wall 17 January 2010
My sister in law ran into a wall in my back garden two years ago on Christmas Day – trust me it seemed to make even less sense at the time. ANYhow, pissed as we all were (and yes, therein lies the clue to the whole ‘running’ thing) I was mindful of her brain being a bit too jigged about. My Dad died of a stroke (as many regulars know) and it’s always good to check those who take a turn, for whatever reason, and it can really make a difference. The sis in law thought I was mad but I am glad I asked her to
1/ smile
2/ make a coherent sentence (I asked her quite specifically where she was) and my 3/ was counting backwards in 7s which is actually difficult and something I can’t do with ease (she’d lost interest by then and was objecting to the amount of Milton I was washing her wounds with).
Now, it should be said that I was doing the stroke checks on her and maybe they weren’t necessary for that situation, but everyone really should know them.
The third thing to do, in fact, is to get the person to raise both arms at the same time. And there is now a fourth (thank you Mandy for alerting me) which is to get the person to stick out their tongue – if it looks in any way lopsided you may have a stroke victim on your hands and the sooner they are dealt with the more chance there is that it can be dealt with successfully/reversed even.
There endeth the (medical) lesson…
For what it’s worth, my Dad got swift attention but his was a seismic stroke that I don’t think could ever have been rectified…but not all are and that’s why we must be prepared!
knife 16 January 2010
Let it be known that I do not normally lick my knife (ref last night’s blog) and would regard such activity as basically bad table manners, not to mention dangerous – those of you following my antics while filming the last (and, sadly, final) series of JAM AND JERUSALEM will know that I was keen on Miss Maggie Steed cross-stitching helpful samplers bearing the advice ‘never lick a steak knife’ rather than the usual trite nonsense you get on such things. It just happened that I did lick my knife as I was explaining my background properly to Richard and that was because there was a lovely bit of marrow still attached to it. I think the only other time I would contemplate this action is if a knife had runny, smelly cheese on it…and no one was looking…
working 15 January 2010
I made a break for London’s Glittering West End this day (one grey, rainy place = manchester for another = london) and am here with Himself now. My dearest wish was to have a pint..in a PUB…and so it came to pass = lovely and absolutely all I had hoped for. Then a bite to eat. We talked about STUFF and as I ate the marrow from a bit of lamb bone I realised Richard did not know just how working class I am = grandfathers a plumber and butcher respectively. and then I licked the knife, he tells me. And I am telling you all now that was and shall remain one of my proudest moments. As the song goes ‘I am what I am…’
12 days 14 January 2010
It was a lot like Christmas at work today cos we had
2 football teams,
8 fire men*
6 drag queens…
and four-ower les bee ee ans
(i THINK if you go from 4 in the original song that should give you the feel of it)
- an alarm had gone off and so the local lads had to turn up to check all was well – it was SO great to look out into the corridor and see them all there.
Great days….
lips 13 January 2010
Ah now here, there are a few things that are getting on MY WICK at the moment. Firstly, I am SO cheesed off with the weather in the UK that I might have to scream from now till Doomsday (I know that’s an unquantifiable amount of time but if this so-called global warming, ie the earth going to hell in a handcart, is anything to go by I won’t have to do it for long). I apologise if it’s me who’s bringing it around like Typhoid Mary, and I may be, because I brought it back from Odessa (Ukraine) where snow is unseasonal at Christmas, believe it or not, and certainly THAT much snow, took it onto London, over to Birmingham, back to London, over to Dublin, back to London and then onto Manchester and now, 5 weeks later, it’s still in London and Manchester…and Dublin…and…well you get the picture. Today’s version was a sly slicky kind of wipe of snow against the face and enough malice not to melt but get ever so slightly slippy on the street – this is in Manchesterford where I am currently sitting, typing to youse all and feeling like I may have to declare myself a Crime Against Humanity for these weather shockers. I am not happy.
SHOCK HORROR NEWS – I have the direst lips in all of Creation – of course I use that term lightly as I am a Darwinian at heart, just love the lingo that goes with the religious end of things…and the Art…Darwin didn’t provoke much in the way of a painting or sculpting movement…or did he? answers please on the back of a 50 quid note so that I can roll that up and snort cocaine through it because, as threatened if this friggin weather were to continue and it has, I AM TAKING TO HARD DRUGS…now, where to find some…again answers on the 50 pound note, my dears….
college 12 January 2010
I hear from quite a few of you that bullying was a feature of school days and that’s sad though Mandy, a regular known to some of you other regs, did have one interesting upside to report from her experience of it – herself and her best friend used to get picked on and found it was best not to play truant as that left them exposed to the bullies and so they went to all their classes and took the opportunity to study – silver lining and all that, I guess.
I loved school, barring one awful year in primary school when I had a personality clash with a teacher (also a nun, but don;t know if that’s a significant detail or not) and it being primary school she was the only teacher we had all year…I was about 10 or 11 at the time. Other than that I was enthralled, and interested in Academia, and I went to College. My brothers to this day STILL rib me about me spending the ‘family fortune’ on my education while they got none – they never showed ANY interest in going to ordinary school let alone college! But they are wretches who can spot a good opportunity to rattle a girl’s cage and make her buy them a pint on the back of their so-called educational deprivation…
bully 11 January 2010
Don’t know why I thought of this today – must’ve been something in a paper or whatever – but I encountered very little bullying when I was at school. I remember being a kid and a neighbour (a lad, now a totally LOVELY man!) giving me grief cos he thought I had been mean to his little sisters (don’t think I had, by the way, but kids, hey?). I didn’t encounter violence and I don’t remember anyone being picked on in the street or at school. I was certainly in the top classes all the time at second level (though I wasn’t the smartest gal in the place by any means, that fell to a girl in the next class along who got stonking results and is a very high flying doc of some sort now, I think) and our class could have been a hotbed of competition and bitchery but it was not. And I never heard of it from the other schoolrooms either. We were largely a happy lot, to be honest, whatever our academic abilities. Perhaps I was/we were lucky? But to all the girls in all the classes of my year – well done us, we were lovely! And I guess a big shout out to our teachers too – they must have run good class/school…
sleepless in manc 10 January 2010
The old sleep patterns are playing up again. Last night, for example, I was awake from 4.30am for two hours. I got up, had tea and read (WISHFUL DRINKING by Carrie Fisher, who I find wonderfully touching, funny and entertaining). I did think about flinging up a blog (I owed one from yesterday) but didn’t as I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t whinge about the sleeplessness and that would have annoyed even me at that hour. The main reason why the incident didn’t truly send me edgewards, though, is because I knew I could climb back into bed and sleep till I wanted to wake up today, it being Sunday and a Day of Rest (well, apart from daily novel-writing and novel-fretting and so on). So, timing is everything, as always, because if this had been an acting day and I was to be collected at 6.30m (the very moment I was crawling back into the cot) there would have been MAJOR unhappiness and International Complaining. I am hoping nightly slumber settles IMMEDIATELY before we get back to another week’s filming…otherwise we’re all in for a lot of grief and earache…
bug 8 January 2010
I hear the German for lady bird is marienkafer which translates as maria bug – like it! and, of course, our American cousins say ladybug – also veh veh cute.
Fed up of the snow now – would trade it for 2 to 3 damp and mild days of rain, however incessant, to wash it all away…
Am holed up in a very snowy Manchester and glad of it as there’s no excuse but to write – oh, hang on, NO, nearly forgot I can find a wealth of excuses not to do that – a WEALTH, I tells ya. I don’t have a radio or tv in the flat DELIBERATELY so I don’t have those distractions but you would be so amazed how many other ‘distractions’ a gal can make for herself = a bath, a THINK, texting pals and so on…it’s not big and it’s not clever and soon I am going to have to resort to hard drugs just to make all this seemingly wasted time reasonably understandable…bleddy hell, it’s complicated, this creative lark…and potentially expensive as a ‘habit’
ladybird 7 January 2010
I’m talking a lot on the phone these days between scenes as publicity for the new series is ongoing – SHAMELESS 7 airs from the end of the month on Channel 4 in the UK so get ready. Lots of the journos have noticed I do this blog and one, the lovely Benji who I spoke to earlier, took in that I am learning the bit of Russian and told me a great thing: his sister did Russian at college and told him the Russian word for ladybird literally translates as ‘God’s little cow’ – how lovely is that!!!!