Autumn

A spider in the bed
a mouse on the rug
a harvestman on my shoe

The Rain It Raineth Every Other Day

October has begun with alternating wet and dry days. Today it's
rain like everything is coming to an end...
a line of mine I really like but haven't ever finished the poem - in fact can't quite remember where the original draft is. I think it may have been a writing class exercise. It rains hard, relentlessly, the sky determinedly sombre, the other side of the valley veiled in cloud. Rain comes down the chimney, but only on the right. We hope the man from the stove shop will come one day soon to advise about wood burners and chimney linings, and why the rain is descending into the fireplace. It's always quiet up here on a Sunday, but when it's wet there's no-one about. Just one dark hooded figure a while back who came and knocked at one of the neighbours' doors, then went away again.

I have designed and printed little postcard-sized cards on a lovely shade of turquoisy mid-blue to advertise my services on the noticeboards around town, of which there are several. It's the next step in the venture. I open my drawer to look at them again, imagine them being in the public domain, read by a concerned parent, the number jotted down on a scrap of paper... I think it will also be worth putting myself on various counselling/ therapy type websites too. And then there are business cards to get, and a leaflet to design, and maybe later, when I'm more sure of what I want to say about myself and my work, a website. There's a scheme which will pay me £50 a week for 16 weeks for going self-employed from Jobseekers, so I shall soon be registering, and all will be official. I nearly got an adult referral this week, but she turned out to be a friend of a friend, and that's the trouble with doing this sort of work in this little community. My inclination is not to take adults unless they live outside the immediate area.

Our friend S cooked us a glorious meal last night - celery and potato soup made with miso, pork chops with apricot and sage stuffing roasted on a bed of potatoes with bacon and garlic, and courgettes with chilli and mint, followed (much later) by organic plum crumble with soya custard. A glass of S's own hawthorn wine made for a heady aperitif, followed by two good bottles of red wine. Between courses two and three, a few glasses to the good, we played darts, S's new obsession. To my amazement I discovered I'm rather good at it, though of course it might have been beginner's luck (I used to play a bit when I was perhaps 18, but I feel like a beginner). Quite a thrill to be able to send the dart successsfully to the place on the board for which I was aiming! However, S won!! She's keen to get a team going, and make this into a permanent feature of life. She's invested £19.99 in a rather posh darts board with little cupboard and blackboard with nice soft chalk, and two sets of 'arrers'...

My beloved Labtec mini glow mouse has died. I am reduced to working on the laptop's own mouse pad, which I loath and detest. I shall be forced to fork out £5 for another mini glow mouse. Some things are important.

L's walking is better every day. An acre of old skin has peeled from her foot! Important to be in good shape as her 60th birthday approaches.

Celebrate

L's pot has been removed! Much rejoicing, though she is moving a little tentatively and experimenting with different footwear to see what feels most comfortable. It is lovely to see her walking without rocking slightly from side to side - the plaster and surgical shoe were hard to match with a shoe of the same height. The doctor has discharged her, says her toe should make a full recovery though it might remain swollen for several months, which surprised us. Tomorrow she will start a programme of rehabilitation, involving little walks up and down the road, before gradually venturing further.

I'm reading a learned paper about neuroscience research and how it meets and affirms psychoanalytical thinking. Interesting though unbelievably verbose in the way only academics can be, and requiring rather tiring deconstruction sentence by sentence. For example:

The quintessential clinical context for a right brain transferential-countertransferential implicit communication of a dysregulated emotional state is the heightened affective moment of a clinical enactment.

Believe me that sentence was short! I'm starting in a Neuroscience Research Reading Group next Monday so got to do my homework. Also starting a series of seminars on Personality Development in November. Great to get into some studying to support my work. Certainly feels a long time since I last did any!

Came through some tests in my work last week. One of which was a salutory lesson in not necessarily being able to work with all comers - currently enagaged in helping family find suitable alternative support. Some of the things you hear in this line of work make you hair stand on end. Got to know your limits...

Equinox

It gets light at seven, it gets dark at seven. I do like the symmetry of this, the sense of balance. I could get used to it, but just as I do it will be sliding off in the other direction, the days shortening, the nights lengthening. I'm making it my business to stay aware and notice this happening this year. The weather is a mixture of languid late summer, and breezy wet early autumn. We've had the heating on an odd hour or two here and there, but not at all the last few days. This time of harvest and stock-taking and thanksgiving suits my mood after surviving the (almost) year since I received the belly blow that sent me reeling into the dark. Preparation too for the challenges of the winter, and the tasks ahead of survival and good management of resources. In my case of starting to earn my living again, little by precious little.

Phase

A bowl of greengages waits to be stewed with some honey. I'll top them with a crumble of brown and white flour, oats, walnuts, brown sugar then bake. Outside sparrows are fluttering as they hang onto the fat-ball holder attached to the fence, and peck the deliciousness therein. After a warm and mostly sunny day, the clouds are gathering, the light dimming.

My life is in a state of transition, with a good beginning made to establishing some private work with children, and a job application in for a day a week as a student counsellor at an FE college. As it approaches the year mark since the shit hit the fan when the complaint was made about my blog, I feel at last clear and certain signs of recovery. I have a renewed sense of my own professional (and personal) worth and potential, renewed determination and enthusiasm for the next phase of my life. And an increasing ability to see that since I definitely did not want to be in that job by now anyway, I may just be in exactly the place where I'm meant to be.

Feldenkrais

I lay on my back, my front and both my sides
and breathed in - hold - out - hold for an hour.
I felt my body relax, my mind expand.
I felt the world changing.

Fly

A fly, heavy as a small stone
travels across the kitchen,
catches light on its fretted wings
as the clouds begin to spill warm rain
from their dull bellies
and all the shoes in the house are still
all the shoes are still.