Heart lines

I'm finding it hard to frame the grief I'm feeling.

When my grandma, Rosie, died, her health declined very quickly. She was only meant to be in the hospice for two weeks so she could sort her medication out and get back on her feet, but she died eleven days after admission. I was working a lot at the time and so didn't visit during the first week but sent my love across, when I was sure she would be out and home again soon. When my mum told me she wouldn't be going home, I started to visit. The change was terrifying. I'd seen my grandma ill, she had breast cancer twice and beat it both times, but now she looked shrunken in, she barely recognised anyone and the nurses were being too kind, too soft-spoken. I'd just got home from school (1st of February 2010, 4.15pm) when mum called me to say she'd died, and I had to go pick my sister up from school and tell her the news. I can't remember how I broke it to her but I know I wasn't kind. My only excuse was that I now know that since having seizure the previous summer, I'd been suffering from severe depression but wouldn't be diagnosed until two months after my grandma died.  

She was comfortable and sleepy and loved when she died. I took the time off school to arrange the funeral and never went back. Helping with the funeral planning was cathartic. There's something very practical about people in the funeral and death certificate business. Closing all her accounts, settling debts, talking to the florist and drinking cups of tea whilst choosing a coffin helped in the process of letting go. I felt collected enough to view her body, but ended up being held onto by my two aunts, sobbing uncontrollably in the family room at the hospice that is meant for that kind of thing.  

The hilarity of the funeral, the vulcan death stare the vicar gave me when my sister announced too loud that I had refused to wear a cross, the same vicar's robes going missing, the wrong song being played... my grandma would have howled at our pitiful attempt to be formal. Clearing out grandma's house, tearing out and refitting the kitchen, writing "NICOLE IS A LOVE MACHINE" on the wall before repainting, spreading her ashes on a field and accidentally inhaling most of it when the wind blew the wrong way, it all helped me say goodbye to my grandma.   And I'm writing this now, just under five years later, because my other grandma, Thelma, has terminal liver and bowel cancer and there's nothing I, or anyone else, can do.  

I've known for a few months now, and whilst I'm relieved she chose to live it out as comfortably as she could rather than doing chemotherapy, and that the doctor seems to think she has a while left yet, this long, protracted way of going is in many ways crueller for those who have to watch it.   And selfishly I'm at a point now where big life events are about to happen and I want her to be there. And so the questions are, will she be at my graduation? Will I be able to tell her I've applied to another uni? Should I not tell her in case I don't get in? Have I got my last Christmas card from her? I didn't want to open it. My children are never going to meet her, and she's wonderful.  

Every time my mind takes me down a morbid path I have to tell myself over and over that I'm not the one that is dying, and that there is a time to grieve but it is not now, while she's still here and alive and kicking. And that she doesn't want us to be morose. The jokes my uncle makes about expiry dates when he takes my grandma shopping and the blasé way in which my mum refers to her illness makes me feel that I should have accepted it by now and not cringe whenever it is mentioned. And in many ways I have accepted it, and it is just part of the inevitable, but I'm still allowed to want my grandma to stay, surely? I'm sure jokes and blunt statements help them ease the process, but for me it just underlines the loss. I don't know how to deal with what I'm feeling. I don't know how to process this grief. I don't know how to show it. Right now I'm just bearing an unbearable thing, and making it bearable.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."

Doodle doo.

I need to talk about my dog. I slipped a disc working at the comedy club and I can't get to my mum's house to see him, and I miss his floofy face.

Barney, Barney Bear, is a goldendoodle. He's a cross between a poodle and a golden retriever. The name goldendoodle is daft but it was either that or Poo Retriever, and he hasn't learned that trick (thank god).

When we went to look at puppies at a lovely lady's farmhouse, Barney was one of six gorgeous little fluffballs. Barney was the fluffiest, with the lightest fur. He was the first puppy I held and I was adamant that he was the one. He was also deceptively mellow, and when him and one of his brothers ate a poo off the ground whilst the breeder wasn't looking, I covered for him. He was my little comrade.

Me and Bear have an understanding. I get to sit, plait his fur and grumble and in return he gets an unending supply of treats. And braids.

He's mental. He's great with the kids and babies in the family. He has claimed sole ownership of my sister. He doesn't like potatoes but if you offer him one he'll act really happy about it then dispose of it when you aren't looking. He's a polite dog. He is also so fluffy he absorbs water, mud and smaller dogs like a sponge. And he does a world-class impression of Davy Jones when he's wet (will dig out a picture at some point).

And his fur smells of biscuits.

Je t'aime, little cookie dog!

The next stage

I think that if there was any question about whether I'm in the right industry,  the past two days would have answered it.

I'm exhausted,  I ache, I spent yesterday on a construction site and today in a warehouse (full of literally thousands of bottles of Vimto...)  building stages and taking names.

It's a physically exhausting process. And one that is almost never seen in public. I feel like I should document it because it really is an incredible process, and a fantastic world to be a part of. After the event brief, after the design and after the manufacture comes the test build which is what I've been working on.

Yesterday I spent all day hauling 60kg steel stage decks around a building yard, making scaffold structures and and fitting the stage together way above my head. The work is so intense I could feel the pressure on the individual vetabrae of my spine, and later our after-uni pool game took far too long because no one could bend down.  I went over to my mum's house and dozed off with/on my dog before I'd even taken my hard hat off.

 

Today was similar.  We were in a huge, cavernous warehouse building a stage for Tiny Tempah's tour. When people see the stage in summer it will just look decorative,  but again, hundreds of work hours, many many tonnes of staging, many expletives expelled. One hour in, I trapped my thumb in some scaffolding,  later, I got a metal splinter down the side of my hand, slammed my knee into a solid hunk of metal, broke a nail and went over on my ankle. Not so much an occupational hazard as me just being hungry.

But I love it.  I love the hard work and the noise and the stress of working to a very immediate deadline all the time. I love the pre-show nerves, being able to perform in my own way for thousands of people without having to go onstage. I also love the banter that can only exist between people who have been working for 18 hours solid at 3am.

Also we learnt how to put a staircase together on live TV in under a minute. I'm not even joking!

The Niece Acquisition

Today was a funny old day.

13th of March,  the birthday of my newest niece, Evie. I've written about her older brother and sisters before so it's fair to write about Evie too.

Today I have spent 4 hours sat in traffic on the A64.

Today I learnt how to set up and operate scissors lifts and star traps (magical hydraulic lifts that make people appear up out of the stage).

Today I ate a shameful amount of Doritos.

Today I also realised that someone in the group really doesn't like me.  And that's just fine because he's annoying. 

Today is a good day because The Big Bang Theory was renewed for three more seasons.

And today Evie was born. And she's tiny, and snuggly, and already looks confused.

And in the morning I'm going round for cuddles and photos.

And that's what tomorrow is.

Will be there from your first day to my last, little noodle!

Boop

Busy busy busy!

Ish. The audio module is over! Sort of. I have 2 assignments to do but now at least I don't have to sit in classes with no understanding whatsoever.

Last week I got an email through asking me to create a CV and a video to accompany it. And like most people on my course I was a bit apprehensive about having a video of me begging for a job floating around on YouTube. However I have no problem presenting you all with the leftover footage.

Presenting!

The CV Blooper Reel

What I've done

So Monday was just a day sat in the stadium full of admin and no heating whatsoever. Tuesday was an absolute disgrace. I was cautiously optimistic that I was actually absorbing the information and breaking down whatever barrier in my head was stopping me from really understanding audio, Tuesday was just one long horrible day. First we all drove out to the nearest shopping park to get lunch and the people who I went there with drove off and left me there, an hour's walk away from the stadium. Then when I got back it was straight back into audio physics and theory and it was all going fine until the tutor started talking about physical wavelength. I was struggling to get my head around it and everyone else was getting it and making calculations based on it and I couldn't understand how. Out of 80 people, when asked if everyone understood I was the only person who didn't. And I totally missed the next section on harmonics because I was trying not to cry.

I had a sort of dismal revelation at the same time. I really wanted someone to comfort me at the time. I was miserable with it, and I was sat in a room full of people I don't really know that well and I've lost contact with most of my school/college friends, the rest of which are distributed across the country at university somewhere. So I didn't get a hug and I realised I have to man up. Which is crap. I want a hug. I like hugs.

Two days have passed and really focussing, sitting right at the front and asking a question every five minutes and getting dirty looks and very loud huffing noises from the rest of my class has actually allowed me to understand the parts of audio I didn't understand a bit better. I have a tentative grasp on it. We'll see if it holds tomorrow when I have six hours of dynamics, effects and a lecture on microphones (?!) when it gets all complicated again.

I was grumbling to my step-dad about how much I'm struggling with this part of the course, and he's laid out the fact that I set myself ridiculously high standards to work to. In my first assignment I got 70% and was gutted. Turns out that's a First, and I still think that I could have done better. And I'm beating myself up because I don't fully understand what I'm being told about audio, something I have no interest in going into anyway. But I really need to know. It's £5995 a year to be there, it would be stupid (I think) to write off an entire subject.

I don't think I'm doing the university thing properly. I just don't have it in me to go out, go mental and walk around with a traffic cone on my head. I have assignments, I have deadlines. And I want to do well because that's pretty much what I do.

We'll see what tomorrow brings. I'm back at work for the first time in six weeks tomorrow night. I can't wait to get back to lighting bands again. Something that comes naturally!

Oh nooooo...

Hello. My name is Nicole and I am 20-and-three-quarters years old.

And I don't want to go to school (err... university) tomorrow.

I am a lighting person. Give me a stage and I will light it up beautifully. Or I will try to. But tomorrow is the first day of a 4-week module on audio. And I can't stand audio. Even though I've studied it for years, I dont get it. I can have it spoon fed to me and I still can't wrap my mind around it, and it frustrates me no end. I find the whole thing stressful and upsetting.  I had a bit of hope that this time round it would be easier because they're starting from scratch but I had a nine-hour class on audio mixing software last week and I had to sneak off for a cheeky cigarette afterwards, I was that aggravated. And that was just one day.

I'm already miserable with it. My books arrived for this module the other day and just scanning through, with everything all broken down and explained,  made no sense in my head.  It feels like usually my brain is a sponge for information and currently it just feels like a rock.

I haven't been this edgy about going to an educational establishment since the days of 12 word spelling tests.

B ig
E lephants
C an't
A lways
U se
S mall
E xits

Yeah I can spell.