a one hundred and first story...'my big brain'

Listen:

My hair has stopped growing.  In fact, it has started to disappear, or indeed turn the colour of my dead Mama’s.  My mouth is full of rotting crockery, and my skin is falling off my face.  My eyes are as dim as low energy light bulbs, and my ears are so full of beeswax I can’t even hear the screams of my own children at play. 

My big brain, meanwhile, is as cluttered as a sorting office where the postmen and women have been on strike for years, and I can’t begin to sift through the bits and pieces of information crammed in there.  My big brain hurts like a warehouse with no room to spare. 

And yet, my big brain taunts me, and sometimes suggests I should take the bag for life given me by my local supermarket, and suffocate myself with it.  My big brain has a fair bit to answer for, and so I try and remind it, which of course just leads me into a vicious cycle of recrimination.  Thanks brain!

Then there are my legs which since pregnancy have become like two, flesh-coloured plastic inflatables, and my arms are lumpy, and my whole body feels like a great big damp loaf of bread. 

My heart struggles.  My heart is regrettably under the cruel and unsympathetic rule of my big brain:  it makes my blood boil, which is probably no good for my poor heart. 

I’ve also developed a stitch in my tummy, and my tummy cries ‘feed me’ at regular intervals while my big brain shouts ‘FEED YOUR TUMMY!’  My husband tells me he likes me soft and round, and not to worry, and for a fleeting moment I am contented, content until my weak bladder makes me visit the bathroom, and in the bathroom my big brain forces me to look in the mirror.  A large marine animal stares sorrowfully back, or so my big brain tells me. 

My appetite these days is for chocolate, and more chocolate.  My big brain craves endorphins like a drug addict craves morphine.  My big brain is goddamn greedy! And since it lives inside me, so I am compelled to be greedy!  But I hate myself for being greedy, and often hate my big brain, especially when, as happens about once a week, a leaflet drops through the letterbox with pictures of starving children in Africa – at which my big brain takes the opportunity to remind me how fat I am and how fortunate I have been.

The only thing that can have any control over my big brain, and make it shut up for a bit, is our television.  I can sit in front of our television for at least a couple of hours every night after the children have gone to bed, perfectly satisfied in the company of both my husband and my big brain.  I am told exercise is a good way to silence my big brain too, but my big brain complains at the very thought. 

Still, thank God for television!

Indeed, my big brain and I enjoy all manner of television shows, from Saturday Night Take Out to Coronation Street, Casualty to Poirot, and we both will watch anything with Nicky Campbell in, because my big brain, and my even bigger body are attracted to him.

Ask me about the next stage in evolution and I’ll say I look forward to the day child-bearing/rearing mothers have smaller, less harmful brains, regulated by anodes and cathodes.