Well, I'm back...

...but a good deal of the time I wish I were not.  My month of travelling in Greece was an extraordinary experience and I would do it all again in an instant.

I remind myself that I must be realistic about this.  Staying in rent-rooms and small hotels and eating out most of the time wasn't great for my blood sugar.  My readings got slowly less good and in the long-term I think my BG levels would probably have slipped badly.  The starting point was excellent, so slipping didn't take me into a really terrible level but by the end of week four things were noticeably worse than usual. 

A week after getting back, with my diet completely under my own control again, things are getting back to normal; so no outright damage was done, I think.  But I cannot risk burning out any more beta cells, so for that alone I would have had to come back from Greece.  Or else settle there permanently, of course.  The key problem was not being able to prepare my own food, leading to a diet with a number of things in it I wouldn't normally eat.  If I had my own kitchen then that issue wouldn't arise.

Moving on every few days was frustrating, too; in every place I went to I wanted to have more time.  That's a good kind of negative, of course.  Wishing you could get away from somewhere is a miserable state of mind; wishing you had more time does at least leave the possibility of another visit, another time.

On a more practical level, I really began to miss having a washing machine.  Not every accommodation I stayed had a basin with a plug, and scrubbing your clothes with a bit of hand soap and rinsing them out under a running tap doesn't really seem to get the dirt out.  It's been good to have really clean things to wear again.

But, ye Gods, the places I've visited, the things I've seen!  I know what a cliche it is, but my heart is full of memories I'll cherish for the rest of my life.  I've climbed the Acrocorinth.  I've swum in an ancient harbour beneath a ruined Mycenean citadel.  I've drunk from a sacred spring, and watched the new moon rise over the Isle of Pelops. 

And now I am setting myself the task of trying to write about them in more detail than I did in the blog.  The task is a bit daunting but I won't step aside from something just because of that; heavens, one would never get anything done!  I don't yet have a "proper" job; I have begun looking since I've been back, but nothing interesting has come up as yet (well, it's only been a week).  So I aim to make sure I do something useful with the large amount of free time I have at the moment.  Being back from this trip feels pretty depressing; something I looked forward-to for so long, now finished and done, and not to come again.  No job, nowhere to go, nothing to do; I must keep depression at bay, and that means work.  Which means, write.

By damn, though, this country is cold.  And damp.  And dark.  My heart and my bones are missing the brilliant light of Hellas.  "Missing" is too pallid a word, indeed; it's a fiercer emotion that that, it's a feeling that wants to cry out in pain and anger, because I have been taken from what had come to feel like my home, and left stranded instead in this chilly place where the sun hides behind rainclouds and the steady wind is icy and blows from the north... 

So now let me write and remember.

Long time...

...and the time keeps getting longer.  The days are getting shorter, true, but I'm still getting older with them.

I suppose I should be grateful that I'm alive to be remarking to myself on my increasing years.  It's a quiet, rather dull grey day here in west London and I have put a load of washing out, so I'm hovering periodically at the window to keep an eye on the weather.  In between drinking large quanitities of herb tea and eating noodles for lunch.  I have also bought a big batch of sensible groceries, had a shower and finished reading "The Help".  Which was terrific; one of those books that really live up to the hype. Gut-wrenching at times, moving, angering, inspiring, and beautifully written.

I've been away, for a week in peaceful, rural, damp and dramatically foggy Cornwall.  That's probably why I'm feeling a little introspective and depressed today; a mixture of tiredness from the journey back and the general post-holiday-slump-plus-concommittant-blues that I seem to get every time I have a decent slab of time off.  God knows what I would be like if I hated the place where I work instead of being fond of it.

Last week I was staying in a place that had wifi, but I didn't have a computer; I was staying with a television-phobe, so there was no tv; and none of us have fancy tech like i-pods and portable speakers, so there was no recorded music either.  A complete brain detox and wind-down, with no sounds except gulls and jackdaws, human voices, the odd fishing boat pottering about in the harbour, and once or twice a helicopter overhead or a larger ship coming in to port.  Plenty of fresh air, albeit rather wet fresh air a lot of the time.  Bit of walking, bit of chilling-out, bit of reading, and a much-needed rest.

I wish I knew why this always happens to me after a holiday.  I should love to come home refreshed and re-energised, upbeat, determined to profit by my time off and the perspective it has given me.  But despite my best efforts, each time, to think optimistically from now on, I still find myself instead feeling like dust and ashes.  Stale, flat and unprofitable...

I looked in the bathroom mirror this morning, and saw a plain, plump, serious-looking woman in her late forties, with her grey-and-brown mixed roots showing as her hair dye grows out, and her spectacles sliding down her nose.  She doesn't look interesting or like someone anyone would bother to get to know.  She doesn't look as though she has a story of her own (much less a whole head full of them) or anything about her to make her of interest to anyone.  She looks tired, even after a week off, and rather grubby and rubbed-about-the-edges, like a beaten-up old recipe book.

I look around my small room in this shared flat, and I see nothing but muddle and clutter; junk I ought to throw away (but don't), half-filled sketchbooks, notebooks on unfinished writing projects...  I think of how many times I have gotten nowhere with something I thought I was doing well at; how many times I have failed, by my own and others' standards.  A sense of my own worthlessness bubbles up in my mind, gradually filtering through the topsoil of confidence until it is saturating every thought.  And I feel, I know, myself and my life to be mere dust and ashes.

It's depression; only mild depression, thank God, but recogniseable nonetheless.  I've had it before, I suppose it's likely I will have it again.  I know it will ease, and then pass (or, my inner voices of doubt and self-condemnation whisper, it will get buried again under a blanket of denial and avoidance tactics).  I will come through it.  It's partly because the journey back from Cornwall to London takes about ten hours and after ten hours either sitting in a car or sitting on a crowded train I am tired and rather stiff.  I know all this.  But I still feel flat.  Stale.  And dust, and ashes, and all the rest of it...