Now I'm going to ruin it totally

One of the aspects of blogging that I have long enjoyed is how accepting the blogosphere is. You can hear the taboos tumbling, as bloggers admit to behaviours and attitudes they've previously considered outrageous. Confessions are usually met with variations on the following responses:

Aw, Hon, don't worry. We love you anyway! And in answer to your question, yes, you're totally normal.

I'm SO glad you wrote this post. I'm not alone! I've felt the same for years, but I've never been brave enough to say so out loud. Thank you!

Bloggers are commended for their honesty, sympathy is offered, and the blogosphere absorbs the revelation of this drossy bit of human life, and moves on.

But there must be a limit. There must be things which bloggers confess to, that other people can't condone. There must be moments when lines are crossed, sensibilities offended beyond forgiveness. Moments when bloggers turn their faces... Bloggy Friends, I fear this may be one such.

I don't like the film It's a Wonderful Life. There. I've said it. And there's worse. Not only do I not like it, I really hate it. I've only seen it all the way through once, and then tedious snippets on various other unavoidable occasions. When I did sit all the way through it, I found it boring, pointless, and downright irritating. I thought the central character was dull, and at points a bit creepy. I thought his self-assessment was right, actually. He should have left that insipid and dreary town, and found himself a more interesting life. At the crucial point, he needed Barbie, in one of her many cinematic incarnations, to appear and warble on about following his dreams, believing in himself, trusting his heart. That might have got him moving. As for the angel, he annoyed me immensely. Angels should not be bland. I believe the word "mawkish" was invented for films like this one. It's 130 minutes long, which is approximately 129 minutes too much.

I've heard TWO discussions in the past 24 hours, one on Radio 4 and one on Radio Scotland, about the remake, or sequel, that is imminent. Those radio people were loving it. Lapping it up, they were. "I go every year, with my family, to see it on the big screen, and we're all weeping by the end." "Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without it." "'Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings' - that line gets me every time!" I must have heard the word "heart-warming" as many times as is physically possible in the course of a radio segment. The only good thing was the aging actress from Vancouver, who played the daughter in the original film, and is playing an auntie in the sequel, who managed to give away huge chunks of the plot, before the interviewer could intervene. Ha! I enjoyed that bit, thinking of all you It's a Wonderful Life devotees speedily clamping your hands over your ears, but not speedily enough, and howling with distress at having caught a half-sentence too much of what she was saying. Ruined it for you, did she? Ha! (See, I have a dark side...)

Please don't judge me. I can't help it. It's a genetic condition. It's in my DNA. My sister hates the film too. We only have to sing "Buffalo Girls, won't you come out tonight?" to each other, in the knowledge that we are the only two people on the planet who feel this way about the film, to experience a Christmas bonding moment so magical, that I have only one word to describe it. Yes, you guessed it - "heart-warming".

Can you forgive me for my aberrance?

"Darling, you were right first time. Your life has been pointless and meaningless, and no amount of my smiling at you in black and white can make it better.

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One of the upsides of having had cancer...

... is that you really love your birthdays. I do, anyway.

Last night, Husband took me out for a meal. It's not quite my birthday, but the date worked and logistics seem to dominate life at this point. And I'm not fussy - it doesn't have to be the exact date. I didn't know where we were going. Husband just told me it was going to be nice, and to dress up. It was a posh gig at a very fancy restaurant in town, and there was a bill that I didn't see, but I know was ridiculously large. I don't care. I loved the evening. Loved every minute of it.

I love celebrating that I'm here. "Every year is a bonus," I told Husband. "Every year since 2009 is a bonus." I might not have had these years. That thought, that knowledge, that tremor in my bones, brings with it a deep humility and an exhilaration. I wouldn't have paired those two emotions, but in my experience, they can arrive together and get along nicely. For me they do, every birthday.

I might not have written all these blog posts (and yes, I know I'm meant to be on a blogging break, but it's my blog and I'll write if I want to). I might not have moved house, back across the Atlantic with the family. I might not have seen all those children's concerts and plays, and planned those birthday celebrations. I might not have seen my daughter in a hockey match. I might not have watched The Hunger Games with my son. I might not have helped my oldest choose his GCSE subjects. I might not have owned a dog. I might not have done ALL THAT LAUNDRY! I might not have seen the beauty of this truly fabulous autumn. I might not have been to the Isles of Mull and Skye. Most of all, other people might have carried a yawning gap in their lives.

I couldn't live life with this awareness at the surface all the time. It would be too exhausting, and would alienate me too much from daily life. When I was being treated for cancer, and life was so odd and chaotic and nothing felt right, I missed normal life. I missed it terribly. So I'm happy that the intensity of all that emotion has faded over time, and that life trots along again in its normality. But on my birthday, and at occasional other times, I dip down deep into that pool of gratitude and marvelling that lies at the very bottom of my being, and I drink from its waters. For a while, I truly love that I hate my hairstyle, and that I haven't got round to putting up the new curtains, and that there are always balls of dog hair fluff in the corners of the kitchen, and that I shout at the children when they're being annoying and then feel guilty afterwards, and that the endless untidy family clutter gets me down, not to mention ALL THAT LAUNDRY.

So Cancer, you're a beast, but you've inadvertently given me this gift of glorious birthdays. I love it, and it's a darn good excuse to spend an unseemly amount of money on a restaurant bill.

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Whatever happened to...

the word "fetch"?

I've long been fascinated by the way language changes. Just how exactly do words come into fashion or go out of fashion?

I'm sure my mother used to fetch me from school, and ask me to fetch something from the kitchen for her. I used the word the other day, and it sounded old-fashioned. Archaic, almost.

Interestingly, I noticed that in America, children are only ever "picked up" from school, and never "collected". I wonder how it sounded to American ears when I (in my early days) talked about "collecting" my children from school. Did I occasionally even talk about "fetching" them? The other mums probably waited till I left the room, and then laughed to each other about how Shakespearean I sounded. "It's so DARLING!" they'd have said.

But back to "fetch"... I also wonder what happened to the word "fetching". I'm sure that word used to be used to mean "charming". Perhaps it was my grandmother rather than my mother, but I definitely remember outfits and appearances being described as "rather fetching".

Poor old "fetch". You've been pushed aside and demoted. Now you're just something I shout vainly at my dog as I throw a ball.

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How do you sign off emails?

It used to be easy. There were rules.

• If you start a letter with Dear Mr ..., you sign off Yours sincerely. 
• If you start a letter with Dear Sir, you sign off Yours faithfully.

It got a bit flowery when I did French, and learnt that you have to do lots of bowing and scraping and promising to be cordially someone's servant when you wrote to them.

It got confusing when I went to America, and my children were taught at school how to sign off letters, in ways that I didn't really recognise: Yours truly (well, we Brits take it as read that what we've written is true!) or Sincerely yours (which is just backwards).

But with the advent of email, it's just exploded into complication. When I was at primary school, painstakingly copying out and completing exercises from Pathways to English, they didn't teach me what to do about emails. What is the correct way of signing off an email? (I'm not talking emails to friends here; I'm talking emails to people you don't know but are dealing with on an official or semi-official basis.)

I use Regards if it's a first contact, and Kind regards if it's a few emails down the line and I want to be a little warmer. If I want to step up from that, it's Best wishes, or (really pushing the boat out here) With warmest best wishes - but that's a bit sucky uppy, I feel. I don't often use Yours sincerely or Yours faithfully in emails. Am I right?

I've put the cart before the horse, though. I should have started with email salutations. In a business or official email, is Hi, or Hi there, or Hi Jane, ok? Or are they too informal? Do you say Dear ..., as if the email was a proper letter? Does anyone, anywhere still start off Dear Mr ..., or are we all on first name terms these days?

                    

Tea

I think you'll enjoy this video about... Tea!

I was first introduced to Yorkshire Tea at the age of 18 (I'd had a sheltered childhood), when a friend who was from Yorkshire used to bring boxes of it to university to last her the term. In those days you couldn't buy it south of the Humber, and she claimed that you couldn't get a decent brew without it. Yorkshire Tea always makes me think of her.

I didn't get it then, and I don't get it now. I mean, China tea is grown in China. Indian tea is grown in India. Yorkshire tea is... what? Tenderly cultivated on the gentle sun-kissed slopes above the River Swale? Picked in its prime by Yorkshiremen in flat caps on the terraced plantations of the North York Moors? Sorry. Don't get it.

But I DO get this video. It's just so ironic and British and it speaks truth, because, as eny ful no, there really is nothing that can't be sorted out by a nice cup of tea. And we all know that the correct response to that is "Ooh, lovely!".





Disclaimer: I didn't receive anything for posting this video, though I did email the PR company who sent it to me, saying "oh come on, there must be some kind of freebie in this for me", and they said they'd contact Yorkshire Tea on my behalf, so I'm hoping for a year's supply of tea (though I only drink decaff and I don't think Yorkshire does that)... Or maybe a nice red mug... Or a packet of digestives... Or a trip to Yorkshire to visit the plantations...