Where there's a Will...

Being grown-up is a funny thing.  Most of the time, it's ace - you can go out on a school night, or watch your favourite programme on TV without having to tidy your bedroom or do your violin practice first.  And if you don't like the vegetables for dinner - you don't have to eat them!  Result!

But there are some parts of grown-up-ness which are a bit more bothersome.  Not unpleasant as such, just time-consuming.  Like reading the gas meter, comparing car insurance quotations or setting up council tax standing orders.  Recently, for example, TheBloke (TM) and I had to get new Wills written.  We hadn't bothered since we'd got married, but with a baby on the way, it made sense to get the admin in order.

So far, so admin.

I was a bit slack with mine.  Whilst the Will company returned our paperwork within days, it was probably six weeks or so until I bothered to sign it and get it witnessed... and once I had, I left it on the table, to be filed at some point in the future.  I am not good at filing things.  Don't tell anyone.  I might want a job as a secretary one day.

Anyway, a few days later was when I got really ill with labyrinthitis.  Not ill enough to invoke the Will, thankfully, but ill enough that I had to spend a bit of time in hospital.  TheBloke (TM) was very attentive throughout; I was admitted on the Friday evening - and after leaving at about 10 p.m. on Friday, he phoned me at 8.30 a.m. on Saturday to tell me he was on his way back to visit me, and did I want anything from home?

Now, not knowing I would successfully persuade a doctor to let me leave that very same day, I gave TheBloke (TM) a nice list of things I wanted, including my iPhone charger, my Blackberry charger (because clearly, keeping on top of office work was my top priority when I was still vomiting over nurses), a change of clothes, some lip balm, some snacks in case I ever managed to keep anything down, and so on.  He dutifully made a list.

It was only when I got home, and a few days later, began to open my eyes again and focus on the world around me, I realised that in trying to find a suitable scrap of paper to write down my numerous requests, he'd made the list on the back of my Will.

Now of course, this isn't a problem - it's scribbled on the back of the Will, not within the body of the text itself, but it does raise the interesting question of if I kick the bucket, which poor solicitor is going to get the job of working out which beneficiary will receive my deodorant, and which one will get the Vicks Vapour Rub?

Or if I live a really, really long time, in 80 years' time, the solicitors might be trying to see if there was any hidden meaning in "Wotsits" and "iPhone charger", and I could spawn a treasure hunt of Masquerade proportions.

Either that, or someone will just think, "Bloody hell, she was clearly crap at filing.  This paperwork's going to be a nightmare."

Seventh Annual BBQ Extravaganza

Well, what an exciting weekend.  This weekend was the much-anticipated SeABE, which as regular Ploggers will of course know, stands for the Seventh Annual BBQ Extravaganza.  For seven whole years, Erica and I have been getting together for a summer BBQ.  Over the years we have been joined by Dean, and TheBloke (TM), and, this year, making her first appearance, we welcomed Charlie, who added her own mark on the event, notably by grinning a lot and pointing at things she wanted.  Also she slept 12 hours straight.  She makes this baby thing look easy.  Either that or her parents are drugging her.  Just saying.

The weirdest part of the weekend for me was seeing photos TheBloke (TM) had taken of us.  I mean, I know I'm carrying a teeny bit of pregnancy weight, but I never get to see myself from side on.  So it was a bit of a shock to see this.

I am a whale.  Hey ho.  Only another two months to go, and then I'm sure I'll snap straight back to my size 8s.  

So we all ate meat, and bread and plastic cheese (no BBQ is complete without plastic cheese), much to TheBloke (TM)'s disgust; he is a firm believer in the South African braai where only "proper meat" - steaks and suchlike are allowed near the grill.  Plastic cheese, pork sausages and especially burgers are an absolute no-no.  I did notice though that this aesthetic predisposition didn't prevent him from cramming a burger (with plastic cheese) and four sausages into his big fat mouth.

The weather was OK - which is something of a miracle, given the deluge of rain we've had so far this year.  And hopefully, all being well, there will be six of us next year at the EABE.

Symptomatic

So whilst I was off sick last week, as I slowly began to open my eyes again, like a newborn baby badger, I was able to focus on the TV for probably about 15 minutes at a time.

One of the shit daytime programmes I found myself half-watching was an American show called I didn't Know I was Pregnant.  I found this programme incredible.  Actually, genuinely incredible.  These women claim they had no idea they were pregnant until they went into labour (or as we're in the USA, "labor".)  I find this incredible because if I didn't know I was pregnant, I think I would honestly think I was dying.

Here are the symptoms I've had that I have translated into non-pregnant possible symptoms:

• Excessive tiredness / floppiness = leukaemia
• Random vomiting = stomach cancer
• Enhanced sense of smell = brain tumour
• Ever-worsening backache, spreading to different areas of my back = aggressive spine tumour
• Acid reflux = that pesky stomach cancer back again
• Squirty black poos from iron tablets = still that naughty stomach cancer
• Piles = bowel cancer
• Constipation = bowel cancer
• Sore hips = early-onset arthritis
• Dizziness / blocked ears / vomiting = brain tumour / stomach cancer

So basically I would assume I had but a few weeks to live.  These US rednecks (let's be honest, there's barely an IQ point between any of them on the show) are clearly made of tougher stuff than me.  "Gee, I thought it was bubbleguts", one of them drawled, before explaining that she thought the baby kicking her was a mild case of wind.  I got simultaneously punched in the bladder and kicked in the ribs earlier today.  Had I not known I was pregnant, I would have been convinced I'd picked up a South American parasite which was now the size of a large trout and eating my innards.

Then again, I could just be a hypochondriac.

Taxing the brain

So I'm late to the party on this one (see previous post), but I really wanted to write a little bit about the "scandal" a couple of weeks ago with Jimmy Carr being lambasted for paying not-very-much income tax, and his subsequent grovelling apology.

For readers outside of the UK, Jimmy Carr is one of the UK's most successful comedians, pretty left-wing, and earlier this year, lambasted a number of large companies for avoiding tax by keeping funds offshore.  The scandal came about when it was made clear a few weeks ago that Jimmy himself was doing pretty much the same thing.  David Cameron waded into the row and effectively said he thought Carr was a tosser.  Or words to that effect.

This I do not understand.  Jimmy Carr was exercising tax avoidance.  For those of you in doubt, tax avoidance is what you and I do every time we open an ISA, offset business expenses against profits or buy a high-priced item deliberately a few days before VAT goes up.  Tax avoidance is perfectly legal.  Teams of clever accountants are there to work out how they can best legally avoid tax for their clients.  This is what Jimmy Carr was doing.  (Tax evasion is illegal.  No-one has suggested Jimmy was doing this.)  At the very worst, you could accuse him of hypocrisy, because he took the piss out of banks for doing the same thing earlier in the year.

So hypocrisy, yes.  But avoiding tax - how many amongst us, given the option to a) pay a shitload of tax or b) perfectly legally not pay a shitload of tax, would choose option A.

I think I was one of the only people during the MPs' expenses scandal who just didn't see the scandal.  OK, there were those of them who were claiming fraudulent expenses.  And they were rightfully punished.  But for those who had been told openly that they could claim for x, y and z, and then did... well, surely that's fair enough.  It's the system that's broken, not the people operating within it. In a capitalist country, why do we expect people to have altruistic motives?  We need to give clear rules, guidelines and laws.

And whilst we're on the topic, if banks and big companies are also exploiting these loopholes, then surely that shows they're doing the best they can to return funds to their stakeholders... within legal limits.  (Exceptions go to Vodafone who basically does evade tax... and gets away with it.)

And for David Cameron to wade in on this when a) his own family made their fortune in tax havens and b) he's one of the few people in the country who could close the tax loopholes if he wanted to, was frankly ridiculous.

Rant over.  Not very entertaining Plog, but admit it, it's true.

I'm so dizzy

So yes, it's been ages since I Plogged.  But to be fair, it's only really been the last five days that I've been able to see straight enough to actually look at the screen.

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you... labyrinthitis!  Upon diagnosis, I did wonder if this might have been brought on by an excess of David Bowie and too many gnomes but it turns out, it's completely unrelated, and actually means that your clever, clever brain forgets which way is up, which way is down, and makes you fall over and vomit.  A lot.  It's nothing to do with being pregnant, but because vomiting a lot dehydrates you, I had to go to hospital.  Joy.

High points of labyrinthitis:

• Finding out that if you vomit enough, you get to bring up some really interestingly-coloured bile.  Think a bright neon yellow marker pen.  Cool!
• Finding out that if the staff at Whipps Cross hospital tell you that they don't have a bed that you can lie down in until you are triaged, there's not much you can do...  Until, that is, you decide to lie on the floor in the corridor, clutching your sick bowl and moaning, and then suddenly a whole room becomes available really quickly.
• Finding out how quickly dignity disappears.  The best part of one night was having to press a buzzer to get someone to take me to the toilet; I had to hold onto my IV stand, sit on a bedpan, whilst vomit into another bedpan (and partly over an orderly), whilst said orderly watched me wee.
• Finding out that injections in your bottom really hurt.
• Getting a preview of a labour ward.  If you're a certain amount pregnant, pretty much no matter what's wrong with you, you go to the maternity ward instead of A&E.  Basically I spent a night inside a very personal episode of One Born Every Minute.  I have decided, pretty finally, that childbirth, or a C-Section, both sound like not very good ideas.  I am open to other suggestions.

It took ages to start feeling better, hence my absence.  Even as I type this, I am still completely deaf in one ear and find crossing the road a lot more like Frogger than I used to.  Especially the part where I have to jump on crocodiles' backs to cross a fast-flowing river.

Anyway, I'm back.  Hello.