room in which she lay.  It was terrible, our eyes were stinging, our nasal passages were burnt and we had been laughing at each and every arse trumpet that came out.  It was like a scene from Blazing Saddles.  Farts are so funny, even during tragically sad times. My Mother would have loved being heralded to the next life by a host of heavenly farts.....

2.  Just before things got too bad my Mother spent a lot of time sleeping on the sofa in the living room.  I'd lay sprawled on the floor lost in my own misery watching TV.  One night the comedy channel I'd been watching ended and I couldn't be bothered to reach that extra few inches to grab the TV remote control to find something else to watch.  To my horror an 'Info-mercial' started and I was trapped and forced to watch it!  Here's the thought process of a grieving person watching an info-mercial:

"Fucking Zumba........Zumba can fuck right off..........?........hmmmm they're dancing like they're in Dirty Dancing......fucking Zumb-that's quite cool actually........she used to be FAT?.......wow, look at her......it tightens your core muscles and pulls in your stomach?......AND it lifts your tits?......doing work out DVDs at home is sad....then again, what else do I have to do all day?....Awwww, look at my poor Mom sleeping.....Y'know, I could do this stuff 'cause she sleeps pretty much all day....(lost in reverie at visions of myself moving like the staff kids in Dirty Dancing when Baby first sees them....hell, I'm so thin!  I'm smiling!  I'm HOT).......what, if I buy it tonight I get loads of extra things?......weights.......A BHANGRA dance work out?........."

That simple offer ended the reverie for me.  My Mother had become much more intolerant of many things - especially racial as she got older.  I  was struck by a vision of  her waking from the peace of the sleep her poor body had provided only to find her daughter enthusiastically bhangra dancing in the house - doing the whole arm and hand movement stuff!  She'd have thought she had died and gone to her own personal hell or was having some sort of morphine induced nightmare!  I still laugh at the thought of me - so white and without rhythm - dancing with real enthusiasm and a big smile all dressed up in brightly coloured clothes from the Punjab whilst my mother watched on in horror.

...I was bloody good too (in my own mind)

1.  Ok, this is the ultimate nightmare death of a loved one scenario but you know something?  I can laugh now.  We're going back to the vigil group.  The nights were made up of the 4 cousins and the days had other family members coming and going.  Despite having been given just hours to live my darling Mother lasted a few days.  This toe curling nightmare happened at her death.  Oh God, WHO would be a family member or pet of mine...... 

The core group had their places and as the tiredness grew we all, at certain times dropped off to sleep but tried to ensure that someone was always awake should the end come.  There were bars on the bed and I fell asleep with my face on the bar and woke up looking like I'd been in some sort of industrial accident at one point.  This wasn't the nightmare, just something I remembered.  My cousin Lisa had bought a sun lounger in from the garden shed to lie/sit on at one side of the medical bed.  We'd also got dining chairs and other bits of stuff to sit on.  No one could really get comfortable but we didn't care.  Day had come and the core 4 refused to leave.  Of course I was one of them and so I was going nowhere but the other 3 had invested so much time and emotion into staying up with Mom that no one wanted to go anywhere in case the time came.  That said, we all got up and stretched our legs etc. when other people turned up.  It was about mid-day and a few people were there.  I came back into the room and noticed that my Mom's eyes were opening very slightly.  Letting out a gasp I  loudly told everyone that I thought she was waking up.  Everyone in the house came running over to the bed but the second I'd called out I realised that her eyes were opening a little because her muscles were relaxing as death took her.  I ran straight to the side of the bed and leapt onto the sun lounger. 

...only, I landed knee first with my full weight at the edge right where the spring is attached to the frame.  The spring shot away from the frame and I was catapulted head first into the face of my dying mother.  As this happened I screamed

"FUCKING HELL!!!!"  

Yeah, I shouted 'FUCKING HELL' right into the face of my Mother as she was gasping her last.  I then burst into tears, held her hand and wept loudly (and comically) "I'm so sorry I shouted fucking hell at you Mom, I didn't mean it".  It was like something out of a bad comedy.  She then died, the peaceful atmosphere everyone had striven to create with pleasantly scented oil burners and the comforting music of Andrea Bocelli in the background being drowned out by an idiot Brummie with a voice like a fog horn screaming profanities in the poor woman's face just as she left this mortal plane.  Nothing like moving on to the next life in peace is there?

Like I say, WHO'D be a relative, friend or pet of mine eh?  No wonder I went mental.

Bye Mom, I miss the fuck out of you......

BTW: There have been many things which have amused me over the past 7 months of which I'd wanted to write only I felt I had to explain my absence first and I didn't have the strength to do it.  Now I've got all this off my chest I can resume normal business.  Hope I haven't depressed the shit out of you.