Had it up to Here

Tonight Emily, Gareth and two of their friends went out for a meal to celebrate Emily's eighteenth birthday. The two friends were away on her actual birthday so couldn't come with us for the meal then.

Stephen and I were supposed to be going too but in the end Stephen went - at my suggestion - and I didn't because I was just too tired and too unsociable and too fed up. Fed up with the state of the house, mostly, and fed up with everything else, especially the relentlessness of the ongoing roller-coaster of the Communist's illness.

Visiting the Communist in hospital takes at least two, frequently three hours out of the day. I have a full-time job with the actors' agency and do medical roleplay as well. I didn't go to visit today and I feel bad about it, which helps nobody, but in general I do go every day.

I am gradually sorting my way through the ancestral junk which is piled in the dining-room, and which came out of the caravan. Plenty of it's not even mine - it belongs to my parents, who are, of course, not currently in a fit state to sort it. I did manage to return my brother's two childhood teddy bears to him this week when he was over from Amsterdam. The continuing heaps of junk in the dining room infuriate me, as do the casual comments from visitors which imply that I just don't think clearing it is important. "I see the junk's still there, ho ho."

My mother comes over and sees me sorting stuff or cleaning stuff and always, ALWAYS, says something along the lines of "Oh, stop for a bit and have a rest," because she thinks I do too much, and she's right, but I find this "stop for a bit and have a rest" idea, without any further suggestions as to how the work will get done, infuriating rather than helpful and have to try not to show this.

Then, finally, as happened tonight, I sit down to watch the one programme I really want to watch, and I lock the door, and everyone else is out, so I am totally freaked out when the lounge door opens very, very slowly. It is my mother, who has come over, found the door locked, gone back and got her key and come back again to see if I am all right.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm just watching this programme."

"What is it?"

"Look, could I just watch it and tell you later?"

"Well I just came to see if you wanted any ironing doing."

How can you shout GO AWAY at an eighty-three-year-old who's offering to do your ironing?

"Well, not at the moment, thank you, because I'm just watching this programme."

"I'll just get some off the pile, shall I?"

- - But I can't just let her do that, because it seems rude, so I go to find her some, and then I feel terrible for feeling cross, and then I've lost track of the programme anyway, so I go back to clearing and sorting.

And then Stephen comes home, and at about midnight, just as I'm starting to clean the bathroom, Emily and Gareth and David and Luke all land back here, because David and Luke are staying here tonight.

So I finish cleaning the bathroom, and start writing this, thinking that when I miss part of my daughter's eighteenth birthday celebrations and start cleaning the bathroom at midnight, something has gone wrong with my priorities somewhere. But at the moment, there doesn't seem to be a way of doing things differently.