A bit of thanksgiving of my own...

I know I’m a day late, but I've been wondering if our Friends Across The Pond have an idea in this Thanksgiving malarkey... 

I’m having rather a trying day (plugging through a monotonous but useful task [every office job has them!] while trying not to disturb the person at the next desk who is getting a tad tense wrestling with a lot of figures) and I find I keep thinking “Roll on five o’clock!”.  But it occurs to me that this is wishing the next three hours of my life away, which I don’t like doing.  So for now, while I munch my apple and finish my cup of green tea, I’m going to practice gratitude.

Thank you, you gods and little fishes, for this very good apple.  Thank you for apples, generally.  And bananas.  And pineapples.  And the mad way pineapples grow...

Thank you for the frail wintry sunshine washing over Kew Green, and for the beautiful wispy mares-tails of cloud in the sky.

Thank you for the fact I’m going on holiday in just over a week!

Thank you for the fact that all my orchids are re-blooming.

Thank you for all the actors, dancers, singers and musicians whose great performances give me so much pleasure and awe.  Thank you in particular for all those who are not just gifted but hot hot hot and gorgeous as well...

Thank you for the wonderful autumn colours all around me at Kew, now entering the final phase before winter; and for the winter colours (textured bark, scarlet twigs and stems of dogwoods, rose-pink linden buds, nerines in bloom) just arriving, and the sharp, musky, bittersweet and incense-y perfumes of the season.

Thank you for it being Friday evening, the evening I treat myself to a really easy supper, and desert, and a beer. And a dose of silly TV - Friday night means "The Mentalist" and "Castle"; yay, shiny...

Thank you for my health.  Thank you for my family and friends.  Thank you that I have a job, an adequate income, a roof over my head, sane flatmates, and the use of a kitchen where all the appliances work.

Thank you for my writing.  Even if it never means a thing to anyone else at all, it means the world to me to have a creative outlet.  Thank you for my maddening, mercurial Muse, and Blessed Be She Who Comes With Stories! Thank you for that mysterious inner spring that wells forth with situations and scenes, characters and ideas.  Thank you for the guidance that nudges me towards knowing that this story will work better if it’s told in the first person, and this story doesn’t yet work because although the initial premise is good there’s a socking great hole in the plot, and this story is the one I simply have to tell right now...  Thank you for giving me Gabriel Yeats and Simon Cenarth and Anne Hope, thank you for giving me Thorn and Anna, thank you for the Ramundi clan and dumb, long-suffering Massimo; thank you for Iain Siward and Aiean Aietes, for the Hobards brothers and Maramne Myers, for Mel and Dottie and David and Yaz, for the Hughuddles, and for all the other imaginary people who have made and are still making my life a happier place.

Weird dreams

I very seldom have full-on nightmares of the world-coming-to-an-end, monster-eating-my-leg variety.  But in the last few days I’ve had two absolutely miserable dreams; dreams that left me practically shaking with relief when I woke and realised they weren’t true.

The first was late last week; I dreamed I had to move house again, and I had just three days to do it in.  I had arranged to get all my belongings into storage and was frantically packing; but of course with only three days leeway I was so busy packing that I’d had no time to look for somewhere else to move to.  So I was about to decamp into a local hotel, at the truly painful cost of £120 per night, room only (meaning I would have spent more than my usual month’s rent in just five days).  No-one I spoke to saw anything wrong or odd about my situation, so that as well as being frantic with worry I was also constantly being struck by the fact that I must be a deeply pathetic person to get myself so worked up about minor matters like this.

The second bad dream was last night.  I was going on holiday and had arrived at the airport; there were 2 hours to go to my flight and I was standing at the queue to check-in when I suddenly realised I had left all my baggage at home.  So there I was in Gatwick, desperately trying to think whether there was any way, using the rather stupid selection of shops one finds in an airport, that I could buy myself a whole holiday wardrobe, plus toiletries, books, binoculars, sketchbook, camera, contact lenses and a replacement pair of specs, plus a bag to put them in, before the check-in closed, and still have a bit of spending money left for things like food while I was away.  To add to my state of nerves, my mother then turned up, having decided very sweetly to come and see me off; and she could not understand why I was so upset, or why I felt I had any kind of a problem.  So, again, I had the additional stress of thinking “What is wrong with me, that I am upset by this, when here’s Mum telling me it’s a really trivial matter?”

Talk about deep-seated insecurities!  When I have dreams like this I end up thinking I’d rather not remember them at all.  Not like the one a few months ago when I dreamed I was recently and happily married and busy renovating a house by a lake with my husband.  Now that was lovely!

I don’t know why I’m having such miserable, insecure dreams.  I didn’t think I was particularly miserable or insecure at the moment, indeed rather the opposite.  But the human mind is a mysterious thing, god wot.  Maybe being contented, busy and in good spirits is making my subconscious mind panic. 

I am contented.  Yes, I could have more in my life (a publishing deal, my own home, a garden, a gift-wrapped Jeremy Renner [preferably in my bed], etc etc) but my family are all in good health, I’m happy in my job, I’m comfortable where I live, I have friends, I can afford a holiday each year - plus  a few concerts, theatre tickets etc - my bladder is behaving itself again; and I have my writing, which has driven me mad and worn me out this summer but has also been a well-spring of joy and fulfillment like little else I’ve known.  So I am contented and I have a lot to be grateful for.  Blessed be!

Things going wrong...

or, one of those weeks.

One of my colleagues has, um, well, let's just say that out of the blue she's lost the plot rather, and is now off on long-term sick leave. It would be unprofessional to say more. But it means that a department that was already short-staffed is now trying to distribute another person's workload amongst the staff, and as the saying goes, a quart into a pint pot won't go. Very depressing.

Then, I've just learned that my favourite baritone has pulled out of "Il Barbiere di Seviglia" at the ROH under doctor's orders, needing total rest. I didn't have a ticket (it was that or "Ondine", and I really wanted to see "Ondine", so I jumped that way and not for the Rossini) but those I know who did mostly had tickets principally to see Mr K. in action, and are pretty pee'd off. Myself, I'm just concerned that he's been pushing himself too hard, silly bloke.

Luckily I no longer live near him and his family, so I'm spared any temptation to peer over their front hedge as I go by (& that is a very good thing!!). I used to live a few streets away, and I'm afraid that sometimes I did peer, like a nosy kid; and then sometimes I would pass him on his way to the shops or the gym, almost invariably looking worn-out and flat... He's one of those performers who put 110% into everything, and rush from Munich on a Tuesday to Manchester on a Wednesday, and then back to Munich, and then go straight into rehearsals somewhere in the US without even time to get over the jet-lag. When someone drives themself that hard they have to stop occasionally, or things start to snap. Having just seen someone flip, I don't like to think of someone I really admire going that way.

Now tonight I'm having a drink with a friend who's just had two members of her family die and a relationship break up within a month. She's had some emotional health problems in the past and is sounding terribly stressed, though as yet still rational - aware, if you like, that she's in a bad way, whereas when you are really up the creek you don't know it at all... But I imagine she will really, really need to talk; so I'm expecting a heavy evening.

You know, things like this remind me of how much I am grateful for - my good health (it has not always been thus, so I know what it is to be without), the blessed fact that none of my family have popped it recently, and even at times the fact of being single, since at least that spares me the misery of being ditched.