My imagination has an incurable habit of running away with itself; not merely skipping a few paces in front of the truth, but darting off like Usain Bolt on rollerskates, having glued the soles of truth's trainers to the starting blocks while it takes off like Superman, looping the earth at the speed of light. (I believe that sentence is what's known as a case in point.) When my mate Suze recently revealed that she's taking me to see Elbow as a something-to-look-forward-to-while-I-recuperate treat, I didn't simply imagine the pair of us swooning along to Powder Blue from our seats in the circle, but spotting a broken-down Guy Garvey on the way to the venue, offering him a lift, hanging out backstage, joining in with the pre-gig vocal warm-up, being invited on stage to duet with him on Starlings, and getting snapped up by a major label for a million-pound recording contract. Because that kind of stuff happens all. the. time.
It works both ways, mind. Earlier this week, I also convinced myself that what is in fact a trapped nerve in my leg was instead DVT, and that I would gradually lose the feeling in my calf until it simply dropped off, leaving me with the embarrassment of hunting down a prosthetics manufacturer who could create a specially made limb to match the alarmingly wide circumference of my right thigh. I was even imagining the kind of outfits I might have to rule out once my new leg had been fitted, picturing the sort of minimum-stare-factor places we might go on holiday and wondering whether I'd still be able to paint my prosthetic toenails.
'I can't lose my leg,' I insisted to a bewilderingly composed P. 'I need this leg.'
'Your leg will be fine,' he reassured. 'Trust me; it'll be around for as long as you are.'
'Hmph. Well if anyone even dares mention the words Heather Mills,' I told myself as I fell asleep, 'I'll have their leg off, too.'
Since the film news, though, I worry that my fantasist's imagination has got even more ludicrous (if such a thing is even possible). So when, on Thursday of last week, I received a clear histology report from Smiley Surgeon following my recent surgery only to have my plans for celebration brought undeservedly to a halt by a hurried ambulance-dash to the emergency room later that day, my mind wasn't so much concentrating on the crisis at hand, but dramatically acting out an ad-libbed, live-action thriller.
Allow me a moment to recap on that peach of a good-news-flash I blithely dropped into that last paragraph. Because, yes, you did read it right… I have received a clear histology report. A shiny, clear, no-sign-of-cancer-in-the-stuff-we-scooped-out-of-you histology report. Fuck it, I'm saying it again: My. Histology. Report. Was. Clear. Better even than 'clear' actually, given that the three-page document ended with the delightfully poetic sentence: 'Diagnosis: no evidence of malignancy' – five words so beautiful that they ought to be offered up for an Elton John ballad. So unless there are any other rogue cancer cells twatting about inside of me (insert can't-rule-it-out caveat here), then this wonderful revelation is as close as I'm ever going to get to the mythical 'all clear' (which is even more a work of fantasy than the contents of my brain). And that, I'm sure you'll agree, is the World's Best Excuse To Celebrate.
But of course it doesn't work like that. Because, as we all know, at the end of any great mediocre thriller comes that most predictable of clichés: just when you think the bad guy is defeated, up he comes for one last parting shot. (Hence, always be sure to leave a gun/knife/grenade just within his reach, okay?) So yes, my three-page document served as the script that proved I'd done my worst with The Bullshit, drowning it, strangling it and stabbing it until it seemingly left no trace. But The Bullshit had other plans and, within hours of my appointment with Smiley Surgeon, it went all Fatal Attraction on me, smirking at me from my steamy bathroom mirror as it rained a shower on my parade and I watched helpless from a crumpled heap on the floor. If, indeed, the villain in Fatal Attraction were not Glenn Close, but Michael Douglas's crippling constipation, and the final scene had been played out with his spouse and best mate cheering him on from the other side of the bathroom door. Because that, I'm mortified to admit, is the plot of my movie.
Let it be said: nine days is not a normal amount of time to go without a shit. Of course, when I say 'not normal' I mean 'leaves you in the kind of excruciating pain that makes you pass out on the loo and isn't even slightly soothed by morphine'. I'll spare you the unedited gory details (because, frankly, not even Quentin Tarantino would touch this stuff) but suffice to say that The Bullshit became so angry at my histology victory that it staged a final comeback by planting an infection in my bowel that combined with co-corkamol's effects to ensure that the only thing exiting my body were the screams ringing around a south London hospital. Endless painkillers, several suppositories, one x-ray, two enemas and a number of internal examinations later and I'm still not sufficiently post-trauma enough to give you any more detail than this paragraph. (Let's just say that you can take your childbirth stories and shove them up your non-dilated arse.)
My point, however, is not the pain exacted by a poo-pellet barely worthy of a pet bunny (not even a boiled bunny), nor my troubling reliance on shit gags (shit shit gags at that), but rather the unpredictable, unscripted, rollercoaster-like drama of every single Bullshit moment. See, everyone gives it the warlike discourse when it comes to cancer – 'battling a disease', 'winning a war', 'bravely fighting' – but, frankly, I think they're missing a trick. Because for me, The Bullshit has always felt far more like a surreal, hectic, mind-bending trip of a thriller than a trudging wartime epic. All that said, there is no spectacular blood-down-the-bathroom-tiles final scene – simply because there is no 'final scene' to speak of. I've said it before and I'll say it over and over and over and over and over again: cancer does not tie up neatly with a clear histology report; it's a story that plays out forever in check-ups and scans and pills and fears and anxieties, like a one-time Grease character endlessly pimping the next DVD re-issue or remastered soundtrack or TV spin-off.
'That's amazing! It's over! It's done!' said, hell, everyone upon hearing of my histology result. (And rightly bloody so.) 'What are you going to do to celebrate? You must be so delighted!' And yeah, of course we were – are – delighted. Shit, 'delighted' doesn't even nearly cut it. How could we not be? It's the best news we've ever heard, and probably will ever hear. But contrary to my theatrical, movie-thriller comparisons, getting a clear report isn't akin to shooting the villain in the heart and immediately walking triumphantly into a congratulatory press conference; it's pulling the trigger, taking a quietly satisfied stroll back to your car (which, according to Movie Cliches #387, will be unlocked), then driving home for a brew. And, despite my twisted mind's reliance on scripting even the most mundane of events into far-fetched spectacle, not even I need to conjure up an ending happier than that.
Roll credits.
How to look good unconscious.
Despite assuming that I've thought about everything it's possible to think about before a spell in hospital (tooling up with a load of new iPad apps, giving P a list of mates to text once I'm out of surgery, training myself not to be too sweary when I come around from the anaesthetic), the one thing I always forget about is the necessity to wear paper pants.
'Oh bollocks, not these again,' I griped upon finding them perched atop the hospital gown on my bed. 'What is it about this standard-issue surgery-wear that insists on making you look like a complete twat?' See, I'm very conscious of what I look like mid-surgery. I know that's a ridiculous thing to be concerned about, but I'm sure you'll have had similar worries yourself in the past, no? Asking your partner what you look like while you're sleeping… Wanting to know what you might have said mid-hypnosis... Pleading with your mates to confirm that nobody could see your knickers when you fell arse over tit in the gutter after the office Christmas party…
And yes, I'm sure that fretting about whether or not I dribble in my sleep is just a way of spinning my worries about something much more significant into a more manageable format but that, I'm afraid, is just the way I tend to deal with things pre-surgery. Which is precisely why I spent the day before my operation having a hair cut, highlights, leg wax, manicure and pedicure. Some folk go all out for a night on the town; I get dolled up for a stay on Ward Three. S'just how I roll.
'So are you going somewhere exciting tonight?' asked the girl who washed my hair.
'Nope, just having an early night.'
'Oh. Tomorrow, then?'
'Nah, I'm actually going into hospital for a few days.'
'Oh. And you're having all of this done before you go in?'
'Well, I've gotta look my best for my surgeon!' I quipped.
'Riiiight,' she said, wishing she'd opted for silence over chit-chat.
Being wheeled down into the anaesthetist's room, I'll admit that I felt more than a little smug about my superhuman endeavour to look as attractive as is possible in a pair of scratchy, see-through knickers and a questionably-patterned gown that parts at the bum. Even that morning, I'd smothered myself in body lotion, given my face a bit of self-tan and administered a liberal spritz of my best perfume. But when I woke up from my surgery, queasy and grumpy and relieved of a right tit and two ovaries, the hierarchy of concerns in my mind had me panicking that even my extreme lengths of pre-op preening hadn't quite gone far enough. Because my very first thought upon coming around from my anaesthetic was thus: 'Omigod. They've removed my pants.'
Now, nobody's immediate post-surgery thoughts are rational thoughts. That's why you hear stories of folk screaming their surgeon's name or directing an expletive-laden tirade at the poor nurse whose job it is to bring them round. But me? It must have been a minute or two until I actually spoke, while my confused brain tried to compute how I'd gone from being forced to wear paper pants one moment, then finding myself relieved of them the next. 'How did they get them off?' I thought. 'Would they have pulled them down? Or chopped them off with scissors? Maybe that's why they're paper, so they can cut through them? Hang on, though – why would I need to wear them in the first place, if they were only going to take them off?' And then, the horrible realisation: 'Omigod. They saw my bush. Why didn't I get a bikini wax yesterday as well as all the other stuff? Stupid stupid stupid!' I thought back to the conversation I'd had with Tills immediately after she'd given birth to Bea, cursing myself for having learned nothing from it:
Me: 'Tills! Mate! Well done! How was it?'
Tills: 'Traumatic. The midwife sniggered at my Brazilian.'
Now obviously, I know that surgeons have better things to think about mid-procedure than state of their patient's ladygarden, but I'm still unreasonably suspicious of what impression a medical team might glean about a patient from an unconscious state in which they're unable to defend their pruning habits or shower-gel scent or funny tan lines. (And besides, that bloody horrible documentary on vets doing awful things to anaesthetised cats has done nothing to assuage my paranoia.) For the record, though, I'm also convinced that anyone present in the surgery room will think badly of me if I'm not wearing mascara, and that I'm lifted onto operating tables by teams of surgical assistants with the comment 'eh up, lads, we've got a heavy one'.
But, as I say, nothing about post-op thoughts is rational (or pre-op thoughts, if this blog post is anything to go by), and so a nanosecond later I found myself greeting the nurse beside me with my very first recovery-room words:
'Err. Why have I got a fat lip?'
'You must have bitten it during surgery, dear.'
'Oh. Right. Is it massive?'
'No, no. Just a bit swollen. Are you in pain?'
'What, in my lip?'
'No, from your procedures.'
'Oh,' I said. And then, looking down to the flat part of chest that once flaunted my beautiful right tit (as though seeing it removed would confirm whether or not I indeed felt any pain), I replied simply, 'Yes.'
Of course I was in pain. Not just the pain of having had three vital ladybits surgically removed mere moments beforehand, but the painful sadness of realising for the first time that those terribly important parts of me had gone forever.
But then, as quick as I'd flitted from worrying about my careless pruning to having a bottom lip like Bubba, my mind switched to another thought: relief. Instant, grateful, appreciative relief. Because, as terribly, terribly sad as it was to wake up to find the essence of my womanhood removed, I knew immediately that it was unquestionably the right thing to do.
So yeah, my carefully arranged pre-surgery preening had failed miserably; my hopes of returning from my operation fresh faced, gorgeously groomed and cutely coiffured rather dastardly usurped by a fat lip, an oxygen mask, a crumpled hospital gown, five new scars and a nether region crying out for a pair of paper pants. But as important as all that stuff seemed before my cancer-preventing surgery, it was now wearing off as fast as the anaesthetic. Because, let's be honest, waking up to the knowledge that I'm now at significantly less risk of a Bullshit recurrence is infinitely more attractive than even the most manicured ladygarden.
Who wins? You decide.
So. A while back I ran a competition, inspired by the folk on the Alright Tit Facebook page, in which I asked you to send in photos of unusual places in which you've been reading The C-Word. Naturally, if I had photographic evidence of my book in Dave Grohl's ACTUAL hands, I'd have shut down this competition faster than you can say 'restraining order' but, lucky for you guys, that remains out of my grasp and so, instead, I've got 10 corking entries for you to choose between. So, without further ado, allow me to say a huge thank you to everyone who entered, and introduce you to the shortlist:
Flavia took her copy on holiday to Rome – and actually paid a person dressed as Minnie Mouse to pose with my tome near the Colosseum (because, obviously, mice in polka-dot dresses were all over Ancient Rome).
Carol took hers on a world tour when playing trombone for Seal, no less. I like to assume that Mr Seal required no monetary persuasion to be photographed with a copy of The C-Word (unless, of course, that champagne was the currency).
Jane, by her own admission, cheated a bit. But frankly, seeing my superimposed book in the hands of The World's Greatest (If Not Most Comfortable) Shoe Designer instantly gets her off the hook.
Marjo took her book into the middle of a forest in Hyvinkää, Finland after failing to get her cat to pose with it. (Smart cat.) She casually dropped into her entry that she's followed Alright Tit from the very beginning. Just sayin'.
Rose is mum to the adorable baby Gracie: a child genius who, I'm told, read The C-Word in a single afternoon. (Note to agent: get me on the National Curriculum, stat!)
David roped his kids into his photo entry. (Those aren't his kids in the photo, by the way; they're his kids' gingerbread men.) And I'm lucky enough to have eaten them. (The gingerbread men; not the kids.)
Sally takes the gong for the photo of The C-Word taken furthest away from my filth-pit in south-west London, having snapped it in the hands of her little boy in North Queensland, Australia. Extra points awarded for keeping her copy pristine in a plastic bag.
Jodie took The C-Word on a holiday to Whitby with her mum Anne. 'Some may say this is not an unusual place,' she says, 'but for us it was very special. If mum had not been diagnosed with cancer we would not have made the time for mother and daughter holidays.' And you can't say fairer than that.
Grainne recently packed up her copy (and, I'm assuming, a few other things) and moved to Canada where she promptly used her dulcet Irish tones to persuade the CN Tower to pose with The C-Word. Impressive.
Lori spent a happy afternoon in Amsterdam taking photos of beautiful baby Fletcher with not only a copy of The C-Word, but also its Dutch counterpart, Toffe Tiet. I'm especially encouraged by these shots, since if all else fails and my writing career goes belly-up, my unsold books may have a lucrative future as chew-toys.
But who wins? You decide.
You've got until the time it takes me to get out of hospital to place your vote (ie, until Monday 20 September), and the winner will receive a signed copy of The C-Word, its original uncorrected draft proof, a couple of other signed books and two – yes, two – Curly Wurlys. Come on, people: scroll to the bottom of this page, select your winner, and make somebody's (questionable) dreams come true.
UPDATE, 22 September:
The results are in... and it's congratulations to Jodie! A very worthy winner, I'm sure you'll agree. Jodie – expect a parcel from me the moment I can make it up to the post office. Well done you. And well done your mum! L.x
Public service announcement.
I'm a sucker for fancy dress parties. I appreciate that's a statement that probably rivals Marmite in its ability to polarise people but, when it comes to dressing up and making a tit of myself, I'm firmly in the 'love' camp. My fancy-dress history is prolific – I've been Morticia, Poison Ivy, a schoolgirl, a hula girl, a policewoman, a witch, a fairy – but it's only over the last couple of years that I've come to realise that fancy dress isn't just a giggle, but bloody genius, too. See, it's come to my rescue on two occasions when I've desperately needed it.
The first was for my friend Ivan's 40th last year, when the theme was to dress as anything from the last four decades. Now, at the time I was at that awkward-hair-regrowth stage where I looked like a cross between Baby Stewie and a pre-plugs John Travolta, so the thought of being able to disguise my bonce for a party where a wig was preferred rather than necessary was one helluva boon. Cue me and P dressed as Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega, and me being stared at by other party goers not because of my dodgy barnet, but my even dodgier party trick of emptying the sherbet from a flying saucer, pulling out my red lipstick and messily shoving them both up my nose, a la Pulp Ficton's overdose scene. (I'm what you might call a method fancy-dresser.)
The second occasion is the reason I'm posting today, given that the next fancy-dress party falls at the brilliantly timed juncture when I'll have sufficiently recovered from this week's surgery to treat myself to a few G&Ts, but won't yet have had the reconstruction to my right'un. So, as the kind of doofus who thinks that planning exciting stuff months in advance doesn't so much take the fun out of an event but multiply it by twelve, I'm already scouting out the perfect high-necked, bust-covering outfit. (Current favourites: Wednesday Addams and Lily Munster.)
The reason I'm telling you all of this is that I'm hoping you'll join me. This is a bit of a public-service charity post, y'see. It's not something I usually do – or will make a habit of doing – but, today, I'm much more comfortable talking about a couple of fabulous fundraisers than what's actually happening in my crazy world. You might have expected different from Alright Tit this week, given that my ladybit-losing surgery takes place on Wednesday – but while it might indeed be cathartic to blog about the passionate slanging match in my mind between the right-shoulder devil who thinks I'm a prize dickhead for voluntarily asking surgeons to remove my vital bits and the left-shoulder angel who insists that doing it is a positive, control-taking step, I do hope you'll understand that it's just not something I want to put myself through right now. So instead, allow me to draw your attention to a couple of things I think you'll like:
Back To Life: Reanimated – a Halloween charity extravaganza
Every year my friends Sally and Ivan arrange a party to raise money for charities which are close to their mates' hearts. This year, they've chosen my old muckers Breast Cancer Care as one of their charities (along with Marie Curie Cancer Care and Action For Children) and will be filling a venue in Clerkenwell with fun stuff, brilliant music and enough booze to make a room full of daftly-dressed people feel less like twonks for having travelled on the underground dressed as Freddy Krueger.
There are only 180 tickets available (at a mere £8 a pop; click on the flyer for details) so if you know what's good for you, you'll join me and Pugsley Addams/Herman Munster and lots of other lovely folk for my first night out of pyjamas. (Unless of course I decide to go as Wee Wille Winkie.)
Celebrity Boutique for the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity
The list of organisations to which I owe a giant debt is tipped firmly in the direction of The Royal Marsden, for they are responsible for the resounding success of my cancer treatment and continuing care. It speaks volumes, I think, that despite the crappy stuff I've endured in the building, I still experience a perverse excitement about going back to see the staff who've cared so well for me. Everyone I've encountered there – from the oncology team to the nurses in chemo, the radiotherapy staff, the psychological medicine department, physiotherapists, geneticists and beyond – have been utterly, utterly wonderful.
Thus, I'm always going to leap on the bandwagon of every wonderful thing that The Royal Marsden do – not least their latest fundraising venture, Celebrity Boutique. They've secured a number of top celebrities – hello Victoria Beckham, Sienna Miller, Nigella Lawson, Elizabeth Hurley, Stella McCartney, Gwen Stefani, SamCam, Dannii Minogue… – who've each donated red-carpet outfits which The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity will then auction on eBay. Bidding begins on 21 October, but you can already check out the dresses online.
Sienna Miller says: "Celebrity Boutique is a great way to indulge your love of fashion whilst doing something good for others. I'm thrilled to be a part of it."
Lisa Lynch says: "Get your arse to www.royalmarsden.org/boutique before I give you a Chinese burn."
'Scuse me while I kiss the sky.
I recently said to my mate Weeza that it's a wonder my post-Bullshit life hasn't turned me to drink, given how often it makes me feel like a manic depressive. I've talked before about the high highs and low lows that are my life; and how the days of blissful boringness are so few and far between that my existence is less of a rollercoaster than an eternally bouncing bungee cord, alternating wildly between free-falls into the grand canyon and head-rushing catapults towards the space station. Bouts of chemo tempered with kind tweets from Stephen Fry; scan-result anxiety set against book-launch excitement; apprehension about next week's surgery juxtaposed with letters from Dave Grohl…
Oh, I'm sorry – did I just say 'letters from Dave Grohl'? Oh dear. Did I let it slip that Dave 'top of my list' Grohl has written me a letter? And did I also mention that he's signed a copy of my book?
Did I? Did I actually say that stuff out loud? Hm? Did I?
Too fucking right I did.
'I've got an amazing birthday present for you,' said my LA-based mate Ant. 'You can't have it for a while yet but I can't wait any longer to tell you about it.'
'Ooh! What?'
'Well, remember I told you that my brother's ex knew someone who worked as Dave Grohl's assistant…?'
I obliged her drumroll of a hint with a couple of seconds of dramatic-effect silence.
'Well, she's got something for you. … A letter. … From Grohl himself.'
'You're fucking kidding me!' I yelped in startling high-pitch, sending every dog in south London into an epileptic fit. 'Squeeeeeeeeeeeeee!'
'And he's signed a copy of your book as well.'
'Fuck off! Fuck right off! You're joking! MY book? He's ACTUALLY HELD a copy of MY BOOK?'
'Yup.'
'He held it in his hands? In his ACTUAL HANDS?'
'Oh, um, you've gone all weird.'
'Sorreeee! But omigodomigodomigod it's just ah-may-zi… Peeeeeeeee!' I interrupted myself, squealing through the flat, 'Ant's got me a letter from Dave Grohl! An ACTUAL letter! And he's signed a copy of my book! My ACTUAL book! Signed by Dave Grohl! Eeeeeeee!'
'That's great, love,' came the unruffled response from the kitchen.
'Eeeep! What does it say?' I squeaked into the receiver. 'Whatdoesitsay? Whatdoesitsay? Doyouknowwhatitsays?'
'No, I've no idea,' said Ant, sidestepping the urge to suggest that it's probably less marriage-proposal than cease-and-desist order. 'But it's going to get dropped off with me in LA and then I'll post it onto you, so it might be a couple of months til you get it.'
'Oh, bird – that genuinely doesn't matter. Omigodomigodomigod. An ACTUAL letter. And I know it's coming. Mate, I can wait FOREVER. Omigodomigodomigod.'
'Er, Mac… you've gone all strange again.'
On this occasion, then, you might forgive the following fate-tempting words when I say that, lately, it feels a little like the balance of my maniacal moods has tipped, and that the tide is getting promisingly higher on my luck-levels.
Well, I say 'lately'. That's a bit of a fib, actually, given that I've been sitting on my next bit of good fortune for a wee while, but it's only now that I am able to unzip my gob and finally – officially – spill the goods. (A bit like my wonderfully overexcitable brother who spends every November badgering you to let him reveal what he's got you for Christmas, only to drop a massive clanger of an it-plays-DVDs style hint at 11pm on Christmas Eve.) So, if you thought I'd lost my ability to play it cool – ha, as if it ever existed – with The Dave Grohl News, then try this on for size: the BBC are developing an adaptation of The C-Word.
*happydances on spot, screams like the kid in Little Miss Sunshine, checks pulse to confirm hasn't died and gone to heaven*
Yup, an adaptation! Of my book! An ACTUAL dramatic adaptation! For 90 ACTUAL minutes! In development by the ACTUAL BBC, courtesy of the ACTUAL executive-producing genius that is the ACTUAL Susan Hogg! For the ACTUAL telly! On the ACTUAL BBC1! Played by ACTUAL actors! With an ACTUAL… okay, you get it. See what I mean about cracking my head against the space station?
So yeah, welcome to my increasingly surreal life. This week, for instance, has been a brilliantly bipolar blend of worrying myself into borderline catatonia about next week's surgery and – cue hypomania – grinning myself into excitement-induced insomnia thinking about who might play me. (And P. And Jamie. And Mum. And Dad. And Tills. And Smiley Surgeon. And Sgt Pepper.) One minute it's depression, the next it's delirium; my only mood-stabilizer being the bafflingly accidental development of my ability to fall into a skip-full of shit and somehow clamber out smelling like a Jo Malone flagship store.
My mates are endlessly entertained by all this, of course, but what none of them can agree on is whether you'd call my crazy fortunes inherently good or bad? 'If we didn't love you so much,' said one friend after my back-break, 'I think we'd all probably think twice about being mates with such an unlucky person.' 'I mean, publishing a book!' said another after The C-Word's release. 'You're such a lucky bitch! I'd love for that to happen to me.'
But which friend was right? Let's look at the evidence. Girl born to wonderful family, has happy life, meets fantastic boy, gets married, has miscarriages, discovers cancer, loses left tit, writes blog, loses hair, gets better, enters menopause, discovers BRCA gene, publishes book, breaks back, loses right tit and ovaries, gets letter from Dave Grohl, has film made about life… I mean, Jaysus, I sure as heck don't know which way to call it. (No bloody wonder this is being developed into a drama.)
So – lucky bitch? Unlucky bitch? There's probably a bit of truth in both, and thus I don't mind either way… people can come to whatever conclusion they like. But, as I'm sure anyone would agree, one thing you can never say is that this – whether intentional or otherwise – is anything other than the very definition of milking The Bullshit for all its worth.
What was it a wise man once said? Oh aye – when life gives you lemons, grab the tequila.