Och I was being tongue in cheek. Well, not about the phobic bit as I truly am. Makes me ill just thinking about having to ring people. I have been like it since being a teen. It's rude and antisocial and more than a little pathetic, but it's not something I have any control over.
I am also phobic about naturally occuring patterns (tessellation for example makes me very poorly). I can't even look at a pineapple. Oh and lobsters, but that's just good sense. They're armoured and have the gleam of murderous intent written in their eyes. They will rise once day with their crab subordinates and shrimp minions and introduce the age of the crustacean. I'm well prepared for this day. You lot will be mincemeat.
Do you know, some days I think I'm actually turning into my 86yr old grandmother who genuinely stockpiles cranberry juice and bread in case Hitler invades. She has 10 bags of sugar, all went out of date in 1998 and she's a farking diabetic, never uses the stuff. Still, with my knowledge of coastal defences, pillboxes or otherwise and her foresight affording excellent ph levels down there, we'll come out laughing, just you wait.
So, what is new round these here parts? I do apologise for not having been around since, eek, Christmas. A couple of you know why and I've genuinely missed you all. I want to hear all about what's been happening.
I've been filling my MN free time with a new project. I decided to trace my family tree and it's been utterly absorbing. Actually, it's been quite a heady mix of distressing, astonishing, amazing and sad. What I have found, going back to about the early 1700s, is that it's the women that stand out as incredible, at least to me. On the surface it all seems pretty pedestrian but I'm fascinated. My entire family worked down the pit in South Derbyshire and were dyed in the wool, campaigning, passionate, picketing Reds. They worked 12 hour days from the age of 12, sacrificed their health (the death certificates are devastating lists of COPD and emphysema, right up to my dear old Grandad who died in 2001) and lived in tiny 2 bedroomed houses. The women had babies. Hundreds of babies. There's a cemetery in S Derbys that has my great grandma's 14 children in it, aged from 12 hours to 93yrs, all buried in a row. And I've met so many people. A lovely lady whose great great grandmother was the sister of my great great grandfather. I feel like I know them. Is that weird? All these amazing women like my Great Grandma Edith who was one of the 14 and put off marriage and children until her 40s so she could work as a community midwife from the first world war onwards. She had 3 children. The oldest was my Grandad, the second my great uncle who had severe Down's Syndrome and the third a little girl who choked to death on a fish bone aged 3. A couple of years later her husband was killed in a pit collapse and there was a massive cover-up at the time of faulty equipment and she was given a paltry sum of no more than £2 a week up to a maximum total of £300 to raise two children, one severely disabled. She lived until she was 93. The money ran out a long time before that. She was the proudest and most wonderful woman. She died when I was very little. I have a photo of her cuddling me.
I'm running on I suspect. It's all just so absorbing. I feel so proud of it and grateful for what I have. And a bit pissed off that they're all spinning in their graves because of old Smashy and Nicey and their big grin coalition.
I'm planning a road trip to S Derbys and I'm going to go round all of the cemeteries and houses they lived in and take photos and catalogue them. My librarian skills have finally found a use.
DH thinks I've finally cracked. Comes home each day to another unearthed dead relative. Not literally you understand. And their names?! Theopholis? Geo? Nellie? Harrington? I need to have 100 babies to honour them all.
Took M to the cinema for the first time btw. Shrek 4 in 3D. It was awesome. You must all go.
Gin, was phoning the photo man. I survived. Huzzah. Obviously I survived. I'm on here. Wittering.