Henpecked

A hen. Sans plastic penises.

My weekend looks like this:

• It's my beautiful friend Gemma's hen do in the fair city of Nottingham. I'm travelling down after work tonight for a weekend of cocktails, fancy dresses, high heels, a cabaret show and, most probably, a whole load of novelty plastic penises. If there aren't any plastic penises I might have to ask for my money back. I'm all about the plastic penis.

• A possible trip to Gay Pride in Manchester on Sunday, depending on who's about, whether I've stopped being sick after a night filled will alcohol abuse (hi, I'm British, it's what we do), and whether or not I can get enthused about paying £12 just to walk into the gay village. £12! To walk! On the streets! We always walk on! Tut.

• A glorious Bank Holiday Monday (for glorious read rainy) spent either nursing a sore head or creating more of a sore head. It's too early to say yet. I may devote the entire day to my duvet, some wine and some comedy programmes. Then again, probably not. You can't recreate that intense feeling of happiness if you're on your own.

What lies in store for you, my lovelies?

Sweet charity

Sir Digsby and Ginger implore you

This is where I put my begging hat out...


As lots of you have probably heard I'm going to be spending my time on the Fourth Plinth trying to raise awareness of just how rife prostate cancer is amongst men. With men living longer than ever before, the discovery of the disease is becoming more and more common. My Dad was diagnosed just over two months ago and is now undergoing both chemotherapy and hormone therapy. His Consultant believes that his tumour has been growing for ten or eleven years, a thought that I find terrifying. Prostate cancer is often slow growing and can be symptomless but, in many cases, as in my Dad's, the cancer can spread.

To put it simply, I adore my Dad. He's an incredible man and I just want to feel like I'm doing my bit. Research into prostate cancer is woefully underfunded and, quite frankly, every little helps.

So, I've set up a fundraising page (http://www.justgiving.com/Helen-F/) and me, my Dad and the charity would all be incredibly grateful for anything that anyone can spare. Big, small, enough to buy a small house in the Midlands, enough to buy a lemon muffin from Greggs... all donations more than gratefully received.

"Prostate cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed in men in the UK. Every year in the UK 35,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer. One man dies every hour of prostate cancer in the UK."


Thankyou xx


PS: To those of you who've already donated, you're wonderful. Each and every one of you.

I wish I was a little bit taller

"If you had but one wish, that you had to use on yourself what would it be and why?"

Back here I asked for any questions that people may have about me, etc. A few trickled through (I must be a massive oversharer!) and first up is the one above from LizSara. By the way, if anyone else would like to delve into my psyche and ask me something, just leave a comment on that other post.

If I had one wish that I had to use entirely on myself, it would be this....

To be able to strip away all the bad memories, bad experiences and hurt that I've experienced in years gone by, thus enabling me to still see love and relationships with the same eyes I had when I was 18 and baggage free.

The older you get, and the more relationships you experience, the more baggage you carry with you into the next relationship (and the one after that, and the one after that...). If you've been treated particularly badly trust issues can develop and, unfortunately, get carried into the new relationship, even though your current partner has done nothing to warrant your mistrust. Similarly, if you felt caged or smothered by someone then a fear of being controlled can develop, and again be carried across into the new relationship, even though the new girl or boy has no desire to smother. Miscommunication and a reluctance to disclose your fears and issues early on in a relationship can then lead to yet another broken relationship. More baggage. And so and so on. Repeat ad infinitum.

So, sometimes I think it'd be nice to be able to visit Lacuna and wipe the slate clean, so to speak. To enter each new relationship with the fresh faced, wide eyed innocence that only those who've never had their heart broken possess.

But then again, love and relationships are nothing if not a learning curve. If you don't remember what went wrong, and don't think of ways to put it right for the future, you're doomed to repeat the same mistakes again.

So, scratch that, my wish is for a penthouse apartment in New York.

Getting on with it

Ah, Theme Hospital. Many hours of my youth wasted.

Visiting my Dad in hospital this week has only confirmed in my mind something that I already knew. I am terrified of getting older. Not getting older as in becoming 30, 40 or even 50. But getting really old. Or, even worse, seeing my parents get really old.

I recently watched that Jo Brand/Vicki Pepperdine hospital-set comedy, 'Getting On'. If you didnt, I implore you to seek it out on iPlayer (if it's one of the few programmes the BBC has bothered to make available). I loved it. Really loved it. Poignant, terribly sad but full of gems of observational humour.

HOSPITAL IS JUST LIKE THAT.

There's a little old man on my Dad's ward at the moment. Albert his name is. But he thinks that someone else is Albert and keeps calling out for him all through the night. Oh, and a male nurse cathaterised him yesterday. Albert is under the impression that he needs to give the cathater and colostomy bag back to the male nurse, because he thinks it belongs to him. Cue Albert getting out of bed every twenty minutes and trying to force this bag of wee on the poor male nurse.

Then there was Jean. In her nineties. Jean had been admitted from the local psychiatric hospital. Jean liked to wander. When asked where she was going she'd shout obscenties and scream bloody murder that she wasn't going anywhere. My Dad was convinced that Jean was going to try and get into bed with him in the middle of the night. She didn't.


You have to laugh, don't you?

Seesaw Marjorie Daw

Up, down, up down...

No, not my moods (I'm actually a chipper little lady these days). My Dad. He's not doing too well, the poor old chap. Chemotherapy is kicking his ass. He strolled into this with bravado, nonchalance and a feeling that he'd glide through the treatment with not a problem in sight. And, if I'm honest, I did too. He's always been this big, strong, jovial man, always ready with a joke, a sarcastic comment or a bout of sheer idiocy to put a smile on my face. Always playing the fool. Always there.

And now he's in hospital. Weak, frail and struggling to walk. An infection? A bad reaction to the chemo? They don't know. Endless tests, antibiotics, saline drips. Poking, prodding, injections.

As I drove home from the hospital on Wednesday night, the all too short visiting hours having come to an abrupt end, dark thoughts started to creep in. Thoughts that I don't want to have. Thoughts of what happens if it doesn't work. Thoughts of what life would be like without him.

That is not a life I want to contemplate right now.

So I'm not going to. The dark thoughts can stay right where they belong, buried deep amongst the detritus of my mind. Amongst the long forgotten memories of childhood fears, irrational and naive.

Come on Dad. Sort it out.