Don’t you hate that? I was busy tapping away onto my blog, pressed some key – I’m not sure what - and the fucker went back to the previous screen and lost everything. Twat fuck hoar bum wee.

Now... what was I saying?

Oh yeah this is one of those random blogs… blah blah blah… didn’t write about big brother because as soon as Pete did a forward roll down those steps I lost interest – another 40 hours plus of my life down the pan… blah blah… anyway, I was at my nan’s last weekend and have been busy at work, hence a lapse last week…

Right… My nan (or grandmother for those of you south of Dudley) lives in what used to be a mining village just outside Chesterfield, but what is now a sprawling housing estate clustered at the side of the M1. She lives in a bungalow with her deaf son who’s as mad as a custard cream and she’s 88 – still on her feet – just. My uncle is so bonkers and beset by illnesses himself, it’s often difficult to tell who is supposed to be taking care or who.

My nan, like so many other nans across this country, has had one of those lives that will soon be consigned to the pages of a social history book. People will read about women like her and marvel at how they ever managed – she married a man with one leg – actually she married her first cousin who had one leg – and a drink problem – and they rose out all the family horror and criticism to bring into the world four almost perfectly normal apparently gene-clean children. I’m not quite sure why she did this (marry her one legged drunk cousin), but she had just recently been caught in the blitz at Coventry, where her father had been killed and she had ended up in a full body cast for 6 months, so that might have had something to so with it.

Despite the quality of her life (drunk out of her house when her children were still young, she’d had to send my uncles and aunt to a children’s home to be cared for – my mother was 16 at this time and left home pretty much for good then anyway) my nan laughs a lot and manages to maintain a determinedly positive face in spite of it all. Even after 88 years of battling she’s still going strong, though it was difficult seeing her last weekend, frailer than when she I knew as a child, obviously, tormented by pains in her legs and back, susceptible of infections on her chest.

Being my mother’s mother, we obviously have different last names, nan and me, but I’m definitely one of her breed. I’d like to think it’s from her that I’ve inherited my ability to turn every negative into some kind of positive, even if it’s just a random splurge of words on here to moan about the ills in the world. At a meeting at work the other day we were talking about our teenage years and some were saying how they’d been across Europe inter-railing. I said, “I’d like to do that one day.” And someone piped up, “You’re too old now.” “Of course I’m not too old,” I replied. “You can go inter-railing anytime, it just costs more when you’re older.” “That’s such a you thing to say,” someone else said. “Very you indeed.” And I suppose it is, refusing to be defeated by mere trifling matters as age and expense. I’d like to think that in most things I see possibility rather than problems. This weekend anyway.
And what a weekend… I started this on Saturday morning, and now it’s Monday evening. It’s been raining on and off all weekend, and SD and I have been lurking round the flat for most of it, only venturing out to the shops independently and, last night, popping downstairs for a few beers with friends. Bank holiday weekends are funny things, and the August one seems especially odd. All sorts of things are going on, or have been: “Manchester Pride”, as it’s now called, Leeds Music Festival, Todmorden Lion’s Summer fete…

But what with the madness at work, and the insanity of the coming month (off to South Africa in 4 weeks time!) it seemed the right thing to do to shun parties and festivities and stay here in the flat, drinking and chatting and lounging on the sofa watching old episodes of Absolutely Fabulous. And now I trip back and forth between my visit to my nan last weekend, and the events of Friday when I announced to the big boss that I wanted to go freelance next year and she said what a great idea it was, and the coming autumn months following a summer that blazed so hot and bright for a few weeks and then got washed quickly away in that flood water, that Sunday when we’d just been for a picnic up near Hebden.

There’s not been enough headspace these last weeks to string these thoughts and events together. I am being carried forward, out of the summer, into darker evenings and cooler nights. Into the hill again, onwards on the path up and up into as yet unseen places.