It’s been lovely to see that I’ve had a few more visitors to the blog this week, thanks in no small part to a name-check in an oDesk newsletter, which was a welcome surprise.  But I did get one less than welcome comment in my inbox that got me thinking.  You know who you are and where you’re from, so I won’t bother naming you publicly, but let’s just set the record straight: oDesk don’t pay me to write puff pieces for them or to link to them.  Anything I write here is my own opinion that I have reached with the application of some thought - this is perhaps the one place where my pen is not for hire.

However, I can see how it may be frustrating for people if they’ve been on oDesk for a while and have yet to pick up their first job.  I’m only a month into using the site myself, so I’m hardly an expert, but I do seem to be achieving a pretty good strike rate with my candidacies so here - for what it’s worth - is my approach to applying to jobs on oDesk.

• Only apply to jobs in which you can show relevant experience: if you can’t back up your claims with some solid examples, you probably won’t be hired
• For writing, always attach a suitable sample: don’t just stick a link in
• Look at the average hourly rate, and the average hourly rate of any interviewees: this should help guide you to pitching yourself at the right price
• Consider taking on a small, fixed-price, easy job in order to get your first feedback. oDesk occasionally post such things themselves - often listed as card-sorting exercises - and that first feedback rating can make all the difference
• Personalise your applications: make it clear you have read the ad by referencing requirements in your cover letter - according to those who’ve hired me, most people don’t bother to do this, so it’s a quick win
• Proof-read your cover letter before you send it: for writing and editing jobs in particular, good grammar and spelling are important and one of the best ways of demonstrating your standard is to consider your cover letter as an article for publication.  If need be, create your cover letter in MS Word and run a spell check on it before pasting it across to the application page
• Take as many relevant oDesk tests as you can, as this is objective, third-party proof of your claim to be an expert in a given field
• Complete as much of your profile as possible: think of this as your online CV, giving you the chance to show off some of the jobs you’ve done prior to oDesk
• Don’t post your ‘job wanted’ ad in the job openings: I’m constantly amazed at the number of job wanted ads that appear in the job openings mailer each day, often from people who use bad English to claim they have excellent English writting [sic] and gramer [re-sic].  This is not going to get you hired!
• Have some dignity: begging and pleading in your cover letter without providing good reasons for the person to hire you - experience, qualifications, etc - will not get you a job.  Developing your skills and being able to provide samples of your work, on the other hand, will
• Check to see if samples of your work are required in the ad and, if so, in what format.  Don’t bother applying unless you can include them as requested by the buyer
• Always go through the day’s job openings emails early: I’m most successful on those jobs where I’ve applied the same day the ad was posted.  From observation, something that’s been sitting around unfilled for a few days is not going to be filled, as the buyer has probably sourced staff elsewhere

This is not an exhaustive list - I’m quite sure something else will occur to me once my head hits my pillow tonight - but it should hopefully provide a good place to start.  Feedback is always welcome, and it would be lovely to hear that this had helped someone get themselves work

Happy freelancing!

m xxx

It’s been a long old day.  Now, that may partly be down to the hangover I earned at last night’s pancake party.  OK, it may in large part be due to that.  But it’s also down to a very long day staring at my computer screen.

I’ve been busy on a couple of things today.  The first is another oDesk assignment, this time to restructure and rewrite a web site for someone as well as, almost certainly, revising and updating their eBook.  That’s been a fun one, because writing for eBooks is like travelling to another planet if you’re used to more traditional principles of writing, and the web sites that promote them are equally alien to someone who’s been more used, in the past, to sorting out gorgeous sites for big blue-chips and small arts facilities.

My inner red pen has had to be quite seriously suppressed throughout this process.  All I’ve allowed it to do so far is pick up spelling and grammar errors and factual inaccuracies.  And it’ll have to make do with that for the time being, because I am preparing to write some of the most cringe-worthy copy I will ever have seen.  

And yet, joking and snobbishness aside, this is copy that apparently works and sells an awful lot of eBooks.  The thought is frankly terrifying to anyone who has ever striven to write good, readable copy that is easy on the eye and communicates clearly, effectively and with a minimum of fuss… and absolutely no badgering, hectoring or gratuitous repetition of spurious ‘facts’ to get the message across.  And I’m quite concerned that there are people out there who will fall for that kind of copy.

But while it’s easy for me to look down my nose at this kind of thing, I took the job on because I was curious and this gave me a chance to have a look at this world from the inside out.  My finely-honed literary mind has been bent not on great novels but on the reasons behind the use of language, the repetition, the presentation of arguments and - believe it or not - HTML elements to create a text that not only sells but gains high page ranks in Google.  Notwithstanding the fact that the site is written in appalling non-native English at the moment, there is a clear logic behind the content and structure and it’s been as much fun analysing that as I used to have in uni days analysing Balzac: it’s trashy, but there’s a native wit you’ve got to admire.

The other project I’ve been working on is rather closer to home.  We’re about to launch a new web site for the Rag Factory, so I’ve been grinding away at the copy for that and loading it into the new CMS.  I will admit to being utterly smitten with the CMS, which is Concrete5.  It really is one of the best examples of what good programming can achieve in terms of user-friendliness and the ability to simplify tasks that lesser content management systems make hideously complex.

So while it’s been exhausting, it has probably, overall, been a good day, so I’m going to quit while I’m ahead and say goodnight.

OK, I admit it.  An old friend googled me the other day - no idea why, I think he knows where all the bodies are buried - and happened across the site.  I’m the first to admit that my site is a work in progress, but I admit he has a point.  He remarked that it was a remarkably empty site for a writer.

I set this site up for a few reasons.  One was that I wanted to have a play with Wordpress, so this is something of a sandbox activity for me while I get used to it, knowing that it’s not going to be getting huge traffic while I work out what I do and don’t want to do with it.

Another reason was that I have friends and family all over the world and this will hopefully give them a chance to see what I’m up to if they wish, whether or not they’re on Facebook.  It also means that people I used to know at school can take an educated decision on whether I sound like the kind of person they want to know now, before they get in touch with me on FB.  There’s nothing worse than having someone be all enthusiastic at finding you, only to have the distinct impression that the post-reunion response is ‘why in hell did I think that would be a good plan?’  What can I say - sometimes there’s a reason people don’t keep in touch.

And the other reason for putting together the site was because I’ve been getting back into the freelancing.  Some of it has been via oDesk, most other things have been with long-standing clients who now know I’m back in circulation.  But in general I wanted to be able to post samples of my writing for existing and potential clients to see.

Of all these things, all I have currently succeeded in doing is posting occasional blog entries.  Which is pretty shabby for a writer, I know.  And I apologise.  But please, be happy for me: the reason I’m not getting more articles and other stuff up here is because I’ve got lots of work on

I’m going to remove some bits of my site that are currently content-free zones to make life more simple for anyone visiting, but I promise to put some work into the other parts of my site behind the scenes, ready to unveil them in the next couple of months.

m xxx

Well, today’s schedule was supposed to involve collecting S’s passport from the Passport Office, making sure all the suitable laundry was done and start packing to go on holiday on Tuesday morning.  As you’ve probably gathered, this is not happening, or why would I mention it?

Sadly, it looks like we will now not be going on holiday for the 10 days we had planned.  It would have been our first holiday in four years - the last was our honeymoon in Budapest - and I was genuinely looking forward to it.  So, I think, was S, but we’ve decided this is really not the best time.  Not only is the economic climate having an effect on the RF, there’s still physical work required on the place to give it a fighting chance of making it through , and that won’t happen without S being here.  Likewise, getting someone else to babysit the place while we’re away would cost a fortune if we wanted someone who could be trusted to be there for all the necessary hours, and that’s money we really need to spend on other things.  And while I may be sad about this, it’s definitely the right decision for us to have taken.

Of course, it begs the wider question of how we ever get to take a holiday, moving forward.  The same issue of getting cover will still apply unless we’re prepared to block a week out of the diary in advance and simply close the place down for the duration.  This more or less means committing to a week in August, however, since that’s the quietest time of the year: all the Edinburgh shows will have finished rehearsal and we could probably take a week at the beginning of the month, before the September productions start rehearsing.  So maybe that’s the answer.

In the meantime, it feels a bit rough to have made all this effort to get passports sorted for everyone, only to not need to use them.  I’m considering taking H on a day-trip to France, since the trip will pay for itself if I buy some cigarettes for S while I’m out there, and it gives me a chance to get back to a country I love and haven’t visited in close on 8 years.  I can also buy books and DVDs for H to help him learn the language, find a decent boulangerie and eat my last ever French gluten, etc.

Ho hum.  Having come back to this some time later, what really strikes me is that I am not desperately upset about missing out on a holiday, nor have I any desire to throw a fit of the sulks.  Which means this is clearly the right decision, however sad.  I shall instead make preparations for a lovely Valentine’s meal for S, H and I - I’m sickening for dim sum, so it may be time we did that again.  Holidaying at home may not be such a bad idea after all

Incidentally, I tried calling Ryanair to cancel our flights.  After all, even if we can’t use them and know we won’t get a refund, that doesn’t mean nobody else has a use for our seats.  And I’m one of those who prefers to be courteous and notify people if I’m unable to be where I’m expected for some reason.  Well, not according to Ryanair.  They told me they had a ‘no-cancellation’ policy and that there was no need for me to have contacted them.  So there’s still time for us to change our minds if we wish, or to change the names on the tickets if someone else wants to use them, so by all means get in touch if you fancy flying to Perpignan from Stansted on 17 Feb and returning on 28 Feb.  There’s doutbless a fee - isn’t there always? - but I have three tickets gathering electronic dust.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking it was time to get started working again.  Lots of potential upsides, it goes without saying, but since I don’t really want to put H into nursery full-time and I look like a bag of spanners on the best of days, a traditional job that needs me to go into an office somewhere is probably not going to be the best option.

On the other hand, I don’t really want to be doing Avon sales, or Innovations catalogue sales or similar because that still involves going out and the psoriasis is making me far too self-conscious for anything but handing over money at the average checkout.  And it’s been so long since I moved in some of my previous circles that I really don’t have current contacts.  All the recent stuff I’m allowed to talk about (no NDA, no Official Secrets) has been for S and his various ventures, so hardly an objective reference, even if the work I did was good.  Ah, what to do?

The only thing I’d been doing on even a semi-regular basis was writing articles on Helium.com.  It’s a great site and has had the virtue of giving me the courage to get off my backside and write again.  Some articles I’ve written because there was a gap in their database I could fill, others have been in their weekly writing competitions, where I’ve picked up the odd prize.  Pretty much all of them have earned me some click-through revenue in Helium’s revenue-sharing model, and it’s nice to be able to withdraw those funds to Paypal from time to time.

The kicker is that I only wrote a couple of the articles with SEO in mind, just to see if I could still do it.  Which is fine, since the two articles are ranked 1st and 2nd respectively for their keywords.  It’s no coincidence, therefore, that my article revenue on those pages is good.  So I set to thinking.  I can either optimise my other articles on Helium, submit the changes, and get only a share of the increased revenue, or I can rewrite them and post them on here.  Or I can rewrite them and post them to another site that gives me Adsense boxes on my articles with my own Publisher ID taking the revenue.

And then I had another thought, which is that all the Adsense and Helium revenues take a while to start flowing, and would require a major volume of articles to make a living from.  Was it time to stick my head above the parapet and see if someone would simply pay me to write things for them?  Like they used to in the good old days?

This has a lot of merits in theory: work as much as I want, when I want, with visibility over how much I’ll get paid and when.  But it also brought me back to my previous thoughts about the lack of a current network.  Ahem.  Well, thank God for the internet!  I’ve been so lacking in confidence it had never occurred to me that someone might be prepared to hire me without a personal recommendation for this kind of stuff, even though I objectively know that this happens every day to other people.  Gulp.

And so, with a little scouting about, I decided to experiment on just the one site, to see what kind of response I might get.  The site I chose was oDesk, largely because it had a few jobs listed I thought I might be able to do.

For those not familiar with oDesk, it’s a neat little site that puts providers and buyers in touch with each other and allows them to give mutual feedback to help future clients/providers make an educated decision about who they want to use.  Since each assignment also adds to your online CV, you gradually build up a body of work that also helps people see what you’ve been capable of before, and allows you, I suspect, to push your hourly rate up a bit.

The upside is that anyone can join in, and there are tests you can take to make up for a lack of oDesk experience.  The downside is that established buyers often won’t look at newbies for jobs, and the openness of the system - membership is free - means that there are many people offering their services for all kinds of jobs for which they aren’t qualified, so you have to try that much harder to get yourself noticed.  Also, competition from people in India and the Philippines lowers the pay rate and perceived value of some activities, so you don’t necessarily get as much as your experience might normally be worth.

However, the economy is in recession, the work is convenient, and you can pick and choose what you apply for, so the balance seems pretty good.

In the week since I joined oDesk, I’ve applied for some 20 jobs, and I am overwhelmed by the response.  Of the jobs I’ve applied for, 25% have taken me as far as shortlist stage: one buyer has said they want to use me in the future on a different project, 2 have given me jobs and 2 have taken me to shortlist and will be letting me know in the next couple of days whether I’ve got their gig.  And one other will be interviewing me at the end of February for an ongoing part-time job.

To say I’m gobsmacked would be something of an understatement.  I’ve ‘met’ some great people already, whether it’s Dip, who shares my love of research, Tom, who shares my sarcastic sense of humour or Emma, who not only has a similar sense of humour, but also some of the same professional experiences.  It’s been hugely encouraging, and I’m gradually gaining in confidence.

So hello world.  You’re no longer talking to a full-time mum, you’re talking to someone who makes their living as a writer again.  How good did it feel to write that?!!!

It seems that, no matter how depressed I get, there are still some things that manage to break through and cheer me up.  I’ve been having a bleak few weeks, with the hideous feeling of falling slowly off something high and slippery, dropping a little further as each nail breaks in turn.

So while everyone else in the UK appears to have spent the last 48 hours bitching about the government in general and Boris Johnson in particular not getting their act together to ensure there is no more than a cosmetic impact on life, I’ve been finding something to make me smile.  If it makes me shallow, so be it, but I can’t see a harmless British snowfall without thinking about other times.  Usually better times, when I was too young to have a clue what I wsa letting myself in for.

I spent yesterday afternoon watching the snow fall on the Cotswolds, warming my feet by an imitation log fire I could turn up or down with a simple remote control.  I also found many reasons for not letting my toddler out to play in it while it was still falling.

All the while I was anticipating this morning, when the sky was set to clear and the temperature warm slightly once the wind had died down.  Predictably, H had lost interest in the snow before breakfast, preferring to return to his toy cars, so it took close on an hour to persuade him to get suitably dressed - he might have been happy to go out in his PJ’s and just the one shoe, but being the mean Mummy I am, I bundled him into fleeces and lined trousers and off we went.

It was probably the high spot of my week.  For just half an hour, our entire focus was on the construction of a snowman.  It seems there are some skills you never really forget, and no matter that it looks like a bleached out version of Fungus the Bogeyman, we were all proud of the effort.

So I’m glad it snowed and gave me a good memory for the future.  But God help Boris et al if my train to London gets cancelled tomorrow morning!

Pity the Israelis can’t get into the seasonal spirit.  I know they don’t celebrate Christmas, but at the very least they could try for some goodwill over the New Year.  I could try emailing the Israeli embassy in London, just as I did when they bombed the hell out of Lebanon, but since I didn’t even receive an acknowledgement of that communication, I suspect any further missives are doomed to be consigned to the recycle bin without being read.  I’m doubtless on some watch-list of Jihadist sympathisers by now, but I don’t think I’m alone in being a Christian and thinking that taking out your short man syndrome on innocent civilians is unacceptable.

Whether they like it or not, Palestine exists.  It’s not a boil to be lanced and recovered from, it’s a physical reality with a population and a democratically elected government, no matter what one may personally think of Hamas.  While the Israeli ambassador to London has at least referred to a Palestinian state in one radio interview, which is almost recognition of Palestine’s right to exist, he’s still a far cry from advocating a peaceful resolution to the problem.

Of course, the Jews have suffered terribly at the hands of others, been persecuted throughout history and borne the brunt of a fairly serious attempt at genocide courtesy of Hitler and Co, but is this any excuse to behave so appallingly towards their neighbours?  None of this treatment excuses their current behaviour.  I have some Jewish friends who refuse to engage on the subject and start spouting the Holocaust the minute I criticise Israel’s acts.  Get over it, already.  You’ve got your own country, now try showing some decency and stop killing babies and children.

If it weren’t such political dynamite Stateside, the quickest way to a resolution would be for the US to pull their financing out of the region until Israel chooses to behave like a mature and responsible nation state rather than a possessive toddler who won’t share his toys.  But we all know that’s not going to happen, so what is the solution?

If I had an answer to that one, I’d be a Nobel prize winner and not the humble blogger you see here.  But not having the solution doesn’t mean I can’t express my disgust at Israel’s behaviour.  Israel, you suck.  See what you’ve done?  Now I’m sinking to your level.

To the non-warmongering, decent humans of this world, happy New Year.

I ask this question as I’m supposed to be going to one tonight.  I’ve never been to this kind of reunion in my life, for all kinds of good reasons, chief among them being that I went to so many schools that I was never really at any of them long enough for anyone to remember me much all these years down the line.  Or so I thought.

In the case of the reunion I’m going to tonight, it’s to meet people from a school I was at for all of two years between the ages of 11 and 13.  I was on the fringes most of the time and, in retrospect, I would probably say I only had one real friend while I was there, and that’s the person who’s organising the reunion.  As for the rest of them, they treated me like I didn’t exist most of the time, and if they ever did notice me, it was generally followed by name-calling and, in some cases, bullying.  So what the hell am I doing even thinking about going along tonight?

I really don’t have an answer to that question.  Partly, it’s to see Jo again, as we were good friends once and it would be nice to see how she’s doing.  Maybe there’s also a part of me that wants to exorcise the whole experience, that maybe by being accepted as an adult I’ll be less hung up about the two years of misery I endured as a child.  I suspect that part may be doomed to failure, however, since I’m fat, frumpy and most likely have little or nothing in common with any of them.

Of course, not everyone in this world was so unhappy at school.  I can’t help wondering why other people go to school reunions.  Is it to share happy memories?  Is it to prove to everyone how well you’ve done in spite/in justification of people’s expectations?  Does the ugly duckling go back to prove to everyone he/she was a swan all along?  Does the class clown go along to prove that constant detention is the pre-requisite for a career in the City?  Might explain a few things…

What of the bullies?  I do occasionally wonder what became of them.  One I know from another school is now highly successful in her career with a satellite TV provider.  What of the ones from this school?  Perhaps tonight I’ll find out.

The one thing I can be reasonably sure of is that I won’t be staying late.  There’s a shared history among the others that goes well beyond the two years I was there, and I think I’ll be feeling left out past about 7pm.

Time to stop procrastinating.  There’s war paint to be applied and loins to be girded if I’m to face this lot tonight.  Who knows? Maybe I’ll even find an answer to the question.

My poor little moggy, Dyson, finally lost his ninth life at 2am.  After a week of veterinary appointments, blood tests and injections, he died mercifully quickly.  Mercifully, because he was very distressed when he went, and he clearly knew he was going.

I’m heartbroken.  I know there are those who will think that you can’t get that attached to a four-legged animal, or who can’t understand that one could be that fond of a cat, as opposed to a dog, as cats are always viewed as so stand-offish.  I can only say that Dyson was probably the friendliest cat you could hope to meet, and that there are thousands of actors in London who can vouch for that, as he provided cuddles and stress relief as they waited for their auditions, learned lines and rehearsed.  He even, in some cases, got used for blocking scenes when actors were delayed or absent.  He didn’t mind, he just loved the attention.

He was a shadow of his former self when he died.  It turned out that the problem was not kidney disease as I had previously feared, but a blood parasite that was causing major anaemia.  We had lots of blood tests that showed kidney and liver function were all good, that he wasn’t diabetic, and that he didn’t have FELV or FIV, which were the other candidates.  It all came down to a parasite, mycoplasma, and the vets were hopeful that, despite him being very weak, we would be able to treat him successfully.

I duly learned how to inject his antibiotics, since his vets knew even they couldn’t get pills down him.  And we went on Friday for a steroid injection that was supposed to help him.  The vet was enouraged that he was more alert, more mobile, and had put on 60g.  He showed all the signs of responding to treatment, so much so that we were told to take him back to the vets the next day for a second steroid jab, and to keep on giving the antibiotics.

Yesterday afternoon, I took him for his second steroid jab, but with the firm intention of refusing it.  Dyson’s breathing was laboured, he was listless and didn’t even want to go and sunbathe in his favourite flower pot when I carried him there.  I didn’t need to refuse.  On examining him, the vet decided that he was too weak t cope with a second steroid jab, told me to keep on with the antibiotics and to take him in on Monday ton check on his progress and give him another steroid jab if he was looking better.

So I took Dyson back home, went to the shop to get him some special cat food, fed him and jabbed him and cuddled him.  He settled on the mat by his bowls and seemed to sleep, which I figured could only help him.  Around 1.45am I heard him start making strange throaty sounds and went to check on him.  While S and I both checked him for obstructions in his throat, even going so far as to work out how to do a kitty heimlich manoeuvre, nothing we could do helped.  We both hit the phones looking for out of hours veterinary services, and it was while I was talking to one - phone in one hand, other hand trying in vain to comfort Dyson - that he lurched off - as if trying to escape from himself, the wheezing now more recognisably a gurgle - hid beneath the kitchen cabinets and died.  Even before I could get under there to investigate, I knew he was dead.  The silence gave it away.

I’ve let the vets know he won’t be making his appointment on Monday.  But I’ll pack up his medication, syringes and needles and take them back tomorrow.  I’ve asked them to give them to an animal hospital so they can do someone else’s pet some good.

While objectively I know Dyson was very weak, and there was always a chance he wouldn’t survive, I can’t help but feel that it was the steroid injection that carried him off.  But I’m no vet, so what do I know?  Just that, if you look at the evidence, he was getting better until that jab, after which he went downhill fast.  I even think the vet who saw him yesterday afternoon suspected this might happen, as she told me not to hesitate to call today if his condition worsened.

Does this help me?  Probably not.  It doesn’t give me what I would want the most, which is to have my darling cat purring in my arms again.  Maybe the best I can hope for is that the vet in question learns from the experience and somebody else’s pet survives as a result.

In the meantime, I have a cat to bury.  We have a small plot in mind at Dad’s, a grassy spot overlooking the fish pond, where he can rest next to his old friend, Octavia.  I’m as lost for words to say at the grave site now as I was when we buried her.  In the end, there is very little to be said.

Goodbye Dyson.  No cat could have been more loved, or as sorely missed.

It’s been a bit of an odd day today.  My depression hits me in strange ways.  While there are clearly some days where events occur that might well provoke my depression and bring me down, there are others where I feel utterly hopeless even though there is nothing concrete to explain it.  Yes, this may well strike some people as the very definition of depression, but when you’ve been living with the illness as long as I have, you get used to there being degrees.  To reach this level of despair without a single aggravating incident is rare for me, and thus all the more upsetting.

I’ve reached the point where I can’t even motivate myself to play a computer game, watch TV or read a book.  As S said when I told him this, it must be bad.  Which leaves the question of what I do.  There’s no point even trying to sleep.  I can’t face chocolate.  And since I don’t drink, or very little, I don’t even have alcohol as an outlet for all of this, not that it would solve much if I did.

To cap it all, I wandered out into the roof garden to get a little fresh air.  Dyson, our cat, has spent the last few days sleeping in a flower pot he shares with my favourite dahlia, which has a bloom like a miniature sunset.  My big bruiser of a tom cat is a shadow of the moggy he once was, slender and light, and curling into a smaller ball than I ever thought possible.

I’ve known for many years that he’ll not have the life expectancy of most cats, as he has cardiomyopathy and will probably keel over with a heart attack at some point.  Yes, cardiomyopathy can be treated in cats, to an extent, but last time I asked the vet it was still only treatable if the cat consented to taking a pill every day, and Dyson won’t.  There was one vet who told me I was being a wimp for not wanting to feed him pills and proceeded to demonstrate how to go about it.  After Dyson had drawn blood and spat the pill across the floor, she decided on balance that I might have a point with my quality of life arguments, and we agreed he should enjoy life to the full and then pop his clogs when his time came.

The irony of all this is that it probably won’t be a heart attack that carries him off after all.  He’s been drinking lots more than usual, and after he had an accident from being shut in one of the rooms here overnight (he very tidily used a Tesco Bag for Life) it seems pretty clear we should expect kidney disease to get him instead, as it did Octavia.  Of course, by the time you spot symptoms in a cat, it’s too late to treat… and then we’re back to the idea of trying to give him a pill a day, which we know won’t work anyway.  Well, won’t happen is probably more to the point.

I will miss my snaggle-toothed moggy when he goes, and I won’t be the only one.  Harvey is probably too young to understand, but will definitely notice his absence, and Dyson has become such a feature of the Rag Factory, comforting nervous actors awaiting audition or cosying up to people during rehearsals, that I suspect he will be very much missed.  All I can hope is that he goes quickly and as painlessly as possible.  In the meantime, he’ll get more than his usual share of tuna suppers and maybe an occasional fresh salmon steak.

Many more days like today, however, and I may well beat Dyson to it.  Some part of me envies him his short life expectancy, all the while knowing that, if it can be called lucky, that is what I have been to date with my suicide attempts.  There is something that has persistently anchored me to this life, even when I’ve tried to throw it away.  Part of it is love for S and Harvey and my family.  Part of it is a desire not to disappoint them.  Part of it the occasional thought that most people seem to think life is worth living and surely there must be some way for me to feel the same thing as everyone else.  There are so many parts to it, but there will come a day when what I have done cannot be undone.  Parvalex will not help, it will be too late for activated charcoal and I’ll say my final goodbyes to those I love, assuming they’re still talking to me by this point.