..dear reader..

We would really try to find some words or images that would go some way to explaining, just to ourselves how it felt being around Margo, if she called, or if we thought about her but it was so difficult. It wasn't good and we didn't think it was all her fault but the lostness itself made it impossible to think or articulate anything. It was like constantly being drugged even when I wasn't. Now that it will be five years this December since she died we are starting to see and feel more clearly.  Any sense of self we fought for based on being someone who lost time, or has her biological daughter in a family that had serious issues as many do but nothing more conspiratorial anything we get from anything we can't keep a hold of around her. Any one else and we have a sense of defiance, hypervigilance ,fury, disgust but also often a sense of having an advantage it always disappeared around Margo. We were always filled instead with a sense of being completely defeated around h

Hoped that the all the virus procedures in place at the school might mean We could avoid the September illness. No such luck. Within days of getting the 'please make an appointment for a flu jab' text Dude wakes up ill enough to not refuse Calpol. Like every other year and every other fucking September virus it's a doozy. Easily covered all the Corona 19 symptoms so we added attempting to get tests and getting stressed out with Covid NHS phone numbers to the miseries. Got two call backs eventually one said it probably wasn't the new novel nasty as we were so congested, sent some antibiotics to pharmacy we couldn't get to and don't want to take and said we should keep trying for the tests. The other didn't think much of the 'probably not Covid' advice and said the tests weren't that accurate anyway so keep isolating.  Someone at the council got tests sent to us after a week of it and we eventually won through the fevered premenstrual brain to corr