Acute accent

I was in Tesco's yesterday afternoon buying some stuff for dinner tonight, and the man at the checkout was very chatty.
"No plastic bags," I said, smiling. "I'm saving the planet."
"It is too late for that," he answered.
"What, so we should just stop trying?"
"Not stop trying, ma'am, but to fix the trouble we're in, we must start all over again."
"With a new planet?"
"With a new planet," he confirmed.
"Where will we get it?"
"I don't know. But we have grave problems here. It is too late. Too much digging and toenails."
"Toenails?"
"Yes, you know, underground - it is all going to collapse."
"Underground toenails?" I asked again.
"Noooooooo, not toenails," he said. "Toenails."
"TOENAILS? You are blaming the ecological death of this planet on buried toenails?"
"Tun-nels," he said, slowly, like I was the thickest person alive. I think I might be. We laughed. In the end I needed a plastic bag anyway, cos I'd forgotten my handy bag-in-your-handbag bag. D'oh.

Later on, I went to the National Theatre with my mum, where we had a nice dinner and then saw Men Should Weep, a play about working class Glasgow set in the 1930s. My dad's from Glasgow so it was interesting hearing them use vernacular I've been around all my life. There was a moment when the performance started that I thought how sad it was that he wasn't there with us, having decided that theatre is simply Not His Bag. It seemed like it would surely be of interest to him - but ten minutes in, it was clear that the kitchen sink drama would have made him flip his combover. And even if that hadn't have been enough to freak him out, the audience certainly would have done the trick. I have never heard so much coughing before in my life. It was like a whooping ward, with hacks going off every two or three seconds, obscuring the dialogue on many occasions. I managed to bite my tongue but admitted to mum later that, about halfway through Act Two, I'd been about two seconds from screaming "SHUUUUUUUUUT UUUUUUUUUP!", only containing my irritation when I realised that the disruption would probably get into the Evening Standard. I don't know what can be done with coughers. You can't expect the theatre to refund their tickets, so I don't blame them for coming along, but it is pretty darn irritating. On top of which, anyone with a vague penchant for hypochondria e.g. me inevitably spends the entire production convinced they're catching a bit of everything. I don't know about you but that's not my idea of a fun evening out. Maybe compulsory shots of Benylin and/or squirts of First Defence for all audience members are the way forward.

I'm feeling chipper today as I had a really positive session with my therapist yesterday afternoon. I'm still a long way from my target destination, but I have unequivocally left my departure point behind forever, and that's an amazing feeling. I am en route and there's no going back. It's not an easy journey, but as I sat in the wingback chair sobbing yesterday, saying how hard I was finding it all, I managed to ask her a question.
"Do you spend pretty much all your working time watching people fighting this same battle?" She nodded. "I just can't believe they're all strong enough," I sniffed. "I mean, it's so hard, it physically hurts."
"Oh, not many people are strong enough," she said immediately, and I felt a bit better. It's not that I am pleased to be winning or anything. It's an acknowledgement that what I'm trying to attain is not easy. It makes me feel more able to cope with the continued struggle. For now, I will push on. And you, up ahead, clear the path to the River of Inner Peace. Incoming.