HAPPY THANKSGIVING from your favorite London lurking twerker

Well, that might be going overboard slightly. But I am lurking-lurking near the turkey, as I am basting it and getting ready to stuff my face (one of my many talents). I'm using a soup spoon in lieu of a turkey baster. Gosh, I wish I had a turkey baster.

I'm on strike from talking about the government's latest asinine antics: no critique of the world class wankers today, it is Thanksgiving Day, and I am just really happy to be able to write. In fact, I'm happy to be able to walk! This is the first Thanksgiving since 2009 that I really feel like giving thanks. After that, life went all to hell: gentamicin (we all know how well that worked out, don't we?), cancer...I'm so very lucky to be alive, and lucky to be pretty healthy (yeah, I know: for my age. I'd like to slap people who say that, even if it is true).

I remember my mother using a turkey baster; it had a rubber bulb on one end, and a glass tube with a narrow hole at the end. All you did was suck up the juice and baste the bird.Easy peasy. I'm sure someone still makes them. I'll have to go hunting. In fact, that would be great for me to take on my travels. Just suck up something noxious, and when some idiot (invariably) knocks me and is nasty, all I have to do is take out my trusty turkey baster, aim-and shoot. What are they going to do, have me arrested? Can you imagine, being charged with assault with a turkey baster? How hilarious that would be. What will be next, a soup ladle?

I went to see The Book of Mormon yesterday. I braved both terrorists and imbeciles (none of the former, plenty of the latter), using the Underground (I try never to use the tube, I'm short and I always come up to someone's armpit. Usually that someone hasn't had a bath in a couple of-decades. Phew!) and the bus (almost as bad as the Underground). Piccadilly Circus was heaving with people, and there wasn't a policeman (or policewoman) in sight. No surprise there! They were knocking me, and knocking each other, and there was a lot of swearing in many different languages. Someone next to me was shouting abuse at someone who had run into him, and when he was finished, I asked him what language he was speaking (only I would do something like that. I'm either fearless or foolish. Or both). He said he was speaking Urdu. I asked him if he was telling the idiot to f*** off-and, if he was, would he teach me how to say it in Urdu. He just looked at me-then he shook his head, and said that I would be better off not knowing. Then he walked away. Damn-I can say it in a few languages, but they are all the popular ones. So much for Urdu. I would ask my friend Dani how to say it in Russian, but I don't think she would be at all amused. Oh, well-it was an idea, anyway. 

So today I have to really think about all the things I am thankful for-and there are a lot. I know that people say that you should make a gratitude list, and that reminding yourself to feel grateful is a good antidote to stress (so is smacking someone with an elbow crutch). 

Well. I'm grateful, I give thanks, for the fact that I can dance around the house, stick my butt out and twerk-or at least, jiggle my wobbly bits and do a good imitation of a twerk. To all those skinny people who do a mean twerk: I salute you. Maybe if I do it a lot, I will have a smaller butt. And, by the way, I didn't fall over. So that is a bloody miracle, considering how hard I was laughing at the time. 

It has been a long, very tough-arduous, in fact-road I've traveled over the last few years, and I've amazed a lot of people with my strength and resilience. I've been told many times that I am an inspiration to other people. Mostly, I think I have been a royal pain in the ass-but this pain in the ass is still here, still pushing to get better, still in everyone's face (especially the doctors). 

I've had a lot of support from some very good friends-but they aren't in this country. So, I've had to do everything on my own, without any help from anyone. I had to prove to myself that I could get better, that I could reach the point where I wouldn't have to rely on anyone else to look after me-and I've done exactly that. And I will keep doing exactly that, since it seems to be very difficult for me to ask anyone else for help. So the moral of my continuing story is: never give up. Never quit. Never.

I wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving. I'm getting the parsnips, and potatoes, and sprouts-oh, sorry, I don't want to make you hungry (even though in about a half an hour I will be stuffing my face. Yum!). But I've been looking forward to being able to make a Thanksgiving dinner for five years-without burning the house down. 

Then I'm going shopping. For a turkey baster.