Excellent

Ovagirl of L'eggs Up and Laughing has given Granny an award which she hasn't been able to acknowledge owing to her total failure to copy it to her site, despite copious instructions ('right click on it, no I mean left click': you know the kind of the thing.) It would be something to do with having a MAC rather than a pc: that's her excuse anyway. AND SHE'S STICKING TO IT.

Kind Ovagirl has now sent her a version she can put on WORD and copy here at least if not on her sidebar. So here it is.

Except it isn't. Deep sigh. Blogger evidently doesn't like WORD either. Back to drawing board. And if you want to see the award hop over to Ovagirl of L'Eggs Up and Laughing (on Granny's side bar) and you can see for yourself just what your very own Granny has been awarded.

Thank you Ovagirl.

Now this: Ovagirl's blog has re-emerged as a book, called Legs Up and Laughing, published by Murdoch Books and available on Amazon. Granny has just read it from beginning to end. To many of us to whom IVF is not, personally, a burning issue - Granny not least - long descriptions of its author - Vanessa Bates' - long struggles with the process might not seem the most thrilling of subjects. But believe her, this is. It IS. It is hilariously funny ('if you don't stop laughing,' said Beloved grumpily when Granny was reading Legs Up alongside him in bed, 'I'm going to sleep downstairs. I can't stand the noise.' Granny was restrained enough not to mention the equally irritating chipmunk beep beep noise of his electronic chess game which nightly afflicts her and did her best to contain her mirth.) Alongside IVF are long passages of autobiography, Vanessa growing up in Malaysia and Australia, her activist Philippino mother, her mother's death from breast cancer, her strict father's re-emergence with his second wife as active supporter of Gay Rights (even to appearing at a Mardi Gras procession throwing leaflets while dressed in minimal hotpants) Vanessa's own very strong marriage, surviving all the horrors of the medical procedures, her early career in a variety of animal guises, moving and sometimes just as funny, all of it conveyed in sensuous vivid prose. She is quite a writer; Granny is envious of her command of words, images, details. It's all just as engaging, thrilling as any novel. GO READ.