Taxidermal Tiger

On my last count it has been 4 weeks since I last wiped the bottom of an elderly person. The lack of employment (self-imposed) has turned me into a bit of a lunatic. The lunacy can be linked to a bout of acute procrastination as I attempt to: 1) do an on-line self-assessment tax return 2) convince the British Home Office to give me the hallowed red passport whilst 3) spending some quality time with the Husband before 4) re-embarking on my chosen career path as a geriatric au pair (the thought of phoning the Agency for a new Mrs PantyHead has given me the FEAR).

To put my levels of Procrastination in perspective; last week I started the day by breakfasting on cold Chinese pork balls, followed by a 9.30am viewing of a Tonga vs. All Blacks Rugby match. I threw myself heartily into the violence of the game with a lot of dramatic fist pumping and shouting disparaging comments at the TV, like “Vat hom Fluffy!”* (Get him Fluffy!) (In my defence it is the Rugby World Cup, one is allowed to get a bit excited). The day proceeded along its weird trajectory as I found myself wandering around the Edinburgh museum with the Husband and our friend, Dandy Ben. What should have been an educational outing turned into the Husband obsessively pointing out the genitalia of a variety of stuffed animals. We then landed up in the pub, where the Husband befriended a woman who was a real taxidermist and had a taxidermic kitten as a keyring on her handbag.

Perhaps it was the shock of seeing the petrified cat, or the tequila, but the evening took the unexpected turn when I found myself wailing into my pint that my marriage was broken. Might I add this scene involved the maximum amount of snot, trane* (tears) and histrionics, including dramatic proclamations of “No it will not be alright, it’s broken I tell you, BROKEN!” If there had been a talent scout in the room I might have scooped an Oscar for best actress in a leading dramatic role. Luckily the Husband had already tottered home when I had a wee drizz (as in drizzle) at the bar and my cries fell upon the sympathetic ears of the sister-in-law, Dandy Ben and the rest of the Edinburgh publican community.

The good news is that my marriage isn’t broken, although my head certainly was the following day. I was, in retrospect, just having a mini-melt down. I’ve come to the conclusion I’m a little stressed.

And my bureaucratic nightmare is ongoing. The Tax office is like a mean ex-boyfriend stringing out our failing relationship – heated exchanges, long and expensive phone calls, waiting days/weeks for a sign. All finally culminating in tears and a feeling not dissimilar to sodomy.

All day I obsess about tax, the passport, swearing allegiance to good Old Queen Lizzy. At night my sleep is punctuated by horrible dreams in which a giant pen with an evil chuckle chases me round and round for hours, or I suddenly find myself back in school woefully unprepared for a science test. The school dreams are the worst as the flash back includes a true-to-life vision of me, aged 13 – spotty T-zone, terrible boy-cut hair and an impressive glittering mouth of orthodontics. In one dream, mid- Science test, an orthodontic-elastic breaks free from my braced tooth and hits my friend Jo* square in the eye, causing me to be sent to the Headmistresses office in a flood of tears. *As an aside Jo was a real life school chum who won the nickname of ‘Joconut’ after a particularly bad bowl haircut left her sporting what appeared to be a halved coconut balancing on her head.

But this week I’ve turned a corner. For one thing I’m eternally glad that I’m no longer 13 with braces sitting through endless Chemical Equations. Instead I’m a woman in her prime filling her procrastination with a healthy bit of 9-5 admin work for the sister-in-law (because your family still love you even if you did get a little dronk vir driet after a few tequilas). Today I even had a particularly pleasant exchange with an anonymous man at the end of the Tax Helpline; I think he’s inline for the god parentage of my unborn children.