Monday 28 March 2011

Flirty business.

‘So do you notice people staring at them?’ asked my mate Matt as we sat drinking G&Ts on the South Bank. ‘Sorry to so crudely drop your norks into conversation like that, dude. I’m just intrigued...’
‘Mate, are you kidding? I love an opportunity to talk about these puppies.’
‘Thought you might.’
‘And yeah, y’know. I s’pose I’ve caught a couple of folk having a sneaky look.’
‘Awesome.’
‘Not, like, random people on the street or owt – at least not that I’ve noticed, anyway – just those who know about them.’
‘But do you mind?’
‘Hell no. I mean, I’ve not exactly been quiet about all this, have I? I can hardly begrudge anyone a bit of a gawp.’
Matt nodded, keeping his eyes firmly above shoulder level – which brought me to another conclusion. ‘And besides, it’s not like they’re amazing tits that’d get stared at in bars or stuff. To anyone else, they’re just the same as my old’uns.’
‘Just with a bit less gravity,’ he added.
‘Exactly,’ I concurred. ‘Anyway, I’m saving the Jordan-job til these need replacing. I’m going to treat myself to massive waps for my 40th.’
‘Sounds more like a birthday treat for P, if you ask me.’

Now, as much as I’m sure my husband wouldn’t exactly stage a protest at the thought of a larger-chested wife, I doubt whether he (let alone I) would welcome the attention that a double-D’d me would encourage. Not that a fuller cleavage would somehow turn me into Victoria’s Secret catalogue material, you understand. (Hell, I doubt I’d even be Stannah Stairlift catalogue material.) What I mean is that I suspect P would rather I remain for his eyes only.

That said, there have been a few examples to the contrary just recently. I’m not sure whether it’s been through truth or through wanting to boost my confidence (oh who am I kidding, of course it’s the latter) but P has been doing a fair bit of the hey-he-just-looked-at-you stuff of late. The most recent was when we were stuck in traffic on Putney Bridge on our way home from work last week.
‘That bloke stared at you just then.’
‘Which bloke?’ I said, looking up from the tweet I was posting from my phone. (There could be a parade of can-can girls dancing their way south of the river every night and I’d miss them because of Twitter.)
‘That bloke. Crossing the road.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Course I’m sure. Had a proper good look, he did.’
‘Oh.’
‘So I stared back at him.’
‘Right. Thanks.’
‘It annoys me, that,’ huffed P.
‘What, blokes staring?’
‘No. You never noticing,’ he said.

P’s right; I don’t notice. Firstly because I tend to get blinded by any light that doesn’t come from my iPhone. Secondly because, well, why would I? But chiefly because, if we’re being honest, there’s nothing to notice in the first place and P is a big fibber. A lovely, considerate fibber, mind you, but a fibber nonetheless.

Or, at least, I thought he was until a few days later, when – unless I imagined it (which is a distinct possibility) – I think I got flirted with. Twice. Actually I know the second occasion was a flirt. Unless, of course, the man who waved at me from the opposite underground escalator was just a lunatic. Or had a lazy eye and was waving at someone else. Or was someone I’ve forgotten I know, in which case he probably turned his wave into a wanker gesture upon being met with my squirm/look away two-step.

The first occasion I’m less sure about. It was in Eat, where my lunchtime queue for a falafel wrap and a bag of grapes (surely the least sexy meal known to man) turned into an ‘are you eating that lunch on your own?/hopefully see you again tomorrow’ couplet. While the demi-flirt took place, my mind was elsewhere – most likely totting up ProPoints – and so it wasn’t until walking out onto Golden Square that I did the double-take. My first instinct (okay, second – after ‘that must be what they’re trained to say’) was to run back in, skip the cappuccino-line and squeal ‘Nononono! Sorry! My fault! I’m married, see?’ while pointing furiously at my ring-finger like Beyonce on fast-forward.

Just as my reaction to any compliment is ‘but it was only six quid’/‘nah, I just disguise it well’/‘oh but you should see this hole under the armpit’, my response to being flirted with is to immediately correct the flirter with a ‘have you got something in your eye?’ or a ‘have you met my friend?’ or an ‘I’m so sorry, I should’ve been holding aloft a copy of my wedding certificate instead of the Metro’. Because, as we all know, 93% of all underground flirting situations result in an immediate, public hump on the District Line.

I should make it clear at this point that I’ve definitely done more flirting than I’ve had done back to me. The fact that I’m writing about two episodes of flirting should not lead you to conclude that this is a regular occurrence, but rather that I’m stoked to finally have an incident I can easily bring to mind. Because, if we’re levelling with each other here, the truth is that – in all situations but these two – I tend to be more flirter than flirtee. Not in a Mercedes from Hollyoaks sense or a Charlotte from Sex & The City sense or even a Barbara Windsor in Carry On sense – but more, I think, in a Rita Sullivan from Coronation Street sense. I’m a friendly flirter, see; the kind that, yes, tends to blush in the presence of a handsome chap, but who’s more than happy where she is, thank you very much – not that it makes her averse to the odd wink.

Besides, friendly flirting (but not, I hasten to add, responsive flirting) is in my genes, as P often reminds me. ‘You and your Mum are as bad as each other,’ he says. ‘You only need to look at how you each behave in front of your surgeons.’ If ever evidence were needed to prove P’s point, Mum’s identikit responses to her own Smiley Surgeon – every bit as girlish and giggly and eyelash-fluttering as mine – are surely it.

There’s no denying it: in me and Mum – and Nan before us – the flirt gene is every bit as unshakable as the Other Gene we’ve subsequently discovered. (Upon meeting P, both Mum and Nan’s – entirely separate – reactions were to grin, raise their eyebrows and say ‘Oooh, he’s handsome, isn’t he?’) Hence, when I was a teenager, Nan and Grandad’s house would be the perfect testing ground for new boyfriends – if Nan kept on her pinny and failed to turn down the volume on Neighbours, it was doomed. If she blushed and offered them a biscuit, you knew it was a goer. (But what really sealed the deal was if Grandad gave up his favourite armchair – a thing he only ever did for P. I expect Dad opened up a wedding savings account that very day.)

Given that I’m more often than not on the giving (rather than receiving) side of flirting, then, it’s odd that my husband becomes annoyed not about me flashing toothy grins at doctors/builders/bar staff/traffic wardens, but about my failure to notice when someone does the same to me. Not that he’ll have much to get annoyed about any more, mind. Because, frankly, had it not been for P’s comment in the car (and Matt’s comment in the bar) I seriously doubt whether flirting would have been on my radar enough to have noticed that week’s subsequent incidences. Add to that my new rack and the swagger that comes with it, and I’m a lost cause. So if you catch me winking in your direction this spring, don’t just blame it on the genes, but on the two men responsible for reawakening them: the one who put a ring on it, and the one who made me boobylicious. They’ve created a monster.


Friday 18 March 2011

Yay me.

It’s not often I give myself credit for stuff, largely because it makes me feel horribly uncomfortable to do so. Frankly, I blame Robbie Williams: the quintessential cautionary tale of what happens when you start to believe your own hype. Hence you’ll rarely catch me patting my back, lest I then find myself getting a tattoo of my own initials, referring to myself in the third person or dating Geri Halliwell.

It’s with more than a little trepidation, then, that I’m about to break with tradition and admit to having done something right. I’ll preface this by saying that the right thing I did was more by accident than design – and I didn’t realise until recently that I’d even done it in the first place – but, sod it: I made a smart move and I’m aware that I sound like a pretentious egotist not afraid to say it. It’s very simple, really: since the moment I was diagnosed with The Bullshit, I’ve never allowed anybody to see me looking ill.

That might not sound like much of an achievement, but allow me to explain. See, for so long, painting a face/outfit/attitude over the rather less grey/smart/chirpy stuff underneath was simply about wanting people to see me as Just Me. Not Cancer Me or Ill Me or Weak Me. Just Me. (Slippery slope into third person begins here…) As far as I was concerned, it was a short-term solution to a short-term problem; a way of sparing my – and everyone else’s – blushes. But, lately, I’ve come to realise that this accidentally genius tactic has worked in far bigger ways than just saving me from embarrassment. Because, actually – if you’ll forgive me speaking on behalf of everyone I know – I really don’t think that anybody actually does see me as ‘the one who had cancer’.

In many ways, that happening has been my biggest fear in all of this. Well, aside from the obvious. (‘The obvious’ being never getting to meet Dave Grohl.) The thing is, I can think of few things worse than forever being known as ‘the ill one’. It’d be like having a Spice Girl name that you can never shake. (Right now I’m having awful visions of a Toys R Us filled with unsold Cancer Spice dolls.)

Not that I could have blamed anyone but myself if it had happened, of course – I mean, I may have kept my ill look (in which I include my post-surgery look) firmly behind closed doors to anyone who wasn’t contractually or familially obliged to witness it, but I can’t exactly claim to have hidden myself away and quietly got on with things, instead choosing to broadcast my every symptom, appointment and bowel movement to the internet. But ultimately – for me at least – there’s a difference between how I want the world at large to see me, and how I want my mates to see me. In a wider sense, I’m proud to call myself a breast-cancer survivor – just as I’m proud to call myself a writer and a wife and a Derby County supporter (sometimes) – but it would be just plain weird if that were how my friends and family were to see me.

I’ve been back in the office again lately – after a somewhat stop-start year of working from home while having, and recovering from, surgery – and it’s that which has cemented my opinion that my steadfast refusal to reveal my ill face has paid off.
‘But you look so well!’ people say.
‘Aha!’ I think. ‘You should have seen me last week. Foiled again!’ (I’ve long fancied myself as a Scooby Doo villain.)
And then, once the yes-I’m-fine-thank-you stuff is done, we get on with it; whether ‘it’ is a chat about last night’s episode of Jersey Shore, or figuring out the best way to meet the requests of a client, or taking the piss about my terrible record of tea-making. And it’s the most wonderful thing in the world.

After surveying my newly reconstructed boob at my recent post-op appointment, Stunning Surgeon sat back at her desk, reclined in her chair, and, with a satisfied smile, told me: ‘Now go and live your life’.
‘We don’t need to see you now for another three months,’ she said.
‘Three months? Blimey,’ I answered, before completely abandoning all think-before-you-speak pretences with: ‘But what will you all be doing in the meantime?’ (I know. As if I’m their only patient.)
‘We’re doing a 10-year audit, actually,’ she revealed. ‘In fact, I wanted to tell you something – of all the women in your position that he…’ (‘he’ being Smiley Surgeon) ‘…has operated on in the last ten years, we haven’t had a single incidence of recurrence.’
‘And you’re not going to be the first one,’ added a finger-pointing Always-Right Cancer Nurse, more as a demand than a reassurance.

My elatedly stunned silence was interrupted by the arrival of The Man Himself.
‘So! Lisa!’ he beamed, ‘I hear you’re pleased with the reconstruction!’
‘SO delighted. SO, SO delighted,’ I enthused. ‘From the moment I opened my eyes I just knew it was perfect.’ (I figured it was only fair to lay it on thick, given the way I’d dissed his handiwork in our last appointment.)
‘I did think that you looked particularly happy on your way back down the corridor,’ he said.
‘I was! As soon as I woke up, I asked the nurse in recovery if I could have a look at it.’
‘Excellent.’
‘Genuinely, though,’ I gushed, as P burned stop-embarrassing-yourself stares into the back of my head, ‘I just can’t ever thank you enough for everything you’ve done for me.’

What followed was one of those awkward little moments that you replay in your head for years, like the time I accidentally addressed my super-scary MD as ‘Kev’, or the night I absent-mindedly waved off a boy I’d kissed at my 12th birthday party with the words ‘Bye! Love you!’ as he climbed into his Dad’s car.
‘Aww,’ said Smiley Surgeon, extending his arm in a way that suggested he was about to rub me on the shoulder… but it turned out he was standing about five inches too far away to reach, and so missed, and hurriedly tucked his hand into his pocket. But that, I figured, was as close as we’re ever going to come to a hug. And since the intent to shoulder-pat was most definitely there, I took the moment lovingly in my palm, stashed it away in my heart in a little drawer marked ‘cherish’, and merrily left the hospital to ‘go and live my life’.

But it wasn’t just the contentment at my new tit, or the reuniting with my colleagues, or the incomparably comforting revelation of Stunning Surgeon that brought about a feeling of tentative finality to my latest dalliance with all things Bullshit – it was the behaviour of the people around me. The flowers have stopped being delivered. The cards have stopped arriving. The good-luck-with-surgery texts and how-did-it-go phonecalls have dwindled. The Facebook wall has fallen quiet. The Twitter concern has settled down. In another world, these might be the kind of things you’d whinge about. But not in this.

I’m sure that, at some point, a transition was made from Cancer Me to Just Me. But the beauty is, I’ve got no idea when it took place. I don’t know if it happened when I kicked the ass of the odds with preventative surgery, or before the final tweak to my new boob. Or even if it never happened at all and was only in my head. There was no sudden realisation; there was no moment of truth; there was no fanfare. Somewhere along the line, it just happened. (It’s not often I’ll disagree with Neil Young, but – as far as I’m concerned – it’s better to fade away than to burn out.) But however it came to be, I can’t deny that something lately has changed and, for the first time in a long time, I’ve felt more like Lisa Lynch me.

Friday 11 March 2011

O brother, here art thou!

I’ve been feeling a bit guilty about the welcome message on this blog. That bit on the right there. The bit that bangs on about moving on from The Bullshit and writing about other stuff instead. The bit that you’d be right in thinking I’d rather reneged on.

Nobody’s more disappointed than I am that Bullshit-based stuff has had to take over again of late but, bugger it, that’s just the way it is. And actually, it’s taken over a bit more than I might have let on. You’ve heard about Mum’s surgery and my surgery and all that’s come with it (and apologies, but you’ll hear a bit more yet in my next post), but what I haven’t yet blogged about is something else that happened lately. Something that I haven’t been quite sure how to approach. And so, instead of attempting a ham-fisted commentary of something about which I’m not best placed to write, I’m instead handing over to the person concerned: my brother.

Long-time readers will have heard a lot about Jamie: the strong, daft, pragmatic light relief to The Bullshit’s lunacy. I’ll leave this story to him to tell but, before he does, I just want to make it clear that, despite the utter pisser of what he’s recently discovered, I’m not in the least bit worried about him. Because, believe me, the force is strong in this one.

And so, dear reader, here – following in the footsteps of my guest-posting husband (but with added cringe-pics) – is the finest arseface the world has ever known: my brother Jamie.


So. My sister asked me to join her ranks of guest-bloggers, which means I get to follow Dave (P to you guys). No pressure, then. It’s not like Dave’s post was met with worldwide admiration or owt. But when the text came through from Doofus (Lisa to you guys) asking if I was up for it, it would have been wrong of me to tell her to piss off. Even as much as I love telling her to piss off.

Before I go on to spout shit about the topic that Sis asked if I’d write about, it seems fitting to spout shit about myself first. By way of introduction, then, if you lovely people haven’t guessed it already I’m Lisa’s brother, James. You might know me as Jamie or Arseface or – my personal favourite from Sis’s book – Lisa’s ‘brilliant, brilliant brother’… and I’m not in the business of arguing with that. If you follow me on Twitter (and if you don’t, @JamesMcFarlane is severely lacking behind Sis in the followers stakes – nudge nudge, wink wink!) then you’ll have gathered that I like football (but hate football fans), have an unhealthy obsession with American football and boxing, would live on pizza and curry if I could, and don’t really see eye to eye with that slag of a cat Sgt Pepper. (Way to get the readers on side, arseface – LL.)

Anyway, the reason The Sis asked me to write a post was to talk about what I like to call ‘This BRCA-2 Bollocks’. Granted, it’s not as catchy as ‘The Bullshit’ but it’s the best I can do (I am dyslexic after all; words aren’t supposed to be my strong point). You kids know the history... Lisa gets cancer (baaastard); then finds out she carries the BRCA-2 gene which a) puts her at a high risk of recurrence and b) means the initial diagnosis wasn’t so much of a fluke (baaastard); the shit hits the fan again when Mum discovers she too has the gene (baaastard); Lisa and Mum have a competition to see who can have the most preventative surgery in a six-month period… yada, yada, yada. After all of that, the rest of the family decided that it was best that we all got tested to see if we had the gene too but, me being me, I took forever to get round to it, mainly because it involved a blood test and I am what can only be described as a wimp.

My results day was a few weeks ago so me and Leanne (my awesomely awesome wife) cheerily went along, optimistically sat down in the consultation room… and was told that I too carried the BRCA-2 gene. (I’ll leave it to this link to explain what that means.)

I was genuinely convinced in the build-up to getting the results that I wouldn’t have the gene. Why? I have absolutely no idea. But that was my strong (and royally wrong) gut feeling, hence I was (and still am, I guess) pretty fucked off about it. (Apologies – I like to think I don’t completely share my sister’s potty mouth but I needed to emphasise just how fucked off I was, and the only suitable word in such a situation is indeed ‘fucked’. So there.) What does it mean for me in a practical sense? Well, not as much as it did for Sis and Mum – after all I don’t have boobs (contrary to popular belief) or ovaries to get shipped out of my body in order to help reduce my risk of contracting The Bullshit. I guess for me, then, I can just get on with life a bit more, albeit knowing that I have a higher risk of contracting The Bullshit in later life than your average Joe.

I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t expecting me to have the gene. Big Dave (Dad to you guys) admitted to me after my results (when we were on a father-and-son away-day to watch Derby County at glorious Scunthorpe) that he thought that I’d be the lucky one, and I see his point. The law of averages should have meant that this BRCA-2 bollocks would pass me by. And so I think the reason I was so fucked off was that, if I didn’t have the gene, we could all draw a line under the whole cancer bollocks and get on with life. We can still get on with it now, of course, but we’ll just have to get on with it with a little cloud hanging over us; just as a nasty reminder that cancer is still an utter baaastard.

Me and my awesomely awesome wife are hoping to knock out some kids pretty soon and, if we’re lucky enough to be successful, there is obviously a 50/50 chance that any of our nippers could get the gene too – and so the cycle continues... Is that going to stop us wanting a family of our own? Absobloodylutely not. Cancer can take over your life at the time that it directly affects you and your family (and, yes, beyond), but I’m buggered if I’m going to let the dickhead (and let’s be honest, if cancer were a person it would be a proper dickhead) take over my life and the decisions I make at a moment when anyone in my life hasn’t actually got it. I’m not trying to sound all macho (anyone who has met me would cry laughing at that thought) and say that my family’s recent Bullshit shenanigans – or my recent BRCA-2 bollocks – hasn’t affected me. OF COURSE it has, and at times it still will. I’d also be lying if I didn’t say that my recent BRCA-2 result has left me thinking that I’ll be spending my life looking over my shoulder, waiting for the dickhead to catch me up and open up a can of whoop-ass on me. But, like I said, I’m buggered if I’m going to let it take over mine and my family’s life, and the lives of any baby arsefaces that me and the awesomely awesome wife may have.

Let’s be honest, though. As fucked off as I may be, my BRCA-2 findings pale into insignificance compared to the family’s recent Bullshit. Is it worse than anything that Doofus has been through since first being diagnosed? Is it bollocks. Is it worse than seeing your Mum go through two bouts of major surgery in a short space of time to reduce her risk of getting cancer? Is it bollocks. I’ve not been told I have cancer. I’ve just been told that there’s a chance I might get it in the future. Any one of us might get it, of course – it’s just that my might is a bit more likely. On the flip side, I might not get it at all – so why spend my life worrying that I will?

Lately, I’ve had some issues with feeling guilty about various predicaments in which I have found myself in recent months. And this is another one of those moments. I’m annoyed about something that isn’t even a patch on what happened to Sis – or Mum, for that matter. I’ve also felt guilty for being upset about losing my job last July (just for the record, I finally started a new one last week... and a better one too!) because, again, it’s nothing compared to what my sis has been through. Lisa knows about all of this and insists I shouldn’t feel guilty but I’m afraid it’s tough shit. Bad news will never stop me having a bit of a moan but, when I do, I tend to get more annoyed with myself.

If everything that has happened recently with Sis has taught me anything, it’s that things could always be worse. Me losing my job and finding out I carry the BRCA-2 gene... it could have been worse. Even Lisa getting cancer and everything that went with it... it could have been worse. That’s just the way it is now – and it’s also a reason why I get so fucked off (maybe I do have my sister’s potty mouth) with people’s wanky (ok, I definitely do) Facebook statuses. You know the stuff… X ‘has had the worst day ever OMG OMG’. Y ‘is so poorly with this cold – why is it always me?’ (That said, man-flu can always be forgiven.) But you get my drift. It’s the same culprits every time, and it takes every ounce of strength I have not to bombard their comments section with lectures about how shit life can really be.

I’m not for one minute saying I’ve had a shit life. Quite the opposite. My life has been awesome – with the exception of a few obvious situations – but I’m not going to let those situations cloud the fact that, ultimately, my life is frickin’ brilliant for a whole host of family-and-friend-related reasons. I don’t begrudge people for having a moan (just not on Facebook where the world will ultimately determine that you’re an attention-seeking tosser with nowt better to say or do), just as long as whatever it is they’re overdramatically moaning about is something worth the whinge.

If this sounds preachy, I’m sorry – I’ve simply written it wrong (blame the dyslexia). It’s just that, since the situation with Sis, I’ve adopted a philosophy that things could always be worse. (And never has that sentence been more relevant than today.) Maybe it’s my coping strategy for dealing with The Bullshit that pissed around with my Sis, I dunno. Even with the awful stuff that’s happened to Lisa, some poor sod has had it – or has got it – much worse. So, yeah, I’m fucked off about having the BRCA-2 gene but, at the end of the day, it’s just tough shit. Life can be pretty crappy, but it can always be worse.

I expect I’ll continue to moan every day of my life, but I won’t be carelessly sharing it with the world on Facebook for people to conclude that I’m an unthinking tosser. Because – again – everything that happens, no matter what it is… it could always be worse. You never realise it straight away but, ultimately, I think it’s true.

Which brings me to the end of my post. But, before I go, I’d just like to point out that Dave Grohl was my hero way before he was Lisa’s. He was on my ‘list’ (yes, laminated – and yes, pre-approved by my wife) long before he was on hers!

Oh, and one final point. My sister is awesome.

T’ra.

Thursday 3 March 2011

This is a call.

Since I wrote this post, a few of you have enquired as to the whereabouts of my letter from Dave Grohl (not to mention the copy of my book signed by his ACTUAL HANDS). ‘Aw, it’s on its way,’ I said, never wanting to count my chickens before they landed on my doormat. (If you’re new, by the way, the background to all of this is here. Also: hello!)

Even when my mate Ant texted to say that ‘something exciting from a certain rockstar’ would be arriving at the weekend, I still remained a picture of calm (read: physically restrained myself from telling anyone else while internally riffing the arse off Bill-and-Ted-style air-guitar). Because, much like I am with ghosts or aliens or God(like geniuses) – I don’t believe anything until I’ve seen it.

But when a follow-up text asked how I was enjoying the parcel that had been hand-delivered to my door that day, the truth hurt… because there was no parcel to speak of. Despite remembering exactly what had been delivered through our door that day (a press release and some bank jargon or other), P and I searched the flat, trawled the bins (and our neighbour’s bin) and door-knocked the houses on our street to see if it had been misdelivered, but no dice.

In absence of a concrete contact to reach out to about my correspondence from The Nicest Man In RockTM (remember, this had been organised through a friend-of-friend-of-brother-of-mate-of-girlfriend-of-cat-of-Foo-Fighter), Ant found herself in the difficult position of having to help retrace the parcel’s steps. Hence, the only info we’ve managed to get back is that the postie(s?) in question must have got the wrong address. We know that they got off at the right station… we think that they delivered it to the right house number… but we’re pretty certain that the house was on the wrong street, given that there was some talk of walking through a park between the station and my house. (There is no park between the station and my house.) Hence, what we’ve gathered is this: somewhere in the SW18 postcode, someone is (was?) in receipt of a parcel addressed to me. And either they don’t know how important it is or they’re busy setting up an eBay account. (I know, I know. The irony ain’t lost on me. This is me breaking my back on my getting-over-cancer holiday all over again.)

I hadn’t intended to blog about this because… well, because it stings like a mofo, dammit! But since I rather let the cat out of the bag on Twitter earlier today (only for said cat to run wild, start a hashtag, become a momentary trending topic, and get offered an interview on Christian O’Connell’s breakfast show) I figured an online explanation exceeding 140 characters was the right thing to do.

So! This is a call… for help. Because at times like these we need a little bit of resolve. (Sorry. I’ll stop that now. Unless of course you want to be my hero.) Do you live in SW18? Do you know someone who lives in SW18? Have you – or has someone you know – received a parcel addressed to me? I'm told that it was wrapped in brown paper, with my name on it, and had a flower stuck to the front. It won’t have been mistaken for junk mail. In fact it’s the polar ruddy opposite of junk mail. It’s treasure mail; swag mail; booty mail! And it’s addressed to the ludicrously lucky shyster that is me.

My official answer to the where’s-your-letter question, however, remains: ‘Aw, it’s on its way’. Because, when it comes down to it – whether the parcel ever finds its route to me or not – the mere thought of Mr Dave Grohl (not to mention the super-sweetheart of a Foo-HQ fairy who set this up) even considering sending me a note – let alone actually writing the damn thing (with his ACTUAL HANDS, no less) – well, by ’eck, that’s more than cool enough for me.