Lady Blagg

On July 29th this year, my world came crashing down when I lost my beautiful, talented,  unique, vibrant, funny, love of my life. 

Gail. or Lady Blagg as she has been know on my blogs since I first came onto the WWW in 1998, was a woman who could light up a room; someone who stopped conversation when she walked in. A brilliant force of nature who seemed to have been given every one of those gifts that we all aspire too - popularity, wit, intelligence, elegance and mesmerism - Gail was sadly inhibited by a cruel twist of fate that dictated that, if she was to have all these good things, then she would have to deal with poor health too.

Gail's cross came in the form of SLE, or Lupus as it is better known, a cruel and vicious disease that blighted her life. There was barely a day she wasn't in pain, hardly a month where some new flare-up didn't raise its head, but she bore this with stoicism - to the outside world anyway -  although at home she suffered from the type of crisis of confidence that often affects those who spend too much time with the Doctor or at the hospital. Lady B refused to ever let her illness get the better of her though. She always dressed immaculately and always looked at her best. Naturally, to add to her gifts she could wear virtually anything and make it look good.

Christmas was our time. I first told her I loved her underneath the clock at High Wycombe station  - take that Noel Coward! - on Christmas Eve and the season seemed to define us. Romantic and exciting, we always made sure that, whatever happened, we always celebrated the weeks leading up to the day itself in the best way we could. Quite how I am going to negotiate Christmas 2018 is, frankly, beyond me.

And so to the Calendar...

It would be only too easy here to say 'She'd have wanted me to carry on' but that would be a bon mot with little basis in reality. In fact, Gail regarded my predilection for seeking out obscure Christmas songs in much the same way as I would watch my cat Buzz chase his tail while inside a box; amused but with a slightly superior grin that said "Well, he seems to get some pleasure from it and it it keeps him out of harms way". 

Both Gail and I were/are complex and not as people often see us - it was one of the reasons we found an affinity even though, to the casual observer, we were entirely different. She may have posted the odd song on her own social media occasionally and, underneath it, I believe she quite liked the fact I had something to do that interested me but, had I, for some bizarre reason, managed to ask her if it was OK to carry on after she'd left her reply would probably be something like "I'm not likely to give  a fuck what you do, am I?"

The fact is though, this isn't about what Gail would have wanted or what people expect or want me to do. It's about what I can do. And, as it stands, I don't know if I've got the will to see this through... but I will have a try. If you return here some years hence and find this calendar stops suddenly and there's no more after it then you know what happened. 

Christmas 2018 then. Despite what I wrote when I set this blog up last December, there probably is a 'need to be afraid'.