Goodbye

The saddest light coming into my kitchen, reflecting in the laptop screen where I see my left shoulder, and a little bit of the sky framed by the window, birds occasionally flying across.
Every time we say goodbye I die a little. The daffodils are beginning to curl at the edges. Late afternoon, the slowest time of the day. Friday. The end of another week. And almost the end of the saddest month. The month with no true end this year. Truncated at 28 days, suddenly it will be March, and this is good, always, but something will have been lost again.

I'll be with my Mum this weekend and we probably won't talk about it much, and it has seldom been planned, but it's amazing how many times we have ended up together at the end of February. Just keeping company as it goes by. My father so long gone now - 23 years - it is hard to find out what the anniversary might be. The danger of suicide is it becomes the most memorable thing a person has done. But I'll read the letters to my Mum, and perhaps we can remember some good stuff together, though this is of course not uncomplicated territory.

Empty

February always gets me in the end. Even when I don't think I'm thinking about my Dad, or not about his death anyway, then I suddenly recognise that thoughts about suicide are bubbling to the surface. Irrational fears that other loved ones will do it, or that maybe it's my inevitable fate. This is not not not a good time for me. The days are grey, damp, foggy and cold. The sun made a kind of momentary semi-appearance through the clouds this morning and my friend A and I, out walking, stopped our conversation, turned towards it, and absorbed its much-filtered rays, like people in a desert finding drops of water on a cactus. I have no work this week, and am falling hard through the cracks in my life. I read, I go for a walk, I cook. There are times of respite, of absorption in something beyond myself, but every time there's a gap, a lull, a question about what to do next, I begin to flounder. I obsessively check my inbox for replies from people I've emailed, and become enraged by the silence. Empty empty empty. And the old refrain in my mind of my mother's voice in my childhood telling me, when I used to say I don't know what to do, that I can't possibly be bored when I've got all those lovely books to read and toys to play with. Marinaded for years in all my parents' unspoken unhappiness, whilst frequently being told how happy we all were, I could never find words or reasons for my misery.

I remembered this evening the time we were on holiday in the Dordogne when I was nine, and there was a fire in our hotel in the middle of the night, and we had to escape in our nightclothes. Lucky that my mother was a light sleeper, and was woken by the sound of slates crashing to the ground from the burning roof, otherwise we might have been burned in our beds (this at least was the family myth thereafter). We stood across the road, watching the upper storey of the building consumed in roaring orange and yellow flames, sparks flying. The patron ran up and down in front of the building wringing his hands and exclaiming que faire? que faire? There was another hotel in the village and eventually we were accommodated there for what remained of the night, and in the morning my father went into the damaged but now safe original hotel, and retrieved our wet but otherwise undamaged possessions. My beloved owl Wol with the white furry tummy was never the same again, all his stuffing clumped together by the water from the pompiers' hoses.

Ladies Who Lunch

Hormones and weather hounding me - the wind huffing down the chimney, my mood as grey as the fog-laden sky sinking onto the drenched hills. Vestiges of the snow that fell on Saturday morning cling here and there. Most of the daffodils have struggled open, after looking for a time like the heart-breaking kind that never do. Their bright yellow star and trumpet cheerfulness offers a small sign of hope. The weather forecast is quite abysmal for the next three days, but at least it is set to get warmer again, and Thursday is billed as the one sunny day in a long stretch of drizzle, cloud, light rain, heavy rain.

I met the therapists on Saturday, which is always very heartening, and I feel my struggles are understood and not judged. Right now I feel if anything more lost than before, though I am certainly not ungrateful for the work at the school. Quite the reverse. But half a day's work does not solve the overall problem, good start though it is. I have no money. Hoping to be interviewed for the teaching work in Leeds, where they seem to have changed their minds about not hiring til the autumn. But no date set yet, and no guarantee I'll get it either.

I confess I'm rather dreading the Census work, with all its fiddly record-keeping, codes, barcodes and the like. And the admonishment not to wear sunglasses. I wear light sensitive glasses, which frequently darken even when you don't think it's bright, and I need them. Too bad if householders are offended, I can't do my job without glasses, or without them darkening. Then there's the small matter of toilets. I shall go scouting before I start work, but it seems to me unlikely there are any public ones in the very rural areas where I'll be collecting, and I'm not one who can go hours at a stretch without going. I'm sure we'll be advised not to ask householders for the use of theirs. I'm sure that is exactly what I'll have to do (selectively of course.)

In a little while I shall go and pick L up from her Pilates class (I always think of Pontious Pilate when I see it written), and we shall go for a little jaunt to Todmorden, taking in the tip to deposit cartons and cardboard, the garden centre to look at cordless strimmers, lunch at the wholefood shop cafe, and Lidl! At the wholefood shop I shall buy some slippery elm bark for my stomach, as recommended by friend H. I'd said I wanted to go out for dinner to celebrate signing the contract with the school, but by the time L had pointed out it's only ten weeks' work, and I'd pointed out my stomach is iffy, and we'd both realised I'd better save the little bit of money in the savings account I was all set to spend, for the rainy day that is definitely already here, we decided that lunch out would be nearer the current mark. So lunch it is.

Cold Spring

The first daffodils in a vase on the kitchen table, bought yesterday on the market, the yellow of petal now beginning to emerge slowly slowly from the fine brown tissue sheath enclosing the bud.

Outside it is windy and foggy, something I used to think a contradiction, but which happens relatively often up here, and so cold again, eye-watering and nose-dripping as I walked down the field this afternoon, with sleet and even snow forecast over the weekend and into next week. As I write and it grows dark, the fog seems to be closing in bluish grey, the distant shapes of the tops gone, the nearest stand of trees just a dark tangle.

Unconfined

I have just received a letter from the school which says
We have now completed our pre-employment checks and are pleased to enclose two copies of your contract for services.
I shall be signing them, and returning one forthwith with great pleasure.

I met the two young people I'm going to be working with yesterday, so everything is in place now for after half term.

The Census people have invited me to classroom training, so I assume they are happy with my reference too!

Let joy be unconfined... Though sadly I'm sleeping badly again and feel rather raddled. However, I have time now to rest and enjoy some peace of mind.

11.08 To Manchester Victoria

Grey railings with sharp ends march along the top of the railway cutting. There's a draft on my left shoulder as we pull into Rochdale, though I can see no open windows. Too many people get on at Rochdale and I feel hemmed in and oppressed, pray no-one needs to sit beside me. The sky is watercolour grey, trees determinedly bare and two young men are talking about Chelsea. I assume it's the football team they mean, though I can't really pick out any other words amid the rattle of the train and the heaviness of the Rochdale-Asian accents. Suddenly I hear Arsenal. Yes, football. Two huge pylons at an electricity sub-station. A long narrow pile of used red bricks like an embankment. A pale yellow bus. This is Castleton where a man leans against the shelter on the platform, chewing hard, looking sideways at me or maybe just at my train, wearing a black knitted hat with a red stripe round the edge. Green metal steps up from the platform, with white handrails. Another pile of bricks and rubble. Looks like they've been demolishing the terraces of Castleton. The railway line crosses the M62 or possibly the M60. I glimpse lines of fast-moving traffic, giant trucks. Lichen-green fence panels. Allotments with greenhouses and polytunnels. A procession of mighty pylons taking electricity to Manchester or possibly bringing it from Manchester. I see the Rochdale Canal, and we are at Mills Hill. A washed out sign saying Princes Drinks. A development of dark red brick box houses with brown rooves. Inflite Engineering Services. Darcy Joinery. A green van with T. Dobson & Sons on the side, and we're at Moston, where red-tipped stems of an overgrown woody shrub behind the platform hint at spring. A beige tower block. A caravan with a blue tarpaulin stretched over one end. More grey railings - standard railway issue. The train maintenance depot. Are You Ready To Be Pool Party Proof? asks a poster on a billboard incomprehensibly. The tower blocks with coloured rooves, one orange, one brown, one blue, with matching trim beneath the windows. The tower block inexplicably called Emmeline, a large red American motel-style sign on top announces this. This building was stripped back to the bone then reclad in red-brown panels and given this incongruous name a few years ago. Waiting just outside Victoria Station, the Boddington's Brewery tower now in view.

Impossible Angles

I can find no quiet way to exist, no way to be open and safe, no way to know without exploding, no way to get up on the roof without falling, no way to fly. The light is clear but fleeting, the light arrives but is always threatening to leave, the wind drifting large clouds, dark in the middle, white at the edges, across the unbearable sun. And the time it takes for the light to change is the time it takes for me to change my plans, change my mind, change from quietly compliant to furiously destructive, from capable to hopelessly fallen. Not able to pick myself up. A rag doll dropped on the floor, yellow thread hair splayed, legs at impossible angles. When I took her to church the rector blessed her at the altar rail, and I was blessed, I was loved, I was included. Don't let it rain. Today could be a beginning. If the sun could reflect in the dark puddled road, could suck the water back off the tarmac, could warm the damp-coated cattle in the rutted mud of the desperate field, could I --? Could I open the door? Could I enter the day? Could I join the world?

There are small flies in the heather - they fly up as my ankles brush the new growth and the older darker damp rough stems. They fly up like summer midges only larger-winged, I disturb them as the rain water soaks into my trouser-bottoms. My hand brushes the sapling and is wet with cool rain. Can I persuade myself to go there? If I can get through the door, if I can climb up the hill, can I breathe in the February air, look a long way south, see how the broken sun picks out that yellow field, turns that line of buildings into the silhouetted back of a dinosaur?

Please stop trying to be concrete. Stop looking for an answer. Eat questions. Chew them slowly, savour them, swallow and digest. My stomach is sore. There's a pink and tender place like a bald patch with sunburn, like a sore spot on a dog's back, like eczema, like an itch, like a burning, like a scratch. I can't soothe it, can't reach it; send down the gentlest foods. Gentle gentle to calm it to reassure it, to placate it. It's a baby crying, it needs rocking, singing to, lulling with lullabies of porridge and stewed apple, soup and rice, chicken and potatoes. Too much, not enough, which is it? What do you want? Mind a parcel, stomach a sore baby, what to do? Stay in. Go out. Rest. Exercise. Eat. Fast. Think. Meditate. Try harder. Do less.

Rainy Sunday

It's been raining all day, and I have cleaned out the fridge (surprisingly satisfying, and not something I do very often - probably why it was satisfying...), listened to Celia Imrie on Desert Island Discs, and completed my e-learning for the Census job. I then took the assessment questionnaire, in which I was required to achieve 85% or more in an unlimited number of attempts. It took me two to get 97%, which brings back the feeling of smug satisfaction of doing well in a test at school! I now know all about the codes you have to fill in on your little forms when you visit houses to collect unreturned forms, and how to issue replacement forms and additional forms (and woe betide you if you get the codes wrong for these). I should point out that I was able to check the answers in my Census Collector manual, but the trick is knowing which section to look in! It's a bit mad to get all genned up now, when the job doesn't start until 21st March. But there. That's if it does start of course...

The last few days have been difficult. The reference issue finally came to a head this week. My former manager, D, had never received the reference request from the school, as she's now based somewhere different and I didn't know, so they'd sent it to the old address. They emailed her a reminder and so did I, and it transpired she was just going into hospital (reason unknown but it sounded planned). She said she'd be back at work four days later and would do it then. But then... I got an email from the HR manager of Children's Charity plc, saying she'd received the email request from D, was out of the office for several days, and could I email her the reference wording we'd agreed when I left. I have no idea why she couldn't get this from head office. I can only assume they'd lost it. I emailed it to her with few other words. This required restraint. She later copied me into the reference as sent to the school - essentially the agreed wording plus minimal greeting and sign off. I knew from my other referee that the request had been a form with a series of questions, including number of sick leave days, and the dreaded 'any disciplinary action on file' question. My little two-paragraph reference, glowing, but not answering any of the questions except dates of employment, and how well I carried out my duties, was all they were going to get. Then the same thing happened with the Census reference.

I went into meltdown, convinced that no prospective employer would accept this, and would immediately smell a rat if questions like the disciplinary one, and 'would you employ this person again, and if not why not?' were not answered. Convinced they would simply go back to them and ask again, possibly by telephone. I panicked, and then I fell down a black hole in which I was convinced I'd never be able to get employment again. For a few hours, I thought we'd be selling up and moving back to the old house. I am no longer in meltdown, but I have to say it remains true that the school or the Census people could request further information if they're worried. I have no way of knowing whether they will or not - whether the glowing nature of the existing wording will be enough to override other concerns. Or whether they'll think that even though I clearly did well in the job, something must have gone wrong later...

A fairly lengthy surf about the internet on the subject of reference protocols, legalities etc revealed some slightly reassuring information. Former employers are actually not legally obliged to provide references at all, and some have a policy of not doing so, others have a policy of not answering the standard questions sent to them. Some just provide dates and confirmation of post and duties. However, it is common practice to give 'resigned pending diciplinary proceedings' as the 'reason for leaving' if it is so, since employers are not supposed to withold information about disciplinary sanctions imposed, which could be information that would prevent the new employer employing someone who might otherwise go on to damage their business/ organisation etc etc. Blah di blah di blah. You can drive yourself mad with this stuff, just like health issues or car trouble, by trying to find out about them on the web. However, I managed to use the information to make me feel better not worse, and that is where I am determined to stay. Deep breaths. Find something else to clean or learn, or read or write. Cook dinner. Keep breathing. Trouble is I don't know how long I need to go on waiting to find out if the sword of Damocles will fall on my head. When's the all clear?

Start

Just possibly things are looking up around here. I finally got back through the doors of the school for the postponed meeting, which went well, and met properly the woman I will mostly be liaising with as we say in the world of work... who I liked and who was warm, friendly and obviously pleased I'm joining the team. She told me I love these kids. I smiled, said that's what they need. We met one in the corridor, a girl who had a headache and thought she'd like to put ice on it. F discouraged this, recommended drinking water instead. The girl agreed. I told F I thought putting ice on my head would give me a headache not cure one. We explore a few possible rooms for me to work in, returned in the end to the originally suggested very small one known as the No Worries Room! Maybe we should rename it the Worries Room... still, the right general vibe I guess. It's very small, but we figured we could just squeeze in two easy chairs, and there's space to paint or draw or use clay, and it has it's own adjoining toilet, always a plus, and handy to have a basin to wash painting stuff up. I had not been sure painting would be an option but I'd kind of like to offer the possibility.

I got the Census Collector job. Dazzlingly speedy response! Have had to provide references, documents, a photograph, all in a very short space of time, but that's fine. Let's get on with it I say. I have got the full 7 weeks' work which means I ought to make over £1500 gross, which is really quite a marvellous prospect at this moment in my life. And the weird thing is the area I'll be working includes the area where the school is, and I discovered today there's an entirely wonderful route over there, cross country, without having to drop down to the main road. I went by the main road and it took me 40 minutes, came back the scenic way and it took 20. Scenic is a bit of an understatement. It's jaw-droppingly beautiful and the route goes through the entire area I'll be Census collecting in. L and I went to look at a house over that way when we were house-hunting to move up here from London. Having earlier in the day decided to make an offer on the house we did in fact buy, we were persuaded by the estate agent just to have a look at this one. The position was so awesome, we were briefly entirely confused as to what to do, and in our confusion got utterly lost. I remember stopping the car in exasperation and anguish, just gazing out at these vast expanses of steeply sloping fields, feeling in some weird hybrid of heaven and hell. We were right not to move there then, as it's quite remote, and we didn't know anyone here then, and I think would have felt isolated, but my God it's beautiful. I'll take photos when I'm over that way knocking on doors, and put some up here.

I also had a call from one of my therapist friends with a potential referral of a young person for therapy. He's passed on my number to the parent, so we'll see if they get in touch. Even the possibility makes me feel better. In fact all of the above makes me feel the beginnings of a picture of a future emerging, even if for now just the short-term future. It's a start...

Unvanquishable

After Slumber

My memory my capacity my feet and my redbush
My bank account my notebook my collarbone and my view
My indigestion my slippers my speculation
My passport and my bicycle my blindness and my ribs
My dissonance my heartbeat my cooking my cough
My neighbour my salt my history and my houseplant
My withdrawal my exit my yawn and my emptiness
My floorboards my uncertainty my paracetamol my hands
My hair and my diary my trousers and my sky
My diffidence and my thirst my suffering and my steps
My fountain pen my keys my torch
My height and my conclusion
My reward my door my plans my breath
My independence and my skin
My peppermint tea my speculation my irritation
My eagerness and my tongue
My skin and my ribs and my history
My indifference and my trees
My recalcitrance my insurance my loss and my ticket
My water bottle my endeavour my notebook and my text
My blankness my tissue my collapse
My walking shoes my memory my pursuit
My obsession my regression my box and my paper
My toothbrush my muscles my tiredness my mask
My mind and my hair and my sky and my dust
My air and my bones and my trouble
My porridge my knees my coldness and my silence
My book my earplugs my memory my blood
My hands and my tears and my email
My hopelessness my gracelessness my rain and my welcome
My apple my heartbeat
Like lions after slumber in unvanquishable number
Oh yeah.

With heartfelt acknowledgements to Green and Scritti Politti (1982)

Monday Morning

Awake between 3.30 and 5.00, ruminating on the frustrations of communication with the school, on how to be gracious about my poet friend's partner's offer to advise me about the correct storage of my father's letters (an offer which includes an invitation to show them to her), and on my mother's deteriorating memory. And once again vague discomfort in my stomach has me reaching for the antacid tablets, the wind in the chimney has me reaching for the earplugs.

Now the wind continues its fretful utterance down the chimney, and a car alarm whines thinly somewhere nearby, and banks of dark clouds with thinner patches blow across the struggling sun, the light changing moment by moment. My tea mug is emptied to the last cooling inch, and I have been looking up archive storage solutions for the letters, wondering if I can afford any of them, if they are really necessary, if the best thing isn't just to scan them all then put them away in a big white envelope. The idea of scanning 73 letters, many of them running to 4, 6 or 8 pages, fills me with a kind of miserable lethargy. Or maybe the miserable lethargy comes first, makes such a task a mountain. Partly it's that I have no knowledge of how to use the scanner, a new toy of L's.

Yesterday I walked in the afternoon in the wind and the mud, buffeted and sloshing down the field to the swollen and surging beck, slithering back up the hillside where I want my ashes scattered, where L and I had our handfasting, read our vows and poems and cried and cried. And I couldn't see a future, though I could see the buds swelling purple on the trees in the clough. I climbed the steep hill, thinking that I don't know what I want my life to be only not this, fighting tears, not wanting to encounter a neighbour or a stranger, wet-faced, crooked-mouthed. Saved the tears for later, at home, with L, who probably welcomes them, easier to respond to than the silent and repressive misery that usually precedes them.

The car alarm finally stops needling my ears and now attention reverts to the wind, which builds to crescendos of urgency, then fades to weary lulls. I feel hectored, nagged, pushed and pulled by its insistence. Can't relax. Bushes and trees tremble and dance, telegraph wires bounce, the clouds keep moving along, moving along.

Later someone unknown and unnamed (so far) will phone me for a 15 minute telephone interview for the Census Collector job. A little ray of hope of at least getting some kind of meaningful money in the bank without having to ask my mother for it. The whole country must be asked questions, and some, like us, will enjoy it, others will complain and delay, or refuse, or just always be out. For today I will be asked questions on the phone, and will endeavour to give the right answers.

Two friends had significant funerals to go to last week. C's mother was sent off kindly in a wicker coffin with fresh flowers, though painfully her siblings had arranged the whole thing without C. And K said goodbye to her friend, and was happy that she had done her best for G, is now spending all available time with G's daughter, whom she describes as 'vulnerable', but is able to call the experience a privilege. Respect to K whose capacity for giving is a thing I can only look on at in wonder.

Last Night In Leeds

The reading yesterday in Leeds was interesting. It was lovely to hear George Szirtes albeit a little too briefly. He is witty, warm and wise, with a charming slight squint, and read with mastery and gravitas from his vast oeuvre. He read powerfully from his translation of the enormously long poem One Sentence On Tyranny, by Hungarian poet Gylua Illyes, another part of which is featured on his blog. And from his own The Burning of the Books. He brought a welcome stillness and depth to the proceedings after the fire and speed of Clare Pollard and Clare Shaw, the pain and passion of Lily Mosini. Great to see Clare P, to hear her read after being taught by her in 2009, and her poem The Skulls of Dalston almost had me in tears, but sadly she didn't seem to see or hear me as I greeted her when she walked past my seat towards the end of the interval, and I ended up feeling a bit invisible and silly.

If you click the link and visit GS's excellent blog you will learn more about the event, which was essentially a benefit for Iranian poet Lily Mosini and her partner Elia who are threatened with deportation.

The Carriageworks is a striking venue, part of the massively expensive Electric Press development in Millennium Square - using an old printing works and 'carriage manufactory' to house a theatre, an enormous number of bars and restaurants, and, somehow in the middle of it all, an outdoor ice rink, which could be observed surreally from the Carriageworks bar. The meeting room where the reading took place may have been the least striking part of the venue however. It was overheated, overlit, and the evening was accompanied by the constant background babble of Saturday night voices from the bars and ice rink. Still, a powerful occasion, and money was raised for Lily and Elia's legal defence through ticket sales, a raffle and an auction of for example a pair of Simon Armitage's Levi 501s with a poem written in the pocket.

Afternoon West Yorkshire

The cutlery sticks up at odd angles,
wooden spoon, tin opener, bread knife
its blue handle ready to be seized,
Excalibur in a wooden IKEA drainer.
The wind mutters and sighs in the chimney,
an empty egg-box on the work-top,
the kettle cooling, mint tea stewing in my cup.
The suspended animation of 3.30pm
when outside parents pull up to collect
their four-foot offspring
and Cheryl the lollipop lady
shines in her high-vis coat.

Forward

I have just heard that my meeting at the school tomorrow morning has been postponed til next week. Having already been put off since early January, and having spent several hours today and yesterday preparing, and (as you know) being desperate to start earning some money, I am not amused.

I have however just filled out an online application to be a Census Collector. How this takes me back. In 1991 I was a Census Enumerator in West Twickenham. I used to cycle over there on my trusty blue touring bike (the one that soon after got nicked from the shed), and bang on doors all afternoon and into the evening, encouraging old ladies and young go-getters to fill in their census forms. Getting inside people's houses is always interesting... This time I won't be cycling, and I don't know if the area I get given will be as benign as West Twick. I hope so. Anyway they're paying £8.02 an hour (don't forget the all-important 2p), so for 25 hours a week, I'll make £200.50. And then a £75 bonus at the end if you get everything done and return your little bag of materials intact. So that's my April spoken for. But easier than trying to get permanent work hereabouts at the moment. And the money will pay the mortgages for 3 or 4 months, so I'm quite happy.

The other work I've been waiting to hear about, teaching small groups of students at the School of Medicine in Leeds half a day a week, isn't going to happen til September now, but hopefully some time in the next few months I'll get an interview for that, and get it lined up for the autumn. Supposedly it's teaching skills relating to leadership and management - like team-working and conflict resolution. But to be honest I know almost nothing about it. I'm hoping to go and sit in on a session some time so I get more idea. A friend who works there has put me onto it and assures me I could do it standing on my head.

Is it boring or is it interesting having to find work one way or another? A little of each I guess. I am still a psychotherapist really of course, and it is to be hoped will get paid again for my services some day soon. Like if the school stop fobbing me off and actually get this thing going they've said they want to do.

Meanwhile we had an adventure trying to find the home of the guy with the tickets for the reading on Saturday. Way down a small dark road, right by the river. We stepped onto a little bridge and looked down at what must have been the door, but could see no way to get to it other than a daredevil leap. Eventually found another door and tapped on it. It took the guy a full minute and a half to unlock all the bolts and locks, but it was the right place, if not quite the right door. He assured us there was a gate from the bridge where we were... Hmm. It was dark I guess. Anyway we have the tickets, hurrah! Looking like it might be Wagamama's for the meal as no Pizza Express bargains available (expired in January). A big bowl of noodly soup with stuff floating in it (prawns, tofu, vegetables) is a thing to look forward to.