I don't think I'm particularly squeamish as far as the sight of blood goes. I could watch any episode of ER or St Elsewhere or M*A*S*H without feeling queasy.

But, in three of the four instances of actual fainting that I've ever experienced, descriptions of blood or of unpleasant medical procedures were to blame.

The first time I was maybe seven or so. We were still living in the Co-Op flat. It was a Sunday. I know it was a Sunday because my Uncle Brian was doing the talking and Sunday was the day Uncle Brian visited. He'd bring a dozen eggs and give me two shillings (later half a crown) so I was always glad to see him.

He lived on a farm (hence the eggs) but he wasn't a farmer. He'd once been a farm hand and he just ended up 'staying on' in the farm house. The eggs stopped when he married, very late in life, the woman who, rumour had it, had given birth to his child decades earlier. The 'rumour' came from my Dad, and the inference was that Uncle Brian had behaved rather shabbily about it. Anyway, she went on to marry someone else and had a whole lifetime with him but, on becoming a widow, she and my uncle somehow found each other again. I doubt it was through Friends Reunited. Actually, she'd only been sixteen miles away all the time, so it's not as though he'd tracked her to the other side of the world, but some imperative drew them back together.

But that's got nothing to do with the fainting.

My Uncle Brian was describing, with some relish, a road accident that had happened on the Rathmell bottoms road. He hadn't personally discovered the overturned Land Rover, but he'd been talking to the man who had and was regaling my Mum & Dad with the details. One minute I was listening to "....and there was blood all over the inside..." next thing, the red and green floral swirls on the carpet were rushing towards me, and my Dad's voice was being funneled from somewhere in the distance: "...she's white as a sheet..." Then, just as suddenly, everything coming back into focus and my Mum was next to me telling me to put my head between my knees.

The other times were nothing to do with my Uncle Brian at all.

Words of the day:

torpor

disconnection

Things I am not going to worry about #1

I am not going to worry about what has happened to the lid of our plastics recycling box, which vanished following the return of the bin men this afternoon: because there is nothing I can do about it.
- Posted using iPod from my bed

Despite my efforts, following up the diversionary anecdotes with a few chapters from one of my Christmas books, last night was still largely sleepless. After waking for the third time and deciding it was safe to look at the clock because, by now, it must be at least five, what I actually saw was the crushingly predictable glow of "three-thirty".

I should have got up and done a productive thing such as, for example, knitting an iPod cover. I didn't. I stayed where I was, grimly determined not to let my thoughts get the better of me.

And in almost no time at all it was "three-thirty-nine"

It's not going to happen again tonight. I'm more than ready for it.

I'm sitting nursing a cup of lukewarm Earl Grey, listening to 'Country Feedback' and wondering how honest I'm prepared to be.

Every time I think I'm ready for it, every time I'm on the point of owning up, telling the truth, facing the facts: I back down. Turn away from it, with excuses.

It's after nine and I'm beginning to feel the dread of tomorrow at the back of my neck and in the pit of my stomach. If I regress any further I'll be having a toasted tea cake for supper and laying out my school uniform on the chair. Grey polyester skirt, grey v-necked cardigan, green & grey tie, plain white knee socks. I was once severely and publicly admonished by the Deputy Headmistress for wearing socks with a red and blue band around the top. The injustice of her disproportionate rebuke outraged me, although it was probably the closest to an act of teenage rebellion I ever got. Certainly, that evening spent drinking pilfered Sanatogen and listening to Bob Dylan in a bedroom in Horton in Ribblesdale doesn't even come close: its only consequence being to knock my enjoyment of underage drinking back by years. Until it ceased to be underage drinking in fact. Oh, and I still get an unpleasant taste in my mouth when I hear Bob Dylan, but that's quite usual isn't it?

See? I did it again. More excuses, and my tea's gone cold. But at least it took my mind off Monday, for half an hour or so.

It's not as though I feel I owe anyone an explanation or anything. Or even as though I know what I'm doing here. If anything.
But I have been a bit derailed of late, and I do fancy a change.

It may come to nothing.

Don't Go Away - Oasis