Highs and lows of a long weekend Thursday

This week: chaos at work, lack of focus, mild panic, general frustration. Next week: a week of meetings in far flung corners of the country -- Premier Lodges with polyester sheets, curries on strange high streets with colleagues with complex dietary requirements, endless hours on Virgin Trains eating peanuts to stay alive and fighting old ladies for a seat.

So I was all set for an evening of indulgence. It started well with the Great Supermarket Guessing Game: cast your eye down the conveyor belt and have a competition (just with yourself if necessary but ideally with a companion) to guess what it will come to.

If I say so myself, I am *very* good at this. I don't count on the way round, I don't look back at the list (which anyway has been wildly deviated from). I just have a gut feeling.

Tonight's shop was a big one as we are self catering this weekend and feeding anywhere from six to twelve, depending. We went for cheap alcohol, but some premium items crept in there -- Roquefort (me), sunblush tomatoes (me again), a nice bottle of Riesling (M), sheep's milk yoghurt (bugger, me again). I scanned with my magic eye and said "A hundred and twenty".

"No... "said M. "A hundred and ten." It's always easier to go second, you just have to guess higher or lower. I stuck where I was and the tension mounted. It came to £122.54. How close was that for a guess on 62 items!

Drove home and had another competition with the £3.99 wine I chose and the £5.99 wine M chose. His definitely had the nicer bottle but mine won on both kitsch value (it was Black Tower Dry Riesling) and taste - it did taste cheap but it was clean and dry. I was impressed.

But then we watched The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off on Channel 4. There's nothing as sobering as watching someone's film of themself dying after thirty six years of pain.

It was brave television in a way, but it doesn't leave you with much of a place to put yourself. You need to know that there are mothers out there who would have aborted their children if they'd known what sort of life they'd have (and if there'd been foetal tests for the condition in 1966, which there weren't but there are now), and you need to hear those people and how they feel about their short, difficult lives, how they are like everyone else and how they are just not.

Next week it's about Thalidomide. There's a guy in the pub with tiny arms. He used to work where I used to work -- maybe he still does. I always say hello but I've never asked about his arms. There's a guy at work with no legs. I never asked about those either but someone told me he fell down the gap at a train station.

You can't take much for granted in this life can you? I think maybe I should have another wee drink before I go to bed.

joella