My wonderful new doctor, a man who engages his brain before reaching for his prescription pad, has done me the great service of discovering what's really ailing me. Not high blood pressure at all - or at least, only of the white coat variety - but an under-performing thyroid. This explains a whole bunch of things, such as why my eyebrows are falling out, and is perhaps a little gift from my paternal grandmother. My Gran was Mrs Malaprop made flesh and after her thyroid diagnosis famously told everyone she was suffering from myxamatosis.
But there may be another reason my poor old thyroid is struggling. Forty years ago when I was a medical sciences student I was involved in some laboratory work with radioactive iodine. We had a bit of a spill in the lab which resulted in my getting about a year's allowance of exposure in five minutes. I've often wondered whether that episode would come back to nip me in the ass. Maybe it just did.

Clearing out my mother's apartment this week I've learned three things about her I never knew.

1. She worked a 12 hour shift the night before she got married. I found the note my Dad left for her at the porter's lodge of the nurses' home. Don't oversleep, he warned her. I have women waiting to snap me up.

2. She took calligraphy classes. I have no idea when, but I found her homework practice pieces.

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
And Wilderness is Paradise enow...

3. She never threw away a rubber band.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 06:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If ever there was a clichè that's right on the button it has to be that one that says if you want something done, you should ask a busy person. I am that busy person. Now admittedly many of the things I need doing relate to the damned show we're putting on again in January, a show for which I have no-one to blame but myself. I thought of it. I wrote it. And, it now appears, I subborned twenty or so consenting adults into agreeing with me that it was a mighty fine idea. But when things need doing, what happens?

I get sob-stories, medical histories and long-winded pleas that there are only 24 hours in their day. A flat 'no' would be easier to take. Actually, I prefer a flat 'no' to a dithering and extremely provisional 'yes'.
But what I really want are Yey-sayers. People who step up to the plate and then find a way to play the ball. I'm a Yey-sayer myself and I know it can sometimes lead to trouble, but mainly it leads to good stuff. Yey leads on to Yey, you might say.

This week's favourite telephone moment was a call to New York to make a restaurant reservation for Phase 1 of my 60th birthday celebrations. I once complained to my bank about having listen to the Beatles while I was on hold, but Stravinsky takes Hold Music to new levels of torture. OK, it was a Russian restaurant, but Tchaikovsky wrote plenty of good tunes. What I really objected to though - and I eat in restaurants so seldom I forget how full of self-importance they can be - is their assumption that anyone making a reservation is suspect. The kind of people who go round making reservations they have no intention of honouring, you know, just for the wicked pleasure of it. Tee hee, chortle, chortle.
I wanted to say, 'Look sonny, if you're running such an exclusive joint people will surely be fighting to grab my table, in the event of my getting mown down by a Sixth Avenue rollerblader and ending up in the emergency room.'
I wanted to, but I didn't because although they do great blintzes I'm very much afraid they don't do sarcasm.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mr F and I are agreed on most of today's debated topics. On guns, we part company. Though he has never owned a gun in his life he defends at all costs the right of American citizens to bear arms. I, coming from a country where the weapon of choice until recently was the toffee-nosed snub or, at worst, a broken beer bottle, have never understood why Americans haven't moved on from this Wild West attitude. It isn't guns that do harm, says Mr F, it's human nature. I find this a very tricky argument. Strychnine is also innocuous, till someone unscrews the lid. Doesn't mean we can all keep a jar in the back of the fridge, in case.

We were discussing this last evening. Little did we know it but at that very moment another disgruntled highschool kid was tooling up and heading for the classroom. This happened in a school that already had metal detectors and a 'security presence', whatever that means. A bull-necked guy in a blue uniform, I guess.

So now, just three days after Crandon, we'll be seeing another load of pictures of shocked people hugging, of fluffy bears and cellophane-wrapped flowers left at the crime scene, of America's future speaking to the press and saying, 'We knew he was, like, mad, but we didn't think nothing.' Quite so.

I don't mean to intrude on a nation's grief. God knows English schools are not exactly Sunnybrook Farm any more. But one thing about England, unless you're a junior drug baron a gun is hard to get. That's why English kids who are disaffected or delinquent or just plumb crazy use knives. And one thing about a knife: you can't use it to kill six people in as many minutes. For that you need a gun. Also you'll need somehow to get it out of the drawer and arm it. A human agency is recommended. Whatever you do, don't leave this part of the job to your dog. He'll mess it up every whichway. Many lives will not be lost.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 04:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A day late posting, guilt, guilt, pressure, pressure. Well, the thing is, we've been at sixes and sevens because we had the plumbers in. They were here for only two full days though it felt like a lot longer. I mean, we got so ho-hum about each other we didn't even speak when we met in the corridor. And it was worth it because we now have a heating system that slides silently and smoothly into action. A heating system that isn't so likely to croak at 5pm on Christmas Eve.

But clearing the decks for the plumber meant dismantling half the kitchen. My cookbooks and chopping boards and all kinds of long-lost gadgets had to be stacked on the floor. And this occurred at the very same time I had to begin clearing my mother's apartment. Suddenly we're a seven can-opener family. Excessive even in Italy where the ring-pull hasn't really taken off.

Tough measures were called for, and I began with my cup and saucer orphanage. A head count revealed that I've broken more saucers than cups, but that's not the point. I had a rare old collection of oddments. The kind of cups I always think will come in handy for keeping a spare egg yolk. The kind of orphaned saucer that might do good service under a plant pot but somehow never does. Well, no more. Like ripping off a Band Aid, this is work that is best done quickly. Perhaps to cheerful square dance music. Find your partners or out you go.
In twenty heart-rending minutes the orphanage was empty. Freeing up a whole shelf which I can now begin to fill with some other category of junk.

Next week, spatulas. Just how many is ENOUGH?

Posted by Laurie Graham at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)