This Year

Moving house in the snow and ice
Fleeting poorly paid but gratefully accepted employment in a very cold office, wearing wool socks
Unemployment - official. Fortnightly and later weekly visits to the dispiriting Jobcentre ('plus' as it is hopefully called...)
Long slow days
Learning the views from the house
Keeping going and more keeping going
Hearing myself say I can't afford to do things again and again
Discovering Edinburgh
Camping in Pembrokeshire and a small spirit of adventure
Poetry refuses to die
Some work some precious work
Self-employment - official
Snow and ice
Thaw
Kind friends and the most loyal partner ever
Goodbye 2010

Thaw

Silent ice yields,
dies in phlegmy looking puddles,
the world returns to the colours of earth
and we are shrouded now in cloud,
cannot see two fields away.
A fly in the bathroom refuses to die,
buzzes dark behind the thin curtain.

Boxing

If you keep beating 'round the bush
you lose your push
Listening to dear Captain Beefheart, rest his soul. 69 seems young to die these days. What can I say about the Captain?
Big eyed beans from Venus
don't let anything get in between us
Wild man, loose imagination, wonderful blues voice. Exciting and liberating both then and now to listen to music which tears up every rule book.

And last night we watched the documentary about Eddie Izzard 'Believe'. He too at his best is possessed of a wild imagination, a capacity for surreal flights - following them wheresoever they may go.

Longing for some of this creative freedom. Longing to lose control. Ridiculously anxious at the moment. About snow and ice. About work. About life. What am I doing with it?

I'm now working my way through my Dad's army letters for the second time, attempting to catalogue them in some way as I go. Having read my way through maybe 150 letters it is nigh on impossible without doing so ever to find again the parts that I want to revisit. And there are many. My father at 20/ 21 a trooper in the 40th Royal Tank Regiment, an ex public schoolboy, interrupted in his Oxford undergraduate studies by being called up for the last month of WW2, suddenly must share his life with working class lads whose language and behaviour he finds 'coarse, uncouth and licentious'. Yet he believes passionately in the equality and brotherhood of all men - as an ideal. He struggles to find common ground with his fellow soldiers and sometimes finds it in one to one conversation, though in group situations he is always the outsider, clearly seen as aloof and snobby. He characterises them as interested only in alcohol and sleeping with women, and occupies the high moral ground of a strict Anglican, sounding distinctly prudish at times. Yet he longs to be free of many social conventions he considers hypocritical and empty. He wants 'all men' to be happy, recognises the part played by Capitalism in the misery of the 'masses', and dreams of a kind of Christian Communism, whose ultimate aim would be to allow everyone to work only a few hours a day, giving them plenty of time 'to themselves' (a fantasy that marked his character throughout his life)...

Yet he seems to find it hard to imagine that a 'working class man' could already possess intelligence, integrity or dignity - without the precious (public school) 'education' he has been taught to believe is the only route to becoming a useful citizen, a good person... There is so much to find absurdly snobbish, classist, sexist, naive, and yet... here he is, entirely and inevitably the product of his time and upbringing and education, suddenly thrown into the levelling experience of army life, doing the best he can to be tolerant and helpful, to make sense of a world of which until now he has only seen such a small sheltered corner, and which has just come through a war.

He's also devouring books, dreaming of writing them, making his parents laugh (I hope) at funny stories of this strange army life, wondering what his brother back home is getting up to, sightseeing in Italy and Greece, swimming and sunbathing, playing cricket, and generally wondering what on earth is the purpose of his being there, as the months roll by and still he isn't demobilised.

My young young Dad, just a few years before he met my young young Mum, and the two of them got married and very soon started our family.

Babes in the wood.

Christmas Eve

The gammon is simmering in a pan with celery, onion, cloves and bay leaves, and L is making cranberry sauce with clementines and port to go with the turkey tomorrow. The turkey is currently residing in the back of the car! The carols on Radio 4 have just finished. In a couple of hours we shall go down to town for the carols in the Square. Hopefully they won't go on longer than half an hour, since the forecast is now for -11C tonight! We'll go for a drink with friend S and then return to glaze, bake and eat the gammon with a nice bottle of red wine.

I am having a strange and moving time reading my father's letters home to his parents from his time in the army from 1945-1947, based in Italy, Greece and Palestine. He was called up and joined the ranks just 28 days before the end of the War, and then had to wait over two years to be demobilized. He was 20 in 1945. I have had these letters for years in a pink cardboard folder, and never read them. I cannot explain why. It's a very intense experience - a meeting across time and beyond death, with a young man I feel I both do and do not know... He is sensitive, thoughtful to a fault, devours books and writes about them, an aspiring writer, wildly idealistic, a Christian with a strict moral code, also a Communist by inclination if not affiliation. He's lonely and anxious and completely out of his social comfort zone as a trooper in the British army. When I have read them all and had time to digest them, I will try to write more about them here.

In the mean time, Merry Christmas everyone! Enjoy peace, feasting and kindness, and I hope 2011 brings us all many blessings.

Winter Wonderland

Incredible ice crystals - frost on snow. I've never seen anything like these long feathery structures sitting lightly on top of the powdery snow. Click to enlarge, though even then it may be hard to get the full effect.

Weather as promised.

More or less. Certainly the temperature predictions are correct.

Solstice

Wow!



In fact the five day weather forecast is exactly the same but that won't embed. Gonna be an ice-cold sunny Christmas... Haslingden by the way is about 10 miles away from here in Lancashire, but is obviously the nearest weather monitoring station.

Hatworld

It's back to the land of people who wear hats. In my case a very unbecoming purple fleecy Peter Storm one, that sits like a large pudding on my head. Unbecoming but warm. Sub-zero for several days now, and no sign of a let-up. One big fall of snow on Friday night. The roads are well-gritted as always and getting out and about not a problem. It's beautiful too, with all sorts of different effects of sunlight on snow. Today a strange combination of brightness and foggy clouds so that on our walk this morning we were in bright sunlight, while the valley below had disappeared into a greyish pink mass of cloud. We walked with care, with walking poles, and it was a pleasure, and we remembered to take some old apples for the horses, and one of the special pleasures was the feeling of warm horse-lips on my hand. But it takes about ten minutes to get ready to go out and another ten to remove all the outer layers, boots, hats and so forth when you return. It is hard work living with ice. And it uses up energy like crazy - ours and the planet's. We just had a massive gas bill, the closing one before switching to a (hopefully) cheaper provider. Also hoping that the loft insulation will now begin to make an appreciable difference. It certainly feels warmer, especially upstairs, especially overnight. The heating's off for about nine hours, and yet some appreciable warmth is retained.

I have a work related meeting tomorrow evening and then I'm on holiday for more than two weeks. A strange phenomenon really for me, who works so very little at the moment anyway. I'll put in some time thinking about how I'd like to structure the work at the school - I told them I'd come up with some proposals. And L and I plan to 'brainstorm' about my work situation generally, and other things I might be doing to generate more. Otherwise there will be much time for reflection, writing, resting, reading, cooking, eating, walking, sorting out piles of papers and the enormous backlog in my email inbox. I feel myself drawing in breath, preparing for new beginnings. In the mean time, at times I feel my mind revert to default setting of looking for something to worry about, to dread, or second option on my inner menu - feeling guilty about everything. More meditative pursuits (if that's not an oxymoron) like Feldenkrais help, by nudging me into the experience of the moment, into awareness, out of monkey-mind. Remembering to make that time is always quite a feat.

Merry And Bright And Cold

We stumbled about a ferociously cold garden centre this morning, gasping at the prices and vastness of most of the Christmas trees until we could manage it no longer, and heaved a smallish 'Serbian spruce' in a pot onto a trolley, added a snow shovel for good measure, and went to the till where I'm happy to say we got change from £25! Tomorrow morning we'll do the decorating. There are already lovely little red and white lights adorning the dresser in the kitchen and we ate lebkuchen with our tea this afternoon. 'Walking in a winter wonderland' is earworm of the day after hefty exposure at the garden centre. All in all it must be Christmas. I've even written almost all my cards. Certainly all the ones that require posting. I think... Actually I've just remembered one more...

Ice is everywhere. Little icicles dangle off the bottom of everyone's car, and all yesterday's puddles are solid. No more snow though, as it's been a wonderfully bright and sunny day. I've pulled out of various things I was supposed to be doing to give myself more rest and recuperation time. Still going out to eat at the home of friends just down the road tonight, and welcoming friends from even closer by to eat with us tomorrow. My friend J is coming over tomorrow afternoon as well. And there's a Christmas concert at the local Baptist-chapel-now-community-music-venue just along the road in our village on Sunday afternoon. Sounds like quite enough, so I am pleased with my decision not to meet the poets today and not to meet the therapists tomorrow (which involved a lot of travelling), though I'm sad not to see all these people before Christmas. Still, it is true I still don't feel 100% well, so that has to be what guides my choices for now.

Christmas Present

I drove over to the school in torrential rain this morning, which turned to rattling hail just as I drew up in the carpark. The meeting went well, and I am going to start doing a couple of counselling sessions a week for them in the new year, initially for ten weeks, and then see where we go from there. Which I think translates as if things go well, they might well want more of my time... The vibe was friendly and informal in the school, the senior teacher I met with very easy to talk to, able to listen and to think! That of course in the teeth of the constant ringing of the phone, babbling of the walky talky and knocks at the door! Ah, schools... I am so happy to have secured some regular work, albeit on a small scale. I think this is how it's going to be - small but significant pieces of a patchwork of freelance work, rather than conventional employment.

A light covering of snow fell shortly after I got home, so everything outside is pale again if not uniformly white. There's more snow forecast, so I'm very happy there is nowhere much I have to go beyond local shops and friends for the next couple of weeks.

Shakin' All Over

Having maintained my recovery pretty well up to that point, yesterday evening I had a very strange episode of uncontrollable shivering and shaking. I'd gone to bed, been asleep a little while, woke up, went to the toilet, got back into bed, and began to feel very unwell in an intangible way. I turned on the light and called to L who was in the bathroom, who came and held my clammy hand while the shakes overtook me. I've never known the like. So stange when one's body feels altogether out of control. Great waves of shiver rolling down my spine. Couldn't be still, couldn't be warm. Eventually, with hot water bottle and many layers of clothing and bedclothes, it subsided. I still felt unwell and unable to settle back to sleep til around 3am, but no fever. My stomach felt a little tender, but nothing else developed. Mystery. Wiped out today, but mostly just sleep-deprived I think, and no recurrence of the shaking to date.

Weather forecast says the mercury's going down again. With possible snow. I'm hoping not tomorrow morning on my way over to Halifax for my school meeting...

One

I have just realised that something else has slipped by - the first anniversary of The Phoenix! I had forgotten that I started it quite so much in the middle of the fallout - before even my 'official' last day in the job. The anniversary of that has now passed too, I'm happy to say. It has been a tough year, but I'm proud I got myself here, kept writing even when it all felt beyond me.

I'm still depleted from my flu, and have an unusually busy week this week, so I'm trying to pace myself. I have a meeting on Thursday about the possibility of doing some counselling in a local school. Fingers crossed something comes of this. I'll have more to say when this week is over!

Sliding By

The first few Christmas cards have arrived. While I've been languishing in my pyjamas, drinking gallons of pale pink juice, the days of Advent have been sliding by. I have little concept of Christmas actually happening in two weeks time, but I know it will manage to manifest somehow. It always does. I know I will feel better, will buy a tree, will go shopping, collect the turkey, buy some stocking fillers for L and so forth. Just glimpsing the light at the end of the flu tunnel today, as the aches in my legs, arms and back finally recede, and my head begins to feel a little less like a hot air balloon. In the end I had to cancel everything this week. Which, ironically included two meetings about potential work opportunities, one voluntary, one paid. Ironically because there are many weeks when nothing so progressive is scheduled. Luckily, people are understanding about illness, wish me warm and well, wait to meet me next week. This is the moment, right now, when my young client usually runs along the path and knocks heartily on the door. I almost expect to hear her now, but sadly I have had to ask her to wait til next week too.

My World

Plaid pyjamas
Flannelette sheets
Aching legs, aching arms, aching back
Hot water bottles
Radio 4
Paracetamol used sparingly as I can manage
Sleep (aided by paracetamol)
Coughing
Balsam tissues
A hoarse voice
Reading 'Tender Morsels' by Margo Lanagan - a juicy reworking of the Snow White and Rose Red fairy tale - being carried off to another world
Peeking out at the white world outside
Sneezing painfully
More balsam tissues

Nest

Suffering some sort of lurgy. Sore throat and swollen glands are my main symptoms and just feel a bit woozy and a bit achey, so I'm staying in the warm house. I haven't left it since the pub trip on Friday night, for which three friends joined us in the end, all the others staying home in their jammies... Not sure if I picked this thing up in the pub or whether I'd already been incubating it, but one way or another I am jolly glad I didn't travel south on Friday.

The snow is still lying thick on the fields and gardens, mostly just slush on the pavements, though some of it refreezes and then it's dangerous, the gritted roads clear, side roads mostly treacherous with ice. It is like living in another country. One where all the inhabitants wear hats. The birds enjoy the food L puts out for them every day, and we enjoy watching them. It turns out dear little robins can be pretty aggressive.

As for the mouse problem, we caught one very small specimen in a trap a few nights ago, and I took it out and left it to its doom in the snow. It was very sweet and bright-eyed, but we had to say goodbye! Since then, no more captives, and no more tell-tale mouse poo around the kitchen. So maybe it was just a lone chancer, come in out of the bad weather to munch on our apples, and hide out behind the cupboards. Too soon to be absolutely certain, but I'm beginning to think there was not a nest full of babies after all. Good.

Snowbound

I haven't gone down south, and here's why!

We had about a foot of snow on Wednesday. It's very beautiful, and ferociously cold and icy. -10C last night, or that's what was forecast and I think it wasn't far off. I hummed and hawed for a while, listened to the radio, checked weather, travel and news websites obsessively, heard stories of people stranded overnight on trains, saw that severe weather warnings were ongoing into the weekend... and ultimately decided to stay home in the warm, and try to get down to my Mum's another time. My Mum, though disappointed, was relieved not to have to be worrying about my safe passage (as she would certainly have done), and so was I. It's my friend K who I think is taking it hardest. Understandably. Her friend has now gone into the local hospice, and I dearly wish I could have spent some time with her to give her such support and courage as I can. And hugs. But I can't. Not this time anyway. K is a very determined, dogged individual, and a very seasoned traveller, and would probably have braved it in my place, which makes me feel a bit crap about this. Yet, I still know it's the right decision for me. As for the group lunch, well, it's sad, but they do meet four times a year, so I'm hoping I may be able to join them in the spring!

So, I'm here to see this.

And this.

And to put on five or six layers to go the five minute walk along the road to the pub this evening to meet at least one friend. Hopefully half a dozen, if they can be persuaded to brave the cold and come up here! The buses are running so there's no excuse really.

Accomplished

The days are accomplished! November is ending on a spectacular note up here, with wind blowing last night's snow into exquisite drift sculptures in the afternoon sun. Sadly I forgot to take the camera out on my walk, having become preoccupied with an important envelope I was taking to the post box, and a spot of snow sweeping in front of the door. I walked along the road and up the lane a few paces behind a man with a hat with earflaps, pushing a pushchair, accompanied by two dogs, Piglet and Chillie. Piglet was a Jack Russell with a gammy back leg, careering gamely along in the snow, being verbally corraled regularly Piggy! when vehicles passed (two or three on the road, one each way on the lane - four wheel drive vehicles, otherwise thy'd have had no chance.) Only as I turned into the howling wind going up the lane, and wished I'd put my long johns on under my waterproof trousers, and saw the light on the windswept snow, only then did I realise I'd forgotten the camera. I will try, dear readers, to return to that place with it tomorrow, but who knows if the conditions will preserve the extraordinary curved banks of snow, their tops curling over like wave crests, touched with the pink of the afternoon sunlight, that met my view some distance up the lane, past Keelham Farm. There were ponies too, in the snow, in the field above the lane, looming over me, the tender hairs of their muzzles sillhouetted against the bright sky, their eyes placid, enquiring. I'll go back if I can...

But I must also tell you about the contents of the envelope because they are important! I have today sent four poems off to the magazine which has previously published three poems of mine (on separate occasions). It turns out it is almost three years since I sent the last batch to the editors, and I am immensely proud and excited to have at last got to this point... The letter I sent with the last poems was dated February 2008, just three months before I started the infamous job. Draw your own conclusions.

In other news, we really do have mice, and braved the elements this morning to go out and block all possible entry points, where pipes go in and out of the wall. Suspected culprit a disused sink waste pipe, which is now comprehensively stuffed with one of those metal scouring pads - like coarse wire wool. Next step is to set the humane traps (sic), baited with peanut butter (yes we have experience...), because it is more than possible we have a nest somewhere behind the kitchen cupboards, and then be willing to go for a walk or a drive in the morning to deposit the trapees at a suitable distance from the house (also anyone else's house). I fear in this weather they may not survive long, so exacly how 'humane' this method is I don't know, but I like to think it gives them a sporting chance. Any views or experience?

To finish, a couple of pictures, courtesy of L, from around our manor this morning.


And the second amaryllis whose splendour has brightened our days for a week or more.

I cannot say what will happen now. Au revoir, not goodbye!

Earth Stood Hard As Iron

And so Nablopomo is drawing to a close. Though I still don't really understand the 'Na' bit - I mean national... After all it is being done by folks across the globe as far as I can tell. Certainly in France and the US! It has at times felt like a pressure, but far more often a welcome challenge and a pleasure. Goodness knows I need a few bits of structure in my strangely formless life at the moment. And it's interesting what I find I can come up with, even on days when I've been scratching my head and feeling devoid of creative ideas or energy. I think the main thing I've got from it is to be reminded how much I enjoy the kind of writing I do on trains, in waiting rooms, cafes and the like. Writing about the minutiae of everyday life, and observing people and their infinite weirdness gives me great pleasure and seems to have been well-received here too.

The freezing weather continues, and every time I go out walking, the line from In The Bleak Midwinter - earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone - plays in my head. There'll be no digging the allotment for the foreseeable future. Most of the time the sun has shone on the frost and snow, and the light has been crystalline, and there's been little wind. Sometimes early in the morning, or as the sun goes down there is gorgeous pinkness in the clouds. Tonight there is heavy snow forecast, so conditions could get a great deal more challenging than they have been so far. This would not be a worry except that I'm due to travel south on Friday, and back home on Monday. By train I hasten to add. Nonetheless things can go a bit pear-shaped even on the railways if there's a lot of snowfall in a short time. No need for any difficult decision-making yetawhile.

I'm going to stay at my Mum's, and take the opportunity also to spend a little time with friend K whom I haven't seen since the summer. One of her oldest and dearest friends is dying, and she has been spending much of her free time with her. I've also been invited to join a very dear group of old friends, which includes K, for lunch at the Skylon restaurant in the Royal Festival Hall on Saturday. We all did our psychotherapy training together, and for many years thereafter, we all met monthly to support one another and do peer supervision, drink tea, and eat cake, and generally hang out. For the last few years they've been meeting four times a year, just socially, to eat lunch and catch up. Sadly I had to leave the group when we moved up here, but one of the group invited me to join them again this year for their pre-Christmas get together, and I was delighted to accept, despite the fact that I can't afford it whatsoever at all. Sometimes you just have to do these things though, and throw caution to the winds! K's friend is dying, J's father has just died, and I have had the year from hell, so I think we all feel just how precious old friends are to us right now.

Ice

9.28 To Manchester Victoria

Off we rattle through the snowy landscape, raucous male laughter behind me, female in front. I mistakenly thought the 9.28 would be quiet on a Saturday morning. Obviously people make early starts to go and do whatever it is they're going to do, and the train is soon full. Just laid down on t'bench. Just laid down on t'bench. Never expected that! laughs one of the male voices. I have slight indigestion and haven't slept well, but I feel OK. Anybody else? asks the ticket man with the curious shuffling walk reminiscent of a mechanical toy. Sunlight on snow-whitened rooftops. A heavy dusting. My reflection in the train window, a little tousled from my hat. Thinking about the coffee or tea I'll drink when I get to the John Dalton building where my personality development seminar is taking place. Today it's pregnancy and birth. A large group of ladies travelling together. One of the younger ones approaches some of the others with a clutch of plastic glasses containing slices of lemon, and little cans of, I'm guessing, gin and tonic or similar. One woman refuses, others accept. It's 9.50am. I don't want to! repeats Dylan, a small child sitting on his Dad's lap next to his Mum who is next to me. Mum says eventually please stop saying you don't want to, and for moments at a time he does. She tells him she's going to buy him a new hat. He says he wants his Thomas one, and she assures him he'll have this too, though I detect subterfuge. Dylan returns to the litany of don't want tos, begins to cough. Mum tells him they're going to see the pretty lights. A group of geese congregate on the snow-covered ice in the middle of a large pond.

It is at about this time that a group of young men boards the train, many of them holding beer or cider cans, many of them sporting hooded sweatshirts emblazoned with the words English Defence League and a little shield with the words No surrender above it, and below to Al Qaeda. On the back of these sweatshirts are the words Rochdale division. Dylan's Mum intones oh my Lord under her breath, and Dylan falls silent. All the young men have very short hair, all wear dark clothing that doesn't look quite warm enough, some woolly hats, one a hood up. They are between 16 and 35 as far as I can tell, with the majority being 18-25. And they are very loud. The train is full and they are standing in the aisle and around the door, and seem to feel the need to conduct their conversations by shouting. Once or twice one of them chants EDL! but mostly I cannot detect any obviously offensive or 'political' content to their conversation, except a snippet about mosques being breeding grounds - I don't hear for what but I can guess. Then I hear not all mosques. I think maybe one of them has engaged a fellow-traveller in conversation, or perhaps been asked about the regalia, and is attempting to appear reasonable. What is most offensive is their loud and aggressive energy, the space they take up physically and psychically, and the swilling of beer and cider at 10 in the morning. I imagine they are going on a demonstration, and will drink all day long. I imagine there will be disturbances later. Or maybe they're just going to see Man United play. I enclose myself in a psychic bubble, look mostly out of the window. Look forward to getting to Victoria.

Return

I finally heard at 7.30 yesterday evening that I had not got the job. My response was a feeling of unalloyed relief. The manager of the centre was one of the most unfriendly people I have ever encountered in such a situation - barely civil at the outset. Her colleague introduced herself and then the manager, at which I said 'good to meet you'. She made no reply... It is so good not to have to work there. All my dealings with them had shown the organisation to be disorganised, casual, unprofessional and chaotic. Halfway through the interview I was asked how I felt about doing a series of other tasks that had never previously been mentioned - no Job Description had ever been forthcoming... Since the job was only 13 hours, it was hard to see how the time was to be managed. And on top of all this it took me nearly two hours to get there. Oh, and the money was way below the usual going rate for anything comparable. So, no shipbuilding for me. Hurrah!

In more good news I heard yesterday that I will finally receive some money next week from the self-employment credits scheme, and that it will after all be back-dated. That's £200 I thought I wasn't going to get! Even more amazing, I filed my tax return online this afternoon, and the calculation showed that they owe me over £240 in overpaid tax! This could hardly be more timely! I take both of these developments as good omens.

One of my local therapist colleagues also phoned to tell me she is in discussion with a local secondary school regarding counselling for their pupils, and she wanted to know if she could mention my name with regard to the 11-16 year olds, as she only works with over -16s. No idea if this will lead to anything, but it's a sniff of something, and lovely to have someone in my corner who may be able to share opportunities with me.

Outside it grows colder and colder, and snow is forecast overnight. I'm off to Manchester in the morning for the first of a series of seminars on personality development, so I hope it doesn't snow too much or it might make my journey down to the station challenging - though the whole route is actually gritted, so it should be fine. Always a bit of a shock when it first does this, though, and it does seem to have gone very cold very suddenly.

Flurry

Cold hard ground mottled with frost, the water butts at the allotment hard discs of ice, the carpet that we spread yesterday frozen.

L reads out of the local paper small ads section:
4 Debenhams bridesmaids dresses never worn, in rose pink, 3 size 14, 1 size 22. All can be altered - £200
Stunning Pro-Novias wedding dress, ivory duchess satin with embroidery detail. Size 14, never worn. Cost £1000. Accept £450

Winter light filters through the amaryllis petals.

The first flurry of snow as I walked down into the little valley this morning. The small flakes rattling amongst the last dry leaves.

Into town later on errands - shoelaces for me, shoes for L, white emulsion, fish, money, a hot water bottle.

My lower back is tender in a way it rarely is these days, and I have an incipient headache all the time. Tension, pure and simple. Still waiting.

My feet warm in my slippers despite the holes my big toes have worn in them.

An acid yellow Smart car is parked outside the Post Office, its reflection in the front window giving a double dose. I think of a song called 'A Double Dose of You'.

I dreamed of my nephew F and large sprigs of parsley.

The cries of children in the playground.

Shipbuilding

Awake at 3-4am this was going round and round my head. I worked out why this morning. The unconscious is a strange and at times subtle thing. Contemplating having to accept work I don't want to do, out of economic necessity obviously fired a certain neuronal connection.

Cold

L took me out for curry at our local this evening by way of distraction, and initially with the idea of playing darts with our friend S. But S had forgotten, and I didn't feel like being that visible - standing up in the bar playing darts renders one public and available in a way I'm not up for right now. We sat by the struggling fire instead, and played flies on the wall to local life. There seems to be a trend for 50/60 something couples to get married. One pair sitting behind two bottles of bubbly, evidently left over from their wedding party at the pub on Friday night. On the way home there was ice forming on the puddles, sparkly frost on the cars, and a glorious almost full moon presiding over all. Sub-zero temperatures, and snow forecast for Friday and Saturday. But first two clear and bright days, so we'll head to the allotment in the morning and get the carpet down over as much of it as possible.

Limbo on the job front. I was told I'd hear 'by Friday'. It's Tuesday.

Night

Tired, drinking peppermint tea before bed. Minimal tonight, just to say I think it went ok today, but I'm not at all sure how I feel about it if I get it. Still, if I get it, I give it a go, and be thankful for money in the bank. Soon be asleep I hope!

This Weekend

• Banana and walnut cake in the oven by 10am
• If you soften the butter in the microwave for even 10 seconds too long, it melts
• Nine baked potatoes in the oven - through the glass door they look quite a crowd
• A 'craft fair' at the community centre across the road (it takes two of my therapist friends five minutes to return from it)
• Warm hats
• Dirty windows
• Parsnip and apple soup arriving by car
• Success, celebration, empathy, support, listening - the joys of a peer group
• Hugs
• Washing up - three lots
• Bath - mango and orange blossom birthday bubbles
• Black Books - surreal slapstick strange silliness. Three of the funniest faces
• Ready for bed 9.30...
• Mouse in the kitchen - cue crawling around on the floor, pulling out the fridge, gaffer taping over holes, turning the sofa upside down
• Talking to Mum on the phone
• Final push on the loft preparation - three big boards standing outside
• Thinking about job interview
• Walking in the cold in my hat
• Meeting S and C also out walking, in hats - C buried her brother on Friday and all things considered seems resilient
• Green & Black's 60% chocolate with cherries - the cherries are eye-wateringly sour!
• L clearing leaves at the allotment
• Trying to catch up with best friend J - texts and messages
• The exhaust emissions warning light illuminated on my car dashboard. Manual says take it to get the engine checked. I see £££££ again...
• Shoulders feel stiff
• Clothes for interview
• Train times
• Person spec
• Reviewing my illustrious career
• Sausages tonight, and inevitably a bottle of some robust red!

Saturday Night's Alright

Tired this evening after nine people for lunch (you know what I mean...) and a meeting. My lovely group of therapists plus some visitors. Now L is chopping veg for the stir fry, the bottle of rose is chilling (must remember where the acute accent is to be found...), and we are listening to Van Morrison (Veedon Fleece if you want to know). Later we'll watch two episodes of Black Books, laugh like drains, go to bed.

Greater coherence tomorrow. Probably.

Floral Friday

Opportunity Knocks

Just when none of us could quite believe the self-pity and despair I was falling into... I got a call at 3.20 this afternoon, inviting me for an interview on Monday. It must be said that the admin style of this organisation is what I can only call - well, crap really. However, I am desperate, and maybe this doesn't reflect all aspects of their work?? Once badly bitten, I will pledge never to name the organisation nor its whereabouts...

I am of course desperate and if they offer me the job I will take it no matter how chaotic or unprofessional the set-up. Sorry not to sound more enthusiastic, but I've been through the mill again emotionally the last 24 hours or so, and feel pretty pissed off with being given four days notice for an interview. Imagine if I'd had a job or private clients... Still, I think, broadly speaking, I am pleased. At least to be able to reinstate my belief in my own good judgement about the quality of my application, and of the experience I have to offer. And yes, here is an opportunity, albeit a modest one.

Dark

It's school-run time, and the yellow school bus lumbers past the window, its windows steamed up, a few faces discernible inside. Parents and children, heavily hooded, are making their way through the wind and rain from the school, 50 yards from our house, to their cars or their nearby homes. The wind sighs and moans down the chimney. The neighbour's boy passes, head down, with his paper bag slung over his shoulder, either at the beginning or the end of his round. Car tyres hiss on the wet road, the sound of children's voices just audible through the double glazing, and past the wind which seems to be building up.

Last year I used to see the kids coming out of the school where I was based, watching them from my office window. Once or twice I wrote something on the blog about the kids, and in particular about my despair at the lack of action taken by social services to protect some of them. Once or twice I mentioned examples of things that were going on for these kids - violent abusive things. And look where it got me... I was told these things were identifiable by anyone who knew those kids, though no names, schools or personal details were ever mentioned. Is that a breach of confidentiality?

It's a classic November wet and windy day, where the afternoon seems over before four o'clock. I remember these from childhood. Lights on in the classroom in interminable afternoon Latin or History lessons, walking home in the half-dark, getting wet. Arriving home and making hot chocolate, toast with Bovril or chocolate spread (or one of each), and sitting down to watch Little House on the Prairie. I'm sure there were many other things I watched, but this memory always comes out with LHOTP in it, and often with Lucy sitting nearby munching toast too, and taking the piss out of goody two-shoes Laura and Mary, and the sugary sweet smiles of Ma and Pa.

Outside everyone's hair is blowing about, and cars are putting their lights on. 15.46 says the computer clock. I have heard nothing about the job I applied for, and am rapidly reaching the conclusion they do not want to interview me. How I hate this process. How I hate not knowing what it is they want, when I thought I'd done a very impresssive application. Soon be time to regroup, and maybe start to put all eggs in just the one basket - the basket of private practice. Not my ideal scenario, but since no-one seems to want to employ me, going to have to do it myself.

At least I can say that this November is better than last November, when about this time I was preparing for the investigation meeting. Though that isn't saying much.

Today

Asleep by ten last night, I woke at four, quite a good long chunk of unbroken sleep. Then back eventually to strange and fitful sleep, little dream sequences with a lot of people in them. At about eight I made tea, brought L a cup in bed and had mine in the kitchen doing my morning pages, while the temperature gradually rose from 15 degrees to 17.5. Outside it was foggy and slightly frosty, and still. A young man stood outside the post office in pale blue jeans and a jacket that looked too thin, his foot up against the wall behind him. I thought women never do that. After pages, I went and got dressed, then came back downstairs for breakfast. It must have been about 9.15 by now, because C, our neighbour three doors up was just returning from her stint as lollipop lady outside the school, and I felt again faintly guilty as I poured my orange juice and put the kettle on. Then again, she's the one with the job... I mean, I'm not choosing this. So, porridge, banana, honey and raisins, a few tinned peaches, and a cup of redbush. Then onto the computer to check emails, the blog and the jobs websites. Nothing on any front. I crash into a kind of exhausted slump (despite the good sleep) and decide I need a walk. The fog is burning off and it's almost sunny. I decide to take a walk down rather than up today. I put on hat, gloves, scarf, fleece, gilet, and in fact it's so still it isn't that cold and I'm warm, shedding my gloves and hat by the end of the walk. I cross the road and head down the field, and into my favourite little valley. There are a lot fewer leaves after last week's wind and rain, but colours still glow gently and the bare trees have that strange almost purplish haze. Hawthorn berries are hot red. I pass sheep in the field above the woods. Most of the cows have now been taken in - too cold. The walk makes me feel a bit better, moves some energy, and when I get home I help L reorganise our outhouse - take out my rusting bike to make room for other things, put in some of the wood from the loft. L is pleased, and I feel as if we've done something useful. Inside we drink tea and eat a toasted teacake and I phone the national insurance people to try and work out if I should go for a small earnings exemption or not. The guy on the line says not paying Class 2 contributions will have an impact on my pension, but he is unspecific. Pension! Ha! Will there even be a state pension by the time I reach the age of 66, when I am considered by the state to be ready for retirement!!

I talk to L, read and ponder until lunch-time. Veggie pasties, one Moroccan style the other Mexican, and salad, and a clementine. Then I'm off to see friend H at her studio. She has had a haircut, and looks very lovely, and ten years younger. I keep staring at her. We have tea and biscuits, and talk about work and memory, hearing loss, Feldenkrais, and a group we are in together... until I have to go about 3.20. Outside parents and children are on the move.

Back home friend S has arrived to help with loft clearance, and the next hour and a half is taken up with carrying very dirty pieces of wood, hardboard, plasterboard, once I have received them from those bolder than me, up ladders and in lofts, out to the car to be taken to the tip tomorrow. Also found in loft 2, a plastic garden gnome, fishing! After S has gone, I hoover the landing, stairs and hall, and then phone my nephew A, who texted me earlier to let me know he now has a landline in his new flat. He sounds alright, says that the flat's not dingy despite being a basement, and is currently working at the Odeon in his adopted city, the one where he went to university, alternating between the ticket tearing, the popcorn selling and the clearing up after showings. He's moved in with his girlfriend, which to me seems a big deal. He doesn't say a lot about this. Characteristic.

Next I have a bath to remove all the dust and grime from the loft clearance, and L starts the cooking. I get out, she gets in, and I continue the preparation of a lamb balti. Leftover roast lamb from Sunday, lots of veg and potatoes, and good old Patak's balti curry paste. Yum. I have the great idea of opening the last two bottles of Tripel Karmeliet beer, brought to us from Belgium by my brother in the summer. It's quite strong and aromatic, made with oats, wheat and barley. It loosens the setting of my brain. After the curry, I ask L if she'd mind if I pull the laptop across and start using the computer. She says she doesn't and goes off to tidy up the landing cupboard. Wow! And here I am...

Scrabbling

Dim autumn afternoon that feels like evening on account of being well on the way to darkness - indeed dark now that I have been interrupted by a phonecall from Hamid at the Jobcentre, who is chasing up my non-appearing self-employment credits money. He says he's on the case, but it will be paid from whenever it finally starts (next week??) and run for 16 weeks, rather than being backdated to two weeks ago when I actually signed up for it. The long and the short of it is I'm £150 down as of this week on what I'd expected to have in the bank. I know that L will lend it to me, but I am beginning to grow weary of this scrabbling for money all the time. The builders have finished the roof and the gutter, and we await the bill. Time for L to put her hand in her pocket again as my pockets are alarmingly shallow and have nothing in them of the sort likely to cover the roof works. Sigh.

Meanwhile it has grown cold here, with thick fog this morning. When it finally burned off we had lovely sunshine for a few hours, and the same sort of thing is forecast for tomorrow. I like it better than the wind and the rain, but it certainly feels wintry. The amaryllis which has opened two of its astonishing four flowers (on one stem!) is a cheering sight, and I will let you see it when in full glory! I feel a bit like I'm writing a letter home to my parents or something. It is interesting what happens when you pledge to post every day for a month.

L is in the loft again, and just handed me down a lovely flat stone, a bike cover, another sheet of clear plastic and a bag of tupperware boxes! This is all in aid of loft insulation, which L gets free now she is 60. The company are coming a week tomorrow to lay eleven inches of insulation, and we have to clear the loft as far as possible. We are therefore getting rid of all the old crap left by the previous owner, and sorting out our own stuff, so as to take up the minimum of space, because where the stuff sits can't be insulated...

I have a job application in, and the closing date was yesterday, the interview date next Monday. So, it's the old waiting game again. That and the absence of money from the self-employment credits scheme are making me edgy, and the tail end of my cold is tedious, and I slept badly last night, so all in all my mood is flat today. But now I shall go and put potatoes in the oven, and somehow baked potatoes are always comforting. And tonight's my Feldenkrais class - ditto.

What Came Out Of The Loft

About ten pieces of wood of assorted lengths
Four enormous pieces of clear plastic perhaps once used for covering new furniture
A lime green plastic thing similar in shape to a surf board
A KP crisps box
A sign saying Teas - 150 yards on the Right
Another sign saying Cream Teas at Old Town featuring a very naive painting of a teapot
A horrid teddy
A nasty knitted doll
A dolly's rucksack with a pick-axe slotted inside (that wouldn't come out)
A gargantuan cardboard box
The front of a fridge salad compartment
About twenty pieces of carpet of various sizes, patterns and filthiness
A doll's dummy
Some very strange and dirty items of girl's clothing
A box of tiles and an assortment of pens, batteries, little plastic bits of things (dirty)
A book entitled The Practical Poultry Keeper - here's a little extract
With respect to old fowls, in the market they are an abomination; but at home it is sometimes needful to use them. If so, let them be boiled. Unless very aged, they will then be tolerable eating; but if roasted, will be beyond most persons' powers of mastication.

Skellies

Education

Remember how we used to lead each other blindfold
around the school grounds, bottle green scarf tied
darkly round our heads? The sighted led the blind
a long trek down the lime walk, up to the tennis courts
across the lacrosse pitch, over to the swimming pool,
chatting a mile a minute all the way.

At last we'd say Now guess where you are! Guess!
and the blind girl would sometimes know exactly
where she was, a tremendous feat of concentration,
more often was wildly confused, knew she felt grass
underfoot but imagined herself on the other side
of the grounds entirely - stared in disbelief
when the blindfold came off at the beech hedge
at the furthest boundary, where sometimes boys
were glimpsed in muddy football gear.

Of course at first you'd know where you were,
which way you were headed, but distances became
hard to gauge, a sudden turn to the left threw
your inner map entirely, and then you were lost.

Interim

I've been having a cold - the first I've had in a long time - at least a year - so not the most creative of spells. The tanker was eventually rescued yesterday by a fearsome piece of equipment called a tele something (according to our builder), but not a teletransporter because I just googled that and it's something from science fiction. Which this wasn't. It was big and yellow and said JCB on it and had a very long telescopic thingy on the front. Hmm. Well, it was in the end too cold for me (with my cold) to stand outside long enough to see it actually heaving the tanker out. But it didn't finally reverse back down the lane until after 6.30 in the evening. We left the breaded haddock and baked potatoes cooling on the table to see it finally depart.

The roof's watertight now but not finished as - perhaps predictably - while they were up there they discovered something else... The mortar all down one ridge is crumbling - chunks of it flying as N, the builder's mate, demonstrated the problem from on high. So the scaffolding tower remains outside. Today was far too wild and windy for roof work. In fact tonight is the windiest I remember since we moved to this house. Roaring and whistling down and around the chimney. I am beginning to get used to it, sort of, maybe. I find it very unsettling, but I'm trying to enjoy being safe and cosy inside while it thwacks the outside world.

One other thing, in recognition of the date. I can't really add anything more to what you will find at the home of white poppies.

Lovely Day For It

After two days of truly wild weather, we have a flat calm and the bluest blue sky today. And M the builder has seized the opportunity to get up on the roof and sort out the dodgy slates and flashings that have been causing the leak. I can hear him and his mate talking down the chimney, though not what they are saying! 'You don't work for the Inland Revenue do you?' asked M cheerfully from the roof.

Meanwhile a Calor gas tanker has keeled over into the ditch while trying to get up the lane! Not sure whose idea that was. The men from Stoneywood Motors don't seem to know what to do. I didn't want to go any closer in case they took exception to me taking pictures, so you'll have to click to enlarge to see what I'm talking about...

Outpatients

A brightly lit corridor with a gleaming vinyl floor, a series of mid-brown wooden doors leading off it. Names are called - the first incomprehensible, the second Mr Sparks. No-one moves. Neither of them appears to be here. The nurse retracts her head from the door round which she had poked it in order to summon the disappearing patients. Your waiting time to see a doctor is declares the dot matrix board encouragingly. We've already heard Mr Foo is running late, and seen him shamble into his consulting room with a cup of coffee perhaps 10 minutes ago. A child of about 7 comes in with his mother, sits in the corner with his woolly gloves on and starts to rummage through the big crate of toys. He finds a large-scale plastic construction toy in primary colours. The pieces, crudely shaped like animals - chickens, doggies, horses - slot together. It makes no sense. The carpet is green, flecked with a darker colour. The waiting room (area 1) is now full, and a woman stands to accommodate the newest arrivals. A nurse tells her there's another seating area nearby. She declines, says she's waiting for someone - I don't think he'll be long. We've already been waiting half an hour. The anxiety in the air is like distant smoke - you can smell it, taste it, it begins to affect your breathing. A woman with a pony tail and gold hoop earrings emerges onto the corridor with a huge pile of buff coloured files. I assume she's a doctor, as she's not wearing a uniform, and therefore stands out amongst the other hospital staff in their various coloured NHS outfits. The elderly couple opposite me look as if they'd been here for hours, days. They seem resigned, except her foot swings like a pendulum in the air, legs crossed. His crossed leg is still but his fingers tap on the chair arms. Both of their faces are tired and lined, a little bemused. He closes his eyes. Suddenly her name is called, and he is left alone.

Grim

A grim day and we awoke at 5.00 to rain lashing the windows, and became increasingly anxious about the leaking roof. A brief loft inspection a few hours later revealed that no rain was currently dripping in - wind in a different direction perhaps. And then L went to talk to our next door but one neighbour the builder, and he's going to come and have a look tomorrow. All we can do for now. But this weather - oh god, the wind roaring down the chimney, rain hurled against the windows all day long with no let up, and so dark! I feel threatened, somehow unsafe the whole time, and the hormones of hell are ravaging my brain chemistry at the moment too, so I feel like an adolescent - moody, irritable, volatile, extreme - only not so young!! And now I'm working on a job application - the first for months - and struggling to feel upbeat about it after all the knockbacks, and the hopeless admininstrative chaos so far demonstrated by this organisation, although in all other respects it appears to be a job I want. And I've got to go off to get the train to Leeds in a bit for my reading group, and after last week's train experience, and the continuing inclemency of the weather, this too makes me anxious and grumpy.

But anyway, here's a lovely gate from the coastal path at Silverdale, and some berries, and the glorious view from the top of Arnside Knott, looking across to the mountains, or fells of the Lake District.

Arnside

We are just back from Arnside, where the sun shone on us for much of the time, save Friday afternoon when we first arrived in light but persistent rain. Deep into Autumn now, with morning frosts, lots of damp leaves on the ground, the smell of leaf mould and fungi and slightly rotting windfallen apples. The light on the Kent Estuary is beautiful in all weathers and at all times of day, it seems. I managed to catch a shot of a train going over the viaduct, which elegantly spans this part of the estuary, giving Arnside its iconic view.

Drip Drip Drip

Yesterday it really did rain like everything is coming to an end... and we discovered that our roof is leaking. L noticed ominous dark circles on the ceiling in her green room, and up to the loft she went, and yes, drip drip drip. All I see is £ signs. But the ship must be watertight, so one way or another ££££ must be found. There is also a fearsome leak under the back door. The door appears to fit tight, but under the (brand new) carpet just inside, the solid floor is soaking. So, trying not to go into panicky home-owner meltdown here.

And what better way to be distracted from home maintenance issues than to go away! Off to Arnside for the last part of L's 60th celebrations, and a little bit of my birthday celebrations. It's over on the West coast, or more accurately on the estuary of the River Kent just where it opens into Morecambe Bay. We went there for my birthday two years ago and it's beautiful. Happily, the rain has stopped and the forecast for tomorrow and Sunday is actually quite good! No post tomorrow as no wi-fi and I didn't really understand Lucy's helpful hint about telling Blogger to post for me while I'm not here. And anyway, if I'm not putting it up that day, it isn't really a post for that day is it? NaBlo is just a spur for me, and seems to be working so far! November 6th will be the joker in the pack!

Winter Whitening

In the waiting room, waiting for L. The sound of an instrument, a low buzzing, not the high-pitched whining of the drill, and the radio playing Stone In Love With You by the Stylistics. Not a song to sing along to. I keep thinking the receptionist is attempting to do so, but it's a certain sound the printer makes as it whirrs into action, spewing out whatever dentists' receptionists print off. WINTER WHITENNG, announces a laminated notice on the noticeboard, inviting you to pay £315 for tooth whitening thus
It isn't only the Christmas tree lights that can be extra sparkly this winter. You could have brighter, whiter teeth in time for Christmas!!
In smaller print it also suggests you might like to treat your family and friends to tooth whitening... The radio burbles and babbles as two schoolboys with heavily gelled hair go into the dentist's surgery with their mum. There is congestion on the M25 in Nottingham. Industrial action on London Underground.

Replacement

Eleven o'clock at night, and we stand shivering along with maybe forty other people outside the front of Rochdale station, where large plastic barriers suggest extensive road closures, and are not encouraging for us, waiting as we are for the rail replacement bus service. Just a little way down the road to the right, a darkened minibus is parked. I remark on it to L immediately, but we decide it has nothing to do with this story. The line is flooded at Littleborough, and our train has terminated here. Those of us who know the area are aware that the main road is in that case very likely to be flooded too, and that a 50-seater coach would not be able to negotiate the twisting, steep and narrow alternative route over the tops. The promised bus has not materialised, and railway employees are nowhere to be seen.

Stranded and fed up, we begin to talk to one another. Someone says they have been told that the bus, when it arrives, will not be able to get beyond Littleborough, which for us is about halfway home. Others begin to joke anxiously about opening a local church for us to sleep in. A bearded man with grubby glasses wanders about remarking repeatedly that we are doomed, in the style of that character from Dad's Army, but without the Scots accent. His companion is coming up with an elaborate strategy for getting to Leeds, involving returning to Manchester and getting a train to Huddersfield. As it is already well after 11pm, this seems a little optimistic. A large group of young football fans from Bradford breaks periodically into song 'I wanna go home! Let me go home! This is the worst trip I've ever been on!', and occasionally '1 -nil, 1-nil 1 -nil!' suggesting their team met with success tonight, despite the torrential rain, which must have rendered the pitch one vast sea of mud. A softly spoken young man from Todmorden is discussing the possibility of a lift for one person, with a nervous Asian man and an American woman. His Dad is on the way, and, as there's a child seat in the back, there will only be room for one other passenger. I enter the conversation gently, and begin to explore with the nervous man the possibility of a taxi. He is keen to establish how much L and I would be willing to pay. L's face says she is not willing to pay at all. I am beginning to feel desperate, and think that it would be £8 well spent if it meant not having to share a church hall floor with twenty football fans for the night.

About this time, a shabby looking man, unshaven, with wild grey hair, approaches us in a manner I can only describe as sidling up. Out of the corner of his mouth he asks where we are going, and when L and I, the nervous man and the American woman, tell him our destinations, he mutters that we should go quietly and stand beside the darkened minibus, without drawing attention to ourselves. There we join a large man with a beard and pony tail and bags of bottles, who has been waiting in Manchester since nine o'clock. He is puzzled about the flooded railway line, remarking that it is usually the road and not the track that gets inundated, and says he is wondering if the reservoir has burst its banks. Slowly, others join our waiting party, asking for clarification of the situation, which we cannot give, but we all remain vaguely optimistic that the shabby man will drive us home eventually, and that this will not cost us anything, though he has not at any point made it clear he has anything to do with the train company. In the mean time nervous man is on his mobile phone, still trying to get a price for a cab, still trying to establish whether L and I and the American woman will share it with him. We have just agreed, when the unshaven and tousle-headed driver arrives, opens the minibus and lets us on board without putting any lights on. His mission has been to avoid being overrun with football fans, a goal we all heartily share.

We set off, driver cracking slightly off colour jokes, nervous man asking 'what did he say? Did you get that?', and popping small tablets whilst sitting sideways on his seat. At Littleborough station a poster asks How's Your Train Running? Some lads get off, joking about going to Sainsbury's to rob some food. The driver says the kebab shop will still be open, then tells an even more off colour joke about the Jamie Oliver sausages on sale in Sainsbury's. 'Did you get that?' asks nervous man, eager and anxious. I tell him I don't think I can repeat it. It turns out, despite large puddles, and areas where water is pouring across the road, and some slightly alarming downhill water-planing, as shabby man drives at a fair speed, we are able to get home using main roads, though not by the most obvious route, which is perhaps flooded as we anticipated. At one point we pass a 50-seater coach coming the other way, and the driver pauses, opens his window and calls to the driver that there is a bunch of passengers waiting for him at Rochdale station. 'You'll like them!' he shouts, and laughs as we move off.

Rain

Rain today. Last September as I drove back and forth into Lancashire to do the job I was soon to lose, I used to think often of death. Not really in the sense of dying in a car-accident. There is something strange and unreal about driving, the sense of being a body moving fast through space, as if you could just take off into the ether.

I die on the rain-drenched road
drive into the sinking clouds
wipers sweeping wet curves
across the glass.

I die with my hands lashed to the wheel
all the colours coming together
a small bird flying up from the ground.

Leaves And Berries

We picked sloes this morning up above the other side of town, ready for this year's sloe gin. I can see this becoming a birthday tradition. We made it for the first time last year, and have just bottled and started drinking it. It's like delicious warming cough medicine! And the colour of a rich rose wine.

We found a lovely path we'd never been on before, beside a small stream, in a tiny wooded side valley, of the kind we have so many of round here, and spotted several holly trees with tons of berries. We shall return when the time comes to deck the halls! Despite the weather forecast, the day was dry and slowly the cloud broke up, and we sat on a bench and looked into the valley for a while at the end of our walk, wishing we'd taken the camera. These shots are from this afternoon, when I decided to go out again, just up our lane.

We had lunch in town and then came home to chocolate birthday cake and coffee!

Eve

Two birds stand on the ridge of the roof opposite, like weather vanes silhouetted against the pale sky. The light is dim but not quite gloomy. Rain and more rain forecast for the coming week. And last night we put the clocks back, so that this afternoon it will be dark around 4.30. And this morning it was light at 7.00. It's Hallowe'en, and the eve of my birthday, and a time of the year that is in my bones more than any other.

This time last year, half term was drawing to a close, my dread of returning to work mounting. There was much that I feared, a great many things were already going badly wrong in my team and in the project, but what met me when I got to our team meeting that November morning, and what unfolded in the course of that terrible day, was worse even than I had imagined. Worse because suddenly the shit came straight at me and scored a direct hit. 'I've made a complaint against you', said one of my team, right in the middle of the meeting, and later my manager's manager told me that the complaint was in fact about my blog. The bottom dropped out of my stomach, and the word 'fuck' fell from my lips. And there began a chapter of horrors the like of which I hope never to repeat. The next day I was suspended on full pay, and never returned to my office or to my duties. Ever. As that year turns, I hope I can leave some of the horror behind, and with this new chapter of self-employment, have a sense of something wholesome and good beginning.

I've just printed out my new leaflet in five different colours. Favourites are two different shades of blue - a turquoise, and more of a sky blue. I need to see what colour paper I can get a large quantity of, but I rather favour the sky. Blue seems to be the theme of my practice - the walls of the therapy room, my business card, the card I've put on noticeboards, and now the leaflet too. And this coming week I'll deliver leaflets to F, a very helpful local therapist who will pass them on to interested parties, and display them where she works.

Tomorrow is not only my birthday, but also the start of NaBloPoMo. I plan to post every day in November, as a decisive antidote to last November, every day of which was a nightmare. The exception will have to be next Saturday, as we're going to Arnside for the weekend, over on the West coast, on the Kent Estuary that opens into Morecambe Bay. I'll post before we go on the Friday, and when we return on the Sunday, but the lovely looking apartment we've taken, though well-appointed, does not boast wi-fi, so that is that!

Waiting

I drove over to Todmorden this morning, past achingly beautiful trees, glowing out of the dimness from the valley sides. I don't remember when the colours have been so beautiful, the deep yellows and oranges making my heart lurch into song. Perhaps I'm coming back to life, as the year turns, as the first year since the complaint draws to a close. I drove to Tod to sign up for self-employment credits (£50 a week for the next 4 months), having registered yesterday as self-employed. I feel freed at last to go full steam ahead with publicising my work. I feel a weight lifting. The best birthday present. And time to say goodbye to a year that began the day after I turned 47 - a year full of woe, whichever way I look at it. And so I'm full of a sense of new beginnings as the year so gloriously dies.

Yesterday I finished 'Housekeeping' by Marilynne Robinson, whose cover proclaims it is 'one of the Observer's 100 Greatest Novels of all time'. The Observer may be right. It is a beautiful and difficult book about loss and growing up. Dream-like in its closeness to the unconscious, it is full of watery imagery, of strangeness and loneliness, and the ineffable sadness of children who have lost parents. I don't know what more to say except - read it. I offer an extract that moved me especially. The narrator Ruthie, is one of two sisters, whose mother left them as small girls at their grandmother's, and then went and drowned herself :

I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation. I expected - an arrival, an explanation, an apology. There had never been one, a fact I could have accepted, were it not true that, just when I had got used to the limits and dimensions of one moment, I was expelled into the next and made to wonder again if any shapes hid in its shadows. That most moments were substantially the same did not detract at all from the possibility that the next moment might be utterly different. And so the ordinary demanded unblinking attention. Any tedious hour might be the last of its kind.

Recycling

L and I have been at my Mum's for a couple of days. She's ok - if cantankerous. Her back seemed not to be paining her much, though she said it was stiff in the mornings, and the problem with the shower is a structural one - currently a large step up to get in the cubicle (not sure why) - that she finds difficult to negotiate, as she does any and all changes of level.

Like old times, writing on the train on the way there. Some fragments...

The train flies along the line.
A banner of blue tops the window
and everything has its shadow.
The day cuts things out
and sticks them back on the world,
gives them outlines,
an air of importance.

Now in England on a red train
there is the small scratchy sound
of music leaking from headphones,
there are trainers and sneakers
brogues and biker boots
and the electric whirr of air con.
A man sings under his breath
another sleeps with his mouth open,
a little string of saliva attaching
upper lip to lower, sunlight
catching the smoothness
of his bald brown head.
Now at Stoke on Trent a grey train
waits at a platform,
a blonde woman on board laughs
still wearing her gloves.


Collecting rubbish on the train

Is that rubbish? asks the buzz-cut young man
with the black bin-bag, pointing
at our apple core where it rests
on the crushed empty juice carton,
his job to cruise up and down the aisles,
identify and remove the empty
the used, the discarded, being careful
to distinguish these from the half-full
the still in use, the still needed.

Into The Clough

Glorious sunshine on Wednesday, so I took the camera out again, to my favourite little valley or clough as they call them round here.

Because it is so deep and steep, the sun doesn't reach some places, and the first overnight frost hadn't melted at 3 in the afternoon. Near here I met friend S coming down with her crazy dog C, and stood and talked for ten minutes, growing very chilly, though in the sun I'd been toasty warm.

The hawthorn berries glowed.

Draining

Here's yesterday's washing up, inspired by herhimnbryn as I so often am.
I remember we had a little spate of washing up photos a few years back when I had the old blog. There is something so intimate and domestic about them. I was tempted to take a photo of my washing hanging on the line yesterday too. Or would that just be strange?

October Moorland

The colours are superb around here at the moment. The grasses dry and pale, the bilberry leaves redden, the heather flowers fade, bracken yellows.

My camera struggles to do justice to this sort of thing... Click to enlarge anyway...

Making Do

Well, so I had this idea I'd do NaBloWriMo this year, as November is almost upon us and I need a bit of a spur. Then I googled it and discovered that this year it's October* and therefore half over already! However, I reason, there is nothing to stop me posting every day in November (except November 6th when I shall be away without internet access) if I want to. Watch this space.

I am feeling lost and unhappy today as the wind whistles down the chimney, and we eat L's birthday chocolates, and I wait for someone to reply to my email enquiry about the first remotely possible-looking job in months. Even though it's 40 miles away. But it is a children's counselling job, and these are thin on the ground, and it is only 13 hours, which is about what I want and presumably means only making the journey twice a week. Shame the money's rubbish, but what can you do? Some money rather than no money is the opposite of rubbish, whatever that is. Fresh, useful, desirable. I decided I'd go into town this morning and write in the library. I walked down, carrying in my head the names of two authors whose books I'd like to read, so I could check the shelves for their works while I was there. I got to the library, browsed the relevant sections. No books by either James Kelman or Alice Thomas Ellis. Then I browsed the seating accommodation. Three round tables with people sitting at them reading papers, typing on laptops etc, two big sofas in a rather dark area, a string of desks, which in my mind's eye I had pictured as at least half just little desks you could sit quietly and privately at to write. No. All equipped with computers, all in use as far as I could tell. I left. I went and sat by the canal as it wasn't too cold. I wrote a small sad autumnal fragment. I met my friend C who seemed small and sad and autumnal. It was nice to see her. Then I walked home again.

Drowned leaves float in the dark canal
yellow, gold, brown and green.
Dry ones blow crisply along the towpath.
In a puddle at my feet are mud and rotting leaves.

The train works its way along the valley.
Over the canal bridge I glimpse dark red
and the curve of the still green hillside
as the wind picks up something light and dry
and slaps it into the back of my neck.

*Footnote - ok, there's NaBloWriMo which is October, and there's NaBloPoMo which is indeed November or any month you like!!

Mum

I've just been chatting to my brother on the phone. We're both a bit concerned about my mother who is 80 and increasingly incapacitated by myositis (specifically inclusion body myositis), vertigo and depression. When I spoke to her on Friday she was complaining of a sore back, which has not been a feature of the myositis to date, and a doctor she is not keen on - her own being on holiday - had prescribed steroids, a hugely bad idea as she was put on these soon after she was first diagnosed with myositis, and they caused her face to puff up and made her depressed! She was also talking about her anxieties about how long she'll be able to stay in her flat. Actually, this won't be a problem, as the flat is wheelchair accessible and helpers and carers of all kinds can be engaged to come and help with personal care. She already has L who comes once or twice a week and shops and does little jobs and errands. My mother complains that she is bossy and irritating, but nonetheless depends on her, and when I was last there and L was away on holiday, she must have mentioned this fact fifteen times, as well as expressing anxiety that L might not return the following Monday as planned. Anyway it is hard to decipher what is an actual physical problem and what is the depression speaking, but the back pain is different from her usual general complaint that she is 'deteriorating', and she says she's finding it difficult to take a shower. I think she needs to get the GP to refer her for another OT assessment and maybe they will provide a shower chair, as previously they provided special 'elephant's' feet for the sofa to make it higher, and a raised toilet seat, though if they don't I'm sure we can get her one... Mostly the myositis has made walking hard work for her, though she manages with a stick and a wheeled walker, and her hands have become weak and awkward, her fingers not at all good at small movements like doing up buttons, putting on earrings or wielding a bread knife. L (that's my L) and I are going to visit her soon, and will be able to see how she is then. My brother is going a week or so later and then we'll be able to compare notes and think about whether any practical action is needed.

48

Listen well but not hard
Open windows
Close doors
Always make the bed
Don't give up
When you give up forgive yourself and start again
Drink water alongside the wine
Talk
Ask for what you want
Write anything
Witness
Floss
No-one else has any idea how to be you
Never ever put yourself down
The future is unwritten
Walk
Get up high for a long view
Baths are essential
Don't cheat
Remember birthdays and anniversaries
Do Feldenkrais to stay sane and pain free
See the sea regularly
Never underestimate people
Don't assume tomorrow will be like today
A little of what you fancy does you good
There are no rules
Don't believe the depressive thoughts
If enough is not enough more can never be better
Eat well
Sleep well and when you don't trust that it will be ok
Happiness is a bonus but hope to stay interested
Lots of effort - no straining
You've survived this before
Definitely don't drink too much
The thing you dread has already happened
Revenge only works in fantasy
Get out of the house
Get out the pen and notebook and write
Trust yourself
Be prepared to learn the same thing over and over again
Remember the past
Forget the past
Try to find out what it means to open your heart
Open your heart
That weird idea you had is important
That weird dream you had is important
This weird life you're having is important
You will always think of one more thing...

60

The sun is shining from a clear blue sky, the flowers have been delivered, the big fat chocolate birthday cake is just out of the oven, and we are about to go for a little walk, suitable to the current stage of the toe's recovery. Later about 12 people are coming for tea and cakes (yesterday I made lemon polenta, and banana walnut...), and even later a bottle of bubbly, and meatballs and spaghetti to follow. L has had some lovely cards and presents and on Saturday night we went out for a meal with 5 of her brothers and sisters plus partners. Celebrations are go!