Work In Progress

My head feels full. The school has asked me to stay on after the completion of my trial period, and I am pleased about this. And two sessions may extend to three at some stage. A secondary school is not the easiest environment to work in, but I've made my little quiet space in the midst of the hurly burly, and have enjoyed the work with the kids so far, and will be starting with a new one next week, another after half term, when my current young client goes on study leave for GCSEs. This week I have had two adult referrals for counselling/ therapy in my private practice. The only one to date never showed up, so I am hoping this time I'm going to get off the blocks with this part of my work. The work at the university is challenging, and comes with a big 'do not blog about this' label attached, since I have already mentioned where and what department. Certainly there is much to learn, and these slightly older young people are interesting and likeable too.

With all of this going on, I don't seem to have much head space for creativity. Poetry continues to whisper and suggest. All I really need is to make some space, get out the notebook and pen and let happen. Maybe this weekend, since I have no major plans. A walk with a friend tomorrow, a walk with L today if the rain eases, a very short one if it doesn't. Next weekend I'm off to visit my Ma for the first time in a while, as the Census prevented me from going away at weekends for over a month, and now we're waiting for the French Open to be on, so we can do our favourite companionable mother-daughter thing of watching tennis together. I shall also see my aunt and uncle while I'm there, which is a rare treat these days.

The allotment's doing splendidly with calabrese, beetroot and spring onions now romping away, the potatoes beginning to show a few leaves, the broad beans surviving well and flowering like mad despite the pea and bean weevil, the savoy cabbages getting quite big now, and the strawberries flowering promisingly, rhubarb growing great big pink muscular stalks.

We watched Inside The Human Body on the i-Player last night. Despite such gimmickery as the blue sperm and the rugby players looking competitively at theirs wriggling about on a big screen in Trafalgar Square, the awesomeness of human conception and birth shone through. The tiny tiny chance of ever becoming a fertilised egg at all, of ever making it to become a viable human foetus, of ever starting on this so very strange adventure at all.