'I can definitely recommend vibrating furniture as a cure for zombiism'

Columnist Di Wades writes about celebrating her birthday and feeling all shook up.
Di WadeDi Wade
Di Wade

It’s been a funny old month, as assorted characters might have said.

My first action of November was to drag myself to bed a minute past midnight having fallen asleep during You’re Fired, and I felt as evil as a lingering Halloween creature subsequently getting ready for work on just two hours’ sleep.

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However, I can definitely recommend vibrating furniture as a cure for zombiism.

Sitting on the bed, minding my own business and drying my hair, it took me several seconds to deduce the source of the sudden earthquake beneath me, my final concession that at least the vibrating smoke alarm appeared to be working preceding reflexive action of which I should not have thought myself capable.

Ripping the hairdryer from its socket, I hurtled downstairs as though perfectly knowing what I should do with the most towering inferno.

In fact, with meagre sight and a non-existent sense of smell, even finding nothing failed to satisfy, and I ultimately left for work, (hair still streaming like Niagara Falls), unconvinced that there wasn’t something quietly smoking or sizzling behind me.

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November 2 seemed to go on forever, and all but ended, finally, in a suicide pact between myself and the computer technician with whom I’d been closeted all day, and to no avail but our mutual desire for grievous bodily harm against the machine at the centre of it all.

November 3, being not merely a Saturday, but my birthday, represented a better proposition.

Opening the door to what should have been the friend with whom I was lunching out, I was momentarily disconcerted to find her having been beaten by a short head by two completely unrelated and unexpected friends, resulting moments later in a chorus of Happy Birthday in three different keys round a flaming chocolate cake the size of Wales.

It was a magical moment, my surprise guests soon after departing by way of leaving the field to my lunch companion, one throwing over her shoulder en route the information that she had left her present by the elephant..

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This referred to the product of a rainy Sunday afternoon at the Glazey Days Creative Cafe in Fleetwood.

However, I DO find myself amid the unlikeliest conversations.

There was the one with my mum about her gift of a bin which was actually a plant pot – while only yesterday, a friend’s account of unknowingly speaking to Reginald Dixon’s daughter and thus being nonplussed by her references to her father’s organ, (impressive though this appeared to be), made for an unsteady walk home for at least one of us.

My birthday was similarly entertaining besides being utterly warm, wonderful and affirming, and I got up next day with only positive thoughts.

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Which lasted until my computer, then TV packed up, kick-starting such a gremlin-dominated week that November 11 saw me hastening to Edinburgh for two days of unadulterated culture.

So a distinctly mixed month, and I wait with interest to see what December brings...ho ho ho.