Band of Bloggers.

Thank you so much, to all of you that sent me messages.
Not a crisis, not a teaser, but I just needed an acknowledgment that life does still exist outside my little cottage.
This morning there was no donkey, the yellow primroses are giving way to tiny purple wild violets, bluebells, cuckoo flowers and little white mouse ears. Pink, white and blue everywhere.
I think the cold, wet winter has done all the plants good.
I timed myself – 24 bars of track five – running past a little copse of wood anemones, The trees are surrounded by little faces of white petals all pushing their way to the sun. Which was out until I got to Frog Spawn Bend.
Marched up the hill past centurion rows of Dan-De-Lion. ‘Wet the beds’ as we called them when I was growing up.
Talking of which, I always have to stop off in the outdoor pursuit centre to use their public loo. I’m drinking three litres of greens everyday. Finally I’m back on my old regime. Which is a massive relief.
Part of my absence has been dealing with GLICLAZIDE. The diabetic drug I resorted to. My doctor’s known me for twenty odd years – and I do mean odd – but he is a Western Medical practitioner, so drugs are always the first port of call. I had got so stressed and out of whack that I had to do something to regulate my body. I trust him, but I hated taking the drug.
Apart from the weight gain my two big toes ( slap, bang on the Liver meridian) had developed fungus, my skin had turned a sallow shade of mustard and my hair was as lank as damp vermicelli.
And then I interviewed a brilliant professor on my BBC show who noticed my bloated belly and said….

‘Get rid of it.’
I confided in him that I was taking the Gliclazide jobby to which he replied.
‘It puts weight on, which is the last thing a diabetic needs to do. Come off it.’
I had put on nearly a stone and was eating less than a gerbil. I panicked.
‘Come off it.’ He insisted. ‘Do it with diet’.
So on the train ride home I googled the drug. There are support networks for people trying to reduce their intake, and a break down of all the side effects.
So I smashed through my panic, took it slowly, and quietly reduced the dose. Introduced my old way of being. Added to which I haven’t touched sugar, bread or coffee since February 10th, that Lent Fast really helped.
So over the last three weeks the bloating has finally started to go, and my body is readjusting to it’s old self.
When you get to my age conversations always start with, ‘How’s your back?’ ‘Hows your blood?’ ‘Hows your father?’
So when I fell last week – with a mighty SLAP, and two old gents tried to help me up, the irony of lying prostrate next to Oscar Wilde at Charing Cross, was not lost on me. As I bit the dust I knew I had damaged myself. Got to the train with one minute to spare, sat down and there they were. Two huge, bloody grazes on my knee, arm and the biggest bruise waiting to happen on my little fat belly – sorry big fat belly – the inscription on Oscar Wilde’s monument spoke to me:
‘We are all born in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.’
I was doing both.
I am, however, much more balanced and back on track. I’m eating raw honey to mend my pancreas. Trying not to eat after 7.00. And nibbling on greens like my donkey friend.
My thinking is clearer, and the weather has done me good. Too much sun and I can’t work, I just want to be lazing in the garden. Which is what I did in between stuff yesterday.
The old git scarified the lawn and put down some grass seed.
I did my second mow of the year. The lawn was covered in daisies. My mother loved them, always upset when I cut them.
“They are so pretty’ she would say.
She’d love my new lawn mower. It’s a big old bugger but I cannot get it low enough to cut the flowers. So now instead of having a cut glass lawn I’ve got a lawn that looks like its got dandruff. Not that I mind daisies – I love them – but I would like just one day of a perfect green patch.
Tonight I’m of to see ‘MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG’. I’ve done with my green drink today otherwise I’ll be merrily rolling into the cloakroom every scene change.
1.50 and time for a sykpe call with my writing partner. We are starting on a sit-com. I did wonder whether to write a sit-com based on an aging broadcaster, with no money, an even older partner and a 26 year old dawter who is a skint musician – but it’s just not funny……