Foiled… at every F*+”£ng turn. 18, July 2007

Today I am mostly foiled by shite! Yes, it’s one of those days when if it can be phaffy, pointless and get in the way of progress it’s there.

First up, my post. It contains my credit card bill. My credit card company has changed hands again so this bill has been “simplified” by the new owners, to make it “easier to understand”. In other words, it’s printed on a bigger piece of paper and it tells me less so that there’s more room for the company to advertise its other products. Where my old one would contain records of all my transactions or – if there had been none – it would say “transactions this month, nil” this one contains no detailed information.

Normally that wouldn’t be a problem were it not for the fact that my bill is for “£-4.95 cr”.

Well what the fuck is that? Minus four pounds ninety five credit is a sodding anomaly.

Which do they mean?

Is my account minus £4.95 or £4.95 in credit? I need to know because if it’s minus I have to pay them something before July 25 or they’ll clobber me with a charge for interest or – if I’m mere pence over – a minimum admin rate of more than the interest would have been.

So I dial the 0845 number knowing I will spend the next 10 minutes choosing options and listening to hold music.

Obviously I’m massively chuffed when the first message is a robotic Scottish lady’s voice telling me they have a really high call volume today. Great, clearly I’m not the only one who can’t read their new dumb-arse bill. Never mind, my call will be answered in 9 minutes, that’s better than some call centres I’ve had to deal with on a good day. I wait while the Vivaldi plays and a similarly (also Scottish) female monotone interrupts the good bits to tell me I can save money by giving them more business.

Eventually after 10 minutes the phone is answered by an even more monotone, droning Scottish voice than the previous two recordings – think the slug in Monsters inc saying “you haven’t done your paperwork” only with less charisma, or (if you do obscure TV) the monotone delivery of the Geography teacher out of the Wonder Years.

She clearly thinks I am barking not to realise that CR is credit even when I explain that I do but that I also understand that a minus in front of it would normally be associated with a deficit.

Oh well, a couple of quid to the four winds to be condescended to by a woman who sounded so bored and was so unresponsive as to appear dead. So much so that I wondered if she actually was dead and being controlled by a computer with its hand stuck up her arse. No… I’m sure your average “vitally challenged” individual would have to be way more animated than she was.  This was just the aftermath of a lobotomy.

Next problem, I have a new phone. I have bluetooth headsets for it, one which is just too much of an Essex earring ever to wear in public and one which is a small ear piece with the main bluetooth brick at the end of a string which can be clipped onto my collar/seat belt or secreted in a top pocket rather than having to be worn on the side of my face so I look like some cyborg twat.

For some reason you have to have a security number to pair your phone and your headset up for the first time. Oh dear, both headsets are more than a year old… you can see this coming can’t you? Yep. Could I find the number? Could I bollocks? Never mind, eventually I found one and 0000 gave me access to the hideous Essex earring. The tasteful one is now almost 7 years old and came from Mr BC so only he knows the whereabouts of the box and in it, the security number. Never mind at least I can use my phone in the car today if I have to, even if it does mean looking like a tosser.

Third thing. Recently I have had a bit of trouble with my short-term memory. I’m not sure whether it’s down to a bonk on the head I received in January (see here for details) or hormones – it’s like it was when I was pregnant only I’m not pregnant… it could be some kind of infection, you know, crap in the blood making concentration a bit tricky – it did clear up for a month or two after the BV incident.

Whatever it is, it’s divorcing me alarmingly from reality. It’s as if I’m wearing a candyfloss crash helmet. Yes, nothing is quite… real. Thinking, concentrating, is physically… well… not painful exactly but it makes my head feel numb, weak even, itchy – but itchy on the inside…

During the day, I feel the way you do when you get up in the middle of the night to go to the bog, you know when your body makes its way to the loo on autopilot because really, your brain’s still asleep. It’s like that, only in the middle of the day after 5 cups of coffee… it’s as if I never truly wake up.

I know I’m not explaining it very well and more to the point, I have always been fairly scatty and vague. However, I’ve been able to cope with my vagueness until now. Now, vagueness management stuff that’s worked for me for almost 40 years is failing. My brain is blunt. I am losing my edge.

Obviously, because I have more imagination than sense, I’m scared I have a brain tumor, early dementia (please, god, no) – I’m nearly 40 after all – internal bleeding/bruising from pulling that pull-up bar down (and going with it) in January or something wrong with an important internal organ… kidneys, pancreas, something like that. Alternatively and most likely, it’s hormones and the only way to sort it out will be to go on the pill – just what I want when I’m trying for a baby – until everything settles down again.

Is it scary? Yep. So after worrying about it for six months on or off but being too frightened to go to the doctor in case it was something really grim and of course, forgetting to mention it when I went about anything else, I decided, this morning, that I would book an appointment and sort it out once and for all. The conversation went something like this – obviously the bits in italics are the things I thought rather than said.

“Hello, I would like to book a doctor’s appointment…” …because I appear to be losing my marbles.

“I’m terribly sorry we can’t book any appointments today, our computer system has gone down. Can you call back tomorrow?”

“No! You don’t understand! I can’t call back tomorrow, I’m having problems with my short term memory! I won’t fricking REMEMBER to call you toSODDINGmorrow because I’m losing my fucking mind!” Said my brain.

Luckily it came out of my mouth as.

“Yeh, sure, no worries. Bye.”

“Bye.”