Christmas 2006

41 Albion Street,
Stratton,
Cirencester,
Gloucs.
GL7 2HT
December 2006.

Yuletide greetings to one and all!

An uneventful little year, a little sharp in the summer, followed by a poisonous autumn, but more on that later (Kirsty Wark? Dead Ringers?). Meanwhile ...... “Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter don’t you call me, ‘cos ah cain’t go - ah owe mah soul to the Nationwide” (sorry! just a tune swirling around my head - just ignore me!). Flap! flap! FLAP! FLAP! the evil ones are awake (nervous twitch, shifting eyes, blood draining from face) - that’s just the drugs, man .... or is it!!! Seasonal motto : Watch out for pointed teeth!

This year began, mysteriously, where last year left off, with us sitting crouched around the aged Rayburn which had two settings, white hot or freezing cold, awaiting the long-foreseen, mythical Coming of the Heating Wizard to strike controllable warmth into our hearts.... With a full frontal assault by the First Brigade of the Corgi Special Forces, the whole dreadful onslaught was over in a (two-week) flash, leaving us reeling (Scottish country dancing is a strange side effect) under the weight of manuals, certificates of conformance to Part L98.6 of the Obscure Regulations and Notifications of Non-compliance, where they hadn’t been able to wire our heating up to the Northern Line. Fighting our way out from underneath a snow-storm of brick dust (cough! cough! wheeze!), we were confronted by an immense mass of new cooking equipment (more brick dust and even more cough! cough! wheeze!). Wow, with each oven glove and apron set, you get a free cast-iron cooker!!! And then, with great solemnity and not a few tears, we sent our dear old faithful Rayburn to its final resting place in a mournful cortège of white van, tastefully bedecked in a fine layer of grime, driven by sober men in mourning overalls, assisted by the pale and spotty Kevin with quiet, respectful cursing : “Oops! mind the door!” (scratch! scrape!) “Stop! STOP!! mind my effing foot, you stupid b*****d!!” and other such delightful epithets drifted back to assault our ears, as we emerged for the second time in two days from under yet another heavy snow-storm of brick dust (cough! hack! wheeze! thud!). “Water! water!” a chorus of thin weedy voices emanated from the red grimy floor. “Aaarrgghh! it’s ... it’s ...” Yes, it was the odd assortment of evil life-forms (they’re not evil, merely misunderstood - Bob) that live under the washing machine / dish-washer. Would they move out? Our hopes were raised. But like the poor, death and taxes, slugs are always with us. Every night, the evil ones held parties - little red slimy trails of brick dust traced intricate patterns over the kitchen floor and up the dishwasher - until one morning I endeavoured to arise extra early to catch them at it (heh! heh!). I touched the handle of the dishwasher and ... “aarrgghh!!” “yeeuch!!” there was the most GIGANTIC slug ever to walk the face of the earth, trying to wriggle hastily under the handle! Heart palpitating, hands shaking, I clutched the chair ....... it was too much for our heroine(!) to bear (sob!) ... nightmareish flash-backs of a previous slug encounter bare-foot in the bathroom one morning (faint!) ..... but that’s another story!

To help with the dwindling Irving cash reserves, we decided to rent out Tamsin’s room, whilst she lived in a van at Dartington (aren’t we mean??). For a month around Easter, we were entertained by stories of the eccentric rich and famous over at xxxxx House (removed in case of libel), near Oxford, where our niece Karen has taken up the post of P.A. (or general dogsbody) to a filthy rich b*****d, ex-chairman of Gnomitron Holdings (Grand Bahama) and wife (never forget the wife, best beloved!). A party of monstrous extravagance was in the planning - we ooohed at the excesses of table decorations for 300, we winced at the bizarre and random volte-faces, we scratched our heads over comments like “you can’t have a GREEN golf buggy - green just doesn’t go with ANYTHING, daahling”! (perhaps they’ve dyed the grass purple!). Karen will have a book to write if she gets out with her sanity intact!

Whilst staying down in Devon in June, to watch Tamsin and her friend Dana perform Tamsin’s final piece for her Music and Digital Arts degree, I detected a certain asymmetry in the breast region, and decided to take it along to see the doctor. At this point, one is whisked into the system so fast, one barely has time to draw breath ...... targets! targets! targets! is what it’s all about ..... as long as it’s a ‘sexy’ disease (you may be detecting a certain cynicism at this point). To be fair, I have been treated promptly and with consideration at every turn, and had all my questions answered, but it does make you realize that this is what happens only when the NHS has funding. If you are unfortunate enough to not have a well-funded disease, your experience may well fall far short of this ideal.

Within a fortnight I had seen the surgeon, been basted and made oven-ready (ultra-sound), amongst mutterings of “it doesn’t look good, I’m afraid”, mammogrammed, stabbed (biopsied) - “this may hurt a little, it’s rather like having your ears pierced” (as I was peeled off the ceiling), and spent lots of money on car-parking charges at Gloucester Royal Hospital. Apparently, I had to go to Gloucester as Cheltenham was too busy to see me within a fortnight - targets, you see! A month and several appointments later, after bombarding the mild-mannered Scottish surgeon with tons of questions about trials results I had researched on the internet, he finally got his revenge!!

Russet Ward in Orchard House was a separate women’s part of the hospital, lacking the hustle and bustle of normal hospital life. A nurse measures you up for surgical knee-high socks, with a knowing look, and you spend the next ten minutes trying not to break your nails on the Kevlar-strength material. So far, so good. About an hour before the surgery, in bounds the anaesthetist, dressed in green operating theatre overalls, with the manner and looks that made us think of Guy Secretan from Green Wing. Not so good. After him, the surgeon arrived, scribbled in enigmatic hieroglyphs, loosely translated as ‘X marks the spot’, on the left breast. Whilst being wheeled in with the consent form on my chest, the anaesthetist asks “Hang on, which breast is it? - it’s not on the form.”. Slightly worrying. “It’s the left, don’t worry, it’s the one with the hieroglyphs on, you can’t go wrong” say I smiling nervously.

I woke up with hot air being blown into my bed and nurses piling on tons of blankets (oh, bliss!) with the surgeon standing over me. “Are you all right, Mrs Irving?” “Yes, I’m absolutely fine, just .. a .. little ... tired ..... zzzzz!”. An awareness of heightened senses ... amazingly-textured rocks within stunningly beautiful calm aqua-blue water .... I can almost reach out and touch ... my hearing amplified ..... the sea-gulls screeching loudly (we weren’t far from the docks, but they were hardly noticeable under normal circumstances) ..... the bloke talking to his wife somewhere over the other side of the ward .... can’t hear his wife at all! ... a straw thrust into my mouth .... “Drink this, dear” ..... blood pressure check ... (thinks : “a dreadful imposition, give me back my dream!”). Woke up in the middle of the night starving .... boredom .... cup of sweet tea and biscuit .... get up ... feel terribly faint .... when’s breakfast? This was all Guy Secretan’s fault - too distracted to notice how much anaesthetic he was giving me - tisk! tisk! Like, wow! man, gimme more drugs!

Desperate to leave (“my dear, there are no private facilities!”), I promised the surgeon that I would go on long walks to get the blood pounding around the old bod to prevent any blood clots from hanging around street corners, smoking and collecting ASBOs. With a boob the size of a melon to lug around, just walking around the block was ..... (yawn!) .... just too ... heavy .... zzzzzz! Just trying to corral the boob involved ingenious sewing, and then trying to exercise?!? ..... you get the picture! However, I did make friends with the sheep at the end of the road over the next few weeks.

Another month, another dissection. Having pinned the surgeon to the wall with yet more demands (copy of the histology report, more questions, more research results), he passed the buck back again, as I had to make up my mind whether to have radiotherapy to my arm-pit, or surgery to remove any cancerous lymph nodes. I chose the latter. Radiotherapy comes with its own set of long-term side effects (such as the possibility of further secondary cancers, localized weakening of bones, etc.), so even though the outcomes are more or less the same, surgery seemed the lesser evil. This time the anaesthetist was of a more sober disposition, who actually checked my height and weight, which meant that I popped up into post-operative consciousness almost immediately - not half as exciting! However, the following week was!!

Picture the scene .... quiet Sunday morning .... dozing in bed ..... semi-conscious dreaming .... warm, wet, sticky, feeling ..... “yeeuck!!” “aaarrrggghhh!!” ...... “blood everywhere!!”. My very own ‘horse’s head’ moment (The Godfather?). And wouldn’t it have to happen on a Sunday! Bob rushed out to buy dressings - how ill prepared we always are for emergencies, eh? For the previous week I’d had my eye on this restless pink lump that aimlessly roamed around the boob until it came to rest over the stable where the child was lying in a manger .... oops ... sorry ... Christmas just entered my brain ... it came to rest ominously just under the breast scar. “ Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about” said the nurse in a brisk friendly fashion .... “hmmm” thought I, not really believing. Post-operative ‘back-wash’ of lymph / blood into the boob and consequent pressure build-up at the weakest point caused an eruption. “I understand you’re experiencing a little local difficulty” was the surgeon’s later understated comment. This went on for weeks ..... “Better out than in!” ... “It has to go somewhere” and other similar riposts greeted my worried protestations. Until one day it met its match in .... the ONCOLOGIST. Nobody messes with the ONCOLOGIST! “It WILL clear up by next week” ... and ....it did!!

Being ushered in to see the oncologist was a somewhat unnerving experience - a complete contrast with the understated surgeon. I had arrived in this position because surgery 1 showed that one lymph node in the vicinity of the lump was cancerous (a moderately aggressive little cancer), and even though surgery II (the movie?) showed no further cancer in the arm-pit, they ‘offered’ me the choice - more decisions! - on whether to accept chemotherapy. I was aware of a very intense woman, with hooded eyes and a slight smile deliciously poring over my notes explaining the evils which were to come, should I choose to accept them (gulp!). There appeared to be a momentary look of deprived disappointment when I told her that I needed time to make a decision, as she gave the distinct impression of wanting to drag me off, there and then, to connect me up to drips and tubes, whilst muttering incantations over my prone body. I suddenly became aware of a feeling of disconnectedness with the world. “Could you please turn that fan on” I muttered, as I semi-slithered to the floor. It took the best part of a fortnight of displacement activities to read to the end of the long list of possible side-effects without (a) suffering heart palpitations, (b) feeling queasy, and (c) putting my head between my knees, but I finally decided that, having been hacked, twice, I might as well be poisoned, and then ……. much later ..... there’s the drugs and radiation to follow …….. “don’t even think about it!”

I’m now just about to undergo the third (six is what we’re aiming for!) burst of frenzied cell-murder ...... “Die! oh evil ones! cackle! cackle!” ..... “Aarrgh, no! we’re doomed! ... doomed, I tell ye!” (I bet you didn’t realize cells spoke with Scottish accents) ..... thud! (little feet waving in the air ... erm ... bodily fluids) ....wheeze! gasp! die! “Oh dear, Cap’n ... there’s been some collateral damage ..... we have hair fall-out on a grand scale, sir .... and the veins in the arm have suffered badly from friendly fire, sir!”. “Oh well, the inevitable casualties of war - carry on soldier.”. C’est la vie ... et la mort!

Bob finally finished his M.Sc. in September (hoorah!) and has just heard that he’s passed (even more hoorah!), but his graduation ceremony is in - wait for it! - September 2007! All that work just for a twiddly bit on the back of the gown a year later (sigh!). But at least we now know how to build a larder that works (“erm ... sort of !” - Bob). For that was what the whole lengthy business was about - whether us effete Brits could foreswear the evil, energy-guzzling, mould-growing refrigerator and return to the dim, cool, tiled era of the larder - and after much calculating, simulating and formatting - some 18,000 words emerged that said “possibly”. It was, however, Quite Interesting (thank you, Mr Fry!) .... found me delving back into the official history of the larder in government reports from the periods of the First and Second World Wars .... managing to quote extensively from a book by the departmental prof (creep, creep!) and measuring temperatures in larders in really old (16th C) and bang-up-to-date houses. The worst part was finishing the brute off, battling with THAT word processor........ Now I’m free! free! FREE!! .... to be poor!

Tamsin graduated in November with an Upper Second (yes!). She really seemed to come into her own in the third year and made up for time lost in the second year, due to illness and slacking (aargh! I’ve just been lightly killed by an irate Tamsin). Picking up on survival skills learnt whilst living in Iceland this time last year, she decided that because Dartington hadn’t made any provision for people in their third year to be provided with accommodation when they returned from abroad (which is actually a part of their course!), she was going to live in a van, complete with woodburner, have showers at college, and save herself the exorbitant rents charged in Totnes by landlords ripping off students, knowing full well that there is nowhere else for them to stay. So she parked in a quiet secluded lay-by on the edge of town, a few yards away from where a couple of her friends lived (useful for the internet!), and persuaded the ‘man-from-the-council’ that she was perfectly safe and that she’d be gone by July, so she wasn’t hassled for the rest of her time there. She then worked and lived all summer on a friendly organic farm by the sea, at Beeson, near Kingsbridge, Devon, with her friend Dana (in matching van!), and returned to us in September, brown-as-a-berry.

We now have a full house again, and our front ‘garden’ is full of ex-Post-Office-van, which Tamsin keeps promising to empty, but which somehow keeps managing to escape the attention of what passes for her conscious mind (grrrr! - Tamsin). The story of how this immense van arrived in the garden might take a whole letter on its own. After several bus, train and car journeys (“it be rather woild and a long ways arff the beaten track, you zee - has oi arroived in Zummerzet, yet?”) Bob arrived, somewhat frazzled, at the organic farm, to the news that the brakes weren’t working! Much cursing followed. But our hero was made of stern stuff - he resigned himself to his fate .... a hazy remembrance of much merriment down on the beach, and an occasional scan of the horizon for the van which was to bring the ‘hallowed replacement bit’ ..... “At last!” (cackle! cackle!) “we can leave this accursed place!” (some gothic novel or other). Two days and an arm and a leg later, our intrepid band had journey’d to the lower reaches of the M5 pointing towards Gloucestershire. The beast declared its true nature by overheating on a hill, followed by locking its handbrake on so solidly, that with much embarrassment our hero and heroine (?) were forced to call out the road rescue. A large bloke flicked the thing off with one finger, casually banged the fan surround back into place (thus solving the overheating problem), and fixed an undiscovered fuel leak .... The beast rumbled on... They passed Bristol and were ascending the last hill before the turn-off from the M4 towards Cirencester, when ...... BANG! .... smoked poured from the bonnet ...... lights lit up the dashboard .... they stopped! There was no escaping it this time - the beast had to be towed. Another arm and leg amputated. A large cable, rigged up by one of Tamsin’s friends to drive her inverter, had sawn itself through on the bulkhead, with consequent shorting of electrics. At this stage, you’re probably wondering why we bothered .... (sigh!).

Tamsin’s graduation ceremony at Dartington - being Dartington - was a strange mix of formality and informality. The Dartington Estate is a wonderful place for a college to be situated - such beautiful river-side parks and gardens - plenty of space - the students are lucky in that respect, it must be one of the most beautiful campuses in the country. The degree ceremony was held in an old mediaeval hall on the estate, but the students - being Dartington students - definitely dressed in their own style! Tamsin was dressed from head-to-toe in orange - tights, shoes, dress, the lot! And by a strange coincidence, she matched the orange of her orange / blue hooded gown perfectly! A perfect place for photographs .... bright sunny, but cold day ......the obligatory photograph of mortar boards thrown into the air (Tamsin’s fault!) .... and I still had hair! The food could have been better .... but hey! let’s not spoil it!

Rupert (yes, he’s still with us) has left two bands and acquired two more (so, no change there then). Earlier in the year, after a few altercations about not getting anywhere on time, or not devoting himself exclusively to either band, the other members of both bands decided to give Rupert an ultimatum : “Either play solely for us ... or leave”. “OK, I’ll leave then!”. Shock waves knocked everyone sideways : their bluff had been called. After a week or two of blind panic “Wha’ do we do now?”, new drummers were signed up, everyone was friends again, and after a brief period of (almost) sanity in his life, Rupe was soon in demand elsewhere (just can’t say no). So, about four bands, then, currently, we think!

Opera at Longborough didn’t happen for Rupert this year - presumably it was the wrong sort of opera - not enough minor parts / chorus, though he did enter for the Cheltenham Competitive Festival, and has done other operatic singing from time to time. We tend to lose track a bit ...... days can pass without actually seeing Rupert, and then “Hi, Mum! Dad!” .... “Off to Sheffield, Mum! Dad!” .... “‘bye, Mum! Dad!”.

Rupert is still working 20 hours per week at the local college as a sound technician, though this year they actually paid for him to go on a two-day course to learn the software that he needs to teach the students. I wouldn’t say that extracting blood from a stone is easy, but ........ yes, further education lacks cash. Periodically, there are mutterings about employing Rupert for more hours, which the students need, but .... that cash flow problem again! Meanwhile, us poor parents get poorer ..... perhaps we should secretly move ......

We keep having thoughts about living co-operatively in a ‘green’ community, and have been to see one such place just outside Llanidloes in Powys .... wonderful views .... slightly faded grand house, still with a lot of original features ..... acres of land ..... flat with huge drawing room and eccentric accommodation (needs a fair bit of work) .... And all this just to get Rupert to move out!!!

“Now is the time to say goodbye.” “Goodbye!” “Now is the time to yield a sigh.” “Yield it! Yield it!” “Now is the time to wend our wayee” “until we meet agaaain some su-nny day.” (thank you Pete and Dud).

Lots of love to you all,

Joy, Bob, Rupert and Tamsin.

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P.S. Latest news just in :

Rupert has recently grown a beard .... could be a slight disadvantage when next dressed as a woman .... but despite this coming between them, Rupe and his girlfiend Lizzie have been together now for a whole year (hoorah!) .... (“’Ere, who’s casting nasturtiums on beards?” - Bob).

Tamsin is learning to drive .... the car quakes nervously in its wheel hubs .... the evil ones have fled .... fear the 21st! (it isn’t just the winter solstice) ....