"If You've Googled Yourself ...

CLAP YOUR HANDS!

If You've Googled Yourself ...

CLAP YOUR HANDS!"

So I googled myself. And if you enter my name ("Oh Matron!), you get almost two pages, excepting the very last one on page 2, at this minute: London time 01:03, that actually refer to me. Me! The real person behind a Google conjunction! Which is rare in the context of googling(?) gulaging(?) the peeps you meet, only to bring up a scrollsworth of eighteenth century architects and other antiquated irrelevancies (the firstnames and surnames MILES apart ... in overencumbered PDFs related to Annual General Meeting Notes of Junior(sic) High Softball Teams in Bumfuck, USA ...)

But I digress.

It's not my actual birth certificate name - haven't checked that yet - but the diminutive of my given aka in Oz Christian name - which is actually the name my mum wanted to give me but was urged it was too cutesy and childish and I might want to adopt the longer form as an adult (oops). When she was pregnant with me, Mama Plog worked at a creche, where she was completely bewitched by an adorable toddler, (insert Dr. P's everyday name) + Brown (it's alliterative, folks!) here.

It's only now, 2010, that I was lured by some naive facebook commenter two-friends-removed to check out my name on urbandictionary.com ...

I dare you to do that and record your findings here!

And not only because my name is apparently slang for "blow job" ...

Le sigh.

So back to self-googling. I urge you all -- google yourselves. And then please post your results, or at least your reactions to the aforementioned results in the comment section below.

Farewell To A Father

Thinking today of my friend, A, whose father just passed away after a long illness. I never met him but he was by all accounts a wonderful character, a wise, twinkling, gregarious, Greek (there is a scene in her wedding video that contains the most vibrant, riotous version of the "Zorba the Greek" dance with him at the centre!), kind, warm mensch of a man.

His funeral tomorrow morning will be the first I am attending since my own dad's in October 2006, so I am having the requisite bad dreams and sudden, sinking, sickly day sweats. I am remembering the feelings that A must be feeling: that unreality, heavy waking nightmarishness of going through the motions, accepting condolences, smiling wanly at the platitudes ("No, it's not a relief!"; "No, he's not better off now he's not in pain, he would be a lot fucking happier being alive and in pain with ME!!!"*), the realisation that nothing will ever be the same again, never would I feel as complete again, never would I be loved so thoroughly, so unconditionally ever again. That even happy times, from this day until the day I die, would be tempered with sadness, fracturedness. Maybe that's part of why I rail against the Wedding Industrial Complex to the rabid degree I do - as much as I love Mr. Plog - and by Jove, I do! - it won't be the goddamned Happiest Day Of My LifeTM (C) The Walt Disney Corporation 1956 because my. dad. is. dead.

Apologies to A. This was meant to be a missive of healing, of solidarity. Look, it does get better - it has to. The vomit-inducing cliches are the truest: Time Heals, Life Goes On. Those initial days, months - that unreality, those Moments of Magical Thinking** (mine involved me getting upset each week that passed after he died, because the longer time went on, the less likely it was that I'd get a call saying it was all a mistake - even though I had literally watched him die) - seem like semi-distant memories mostly. But today, this minute, I am reliving them, and the rawness feels stinging, searing.

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*Which in hindsight and with reflection is sadly probably not true (I mean he joked constantly about wanting to make an appointment with his "good friend, Dr Kevorkian" -- but hey, I guess it proves we all see what we want to see, especially when it comes to our parents ...)

**Please read Joan Didion's The Year Of Magical Thinking if you haven't, especially if you are grieving. I bought it at Hong Kong airport on my way back to London after my dad's funeral and was so captivated that I read the whole thing before landing despite the cocktail of Mogadon, Xanax and Nytol I'd taken to cope with the solo 22 hour journey in that frame of mind.

***Please note that the image of woodworking tools is a tribute to one of my dad's greatest passions, not a lazy shorthand equating masculinity with hardware. As if I wood do that!