Reasons To Be Cheerful (Part 2)

Working on a presentation for a job interview on Tuesday - this time with disabled people. Interesting, challenging, nervewracking. Where to position myself emotionally? It is hard to start feeling enthusiastic, as I inevitably do while I do my research, and start to see the potential of this project. Hard, because the underbelly of the excitement is the possibility of another knock-back. I just don't feel as resilient as I might...

I'll go in a while to visit the horses and foals in the field along the road, and take some photographs, though the light is far from perfect - sky almost entirely covered in grey and white cloud. We saw them last weekend, and watched the spindly-legged foals run alongside their mothers, up and down the field. There seemed to be a collective agitation or excitement afoot. One of the adults took to bucking and kicking at one point, so we decided to withdraw, as another group of people were watching from the other side of the field, and we wondered if the mares were feeling threatened.

The honeysuckle is finally opening its flowers, dark red, with orange and white inside, yielding up a deep perfume you feel in your belly.

My memories of the befriending scheme where I worked in London are fresh and tender when I tap on the door of that recess of my brain. I remember the young people, their families, homes and pets as if it were yesterday. I wonder how hugely tall, unconfident S is getting on, how softly-spoken, creative N, so vulnerable and beautiful, has fared these last six years. I hope they are finding ways to be adults that keep them safe, and let them blossom...

Like A, my nephew, who visited briefly this week, before flitting off to North Yorkshire to see his old friends, then back down South to his girlfriend's today, before returning to his home in Brussels tomorrow, then off in a couple of weeks to travel round Europe with an Interail ticket with S for a month, then back to Brussels to work for six weeks, then back to university to embark on an MA!! He is tall, lightly bearded, tousle-haired, blue-eyed, ripped-trousered, but not shambolic - in fact he seems very responsible and well-organised. Very nearly got a first in his degree - gave me his interesting, thoughtful dissertation to read... Never sure when I will see him these days, but always a pleasure when I do.