hanging on...

I was walking back to my car after work today (Sorry. I drove. I know I shouldn't. But. Too dark. Too wet. Too wintery. Too tiring. Carbon Footprint goes up one more size...) and I heard the sound of birds chirping cheerily in the trees, probably just tucking themselves up for the night as the sun (somewhere behind the greyness) was setting and the sky getting dark. But as I looked at the trees I noticed that they were not swaying in a nice calming to-and-fro sort of way. They were way-jerking around, flapping almost, with wind whistling through them cruelly tearing the last crackly leaves off the branches and all I could think was: shit I'm glad I'm not a bird right now. And then when I was lying in my bath tonight with my book (hey. Because no one ever asks me to join their book club - I'm too stupid / get drunk / inarticulate / wouldn't complete the homework / would just want to talk about Politics and Tax rather than the sex lives of the fictional characters in the book being studied - its ok, I've accepted my isolation: I've decided to start my very own Mothers Ruin Book Club. I can only read and assess my books in the bath, after a round of East Enders and 1/3 a bar of Sainsburys Own Brand Belgian Milk Chocolate; and if I get distracted its OK! No one there to tell me to get back to the point! I can just bark on at the steamy walls, the towels and the kids' rubber ducks: they won't mind!) which is still really good and really readable (Zadie Smith On Beauty), the sash windows in the bathroom were totally clattering (and still are as I type) and I wondered to myself: I know that the whole of Cumbria is underwater, but how many birds actually get blown off their perch in this wind?
Their little gnarled claws clinging onto twiggys for dear life. Their feathers ruffling and their eyes blinking in the hard wind. I felt a bit sorry for them, personally.
Talking of hard wind. OMG. Who got caught in the bad weather yesterday? Oh fuck the birds falling off their perches in this instance. What about ME? and Liz? And my mum who made her annual pilgrimmage to N8 to "see you darling" and stupidly I decided to go-green and walk to Liz's Fun Fit Gym Class with Granny Darling and Liz. And within 10 minutes, in the most exposed part of Hornsey, a major howling roaring like a Caterpilla-Digger sheet of hail & rain & wind whipping in circles came at us like an animal from HELL.
And this bastard in his people carrier laughed at us as we cowered (I know! Call myself a sturdy country gal? We were so completely cowering) behind a skimpy hedge that did nothing more than, well, nothing frankly. Liz had total-humour-failure; Granny Darling gritted her teeth and muttered something about 'never seen anything like it in all my life' and I think I just swore a lot at the fucker in his silver car flashing his great white teeth in the luxury of dryness.
Mol just told me she's got a part in her Christmas sorry, WINTER (no religious words allowed, ever, in the multicultural North Harringay Schools...) Play. I'm going to brain wash her to go on the stage and start singing Hark the Herald Angels Sing! Glory to the new born King! just to see how many members of staff faint with shock. Such audacity.
So. I've done birds. I've done book club (sorry guys, its for me only). I've done weather. I've done smug bastards. And I've done Christmas, no, WINTER, Play.
Think that's all for now.
Oh - no - Spooks. They killed Jo. Husband very upset. No more bottom to watch. She had a good one. Although he claims to never have noticed it.