Sent To Try Us

A chapter of household inconveniences (let's call them that). The boiler in our other house is not working. This more an inconvenience for our tenant than for us, but we will be footing the (ever-increasing) bill. Cheaper repairs have failed. Now it's a new pump. Last report was tenant had no heat or hot water at all, though previously they'd been intermittent. Liaising with plumber and tenant an ongoing task. We're new at being landlords (ladies?) and the responsibility is uneasy at times like these, especially as our tenant's father has just died.

We have mice. Oh yes. In fact the little blighters never really went away, but we just became more careful about not leaving food accessible. One slip-up - leaving food cupboard door open at night - and they're back with a vengeance. Nibbling the corners of flour bags, which have now been firmly rehomed in high cupboards or plastic boxes, and returning on subsequent nights to chew furiously at the wooden door of the now firmly closed cupboard. L has taped up a place behind the kitchen sink where we think they may have been coming in, and we've been putting peppermint oil on paper towel attached to the cupboard, and taping up the area they were chewing. All quiet the last couple of nights. But Amazon are soon to despatch a package of entirely inhumane mouse traps to our home. I'm sorry, but we've had enough.

The bracket of the curtain pole in the sitting room has pulled out of the wall. We've been easing up to this job for weeks. Took the curtains down, investigated, sighed etc. Today we actually tackled it with a big wodge of filler, and let's hope when it dries it will hold the screws in place once more.

The stick blender can no longer be assembled. It is still under guarantee, however, so M&S will have to replace or refund. Luckily we also have an old school blender - actually another thing inherited from my father - and I was able to blitz the beetroot soup I made at lunchtime in that.

The bathroom basin seemed to be creating unpleasant smells, but a dose of soda crystals has so far eliminated them.

L's mini greenhouse outside blew over in strong wind today. It withstood much stronger winds a few weeks ago when she was away in London, but maybe it was the precise direction of this one that did it, who knows?

The exhaust emissions indicator light keeps coming on in the car for a few days, then going off for a few days, then coming on again. It was serviced two weeks ago and they found nothing of note. I popped in there today and the friendly woman behind the desk (who is quite knowledgeable) said if it comes on and stays on it really needs looking at. It might just be a faulty sensor, but on the other hand it might be sensing a fault. Boys and wolves come to mind. I told her I was reluctant to bring it back after the last bill (two new tyres, MOT and service don't come cheap). She sympathised.

I have the feeling there's something else, but these seven seem like quite enough.

Frittering

It's all so horribly imperfect. Today I went into school feeling marginally less sleep-deprived than last Wednesday. I saw my young client, who seemed also to be marginally less sleep deprived than last Wednesday. Then I met my colleague who is the welfare and medical person in school, and a teacher (who looked young enough to be a student) to discuss a girl they want me to work with. Then I met the girl, just briefly, so she'll know who I am next week when she comes for her first session. Late in the proceedings, the young teacher remembered that the girl's year will be away on a trip in two weeks' time, and therefore she will have precisely one session with me before the Easter holidays. My brain whirred, trying to process this information, and decide what to do about it. Far from therapeutic to have a single session, then a break. I heard myself say well, it's not ideal, but we don't live in an ideal world, do we? The kind of putting-a-brave-face-on-it, compromise-filled statement I find myself making more and more in this setting. I came home. Part of me thought I should just have had the girl come for a first session then and there. But she was terribly sad, quiet and withdrawn-feeling, and I think being rushed wouldn't suit her. We do what we can.

This sleep thing is a puzzle. Not clearly, consciously nervous in a major way about the next day, I still spiral into a gut-clenching place of panic in anticipation of something about what the next day will bring. Or not bring. The best outcome is when, as last night, I can manage the panic enough to get some sleep around it. Fitful, broken sleep, each awakening a return to the familiar dread in the stomach. But sleep nonetheless. I know when I've slept because I wake up with a dream, hold onto it like a trophy. The tiredness at this time of day varies nonetheless, and is oddly sometimes worse when I've had a little more sleep, better when I've had (as last Friday) next to none. No rhyme or reason. But the weariness carries a burden of misery and despair I have to work hard to keep in perspective.

In and out of work, of being a working person. A few hours here and there not really enough to get into the swing of anything. A morning as a professional, then back home to my indolent unemployed life. And, as I've mentioned, tired. I eat a hot cross bun, answer an email, write this, stare out of the window. Feel there is probably something I ought to be doing. Contemplate a nap. A walk. Rereading the Census collector's handbook. Getting out my notebook.

On an entirely unequivocally positive note, we have booked a week's holiday in June. We'll stay in a cottage close to the beach in a tiny Northumbrian village. I am so grateful and excited. L gets her state pension in May and has decided to dedicate the first few weeks' money to this ineffable plan.

Spring Ahead Or Fall Behind

What is time passing? It is the earth's rotation around the sun, it is the spinning of the earth around its axis, darkness followed by daylight over and over again. It is the growth of plants, the return of leaves to dark trees, the vase of big yellow daffodils with slightly twisting petals. The pseudo ticking of the electric wall clock in the kitchen divides up the day into tiny segments, like grains of sand falling through the narrow middle of the egg timer. I felt this interminable progress from second to second, when as a child I moved slowly, silently from room to room, hearing, in the dining room the steady metallic clunking tick and whirr of the grandfather clock, in the kitchen the perkier, impatient tick of the red clock, a melamine plate hanging high on the wall. I pulled my feet out of the sucking mud of inertia to get from one end of the house to the other, one end of the day to the other. There was nothing happening. All space in between, no thing. What was the thing? There was breakfast, lunch, supper, even tea with chocolate spread on toast, there was television, there was my father leaving for work in the morning before I set off for school, returning on the 6.15, to come home and wash London off his face and hands, to eat handfuls of peanuts from the jar in the larder, to drink whisky and soda as he sat in his wing-back chair, while he studied the Times crossword. My mother in the kichen preparing supper to be ready at 8 o'clock, no sooner, no later. The Archers on the radio. Me in my green school uniform, going back and forth to school, down the hill, along the length of Charles Street, right into Kings Road, across the crossing. There were the school holidays when I wondered what to do. The default position of my life, this wondering what to do. I've always struggled to get started unless someone else's protocols set the terms - family routines and rituals, school rules and requirements. There'd be tropical fish to feed and occasionally clean out, a record player on the floor, mono, to play my brother's records on, and later my own. There was endless homework, and sometimes there was helping my mother (though not that much), and there were my collections of marbles and of cars, and there were books everywhere, and there was the garden, and there was the big white toy cupboard with the double doors, full of toys - etch-a-sketch and a humming top, a wooden truck with wooden barrels that rolled up a little ramp and sat on the back, kept in place by chains, and a flower press. And all the empty space in between, where nothing was.

Salt And Pepper

The salt cellar used to have a little wooden spoon. The spoon did not have a bowl like a conventional spoon. It was more like a little snout, the same all the way round, that you poked into the salt, and somehow you had more control over the sprinkling than with a more spoon-like spoon. In some move from house to house, the shaft of the spoon got broken, was taped for a while, then eventually, sadly, abandoned. The bowl survives, if scuffed, salt now dispensed with the fingers. Probably unhygienic, but quite pleasing from a tactile point of view. There is something about things we have known since childhood. The deep familiarity so reassuring whilst almost forgotten.

My Dad used to grind pepper over his fried egg and his baked potato. Probably over other things too, but I especially remember these. I used to find this sprinkling of black dots deeply irritating, I cannot explain why. Only that the use of pepper marked my father out as different. No-one else used it. And that was somehow the way my father was seen in the family. Now I love my pepper; grind it over eggs, potatoes, and most other things too.

Grumpy Queens

I confess it is not I who am learning about beekeeping - or only indirectly. L has joined the local 'Environment Group', which as well as organising litter picks around the village, looks after the lovely old graveyard of the local Baptist Chapel, now deconsecrated, which is used for music events, and whose Sunday school is home to several artists' studios and Thingamujig Theatre. In an area beyond the gravestones, they are planning a pond, and a beehive. L threw herself into things, as she does, and undertook to apply to the Co-operative Bank for a grant to fund said beehive, and successfully landed around £400. On Saturday she went on a morning's course at the Community Centre, given by the chair of the group, who is attending an ongoing training in nearby Halifax. She is still not sure if she will become a 'bee handler', but there are other ways to get involved, she tells me. Potting up and selling honey, for instance.

I expect some of the things she told me about bees are well-known, but I was in awe. A few examples. The drones, the males, have only one function - to mate with the queen (apparently one member of the course - male - had many jokey remarks to make on this topic...) The females, the workers, do all the work. The queen, once she has mated with a number of drones, lays thousands of eggs a day. Bees communicate using pheromones, and the 'waggle dance', informing each other of the whereabouts of food sources. There is just one spot in each area, where mating takes place, to which queens and drones gravitate. In the book on the table it says

GRUMPY QUEENS
If you have a grumpy queen you will have an aggressive colony. Replacing your old queen with a young one from a docile strain will change the personality of your hive within hours.

The sophistication of bee society prompted L to remark that perhaps they should be keeping us.

On The Table

my mobile phone on a folded striped napkin, cream, green, gold, dark red and blue
my Keep Calm and Carry On mug, dregs of decaf tea at the bottom
the bus timetable for bus services A,B,C,D,E
an empty packet of Ricola Original Swiss Herb Drops
a pale blue glass of water - half full
a post-it note listing varieties of strawberries Elvira, Korona, Ostara, Elsanta (no good)
a bottle of sparkling mineral water called Saskia (cheap from Lidl)
a folded blue napkin
various versions of plans of the allotment
a small wooden salt bowl and a wooden pepper grinder that were once my father's, that, in fact, I grew up with
a biro from JCS Electrical Solutions
the key to the front door (or is it the back door? our house being two back-to-back houses knocked into one, this is a constant source of confusion)
a guide to the Calderdale Way
a book on beekeeping
an empty glasses case
a round rush table mat that was also once my father's
a magazine box labelled GARDENING magazines, seed catalogues
the laptop at which I write and the trusty Labtec glow mouse (mark 2)

Which of these would you like to hear more about?

Flying

A flying visit from nephew A, who at 23 is not too old to enjoy the children's playground along the road. In fact this rather took me back 21 years or so to the toddler whose favourite thing was the 'wobbly bridge' in the little playground at Thornton-le Dale in North Yorkshire where he grew up.

Dancing

I could hardly see my hand in front of my face when I came out of school at lunchtime. The fog had grown thicker while I'd sat in a windowless room with my boys. Fearful of thick fog this morning, because we'd had it all day yesterday and because of the weather forecast, I'd planned last night to drive the long way round to school, as the beautiful high route I usually take is in places narrow and precipitous. Some of the cavalier driving I've seen in fog, and really bizarre failures by drivers to put headlights on, made me balk at the idea of undertaking that journey in those conditions. I knew there were roadworks on the main road, though, with temporary traffic lights we'd waited several minutes at on Monday morning, long after rush hour. I planned to allow an extra 15 minutes. I spent energy worrying about this in the small hours of the night. But the day dawned only murky - I could see all the way over to Cock Hill, though its outline was blurry. I knew that the top road would be fine. Having got up extra early I had loads of time to read my notes, think my thoughts, eat my porridge, make my flask of tea, listen to a report on the radio from Tokyo featuring a family with children, struggling to know how worried to be, aftershocks swaying the lamps even as the reporter sat with them. The thickness of the fog at lunchtime sent me home the 'long way' round, which in the end only took half an hour, and no roadworks to be seen.

This is a beautiful and gentle teaching about how we actually never know what is going to happen. How worrying is entirely unrelated to the apparent object of the worry, since we almost always worry about the 'wrong' thing. Worrying is about us, and our need for control in a world that is busy carrying on regardless. I laughed at myself, with all my anxious planning and assumptions. I was worrying too about a situation with one of the boys, which by the time I came to meet him today, had changed, and the frowning young man of last week was a delighted and playful boy, who told me he'd come into school dancing!

On Campus

A quiet Sunday after a busy week. L back from London on Friday, and the car in the garage having its MOT and service, needing two new tyres. No such thing as a cheap trip to the garage...
L returned with a cold she caught on the train going down, from a giant man with a tiny laptop, and is now feeling a little sorry for herself, coughing uncomfortably, and drinking hot blackcurrant. Still, she had a wonderful time in London, seeing different friends. Yesterday I was at the latest of my personality development seminars - on puberty! Only it wasn't really. Much more focused on adolescence generally, which seems a shame since that is actually the topic for the next seminar, and since puberty is such a specific, such a momentous event in our lives, in our development. This series has been patchy. The first two seminars fascinating, exciting, informative. The subsequent three disappointing in different ways, though always still managing to be thought-provoking one way or another.

The experience of being at Leeds University on Thursday was a strange one. It was extremely windy, and the afternoon sun was dazzling, as I made my way up from the station, leaning forward against the intense force of the wind, rubbish swirling in the gutters, people battling with their hair, ties, coats, bags. I held tight to my little street map, followed signposts, and found the building I was directed to without too much trouble, though the geography of the campus was a mysterious jumble to me, great herds of students moving this way and that. Big buildings, big groups, lots of activity. A group of young men in sports gear, with a football, making their way across a carpark.

Up I went in the lift to Floor 7, not entirely understanding how I seemed to have started out at Floor 4, when I thought I'd entered at ground level, feeling as if I were in a strange dream. Floor 7 - the doors open and I get out. Now what? A sort of lobby, some students eating snacks on seats near a pool table. No signs to indicate where specific rooms are, least of all room 7.09. The central space of Floor 7 is taken up by a coffee bar, where a scattering of students sit, eating or not, drinking coffee from cardboard cups, chatting, texting, looking at pieces of paper. I walk all the way to the other side of the coffee bar, find myself approaching the Health Sciences Library. To my left the East-West Campus route is sign-posted, from which direction emerge further herds of students, fresh from a lecture perhaps. I walk all the way back to the lobby area near the lift, ask a man with an ID tag round his neck (he obviously works here) if he knows where room 7.09 is. I tell him it's the Medical Education Reception. He looks rather blank, suggests it is most probably over the other side of the coffee bar. I head over that way again, once again find the Health Sciences Library. Begin to feel slightly hysterical, though luckily it is still more than half an hour until my interview time. I ask a librarian, who comes out of the library and points me back in the direction of the lifts and the lobby, suggests I turn right there and go through the double doors, and she thinks there's some sort of reception down there. Off I go again, pass the man with the tag, tell him I've now been told it's over this way! He is impassive. Along the corridor I go past noticeboards for Years 1,2,3,4 and 5. On Year 1's noticeboard, I see the timetable and list of groups for the course I am applying to teach. This is beginning to make more sense... Then, a huge glass-doored reception area. I stand looking at it, noticing there is nothing to suggest it is room 7.09. A woman says you're lost... I tell her I'm looking for room 7.09, the reception area, and she tells me this whole area is 7.09 - rather misleading to call it a room, I think to myself. I thank her, go through the doors, approach the desk, discover that yes, I am in the right place, though the person I've been told to report to is on her lunch break. I say that I'll go and get a cup of tea, and come back in half an hour.

In the coffee bar, I approach the counter, ask for a cup of tea, am told it's self-service, directed to a big machine offering various combinations of drinks, or hot water to add to a teabag, which I do, feeling exactly like a student on her first day, everything strange. I sit with my cardboard cup of tea, watching the students, looking at the coffee-stained and sugar-scattered round aluminium table top, with the little notice asking everyone please to clear their tables when they've finished. Two students do exactly this, a girl and a boy. She says ooh aren't you good? as he deposits his styrofoam food container into the bin beside where I am sitting. I was brought up well, says the boy, as they walk away towards the library. Eventually I go slowly back to the lobby near the lifts, down the corridor, through the double doors, past the noticeboards, and into the reception area. The administrator for the course in question has returned, and shortly comes to greet me, and takes me inside the area where a large number of people work in an open-plan office space, and puts me in a little side room to do the exercise... which is to say what factors I'd consider and what actions I'd take if I had a rude student who kept talking over people, changing the subject, and sending text messages. Not hard. And very similar to a scenario in a little tutors' e-learning section of the website I'd come across a few days before. Thanks very much, most helpful. The interview began with this and I could tell I was scoring well, nice smiles, good body language, encouraging nods... And so it went on really. I was able to answer all their questions with relative ease, and could tell my answers were at least adequate, sometimes better. I was asked to wait outside for maybe 5 minutes. While I was waiting, friend S, who works there, and had put me onto this work, appeared, asked what was happening - I told her the jury were deciding. We chatted a bit and in mid-chat, the door opened and I was asked back inside. The course manager told me that they had no hesitation in offering me the job. I made appropriately professional noises of pleasure, and we discussed logistics a little. The plan is I go in on Friday week, as long as references are through, and all well, and shadow the present tutor who I'll be taking over from next term. Then there'll only be one more week of term, then a training session, then the Easter hols, and then I'll start in May with my group. Gulp. By then I'll know what it is I'm going to teach. More of which anon.

Tired But Happy

I got the job!! So now I'm going to be teaching medical students too. What a strange adventure life is.

Driving With The Brakes On

A maddening wind huffing all night and all day, and this morning sleet pelting the car as I drove to school for week 2 of the trial 10. At some point I had a near miss turning into a side road where visibility is very awkward on a bend and a hill, and the cars come fast and (did I mention) it was sleeting and blowing a gale, and had to brake sharply, then apply the handbrake and attempt the manoeuvre again, this time successfully (just). Continuing on the last few minutes' drive to school, a large red exclamation mark had appeared on the dashboard, and a loud and insistent beeping just kept on and on, while I shouted what!? what for fuck's sake? and continued driving, knowing I was within spitting distance of my destination. Arriving, I had to turn around in a side street (there is never any space in the school carpark), and discovered to my utter chagrin that the handbrake was, and indeed had been for several minutes ON. How did I not know that? Have I done some irreparable damage to something? Weirdly, fortunately, embarrassingly, the car is going into the garage on Friday so I can fess up, and ask them to check. Later another little warning light came on - a weird one that has come on a couple of times before then disappeared, which according to the manual is something to do with CO2 emissions... This car is anxious for care and attention (or is that me?)

My friend K, astrologer turned psychotherapist, looking at my chart many years ago, described the effect of a central aspect of it - Mars-Saturn opposition - as being like driving with the brakes on. I've never forgotten that. I do it a lot, but usually only metaphorically...

At school, I made use of the mystery toilet adjacent to my room, having locked the door leading onto the corridor (of which I was blissfully ignorant last week), and when I flushed it, the plumbing began to make the most horrendous noise, not unlike a light aircraft coming in to land. Please, I thought, make it stop - do not let me have to have a plumbing discussion with anyone. After maybe three long minutes, when the cistern had finally finally filled up, it stopped, and fortunately this was before my young client arrived...

Devastating

Life is gathering momentum, and I have what feels to me like a very busy week! Census training on Monday (plenty of little role plays to keep the boredom at bay), supervision in a dazzlingly sunny Manchester today, where a woman with immensely long semi-dreadlocked hair accosted me in the street with the irresistable greeting hey there, devastatingly attractive woman, and proceeded to explain that she was sleeping rough and needed £6 for some journey, and I placed not £1 but £2 in her grimy hand, for which she thanked me profusely as she walked towards the door of the pub... Tomorrow it's back to the school, then Thursday I have an interview for the work at Leeds University (half a day a week) teaching medical students how to listen, be part of a team, manage change, negotiate and stuff! Friday the car goes to the garage for its MOT and service which doesn't involve me being exactly busy, just getting it down to town by about 8.30!! L is away in London til Friday, so I have some unaccustomed solitude, which so far feels ok.

Count Me In?

Off this afternoon for my Census classroom training. Not without a few doubts, on account of what I have discovered about the involvement of Lockheed Martin and the proposed boycott. I kind of wish someone had told me about this sooner.

Everything

The 593 bus rattles by, as the fog that never fully burned off all day begins to reassemble for another chilly night. A hard frost this morning. March coming in like neither lamb nor lion, more like a wolf. It is light now until between six o'clock and half past, light by seven in the morning and I feel the stealthy approach of the Spring Equinox. It feels not so long ago I was last writing here about days and nights of equal length, though clearly it was six months ago.

Today we went to Lidl's 'Gardening Event', and aquired a rake, a poly-tunnel and some plants including centaury and lily of the valley. We have spent a couple of afternoons already on the allotment, digging and preparing the soil, clearing and cutting back old growth, and just gazing into the valley. I am not able to feel depressed when I am there, digging big clods of earth with my fork, and pulling weeds and old roots out of the cool damp soil. The waiting plots begin to look ready for vegetables to grow in, and we have planted broad beans in pots at home.

I have been enjoying Human Planet on the i-Player, witnessing extraordinary scenes of life as it is lived in the deserts, mountains, jungle and Arctic, the skill and single-mindedness required for people to survive in challenging physical and climactic conditions. The Buddhist 'sky burial' was a chastening thing to see, or not quite see - discretion dictated the camera turned away from the actual hacking of human flesh, though we saw the undertaker approach with his little axe, the vultures circling, then pecking at unidentified morsels. I have to say though, that I watch all of these scenes with a mixture of awe, and some sort of shame (is it?) at the way in which nothing now remains hidden. We are able to see everything, to learn of mysteries and marvels, suffering and triumphs that we could only discover in books before, if that. Now production teams spend months, maybe years researching and fixing, television crews spend weeks immersing themselves in the worlds of these remote communities, and showing us everything, or so we feel. We feel we have seen everything, we can know about everything, and this is both wonderful, and somehow strangely wrong.

The Hard Way

I started at the school this morning, seeing my two brave boys for the first time in a very small room from which sometimes classroom noise can be heard, sometimes feet and voices passing in the corridor. The room also, disconcertingly, though also usefully, has a toilet off it, which can be entered either from my room, or from the corridor on the other side. At some point during the second session, someone entered and proceeded to make audible use of the facilities... Schools!

Having had very little sleep, I certainly felt I was doing things the hard way, but do them I did, and a start has been made, and I will definitely not be so anxious next week. I might write more at some point about this sleep issue (can't sleep if getting up in the morning to do anything I'm more than a little nervous about.)

Now my eyes are sore, the clouds are breaking up and the sun has started to come out, and I'm torn between a walk and falling into bed.