Holiday

Just very quickly.

Work has been hectic, the last few weeks.  November is a busy month anyway, with the run-up to the Christmas programme, plus the exhausting World Travel Market.  I promptly went and added to the demands on me by adding one of my own and signing up for NaNoWriMo.  I didn't "win" it, but I'm 36,000 words into a new story, which I wouldn't have begun at all if I hadn't decided to try this.  So that's not bad for someone who's been fairly run off her feet.

I've also done most of my Christmas shopping and seen some excellent ballet and dance and a very good (if sad) play, and completed a couple of small projects at work, as well as doing all the day-to-day sales things.

On Friday I finally reached my longed-for spell of annual leave, the one that was postponed from September.  I really am very tired, and I went to pieces rather on Saturday; did virtually nothing except play with the kittens and go to the laundrette, and had a nap in the afternoon like a convalescent.

And so to today, and packing a suitcase, for tomorrow at silly o'clock I am off to Cyprus for a week.  Holiday!  It's warm and sunny out there and I have a bathing costume, a couple of fat novels and a couple of notebooks.  Bliss.  Have a good week!

Melissa Hamilton in "Manon"; wow...

Isn't a "Manon" a kind of chocolate?  Something with praline and whipped cream enrobed in fine belgian choc?  Delicious.

"Manon" the story is not exactly delicious; it's bittersweet even at its happiest moments, and deeply tragic by the end.  At the moment the Royal Ballet are doing MacMillan's magnificent version and I've been twice, sad balletomane that I am.

I went with the DipGeek, a planned outing; we saw Laura Morera and Nehemiah Kish, innocent and unhappy as the lovers, and Riccardo Cervera as an insouciant Lescaut.  But then on Monday I managed to get a returned ticket, to see one of my current dance idols, Melissa Hamilton, making her debut in the lead.

So if I am a sad balletomane? - so what.  This was something not to be missed.  And boy, do we have a Manon here!  I know I'm one of her fangirls, but Ms Hamilton simply seized the part with both hands and made it her own.  I was completely blown away.

She was going absolutely flat-out, technically - not a foot wrong, not a risk fudged - while dramatically, emotionally, this was as subtle and truthful an interpretation as I've ever seen.  Her performance was alive with flickering feelings, right to her fingertips.  She brought out little nuances, like the way the innocent girl, arriving in Paris in a pell-mell hurtle of excitement, cannot resist trying to show off her pretty new frock to her brother - only to realise within minutes that next to the glittery finery of the local whores she looks provincial and frumpy.  And bang! she goes, like the kid she is, straight from unthinking happiness to frustrated dissatisfaction.

This was a very young Manon, in love but also very much swept up with being in love, and visibly steeling herself to the touch of Monsieur GM with his creepy fetishes and bullying dominance.  Right through Act One there was a vividly real sense of someone trying to keep abreast of things, trying to make decisions on the spur of the moment, trying to stay ahead without really knowing what she's doing.  Circumstances keep changing, complications keep arriving, and she is too un-worldy-wise to realise she cannot have it all, despite the deepening mess, until it is horribly, painfully too late.  By the end we were going full-on for raw danger; the famous flips and plunging lifts of the last pas de deux were taken right to the line, as they need to be, to give the last scene the utter desperation it needs.  Seriously; it needs to be scary, that scene, and it was.  I haven't seen a Manon come that close to dashing her brains out on the stage for a while...

She had an excellent Lescaut in Bennet Gartside, who I didn't know would be dancing this role until I opened my cast sheet; that was a nice surprise to arrive to.  He's matured into a terrific actor and still has the dancing chops to pull off a superbly naturalistic, tumbling drunk scene, making all those horrendous off-balance leaps look easy - and phenomenally real.  If anyone in the company is going to step into Gary Avis' shoes in time, Mr Gartside might be the one to do it.

Mr Avis was excelling himself as usual (if that isn't a contradiction in terms) as an utterly repellent Monsieur GM.  I wouldn't ever have expected to say this as a compliment, but he was rape culture personified.  Through great chunks of the brothel scene my eyes kept straying from the merrymaking of the whores and their clients, to watch the interactions between him and Manon.  This was a real relationship, subtle and full of tension, a constantly-shifting unadmitted power struggle going on.  One got a very clear sense of what has happened to Manon in the last few weeks, and a real premonition of what might have happened in the succeeding months, if she hadn't taken another spur-of-the-moment gamble and tried to have it all.

I would have liked to see Miss Hamilton paired with a more emotionally responsive Des Grieux.  Matthew Golding certainly seems to be a strong, safe partner (& my god, you need one with some of the lifts in "Manon") but his acting was a bit one-dimensional for my tastes.  Mr Kish, a couple of weeks before, brought a low-key sincerity and an air of innocent, well-intentioned sweetness to this foolish young man; one watched his characterisation and thought "By gum, Des Grieux is an idiot" but one also felt for him desperately.  I didn't really feel for Mr Golding, and that's a pity. 

But by and large it was a tremendous performance.  As usual all the bit parts were beautifully done.  As usual Gary Avis acted his socks off.  And as usual Miss Hamilton left me stunned, by her wonderful dancing and her heartfelt dramatic instincts. 

The rest of my week has been busy at work and I am tending to flop at home.  I'm still very tired.  I've just been for a drink after work with the Press Office team, followed by pizza and salad 'cos it's Friday.  My internet connection at home seems to be okay tonight, after being distinctly off-colour lately.  And I have kitten-sitting duties this weekend.  So things aren't too bad at all, all things considered.  And now I am going to bed.

A day out, and enjoying the little things

Yesterday, for a change, instead of doing my grocery shopping, cleaning, running the washing machine, etc, as per any normal Saturday, I decided to take myself off for a day out.

That makes it sound rather momentous, which I suppose it isn't really.  But in an odd way it felt as though it was.  Life is short and sometimes hard, and at the moment there seem to be so many troubles and disasters in the world outside my own little life, most of which I am powerless to do anything about.  On Friday one of my colleagues quoted "Firefly" at me, and the knowledge that I'm working with a fellow-Browncoat made me grin for about the next hour.  Little moments like that can uplift a day, and sometimes, at times like these, one can simply miss them as they pass by.  I don't think it is hiding one's head in the sand, to want to see some good amid the gloom.  The pleasure those simple few words gave me outweighed quite a few rough moments during the working day, and it reminded me how seldom one indulges oneself to stop and look at the good things as they flash by.  I want to find things to give me hope and moments of pleasure, to counteract the knowledge of so much violence and cruelty, so much sickness and sadness.  To have those tiny flickers of satori, even if of the most simple and minor nature.  To say "Give me some happiness, give me some tiny epiphanies, as I slog through this week, this month, this year.  Let my life be about the journey, not the goal; let the journey not be devoid of good things, and let me have the time and the energy to notice them."

So I didn't do any of my duties, I was self-indulgent, and I enjoyed the simple things.  I had a lie-in with a book, and proper coffee and hot buttered toast for breakfast, and then a leisurely shower with some new smellies from Lush; and I went to the V&A.

Part of the Tube was out of action, so I took the bus to Hammersmith.  I sat on the top deck and watched autumn leaves go by, and people on the Chiswick High Road doing their shopping or having coffee out.  It had poured first thing, but by late morning it was bright and sunny, and all the cafes and restaurants seemed to be doing a roaring trade.  At Hammersmith I changed onto the Piccadilly Line and went through to South Ken, and went and had an early lunch at the Kensington Creperie.  My neighbours at the next table were French, and terribly Gallic with it, noisy and emphatic and talking with their hands, which certainly added to the ambience.  I had a savoury crepe with sundried tomatoes and olives and pesto and cheese, a glass of cold lager, and then (because I am a pig) a second crepe filled with cherry jam and dark chocolate chips.  At the other neighbour table were a group of students all eating dessert crepes and huge ice-creams, all of which they religiously photographed and tweeted before eating.  They weren't as talkative as the French group, but at one point I did hear one of them say "So are we going shopping or are we going to meet Lee at the Natural History Museum and help him pick up girls?"  The general consensus seemed to be for shopping.  I wondered why Lee needed help picking up girls in the NHM?  And is the NHM a pick-up shop? - have I been missing a trick?  I wonder which museum is the pick-up shop for forty-somethings?   

I walked up the road belching in a most unfeminine manner, and had an afternoon of Constable paintings, Indian sculptures and wonderful fashion.  No pick-ups in the V&A, just lots of food for the mind and the eyes.  The current Constable show has a lot of his little oil sketches, which are marvellous, and a lot of instances of a preparatory sketch, an oil sketch, a full-size study and a final painting, all shown side-by-side; fascinating.  There are also a lot of his copies from other artists, including a drawing he did when he was about 18 which is endearingly bad.  Even Jove nods, and even John Constable had to start somewhere.

I wandered after that through the big galleries of historic Indian arts and crafts and scultpures, and finished up in the fashion section.  It was too late by then to go round the special display of wedding dresses through the ages, so I just went on mooching.  There's something very satisfying about seeing perfect cutting and elegant styling in something like a suit or a coat; and of course the party dresses and cocktail outfits and so on are always gorgeous.  At the moment one of the 1940s cases has two Utility suits, one for a lady and one for a gentleman; it's salutary to realise how elegant, to modern eyes, this supposedly unflattering clothing seems.  I would have had a deal of trouble, in times of rationing, being a distinctly larger lady these days; just to make a neat knee-length Utility skirt for a big pair of hips like mine would need an extra half-yard compared to a "standard" size, and that would have meant saving up coupons a bit longer.  But when one tends to dress, as I do, like a parrot, with eclectic colours and patterns and styles thrown-on anyhow, it's fascinating to study the careful colour choices, precision of cutting, and clarity of line and silhouette of earlier fashions; and maybe I can learn something from them, too.

Then home, with very tired feet.  My new shoes (thank you, Hotter!) are wonderfully comfortable, but even in the best footgear Museum-foot strikes eventually.  So I finished off my indulgent day by eating a big bowl of noodles and an apple, writing up my diary, watching a little idle tv and having an early night.  I then slept for over ten hours.

It's no good pretending otherwise; I am tired.  This has been a stressful, draining year for me.  Over the next few months at work I need to get my head round the changes in my role, and in my spare time I need to focus on getting some rest, eating healthily, and doing things that make me feel happy rather than duties that make me feel harrassed and strapped for time.  And carry on with my writing, of course.

A busy couple of weeks

By gum, I am full of pizza.

Thank the Gods, it's Friday.

It's been a hectic couple of weeks and I am worn out.  I should have been on annual leave right now, and in Greece, for a fortnight; but things have worked out differently in the end and I'm here instead.

I hardly know where to begin.  There are things where I'm not sure how much it's okay for me to say.  I was interviewed for my job, and I've been told verbally how I did, but not officially in writing.  Some of my colleagues are in the same boat and others haven't been told yet, some of them because they've only just been interviewed.  In theory the new structure for our department is formally anounced next week; so I think I should probably do well not to talk about it until then.

The whole business of getting thus far has been horribly drawn-out.  Different departments started their restructure programmes at different times, and some aren't as advanced as ours.  I cannot wait for it all to be over, and I'm sure I am not the only person who feels that way.  I understand the need to do this, I even agree with it; but it's no less exhausting and depressing for that.

Meanwhile, I've had a good week in other ways.  I got some things done at work that I wanted to get done, wrote most of another chapter at home, of something that had got bogged-down, and had a couple of drinks with some colleagues tonight followed by a very self-indulgent pizza supper. The weather has been bright and cheerful too, and the first autumn colour is staring to gild the streets and the gardens, and the Gardens too.  The autumn festival, the Intoxication Season, is excellent, too, with some really good displays and a terrific programme of talks at the weekends.  The autumn theatre season starts next week for me, too, with "Manon" at Covent Garden with the DipGeek.  I am tired-out, but on balance it's been a good week, at least on a personal level (the international situation doesn't bear thinking about, but this is not a socio-political blog).

I think the worst thing that has happened to me was this morning, when I went to a colleague's baby shower and unexpectedly the chap I've been trying not-to-have the crush on walked in.  I was so taken aback I could hardly look at him at first.  Then there came a moment when he was nearby, taking some grapes from a dish, and I wanted to say something sensible and friendly, something that would signal that I just want to be friends; but my eye fell on his hands, as he stood there peacefully picking grapes from the bunch, and my idiotic brain was completely paralysed by the sight.  All I could think was damn-you-have-such-attractive-hands...  Nothing intelligent occured to me at all; nothing that was adult and friendly and devoid of embarrassing overtones.  I am hopeless.

I do accept, rationally, that he isn't interested in me in the way I am in him.  But my irrational hind-brain is rushing about in bearskins howling, it would seem.  Damn it, calm down, you.

Apparently his office is being moved, though; he's going to be in the same building as me soon.  So I will have plenty of opportunity to teach myself to be calm and adult and a good colleague, and not a mad hairy crazy cavewoman.  I vow to do better.  After all, good grief, I don't even know if he's gay or straight or any one of the myriad nuances in between.  It simply won't do to be cavewoman Ims, acting out and jangling my beads and waving my fancy flint hand-axe.  He's a nice man, he deserves better than that; and so do I.  Friendship's the thing.  That fing wot grown-ups do.  You can do this, Ims.

Tired and in reflective mood

A while since I wrote; life has been busy and work has been hectic. 

I'm pretty tired today.  I went down to Dorchester and back yesterday, to go to the wedding of two very dear friends in Tolpuddle. 

It was a lovely wedding, and because I was booked on a train home fairly early in the evening I was able to leave before the drinking got too serious or the crowd got too overwhelming.  I even got to have proper conversations with two interesting people (as well as the bride and groom, obviously!), which is quite satisfying for someone who looks at a mass of strangers at a social event and wants to run away. 

It seems that my long-term policy is paying off gradually, over the years; accepting that I am shy and that's my nature, and then finding things I can do, like have a chat to one person instead of trying to socialise with everyone.  I envy the sociable; all sorts of things in life must be easier for them.  But I am what I am and I too have my strengths. 

I remember the glory days of Playcraft and how much I enjoyed get-ins and get-outs, and after-production parties; I had no problem with those crowds, but that was working with people I knew, doing something we all loved, and making whoopie afterwards.  A party with a crowd of people almost none of whom I had ever met before was a different matter entirely.

There was a time I would have ended up backing out of going to my friends' wedding altogether, because of that.  But as I say, I have been working on this for a long time, this business of finding coping strategies for being an introvert.  And it is working; because instead of hating it, I'm genuinely glad I went. 

It was a lovely wedding.  The bride and groom were radiant, and very elegant.  The weather held fine, dry and warm and mostly sunny, the church and the reception venue were both lovely, and the wedding ceremony itself was touching, a nice blend of very traditional and some individual notes.  The flowers and other styled things all looked great.  There was a lot of very pleasant bubbly to drink, and plenty of olives, cherry toms and cheese straws to eat with the drinks.  I had to leave before the sit-down meal started, but I got a Cornish pastie for the train back, so I was okay.  It was nice.

My other big bit of news is that I have an interview on Tuesday for the new role that my current one is metamorphosing into.  The job is actually changing in exactly the way I would have liked it to, if I'd been able to cherry-pick the things I'd like to do more of.  So I do hope that interview goes well!  The restructure at work is slowly beginning to get sorted out, at least in our section.  It's a protracted business, though.  Some departments have only just begun on the consultation stage.  But, as I was trying to explain to another friend a few days ago, it's surely better in the long term for this to get a bit dragged-out, but be done properly, or at least as well as it can be, than for it to be rushed, and possibly bodged, because the people at the top making the decisions are scared of missing deadlines they themselves set.  Whatever happens, in a situation like this, junior people like me are going to feel scared and uncertain.  At least this way we can have some hope that the final result will achieve some useful goals.

In the meantime life and work go on, steadily, and it's good to have plenty to keep busy with.  I've just acquired a nice task, drafting text for a new leaflet and searching out a range of possible illustrations.  Just the kind of thing I love doing.

There's been one piece of really awful news, though.  A colleague from the Jodrell lab, a gifted scientist who was highly respected in his field and much-liked at work, has died very suddenly.  Nigel was a lovely bloke, and I'm so grieved for his poor family.  He used to run our Christmas choir.  It just won't be the same without his enthusiasm at rehearsals, and his very beautiful voice in the final carol service. 

I've seldom met anyone who had such a talent for helping people find the music in themselves and bring it out.  A lot of very musical people are downright snotty about the well-meaning amateur singer with the strong but not-very-good singing voice (i.e. the likes of me).  Nigel was tirelessly encouraging, and never, ever, sniffy; he always found something good to say, even if it was only "You've got all the words right!"
     
I wish I'd told him how much he helped me feel better about my rather odd voice, simply by helping me try, and not blenching at the initial sound as others have done.  Now I'll never be able to do that.   I'm sad to remember the inner prompting in me that told me not to talk to him because he couldn't possibly be interested in anything I had to say.  What a shitty little inner prompting that was.  Doesn't everyone like to be thanked for their help? 

It's really very stupid, and in a strange way almost selfish, to refuse to thank someone for their kindness or their support, on the grounds that they wouldn't demean themself to pay attention.  It's hiding one's own sense of inadequacy behind an assumption of arrogance on the other person's part; and I don't believe Nigel was ever arrogant, so how stupid and how mean to have behaved as if he was, merely out of cowardice.

I say to myself, wake up, woman!  Life is ephemeral!  It is fragile and very short, and can be cut-off still shorter without any warning.  So befriend those you want to know better, love those that you love, and don't be ashamed.  Be good to yourself and to others, and be kind, in memory of the kindness of those now gone.  Live well and embrace life; embrace all things.  If an inner prompting tells you "Don't!  You mustn't!" about doing anything that is in essence good, then question that inner prompting closely, and be prepared to ignore it, no matter how scary that feels.  Don't shut yourself away inside with your private fear and pain and let them grow until they use up all the oxygen.  Seek happiness; and open the doors, and live in the world. 

I think of the chap I like; of the crush that has now settled to manageable proportions again.  I think of how interesting he is, and how ridiculous it is that having a crush has led me to hide from him and not to seek his friendship, although he's someone well worth knowing.  I want to go to him and say "I'm so sorry if this is embarrassing.  But I wish I could get to know you better.  You're interesting and I like the way your mind works; I appreciate knowing you so much.  I'd like very much to be friends."

But I'm not going to be able to do any such thing!  That's going way beyond thanking someone for their help.  It's just not done to say something that could be so embarrassing to the other party.

So much for that challenge of working on my shyness.  So much for opening the doors and living in the world.  I want to reach out; but I just haven't got the guts.

I'm tired.  Maybe it will seem better in the morning. 

Epic fail, plus sewing projects

I've been pretty busy at work this week, and this afternoon I managed to lash something up on Outlook.  I'd had a personal email I wanted to answer, from one of my best friends; I dashed off a quick reply and sent it; and it bounced.  No idea why (computers are weird).

So, irritably, as I was trying not to take extra time over it, I went >select all > copy all > new email > paste, entered the first two letters of the intended recipient's name into the "To" box and clicked enter as her name came up, and sent it.  Only to see, next moment, that I had sent it to the wrong person.  Said best friend's name begins with the same two letters as a colleague at work's name.  I email her a lot (because best friends, yup?); but I also email him a lot (because colleague of vital importance).  It turns out they are running neck-and-neck in my contacts list for that initial.

I tried to recall the email, but in the thirty seconds or so when I was still sitting frozen, staring at my screen and thinking "No... no... noo" he had already opened it.  "Recall email" doesn't work once the email has been opened.  Oh sh*t.

Scream at computer.  Write hasty grovelling & embarrassed apology.  Cross all available digits and wait.

I imagine he was still reading, and thinking "I don't need to know this, and my mother is not being a goose about my wedding - my wedding?!? - and why would I need lace and jam jars?" and contemplating how to tell me I'd cocked up, when he got the apology.  He was, of course, a complete gentleman about it, so it isn't an absolute disaster. 

But it is utterly mortifying to do something so bloody stupid; and if I can do it once, I could do it again.  And I could do it in far worse ways.  It's really shaken my self-esteem to make such an idiotic mistake, just because I'm tired and stressed and trying to do something in a hurry.  I thought I was an efficient, professional person who didn't balls things up.  Ha-bloody-ha, so much for that idea.

I suppose it is good for one, to be reminded that one is just as capable of making a really imbecilic mistake as anybody else.  If even Jove nods, then common-or-garden mortal Ims is bound to, and it's a kind of mild hubris to think I can't.

I still wanted to weep for a while afterwards, though.  Epic bloody fail, woman.  Epic.

I came home, ate felafels, felt disconsolate and incompetant, and watched "Great British Bake-Off", which is schadenfreude of the first water in such situations.

I've been trying to cheer myself up, since then, by getting on with some of my sewing.  I bought a dress in the sales for £11; when I tried it on in the shop it was one of those garments that don't quite work, but I could see it had the potential to be something rather smart, with a little help.  So I bought it anyway, and am adjusting it.  I've taken off the sleeves and taken out the zip, and I'm refitting the waistline and the bust darts, and turning the edges of the shoulders under to make it sleeveless.  It's a really unusual fabric, a screen-printed design in grey with green orchids.  I think it's going to be rather snazzy when I finish.

I'm also engaged on cannibalising two other old dresses to make a third; when finished this will have a rather 1920's cut with no waist at all, cap sleeves and a harlequin-patchwork panel down the front.  And I'm converting a black evening dress into an evening top as a present for the DipGeek.  Lots of sewing, then; and when I turn out my winter things I'll probably find more jobs there, too.  I don't have a sewing machine, so this is all hand work.  Luckily  I find needlework very relaxing of an evening.  I feel much better now.  I've almost got over the email fiasco >whimper<

Just quickly

I'm moved (oof), I'm a good way towards being unpacked (OOF) and I now, with a little help, have internet access at home again.  Hurrah, I progress.  I'm pretty tired, mind you; but I progress.

Slightly overwhelmed

Do you ever have that feeling that everything is just too much?  That you are being slowly overwhelmed and pushed down – not waving but drowning?

I have that feeling at the moment. 

Today is the ninth anniversary of the last time I saw my father lucid and able to talk rationally.  After that, I saw him twice more when he was stoned out of his mind on morphine, and increasingly confused and frustrated by his confusion; and then he was in a coma; and then, of course, a few days after that it was all over. 

The memory of this does not help matters, when I am feeling under pressure in every direction as it is.

I miss my father so much sometimes.  I miss his conversation, I miss his quick mind and his acuteness, and his fascination with any and all new knowledge.  I miss just being able to sit and talk to him.  I miss his whiskey collection and our silly “blind tastings” when he’d bought himself a new malt.  I miss having access to his knowledge of computers and his willingness to share it.  I miss his voice, and I miss his sense of humour - weird musical jokes, dreadful puns and all.

Just now I also miss his support, which was steady and unquestioning and unconditional, and came with no suggestion of expecting or needing anything in return.  He was that kind of chap, old-fashioned in the good way, and utterly sound.  In two weeks it will be the anniversary of his death.  I miss you, Dad.

I could have done with that kind of support at the moment.  I still don’t know if I will have anywhere to live come July, and I still don’t know if I’ll have a job come August - and I do know that the man I fell for a while back isn’t interested in me.  Then there’s the fact that because all this is chaotic and pressured and exhaustingly steessful, at the end of the day I haven’t got the time or the energy at the moment to do the things I really want to do (write, draw, go out, see my friends, and of course my Big Plan for this year, sort out how to publish something online and have a go at it, just to see what happens).  

So I am now just working in order to keep on working; I’m no longer working in order to do the things I love.  This is a state of affairs I dread, and have long fought to avoid.

I have to go on at work, performing properly and demonstrating my ability to deliver under pressure, while not knowing whether my role will even exist in a few weeks time.  I have to pack up my belongings at home and prepare for a move, when I don’t actually know where I’ll be moving to.  I have to smile and be at ease with my crush and accept it will never even register with him how much I would have liked to get to know him better.

I have to keep smiling and saying I’m okay, to all the people who, if I admit to them that I am close to screaming with despair inside, will then get upset and worry about me, and need me to be caring and good, and manage their distress.  I haven’t the energy or the patience to do that at present, so the only practical option is to conceal the situation from them.

It's tiring.

I have to suppress the gnawing doubt, which maybe is not a doubt at all but an unadmitted certainty, that I have wasted my life and am a creature without purpose or use to anyone.  Because if I admit this doubt – this doubt that may in fact be a certainty – then I have to face the question – if there’s no point in me, why am I alive?  Am I alive primarily because it will upset some people if I’m not here anymore? 

And that way madness lies, madness and Ed’s sorry end. 

I don’t want to die; I’m not suicidal, at least not in any sense that I ever have been before.  I think I would recognise the state of mind, as it is hellish in the extreme. 

But I am beginning to wonder if my existence is pointless, and even without any wish to end one’s life that is still a salutary and a depressing thought.

I know my existence wasn’t meant to be pointless (excuse the rather “fate and destiny” tone here!). 

I was born into this life to create.  Of that I am certain.  I’ve known this since I was a very small child. 

I want to tell stories and make images and write songs and plays, I want make beautiful things and share beautiful tales and adventures.  I want to give joy, to cheer hearts and make people smile, to remind those who are feeling alone that they are not alone, that no-one is alone. 

But I’m not doing any of this.  I’m battling-on with a fraught job and fraughter home life, and seeing love go by me like a bright boat on the river.  And my own right work, creating and making new stuff that will give pleasure and joy to those in need of them, is a thing I drag myself to with tired mind and body at the end of the day.  When it ought to be the centre of my existence.

Should I ask for voluntary redundancy here, leave London, bugger off somewhere else entirely and make a completely new start?  It’s almost starting to look tempting.  I have nothing, really, to tie me to London, except liking my life here; or at least, liking the way things have been – until work became insecure and I got asked to move, and all the rest of that, and the bright boat sailed by me yet again... 

I have a mouth...

...and I must scream.  Or at any rate, I want to sometimes.  By damn, flatshare-hunting is hellish.

I had another viewing arranged for this evening; the place was in Richmond, and it sounded okay, perhaps not as great as the one I'm still waiting on but perfectly good, and well within budget.  I was meant to meet a chap from the lettings agency after work.  But in the afternoon he emailed me to say he'd just let the place to someone else, sorry for the inconvenience. 

Inconvenience.  Yup, that's the word I was looking for.

By then I had given away my ticket to "Dialogues des Carmelites" tonight to a colleague.  Who is an opera newbie.  Interesting choice for a first-ever opera, I must say.  I hope he enjoyed it.  The state of tension I'm in, I would probably have howled my eyes out, anyway. 

I've spent all evening searching online; gumtree.com, spareroom.com, rightmove.com, zoopla.com, lettings agencies, you name it.  I've stared in misery at ad after mis-spelled ad; endless variations on "Nice Massive bright dbble rm in quite house, rm has furnished wth duble bed, woddrobes and draws".  "Massive", judging by the accompanying photos, does not usually mean massive, though; it means something more like "O look, there was room for a woddrobe and a chair as well as the double bed we've managed to squash in somehow"...

I've even seen one where the landlord had put "Room for rent for female, as it has dressing table and a female vibe; Willing to negotiate or even go rent-free in return for companionship"...    

Say what!?!  

Somehow I don't think that landlord has plump, self-possessed forty-something me in mind when he daydreams of "female vibes" and "companionship"... 

And I doubt very much if he is what I have in mind when I daydream of the equivalent, either.

At any rate, I'm going boss-eyed with tiredness and haven't found anything tonight that made me feel "Yes, that would suit me nicely".  I'm looking everywhere; all through an area of a four mile radius of work, i.e. cycling distance, with longer searches along the main transport routes as well.  I'm not being fussy about furniture or views or en-suites, and despite my jokes above I'm not being fussy about illiteracy, either (though Mr I-want-companionship is going to be waiting a long time for my call, as I am not a Companion!).

Something's got to come up.  Something, somehow, somewhere...  But gods, it's depressing.  Depression and tiredness start to kick in and I have to fight to remain positive.  Damn it, I will not give in to expecting disaster!  I will keep hoping, and I will keep looking!  Something has got to come up!

Mixed bag

Well, I'm back from my holiday.  Feeling a bit mixed at the moment.

Katelios is still beautiful.  It was quiet and peaceful, the hills around were golden and green (wheat fields and olive groves on the lower slopes, scrub and maquis above), the beach was unspoiled, the sea clean and clear as sapphire.  My doubts about staying in a block of studios in the centre of the village were groundless; this early in the season, I was disturbed more by the squeaking taps in a neighbouring room than by any noise from the tavernas and bars along the street.  My studio was lovely; comfortable and well-appointed, with a balcony giving me sea views to the left and mountain views to the right.  Sparrows chirped on the roof every morning, and swallows and housemartins swooped by constantly.

If I wanted a dip, I could go downstairs and across the road, and be on the town beach in two minutes, or I could turn left and walk along the front for five minutes and be on scruffy, sandy Ayia Varvara beach, with the amethyst silhouette of Zakynthos looking like Bali Hai on the horizon.  Shade trees, benches, a couple of rubbish bins, a pinewood changing cubicle for the more modest bather; sand and fine shingle, gently shelving so that one walked for 50 yards to get to chest-deep water; no currents, sandy sea-bottom, perfectly safe swimming with little lapping waves, and small fishes coming to inspect your toes... 

A row of tavernas and cafes along the front, above the town beach, and a couple more one street back.  Good, classic Greek food; by gum, Hellene cuisine is fine stuff!  I don't just mean souvlaki and moussaka, but things like horta and home-baked gigantes, lemon potatoes, briami, skordhalia, beetroot served with its own greens, and so much wonderful fish...  Tremendous local wines, too.  If you wanted a change, La Floridita served ginormous fresh-cooked pizzas, or a pleasant nameless beach bar halfway along the strand would do you a salad and a toasted cheese-and-olive-paste sarnie, and a bottle of Mythos or Fix...

If you wanted a more untouched spot, then forty minutes' walk on a rocky cliff path over the headland to the east would bring you to Mounda Bay and the almost entirely undeveloped - and quite spectacular - strand of Kaminia Beach.  One small cantina, set well-back behind trees, and two very modest hotels, on a golden sandy beach a couple of miles long.  It's a turtle nesting site, and it would seem any further development has been stopped because of that.  Hurrah!  For my money, the walk over the headland and then along this beach to Cape Mounda, the southernmost point of the island, is one of the best I know in Greece.  On the Cape there are wind-sculpted caves and tumbled boulders, and the path gets scrabblier and scrabblier until one fears turning an ankle.  In fact I just stopped there, and sat on a sloping rock above the waves, to meditate in the utter isolation on The Eternal Spirit Of Hellas...

As well as several very lazy days having a stroll, a swim, a sit in the sun, and then a read in the shade, I did this walk one day and another day I went on an organised but nonetheless highly enjoyable day trip to Ithaka.  Ithaka is beautiful; I was moved to poetry.  May share that, may not; it's a rambling semi-homage to Cavafy's "Ithaka", and I'm not sure if it's any good or not!  But the island herself, being high and green and secret, was very good indeed.

So far, so good.  Warmth and good food, good bathing, plenty of time to relax under a tree and read Fat Novels no's 1 and 2.  But there were downsides.

Firstly, minor but desperately irritating, I caught a cold.  All of that good swimming and good eating is less exciting when one has a sore throat and a stuffy head, and is periodically letting-off explosive sneezes.  It's the classic run-down thing; I was tired and I didn't have enough resistance to fight off the germs. 

Secondly, those squeaking taps I mentioned?  Someone who had access to them used to squeak them rather a lot.  I can't say I'd prefer neighbours making noisy love every night (I've had that, elsewhere), but someone who turns a squeaky tap on, and off, and on again,and off again, on-and-off steadily for about tweny minutes at 2.00am is almost as inconsiderate.  I have no idea what they thought they were doing.  But thanks to them waking me at these unholy hours with their random-tap-turning obsession, I don't think I had a single unbroken night's sleep.  Boo.

Lastly, my alarm clock began to play up; so because I am a Big Girl and know what I am doing with modern technology (Oh Yes I Do), I set up my mobile phone to give me an alarm call.  Which it did, most efficiently.  But in turning it on, last night while I was packing for my return journey, I picked up a text message from my landlady giving me notice to quit the place I'm living, because she and her partner are putting the flat on the market. 

B*llocks.  I hate flatshare-hunting, and I hate moving, and I was already feeling worried about coming back to face the latest stage of the restructure at work.  Now I also have to face finding somewhere new to live.  Neither area of my life is clear and straight at all, suddenly. 

So if anyone reading this is in south, and in particular south-west London, and wants a lodger or a flat-mate, or knows anyone else who does, let me know. 

I need to wind this up, wash up my supper plate, and finish unpacking; and then I need a fairly early night.  Work tomorrow, and I am still on Greek time.  And I have a ticket to see the Draft Works bill at the Linbury Studio tomorrow evening.  To remind myself of the consolations of London; the things like culture, that I would miss most painfully if I were to chuck it all in and decamp permanently to Greece.  I would miss my friends, too, and some of my colleagues; and I would miss bookshops.  I can see myself spending a fortune on Amazon, and setting up a amateur theatre group and a choir and a cinema club, just to try and have some Culchah in my paradise.

I think I would fail as a lotus eater.  But I do crave my little doses of lotus from time to time...

Made it out...

...I made it out alive...

It's Friday and I made it to the end of this week, and now I have finished work for ten whole days - no, eleven, even.  Yea!  And at crack of dawn on Tuesday I go to Kefalonia for a week.

Before that I have three days to work my way through a stack of odd jobs.  It looks like being a busy weekend.  Tomorrow, hopefully I'm meeting up with some friends for tea, after one of those ridiculously cheering pre-holiday shopping expeditions for new walking sandals, sun lotion, insect repellant etc.

Sunday I want to have a proper, full-on Writing Day.  I want to make some progress on "The Healers" and I also want to get the rest of my recent poems typed up.  I probably won't post many more of those here for a while, though.  The majority of them lately are about the odd feeling of falling for someone you thought was a friend, and realising the "It's just biology" trick isn't working anymore...  But they're quite good in some cases, these poems, albeit lyrical and soppy; so I mean to keep them.  Maybe publishable in twenty years or so; when I retire, yes, that sounds about right.

Monday I will be packing and stashing left-over food in the freezer, or taking it to the Dipgeek for her and the Lovely J to eat, and then I'll be getting two hours' sleep before catching a night bus to Victoria Station, and the train to Gatwick, and my flight...

It has been another hectic week at work; I wound up putting in almost 1 1/2 hours unpaid extra at the end of today sorting things out, in order to leave a reasonable state of affairs while I'm away.  The constant barrage of irritating problems with the new system just slows everything down; and there are only the same number of hours in the day as there always have been.  I am working flat-out, and I still can't keep up.  I'm tired.  But I have - I think I have - left a fairly clean desk.

On Wednesday we had a big meeting, all our section, to learn more about the staff restructure.  In the event there still wasn't very much to learn about, as the details are yet to be hammered out.  The overall new structure, which was presented on Wednesday, makes a lot of sense; but it isn't final and may change further.  This is going to take a while, and the lack of certainty is pretty depressing.  But then such things always are depressing.  I now know that my role is affected, but not much more than that; it's all basically still speculation - "It's likely to be this or maybe more like that, but things may change".

So - well, okay.  That's how it is.  Nothing I can do but wait and see, give my input if/when asked for it, and do my best whatever happens. If what's been outlined to me as a possible scenario is what does finally happen, I'll be okay with that.  But none of it is fixed, so I won't pin too many hopes on it just yet awhile.

Saw my crush on Thursday, and found to my relief that I could be around him, talk to him intelligently and reasonably sensibly, and enjoy his input and his company, without feeling heart-sore or making a fool of myself.  And I don't think he has a clue what's going on in my head, which is also a relief (unless, of course, he's just a very good actor!).  He's one of those people who restore your faith in human nature; so it would be a pretty rotten thing if I were to be a cause of embarrassment to him.  I'm an old-fashioned enough Brit to think one should do right by those one respects; so not to cause a problem for this chap is important to me.  Now I can let myself hope that in time we'll be able to be friends.  Much the best outcome, if it can be so.

But anyway, now I am off work for a spell, and I can put everything behind me; walk away from the tiredness, from the wry sadness, from having had to crush feelings I had just begun to allow myself after seven years, and from the non-stop pace and general anxiety at work...  And so I will go to Katelios, to swim, walk, read, do some writing, eat grilled fish and salad and drink good Greek wine, and have a rest.

I wish I could bestow a week in Greece on all my friends and everyone I work with.  I see so many tired, stressed faces lately.  It's a busy time of year at the best of times, and with the restructure and the uncertainty that brings, a lot of people at work are worried.  Whilst among my non-work friends there are theses to be completed, weddings to be planned, houses to be sold, new jobs to be found, new digs to be settled into, bad break-ups to be got-over...  Yes, stressful times for so many people at the moment.

I wish I could just pluck them all up and drop them down in my favourite places in Greece.  Athens for the city-break buffs, Crete for the lovers of mountains and archeology, Thassos for the swimming nuts, the serious foodies and everyone who likes a bit of everything, Kefalonia for those who want a complete rest...  I wish I could give Greece, the home of my heart, to everyone who would benefit from it.

If I am ever rich, maybe I will.  Remind me, if I write a best-seller!

New scale of measurement

I have been reminded that some of the people who read this know me in real life, and some of them even work at Kew.  I have been grumbling about pressure at work a lot lately, and I realise it might be construed as unprofessional of me. 

So I've decided to instigate a new scale to grade what kind of day I have had, instead of griping about specifics.  It will be a scale of fictional heroines.

I haven't yet got a full range of markers for every gradient (give me time, I only thought of this half an hour ago).  But, for example, an Anne Elliot day will be one in which I have borne quietly with all kinds of miserable shit, in the patient hope that things get better, while a Lizzie Bennett day will be one on which I have borne rather less quietly and have vented my feelings without shame. A Carmen day will be one in which I have been feelin' good & shakin' my sexy thang - singing in the kitchen, dancing with the photocopier - because I know I am The One.  A  Black Widow day, by contrast, will be one on which I wanted everyone to think I was The One, but only so that I could kill them all.  A Cunegonde day will be one in which I wanted to be able to lament my sorry lot and then have flat-out hysterics in high coloratura. 

You get the picture.  If I ever have an Ophelia day, get help.

Today started out quite cheerful but went decidedly Cunegonde by the end of the day.  It's good to be home, and eat, and write this, and wonder whether to spend the evening in Missouri with Wood and Sarah and Torstein Riis, or in Brentford with my unnamed protagonist getting drawn by Kat Ryle; or whether to cut my losses and watch a silly film.

I feel in need of serious silliness, I must say.  If I had a dvd of "Ghostbusters" I would probably be putting it in the machine right now.  I need to switch my brain off.  Maybe "The Princess Bride" might do the trick; heroes, giants, wizards, villains, true love, sword fights...  Yep.  Perfect switch-off film.

Just quickly

If you have the chance to see it, I highly recommend Lukas Moodysson's film "We are the best!".  It's delightful; truthful and very funny, and the three leads are tremendous.

If you remember being young - and especially if you remember being young in the eighties - if you've ever played in a band or known anyone who did, if you've ever felt that no-one will ever understand you, if you have ever been embarrassed by your parents or fought with your friends, or rebelled, or got drunk when you couldn't hold your liquor, or trailed about as the gooseberry when everyone else seemed to be pairing up...  If you love seeing fresh, unfussy, natural acting from non-professional actors who seem blind to the camera and make every scene burst with life...  Well, just see this film.  It's hilarious and touching, and deliciously real about all of those things. It's on at Waterman's Arts Centre at the moment, and probably at an art house cinema near you, too.

That aside, Monday has been okay.  We had passable weather right until the evening, with plenty of sunshne during my lunch break.  Work was mostly just about manageable (as in, I managed to keep on top of the phone calls and also did something right that I was sure I'd done wrong, but I still haven't got done the job I didn't do Friday, even now - so it was one step forward and one back, whereas on Friday it felt like backwards all the way).  Then a nice curry supper with the Dipterist, and a good film to finish off with.  Yep, not a bad day.

And I got home to find a postcard from someone I was at college with, telling me about her most recent show.  Alex Perri was one of the most talented painters I met in the five years I was at KIAD, and it's a real pleasure to know she is still painting and exhibiting.  And judging by the image on the card, she's creating good work, too.  Proof that talent can still rise to the top.  Alex, you rock!

Hope tomorrow is as good.  I could use a few good days.  Hope all are well - Cryptic, I hope you were able to meet your deadlines without staying up all night wearing yourself out - Kath, I hope you are feeling better after that nasty bug.  Off to bed with me now, I think.  Ridiculously tired tonight...

Better for the weekend...

A couple of days off have left me feeling far more human.  I still can't wait for my holiday at the end of the month.  But a quiet weekend, a couple of long telephone calls with my mother, a pleasant meal out at Bistro One in Southampton Street, some brilliant contemporary dance from Northern Ballet at the Linbury Studio (& what a gorgeous little theatre that is; I'd give my eye teeth to be able to use it >sigh<), plus getting my fantasy western past the 100,000-word mark today; yes, after two days of that, I feel more like me.

I've also discovered that crying jags are, like non-specific bouts of depression, frequent symptoms of the perimenopause.  While not exactly cheerful news, this does at least help me to place my weird attack on Friday evening in perspective.  Yup, I'm a menopausal woman, folks.  Be afraid, be very afraid...

The only alternative to going through the menopause is to die first.  Which I should prefer not to do.  Even when it is chaos, even when I am worn out and depressed, and work is hectic and I am trying to get used to using a ticketing system that has the electronic equivalent of several limbs in plaster (& one perhaps tied-on with string), even then, I enjoy my life.  I know I will die one day; maybe tomorrow, maybe not for another forty years.  Why wish it any sooner, when I have so much I want to do with my time?

Anyway, if anyone was worried (& I know one person at least was; bless you, dear heart), don't be.  I'm okay.  It was just one of those days, a day that started well and went sour.  We all have them from time to time.

I've decided to step off the 5:2 diet wagon again for a while, though, since I don't know that this is a good time for being hungry.  It isn't as if anyone but me cares if I am stout or not, after all.  I was trying to diet because I dislike finding it harder to run for a bus, not for my looks (or lack of them).  But right now I think self-care is the order of the day.  That needn't mean self-indulgence, but it's not self-denial either.  It means enjoying that lovely fresh grapefruit I had for breakfast, and the extra pumpkin seeds I put in my cereal.  It means not feeling harried into doing things I don't want to do, not feeling I have to apologise for being an introvert.  It means showering in the morning and using conditioner in my unruly rag of hair, and wearing my good clothes even on non-work days, not because anyone is looking, but because I will feel better if I am clean and do not look like a windswept tramp.  It means going out of the office for some air, and taking the time to say hello to friends and not sit in a slumped heap feeling sad in the summerhouse like a neglected toy.  It means all sorts of things, but it does not mean trying to lose weight.  Not at this moment in time.  Life is too pressured to add any more pressures just now.

On with the motley tomorrow, anyway.  Little by little we'll get there.  My life seems to be full of half-resolved stories, and little by little I'll get to tell them all, or have them told to me. 

Who knows, tomorrow I may get a breakthrough of some kind at work.  I may learn that my job is secure (gods, I hope it is!).  I may get a procedure for a month-ahead report on unconfirmed provisional bookings, or one for last month's figures, or a new process to simplify another task.  If work stays hectic, nonetheless I may find something wonderful in bloom, or be paid a compliment, or run into a friend; I may have the chance to help someone, or simply hear a good joke.  Someone may like my singing or my writing, or may just need a cup of tea that I can make them.  Of such small incidental things much happiness is composed.  

Meantime, all of you who I cried over on Friday; I'm sorry if I worried or embarrassed you, and I hope you are all well, and I love you all.  Even the ones I don't know.  Look after yourselves.

I'm not going to delete Friday's post.  I've thought about it, but it seems a false note somehow.  One should not hide from the shadows; they will still be there, notwithstanding, so better to be comfortable with that.  It's all part of life's rich pattern.

A rough day that ended oddly, with my mind playing a rum trick on me...

Today didn't start rough, in fairness.  The weather was passable, if windy, and mild enough to wear sandals to work.  In the morning a couple of minor problems got solved, too, which is always satisfying.  I had managed to do something thoroughly silly and I appealed to my friend The Man With The Answers, who  popped in and demonstrated that it could in fact be fixed with three clicks.  Three clicks!  That's my idea of a good, well-behaved problem.  I sat and beamed at him like a child with an ice-cream, and thought everything was shiny and not-to-fret.

Then it all went a bit pear-shaped.  The phones rang almost incessantly, my boss's computer turned out to have much more complex problems than we had all understood them to be (it needs the digital equivalent of brain surgery rather than therapy), things kept going wrong and taking far longer than they should, I had to turn down offers of cake and muffins because it's a 500 calorie day, I never even got started on one of the two main tasks I wanted to do today, and when I finally got round to doing an essential Friday job that's usually very quick and simple, it took far longer than normal and I uncovered a whole new can of worms by doing it.  I then spent well over an hour of extra time trying to solve the can of worms (oh dear, sorry about all the mixed metaphors here) and ringing a gentleman in Poole who was very upset and angry and bullied me something rotten.  I ended up emailing The Man With The Answers again at 6.15pm to say (albeit in slightly more diplomatic terms) "This is shit, please may I ask if you would be able to do x for me next week to make it slightly less shit?  Because it's really shit." 

Gah.

Then got home, had my small low-calorie supper, and - suddenly, completely out of the blue - I was struck by the certainty and deep, experiential awareness that everyone I care about, all my family, every friend, every lover lost and gone, every crush dreamed-of with childish sighs, every colleague, every musician or actor I have every admired, every writer or artist I've ever wanted to be like, and everyone I've ever said "Thank you" to in a shop or "Please" to in a cafe, or brushed past in the Tube, or smiled at in the staff kitchen - every single one of these people, most of whom are good people possessed of kind hearts and deep, uncommon human wisdom in their way - every single one of these people is going to die.  And I sat on my bed with my cup of herb tea beside me on the bedside cabinet, and I cried like I had just been bereaved, of all those good, honest, ordinary people.  All my folks.  All my friends.  Everyone I have ever loved, and everyone I have never even met.

I know I'm tired and stressed, when I do things like that.  After all, I know rationally that I'm going to die; I mean oif course I do, I'm not stupid; I know that we are all going to die, and that immortality would actually be hugely depressing.  But I kept seeing faces in my mind's eye - my brothers and my mum and my stepmum, and my dear, dear friends - but also the nice-looking girl who took my coat at Covent Garden and smiled at me; the chap in the cafe at work who is always trying to chat me up; the woman with the lovely dogs who I pass on the bridge every morning; the guy at work with the amazing Burne-Jones hair; and my nice new boss Daryl, and the colleague I modelled Perpetua Maddix upon, and The Man With The Answers, and Mr Irritating from the mezzanine...  Friends old and new, and aquaintances, and those I had barely registered.  I kept seeing all those real people, and loving them all, in their reality and their self-contained happy purposefulness, that may have no purpose at all save to continue in happiness; imagining them dead and mourned, and then those that mourned them also dead.  My heart did not feel large enough to hold all the grief I was feeling.

The mind is fascinating, when it plays tricks like this on one.  For it was a trick of the mind, of that I've no doubt.  Tiredness, stress, lack of food, worry, all kicking in and conjuring a quick, toxic brew that left me momentarily - but utterly - flattened.  I cried until my face hurt and my throat felt almost closed-up with the pain of suppressed sobbing.  And then, quite quickly, it passed.  I blew my nose and dried my eyes, and made another mug of herb tea; and here I am a bare hour later writing about it quite rationally, and wondering what the heck was wrong with me.

I wish I were a light-hearted person who could be calm and cheerful.  I wish I could smile at grief and laugh in a crisis, and be one of the sustainers of the world, helping others to bear their burdens, without a thought for my own.  I wish I could be a better person; I wish I could love everyone as they deserve, and never grieve for them or for myself.

And, who knows, maybe to someone somewhere I am one of those who keep things from falling off the ledge in the mind.  Maybe there are people to whom my words here, or the sound of me singing as I go by, is a tiny daily blessing; maybe to someone my daft sense of humour is the veil that holds back despair.  Maybe, unawares, even I help someone who is wrestling with the knowledge that we are all going to die and in the meantime it's all just a damned long hard slog... 

For that hope, that I can restore a moment's peace to the odd soul here and there - as a kind word, a joke or a smile or the sound of a familiar voice have done for me sometimes - for that hope, I can, I will, keep going through it all.  Right to the end.

Gods, I am so bloody tired.  I am going to telephone my mum, and then have an early night.  This philosophy of melancholy is a sure sign that I need sleep.

Weary but not unprofitable

Oof.  I am tired and I have backache.

I love bank holiday weekends; three days off instead of two, yea!  So despite going out last night and eating far too many tapas, and drinking far too much sangria, on top of far too many cocktails, and consequently feeling pretty wiped out today, I have still got two days off after this.

Party last night was the one I was worry-warting about a few days ago, the posh one in the smart bar uptown.  I really don't run to much moderately dressy clothing (I have one summer dress and a few really evening-y things) so I compromised on one of my new blouses and my turquoise green linen slacks, and my big gesture towards being dressy was to wear (gasp) make-up.  I never usually wear more than a dab of lippy at most.  Looking in the mirror at myself in lip-liner and lipstick and mascara and sparkly highlighter and concealer was rather odd, and I confess my first thought was that I looked like a cartoon version of myself.  So when I got to the party and overheard one guest saying to another "Is that Imogen over there?" I wasn't sure whether to be gratified or thoroughly embarrassed. 

 It was a good party though; the cocktails were amazing and the tapas were plentiful and tasty, and the company was good.  There came a point though at about 10.30 or 10.45 when the music was cranked up, and I suddenly couldn't hear a thing anyone was saying to me.  Not being able to have a conversation rather takes the pleasure out of a party if one isn't young and lovely and partying in order to flirt (there were plenty of attractive interesting people there, so partying to flirt would have been a thoroughly enjoyable activity had I been 28 instead of 48!).  And it wasn't my kind of music anyway.  I'd entertained hopes of something Latin, as it was a Spanish club; I can still pull off a passable salsa and merengue, though I no longer remember the footwork of the chachacha.  But thumping-bass "dance" music isn't my cup of tea.  So I snuck off home, and slept abominably, probably on account of all those cocktails, and managed to lie in an odd position and give myself backache...

What else?  The National Theatre "King Lear" was even better than I expected/hoped/feared.  I can now say I have finally seen a production that really, utterly worked.  It was cold and clear-headed and lucid, and terrifying, and heart-rending.  Talk about being purged with pity and terror; my God, was I gutwrenched.  Simon Russell Beale was tremendous. Not a Lear with any kind of comfort in him, but a harsh, desperate man with dementia, battling his own slow descent, and failing. Stephen Boxer was a phenomenally good Gloucester, too - the embodiment of that poem about realising the man being tortured in the next room is the bureaucrat you thought would save you (it's by Margaret Atwood, I think, but I can't find the bally book in the muddle of my shelves at the moment). 

I came out and stood at the bus stop in the torrential rain feeling as though I were a speck of dust to be trodden underfoot and ground to nothing.  Hardly a comfortable feeling; but it was a powerful and a kathartic evening, and sometimes, when one is strong enough, these are worth all the grief and pain they evoke.

It did leave me teribly aware though of how much I miss seeing my old mate Alan; he's pretty much house-bound these days and I don't think he's been to the theatre for a couple of years.  He is 84, in fairness, so he's entitled to take things more quietly if he wants to.  But I would have loved to discuss this production with him; the details, the way no-one was "verse-speaking" and so the verse became like powerful, slightly cadenced but perfectly real speech, the stage design and the fantastic sound design, the casting decisions...  I do have theatre and opera and ballet-going buddies, but few of them are as knowledgeable, or as up for a hearty debate on the director's intentions and the political connotations of the blocking of Act one Scene one, and all the rest of it, as dear old Alan. 

What elose, what else?  I booked a holiday yesterday.  I'm going back to lovely Kefalonia for a week at the end of the month; back to the same place I've been to for the last two years, Katelios.  This time I'm going to be staying right in the heart of the village, in studios built above one of the harbourfront tavernas.  I've tended to be in quiet places in the middle of fields, lately, so this is a bit of a departure for me - the last time I had accommodation in the middle of a town was staying on Poros, way back before I went to college. 

Hopefully it won't be too noisy (after all, Katelios is hardly Ayia Napa; the worst I'm likely to get is some music and buzz from the tavernas).  But it will be lovely to be back there.  Katelios is small and rather scruffy, with a lovely but relatively undeveloped beach, and some good walking in the area, and it has just enough in the way of touristic infrastructure that one can get a good meal or an ice-cream, and a peaceful drink before supper, and book a boat trip...

I can hardly wait. 

The last six months have been hectic at work.  It seemed to take forever to shake off that horrible bug I had at my birthday.  I seem to be permanently tired at the moment, and there's no sign of any let-up for the forseeable future.  Even the writing is stalled at present, apart from this sudden attack of poetry. 

The western I've been working on is stuck, at a stage where I know what I've written isn't right and needa a full rewrite, and the next part doesn't gel yet.  But once I get past that problem, I've got the next two chapters written out in long-hand already. So all I need to do is join up the gap.  It ought to be easy; I'm going to have another bash at pushing on through the pain barrier this afternoon.  It's going to take me to the point of killing off a minor character who I don't feel I've done justice to (he's the bit that needs to be rewritten) and that feels oddly mean and wrong when he's not been got down on the page right to begin with. 

Ugh, I went all through this with Jamie Weston in "Gold hawk" and I'm doing it again?  Why do I kill characters off at all if it's so hard to do?  Maybe I should settle for writing nice cuddly fluffy stuff where everyone is happy and no-one is ever troubled or untruthful or unfaithful or wrong-headed, and nobody ever gets hurt or dies; where all misunderstandings are righted and all love is true. 

The problem is, that would be crap.  I write what comes to me, I can do no other; and sometimes it's a mess, and sometimes people die.  Torstein Riis is going to die.  I'm a-gonna kill you, Sheriff, so watch out!  Then Wood will be free to go about the countryside being miserable and avenging people he feels he's betrayed for a while (this is the part that exists in long-hand).  In my long-hand notebook I started writing the denouement a couple of days ago. 

Maybe I should skip the part that isn't working altogether and type up my long-hand sections, and then come back and fill the gap?  "Gabriel Yeats" was written in lumps and bumps and raggedy chunks like that, after all.  It's not my best work but I think its weaknesses are due to other factors than the eccentric way I wrote it.  I managed to kill of Thomas Rosenau easily enough, come to think of it, and I adored Thomas.  Maybe I'm getting lily-livered with my old age...

Hmmph; and maybe I should get on with the writing, instead of with the writing-about-writing...

No, I must not think like this; I must not sit here telling myself I'm feeble and awful and am getting nowhere.  It isn't true.  I am making progress.  It may not be tidy progress but it is progress nonetheless.  I am weary, yes, but not stale, or flat, or unprofitable. 

There have been some big pluses to the last six months.  Several new friends, for starters.  I have met some really lovely kindred spirits online lately (hello, Kath, if you're reading this!).  And work has thrown me recently into the company of someone I've always been curious about, who has turned out to be interesting, witty, immensely likeable, and possessed of that undervalued quality, great kindness. 

Things like this are huge blessings.  Friends are sweetness and salt, after all; the essential seasoning of even the most quiet and enclosed life.

The writing is progressing; and poems are not to be sniffed-at when they pop up in the interstices.  The Muse is random in her gifts sometimes, but she is still my first and greatest love, and her presence in my life remains another huge blessing.

Life has always been challenging from time to time.  And I've always hated the times when it was not, so I have no business complaining now when it is. A great many things, including pressure, struggle and frustration, are better than the soul-sapping effects of being bored.

So - I suppose that means, onwards and upwards for the remainder of today.  With maybe a session in the kitchen to start with, since I've promised to make gluten-free chocolate and raspberry cake for tomorrow...

Should I wind down?

Should I wind this blog down?

I hardly ever post anything on it any more.  My evenings of late have mostly been spent either getting on with some creative writing, or messing about chatting to people on tumblr and posting my photogaphs there (& making dirty jokes about fanciable actors >ahem< sorry folks, I'm only human).  And work is so hectic at present that in my lunch break I want to flee and sit outside in the fresh air, not sit blogging at my desk and hoping no-one makes an issue of the fact I've taken a break from working while I eat my lunch.

More of all of that anon.

I'll start by answering my own question, though.  Although I'm fairly sure very few people read this blog (apart from robots in Russia trawling for Russian opera singers' names) I don't think I will wind it down after all.  In very large part, because there seems to be too much winding down going on around me and to consciously decide to add to it myself depresses me in a vague unquantifiable way I can't explain.  It feels too much like going with the flow, when this particular flow is one I want to fight.  I do not want to wind down.  I shall not go gentle into that good night.

I am aware of my body getting plumper and slower, and it being harder to fight that progression into middle-aged spread and torpitude.  I am aware that the tipping point has been passed for some of the things I've always wanted to do; I doubt very much, now, that I shall ever direct a play, or see one I have written performed.  I know I will never be a successful artist, or run that cafe I used to talk about, and I wonder if I will ever get to bum around Greece writing "The Modern Pausanias"...  I am painfully aware that my brain isn't quite what it was, either; tiredness and tension don't help, of course, on that front.  But if I went to live in another country nowadays, the way I blithely did fifteen years ago, I wonder if I'd pick the language up as easily as I picked up Spanish, back then in 1999?

But I remind myself, I am tired and tense; and have been badly depressed, this winter.  As per usual; but still hard going for all it is a familiar pattern.

It's been a rough six months, and there's no sign of that easing up for the foreseeable future.  I was thoroughly ill twice in the autumn, with a horrendous fluey cold followed by a bout of gastroenteritis that had me off work for a fortnight.  All sorts of things since then have been tiring and stressful, too.

There's a massive staff restructure going on at work that will mean roles being lost, and that in turn may mean facing the propect of being out of work.  I hope it doesn't mean that for me; my job makes money, so I'm possibly safer than some, but no-one is really safe when these things happen.  I understand the operational thinking behind it, and it does make sense, sadly; but that doesn't make it any less alarming to contemplate.

At present we're in the throes of implementing a new ticketing and customer relations management database system; damned hard work, let me tell you.  I had no idea how flipping complicated these big organisation-wide projects were to bring in.  In my particular area we are just beginning to make some real headway and I can believe now that in time this will all work, and do what it's meant to do; and it will be tremendous when that happens.  A good visible sign of this progress is that the long email I stayed late at the office tonight to write, detailing the latest list I've made of queries, issues and general peculiarities, was mostly detailing non-urgent things this time - the previous three or four have all been about things that were vital and that needed to be sorted out NOW!  I have complete faith in the person who I know will be doing most of the sorting-out, who is one of the most capable people I've ever had the pleasure of working with.  But I also know he has a lot on his shoulders at the moment.  I'd prefer not to add to that if possible, so I'm even more glad that the queries on my list are now relatively minor ones.  Man deserves a break.

Heck, Man deserves a ruddy medal.  In my humble opinion.  But that's another story.

Paul, my lovely boss, left us ten days ago to go to pastures new, working for a marketing company that has been running less than two years and is apparently going to all sorts of exciting places.  He deserves every success and I hope he finds it; he's been a fantastic manager and I shall miss him.  But I could also thump him, because he's left me at the busiest time of the year for my regular job, with all the extra workload from the new database implementation, and until his replacement is fully run-in I can't ask for too much support from him.  Apart from anything else, he won't know the job or the people well enough to do much.  But meanwhile I am terrified of getting behind and feel as though I'm juggling cats.

I come out of the office at the end of the day and walk home, and tell myself to put it behind me.  I have a cup of tea and a proper meal (I am determined not to fall-back on cook-chill meals, so am making sure I buy real raw ingredients and cook them; I know I need the real nutrition just now).  Then I write, or mess about, as mentioned above.  I've been doing a lot of writing; my Western is progressing nicely and looks to be going to end up at well over 100,000 words.  And every now and then I go out.

On Monday night I was out; at, guess what, the ballet.  Seeing the Royal Ballet's "Sleeping Beauty" for the umpteenth time (well, fourth, or fifth possibly? - it's a gorgeous production, anyway, and I don't feel the slightest bit guilty).  There were some problems in the pit at the beginning - someone needed to have a quick word with some of the brass section, who were all over the shop - but on stage it was sheer heaven.  One of my favourite dancers, Hikaru Kobayashi, was dancing Aurora.  I've seen her in the role before - I made a beeline for this performance precisely to see her in action again.  She has beautiful feet and a lovely luxurious sense of space and scale.  She's one of those dancers who can make it look as though she has all the time in the world, although she has exactly the same number of bars of music, and beats in a bar, as anyone else would.  And she can act.  It was simply lovely to see her dancing a leading role opposite her husband, too; no need to worry about onstage chemistry between this prince and his beloved... 

There was more chemistry between Princess Florine and her Bluebird; Melissa Hamilton being wonderful (as usual) and Fernando Montano (ditto) ; flawless virtuosity from both and a sort of sparkling sexiness that made one really feel this was a fairytale indeed.  And between the King and Queen (Gary Avis and Genesia Rosato) not only chemistry but also a series of object lessons in telling, simple, spot-on mime, using the set conventional gestures and the chances to add one's own elements of expression alike superbly.  Not to mention demonstrating wonderfully how to manage a long trailing cloak with aplomb.  Christina Arestis was a splendid, beautiful, evil Carabosse and I think every fairy was a standout (though the lilac fairy was rather more of an implaccable spirit of justice than the personyification of goodness that I'm used to seeing).

I wish sometimes at the theatre that it were possible to make notes as the evening went on; but of course it would be the most horrible bad manners.  Only one finds oneself afterwards thinking "There were so many great moments last night, and now it's all one wonderful happy blur...".

But a wonderful happy blur is by no means a bad thing.

I shall have to stop writing; for now.  But not forever.  There is still too much to tell, too much to do, too much to say.  Even if I'm more erratic, more chaotic, I cannot stop now.

Tenderisation and aging

Did you know that the NHS had effected a downward extension of the age for free mammograms?  Nor did I - until I got called for one. I'm 47 and as of some time last year, I'm in the age range. Yesterday I had my first-ever breast screening appointment.

Stop reading now, by the way, if you are of a squeamish disposition, or do not like thinking about the fact I have boobs, or do not like the fact I'm prepared to mention them in public.  Because this may be a TMI post.

I had been told it wasn't a very nice experience, and I can now agree wholeheartedly with that.  It is very uncomfortable, physically.  But on the other hand, in every respect where they can make it less horrible, they do (or at least Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith do).  I had the chance to choose an appointment date and time that suited me.  When I arrived, I was seen promptly (I had taken a book and a bottle of water and was expecting a long wait, but I was into the screening room on the dot of three o'clock).  The radiologist was female, and was friendly, kindly, sympathetic and chatty - yet at the same time she also managed to be unintrusive and decorous.  That can't be easy when you spend your working day handling other women's tits like so many slices of steak to be tenderised.  She was gentle, she primed me for what the machine would feel like, and gave me tips on what I could do to minimise the discomfort (basically, relax, keep breathing, keep still, and don't hunch your shoulders). 

As those of you who know me face to face will be aware, I have fairly big breasts.  Not huge, but a good size all the same.  A lot for the machine to take into its plastic maw.  As they are also pretty firm for their age, they were very resistant to being squished.  Large firm breasts are apparently the most painful when being screened, I was told.  I've never wished for a pair of droopies, indeed have always been rather proud of my perky pups and how well they were standing up to the joint tests of time and gravity, until yesterday!  

As for the machine, well; speaking in particular to those that haven't ever had a mammogram, everything you've heard is true, I'm afraid.  Two x-ray plates are taken of each breast, and to take them, your boobs are put between two surfaces and then squashed hard.  Really, really hard.  The upper piece comes down and down, pressing your breast onto the lower piece, until you think "Crikey, that's a lot harder than I expected, ouch!" - and then it comes down a fair bit more after that.  It is very uncomfortable indeed, and I was impressed with the fact my boobs sprang back into more-or-less their normal shape afterwards.  I don't seem to have any bruises, either, which was worrying me (I bruise easily).

Results in about two weeks, and I shouldn't be called back for three years.

Then I went to an optician's appointment, after that, to have a light shone in my eyes, and my eyelids turned inside-out (yuk yuk yukk) and be told me new contact lenses seem to be a good fit.  I've now signed up for monthly renewables instead of the long-wear lenses I used to use.  It's going to cost me more, but not an appalling amount - £144 per annum instead of about £110 - and it means I can get a much higher-water-content lens, which apparently is good for older eyes.

I dunno; older eyes, older boobs >sigh< it's all starting to wear out on me...

Well, one of the pluses of being older is being more aware of one's condition, and quicker to spot if one is not in top form.  Coming out of Charing Cross Hospital I realised I was feeling slightly shellshocked, and peculiarly tired for the middle of the afternoon.  Once, I would have given myself a talking-to, told myself to ignore it and tried to soldier on.  But nowadays, instead of doing that I went and sat down for a while, and had a hot chocolate and a slice of millionaires' shortbread in a cafe.  No-one gains, if I try to force myself to conform to some arbitrary external standard of "what one ought to be able to deal-with"; while if I recognise when I'm a bit shaky, and treat it accordingly, everyone gains, starting with me.

I read an interesting article this morning on depression, and thought "yes, I am skirting along the edge of this at the moment - there it all is in black and white, & I am not being self-indulgent and whiny; it's real and I recognise those symptoms".  So I have to sort-out and implement a plan to make sure I look after this older body and older mind of mine.  Plenty of sleep, healthy food, adequate and appropriate exercise, come off the computer an hour before bed, see friends and family from time to time, be kind to myself, and go back onto the earlier-nights-and-Sleepytime-tea in the hope of breaking through the pattern of insomnia that has grown up over the last few months.  And don't nag myself for being inadequate.

To finish on a more cheerful note, last night I totted up the total number of words I've written since last June.  Taking into account the completed "Gold Hawk", the new novel I've just started work on (which is a western - odd, but there you go, the Muse turns as the Muse wills), the fairy tales, a good deal of fanfiction and some other unfinished stuff, I've written over 330,000 words of fiction in the last 15 months.  Not bad, not bad at all.  Even if some of it is drivel, that's still all good writing practice.  

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...

Haven't blogged here once for something like four weeks...

... and I feel I have been very remiss.  Over the last few months work has been pretty hectic, and when I’ve got home in the evenings I have tended to have some supper and then watch tv mindlessly or play about online.  I’ve written some fanfic and begun work a couple of new long original stories, but I haven’t made any progress on re-starting either of the two half-finished projects I was working on before “Gold Hawk” bit me last June; and although I have a fairly good “Gold Hawk” sequel outlined in my head, I haven’t started on that, either. 

So all my writing lately has been directed to the basically frivolous (albeit fun) activities of fandom.   I haven’t sent the pitch for “Gabriel Yeats” to anyone for ages, and haven’t even drafted a pitch for “Gold Hawk”.  And although I’ve been to the ballet and the opera and to Brighton and to WOMAD in Charlton Park, all of which have been tremendous, I’ve reviewed none of it.

And there’s been a heat-wave, which tends these days to leave me feeling as though I have raspberry jelly in my cranium instead of brain cells.

I’m going to try and get a grip on this.  Not on the raspberry jelly, but on the writing and blogging and generally making proper use of my brain and my free time.  I promise, I really am going to try and get a grip.  GET A GRIP, Ims!!

Feeling even more jelly-brained than usual this evening, having done a fairly busy day at work after being kept awake for most of the night.   I don’t know what the problem was, but there were about six blokes out on the railway line at about 2am, working.  They were shouting, and more importantly using some kind of metal cutting tool that made an appallingly loud noise.  They were there, using this tool, on and off till after 4.00.  The stretch of line was the bit directly opposite the flats and the din was appalling.  

All I could see in the dark was that they were wearing yellow flash clothing and that the tool one of them was using, the one which made this ghastly metallic screaming sound, also gushed out sparks.  I hope they weren’t stealing metal or something!  But thanks to them, I’ve had very little sleep – perhaps three hours in total, and I've felt frankly shitty for most of today.

But TGI, it's Friday!  Time for a quiet glass of wine with my supper, and a bit of lazy tele...