Eccentricity

Happy New Year! I am a very pleased person because the Guru has collated all the blogposts so far, from 2008 and 2009, and presented them to me, spell-checked, in a beautiful bound cover. That makes it appropriate for me to start this year with the first of the new series. Mind you, I could have done without the spell-check. I always saw myself as a good speller and even, long ago, earned my living as a proof reader and sub-editor, so I was not best pleased that he did find spells to check. I do, as it happens, even read over the posts, myself and still, it seems, the little blighters escape. Never mind; nothing is fool-proof even if you are both the fool and the proof reader. To the point: since eccentricity is a flavour that permeates all my blogging, it does seem superfluous to give it a post all of its own. However, for want of a more direct nomenclature, eccentricity feels the kindest compromise as things stand. So, I had better tell you how things stand. First, I simply can't believe a month has gone by since I last wrote. I have looked at the sitemeter and, to my horror, see that that have been zero vistors this week. What can I say? Please, do all come back. I can't think how to alert those of you whom I don't automatically alert but I shall just have to hope that in Australia and Canada and wherever else I am privileged to have followers the Wizard of Cyberspace will relent and send waves you can't fail to pick up. Anyway, eccentricity: lately, the scale of my ' I- can't- believe -I -did- that' activities has been increasing to the stage where something official had to be done. You know the sort of thing, keys in the fridge, cheese on the doorstep; telephone a friend and find quite another one in your ear. No, seriously, I put in a rate-buster code for Austria so as to pay only 2 pence a minute, dialled the number and heard the voice of a beloved friend in Ireland, with a totally different rate-buster code, whom I could have reached for 1 pence a minute. In a court of law I would have sworn that I dialled not only the Austrian pre-code but also the Austrian number. The scale of my forgetfulness is just about border-line funny. One more occasion and I'll be over the border before you can say " what was I saying."

What to do? Well, I arranged to have a dementia test with my lovely GP. He seemd sanguine about this, like he has dotty old women taking this test every time he has a surgery. It started rather inauspiciously: I got the time of the appointment wrong. No, don't laugh, although the Doctor had difficulty not to. This mistake left me rather flustered even though he was kind enough to see me anyway. Dear Reader, I scored 29 out of 30. The fluster was my excuse for not holding on to one of three words I was asked to remember as the first question. Other than that, I got everything right, even counting backwards in sevens. Neurotically - I am, you will have judged - I still doubted the veracity of the outcome. I was asked the date. It was the birthday of a close friend so very much in mind. But, temperamental doubts allowing, I did well enough and have been greatly helped since then, when the 'eccentricities' have multiplied, eg leaving my keys in the front door for 12 hours or so until the Guru came back in the middle of the night, (he's young) and found them. He said he couldnt see any blood on the stairs and a lovely silver jug I have was still there so he stopped worrying, wrote me a HUGE stern note to find when I got up in the morning and took himself to bed. But, now, when I do some thing dottissimo, I can comfort myself with knowing I am eccentric, but not demented....yet.