In preparation

I'm struggling to find words to adequately describe the last week. Nerve-wracking. Ominous. Some verb conjugation of tenterhooks.

There have been quite a few 'lasts' - not lasts forever, but lasts for now. Last drama class; last swimming lesson; last school dinner. (It's possible that Eldest was being a bit over-dramatic about that one.) I left a job: a lovely job that I've had for eight years, in a beautiful building, with smart, funny colleagues who felt like friends. It would be easy to be maudlin and woeful about approaching a surgery that's aimed at giving Eldest - and by extension, all of us - a better future.

Still. Without a tendency to over-think, how would I ever have become a blogger?

Today, I'm packing a hospital bag. I have a suitcase full of children's library audio books, and a stack of Henning Mankel paper backs borrowed from my mother-in-law (don't judge me. This is not the time for Improving Literature). Douwe Egberts just sent me six full packs of ground coffee (including decaff, whatever they expect me to do with that.) I have a shopping list, courtesy of Sue, of ideas for meals to prepare in hospital, this wonderful yoga podcast, and bottles of lavender and camomile oil. I have tickets for Lloyd Cole to distract me and Eldest. Virgin Mobile just kindly gave me a bunch of free mobile phone minutes, even though I rang up specifically to ask to pay for some.

In order to increase the mounting pressure on myself, I have interpreted the hospital's letter suggesting Eldest bring 100% cotton nightwear as an instruction to set about making a nightdress. Somehow it feels, when entering the unknown, that by sorting out nightwear and shopping lists and the proximity of crime fiction, I can hammer down some veneer of control over the whole business.

So for now, leave me here with my psychedelic fabric and my self delusion. They will do me just fine while I wait for my order of optimism and inner strength to arrive.

Which it will. Probably it will drop, reassuringly, on the doormat with the rest of this morning's post.

This is nothing you couldn't have learned from Fred and Ginger*

The Internet is a wonderful thing (does it still have a capital 'I'? I don't know. When change happens in any area of society, how can I be sure that anyone will tell me?). For example, when I liked a dress pattern, a few years ago there would have been no Jorth with a blog showing me umpteen different versions. There would have been no Flickr to search. It would have been like throwing my money into a deep, dark cave.

But no! The evidence was solid - Vogue 8511 was infallible. New levels of sophistication would be reached! Grown men would faint at the sight of my elegant box pleats!

(Sorry. I just had to break off there due to a fit of hysterical sobbing. No, no, I'll be fine. I'll just wipe my eyes on this piece of bitterly scrunched-up lining fabric. Oh God. I'd even lined it.)

I'm not going to show you the fabric. I could Google it; I could even go upstairs and photograph the scraps, but the truth is - it's just too painful. My dress was hideous. I've spent a lot of time trying to think of hilariously witty ways to describe my dress, but 'hideous' is the only one that covers it.

That, and 'like a big brown sack'.

I tried everything to save it. I cut the sleeves off. I tried a belt. Whatever I tried, it just looked more and more like a costume I had bought to re-enact something historical. It cried out for accessories: a muddy field, some kind of head-covering, a few wicker baskets full of cabbage.

I cut the top off and made it into a skirt. I cut the hem off to make it into a shorter skirt. Apart from cutting it into tiny tiny bits and using it to mulch the flowerbeds, there was nothing I could cut off which would make it any better.

I flew into a rage, which lasted all the way to the fabric shop where I saw this pattern. I mean, look at the state of it. Who would buy that without a single piece of research? That jacket! What is this, 1985?

  

I'd show them. I'd show these people with their patterns, ruining women's lives like that.  I set about it in a complete frenzy, first checking the pattern for bits that I could miss out. Stay-stitching? Pah! Pressing the darts flat as I went along? Yeah, right. This wasn't sewing. This was running away from failure. I even tried it on with all the pins still in the sides and nearly had to take myself to Accident and Emergency.

And so, with a very muted fanfare which celebrates success whilst containing subtle echoes of past tragedies of which we cannot easily speak, I give you New Look 6013, in Liberty cord.

Let's get this out in the open right now: the facing at the top was too big and it stuck out and threatened to hit me in the ears. I sewed dirty great chunks out of it on completion and chopped the rest off with my scissors. I have shown it to enough people now to be assured that no-one will ever notice, and I am happy enough. We carry little imperfections on our shoulders all our lives; why should dress-making be any different?

*Fred and Ginger. Of course.

Where we go out in the fresh air a lot (which is quite an event in itself)

Firstly, this would not be a proper British blog if there were no blurry photographs of fireworks. There are traditions to be upheld (even if I am a couple of days late. Look. I've had a busy weekend, okay?)

If you're still in a bonfire mood, I have TV and radio suggestions. (I am always in a Bonfire mood. Halloween can go and get lost, as far as I'm concerned. I am much more in favour of celebrating half-baked treason, which seems a particularly British thing to go for.)

The Lattes and I very much enjoyed watching Richard Hammond's Exploding the Legend (available in 10-minute instalments on Youtube, starting here), where the old Parliament buildings were recreated, filled with crash test dummies, and blown up in an experiment to see if the plot would actually have worked. The blowing-up bits were interspersed by a kind of docu-drama with lots of fascinating stuff about the plotters.

There's also this radio comedy, available till November 13, where Guy Fawkes eats deep-fried birds for bar snacks and is late to a plotting meeting after being presented with an irresistable opportunity to tip a vicar into a well. In recommending this programme, I must admit that I haven't heard the end, because I always listen to the iPlayer when I'm going to sleep. But it's got Archie from Balamory in it, which must count for something with you people.

And now to the seizing of the day. Eldest woke up on Sunday with a desire to revisit a forest she had been to on a school trip. Usually this kind of request would have been denied, if I'm honest, since Sunday was already full of plans for church and confirmation classes and a wish to sit under a duvet and watch a DVD.

Then we remembered that in less than two weeks, Eldest will have had her surgery. Who knows how long it will be before she can enjoy a forest? Who knows how long it will be before she can even leave the house?

On an ordinary weekend, would we have wasted a beautiful Autumn day? We would. Will we learn a lesson from this? Probably not.

Thanks to the Random Number Generator, the winner of my Kelloggs school breakfast giveaway is DeZeal - thanks to everyone who entered.