I'm going to try a large vodka tonight

I’m dying, I’m almost sure of it.

That’s probably because I’m a man, and it hurts a little bit. It’s a well known fact that men have a lower threshold for pain than women, let’s face it if the act of childbirth were left to us then the world would be a far less populace place – I tried pushing a lightly moistened fist up my nose once and I have to say I didn’t like it at all.

I’ve been plagued by headaches for the past week and they seem to be getting progressively worse. Not that I’m a stranger to headaches, they’re a lifestyle event, but usually my breakfast diet of two aspirin a coffee and half an ounce of toothpaste does the trick in a jiffy. That and the simple fact that the boys can’t (but I sometimes think wilfully won’t feed themselves – they can open every other bloody door in the place, how hard would it be to get at the sack of dog food in the cupboard – or for that matter put the sodding kettle on for once in their lives), so life is a matter of prerogative, in as much as if I don’t function, we don’t function.

But these aren’t the usual morning headaches. I’ve tried all sorts of things, including my own recipes, mixtures of paracetomol, aspirin, ibuprofen shaken and stirred in glasses with whiskey and red wine (a sure fire cure if there ever was one!) and liberal amounts of cerveza, but all to no avail.

On a slight tangent here, have you noticed how you can really get into a good ache or pain. Lying there, especially at night when there’s nothing else to do, no distractions, nothing else but the umbra of pain itself, to be absorbed by the throb…the ebb and tide as it washes in and out with your pulse…last night I would happily have cut my head off with a rubber flip flop if I’d only had the willpower to get out of bed.

Which would all be okay in isolation. But more worrying, vaguely, if I could concentrate on it would be the increasing number of “moments” that I seem to be losing. I’ve always been a little bit absent minded, it’s a matter of course to make 8 separate trips to the kitchen to enjoy a meal in front of the tv…knife, fork, glass of wine, tv controller (oo, surprise, it’s in the bathroom), bread, switch the cooker off, more wine (I’ve drunk the original one while I was faffing about) and…bugger, the dinner…But, with increasing frequency, I’ve found myself suddenly being in a room without knowing what I’m doing there, or reading a book and “waking up” (that’s the only way I can describe it), as if I’d ‘slipped out’, for a moment – a kind of sleep walking, narcolepsy. Which is nothing more than vaguely disturbing at home, but potentially very embarrassing at work.

On the bright side I might actually spook my gimp! (He’s my colleague if you didn’t already know, a very disturbed bunny wabbit indeed).

On that same bright side, I have removed the ridiculous “phantom of the opera” mask now. So I look almost normal. At least as normal as I did before, which was not a particularly pretty sight but at least no creation of Julian Lloyd Webber, (and I am no longer afraid of Sarah Brightman as I was as a child), just a black eye.

And just to make it a perfect day, I drove to Rugby to go to a meeting. (If after reading the above, you are as nonplussed as I why I chose to drive 100 miles to the meeting, then welcome to my world).
Imagine the world as a great big bottom if you will. And all of the less attractive towns and cities occupying space in the dreadful crevasse of the bum cleft…then Rugby is deep in there, burrowed towards the very botty hole, a virulent speck of puss on a pimple on the arsehole of the world.

I don’t like Rugby.

It always seems as if it’s shut to me. That the people who live there have gone on a budget coach ride to gayer climbs and shut the shops, battened the hatches and taken anything of any value or beauty along for the ride.

So I am happily at home, tucked up in the corner of the sofa, squinting at my key board with my sadly neglected hairy idiots lying across my feet. Which is nice.

I might put off dying until tomorrow.