No Rules

It occurred to me that one of the things I love about blogging is that there are no rules. (It immediately strikes me that I have learned the hard way that there is one cardinal rule - don't allow your work place to be identifiable.) No rules about what, when, how much, in what style, to what purpose you write here. Individual bloggers make their own of course, to suit themselves - create a house style, a theme or series of themes, things they do and don't do. But these can and do change. And as for me, I have made a point of making as few as possible. Then I don't have to apologise for breaking them. I experiment here. Sometimes I play, sometimes I seek attention, sometimes I explore creative possibilities or chat about what I think or feel about things. Sometimes I just show up in the new post box without a plan, and sometimes the result is very exciting, sometimes not. But the blog is mine and I don't have to explain or define, praise or blame its content.

When I was 17 I wore a little badge on my lapel that said there are no rules. It might have been pinned on my jumble sale waistcoat, which I wore over a collarless khaki shirt or a blue and white striped prisoner's shirt, red needle-cord Levi's, and big boots, first hand made crepe soled ones, later Doc Marten's. My hair was cut short and I was already 6 foot tall. Some boys in the school used to laugh at me as a matter of policy, loudly every time they passed me on the stairs, on a corridor, or out in the grounds, and I can tell you now that it hurt. Even though I knew they were the fools, I still felt foolish.

I liked the idea that I didn't have to follow anyone else's rules about my appearance or anything else. The idea, mind you - the many rules we unconsciously follow are hard to spot at any age, especially in your teens. Family rules, social rules, cultural rules. The badge was a kind of statement of intention - to explore life outside the rules, to question the rules, to break the rules and not to care if people laughed.

Coal

All the logs seemed to be damp, or something wasn't right, and my fires kept going out, so we went down to the coal merchant's yard and bought some coal, and have now got a lovely glowing coal fire going in the multi-fuel burner, to give it its correct title. Good to learn how to do this before the cold weather strikes, when we shall want to be able to keep it in overnight, and other such advanced skills. Alarming how upsetting I found the failure of my log fire this afternoon. I felt about three and ready for a tantrum. My great new love, the wood burner had failed me, or had I failed, or had the log man? Don't know, but coal to the rescue!!

Strike

Sorry to be so shallow but I am at this moment so happy to learn that next Wednesday's strike will close the school where I work, thereby giving me a morning off. I do of course support the strikers, and at the same time I will of course lose a lot of money by not working that day, but right now this little respite in my next week is making me feel (in anticipation) a lot more relaxed. It's Friday night and I'm barely coherent but made it through another week, so good...

Mind Is On The Blink

So tired of being tired, though also getting used to it.

In the pub with J, by a roaring log fire, the landlord fond of throwing anything and everything onto it including our empty tomato ketchup sachets, George the dog chews up beer mats, thrown to him to stop him barking, loud, harsh, single barks.

Today I learned that the husband of someone I work with had died unexpectedly, a blood clot in his leg travelling to his heart, felling him as he went to get into his car to drive to his first day in a new job. Really, we never know the day or the hour (and I know this originally referred to the return of Christ but still... what is the return of Christ if not a metaphor for death anyway?) This saw me beginning my day stunned, sorry and chastened.

Hats arrived today - lovely, cosy and astonishingly ornate hats. And suddenly everyone in town is wearing hats, as the temperature dips a little lower than the amazingly mild temperatures of recent days and I begin to believe I'll need a hat soon to keep my ears warm. Maybe it will also soothe my mind.

Grinding Halt

Ho well, it was good while it lasted, and I never made any promises anyway, so there we go.

I scraped that post out late in the evening on Monday, then deleted it, and there I was banjaxed! But I was trying to say something very very good, so it's a bit of a shame. And then Marcheline felt I was being a cruel tease, and I hadn't even thought of that! Truth is I got in trouble for blogging, rather unjustly, it had devastating implications, and now I am recovering step by step. The Phoenix rises slowly, and sometimes sinks and then has to rise again.

Now I'm having to teach my students a mini version of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and though it amuses me greatly to be the one to deliver this, and though I think it's probably not what 18 year-old students need to be doing, I find I am curiously susceptible to these ideas just at this moment of my life. Or at any rate it is giving me pause for thought. Habit 2: Begin With The End In Mind is the main part of the teaching session I'm doing. It's about planning and goal-setting, and visualising where you want to get to. What it makes me realise is how I have never done these things in any significant way. Never had a career path, never had a game plan, never had goals, short or long term... And there are many reasons for this. Many reasons why I could never actually imagine a future at all, in which to visualise myself doing anything. And it has been in many ways the work of my adult life so far to understand this, to see what has happened to me, and maybe finally to have some other choice. To have hope at any rate. Even to think about looking ahead, planning ahead, thinking about what I want and going for it - all this is so revolutionary I can hardly believe I'm even thinking of it now. But I am. And only incidentally related to Mr Covey's formula! I am imagining how I might develop my work with young people, contact other schools, do a training. These thoughts are very new, but I feel a kind of hope and excitement I haven't even glimpsed for years.

Mean

A horse in a field means what? Freedom? Captivity? The instinctual life? A horse in a field is just a horse in a field of course and means nothing at all until the beholder adds meaning. Likewise a boy on a bike, a dog on a lead, the setting sun, a baby. What do I mean? I mean it's up to us how we interpret the world, I suppose. Glass half full or half empty. The way we can sit for years in a prison whose door is all the time open wide. But it takes a long long time to see what you do, even longer to accept it, and then what? Then you forgive yourself that's what.

Credit

I did write a post last night. It was about how far I've come from the situation I found myself in two years ago. How much I've achieved, despite the imperfection of the present state of affairs. L read it and counselled caution about how explicit I'd been about what happened. I was tired, and decided to err on the side of caution, and pressed delete. It was called 'Credit' and was about giving myself some for how far I've come. Sorry not to have posted it. Today will have its own post - later.

Labyrinth

Taking down the birthday cards, except Lucy's lovely flying bird, still hanging from a hook on the dresser. The mantelpiece looks a little bare, but I don't feel much about it. Intermittent conversations about how best to celebrate the 50 next year. Not at all sure, except for one thing - do not want big party! Friend S suggests taking the Turkish baths in Harrogate for a day. I have a hankering to be by the sea with friends. We shall see. I guess this is a sign of hope, to be thinking about it at all, in one whose predominant impulse at the moment is to crawl into a cave and hide. I'd say under a duvet, but I spend so many wakeful hours under one each night at the moment that the appeal has lessened. S has given me some Passiflora (homeopathic remedy) and it may have helped a little last night, not sure. I woke at 2am after three hours' sleep, and was predictably awake for some time, perhaps an hour and a half, but then did fall into the sleep-wake-sleep-wake pattern that is another familiar part of my recent experience. Maybe half an hour's sleep at a time, maybe less, waking with a vivid dream fragment, wide awake again for a time, then back for another vivid dream. It's not terribly restful but it sure beats lying awake for three or four hours at a stretch.

Need to start sorting out the information for the tax return. Need to get a haircut. Need to sort out the over-stuffed filing cabinet, thus enabling the sorting of my drawer and my basket, my two day-to-day in-trays, whose organisation is never complete because there's no room in the filing cabinet to put anything away.

The forecast is for glorious sunshine but we are currently shrouded in mist. Last night a bright autumn moon, just past full.

Currently life makes no sense and I can find no joy, except in lighting the wood burner, and food. One foot in front of the other in the labyrinth, hoping eventually to find the way out.

Wordless

Round Here

10

Still here despite all. Sleep continues faulty, invariably awake for one, two, three hours some time after three - essentially hormonal perturbation. Everything feels a struggle at the moment. At odds with three of my different jobs, not exactly at ease with the others but better. At odds with myself. Trying to untangle some mighty big knots at the moment. Back in therapy, as was just not doing well at the end of the summer. Tentatively job-hunting again...

L has been to IKEA and purchased a Poang chair and footstool to go in front of the wood burner, a cushion, a chopping board, an oven-proof dish, lots of candles and tea lights, two cutlery drainers and two fleecy throws she plans to make into a door curtain, plus curtain pole. I am so happy I didn't have to go. Instead I had a therapy client and a meeting with a CBT therapist.

Too Tight

I put my sweatshirt on back to front

too tight at the neck

thought about learning to dress myself.

I still remember learning to tie my shoelaces,

the boy who taught me, his great wisdom.

In the bath looked at my great big leg

thought about how my thigh's the size

of my whole baby self.

Night

I haven't been sleeping brilliantly for weeks, so I'm resorting to Kalms Night, which announce on their box:

Traditional herbal medicinal product used for the temporary relief of sleep disturbances.

Based on traditional use only

Whatever that means. It's valerian in fact, though there's nothing traditional about an oval tablet in a blister pack. I took one last night and it did nothing detectable at all, so I've taken two tonight and shall very soon be in bed, and let us hope drifting off to sleep.

Night.

In Between

In between day and night, where birds hop onto the honeysuckle, and fly away making it tremble damply. In between work and leisure, where stuff I need to do starts breathing down my neck, stupid lesson plans on the table beside me. In between solitude and company, L heading home soon from a misty walk and tea with friends. I expect she'll be on the next bus. In between autumn and winter, where the temperature spikes and dips like crazy, and now my feet feel cool and the cold mist is falling over the tops. In between the past and the present, where I don't know if I'm 9 or 19 or 49, or maybe nine months. In between the old life and the new, where I am contemplating starting job-hunting again, where the current collection of pieces of work rattle oddly about my week, where I feel lonely, under-supported and under appreciated - oh and underpaid.

I am drinking tea from a very large cup, a Cath Kidston one if you must know, though I never drink it all up, which is a bit perverse perhaps. In between full and empty I suppose.

Amen

Plot

Today. This day. Now. Remember remember the fifth of November. A day that draws attention to itself.. Later, the big firework display in town, and crowds will descend on the park and pay to churn its grass to liquid mud, eat smelly hot food, drink beer. Wait a long time for half an hour of big bright loud fireworks which can for nothing be seen from many vantage points all around town. This old curmudgeon will probably stay in looking at the wood burner instead. We have a little firework display up here in our village that I don't quite think of as a village tomorrow night, so I think I'll settle for that.

Next year's diary pages arrive from big internet retailer threatening to take over the world. Another year so swiftly added, seamlessly promising to continue on where this one leaves off. I am hoping it will be easier to navigate than this.

Lovely scabious, white and dark red, from the garden, in a vase on the table, many with wiggly stems that still manage to hold them up.

It is nine minutes past three and I have just experienced that moment when you first sense the coming of darkness, that subtle shift in the light, towards dying.

L is out at a lino-printing workshop. I look forward to seeing her creations.

Remember

A girl waits in a house, the dark pressing cold against the windows. She knows the glass will keep the dark outside. She hears the distant popping of fireworks. Later her father will let off rockets, roman candles and catherine wheels in the garden and she and her friends will shriek and gasp, and write their names in the air with sparklers, bright lines etched on the retina for a moment then gone. The garden will be damp and cold and it will be good to get back inside to eat cake and play pass the parcel by the fire. For now she is alone and thinks about her small body, a dot in the vastness of the universe, and then stops thinking of this because it is making her feel like she's falling off something.

This Day

This day comes every year, when the leaves lie thin and wet in the gutter, lining the road with shining ochre and ginger, and suddenly it is getting dark at half past three and you drive home from somewhere with your headlights on and the windscreen wipers on intermittent, and you feel something in yourself fold into the dark, something resist it, trying to smell or taste next spring underneath it all.

Still Point

Sit down in the city

become a still point

people walk past

birds fly over

the river flows by

the man with a fistful

of pizza slices

wanders towards,

seagulls whirling

shrieking round his head.

Down on the beach

below Gabriel's Wharf

a woman with a plastic bag

picks up pebbles.

A couple walk down the jetty

with a photographer

to pose in front of boats

trees, the buildings

on the north bank.

She fluffs up her hair

he shifts from foot to foot

and as they return,

looks furtively to see

who has seen.

All Saints' Day

Half my family seem to think I'm 50... but that's next year!! Obviously.