One of the things that was so especially agonising about the revelation that my blog had been being read by the colleague who made the complaint last October, other members of my team, and various senior management bods, was the discovery, upon re-reading the entire three years' back pages, of just how many times I had written about PMT. I felt no shame whatsoever about the posts that were actually being complained about, stood by them, and by the account I gave when challenged of the unacceptable stress I was under, which had led to these uncharacteristic outbursts... But somehow, in the atmosphere of humiliation generated by the whole sorry episode, one of the things that hurt worst was thinking of all these people reading repeatedly about my PMT. (Thinking of them reading the posts about my Dad's suicide hurt more, I suppose, but I disssociated from that as fast as possible...) Anyway, I thought of this when rereading yesterday's post this morning. Nuff said... Hormones suck. Oh, and the weather, which is frankly incomprehensible. A fascinating concoction of fog, rain and wind, unusual even for these parts in June...
Anyway, I have rediscovered excitement today in the shape of (in no particular order) a Kit-Kat (how can you better this ancient and simple rectangle of confectionery?), a cup of strong decaff coffee with frothy milk (IKEA frothers are clearly first cousins to vibrators, but give me a cappuccino any day of the week), the Be-Good Tanyas (Blue Horse sounding joyous after a long long time), and a Delia recipe for a roasted vegetable and couscous salad with harissa style dressing, which I plan to make tonight. Sadly the Co-op in town couldn't rise to a firm goats cheese, so I'm doing it with feta, but I see no reason to imagine this won't work ok. Simple pleasures all. Sensual pleasures designed to cheer on this day when I can't even see the Red Horse from the kitchen window.
As a coda to the first paragraph, I would like to say (again) that the blog posts that got me fired (or would have had I not found the door of my own accord) were in fact righteous and accurate rants about the parlous state of child protection services in the area where I worked, the horror of the impossible lives faced by many of the children we were working with, and (as subtext) the shameful lack of supervision support offered to me and my colleagues facing this kind of pain day after day. What I said needed to be said, since not enough was being done about the former, and nothing at all about the latter. As you can intuit I am still angry about that.
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
Bored
Oh, the relentless ongoingness of life. Day after day, all these hours, minutes seconds. No respite except sleep. I nodded off on the sofa, my head lolling forward, and woke with a start, falling off some pavement, to see my neighbour walking by in a blue tee shirt. Oh and the guilt the guilt for feeling like this when life is short and precious, and I know and fully subscribe to all the live in the moment, live every day as if it were your last philosophies. And sometimes I am closer to that ideal, sometimes further away.
It's the same felt experience as the 'boredom' of my childhood. A feeling of lethargy and longing (but for what?) that would take me shuffling to my mother moaning 'I'm bored. I don't know what to do'. My mother would always say the same things 'how on earth can you be bored? You've got a cupboard full of lovely toys, shelves and shelves of books, a wonderful big garden, records to play, paper to write or draw on....' etc etc. That's probably where the guilt started. How indeed could I be bored? How ungrateful I was for all the gifts life had bestowed on me. I think then, as a child, the missing gift, and what I really wanted when I went shuffling to my mother, was her company, her attention, like Jake's recurrent 'play wi' me Daddy' in Bleasdale's Jake's Progress.
This afternoon, alone in the house for a few hours, I could of course be writing, could be listening to music or an interesting talk or programme from the internet, could be going for a walk in the rain, could be cleaning the bedroom, or hoovering the stairs, could be reading, could be doing some more work on my interview presentation. And on and on... Instead I feel lost and alone. Have lost access to my own inner resources somehow, my ability to be the parent who would 'play wi' me', or listen to me, or sit me on her knee and cuddle me. I know all this, am apparently, and at times am actually, able to apply these insights helpfully. So it is a matter for boundless patience, repeated forgiveness, to understand that again and again I return to this lost place, and feel myself drowning in minutes and hours, long for the oblivion of bedtime, the comfort and respite of sleep.
What's missing in my life at the moment is of course a job. And here comes the guilt again - oh the envy of my freedom experienced by the employed, oh the apparent boundlessness of the delight of our retired friends in their entirely work-free lives. But for me too much unstructured time has always spelt trouble. When I gave up work in the '80s 'to write', I swiftly fell into depression. There is a fine balance for me in the matter of busy-ness and writing; I need neither too much (like my last job) nor too little (like now). I need to feel the rhythm of activity and rest, of stimulation and assimilation, go and stop. And some of it does need to come from outside myself, be imposed, contracted, like work. I struggle to build substitute structures to my time in a non-work setting (like now).
It's the same felt experience as the 'boredom' of my childhood. A feeling of lethargy and longing (but for what?) that would take me shuffling to my mother moaning 'I'm bored. I don't know what to do'. My mother would always say the same things 'how on earth can you be bored? You've got a cupboard full of lovely toys, shelves and shelves of books, a wonderful big garden, records to play, paper to write or draw on....' etc etc. That's probably where the guilt started. How indeed could I be bored? How ungrateful I was for all the gifts life had bestowed on me. I think then, as a child, the missing gift, and what I really wanted when I went shuffling to my mother, was her company, her attention, like Jake's recurrent 'play wi' me Daddy' in Bleasdale's Jake's Progress.
This afternoon, alone in the house for a few hours, I could of course be writing, could be listening to music or an interesting talk or programme from the internet, could be going for a walk in the rain, could be cleaning the bedroom, or hoovering the stairs, could be reading, could be doing some more work on my interview presentation. And on and on... Instead I feel lost and alone. Have lost access to my own inner resources somehow, my ability to be the parent who would 'play wi' me', or listen to me, or sit me on her knee and cuddle me. I know all this, am apparently, and at times am actually, able to apply these insights helpfully. So it is a matter for boundless patience, repeated forgiveness, to understand that again and again I return to this lost place, and feel myself drowning in minutes and hours, long for the oblivion of bedtime, the comfort and respite of sleep.
What's missing in my life at the moment is of course a job. And here comes the guilt again - oh the envy of my freedom experienced by the employed, oh the apparent boundlessness of the delight of our retired friends in their entirely work-free lives. But for me too much unstructured time has always spelt trouble. When I gave up work in the '80s 'to write', I swiftly fell into depression. There is a fine balance for me in the matter of busy-ness and writing; I need neither too much (like my last job) nor too little (like now). I need to feel the rhythm of activity and rest, of stimulation and assimilation, go and stop. And some of it does need to come from outside myself, be imposed, contracted, like work. I struggle to build substitute structures to my time in a non-work setting (like now).
Monday, 7 June 2010
Footings
I am drinking Earl Grey tea from my bucket-sized red and white Keep Calm and Carry On mug. This mug was a joke shared with one of my team in the last job, who initially bought one for herself, and then got one for me ('ideal for a cuppa and ideal to reassure when things go tits up'...). For various reasons I ended up with one at home and one at work, and when I left my job, I emailed the Head Teacher at the school where I was based and told her I'd like her to go and find it in my office, as it was my parting gift to her. I never saw her or my office again, after I was suspended on full pay last November, so it was important to me to pass on this talisman remotely. Somehow it never ceases to be a relevant slogan...
These 18 days (between being invited for interview and the interview date) are seeming rather long, and it is hard to sustain the optimism, enthusiasm and confidence consistently at all times. 9 days to go. I am struggling with my 15 minute presentation this afternoon while L is out with her walking group. I am trying to give an engaging, coherent and impressive account of a piece of work I did with a young woman several years ago. It's awful trying to work out what will be impressive... I hope my reflections on the work, my honesty and realism about the success and shortcomings of the work, will come somewhere close. I also spend time reading books about matters closely related to the job. I would like to tell you more, but paranoia, or well-grounded caution (not entirely sure which) dictates that I cannot. Anyway, it is extremely interesting and a bit scary.
I doubt we shall see the sun today. It is entirely overcast, and very muggy. As soon as you exert yourself - as I did this morning, walking down to drop address labels in at our other house for our tenant to redirect our mail (still a few stray items trickling in where we haven't yet managed to change the address), and then to the decorator's house to drop in his final final cheque - you break out in a muck sweat. I had to keep taking off my glasses and wiping my face to prevent them falling off my nose.
In one of the fields we look across to from the front of our house there is a horse in a red coat. There are other horses in the field too, but they don't wear coats. We speak of it as the Red Horse. Its field and the field above are coloured in in patches of yellow by the buttercups.
L had a good time learning how to build dry-stone walls on Saturday, and came home exhausted! She reckons she could now have a go at building a garden wall for us out of the pile of stones outside our hoouse, that were once our kitchen wall. She uses lovely body-related words like footings, cheek-ends, heartings. The heartings are the smaller stones used to fill the space between the two layers of wall, and are what we haven't got. L is hatching plans for raiding parties up onto the moors to pick up bags full of the stones of various sizes, that work their way up out of the ground.
These 18 days (between being invited for interview and the interview date) are seeming rather long, and it is hard to sustain the optimism, enthusiasm and confidence consistently at all times. 9 days to go. I am struggling with my 15 minute presentation this afternoon while L is out with her walking group. I am trying to give an engaging, coherent and impressive account of a piece of work I did with a young woman several years ago. It's awful trying to work out what will be impressive... I hope my reflections on the work, my honesty and realism about the success and shortcomings of the work, will come somewhere close. I also spend time reading books about matters closely related to the job. I would like to tell you more, but paranoia, or well-grounded caution (not entirely sure which) dictates that I cannot. Anyway, it is extremely interesting and a bit scary.
I doubt we shall see the sun today. It is entirely overcast, and very muggy. As soon as you exert yourself - as I did this morning, walking down to drop address labels in at our other house for our tenant to redirect our mail (still a few stray items trickling in where we haven't yet managed to change the address), and then to the decorator's house to drop in his final final cheque - you break out in a muck sweat. I had to keep taking off my glasses and wiping my face to prevent them falling off my nose.
In one of the fields we look across to from the front of our house there is a horse in a red coat. There are other horses in the field too, but they don't wear coats. We speak of it as the Red Horse. Its field and the field above are coloured in in patches of yellow by the buttercups.
L had a good time learning how to build dry-stone walls on Saturday, and came home exhausted! She reckons she could now have a go at building a garden wall for us out of the pile of stones outside our hoouse, that were once our kitchen wall. She uses lovely body-related words like footings, cheek-ends, heartings. The heartings are the smaller stones used to fill the space between the two layers of wall, and are what we haven't got. L is hatching plans for raiding parties up onto the moors to pick up bags full of the stones of various sizes, that work their way up out of the ground.
Friday, 4 June 2010
Summertime...
The door is open, a pleasant breeze tickling my bare calves and ankles, as I sit here at the kitchen table. L is hanging washing on the line. The sky is clearest blue. A fly walks across the window opposite where I am sitting. On top of the radiator lies the purple fly-swat we bought for £1.50 on Todmorden Market yesterday. It was adorned with a strange pink daisy-shaped flower - artificial obviously - big enough to cover the business end of the swat entirely. It was easy to remove. The woman who sold it to us expressed the view that it was 'gross' but unfortunately this was the only one she had to offer us. Was it some sort of prudish attempt to conceal the murderous intent of the weapon? Well, the flower went straight in the bin as soon as we got home, and soon the windowsills were strewn with small black bodies. I am intrigued by my cavalier attitude to the deaths of flies, whilst always carefully rescuing and freeing bees with a small glass and a postcard or bus timetable, with encouraging words and kind wishes. Obviously I am making a value judgement about which insects are dispensable and which worthy of preservation. I feel fine about it, but I do feel very aware as I swat and remove bodies, of my power over these minuscule, to me deeply irritating, life forms.
Thursday, 3 June 2010
Entertaining
For dinner tonight - salmon steaks fried so the skin is a bit crispy, served on a bed of home-grown lettuce, rocket, mizuna and mibuna, with sliced red onions, cherry tomatoes, black and green olives, and anchovies, with a lemon wedge on the side, and Jersey Royal potatoes served warm. To follow - rhubarb upside down cake served with creme fraiche or ice cream. Rhubarb is from the garden and the allotment, cooked with honey and grated orange. There will be white and red wine (though I'll be drinking tropical fruit juice or Schloer as an aperitif, and fizzy water with lemon and ice with my meal, as I'm having a spell on the wagon). The day is hot enough to imagine we might sit in the garden for our pre-dinner drinks.
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
Leisure
Front door open, vases of poppies and centaury on the table, from the garden and the lane. Flowers everywhere. We went to local beauty spot Hardcastle Crags this afternoon to catch the last of the bluebells before they go over. Intermittently reading and preparing my presentation for the job interview, but it feels pretty luxurious to have two weeks still to go. Trying to feel at least some of the time as if I'm on holiday. The weather helps. Lovely sunshine today after yesterday's murk and rain. L is going on a dry-stone walling course on Saturday, and then hoping to build a garden wall out of the stones that used to be the kitchen wall, which are still sitting in a big pile outside the house...
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
Dreary Tuesday
It's the first of June and the heating's on...
**********************************
The room is sealed yet full of birdsong
peppering the weight of silence.
I can't move - my legs are some
dense material, metal or stone,
and my mind is a clear liquid,
hydrochloric acid, into which
thoughts swim only to die
an ugly death, eaten, dissolved.
**********************************
The room is sealed yet full of birdsong
peppering the weight of silence.
I can't move - my legs are some
dense material, metal or stone,
and my mind is a clear liquid,
hydrochloric acid, into which
thoughts swim only to die
an ugly death, eaten, dissolved.
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