Nailed

My digestion and I awake in the wrong hours again last night, and today lowness of spirits at a new low. But we've just nailed the nesting box to the tree in the garden, which feels like a hopeful sort of thing to do. And been round to visit our tenant, and do the annual inspection of the house, as she's now been there a year. All is well there, the damp in the cellar improved by work done by Ultimate Pest Control, and she is not being made redundant (we'd heard of job losses in her company), and has no plans for moving on. Strange to be walking about in our old home though, up the white painted stairs clackety clack, the view from the velux in the spare bedroom...

Yes, and so this means it's a year this week since we moved here. By some distance not the best year of my life, but maybe worth remembering not the worst either.

L came back from Leeds with a present for me - Jo Shapcott's 'Of Mutability', which has just won the Costa prize. Not that that means much to me; I wanted it when it first came out, but book-buying is verboten at the moment. I'm working my way slowly through it, as if walking round a garden, taking in the scene gradually, knowing I can come back and look at this shrub, this tree, this quiet corner seat again later. It is good, strong, moving poetry. I'd like to be inspired.

Next Saturday we're going to a poetry reading in Leeds. I'm at my Personality Development Seminar in Manchester til 2.30, then will get the train all the way back, and on the other way to the second city of the day, where I'll meet L who is returning there to buy the shoes she hesitated over this week... Major treat, as the whole excursion will cost me well over £15, notwithstanding some fab deal like 2 pizzas for £12 at Pizza Express beforehand! We're going to hear George Szirtes, which is very thrilling to me, and lovely Clare Pollard, who was one of my tutors on my Arvon course in 2009. Also Clare Shaw, one of our local treasures, and two or three others I am not familiar with. I'd like to be inspired, but I'll settle for being moved, excited, entertained, diverted.

(Do tell me if I'm becoming obsessed with money.)

Blossom And Flourish, Wither And Perish

Stuff seething and simmering in my mind about the mysteries of youth and aging. The young man from three doors up walks past, returning from his paper round in a thick cream knitted cardigan. He is perhaps 17. In the year we have lived here, he has grown taller, wider, more solid. I don't know him, but I observe. There is C, day on day, moving through his life. He is young, and doesn't know it. When I was that age I had no idea how young I was. I wrote impassioned poetry about trees, kissing and drunkenness, felt all sorts of named and nameless longings, saw life stretching ahead of me, not requiring me to make choices so much as just to follow and see where it led. Felt life was my right somehow. But was more aware that I was older than I'd ever been before and getting older year on year, than I was of being barely formed, a new adult blinking in the bright world.

My mother, 81 on Sunday is old now, officially, and how can it be that I never saw this coming? And how can it be I've only now realised that much of what has been happening to her, the memory loss, depression, dwindling interest in life, loss of concentration, and the viciously aggressive outbursts, all point clearly to the early stages of one or other form of dementia? Because she's my mother is why. And she is not, in terms of my inner working model of the world, permitted to become old and infirm.

At 48, my life has foundered, and I feel 'on the outside looking in' at people with secure jobs, nicely developing careers, established roles in the world of work. Of course I know that there are at this time many like me, out of work, more or less, many others fearful of losing jobs and the security that goes with them, but what I tend to be wincingly sensitive to, on the radio, in the paper, in overheard conversation, is the feeling of complacent entitlement people have to their work identity, the social and economic validation so unthinkingly gained from going to work and doing whatever they do year on year. And I am chilled to the bone, thinking I've lost it (even though next week or the week after I may perhaps regain at least a little of it), and may never be readmitted to the charmed circle of the working. And I'm 48. Too old for a major career change, too young to retire. Too young to be old, too old to be young. I have never really known what I wanted 'to do with my life', and now I am so sharply aware that 'the life' I have left is finite, is very likely less than the life I've already lived.

It's not just work either. What else is important to me? How do I want to live? Surely I should be thinking about these things... I have so much time at the moment, but not the spare psychic energy for much creativity, tied up as most of it is with the matter of my economic survival.

I met a woman I know slightly at the bus stop last night. I was coming home from the pub, she from working, doing healing and Reiki at a local centre. She said she always came away with a big smile on her face, saying (casting her eyes upwards) thankyou, thankyou for letting me do work I love. I just felt annoyed, thought ungracious thoughts about how Reiki isn't work at all and what a bunch of flakey new-agey types this town is full of. Which isn't what I usually think. Much. I think it was her comment about work that hit the raw nerve. I'd settle for doing work I can just about tolerate at the moment... Thoughts of being '50 and on the scrap-heap' haunt me. I know you'll all say no, no, of course you won't be, you have so much to offer... and this of course in my better moments I do know. But this limbo, when none of the possibilities that keep shimmering like mirages up ahead on a hot summer road, seems willing to manifest itself, keeps me struggling to believe that 'all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.'

Say Something

The strangeness of limbo. Waiting to learn that references have been received, either 'satisfactory' or not. Waiting to hear what the school makes of my response to their weird job description - a proposal to do things a bit differently from what I'd agreed to so far. I'd much rather approach the 'whole thing' as one big project - the setting up of a counselling service in a school - than do it piecemeal, a few sessions with a couple of kids, with little or no ground work, and no time for what we used to call 'relationship building' in my late unlamented job. Also waiting to hear something about another possibility for earning some money that a friend has put me onto. I'll save the details til anything actually happens. Been waiting about a month on that one. Waiting too for my membership of grandiose professional organisation one must join in order to demonstrate professionalism to come through. Until which time I cannot put an entry on their 'find a therapist' database, nor another website where therapists and counsellors advertise their services, where one must state which grandiose professional organisation one belongs to, and they will check the truth of one's claim.

And the wind murmurs down the chimney and the afternoon light comes and goes in the kitchen, as clouds blow across the low winter sun. It's cold again - hovering around the zero mark, a tiny scattering of snow this morning. I drink an experimental coffee and eat a toasted tea cake with friend H, who recommends Slippery Elm for dodgy tummy and Mag Phos tissue salts for sleep and various other ills. And reminds me of Flower Remedies for soothing the darker moods. Who needs a doctor or healer with a friend like her? The coffee and tea cake (with butter yet) have done no harm, and were much enjoyed, so there!

Birthday season in our family - my niece's last week, brother's yesterday, mother's on Sunday. The family gathering to eat Sunday lunch with her, except me. I was supposed to have a seminar on Saturday so planned my near-to-birthday visit for last weekend. Seminar has been postponed, due to student demonstrations in Manchester on Saturday, but please don't tell my Mum... It's mad really - the thing that makes her most anxious, and therefore liable to outbursts of unreasonable fury, is having lots of people around her. Originally she said she didn't want to do anything much for her birthday, the big one having been last year, but seems to have been persuaded by her brother and sister-in-law that a 'celebration' is a good idea. How glad I am of the phantom seminar. She can't get much really from sitting round a table with nine people. They'll all talk to each other, and she'll zone out, occasionally getting cross and frustrated. Unless maybe my sweet nephew sits himself next to her and makes sure to stay in touch with her amidst the hurly burly.

L is in Leeds hunting for shoes and a padded jacket, so I have the house to myself. This is both good and bad. Good really, but sometimes I drift into inertia. Shall try to get back to the Dad letters after this. Not sure where I'm going with them. Just need to keep on the scent of the energy in the words. Hunt down the exciting, moving, funny or weird bits, and see what they show me. I should also be planning something about the work in the school, where I have a meeting next Wednesday. Hard to know exactly what to plan at the moment...

Hard to know exactly what to plan at the moment.

Perturbation

The two things that really gave my Mum pleasure were the big bunch of white lilies I took her (now a well-established tradition), and the ten or so letters of my Dad's I took and read aloud to her. I have to say they read very well aloud, and she was delighted by how well he wrote, how interesting and funny and full of detail they were. 'I shall be thinking about Dad's letters when I go to bed' she said. I said I'd bring more next time. Now have to figure out a strategy on the more disturbing ones...

I have been suffering from very poor sleep, and recurrent indigestion. The first I attribute to 'hormonal perturbation'. The second perhaps to stress, or to my system objecting to certain elements of my diet. Anyway, it prompts me to a more careful way of eating - little bread or dairy or coffee. Lay off the alcohol. And the cakes!

Poor sleep may not be helped by yesterday's revelation that the school is asking my referees about 'disciplinary action'. My supervisor emailed saying I hadn't been the subject of any had I? I set to work to establish the exact definition of 'disciplinary action' and discovered via the ACAS helpline (a stalwart of the original drama) that there is none. My advisor thought my interpretation - that it refers to actual verbal, written and final warnings or dismissal, was a reasonable one. My supervisor then emailed again to say she'd realised she didn't have to fill that bit in anyway as it was for 'employers only'. Which leaves my other referee, my former manager at the children's charity where I was called to a Disciplinary Hearing at the Final Stage (Dismissal), but resigned before it ever happened. The question is apparently whether they have any disciplinary action on my file... I can only wait and see if the shit hits the fan, and if it does - tell them the truth, if I'm given the chance. There's no other way. And I guess they may decide not to take me on because of it - because it makes me 'a risk'. But let us hope not.

Sun And Moon

Intense sunshine by day and moonshine by night, the brightest shiniest full moon I've seen in a while, and hard hard frosts again. Thick ice in places up on the Calderdale Way above home. Winter still not done with us, but when the sky is blue and the light crystal clear, I'm not so impatient, though I could cheerfully not encounter the sub-zero air on my face again for a long time to come. And there have already been hints of spring. Green bulb shoots in the garden. That purplish haze in the trees that presages the new leaf buds swelling.

A draft contract arrives from the school, and an entirely inappropriate job description, given they have only engaged me to undertake two counselling sessions a week for 10 weeks intially. Item 1. reads : to strategically lead the overall development of a range of support services for students and the wider community. I'd be glad to develop such services for the students, if they engaged me for a decent amount of time each week, but I'm not so sure about the wider community... Also item 6. to maintain regular consultation visits to partner primary schools and other school partners. I'm wondering if, without having mentioned it to me, they are hoping that, after a trial period, they will be able to take me on for a more substantial role. I hope so, but meanwhile there will be a few important points to clarify...

I'm off down south to see my Ma tomorrow for a couple of days. I shall cook her fish pie, drink wine with her, read her extracts from Dad's letters, show her some photographs, watch the Australian Open Tennis with her and generally keep her company. Her spirits are low, and she always cheers up over the course of my visit, so I have to just manage my difficult feelings about her Eeyore-ishness, and believe that it's worth it.

My friend K's friend G died on Tuesday night. I was hoping I might be able to see her when I'm down seeing my Mum, but she can't make the time, feeling at the moment very responsible for her goddaughter, G's 18 year-old, now alone in the world (in terms of family.) My friend C's 96-year-old Mum died peacefully the week before, C's partner M chanting beside her as she slipped away.

Outpatients II

There is no-one but me waiting in this little corridor, outside the outpatient minor surgery theatre. I sit on one of four grey speckled plastic padded chairs, with a small coffee table separating them two and two, a few unattractive magazines not fully covering its wood effect formica top. The fluorescent light makes my eyes feel funny. I can hear the doctor's voice from inside the theatre, but not what he's saying - then laughter - he seems to have quite a line in cheery repartie. The previous patient had refused to have local anaesthetic - fearful of the needle - and is told his GP will discuss general anaesthetic with him. It might need some thought as you're not the fittest says the small woman in blue cap and scrubs. She then suggests he go and wash off the ink marks with which the areas of his face that were to be treated have been ringed. He suggests he could do it at home. She, as if speaking to a child, but not unkindly says you've got biro on your face - go into the toilet and wash it off. He complies silently.

Two tanks of medical oxygen on their wheeled stands wait silently beneath a poster that says Targeting Oxygen Safety. It is all about O2 saturations, from 88% to 98% illustrated by a target with five rings of different colours. Nearby, weirdly since this is a place where clearly the public wait regularly, if not in vast numbers, other posters declare that Bradford Teaching Hospitals are having a year of improving patient safety. The branding for this series of posters is the word SAFE! made to look like a rubber stamp, in various colours. There's a poster about patient observations, another about ward rounds. What makes a great ward round? it asks. A series of bullet points includes Patient dignity and privacy is maintained. Also Patients are introduced to yourself and colleagues. (I think of Getting On, the excellent and excruciating recent dark 'comedy' series on the BBC starring Jo Brand, in which the ward rounds were - well, not great anyway...) The poster about patient observations carries the slogan Competent staff = confident patients.

Stalking

A strange time of picking up old threads while trying to find new ones strong enough to get hold of, to follow. And of just surviving this winter, now shifted from the seemingly relentless cold to mild but windy and frequently dull, though there was a glimmer of sunshine as we drove back from Todmorden this lunchtime, after visiting our new friend H.

L is stalking the house for rogue drafts with a candle. Thank goodness for the warmer weather - we had been burning more pounds a day than I care to tell you - I hold my head and moan every time this conversation arises. We look at brochures for woodburners, weighing the initial outlay against the steady drain of funds on gas.

My finances are close to rock bottom, and I can't afford to do anything akin to a luxury. My brother's partner is having a 60th birthday party in May. They live in Brussels and I can't afford to go. It's an odd experience. I have not really been quite this poor before. Still hoping the school work will start soon, but have waited all week to hear when the planned meeting next week is to take place. No word. Painfully slow, the progress towards a living. And my one child client has this week decided she wants to stop for a while, maybe forever. Awake in the night in panic - the ground dropping away beneath me kind I experienced when the complaint was first made, and I realised I would probably lose my job. A diluted version of that. Sleepless like I haven't been for ages. Wide-eyed and nervous system roaring at 2.30 and 4.30 am.

At the same time I feel a steady growth of optimism, of excitement.

I have tracked down my first therapist whom I haven't seen for nine years, and exchanged emails. Strange. Important. Somehow linked with reading my Dad's letters. I went to her the year he died, sensing that somehow my numbness wasn't right.