Missknee's Blog

My grandmother died this week. She’s had cancer since last September and I didn’t go see her. I mean there were factors out of my control, like the fact I was working full time, I kept having nasty colds, and I’m in third year of university. But really I could have rung more. I planned to see her in Easter but she went into hospital while on holiday in NZ. The family were very supportive, especially the ones out there. Several of them flew out from the UK and gave as much time as they could just being good company and providing support for my gran and each other. I stayed here, and then before my mum returned I came back to uni so the whole thing has been communicated mainly by email and phone. It’s odd to deal with something that’s just a passed on message, plus she’d never been a day-to-day part my life, so I think it’s going to be a while before I stop thinking ‘I wonder when we’re going to Blackpool’ or ‘When’s Gran coming to visit with her boyfriend’.  And just like that the oldest generation has gone from the family.

Important people are disappearing from my life every day and I keep missing opportunities. This year has been a little bit of a wake up call, a morse code message from the underworld: ‘stop pissing about!’. I’ve also realised how unlearned I am in the way of conversing at funerals. I’m in constant danger of saying the most inadequate, insipid things, things which probably come across as wholly inappropriate, and make my stomach churn to just remember them. I do think it is a learned ability, and I have the greatest admiration for my mother for being pragmatic, calm and collected. She spent a lot of time with my Gran this year, doing the four hour drive to Blackpool and supporting her through chemotherapy. Her demeanour is probably from years in hospital service… or perhaps from dealing with her melodramatic daughter, but she faces loss and still manages to find reasons for hope, without being indulgent or spiritual or dismissive. Which is really quite a skill. I look like her, and I sound like her on the phone, so maybe, maybe one day, I’ll be as capable and tactful as her.

(But it’s unlikely.)

Apologies for the soppy post. The cynic in me is making vomiting faces, but I felt a need to write it down and I thought here was as good as anywhere. It certainly wouldn’t have condensed into a good twitter.

On Monday night I saw Graham the ferret on my drive back from Heligan. This will only make sense if you’ve seen the show! Wish I’d had my camera! He was beautiful! I had to stop the car and stamp and clap to scare him off the road. A couple of nights before I also saw a badger! They make terrifying noises.

I got to watch the Hansel and Gretel show again last night! It’s great to see it again, little things change and the audience was extremely giggly last night. I appreciated all the mechanics, like the giant mousetrap, even more. And I spent some of the time staring at the audience’s faces. People make strange faces when they are watching theatre! The smell of woodsmoke has now permeated my car, my bedroom, most of my clothes, and my hair smells especially campfire-ish. So if at any point in the Falmouth area you smell that smell, I may have wandered within a hundred yards or so of you.

Listen to it! I downloaded it as a way of making myself look forward to my long drive on Monday and even though I left home at 10am, and arrived at nearly 8pm along with important non-avoidable roads being closed Ms. Josie Long kept me amused with tales of bread pilgrimages and fancy dress costumes and spying on odd men at the gym. She also kept me uplifted, I’m liking the positive happy comedy right now. Not in a silly hippy way, just in a genuine, honest way. She’s also in the second series of Skins as Chris’s career counsellor. Great stuff.

Today I begin my volunteering with Kneehigh, I’m just going to be doing nice little things like helping people park, taking tickets and making tea. They’re doing their show ‘Hansel and Gretal’ at Heligan Gardens for the next two and a half weeks, go if you are in the vicinity! Yesterday I went for a training session and left very early because I thought I’d get lost. Unfortunately the weather was dire, the traffic was appalling and I arrived only just on time. I had the satnav on to see if it worked in that area, and I don’t think I’ll trust it because it told me to turn left a crossroads, whilst I was on a bridge over a river. Hm. The tents the performances are going to be in are wonderful! I’ll try and take pictures at some point!

After extensive research of children’s books about cancer (Henry Tumour was the only one I could find, but I didn’t really look very hard.), I have come to the conclusion that children do not have much access to finding out what the bubonic plague of our time is. Bubonic plague might not be the best comparison, it was more me just me giving in to hyperbole. As a child (well more a early teen) I was exposed to cancer through relatives getting it, and for the life of me I couldn’t really work out what it was. I didn’t know if it was contagious (a couple of times I think I almost convinced myself I had it), whether it was some kind of alien life form or whether it was always really really really serious, or whether sometimes it was almost benign. Is there a space for a book for 8-13 year olds about cancer? Would it be appropriate? Yesterday I read Michael Rosen’s sad book and realised how skillfully he deals with such a difficult topic. If cancer affects one in three people is a book a good way to explain to kids what their parents probably find really difficult to say? And how careful would that book have to be not to panick their audience or make light (or too heavy) the topic it deals with? It would aim to give children a basic knowledge of the causes, symptoms and effects and set up a dialogue for kids with parents or relatives who probably find it really hard to translate medical jargon into something an young person can understand.

It’d be great if anyone who has experience of cancer in any form (relative, close family, self, friends) as a child or from looking at a child could comment. I’m really interested to do some research and as I am almost unfaillingly naiive about all of this stuff, it’d be great to blow my opinions out of the water.

I’m also currently watching the Wire season 4, the one about kids. I think it pretty much counts as some kind of research… maybe?

I feel bound to explain that there foot up there. That is my pale foot hovering close to the boundaries of illegality above a cenote in the Yucatan, Mexico. It’s the first week of my gap year trip in 2007, and we went all the way to a place called Dzilbilzalchun (or something along those lines) to look at ruins, seven tiny creepy dolls and swim in the cenote. (All the rivers are underground in the Yucatan, so cenotes are where the cave roof has collapsed in. We went diving in some later, it was like floating through space once you were in the caverns. And all the water bubbles trapped on the ceiling looked like pools of mercury.) We plastered ourselves with sun cream for fear of frying to a crisp, then just as we were about to get in and join all the happy splashing Mexicans, the park warden comes over. She tells us we can’t go in because the sun cream pollutes the water. So we sat on the edge, being openly mocked by the children, gazing longingly at the water and trying to take pictures of the fish. Picture explain.