Colonel BigFinger

I have been amused and underwhelmed by the response to my newly renovated exciting website.

It would appear that either nobody has noticed at all, or possibly they have noticed, but are not sufficiently stirred to mention it.

Either way, I was mildly surprised to realise that not only has it not made headline news in the tabloids, but it has not even merited a footnote in the Westmorland Gazette.

This is the consequence of becoming absorbed in one’s own activities. I have been so busy thinking about it that I forgot completely that the rest of the world was out there going to the cinema and having babies and losing their car keys and booking their dentist appointments. Nobody at all, anywhere, is going to notice that the colour has graduated through a couple of shades, or that the functioning of the search bar has changed.

Except me. I am feeling pleased with it.

I think that this is the important thing.

I had another website recommended to me today.

I had to go and visit the doctor, due to some tiresome problems with an infected fingernail. This does not sound especially unpleasant, but I had been dispatched there by the pharmacist at the chemist in the village, who was presumably sick of me cluttering up her tidy counter, waving an oversized purple finger at her.

Please would nobody remind me of the Golden Apple song Captain BigFinger, thank you. It has been running through my head incessantly for the last fortnight, since my finger first became sore.

It is my typing finger. It is an absolute nuisance.

The doctor was about fifteen years old, and lovely. She smiled kindly, and nodded and listened and did not tell me not to be such a total weed. She thinks that I might possibly have got gout. Gout, for goodness’ sake, like a retired Colonel in the Beano. She arranged a blood test and then asked about the menopause.

I explained about the horribleness of being a compulsive truth-teller, and about being ridiculously tired all the time, and looking like an upturned bowl of hairy blancmange when I take my clothes off.

She thought that I might need HRT to help me through the worst of it.

I explained that I had tried HRT, and also some anti-depressant that made no difference whatsoever except to put me off sex, and asked if she could get cannabis yet.

She declined to provide cannabis and said that in that case I would just have to put up with it.

She recommended a website called Menopause Matters, which is run by the Menopause Society.

I expressed surprise that such an organisation exists, imagine being so interested in being hormonal that you start a club to listen to other people whingeing as well.

She said that I should look at it, because it has some handy advice about diet and exercise.

I do not feel in need of advice about diet and exercise. If I wished to be told that I eat too many sweets, drink too much and ought to do more exercise then there is a long list of people I could visit, starting with Number One Daughter.  Nor do I feel any need to become a member of a club for people with the menopause, if I were the sort of person who was going to join a club, which I am not, then it would be something like the Mile High Club, or Club 33. I can’t afford the decadence of either of those but like the idea more than I like the idea of discussing Unwanted Facial Hair and Sexual Difficulties with other mental old ladies. Despite this, I agreed to look at it, out of politeness, and also in an outpouring of supportiveness for fellow website compilers.

I looked at it on the taxi rank later. It seems to be encouraging men to go and hide in their sheds when their wives are menopausal. I think that this is a good idea. In fact, I would quite like to hide in a shed myself. How nice to be peacefully building a model village, or inventing machines out of meccano that will take the dog out for you, whilst all the while humming to oneself and not paying the world any attention.

I went home and made jam, which was not quite as relaxing as building a model village, because of the splashy way that black currants boil. This is not nice when you are wearing flip flops.

The jam turned out surprisingly well. I was so pleased with it that I made jam sandwiches for our picnic tonight. They were perfectly jammy in every way. Today my housewifeliness has been a success.

I am going to close this rather sooner than I had intended, because we have been unexpectedly busy, and Duty Calls.

Have a picture of the jam.

There is no end to the excitement.