Mother Tongue

i'm a mummy's boy, and apparently have the perfect tongue for piercing.

mother's day, or mothering sunday was on the 2nd of march here in the uk but is on the second sunday of may (11th may in 2008) in the states. everyday is mother's day for me, but it's one of those days when we have to be extra nice to our mothers. that means not telling her you just got your tongue pierced. on her return journey from australia recently, my mamma said that she'd tried unsuccesfully to watch elizabeth, starring cate blanchett. watching and flying put her off the movie.

while shopping for an elizabethan gift (eventually the dvd and a beautifully illustrated book were chosen) i told Bulbgirl that i had to check something out. while in glasgow city centre i thought i'd do something that had been put off since last week. bulbgirl had a few guesses:

"is it art?" "no."
"is it music?" "no."
"is it food?" "no."

she soon realised what was to be checked out when we were standing outside nirvana body piercing. after enquiring about tongue piercing they took me right after someone who had made an appointment. the piercer, john, was great at laying out what he was going to do. and clean? i think it's probably cleaner than most hospitals, with the attention that john puts into washing, wearing surgical gloves, and using sterile instruments only once!

the procedure was a doddle in john's capable hands. a slight sharp pain and the bar was inserted. i was handed mouthwash (maybe dental bleach?) and given a run through of after care procedures. john said that my tongue would swell up probably by tuesday, and then be fine in 7-10 days. he also added that i'd probably regret having it done for a day or so. it's now the wee small hours of thursday morning, and it's been no bother so far.

i couldn't even feel the pain of the tongue that first night. my regular body pains outdid any piercing pain. is even a short walk in glasgow too much for me these days? pacing myself is something i've tried but some days my stamina just seems to evaporate.

a cool trick that i learned from house m.d is to use pain as a distraction. bulbgirl and i have been making our way through the first 2 series of house. in one episode, hugh laurie damages his hand on purpose, creating pain there, which also lessens the chronic pain in his leg. something to do with pain pathways, or the like. i don't know exactly how it works but tried it the next night. when experiencing joint/body pains i pushed the tongue piercing against my teeth to make it hurt more. it hurt a little, but seemed to take the edge off the rest of the body pains momentarily. is the answer to pain medication more pain (or just a different type of pain)?

anyway, john the piercer gave bulbgirl and myself a lift home. i was his last customer of the day and he asked me where i live and said it was on his way. we got talking, how long had he run his business, mothers day, what did his wife do, and other stuff. bizarrely enough, we found out he had met my mother at a parents evening! his kid was being taught be my own mother. "didn't her brother die recently?" john asked. his kid was quite upset that they had lost their teacher for a month.

obviously him sticking a needle through my tongue was meant to be. in a city of over a million people, how spooky is that? the rest of the night i tried to avoid speaking with a slightly closed mouth so not to show a glinting stud, and eating soup really slowly so the chink of spoon on metal in my mouth didn't give me away. it's not a big deal, but after the shock my mother got when told of my previous tongue bifurcation attempt, understandably i didn't want to her through that again. well, not just yet.

she really like the mother's day gifts, but would still give me a tongue lashing for the piercing. not a word to her if you know her please.

Death Down Under

my mother just returned from oz . she hadn't planned the 3 week visit down under: at the end of january she received a sad call from her eldest sister to say that her brother, Ken, had died. he was 72, the eldest of her siblings.


the neighbours hadn't seem him for a while so the police broke in to his house where he was found in his bed. it's unclear how long he was there for, it could have been up to a couple of weeks. his sister, living in melbourne, thought that it was funny she hadn't heard from him on her birthday, on the 25th january. this was a little weird, but not out of the ordinary, he had been forgetting a few birthdays over the last year.

Kenny was my siblings' favourite uncle when we were children. as a merchant seaman, and a lifelong bachelor, he always gave us more money than we were used to getting as pocket money. he would play silly games folding paper, guessing games and tricks with the prize being cash. he was very generous but more often than not he was plastered. drinking too much does seem to be an affliction that many sailors from the western isles seem to have, but Ken had a few more reasons to drink.

when he was younger he suffered an accident on a building site which left him in a lot of pain. in his mid 50s he had another accident. Kenny was in the cabin of a boat that was being lowered into the water when the cables holding the boat snapped on one side. the men that were on deck fell into the water, but my uncle was thrown around this cabin putting him in hospital once again. he needed metal rods inserted into his arm to rebuild his shattered elbow. drinking for him probably killed the pain to some extent, but also made him a little childlike himself. on the whole he was a likeable drunk, but in his later years, alcohol probably got the better of him.

most people liked Ken. in australia they mostly likely thought he was a crazy scotsman, while on his visits back home, many thought he was a crazy australian. he 'emigrated' to australia many years ago, well that's not quite true. he jumped ship in australia, and hid out in new zealand for a while until the coast was clear. he told me that you probably wouldn't be able to pull the same stunt nowadays, but he got away with it.

my mother, along with another sister, flew out to melbourne, to see to Ken's funeral, put his affairs in order, and clean out his house. so there were 3 of his 5 sisters at the funeral. he was cremated and his ashes have been brought back to be scattered in the western isles. at the cremation ceremony my mother, and her sisters, were wondering about the identity of 3 young girls. could they be long family, a hebridean connection? quite possible as Ken knew a few scottish families out there. actually, no. they turned out to be barmaids from his local watering hole. kudos. my uncle must have been a good tipper. i'm sure he would have appreciated that.

Dramatic Lemur

just because.

Balls to Christmas

so the 12 days of christmas came and went, and so did the feast of the epiphany (and i didn't have a good idea that day). it was time to take down the christmas tree.

last year we didn't put up a tree. in it's place, or so we thought, we placed a wicker-type reindeer, christened, of course, "robbie." we did have a tree this year, but the our little wicker friend also made a reappearance. Bulbgirl had a swedish friend staying over for a week (she was the one who gave us 24 series 6), who informed us that our reindeer was in fact a billy goat. robbie's name quickly changed to billy, although we have in the past called him goldenballs due to the baubles we gave him. bulbcat #3, likes him though she was a little wary at first. she thought he was encroaching on her territory, but eventually got used to going up and giving him a good sniff.



for christmas 2007 we had a small fibreoptic tree. simple but effective, and very hypnotic at night. we didn't have a fairy to stick on the top of it, so i used a figure that i got from ebay, a masters of the universe villain called trapjaw. bat wings were planned but time ran out to make them. not the prettiest of fairies but he did the job.


christmas popped into my head again today after coming across the merry xmas everybody vid by slade. it's strange how it doesn't have the same effect on people after christmas. i suppose that's why they call it seasonal. out with the old and in with the new, looking ahead to valentine's day and easter and all that jazz. i just feel a little cheated as we haven't really had a proper snowfall yet.