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... 

Get it together, lass!

I'm trying to, I really am...

I suppose I just have to accept that I have a real mental block about flat-hunting.  I hate it!  It unnerves me and leaves me feeling confused and insecure.  I'm trying really hard to be positive about it this time around, but inside I am rigid with tension.  I need that positive energy.  I need to keep going and keep my spirits up.  But I'm finding it tough.

It would be easier if just for once I could have a landlord who gave the correct amount of notice; counting the time I was given the boot because the landlord's new girlfriend didn't like me, this is the third time this has happened.  Two months, the legal amount I should have been given, is a reasonable amount of time to find a new flatshare.  Four weeks, which is what I have been given, feels really tight; after all, almost a week of it has gone by already.

My landlady is still being friendly enough about things, but shows no sign of accepting that she's made a mistake.  Presumably this is because all her own plans were made before she gave me notice, and hinge on the date she expects me to move out by.  In effect, my bluff is being very courteously called; will I raise the subject again and risk disturbing the peace?  Or will I simply sweat blood and tears to find somewhere to move to, within the illegal timescale that suits her, in order not to risk getting a bad reference or having trouble getting my deposit back?

Yes, I know there are legal rules about these things, deposits etc, but I also know that landlords can and very often do disregard them, either out of ignorance or because they cannot be fagged, and rely on the tenants to be too busy, too scared, or too relieved when things are over, to cause trouble.

I had a odd start to my flatshare-hunt yesterday.  I'd emailed a place that sounded promising (the room looked good and the rent was okay).  The map on Gumtree showed it as being in Barnes, in the postcode area SW13, about ten minutes' walk from Barnes Station and maybe 30 minutes by bike from work.  The landlord emailed me back during the day to say "Can you come for a viewing on Saturday?" & I was about to respond when I noticed that the address he was giving me was not in Barnes, or even in SW13 - it was in Sutton, miles further south, and miles out of the area I'm looking in.  So I had to email him back to say "Sorry to have wasted your time - & by the way, you may like to check that your advert has been set-up correctly...".

If I were planning to go that much further off, I would be looking at direct rail connections from Kew Bridge, or at least at routes which connected directly with that line, say at Clapham Junction; not at routes with two connections, and a likely commute of well over an hour all told.  The longest journey to "work" I've ever had was a forty minute walk to college; call me a wimp by all means, but I should hate to have a journey longer than that.  I was fifteen years younger, then, too!

Think positive, Dent, think positive.  It's early days yet and there's got to be something, sometime, surely...

Which brings me back to where I started; my own desperate, miserable insecurity when faced with the need to move at short notice.  It just does really upset me.  Some deep-seated childhood thing no doubt (blame the parents, that's the way!).  I imagine it's probably good for me to be facing it again, actually.  Try to get a good result this time, prove to myself that it can be done...

I wish I could afford to get my own place; but I have to be realistic about budget. I do not want to be in a one-room studio smaller than the bedroom I have at present, with a freestanding shower cubicle and a mini-kitchen-unit all crammed in as well as the regulation wardrobe and chest of "draws" (as everyone seems to spell it nowadays), with a shared loo and (if I was lucky) a shared washing machine on the landing.  I have books, goddammit, and consequently bookcases!  I have potted plants.  I have Dvds and a tele, a fair amount of my own crocks and kitchen equipment, and an easel, and a bicycle...  But on my present salary (which is very unlikely to go up for the foreseeable future) I cannot afford the £600 a month plus council tax and utilities that this kind of semi-slum studio would cost me.  An actual flat, with separate bathroom and kitchen and its own white goods, would set me back easily £150 more than that (again, plus bills and CT).  I just don't have the money to feed myself on top of that; much less for transport and a little bit of leisure activity.

I don't want to be rich (well, I say that, but actually it could be really handy, only that isn't the story here!).  I just want to have enough to live on, in a simple, civilised manner as a single person who has passed the age of wanting to live in student digs with a bunch of 20-something hipsters who never do any cleaning.

Buying is absolutely out of the question.  And please, don't tell me to look into shared ownership!  I have; and all the schemes are predicated on you being a couple with a joint household income of £40,000 per annum minimum.  If I had £40,000 a year plus my existing deposit I wouldn't be farting around looking into shared ownership in the first place, I would be getting myself a mortgage for £160,000 and looking for a flat in the £200,000 range.  Whcih would get me nothing remotely grand, but at least would be feasible.  As it is, if I could get a mortgage I would be looking at around £80,000, and even with the money my Dad and godmother left me, that wouldn't be enough to buy.  Not even in Heston.

Sorry, ranting a bit here.

Most depressing thing about this is that I'm quite incapable of any creative writing or drawing at the moment, or even of uploading my holiday snaps.  The Muse has taken one look at my stress levels and simply b*ggered off.  I wish I could just drop the whole mess - job, flatshare-hunt, everything - and decamp permanently to Greece.  Live in a shack on a mountain and eat olives and goat cheese and wild greens, and write a masterpiece...

I was planning to come back from my trip and get myself sorted out to try publishing something online, just to see what happens.  Publishing properly online, I mean, and proper original writing, not fanfic on a fanfic site.  Just to see.  It would be nice to be read, after all, else why am I doing it?  I have no grand social agenda or expectation of changing the world with my writing.  I just want to tell stories and have people read and enjoy them.

But for now I have to focus on finding somewhere to live.  I've emailed four more possible flatshares, and I've taken the plunge and advertised myself as a "room wanted" at work and on Gumtree (replies to the latter, if any, to be handled with care!).  I will obviously try all the old-fashioned routes like newsagents' windows and the noticeboard at the PRO, and so forth.  I just need to get this sorted out; this, and the uncertainty about whether I'll still have a job at all by autumn.  When my life is straightened out then maybe I can think again about the things that really matter to me, like writing and creativity and my poems, and my holiday photgraphs, and seeing friends and family - and even my crush!  How idiotic my behaviour over him and his nice brown eyes seems now, seen with the dubiously-beneficial perpective of a real problem on my plate. If you'll excuse the mixed metaphor.

But it was pleasant to feel romantic and day-dreamy, and to be so utterly bloody silly, just for a little while.  And they are very attractive brown eyes...

Oh well.  On with the motley.  Onwards and upwards.  To infinity and beyond.  And the like cliches...

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.

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.

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.

Bleary-eyed and blue

Did I say 'it never rains but it pours' yesterday?  Guess what - it gets even more melodramatic. 

Last night, being tired and stressed, I went to bed fairly early.  I was woken from a deep sleep at 11.30pm by the unmistakable sounds of someone moving around downstairs in the house.  I was alone, it was pitch dark, I was disorientated and terrified, almost paralysed with fear for a moment.  I forced myself to get out of bed, put on my glasses and put on the light, and I went onto the landing as noisily as I could and called out 'Who's there?' loudly.

It turned out to be Emil, my landlady's daffy Polish handyman, delivering tools and equipment for some of the planned renovation work.  I went back to bad, shaking with shock and adrenalin, and couldn't get back to sleep until 3am.  This morning I texted my landlady to ask what was going on and was told that Emil is starting the first parts of the renovation work (installing a second toilet under the stairs) next week.

She has never paid any attention to the stipulation in the tenancy agreements I and all the other tenants have had about always notifying us and agreeing an acceptable time for a visit; she and her plumbers and odd-job men have always just rocked up unannounced and let themselves in (the previous handyman even used to come into the house to use the loo if he was passing through the area, rather than going to the public toilets near Sainsburys). 

But this was a really unpleasant experience that left me feeling very vulnerable, threatened and pressured.  I feel it's bordering on full-on harrassment.  So I am going to have to go back to the Citizens' Advice Bureau this afternoon to try and get more specialist advice on my position.  

Dear God, please solve this for me; I am not doing too well at solving it by myself.  I need help.

It never rains but it pours...

My bl**dy landlady is now putting pressure on me to be out by the end of this month, as she has booked builders to begin the renovation at the beginning of May!

She is totally out of line, but she could make my life very uncomfortable.  I have never had a dispute with a landlord before (apart from that ridiculous business with Stuart in 2007, which was purely personal [his new girlfriend objected to me] rather than a tenancy issue).  I've never dreamed of having to fight for my rights and I really resent being put in this position.

Carrying on looking but nothing suitable as yet.  Grrr...

Trying to catch up with everything that's gone on...

Well, it’s been a few weeks since I wrote...

Life has been hectic; it’s the run-up to Christmas, after all, but being a chump I went away on holiday and have now got dreadfully behind on everything.  I have just managed to post my UK Christmas cards, on the last safe posting day for second-class stamps – but I missed the last safe posting dates for parcels and for international post – by miles, in the latter case.  And I still haven’t finished dealing with the problem of Christmas presents.

I remind myself that Christmas isn’t about presents.  Or cards, for that matter.  The problem is, when you are not a churchgoer, and can’t really call yourself more than a fellow-traveller of Christianity, it becomes ridiculous to say “Christmas is about Christ”.  But the capitalist subtext (“Christmas is about spending and consuming as much as you humanly can!”) is thoroughly sick-making in every sense. 

So for me, Christmas is about the people I love; seeing friends and family, catching up on news from people I don’t see much of (because they have done outrageous things like going to live in another country); it’s about sending greetings cards to say “I am thinking of you and I hope life is going well & hope you and yours really do all have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year”.  So giving gifts (which needn’t be anything fancy - I am doing a strong line in socks and home-made jam this year) becomes a tongue-tied-and-terribly-British way of saying “Um er, and I love you”- mumble mumble turn-pink-and-look-at-your-shoes...  So I want to buy and send cards, and buy and/or make presents, because they are my annual “Um er I love you”s.

I’m off down to Kent tonight to do something practical and, hopefully, helpful; my mother always has a big, real tree, and lots of greenery and decorations all over the house, and really appreciates a hand getting this all done.  She also appreciates a hand with some of the grocery shopping.  She is 79, after all.  So that is my weekend sorted; lugging a wheely basket of bottles and biscuits back up the hill from Sainsburys; dragging the tree in and setting it up; cutting and gathering armfuls of evergreen from the garden; and decorating the lot.  With the final of “Strictly Come Dancing thrown in for good measure on Saturday night.  And, you know what? – I’m really looking forward to it.  Maybe this is one of the signs of adulthood - good heavens, did I get there at last?  Instead of regarding a weekend spent helping my mum as drudgery I am thinking “Great – this will be a lot of fun!”

In a week’s time I will be heading down to Kent again, for ten whole days off.  Ten days of peace and quiet with my family; eating decent homemade food, playing board games, walking by the sea.  It’s a time I always look forward to, and this year more than most, as I feel in serious need of recharging my metaphorical batteries.  The week in Cornwall, though it was lovely, didn’t give me as much of an energy boost as I had hoped for.   The picture at the top is one of my holiday photos and makes me feel very nostalgic - wintry afternoon sun over the sea, with the Trinity House daymark on Gribben Head in the distance. 

Part of the problem has been stress at work.  Things here have been over-stretched and understaffed for quite some time now, and everyone has got more tired and frazzled as the months wore on.  Then in late November we were told that the team I work in is being restructured.  In the end this has turned out less horrendous than some restructures I’ve heard about elsewhere, but it has still led to a very uncomfortable few weeks of uncertainty, not to mention the hassle of filling out all the forms to apply for new roles, or in some cases our own existing roles, again.  For me, matters were not helped by the fact I can’t find a copy of my CV (being as I am a nitwit), so I had to do it all from scratch.   I found myself earlier this week laboriously working back through my entire employment history, listing all my jobs and my duties in each, in order to fill in an application form.  Given that I’ve done some fairly odd things in my time, the end result does look a bit as if I’m taking the mickey.  They can’t see many cvs that include a degree in Fine Art preceded by being a chef, an actor in street theatre, an artists’ model, a cleaner and a furniture restorer.  Plus a lot of retail work.  I even know how to clean vellum book-bindings, courtesy of my first-ever job in Canterbury Cathedral Library...

Anyway, off for my weekend of hauling and decorating duties.  By Sunday evening Mum’s place should be bursting with good things to eat and looking like Christmas at Dingley Dell.

TG...

...it's Friday.  Not an easy week.  I've done my best to keep my spirits up with Chinese food, chocolate cheesecake, ballet and Bruckner, but I am stressed and tired, and there's no getting around the fact it simply has not been an easy week. 

Let's hope it has been better for everyone else.

When I am troubled...

When I am troubled I like to walk. Whether it is ten minutes stroll out in the Gardens in my lunch break or forty minutes tramp going homewards, it clears my head and lets me breathe. I feel my shoulders relax and my head go up, my legs seem to stretch out as I move forward, and suddenly I find I can reflect calmly on things that stress me; work falls into perspective, plot problems sort themselves out, and poems begin to stir, and I see colours that make me want to grab a brush and paint for hours. Solvitur ambulando, as someone said, back in the days when they spoke Latin rather than scratching their heads over it - I think it was one of the Church Fathers. He was right, anyway. It will be sorted out by walking.

Today I think I need to walk home; not just for the head-space it gives me, but also because a colleague brought in and distributed some fabulously rich home-made Indian sweets this afternoon. Gajjar Khe Halva, yum; but goodness knows what the calorific value of two slices was.

Yesterday it poured for a lot of the day. My brief walk at lunch was one of pungent wet smells and cold air, my umbrella catching on things, branches reaching under it to slap my face. Today it has turned hot and sunny again and my lunchtime stroll was full of flowers and birds chirruping, and dry, resiny late-summer scents. Most of the time I love the constant contrasts of the British climate, but sometimes I am baffled by them. There must have been a good ten degrees temperature difference between yesterday and today; and the forecast is for another chilly wet day tomorrow…

Off home now to eat warmed up lentil moussaka and get on with the next fairy tale. I don’t know what it says about me, that I’m writing fairy tales at my age. But they are what comes, and I go with it.

Another Friday, ahh...

It worries me, when I wake up on a Monday thinking "Drat, another Monday" and get to a Friday thinking "Oh good, it's Friday". It's the only life I'll get, after all, at least as me (as Rose MacCauley puts it so perfectly, "Whatever follows after, we shall not have this life again"), and I am wishing it away. But the summer is always the busiest time of the year at work, and this summer the "long-term short-staffed" problem is really starting to tell on everyone, too.

There is an early stage in that situation, when everyone is in agreement; we all have to knuckle down and do our bit to keep things going. One stretches a bit, takes on a bit more, finds it is feasible, finds that the pressure is still manageable; then one is asked to take on a bit more, and so is everyone else; and then a bit more again; and once again one grins and says "We can handle it, come on, folks, yo-heave-ho"... After all, there is really no alternative but to try one's best. None of us want to drop Kew in it; and no-one wants to be a slacker, even at the best of times, much less in difficult ones. But over time, as the pressure does not ease but grows incrementally, and the duration of the period for which this will go on increases, too, and the possibility of any improvement recedes steadily, one just gets, quite simply, tired. There's a point (which our team at least has reached some time ago) where there is absolutely no more slack to be taken up. Performing at full-stretch-plus for month after month starts to take its toll; and because everywhere one looks there is the same thing - over-stretched, worried people trying to hang on and do their best - one gets demoralised as well.

It is chiefly just tiredness, plain old tiredness. Compared to other places I've worked, which had much less serious staffing and financial stresses on them, there is an amazing lack of grumbling here. We all want to keep things going and not let our colleagues down. We almost all manage to keep the bigger picture in mind most of the time. But we are all so tired. And there is still no end in sight.

On a more cheerful note, the Gardens are looking wonderful, and despite some very gloomy weather forecasts last week, the Kew The Music open-air concerts were not rained on (well, about five minutes of drizzle, one evening, but otherwise dry).

I have finished re-reading "The Last of the Wine" (& cried my eyes out over it once again) and started on an entertaining murder mystery called "Anthem for Doomed Youth" by Carola Dunn. Carola was at school with my stepmum Jane, and it is enormously pleasing to know that I have this tiny connection with a real, published author.

Carola's books make no attempt to be great literature, but they are enjoyable without being potboilers. Her characters are credible and likeable, she gives one enough of the clues that there is a hope of spotting the killer, and she describes Saffron Walden, where much of this latest story is set, well enough to leave me planning a visit some time this summer. Not bad for a straightforward piece of summer reading.

The Mary Renault also left me dreaming of travel, but going to Athens is a bit more of an undertaking. Besides, at the moment Athens might be rather an odd experience, owing to the strikes and demonstrations (with which I am in sympathy, but which nonetheless I don't want to get caught up in). There's a huge magic in waking up and drawing the curtains to see the Parthenon silhouetted against the morning sky. I shall have to go back there some time soon. Maybe I could manage a long weekend over the winter?

But for now, it's Friday and it's been another tiring week, and I'm looking forward to a couple of days off, not doing anything or going anywhere. I will tidy the garden, bake a cake, and finish Carola's book.

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.

Another Friday...

...and I am knackered again. This has been another painfully hectic week. Thank goodness another Bank Holiday weekend is now upon us. If only they came this frequently all year round.

Going to go home, via Sainsburys to buy muesli, yoghurt, fruit juice and (in case you are reeling at my healthiness) a pizza and some booze, and flop in front of the lap top and do some writing. The Play (read story)'s the thing, wherein I'll - on second thoughts never mind... I know what I'm trying to say but can't mangle the words even of poor Shakespeare, infinitely variable though they are, to fit my wilful posturing...

I think what I'm trying to express is a desire to get out of myself and into another place, although as it is a place within my own mind it isn't really outside myself at all. But it is outside this office and the copious stresses of this really very unimportant job. Heavens, I'd never have made a doctor, I'd go insane, either with anxiety or rage, over every patient.

Hope all are well out there in the universe. Have a wonderful May Day eve!