'Robert Palmer Radio' is now playing 'Abracadabra' by the Steve Miller Band - now that's somebody I haven't thought about for ages, yet only this morning i had 'the Joker' running through my head - coincidence.
And 'Fly like an eagle' - now there's a great song.
don't suppose this means anything to anybody except me.

'I want to fly like an eagle, to the sea,
Fly like an eagle, let my spirit carry me.
Fly like an eagle, to be free,
Fly right into the future...'

Decided to stop this whingeing and go and do something useful – like, printing out and circulating the agenda for the Parish Council meeting.
Had to limbo under the units and into the space between the back of the bookcase and the sloping roof again, because the USB connector I pulled out on Friday, so I could plug in the new mouse, which I THOUGHT was from the one for the camera, was actually the one for the printer. In the process, I knocked the power cable out, so had to restart the computer again…
Listening to BB King (on Robert Palmer radio) singing: ‘I’ve a good mind to give up living and go shopping instead…’ know what he means!

This is inspired by various comments that have been made by various people in various places, but they have set me thinking. The themes are ‘emotional numbness’ and ‘adolescent problems’.
I was emotionally numb, as I’ve said elsewhere, for most of my 30s – after giving up my job to go with my husband to live in a foreign country where I found it hard to make friends (sorry, Lady Lucy, obviously we’re best mates now, but back then, I was so UPTIGHT that I couldn’t connect with anybody), had small children, never went out and met people, except as somebody’s wife or somebody’s mum. Melinda just disappeared, she died inside, she was completely swallowed up and lost. Cassandra was pretty stultified too, she managed to keep going enough to finish her Open University degree and every so often she would add a bit to the first novel (the one that has never been published), but mostly she had no place in life.
Then, about 15 years ago, I met someone and WHAMMO! Melinda leapt back into life. He was the tutor at an evening class on drawing, and apart from being sex on legs, he actually spoke to me as though I was an interesting, worthwhile and maybe even attractive woman. Set the old heart a-flutter and no mistake. Real adolescent stuff. I was trying to work out what was going on in his head, but as soon as he realised what was going on in mine he ran for the hills at a tremendous rate of knots and left me feeling completely crushed and humiliated and wishing I’d stayed numb. So I retreated back into numbness again for a few more years, now thoroughly convinced that I was a sexless old crone whom no man could ever want.
These feelings changed again when I started doing my PhD. Suddenly I was no longer just somebody’s wife and somebody’s mum and I was out and mixing with intelligent and interesting men and women on a daily basis. At first I felt a lot of ‘What-am-I-doing-here?’ and ‘I-don’t really-belong-here’ and ‘They-can’t-possibly-like-me-not-really’. But gradually, as I got interested and involved in my research, I suppose you could say I started to ‘blossom’, and other people responded to that.
I said the other day that it was my EMBM (Erstwhile Male Best Mate) who dragged me out of my shell of emotional numbness, but thinking about it, he was just a catalyst in the process which had started already. I think I had blotted the art-tutor incident from my memory, probably rightly, because, as I said, the main impact was to destroy my confidence and push me further into numbness.
By the time I finished my PhD, I was working 6 days a week, the university had become my refuge. It’s an awful thing to admit but spending time at home with my husband and kids… I can’t finish that sentence. I can’t explain how I felt – maybe that’s just shame and guilt. I had been through such an intellectually stimulating and exciting time, how could I ever go back to being just Mum? So I applied for job after job, I planned to leave, to get away, to start a new life. And – nothing. (This was the period when I was told that, if I didn’t get out then, I would become an alcoholic).
But it didn’t happen. I never found a job (well, I did a couple of years later, but that’s another story). I went back to being Mum, out of necessity, because there was nothing else I could do. I applied for dozens of non-academic jobs, too, but apparently I was just too over-qualified, or under-experienced, or maybe just not very good at selling myself, I don’t know. But nobody wanted me.
So I threw myself back into Belinda – but a spark had been lit, and I’ve never quite let it go out. Every so often it flames up again, the craziness of life.
This isn’t what I set out to write about. But obviously it’s what I needed to write about today.

This morning, I started telling Hubby about my creative writing assignment.
Last term, we had to submit a 1200 word piece, which could be a complete story or an extract, and I did the opening of my current novel (the piece I posted on Surreality as ‘Chapter One’).
This term, we have been doing about ‘structure’, so we have to submit a 1500 word piece, again, either an extract or a complete story. If it’s a story, we have to give a brief analysis of the internal structure, and if an extract, a structure of the overall piece, and how it fits in.
So, this morning I’ve been going through what I’ve written – the later sections – to find a suitable extract, and thinking about the structure so far – after that, it gets tricky, because I don’t know how it’s going to end. I’m always reluctant to read back what I’ve written, but then I’m always pleasantly surprised, so I was quite excited, and I was telling him about this, and…
No reaction, no comment, no eye contact, even. He let me finish, then said, ‘Right, let’s go and do something useful' and started tearing up bread crusts to put out on the bird table.
I know that after all these years I should know better than to expect anything more positive. And probably he just couldn’t think of anything to say. But after years and years and years of that sort of reaction, it just saps your soul.
This is why I get so excited when any man acts as though he thinks I’m actually INTERESTING.

which blog does this belong in, I wonder?
this one will do.
Bought a new mouse for the daughter's computer on the prinicple : 'If all else fails, buy a new one!'
she was trying to install it - there was a CD with drivers on it - but she couldn't do anything with the CD because her mouse didn't work... etc etc
Decided I would try and sort it out this afternoon myself ...NOOOO!!!! BAD IDEA!!!! Clean the bathrooms, do the hoovering, tedious, yes, but manageable and achievable, and you'll have something to show for it.
also thought I'd try and get the wireless one working on my computer (it still doesn't, and now I'm too embararassed to take it back, because it's probably something stupid that I'm doing, and anyway I've probably lost the receipt by now..')
Rewiring anything on my computer is a pain because I have these wonderful 'home office units' that the box fits into, so to get to the back of it you have to do a sort of limbo under the 'modesty panel' (remember those?) into the space where the attic roof slopes down, and try and squint at the the back of the thing in the dark - which is tricky, so you need a torch, and also reading glasses because you (I) can't get your head far enough away to actually FOCUS on the bloody thing.. and why do they make the connectors for mice so hard to get in the right place and so easy to bugger up?
well, I now have a mouse that works and so does she.
But I left my old reading glasses on the chair, then sat on them, then tried to bend the arm back into the right place, and now it has snapped off so they're sort of balanced on my left ear, these are the ones which are just about right for the distance the monitor is away from my face.
and I thought 'Robert Palmer radio' would be ALL RP, not just various things which sound a bit like him, well, OK, now it's Nils Lofgren, which is acceptable, I suppose.
I'm rambling again. But the fire I lit in the sitting room has gone out, so I might as well be up here doing this, except, when the hell am I going to read the 'New Statesman'?

How come ANOTHER of my best friends is suddenly going for mammograms and blood tests?
Sorry, I'm just not ready for this.

Guess what, guys....
forgot to replace the loo paper!

Read this (today's meditation) after I'd written all that lot:

‘It is inevitable that one will fall in and out of Tao. The wise arrange their lives so that they can always return to balance.
‘Whenever you feel out of sorts, or cannot sleep, or find it hard to work and think, you are separated from Tao… ask yourself… “Is my mind tamed?”
‘…the difficult mind seems to have its own interests, habits and excesses. The only way to counter this is to guard against worry, stress, intellectualisation, scheming and desire. This can only happen through a strong philosophical grounding and by methodical meditation.’
Now, who does that sound like? I can compartmentalise the worry/stress; the intellectualisation; the scheming and desire. But am I ready to abandon any of them just yet?

Feeling severely battered after Lady Lucy’s onslaught yesterday (you’ll have to go to Surreality to read it). I strongly contest the epithet ‘UPTIGHT’. Maybe I have some hang-ups, but they are about trying to do what’s right by the world and the people around me, doing my ‘duty’ if you like – showing some responsibility and respect for other people’s feelings and needs. Just getting on with it all.
Virginia Woolf said that women will never be able to achieve great things as long as they are the ones who (I’m paraphrasing here) have to deal with all the crap in the world – all those mind numbingly tedious things that have to be done just to keep the rest of the world rolling. Like, giving up a whole afternoon (when I should have been doing yoga, or writing letters for the Parish Council, or at least mopping the floors) to transporting daughter and friend to Northampton; buying tap shoes (which I seriously can’t afford); taking them to college so their friend Alice can do their hair for her assessment. At least I don’t have to wait and take her to the theatre as well for the tech rehearsal, but I was the one who had to try and find out about buses for her. And at least it will be Hubby who will go and pick her up from the theatre at 9 this evening – because Melinda will be swanning off before then to rehearse ‘The Mikado’.
So, as I was saying… (mustn’t forget to print off 80 copies of a poster and post them to Cambridge – oh and pay the car tax, ring the chair of the Parish Council to check she got home OK – I never did type up that posting from Sunday evening…) sorry, I’m off on one again.
And another thing… it is Mel and Cass who are responsible for most of the ‘faffing’ and procrastination around here. All they think about is themselves, they will happily spend hours away in la-la-land, leaving me to pick up the pieces and try and squeeze everything into what little time they leave me. So I have to deal with their demands on top of everybody else’s.
Maybe I’m jealous of them. Who wouldn’t be? They’re the ones who get all the attention and all the fun. But ‘Life isn’t all Ha-ha, Hee-hee’ as Meera Syal puts it. Without me, where would they be?
Lady Hester ended up in poverty, abandoned by her young lover and all her friends, having sold and given away everything she had. Cassandra was murdered by her lover’s wife, after watching the destruction of everything and everyone she loved. We all know what happened to Lucy Jordan, and god knows what happened to Ruby Tuesday.
So, have a little compassion, please, Lady Lucy. ‘Shit happens’, as Cassandra says, and as you know better than any of us. Keeping on keeping on is sometimes all any of us can do, and the greatest achievement of all. The Outer Life rules everything, and dictates the course of action. Get up, get on with it, and put one foot in front of the other.

The old feller has just left a dead bird and a pile of feathers in the utility room for me to clean up...
After a morning catching up with some tedious admin jobs, that was all I needed to make my day!

Lady Lucy appears to be confusing being 'rational' with being 'decisive' which is somewhat different. Being rational is about weighing up all the options and coming to a considered decision on the basis of anticipated probabilities and utilities. Being decisive is about acting on the spur of the moment without thinking about the consequences. If it works out well, it is called being 'decisive' and everybody assumes the good result was inevitable. If it works out badly it is called being ‘impulsive’, and everybody assumes you should have seen it coming.
In other words: ‘Look before you leap’.

Sorry about that. Like I said, 'nobody likes a smart-arse'.

Melinda has had it.
She has decided to break out on her own at:
www.surreality.blog.co.uk
See you there.

On Wednesday night, I couldn’t get to sleep. I knew I had to get up early to go to Cambridge on Thursday, and I just couldn’t settle. I was quite hyper, I suppose, because I had been singing – though I didn’t go to the pub, which was just as well, because I had a lot to do when I got home and was quite late going to bed.
Then I woke up at half five, which isn’t too bad really, not so early that it was worth trying to get back to sleep, but in time to get my wits about me before I had to get up.
And I had one of those early morning flashes. Well, it was a combination of things I’d been thinking about anyway, but then I had an inspiration about Mel and Bel.
I had been thinking about my inner and outer lives, and about real life and surreal life. My outer life is pretty OK actually, I have a lot of things to be grateful for. On the everyday level, I get on well with my hubby, we don’t argue, we share the house and the responsibilities, nothing contentious. That is where our marriage sits, firmly in my outer life, in real life (I’m not too sure how the two dimensions – inner/outer and real/surreal, articulate at present, but I’ll keep going and see).
But my inner life is something else. He has never really been involved in my inner life, except perhaps back at the beginning, when I fell in love with him, when he was an idea in my head, an idea of a lover. But I don’t share much of my inner life with him. And he has never really shown any sign of being interested in it. I’m sure he’s quite excited about it in his own way, it’s probably part of the attraction, but it’s not something he relates with directly at all.
So I no longer try and share it with him. In fact, for years and years I didn’t share it with anybody. I would pretty much say that from the time I left my IT job and we went to the States, to the time I went back to uni, it was completely internalised. Of course, that was when the children were small, too. Well, thinking about it I can remember a couple of exceptions in that time – when I went for counselling while we were still in the States and after we came back when I did a drawing course at evening classes and became infatuated with the tutor – which alerted me to the fact that there was still something going on in there. But really it didn’t come out again till I was doing my PhD.
Now, I don’t want to go back over the coals of my life again. I just want to talk about my inner life. So, I don’t share it with Hubby, and I don’t want to. But I can share it with all these random strangers. Which is pretty weird, I admit.
And now I come back to Mel and Bel. The inner life is the realm of MElinda, and she is completely egocentric, everything revolves around her. The inner life is full of trauma, terror, passion, thrills, joy. She sings, she writes, flirts, draws, soars and sinks. She is ultimately alone. She may have infatuations and obsessions, but she has never really found the man to match her, and maybe he doesn’t exist, though she may indulge in romantic fantasies from time to time. She is Ruby Tuesday:
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/r/rolling-stones/117876.html
BElinda is happy just to be, and she enjoys her comfortable life and her garden and her cats and her children’s lives. She is comfortable in her marriage and doesn’t see what all the fuss is about. She is happy for small achievements and small pleasures. She might be a bit too self-effacing and self-sacrificing at times, a classic ‘Mum’, a bit of a martyr – which can lead to resentment… now here’s an interesting question – is she the resentful one, or is it Mel? Don’t know just yet.
Belinda lives in the real world, deals with it on a day-to-day basis, and mostly does a good job of it. But what about the surreal world? The surreal world keeps erupting into the everyday, and it is the realm of Melinda. The surreal world doesn’t only consist of sitting on Fisherman’s Wharf with ‘Dock of the Bay’ running through her head; or sending emails from a cyber-café in Haight Astbury; or strolling past the Coliseum at midnight; or singing ‘All you need is love’ in the Grand Place surrounded by Christmas Trees; or drinking red wine and salsa dancing with the Crazy Frog. It can be going to a NADFAS lecture and discovering Lady Hester; or drinking a cappuccino in a Cambridge coffee shop; or taking the boat down the Thames from Tate Modern to Tate Britain; or eating a hot sausage roll while people-watching on Bedford Embankment; or singing in the chorus of ‘The Mikado’.
So, she doesn’t have to go to San Francisco or Rome or Brussels to find the surreal world. If all else fails, she can find it in her computer, or even inside her head. All she needs is a notebook and pen.

Too much gin, maybe. Friday is curry night, which means no wine, but dry martinis - proper ones, with lots of gin and dry vermouth and stuffed olives.
Then there's the New Statesman in front of the fire - which I suppose induces a contemplative mood. Maybe a couple of dry martinis is an essential precondition for the reading of the NS.
My trawling through my CD collection has lit upon 'The year of the cat' by Al Stewart - a far cry from Springsteen, but it takes all sorts. Does this have resonances for anybody other than me?
'On a morning from a Bogart movie, In a country where they turned back time, You go strolling through the crowds like Peter Lorre contemplating a crime. She comes out of the sun in a silk dress, running like a water colour in the rain. Don't bother asking for explanations, she'll just tell you that she came...'
Aaaaah.
almost on a par with 'Aeroplane'.
Then I read this in 'The Writer's Journey' by Christopher Vogler (on the recommended reading list for my writing course - I've actually read the main sources years ago - mainly 'the Hero with a Thousand Faces', by Joseph Campbell, but it's still quite interesting):
'Heroes come to decision points where their very souls are at stake, where they must decide: 'Do I go on living my life as I always have, or will I risk everything in the effort to grow and change?'
Indeed.
My computer should be defragging at this time on a Friday evening - son set it all up when he was home at christmas. But it isn't. So does that mean it's finished already or never even started? And do we care?
I've never had a silk dress that ran like a water colour in the rain. And I've never dropped into anyone's life without explanation.
Random events. Yesterday I picked up a cassette to play in the car, thinking it was Steve Winwood 'Back in the high life' - shoved it in - and heard 'Ruby Tuesday'. Wasn't even my tape (it was hubby's) - I've never really liked the Stones, too preening and macho and full of themselves. So how the hell did they ever manage to write 'Ruby Tuesday'? The me I've always yearned to be - and always knew I never could be.
Must be the gin - or maybe it's the olives????

Exchanged emails with the Crazy Frog yesterday. He sent me French hugs, I sent him sensible English handshakes and told him to go away and stop distracting me. Kept checking my inbox all the same, though.
I wonder if he has the faintest idea about the idiotic fantasies I've been having about him. God, I hope not!
I like flirting, but I have to keep it at a jokey level so I won't feel too humiliated when the inevitable rejection occurs. When I'm attracted to a man, I think it must be absolutely bloody obvious, so I have to hide it. I want him to know - but only if it's what he wants too. I need to cling on to deniability, just in case. I can see how that might get confusing. Maybe this is why, the last time I saw him in person, he asked me how I would define flirting.
Fortunately it is all theoretical, as I very rarely get into situations where I meet men. Which is probably just as well.
I have a hypnotherapy tape (one of several) on which the therapist says: 'anticipate happiness, and happiness is yours'. Ah, but, what if you anticipate happiness and it doesn’t happen? What did Springsteen say in ‘The River’: ‘Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse?’ I can see how anticipating rejection and disappointment can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, but at least you have the satisfaction of saying 'I told you so'.
Anticipating happiness is all very well as long as you don't start testing it out, looking backwards to see how it worked out in the past. The phrase 'blind faith' springs to mind. You just have to hope that it will get better this time, even if it never did in the past. Or ignore past AND future and live for the present. Make it as good as it can be. That’s what they say, isn't it. All we have is the present moment. So the secret of happiness is to be happy in that moment.
Well, from my outburst of cynicism, I seem to have wandered back to a quite positive place. That must be a hopeful sign.
Actually, considering February is half over, I think I’ve coped reasonably well this year. February is my absolute worst month, for all sorts of reasons – I’m not even going to begin to list all the crap in my life that has happened in February. I started noticing a few years ago that my worst depressions hit me in February, then when I looked back over my life I could see why… But this year has been pretty good – well, so far, after all, it is only half way through. What was I saying about anticipating happiness???
.

My self esteem is a tissue-paper screen, a gossamer cloud, a film on the surface of my ego. Touch it, and it – I was going to say, ‘shatters’, but that wouldn’t work with any of those metaphors. OK then, it dissolves, melts away. I can be going along, apparently quite happily, then I make a stupid mistake, or someone makes a thoughtless remark, and I’m a mess.
I was told, years ago, that my self-loathing was a kind of inverted egomania, a way of making myself seem important and special by drawing attention to how useless I am. Of staving off criticism by anticipating it, being my first and worst critic. A therapist once said to me: ‘you keep shooting yourself in the foot so someone will give you a cough sweet, when if you tried you could have the whole sweetie factory’. (Well, he never told me how to get the sweetie factory, and I’ve never worked it out for myself, but that’s another issue).
What set me off on this was thinking about how I respond to criticism. When someone says I can’t sing, or I’m a bad driver, or I’m untidy and clumsy, or I’m old and overweight, I immediately internalise it. It’s the same as what I was saying a while ago about rejection. I can’t see why anyone would want me, so when they don’t it confirms everything I know already.
When my kids were small, the pop-psych jargon on ‘building their self esteem’ was: ‘For every negative thing a child hears about himself, he needs to hear 10 positive things’. The positives don’t stand a chance when the negatives come out. The negatives resonate with and reinforce what I already know. I don’t get angry with the critic for saying it, I get angry with myself for being/doing it. My anger is rarely, if ever, directed outwards – and if it is, it’s immediately followed by a backlash of guilt and regret. I hate to think how many friends I’ve alienated over the years. I feel pathetically grateful for any who stick with me.
I was told ‘Once you get your PhD, that will change the way you think about yourself’ (it didn’t); ‘If you get a job, that will change the way you see yourself’ (never did in the past). I can spend months and years trying to piece my ego back together, trying to reach a place where I feel good about myself - then it falls apart again, for the stupidest reasons. And I have to start again, all over again, from the bottom of the hill, pushing the boulder. Perseverance. That’s what it’s all about.

I have been told to stop ‘faffing about’. Thinking about this at 4 o’clock this morning, my reaction was to get into an argument with the person who said it. What exactly did they mean? Have they understood any of the things I’ve been saying about myself? Don’t they realise what I’m trying to do here?
Then I thought, oh well, they probably mean well, they’ve got my best interests at heart, they’re trying to be helpful etc etc
Then I thought, I suppose I’m laying myself open to this kind of thing, maybe I should give up the blog idea. Just write what I want for myself, without inviting comments. Or start another blog under an assumed name, with no history.
I suppose it’s actually a good sign that I got angry with the other person rather than, as usually happens, with myself – though I did think ‘obviously I haven’t been explaining the value of this very well’, ie it’s my fault for not being clear enough.
I started thinking about people in the past who have decided to ‘take me in hand’ and tried to change me ‘for my own good’ (no one who would be reading this blog, I am not trying to induce paranoia here). Because in real life I am shy and reticent and don’t let people close to me very easily, some people seem to see this as a challenge, and determine to ‘cheer me up’ and ‘get me out of my shell’ – two things which I will do on my own terms or not at all, thank you very much. What usually happens is that I put up with it for a while, then I try avoiding them, then if they persist I lose it and let them know exactly how I feel. Which rarely does any good.
I see this blog as a space where I can say what I feel and be who I am without having to constantly second guess what other people might be expecting of me. Because in real life I’ve had years, decades even of trying to work out how to behave so that people won’t despise me too much (not even ‘like me more’, just not think I’m a worthless waste of space). Now, before somebody starts, I’m sure that’s not really how people see me, I know it’s just my paranoia, but nevertheless it is a very powerful feeling which has affected my ability to develop friendships with both men and women for most of my life.
So, what I really want is to be able to be honest, and say what I’m thinking and feeling, without being judged, and without being told what I should or shouldn’t be doing. I am trying to find out who I am, and learn to accept myself as I am. Which probably includes saying things about myself that people who have my best interests at heart think I shouldn’t be saying, not to mention doing things they think I shouldn’t be doing. I’m just trying to be myself, and not what anyone else thinks I should be.
Just heard the church clock striking 5. And it’s still daylight. Wow, spring really must be on its way.
It also means I’ll have to go and start preparing dinner soon, so I’d better wind this up.

This week, we were going to do the snowdrop walk at Anglesey Abbey (part of this policy of trying to make time to do things together). But as it’s pouring with rain, doesn’t seem like such an attractive prospect.
http://www.angleseyabbey.org/gardens/winterwalk/page2.html
(Not that I’m knocking the rain, of course, as I keep saying, we seriously need it).
This also means: Another unanticipated day of uncommitted time.
The concepts of ‘free time’, ‘spare time’ and ‘killing time’ don’t usually have any meaning for me, given that the amount of Stuff To Do is always far in excess of the amount of time available. So an extra day is a bonus. And, given that it’s a Sunday, I don’t have to feel obliged to spend it on either parish council/serious stuff or housework. And, given the rain, gardening is out of the question.
The question is: what DO I spend it on, what should I be doing to make the most of this bonus? Last Sunday I spent the whole day blogging. I did some of that yesterday evening too, to try and catch up again. So I can spend some time on that today. Or I could do some of those jobs, like clearing out my inbox, backing up my hard drive, or cleaning the utility room, which are time consuming and never get done in the normal course of events. Or I could read (either try and catch up a bit with the backlog of magazines, or read the current book), or listen to the radio and cross stitch, or do some drawing/painting, which I just haven’t done for months and months. Or play around with my website. Or tidy my desk. Or check my bank statement.
Trouble is, trying to decide which one to do takes up so much time, I will probably end up doing none of them, and get to the end of the day and think: ‘where the hell did that go?’

This is taking up so much time. Even though the original writing is happening in these dead, middle of the night hours, when I wouldn’t be doing anything but lying awake thinking (or possibly reading), the typing up still requires time. I have tried getting up and typing directly in the middle of the night, but that usually makes it even harder to get back to sleep.
Actually reading is probably the main one of my activities which is being affected, first thing in the morning and at the weekends it is my reading time which I am using to do this.
And it seems I keep asking the same questions all the time. You’d think that some things would be resolved and then it would be possible to move on and build on them. But life is a constant process of renegotiation of the same situations. I guess that’s a good thing. If you ever reached that level of complacency where you didn’t have to think about it any more, maybe you’d be dead.
But it would be nice to think there could be some kind of cumulative progress, that you could add on to what went before. Feels like Sisyphus, always at the bottom of the slope, having to start again to push that boulder upwards. What’s that old business school cliché: ‘No such thing as problems, only opportunities’. Hah!
The more I do, the more I think, the more questions there are to be answered, the more ways the old ones present themselves. I never feel I’m getting any closer to re-starting the novel or producing anything publishable/saleable. Just more and more drivel to be dealt with.
I have started down this road, and I don’t regret the journey, but it comes with a cost, in terms of energy and time.
I’ve heard it said: ‘You can always make time if you want to do something badly enough’ (and I’m doing this really badly! Hah! Sorry for that one). But there is always an opportunity cost for that time. While I’m writing, I’m not reading, or getting on with my jobs, or gardening, or listening to the radio, or sewing/drawing/painting. Or even watching the telly. All those activities are being squeezed out – well, the telly watching is no loss, that’s for sure, but some of the others are. And that’s when you start questioning the value of it all.
Why do I always find difficulties in everything I do? That’s just my personality. I have always been like that; I can’t help seeing the problems in what I’m doing. But the point is they are already there, I’m not creating them, I’m just recognising them. Maybe it’s better not to see them, better just to keep pushing on regardless. The danger is that in anticipating the problems – sorry, the ‘opportunities’ – you become paralysed and you just can’t get on with it at all, can’t do anything.
This is supposed to be my year to keep going back to the well; this is what I decided to do back at the start of the year, six weeks ago now. I didn’t realise what I was starting. But if we anticipated the difficulties, we wouldn’t start on anything. Now I am beginning to understand a bit better. This is where the persistence comes in.
Now, spookily, today’s Tao meditation is about persistence – I’ve just read it (after writing everything that has gone before.)
‘When it seems as if nothing encouraging is happening to us, it is important to remember perseverance. Work may be drudgery, maintaining a home may be routine, and we may find our goals quite distant. But we must persevere and prepare nonetheless. That will bring a steady pace towards our goals and buoy our faith in rough and threatening times.
‘To taste the fruit of perseverance requires maturity and experience. We need to cultivate patience, planning and timing. We build our resources even when circumstances seem to be against us. We don’t neglect anything we have set in motion. If we nurse our plans through good times and bad, our plans will eventually succeed’.
Great – but what are my plans, what are my goals?
I seem to be on a journey with no discernible destination. So, if I don’t know where I’m going, how do I know if I’m getting any closer to where I want to be? Now, that’s an interesting one. What am I trying to achieve, where am I trying to get to? Just to fill up these empty hours in the middle of the night, when I can’t sleep? That is a good thing in itself, but there is still an opportunity cost, I could also be reading, and what about the time taken up by typing it all out? What is the value in that?
To keep on going, even when you don’t know where you’re going to or why you’re going there or if you’re ever going to get there. Maybe one day it will all make sense.
When my son was a baby, and I was living in the States with no real friends and no real intellectual outlet, just that terrible constant relentless day to day burden of having to deal with a small baby, never knowing when I would be home again or what would happen, I came up with a metaphor for life. Every day, I told myself, I just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Now, 20 years later, I am in an infinitely happier place, in my own home, without that awful pressure that small children impose, with so many outlets for my brain and things to think about, with friends I can confide in, with a more mature understanding of myself and who I am. But sometimes, I still have to keep reminding myself to put one foot in front of the other.

This is a funny time to be awake. I’ve been awake since about half four. On a week day, when I wake at this time, quite often I don’t get back to sleep at all. As it’s Saturday, I’ll probably doze off again around 7:00ish, and then sleep till 9, which will get me off to a late start and disrupt the whole day.
The phone started playing up again yesterday. It is a cordless phone and extension, it has done this several times before and we’ve never found out how to fix it, it just gives out a high pitched shriek instead of the dial tone (Can an inanimate object ‘shriek’?) and won‘t do anything. We can’t find the instruction manual. I tried reading the instruction manual on the BT website, but I wasn’t sure of the model, and the one I found doesn’t seem to have quite the same buttons.
The previous times this has happened, it has started again spontaneously, though last time it was out of action for several weeks, which was a pain. We still have two old style phones which plug into the sockets, and the line is fine because they work, but there is no socket in the study so that means running round the house whenever it rings.
There’s a helpline number to ring on the website. I was reading an article in the New Statesman about this kind of thing, how the helpline numbers are premium rate , how companies don’t provide proper manuals any more , then you spend a fortune trying to get through to the help line and in the end give up in disgust and go out and buy a new one.
http://www.newstatesman.com/200602130015
The world is mad. Don’t get me started.
Or maybe I need to get started. Maybe I need to write all that crap about the world, the madness of the world. But I don’t know how to start, where to take it. Like the novel.
Where am I going? Don’t start on that one again. Out into the desert, maybe. Away from here. I had a bit of a kick start when I discovered Lady Hester. But I still haven’t gone back to my novel yet. Is this how it has to be? Am I going to keep on going round this loop, never getting going on anything, always saying: ‘I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that…’, but distracted by life. What is stopping me from making progress? Nothing, if not myself. But how long do I keep on saying that? I felt good after last Sunday, it was cathartic. Maybe I should have another blog-blitz.
On Tuesday, I had to go and buy tiles. On Thursday, I had to respond to the proposal to extend the Euro project. Yesterday, I was driven to write two letters to the Times (they didn’t accept either of them but hey, I had to write them anyway). None of those things were predictable. It’s the things that come out of nowhere that throw you off track, always, and stop you getting on with the things that you should be doing. That’s the way life is.

On the verge of slipping into sleep on the sofa this (Friday) evening, pulling back from the brink into consciousness of the music (Cat Stevens singing ‘O Caritas’), and the room around me, with a lingering sense of joy and clarity – what about? What had I been dreaming about, on the edge of sleep? An echo of passion, lost in wakefulness.
Could it be possible to wake every morning, or go to sleep each night, with a sense of wonder and excitement at the day to come, or the day just gone? Can life be like that? Is that how it should be?
Why do these romantic ideas occur to me, old and world-weary and cynical as I am? I should know better. Half a century should be long enough to knock that nonsense out of a person. ‘Just hearing your romantic schemes can set my heart to thundering, I long to see your bright and smiling eyes’ (‘Aeroplane’, Robert Palmer).
Why do I fall for that vicarious thrill? I wouldn’t read Mills & Boone if you paid me. But I can see Audrey Hepburn standing in the rain holding the cat at the end of ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ – and I can’t even remember who played the man.
http://www.reelclassics.com/Movies/Tiffanys/images9/tiffanys_kissrain.jpg

Or Shirley McLaine running to find Jack Lemmon at the end of ‘The Apartment’. Why these two? Must have seen them at an impressionable age, I guess. Rick and Ilsa standing on the tarmac. ‘If you miss your aeroplane, and you’ve got nowhere else to call....’ I can’t think of a single film from the last 40 years that has the impact of those three images.
Why do I care? I know that’s not life. That’s just movies. Cocoa, and a good book on a Friday night, and a kitten snuggling down under the duvet, that’s worth being happy about.

I’ve been thinking about the blog, because I’ve now reached my 10 meg limit and can’t upload any more photos. I wondered about setting up another one. You’re only supposed to have one for free, but I guess I could find a way round that.
Then I started wondering about what happens to blogs. Do they get deleted after a while, and if so, how long? How would I feel about that? Do I need to back it all up somewhere? Then I started thinking, well, what does it matter? Is it any more valuable than all those spiral bound notebooks in the attic, all those Word docs lying around on my hard drive? If they were all destroyed, what would it matter? Am I mad to think there is anything of value in any of them?
That started me thinking about ‘Citizen Kane’, and Rosebud burning at the end. Is that all anyone’s life comes to? ‘All we are is dust in the wind. All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see…’
Well, that’s it, isn’t it. It’s all futile and pointless, yet we get up every morning and get on with it anyway. Life calls to life, and you might as well live.
I was thinking of the analysis I made of my ‘career’ earlier in the week. All that has brought me here, to this point, this sad middle aged woman trying to make sense out of it all. Are other people’s lives so very different? All these people with satisfying jobs and happy marriages? All their Rosebuds end up on the bonfire in the end.
I suppose that sounds bleak. It isn’t meant to be. I’m just trying to say that I’m probably no worse off than anyone else.
But finding a little bit of joy along the away, that’s what’s important. It doesn’t have to be much . ‘Just a drop of water in an endless sea’.
It occurs to me that I keep throwing in all these quotations from songs, books, bits of poetry, whatever, and I wonder if they mean anything to anybody but me.
http://ladynwavsone.com/dustinthewind.html

I remember a TV documentary from about 30 years ago, called ‘Self-portrait of a happy man’, about a documentary maker who lived somewhere idyllic like the Lakes or the Highlands, and made nature docs, and was just – a happy man. I remember the people at work talking about it. It made a big impression.
Round about the same time (or a bit later), I read something by Bertrand Russell about how the secret of happiness (or one of them) is maintaining contact with the natural world. And there is the book ‘Nature Cure’ by Richard Maybey which came out last year, haven’t read it yet but I’ve heard some of it serialised on Radio 4.
I noticed last year, that when I spent at least some time in the garden every day, it helped. But the garden can become just another thing that has to be done. Like the writing, however therapeutic it is, it still takes up time which is needed for other things too. An endless series of demands, all fighting with each other.
Last week, one of the organisers of the Euro project sent out a draft proposal for funding to continue with it. I hadn’t looked at it, it was on my ‘to do’ list, but suddenly they wanted comments by the end of the week. So it suddenly became a priority.
It’s tempting not to bother. But I have to keep trying, keep putting in the effort, even if 99 times out of a hundred it doesn’t result in anything. Because you never know which is going to be that one time in a hundred which will lead to joy. Even if it’s ‘only for a moment, then the moment’s gone’, you can’t afford to let it pass by.

Catching up with the notebook, Monday, 2:45 AM:

The old cat is lying on the bed exactly where I want to put my feet. Stretching out, I have to stick them either one side or the other. I think maybe he can feel the hot water bottle through the duvet. I’ve noticed that they like the hot water bottle, even when it’s not hot. The little one sits on it sometimes and does that thing they do with their feet when they’re settling themselves down. I guess it’s a bit like a water bed for her. Cute.
She is shut into the daughter’s room at night (with a litter tray for emergencies). We’re not letting her go out yet (the kitten, not the daughter!) I didn’t want to do it until after her op. I didn’t want her wandering off looking for a mate. It wasn’t even the thought of potential kittens that bothered me, just that she might wander off.
One of the concessions that hubby has made is letting the old feller into our room at night. He always used to shut him out. But since I let him (hubby) back in, he’s not objected to sharing the bed with the cat too.
We can’t have both cats here at night though, they fight constantly and NOBODY gets any sleep.
Had an email from son at uni yesterday. He went to a party on Saturday night, got back to his house about 8:30 AM and had to get one of his housemates to let him in, with no recollection of what he’d been getting up to. We laugh about his antics, he works hard, he is doing well with his studies, and only drinks at the weekends. It’s good to know, really, that he’s prepared to tell us what he’s been getting up to, even if it sometimes feels like too much information.
Our attitude has always been, if you can’t do those kind of stupid things when you’re a student, when can you? When will you ever learn how to deal with the consequences? We’ve both been there and done that.
But I was in the local Weatherspoons a couple of weeks ago on a Wednesday night after rehearsals, and saw crowds of drunken youngsters and wondered where their lives are going. There is a lot of moral panic at the moment about ‘binge drinking’, I’m not saying it’s not a problem for some people, because obviously it does cause a lot of unpleasantness and violence.
And it is different with a girl, though you worry about them both getting caught up in violence. Our daughter will be 17 next month. Sometimes I feel I’m holding the ring between her and her Dad. I went through a stage with her brother when I suddenly thought, well, he is big enough and strong enough to look after himself now, we have to start to let go. It has been harder with her, no doubt about it. But in many ways I realise that we’re lucky that she has reached this age without more troubles and traumas.
Just latterly she has been wanting to stay over at her friend’s near school on a Friday night, and hubby has been putting objections in her way. But she is not the sort who is happy to stay in on a Friday night, as her brother is when he’s home, as we are too, come to that. There’s absolutely nothing for her to do in the village, and she doesn’t have any friends round here. Not that there’s too much for her to get up to at her friend’s village, either, but it is a bit larger, and she has a group of friends there she can hang out with.
They get to that age when all you can do is trust that you’ve instilled enough common sense and self respect into them so that you can just let go a little and hope for the best.
There are these young people, who are still dependent on us financially and hopefully still have that emotional bond, but who need to learn how to live their lives for themselves. Any influence we may have had over the people they are becoming has already been laid down. From now on, we can watch and hope and provide whatever support and help and advice we can, but it’s up to them to make their own way.
When I think back to my teens, I remember constantly worrying about what I ‘should’ be doing, what my parents expected of me, trying to second-guess what they wanted from me. Actually, that went on a lot, lot longer than my teens, probably until they passed away (by which time I was 44). I never want to impose on my kids like that – even if I could. I don’t suppose my parents wanted to either, it mostly came from me. And here I am, still trying to negotiate who I should be.

Katwoman (yet another namecheck, she seems to be the only person I’m actually speaking to at the moment) yesterday asked if I’d thought of trying to do some more lowly writing job, rather than launch into writing a novel – the example she gave was writing for Mills & Boone (though their standards are actually extremely tough, given the nature of their product.) I read the writing mags every month, and they have suggestions for market openings for short stories and articles, and then there are jobs which have a component of writing in them – I’ve applied for quite a few of those down the years.
The problem is, as with any area, that old Catch 22 – nobody wants to know unless you h