Curry Night

So... It's Sunday now. Nothing interesting has really happened yet so I'll start at Thursday night/Friday. But I'll be brief about that day.

Thursday, 8pm; I fall asleep, fully dressed.
Friday, 00:00; I wake up, just as dressed and have pulled my bed sheets over me in my sleep, as I do. I was hot, sticky and uncomfortable. And, having slept for 4 hours I didn't fancy my chances of nodding off again. Failing to get off I go online and do... Fuck all for a while. María was actually online for a few minutes but the amount of chat between us wasn't even enough to be classed as 'small talk'.
02:30; Nothing else to do I go back to bed. I lay there for hours before I fell asleep.
08:00; Elise arrives to dump one or more children on me. I'm so tired I can't actually process how many I have.
12:00; Tony arrives. I go back to bed.
5 something; I'm woken up because we're going to some church thing. I'm annoyed that I wasn't really given enough time to shower but I do so anyway, since everybody else who was going to has apparently already done so. (That doesn't count Chug. He bathes for no man).
19:30; We set off at the time the social event was set to begin. This has essentially become a standard household practise. If it isn't Tony holding us up it's Chug, which was the case that night. And it's mental because he went dressed in whatever he was wearing when he woke up; all he had done was added shoes and socks.

I had already been told that it was a 'curry night' but I decided to go anyway; curry is something that the British are incapable of screwing up, it's as if it's ingrained in our genes. Obviously it isn't because it's not a British thing; we've only actually had it for 1 or 2 hundred years. And I don't think it was amazingly popular until sometime quite recently.

When I realised that it was Glynn Hughes who was cooking I was somewhat disheartened as this is a man who has gone to great lengths to avoid providing food for any church events, even when all he's been asked to do was sandwiches. I do recall him having words with some of the relief society when they'd asked him to do so and he'd said that he'd happily 'provide the drinks' (as he often did, as it required no more effort than buying a few bottles of the cheapest pop or squash that he could get his hands on) .

We arrived to find everybody was playing DVD Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. The hall was divided into 3 teams, as the game is apparently set up for a multi-player mode of play. (Apparently not as many players as we had in attendance, therefore my team answered questions for 'player 1', the next for 'player 2', and so forth). All teams lost at £1000. Chug refused to participate in the game completely.

I went and offered to help Glynn with the cooking but he refused point blank. I tasted some and suggested he should add some spices but he said that 'not everybody likes it spicy'. I tried to explain that I didn't mean peppers or anything that would make it hot but Glynn just kept saying 'some people don't like it spicy', refusing to understand the difference between spices (such as cinnamon or musala) and peppers (chili peppers, etc). Looking I might have come across as a little condescending but I had no way to tell and no way of finding out retrospectively. I'd call and ask but I'm afraid I might be stirring a hornet's nest of some kind as trying to understand humans is something best left to other people.

I seem to recall that we had some mexican themed lunch after church one time and mum made a enchiladas (ie; I made enchiladas) and a mild chili. Glynn refused to try either of these on the grounds that he didn't eat hot foods. However they were both extremely mild and I can't see how he could qualify them as hot without trying them for himself. Everybody assured him it was mild.

Chuggle refused to participe in this, too; not only would he not have any of the food (which I admit that I completely understand) but he wouldn't even sit at the table with everybody else; he sat on a lone chair facing away from everybody. After a while Steve went and sat next to him for a chat. He must have ammused the boy in some way or other but it didn't seem to improve his attitude on the whole because he was back to his gloomy self as soon as Steve went to attend to other things.

Ultimately the food was edible though rather bland.

I spent most of the night talking to Lauren Thorley. I had previously assumed that her real name was 'Eden Ivy Lee', and that she had adopted 'Lauren' as a pseudonym because doesn't stand out so much, however she clarified that she'd changed it to Eden by deed poll some years ago. She seemed to be in good spirits, hard as it is for me to tell with people, though I think something might have been on her mind. She never seemed too cheerful when I first joined the church so I don't have much to compare her mood of that night. She thought I seemed miserable.

At one point she asked me what I had planned for the weekend and I honestly did not know what to day. I consider myself an introvert (though my friends and family find this hilarious) because I don't go out or socialise in general. My answer was "I don't know. Get screwed over by my sister and probably watch some cartoons" or something very similar. She smiled and said "You mean get stuck babysitting?". I was tempted to make a joke about incest but I decided not to bother. (I'd told the one about the 2 Jewish assassins who were hired to take out Hitler, earlier, and it had gone down badly).

(In the event that I have any new readers I would just like to clarify that I have never engaged in incestual relations. I hope that nobody took any implication that I might, but I have this dry sense of humour that some people tend to take seriously).

Her daughter, Hally, has grown as an almost surprising rate, but then I do tend to forget how much time tends to pass between the instances I see her mother and it's rarer still to see her. She must be 6 or 7 now. I meant to ask and I have no idea why I didn't do so.

I got home about 9:30 or so and eventually went to sleep at around midnight which I wasn't expecting given the amount of sleep I had already had that day.

If anything particularly interesting happened the following day I can't remember it.

Chaperon

(I should have typed this up half a week ago, since I mentioned it several times in advance of the event, but when I haven't been busy I've either been tired or just plain lazy).

I suppose a chaperoned date doesn't feel like too much of a date at all. I wouldn't know since I was the chaperon, in this case, and I've never had a chaperon. They spent most of them time not talking to eachother; mostly because Chug is naturally aloof to... Well, just about everyone. The journey out of town he spent most of his time staring out of the window and I, wanting to give them the illusion of privacy, stuck my nose in my book.

(I must say that the first part of the Earthsea series has not been nearly as interesting as I hoped it would. I think LaGuin managed to recreate Tolkien's problem in precisely the opposite way; he writes pages and pages of detail that cover just a few hours, she writes pages and pages of detail covering several years and neither of them seem to have enough story within those pages and I get bored. Towards the end I was really forcing myself to continue, mostly because I have a Neil Gaiman book waiting for me when I'm done but I've reached the second book in the volume and I haven't found the will to read any of it since I finished the first one on the train, that day).

We then hopped on the next bus from the bus station after going to some trouble to find out which one it was. (Apparently it was from 'Stand E'. Again. It's always there, but since it's only once every year or so that I take the buses in Shrewsbury, which are the only times I ever ride on buses at all, I live in constant fear that they will have changed the routes and if I get on 'E' it will take me to completely the wrong place) I learned the value of getting a return ticket the hard way, which I will explain later. (I don't know why I never bother with them for trains, they're completely sensible).

They had already decided on 'The Pink Panther 2' (Steve Martin) the night before. I had been promising myself that I would attend a different film to them but there was nothing that started at the same time that had a similar run time; meaning there was nothing I could watch separately without leaving the 2 12-year-olds unaccompanied. (There was nothing I wanted to see, anyway. There was only one film that looked remotely interesting that turned out to be by Woody Allen. A quick check of the weather indicated that hell was, indeed, still in the middle of a heatwave so Woody Allen was still out of the question). So I got a ticket for the same movie.

The show time was at 4pm which gave us over 2 hours to kill, so I got them each some Ben + Jerry's Ice cream and gave them a £5 note to go on the arcade (I say 'arcade' but a 3m x 5m corner with 1 game, 1 lucky dip and a "who wants to be a millionaire" machine does not an arcade make by any standards), though I would have given them £10 but the cash machines had been shut down and the £5 was all I had to give them. After that we still had time to kill so I took them to dinner at Nandos, which made quite an impression on both of them. Chug displayed an uncharacteristic amount of machismo by ordering his chicken "extra hot" and putting their special "extra extra hot sauce" on everything and daring me to do the same after mocking me for my feeble (he didn't actually use that word but I doubt he actually knows what it means) choice of Lime and Mango chicken which, according to the menu he had studied (though not much further than the 4 grades of spice on the chicken) was the least spicy of the chicken they did.

I had to explain to him that, once you're particularly used to hot foods, you find that various chili peppers and chili powders don't actually change your food's flavour, much, it only makes it hotter and that my choice of lime and mango was made purely on the grounds that it seemed like it was one of the most flavourful. (Alternatively there was 'Lemon and Herb', however seem to have a lot of chicken marinaded in herbs while lime with mango was something I hadn't tried, though I have had them as marinades separately on other occasions, usually with various mixed herbs).

The kids sat themselves down before I could suggest that they sit opposite each other, as etiquette dictates, though I didn't feel the need to correct them since sitting adjacently on a round table can be more intimate and, since it was only a table for 4 and it was a round table I would have been between then, which would have detracted from that intimacy.

They were both suitably impressed by the place, Chug even complained that nobody had ever taken him there before (we explained this was because he had always refused to go before, favouring the allure of Pizza Hut, on the other side of the town). The place was more 'up-scale' than anything either of them were used to (hell, it was nicer that some of the places I've eaten and I've attended some pretty swanky venues, and it certainly had the most posh rest room I'd ever seen; it even contended with those that had attendants). I wasn't expecting a franchised restaurant of that type to look classy; I was expecting something with the atmosphere of a more generic fast food place. The only problem was that the music was so loud we practically had to shout to hear oneanother. (We even considered writing something to this affect on the feedback form that came with the menus, but when you have a lot of family in various areas of the catering business you learn what happens when you give the people who serve your food any form of criticism. I decided to comment online, nice and anonymously).

The film had some funny moments. The plot wasn't great but, then, it was a sequel which is something generally to be avoided with this type of film. It was funny enough to make me consider seeing the original (and by 'Original' I mean the first of the 2 Steve Martin PP films, not the original Peter Sellers version which I have seen many times and never laughed at once), as there's the likelihood that this was just another case of a movie company trying to make a quick profit following up on an unexpected cash cow.

When the bus back to the station arrived I realised that it I had no money to pay for the tickets and asked the driver (knowing that the odds were slim to none) if he accepted cards. This is why I should have got return tickets, as it would have been easier than paying for a return journey. I don't know why I don't bother getting them on buses when I always get them for trains. I will make a point of doing so in the future. He said they didn't so I said I'd just go to a cash point and wait for the next bus, but he said he'd lets us pass this time. There was only one other passenger on the bus and when she got off he asked me 'if that trick works often' and I explained that I hadn't intended for it to happen at all, that I merely hadn't been thinking ahead (but most of what I do is spontaneous or with reluctance and therefore I seldom plan ahead).

When we got to the station there was over an hour to wait until our train arrived (trains between my town and Shrewsbury arrive every 2 hours, so it was just a case of bad timing that we arrived half way between 2 trains) and so we waited on a bench on the cold platform.

While Chug had been very aloof with Laura on the way out there seemed to be something sweet between them, in a shy sort of way, and he did actually make eye contact and there were lots of embarrassed smiles between them. (I actually did catch a glance at them doing something which they swore me to secrecy about. Nothing bad, it was actually pretty innocent, but being 12 years old they're shy and easily embarrassed (especially since I'm always the first person to tease them on their 'puppy love'). I said nothing about it on the way home and I've been bursting to tell somebody IRL ("In Real Life"), such as Dimebar or Mum or Elise (or even somebody online). But if there's one thing I'm good at it's keeping secrets (or at least I am when I know it's a secret, if somebody fails to ask me to keep something on the down-low then I don't see how I can be held responsible for what I share with others. Or maybe that's just the aspergers in me...) I would write it in my journal, as that's always a suitable place to keep secrets (and I do write plenty of stuff that could be construed as confidential to others who didn't tell me it might be) however, having said I wouldn't tell I don't think it would be right for me to do so knowing that I'm going to publish my journal online, essentially telling the world (or at least the world who wants to know. So far I think that's one person).

She came to visit on both the following days and is here now as I type this (when last I passed chug's room she was on his WoW account while he was playing some xBox game she got him).

Yesterday I awoke with a nasty tummy ache and found myself doing squats to relieve it, assuming it was a blockage. Sure enough I felt whatever it was moving through my system quite rapidly over the next few hours. I made sure I had plenty more fiber yesterday, to try to make sure it didn't happen again, though it did.

I had Bink last night and he woke up crying to I took him down for some milk. I fixed him a bottle, put the fire on and we curled up watching the baby channels under a blanket and both fell asleep. (Which was a bugger, because 30 minutes before I next woke up we had a delivery, but as there was nobody there to receive it (the delivery guy didn't knock very loud and didn't even bother ringing the bell) he left a note telling me where to get it). I went to pick it up at 10am only to be told to come back at 1pm (it's 12.43 right now). I don't really know what I did before typing this, I did spend a while looking for torrent files (the latest episode of Kyle XY would have been broadcast in the U.S, however the only rips I could find were all over 1GB, so I'll wait for a smaller file. I know it might actually be quicker to download it at 1GB but disk space has really become an issue, lately).

When Bink woke up again (thus waking me also) I had another stomach ache, though not nearly as bad, so I did some squats and encouraged Bink to do the same for the sheer hell of it. (He seemed to think I'd gone mad).

And now the big question; do I, a guy who must have every moment of his time filled with something, even if it isn't very exciting, to occupy his mind, kill the next 10 minutes or so by dossing about? Or do I load a computer game, waiting for which and getting stuck in with eat those 10 minutes and demand more?

I guess the game it is, then...

Girl in a Box

Friday was my step-sister's funeral. I began writing this in the small hours of the next day because my sleeping pattern is messed up beyond recognition I went to bed not feeling slightly tired at I-don't-know-what-time, feeling completely restless as I listened for the downstairs clock to chime every 30 minutes. The last chime I remember hearing before I fell asleep was 4am, meaning that I had at least one and a half hours of sleep before I was awoke by my step-dad.

I found a shirt, (I found another shirt when it turned out the first one wasn't big enough for me to put in both of my arms at the same time without squeezing my shoulder blades together and force me to walk around with my arms out-stretched) got dressed in the new suit that I blew all my cash on a couple of weeks ago, got mum to put on my new tie for me and then went back to bed, where I failed to get any more sleep before the time to leave approached.

I changed my nephew's nappy; something I don't mind doing but this morning... having taken off the one he slept in (which he had clearly pee'd in several times and was a hefty weight) he pee'd again. And again. He must have pee'd at least 4 times, although I counted 5, each time failing to hit me (although he managed to get the corner of mum's laptop, I have no idea what the shape of which is now). I made my usual joke, when he made a large amount of waste that I was "surprised there was any baby left".

So when I finished changing his nappy and had him dressed I went to put my coat on when somebody (Jeff, I think) noticed I had managed to get baby cream all over the top of my new suit trousers and part of my jacket. We got most of this out but it's grease based cream and very hard to remove, but we managed to get it to the point where it was only really noticeable if somebody pointed it out.

I don't know what time we set off. An old friend of Tanya's, Kelly, was accompanying us so we took 2 cars; Steve had agreed to drive some of us and Elise would follow mum's car (after mum's chemo yesterday she wasn't feeling well enough to drive), which may have been a mistake because Steve is an erratic and often dangerous driver. Kelly, Chug and I were in his car, mum, Elise and the baby were in mum's.

Steve and I talked quite casually, only occasionally speaking about Tanya or the Funeral. I wandered how Kelly would interpret that as being callous, since was clearly taking things much harder. Then I felt a mild sense of shame that I was thinking about my outward appearance on such a day.

We stopped at a service station just east of Birmingham because mum needed the toilet. We were hoping to grab a quick breakfast but fate was not in favour of this; I had forgotten my cash card and had to borrow £10 from Steve and most of the food court was shut, opening in 15 minutes which was unacceptable because we were already behind schedule and the one shop in it that was open was highly over-priced and I didn't have enough to feed and quench 4 people. So I got a drink for Chug, mum, Elise and myself, Kelly got her own drink and some food and I think Steve got something, too. I didn't have to break the tenner Steve gave my since I managed to find enough loose change in my pockets to cover it, but I kept it nonetheless in the hope there would be an opportunity to get some food later on.

Unsure at first that we were in the right one we found the cemetery about an hour early, probably due to Steve's erratic, dangerous driving.

Steve got out and looked at the various tomb stones, Kelly and Chug squeezed into mum's car for warmth, while mum fed the baby, and I paced around a little bit and looked at a couple of tomb stones, staying a long distance away from the freshly dug hole not far from where mum had parked. (Steve had a good look at it at some point).

After a while the ladies got out of their car after mum asked me and Steve to fetch the reefs from his far. I began to suspect that I was being somewhat petty, as I wouldn't touch the reef sent by Tanya's father, taking the one mum had selected instead. We put 2 cards on it, one from mum and one with a short message from me, Elise and Chug. I don't really remember what they said. My message read something like "Tanya, I love you as much as any real sister and I always will".

I do love Tanya, as shamefully distant as we were. I deeply admired her until she gave up... And even then I felt the deepest of sympathy when I heard the circumstances of her death. And I felt these things every bit as much as I do for Elise or Charles or any other relative, even as short as our time together was. In a strange way it was a relief to know that I loved her.

I was worried about how I felt... I couldn't tell if my lack of feeling simply due to my Asperger's or if I really didn't feel anything. It only really hit me that she was gone the night before; Jeff said something about seeing Mark and Zoë (fumbling a little bit, trying to remember Zoë’s name) and I was about to open my mouth to correct him and say something like "you mean Mark, Zoë and Tanya" and then realising that Tanya was gone.

I don't know if the 5 stages of grief will never apply to death for me as they do for everybody else; I seem to miss staged, or take them in the wrong order and tend to get through them very quickly*, but I guess my grieving prices started there.

Much as I wanted to I was still unable to shed a tear.

Having finished my message I put them both in the card holders and the 6 of us (it may not have been 6, the baby may have been in the car with somebody attending to him) stood around, waiting for something to happen.

"Collo" was the next person to arrive in his van with a couple of other people we didn't really get a good look at, although we all seemed to notice that one of them was on crutches but didn't see the person's face.

He walked up to us and asked if we were alright. We all ignored him as well as we could; I couldn't even glimpse him with more than my peripheral vision without feeling a little nauseous. Maybe he thought we hadn't heard about the things that happened between Tanya but Zoe had told us all about the absolutely despicable things he had said and done and none of us wanted to know him.

The next thing I remember Elise was on the phone to Zoe... I don't remember who phoned who but I guess Elise phoned her, since I don't remember the phone ringing. Elise told her that Collo was there and that we all ignored him and that he was there with somebody who might have been his new girlfriend, but we couldn't tell because we didn't see the person from the front and only knew that they were in crutches.

Zoe told us to move out of the way because some bikers were on their way down.

I think Steve had already returned to his car by this point; he didn't know Tanya or any of her family and I guess he felt uncomfortable with the prospect of attending the funeral (which is understandable, especially given to his irreverent nature).

We all walked around to the other side of the chapel and stood around there and, sure enough, minutes later the bikers arrived. They parked their bikes on the other side of the building from us (the side we had just walked from) and they marched back towards us, looking stern and into the chapel. They walked out and seemed to be looking around.

Elise took it upon herself to see if she could be helpful, asking them if they were looking for somebody (which they were) and if this somebody had ginger hair (which he did). She pointed them in the right direction, saying that he was by his van with somebody in crutches.

We didn't see Collo again that day and the malicious thought crossed my mind (and, presumably, everybody else’s) that hopefully nobody would do so ever again.

More people started to turn up and eventually the funeral procession arrived.

We awkwardly tried to position ourselves as out-of-the-way as possible, which sadly meant we found ourselves bunched next to the doorway where we were available for all to see...

I know this is something which shouldn't have meant anything but I have attended enough funerals to know that there is a weird kind of pecking order when it comes to position and being seen much the same as weddings. The mourners who were the most closely related to the departed (spouses, parents, children, siblings, etc) will be at the head of the procession (after the casket), at the front of the service and at the head table of the wake, followed by 'lesser relatives', people of importance, close friends, and those who wished to pay their respects and be as inconspicuous as possible. It can all get very shallow from time to time, but I didn't want to be perceived as some stranger standing in the place of Tanya's closer relatives. Again I wandered if I was being shallow or petty.

Fortunately Mark and Zoe made a point of coming up to us and greeting us all exceptionally warmly and stood with us.

The preacher said that there was no way everybody there would fit in the small chapel.

Both mum and I said that we would remain outside if there was no room. I think she was able to procure a seat and I remained outside with the baby, deciding that (uncomfortable as it was to stand there carrying his chair) my own comfort should be second to that of Tanya (such as it was) and the strangers there whose closeness to Tanya was a mystery to me. The undertaker ushered me in, though, saying that I shouldn't be stood out there with a baby (I'd just like to point out that he was well wrapped and it was as cold inside as out, so standing in the shelter of the doorway he would have been fine but she seemed to find this idea unthinkable) and not only sat me near the front but on a bench in front of the other mourners, adjacent to Tanya, next to 4 or 5 people I had never seen before.

Sadly I found myself trying to feign the appearance of my genuine sadness so that anybody not aware of my condition who noticed me (i.e., everybody except mum, Chug and Elise) wouldn't think I was totally heartless. This time I didn't think of myself as shallow because I reasoned that if somebody did spot somebody who didn't look as if they were deeply upset would become distracted and [further] resentful of me. Some of the contortions in my face, at least, were caused by real pain from some of the things being said by the speakers.

The baby awoke during the service and began to make noises and I fed him his bottle (after all; he's usually of the opinion that being awake means its feeding time) and took it away again when he coughed slightly. He cooed and gurgled happily and quietly (for the most part) throughout the service and I caressed his cheek and his faint, wispy hair from time to time.

I noted that the reverend twice mentioned all of Tanya's brothers and sisters and other immediate family without mentioning Chuggles (I didn't mind that Mum, Elise and myself weren't mentioned), her half brother; as much a brother to her as her half siblings Gaynor, Daniel and Alex who were mentioned. But I understood; her mother was for some reason resentful of us; Tanya's extended family; probably because of our connection to Carl; Tanya's father. Or maybe the list given to him was given by one of Gaynor, Daniel and Alex themselves who would have been too young to remember any of us. Or maybe it was Mark and/or Zoe who didn't include our names in order to avoid trouble with Renarta.

The list was also mentioned by Daniel, who delivered the eulogy and seemed to gloss over the years she lived with us. But this was time spent with her father, so etching it out of history may possibly be a good thing. I know I don't want him mentioned in my eulogy if only because I was taught that if you can't say something nice you shouldn't say anything at all.

It was about this time that I felt that I should create a new blog and write about the day.

Then the coffin bearers took her remains outside... The people in the front row followed, along with the people standing in the doorway, and then people seemed to be unsure who was supposed to go next. The guy sitting next to me stood up and walked out of the room, and I was sitting right next to the door so I surmised that it was probably me causing the bottle neck. I cautiously got up, trying to look around to see if I was indeed supposed to go next but nobody seemed to be looking at me. I left anyway and the rest of the congregation seemed to follow me so I guess I was.

I shuffled around nervously, awaiting the rest of my family so that I could walk with them and got separated from my mother (as I tended to during funeral processions), but Elise caught up with me and took the baby's chair off me for a couple of minutes (much to the relief of my arms) and she walked with me.

It's not often I'm glad to see her much less walk with her but I was then.

The flowers and reefs had already been taken from the chapel and hurst and displayed near her final resting place for all to see before the service. Tanya's remains were lowered into the hole and people were invited to drop roses into her grave; mum ensured that Chuggles was among them, being a genuine half brother.

Then, as people started walking away something happened that I had never seen at a funeral before; people stopped to admire the flowers. This wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for the rather tacky feeling that came with this and I asked mum "What's happening? Are they 'comparing sizes'"? At which she sniggered but I pointed out that that it wasn't funny. It really did seem to me that people were checking to see who gave the biggest and nicest reefs and bouquets.

Gradually people began making their way to their cars and Chris (an old friend of Mark's whom we didn't recognise at first) started to give people directions. Mum told him we were from Wales (and so we didn't really know any local landmarks or street names) which prompted him to recognise us and he said just to follow his car (a white Ford Fiesta).

Kelly and Chug decided to ride in Mum's car leaving me to go in Steve's. Steve and I nearly lost the procession to the wake a few times, probably because the car we were following didn't realise we were following him, he seemed to be having some trouble keeping up himself, he was overtaken by other cars (not part of the procession) once or twice and so were we.

We were a little worried that perhaps he was not actually attending the wake but just going straight home, however we spotted mum standing next to her car in the car park of the community hall in which the wake was being held.

Everybody else went in and I assured Steve that I would find out how long we would be (he said he didn't mind how long) so that he would know if he had time to grab a bite to eat from the nearest corner shop. After using the rest room I found mum and asked and she told me she didn't intend to stay too long, but I gathered from the tone of her voice that Steve probably had time to get some food quickly and I told him so.

The Pears side of the family, as well as the younger mourners, were more jovial than the older attendants whom I supposed were the Collo's family and Renarta's in-laws, who sat at their tables looking more like those people more traditionally found at wakes.

One or 2 of the bikers joined in the merriment but most of them sat along the wall looking as solemn as the older guests.

After a few minutes of standing around feeling uncomfortable I sat at the same table as Kelly and Chug, which Elise and Mum had been at previously as evidenced by their coats and bags. They were not far off, chatting with Mark and Zoe.

Then they, along with Kelly, wandered off into the bar room for a few while leaving me and Chuggle with the baby again. (Not that I mind, I love that baby incredibly and I love Chug just as much). I had a few crisps (some kind of smokey chicken, I suspect) but I didn't like them to much (not that this stopped me from picking at them every now and then; I was famished) and I chatted with Chuggle about some mindless stuff.

I couldn't help but notice Chris from time to time, as he was laughing and joking loudly with some people I didn't recognise, exchanging stories which I don't think were really related to Tanya. It seemed somewhat disrespectful to me and made me a little uncomfortable, not that I could really make out what they were saying specifically, and I found myself regarding them with some mild disdain.

After a while Mum, Elise, Kelly, Zoe and Mark returned and I got to hug both Zoe and Mark, told them that I missed them (it just slipped out, unexpectedly. It was true enough but I hadn't actually planned on saying it. I hadn't really realised how much I missed them until I said it, to be honest) and we all got to chatting (I say 'we'; I chimed in every now and then but I'm not a brilliant conversationalist).

Having spent some short amount of time (in truth I have no idea how long we were in the building, it could have been half an hour it could have been over 1 hour) we went out to set off home. Mark and Zoe came out to see us off and the small talk continued. We talked about the baby, computer games, and work in that particular borough of London.

We had time to talk considerably because Steve still wasn't back from getting a snack. Mark assured us that the nearest corner shop was just at the end of the street so we weren't sure where he could be. Steve told us he often gets lost in big cities, so we imagined him in lost somewhere in the middle of town. Well somebody imagined that; my imagination tends to get the better of me and I imagined him getting arrested for making another illegal u-turn somewhere. This was a thought I probably should have kept to myself.

He eventually returned, having found some kebab house some way away where he got himself a burger. We pointed out the shop mark told us about as wel left; it was less than a minute away.

We went back to the cemetary for one last moment at Tanya's grave. First Elise went to see it and Kelly followed and I waited to accompany mum, who stayed with the baby. I went to see it with Kelly as Elise returned. It wasn't the personal moment the ladies hoped it would be; it was being filled in by some some ugly men who seemed like the couldn't care less about whom they were burying. As cold as they found it it was the thing that eventually made me cry, and I turned away so that Kelly woundn't see. (I have a problem crying infront of other people).

I thought about her half siblings in London and her 3 children. Tanya was a mother or big sister to everybody she was a friend with, even people of her own age. The world seriosly needs more people like her.

I opened mum's door so that she could go and pay her respects but Elise had described it to her and decided to stay.

We stopped for a KFC on the way home. It was some cheesy radio 2 show with Chris Moyles or Chris Evens or Christ Tarrant or some other terrible radio personality called Chris taking cheesy requests. Although it's kinda weird; in the dark on a long drive after a long day (particularly when everything you see is only lit up by the cheap orange glow of street lights) there's something kind of comforting about the tone of the radio, no matter how bad the programme is.

Kelly, now that Chuggle was in the other car, stretched out on the back seat a few times to sleep, according to sleep. I nodded off myself a few times but I don't think it was ever longer than a couple of minutes.

Dave was there when we got home. We watched some TV together and eventually we went online to play World of Warcraft. I would have gone to sleep but I was over-tired and didn't see the point of doing so until I came off my 'second wind'. (I would just be awake, thinking, all night). When I did head off to bed I remembered that I really wanted to record the things that had happened so I came back to my room and started a new blog. I was up until sometime after 5am writing until I couldn't keep my eyes open.

Although Tanya's body was buried on the 16th of February, she wasn't there. I believe in an afterlife but this is something differant... It wasn't her body she left behind. She died once in december and what was left behind was what remained. When that died 2 weeks ago it wasn't even the remains of Tanya, it was just some girl in a box.

*I don't know what happened with my nan, 6 years before; it was about 4 years later when I started crying uncontrollably in the middle of a night when I was having trouble sleeping.