Now, thank God for Ziggy! - Baclofen, Curing Our Addiction

Well, if I can thank God for Evan and all the others that he has come to symbolise, I can most certainly thank God for my beautiful neice and Goddaughter. She is called Zara, but we all call her Ziggy or Zig. It was a nickname I coined years ago, because Ziggy Stardust is one of my favourite songs of all time.

If you have read My Baclofen Diary for today, you will see that yesterday was a truly terrible day. My brother-in-law later brought Zig, his daughter, to stay. It made me get up for her sake. She is devoted to me, and to see me so sick and low would frighten her. We had a lovely evening. We drank lots of special flavoured fizzy water, and ate lots and lots of chocolate. Well, she did. Got a very chocolatey tooth has our Zig!

We chatted and laughed our way through story after story, and memory after memory. She is only 14, but there are so many things we have shared. She sat in awe whenever told her a story about her or her elder brother that she couldn't remember because she wa too young at the time.

That is when something very special happened. In passing, I mentioned "Will's Book", assuming that she knew what I meant. She had never heard of it. You should have seen her face when I told her. Her jaw did literally drop open in amazement. About 8 years ago, when her brother was 8, one year he asked me if he could have something for Christmas that nobody else could possibly get. After a little thought, I decided to write him a Christmas novel, in which he was the hero. I was like a man possessed. It took me less than 6 weeks to write "Salokin's Revenge - how Will Saved Christmas". Imagine Harry Potter meets Philip Pullman meets Christmas. And, before you think plagiarism, remember that I wrote it before I had even read those other books! Almost 90,000 words, 400 pages of double spaced A4. A 'proper' book. And it contains characters named after every member of my extended family. Even the recently deceased Edith and my dear but long deceased and still much missed granddad Alf get a mention. Zara is a beautiful princess.

Since then, nobody has ever read it. I never got around to submitting it to publishers. Although an animation production company did nearly turn it into a film many years ago.

Getting back to Zig. To say she couldn't believe it would be the understatement of the decade. She asked if she could read it. Do you know, I wasn't even sure that I had kept a copy. I trawled through my old computer files and found one. But I couldn't remember the password from so long ago. Aaarrgghh!! After lots of attempts, trying to remember what might have been special to me all those years ago, the file finally (and mercifully) opened to the password "lynyrdskynyrd" - I should have known.

Zara sat mesmerised at my pc for hours. Every now and again, she would let out an "awe, that's so sweet". Her jaw barely closed for four hours. I was as nervous as hell. She got about 60 pages in when I had to send her to bed. She has already been back at the book this morning. She says it makes her laugh and want to cry. She says that she cannot believe that I wrote it. "Actually, that's just so mad" were her sentiments.

So, thank God for Ziggy. On a day when her dad and I discussed my living will, she brought in a huge chunk of life.

Hope that mad sense.
Pip xx