Being Me

The Boiler Man has been. If you want to know why that's even A Significant Thing, see  this post from last Sunday He took out a spanner, said, 'Yeah, I know what this is,' turned a screw, and bingo! The boiler has been renamed Whisperer. I do not have words for the relief I feel. I will just offer you these comparative situations in an attempt to explain. I get the same level of relief when I .... - have eaten a bar of chocolate and when I read the calories it says '100' where I was expecting '300'. - wake up after a dream in which forty children are rioting in my classroom, lobbing doughnuts at each other and shouting 'Out, teacher, out!' - leap out of bed thinking it's a Friday and that I'm an hour late for school, then realise it's a Saturday - find a seat on the bus next to a string-thin person so that they don't have to commune with my thigh - watch a string-thin person get on the bus and take the seat not next to

I like general noise. I work best when in cafes, surrounded by the hubbub of gossip, coffee machines, the clink of cups. At night, I often drift off to sleep with Radio 4's Book at Bedtime murmuring in my ear. Silence worries me and makes me restless. However, there are some noises I can't tolerate. Let us talk about them. 1. My husband using the pressure cooker My husband makes stock if we have chicken bones left over or sometimes puts a soup together with all the root veg from his allotment. He likes to use the pressure cooker but he knows to warn me before it starts the hissing phase.  I have to know the exact time because I hate to be taken by surprise by that hissing: it makes me want to slap people. Maybe it's some kind of primal warning system of danger - a throwback to long ago (hissing serpents ... temptation ... No, Eve, don't DO it!) but that hissing noise crawls under my skin. I've typed 'hissing' several times now and it's recreating