I think I’ll invent a saying: ‘Be careful what you blog about, it might all go pear-shaped’. As soon as I wrote yesterday that I was still flying and my wings were holding up, I could feel the wax start to soften, the feathers begin to droop. In here I can talk happily of playing dangerous games and kissing frogs, but out in Real Life, it’s all about: Where-have –I-left-my-phone? And the-new-washing-machine-finally-arrived-but-we-had-to-reorder-it. And whose-turn-is-it-to-cook? And this-place-is-a-tip,-I-can’t-find-anything and we’ve-run-out-of-Persil,-better-write-it-on-the-list. And I-think-I’m-coming-down-with-a-cold,-I’ll-take-a-couple-of-paracetamols-and-a-hot-toddy-
and-go-to-bed-with-a-hot-water-bottle,-I’ll-feel-better-in-the-morning (I don’t). And Where-DID-I-leave-my-bloody-phone?
I thought that setting the alarm earlier would help to force the sleep earlier in the night, but it hasn’t happened yet, still waking up, still getting progressively more exhausted in the day time, but now I need this extra time in the mornings or else the day starts later and later.
Reading magazines in the middle of the night, the front page of the new issue of Writing Magazine screams: ‘How to succeed in romance’ then the pay-off: ‘Mills & Boon authors give you their hot tips’ ‘And more:… Create a credible fantasy world…’
So I persist with this weird dichotomy (or trichotomy?) of life in my head/computer/blogland, and life-out-there. For a month now I’ve been wrestling with the idea of change, and whether anything can really change, or whether I’m condemned to return to the same old tracks, jumping from one mad fantasy to another or, even worse, living without even a fantasy for comfort.
So I enjoyed Kandamoist’s advice, but the simple fact is that I can’t even find any frogs to practise on, let alone knights.
Well, I’m going to be late again, I’m only half way there and I still have my meditation to do. It gets later and later. I think too much about the writing because I’m conscious of blogging.
Also in the night I thought: I made a kind of resolution to submit a poem or story somewhere every month of the year, and if I don’t do that today, already I’ve broken it, fallen at the first fence.
The wind howls and rattles the windows. The waning moon is out there somewhere, but it’s gone shy now, no longer watching me, grinning at me, but keeping out of the way.
And it’s February tomorrow. I hate February. I say this every year, but it doesn’t become any less true.

You may have noticed from my previous post that I have memorised every compliment that has ever been paid to me. They are carefully stored in a dusty little box somewhere deep in my brain, wrapped in tissue paper and tied with red ribbon like old love letters, to be taken out, gloated and puzzled over every now and again.
I missed out the one about the special ‘glow’ that I have, told to me twice, years apart, by two different people, both women, both Greek. The second time was the night in Brussels when I was salsa dancing with the Crazy Frog (and a few other people, admittedly, but he was the one who said, next day, ‘I want to go salsa dancing with you again’. We never did). The night of the embarrassing photos, posted somewhere in the bowels of this blog. My second Greek friend, the one who was there that night, the one I’m still in touch with, always addresses me in her emails as ‘beautiful’. Maybe she says that to all the girls, I don’t know. When I speak to her, to any of these people, I have to remind myself that this is how they see me, not as the hopeless and rather pathetic middle aged woman I feel myself to be, but someone special and lovely.

The EMBM used to take the credit for the changes he saw in me during the time I knew him, but it wasn’t really down to him. Melinda has always been in there, just sometimes she finds no outlet and goes away and sulks for months at a time. But for now she seems to be in the ascendant, even through a damp and dreary January, with nothing much going on in the Real World, when I sit in front of my computer she is there, whispering in my head, egging me on to flights of ridiculousness. So far, my wings are holding up, the wax hasn’t quite started to melt and bring me crashing down again. Not quite.
When Chris/Lady Lucy was approaching her 40th birthday (must be about 10 years ago by now), she wrote and asked me how to cope with being 40. I wrote back and told her all the mad things I had done in the previous 3 years (got my PhD, went up in a hot air balloon, spoke at conferences in the US, etc. I missed out having sex with a 28-year old German PhD student, I didn’t feel like confiding THAT much at the time). I asked her if she knew ‘the Ballad of Lucy Jordan’, and the line ‘At the age of 37, she realised she’d never ride/through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair’. ‘Well’, I said, ‘I still haven’t given up hope!’ (and given some of the things which have happened to me in the last 10 years, I STILL haven’t).
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/m/marianne+faithfull/the+ballad+of+lucy+jordan_20088581.html
Turned out it was one of her favourite songs. In her darkest times, she used to threaten to do a Lucy Jordan, at which point I reminded her of Dorothy Parker’s poem ‘Resume’ – or ‘You might as well live’, as I think of it.
http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/4931/
From somewhere, she found a card with it printed on, and sent it to me when she moved house to California a couple of years ago. We had a few exchanges on the theme of Lucy vs Dorothy, which made me realise how firmly I am in Dotty’s camp.

People ask me why I stay in this relationship if it doesn’t make me happy. ‘You deserve so much better’, they say. ‘You’re an ace person, you deserve to be happy. You’re a vibrant, lovely lady. Lots of men would want you. You’re smart, funny, and a good mate. You’ve got an effing amazing mind and an effing gorgeous body’ (well, OK, the body’s filled out a bit since I was told that one, but it’s not that bad).
So, how come, when I meet someone I like and try to be upfront about my feelings (as opposed to my alternative and equally ineffective approach of hoping he’ll get the message subliminally and take the initiative) I get the old ‘Oh, I don’t think of you in THAT way, can’t we just be friends’ line?
For years I internalised this as meaning that I was sexless and undesirable. But actually, maybe a bit late in the day, I am beginning to get over that. I almost even believe that stuff in the first paragraph, I’ve been told it enough times by enough people (though mostly by women or by men who are quick to make plain that for them I will always be in the ‘just friends’ category).
Maybe the answer is that I don’t get out there and kiss enough frogs (used in the generic, rather than the specific, sense here). It’s like the lottery analogy, I never buy a ticket, so why should I expect a jackpot winner to just fall through my letter box?
But I can’t really do that while I’m still theoretically in a relationship, however unsatisfactory. And am I prepared to jump out of what I have, tear up the roots of thirty years, go it alone without a plan?
And what about all those frogs? Is kissing frogs (again, in the generic etc etc) really what I want? Can I be bothered with it all? Maybe 10 or 15 years ago it seemed like an exciting prospect, but these days I think of the majority of the men I know and, well, a different metaphor springs to mind, something about needles and haystacks. It all seems too much like hard work, for a very uncertain reward.
So I stick with what I know, and I look for ways to escape, however temporarily, and I indulge in my dreamy fantasies.
I’m not really waiting for the perfect knight. Galahad would be no use to me. But I’d settle for Percival.
Or even the perfect frog.

Waking at 2:30, I take myself downstairs to the sofa, folding my body into a semi-foetal curl, wrapping around my thoughts. The cat comes in, mews a greeting and settles herself into the hollow, against the curve of my body. She presses against me as tenderly as did the children when they were babies, her furry elegance curled into a perfect circle of contentment, face against my legs. I feel and hear her purrs, so loud in the quiet house.
The words beat themselves against the inside of my forehead, trapped just above my eyes, trying to escape. My notebook isn’t here, I left it by the computer when I was transcribing yesterday, they will have to wait where they are for now.
I will be so tired in the morning, yet I will have to get on and deal with the day. Writing class, writers’ group, and then an evening meeting, the first of three this week, when I will be the faithful recorder, concentrating, tracking the discussions, the words flying through my brain and out of my fingers, later to be retrieved again and confined to bits and bytes, reassembled in logical and coherent sequences, and fed back to their originators. A word processor, that is what I am, that is what I do.
I remember telling the Crazy Frog about my inability to sleep, how I feel permanently exhausted, his reply ‘you don’t look it’, casual, gentle words that mean nothing, really, and yet something in the way he said them still nestles in my mind like the cat in my lap. I remember him sleeping on the bus to Nicosia, resting against me as casually and confiding as she is now, and me being happy just for that, hoping he wouldn’t wake and pull away. Simple, ridiculous things.
Monday’s realities drive out Sunday’s fantasies. What I want seems so very little, pathetic really, something that happens to people everyday, and yet so hopelessly unattainable for me. How could I even hope to find someone to share those feelings with? The answer, I know, is to rise above the wanting, to see the fantasy for what it is. I don’t dream of winning the lottery, why should I dream of this?
Ran thinks I interpret the word desire too literally, but the smaller meaning is subsumed into the larger. Desire for love, desire for wealth, desire for change, for things to be different from how they are, right here, right now, all come from and go back into the same place, I can’t help it if the way my mind is working lately leads me to focus on that one interpretation.
My poetry mocks me, all about roses rotting in water, moths caught on pins, cranes circling, boats drifting, all trapped in their different ways. The fisher king sits in his castle in the middle of the waste land, waiting for the perfect knight. But will the perfect knight ever find his way to me?

You're not the one who needs to pack, Lilian.
Kick the bastard out.

I want to play a dangerous game - but what other kind is there? What’s life without a little pain, a little riskiness? Kandamoist once said kindly to me ‘what you need is to have sex with someone nice who you fancy and who fancies you’. Well, he would. And it’s true, of course. But I also want someone to sit in cafes with me and hold my hand, someone to stroke my hair when things get bad - or even when they're good (and they'd be good anyway just because he was there). Someone whose kisses will... hell, I can’t say anything about that that isn’t a cliché. Someone to laugh with, who’ll listen to my crazy ideas and bounce back a few of his own. Someone to tell me I’m beautiful.
I need too much. And maybe I’ll get some of that, and maybe I’ll have it just for a short while, and then life will be as it was again, and I’ll be crying into my pillow and staring at the moon. And who knows, I might write a poem or two. And then I’ll take a deep breath and get back to work.

Took the train into the new St Pancras International terminus yesterday. I was there in November, the week after the Eurostar started running from there, but at that time my train was still going into the grotty Kings Cross Thameslink, and I only walked through St Pan trying to get to the British Library to kill time till 7:00pm when I could use my cheap ticket to get home. It was a couple of weeks after I’d been to Brussels, and I felt sad, because even though I knew I would be going again ‘in the new year’, it seemed distant and unreal.
Yesterday was different. Yesterday I felt a real buzz, an adrenalin surge as I walked through the station, heading for the tube, that excitement I get whenever I’m off on my travels, even though I was only going to a boring women graduates’ meeting, because I know that in a few weeks’ time I’ll be there again, heading for Brussels, and this time it will be so cool because there will only be one change of train. No walking from Thameslink to the tube station through a building site, no struggling to Waterloo with my case, just get off the Bed-Pan line and stroll into the Eurostar terminal.
And on the way home, I noticed that the sky through the windows was striped in pink and purple, with buildings, pylons, telegraph poles and skeleton trees floating by like black paper cut outs in a zoetrope.

Hmmm. It's a bad sign when all I can think of for a title is the name of the day
I’m under time pressure today because I have to catch the train into London for a meeting of my women graduates group. If I’d woken at 5 or 4:30 today it would have been OK, I would just have got up early, but I was awake earlier in the night this time and went back to sleep some time around 5 till the alarm went off.
I can’t remember what I was dreaming about when the alarm went off, or I would write about that. But otherwise, I can’t really think of anything. I’ve decided to skip meditation today, maybe I will try and do it on the train. I can never really estimate how long everything will take me in the morning (or any other time of day come to that), it’s always a lot longer than I expect.
So, why am I spending time writing, especially when I don’t seem to have much to say? Because it’s a commitment, it’s what I do. Will I blog every day this year? I said I would do it at least till the end of January. That’s only another week. After that, we’ll see. It’s certainly been interesting. Life feels different from the way it did just over three weeks ago, as though I’ve skipped the tracks from one cycle into another one. I’m not obsessed with... what I was obsessed with then. And I’m much more hopeful, in more specific ways than the vague, ‘Darkling Thrush’ kind of hope that I started the year with.
I’ll take my abstract for Oxford with me today to work on on the train, maybe sort out a few ideas, it isn’t coming very well, I’m worried that the topic isn’t academic enough, not what they’re used to from me. And I’m on the assessment panel, so I know all the people who will be reading it, and I don’t want to disappoint them, I really need to have a paper for them but on the other hand I wouldn’t want them to accept something substandard just because it’s me – not that they would do that. And actually, all the abstracts I’ve had to assess have been anonymous, so only one of the reviewers would know it was me. But how would I feel if they turned it down? Maybe that would be a good lesson. But I just can’t get the words to perform for me. I always say they have a life of their own, and sometimes they work, and sometimes they want to play, and sometimes they just fly off in completely unexpected directions, and leave me here gasping for breath.

Oooohh errr!!!
Maybe Lilian will finally realise it's time to give that arsehole the elbow!

I grew up being teased by the males in my life – father, brother, cousins, brother’s friends, brother in law. I learned that attack is the best form of defence, I honed my sarcasm to the sharpest edge, I always aimed for the pre-emptive strike. I learned to be suspicious of soft words, of flattery, always looking for the hidden edge, always waiting for the punch-line. I learned that trusting is for suckers, and yet I longed to trust, to tell someone I thought they were wonderful, to believe them when they said I was wonderful, to still the imp in my ear whispering ‘he’s only saying that’ or ‘he doesn’t mean what you want him to mean, it’s just in your imagination, and won’t you be humiliated when he realises what’s going through your head, and then he’ll never want to have anything to do with you again’.
I heard the voice which said ‘why do you think he might want you, don’t you know what it is men want, they don’t want what you’ve got to offer, cleverness and words, they want giggles and curves and fluttering eyelashes and ego-stroking, and you won’t resort to that, you won’t stoop that low’. And if I tried, it always felt ridiculous, like a crow trying to sing an aria, and then I would think, now he can see right through me, and he knows what I want, and isn’t that pathetic, because why should I expect that he’d want me? Because showing someone that you care about them means giving them power over you, opening the shell, letting them see the soft flesh beneath, asking to be hurt or rejected or abused. So you close it all tightly, even though you know that inside there’s all that softness and loving and warmth and that it’s just suffocating.

‘It happens almost every night,/when the moon is big and bright…’
Not there today. Well, obviously it’s there, it must be behind the clouds. But it’s waning by now, surely, by next week it will a semi-circle, then fade back into obscurity again. For the time being. Once in February, then the next time after that will be the equinox. Which is why Easter is so early this year.
Will I ever stand naked under the moon again, pledge myself to it, and feel the power to keep going? Not in February, I won’t. Will I ever dance beneath it again, on a hillside overlooking the Danube? Not literally, I don’t suppose. Maybe life has other things in store for me, other magical openings to another world and another life. The door in the fairy hill opens, reveals its wonders, closes again and goes back to mud and leaves.
I said something about Sir Percival and the Grail a little while back. Melvyn Bragg last Thursday had a programme on Radio 4 about the Fisher King, the guardian of the Grail, the wounded king who can only be healed when the perfect knight asks the magic question.
All these things, thoughts, ideas, pile up inside me, things I have known about, or half-known about, for thirty years drift back up to the surface, the flotsam of my mind, and weave themselves into new patterns, floating and diving, dancing in the moonlight.
But now the critic appears – what’s this all about? Where are you going with it? You’re wandering again. Feet back on the ground, please, say something, anything, something sensible about work and the cats. My mind won’t be channeled, it finds its own course, bubbling out through springs, trickling and splashing over rocks, down through pools, into rivers, losing itself in the ocean, dragged back and forth by the insistent moon, then up into the clouds, back down again, into the earth, finding its own way back to the dark pools beneath the ground, ready to start the journey again. Over and over through the cycle. Back to the same old themes and feelings.
My phone vibrates in my dressing grown pocket, its sound muffled by the fabric, but insistent none the less. It’s 6 o’clock, and what are you doing? I’m here at the computer again, don’t worry, I don’t need you today, I’m up already.
Where does all this semi-mystical guff come from? Who knows. During the day I think of sensible things that I should write about. But they drift away from me when I sit here and the moon is outside the window, because I KNOW it’s there, even if I can’t see it, and it knows I’m here, and I haven’t meditated yet today.
But at least I guess this is better than all that self analysis and whingeing. Maybe…
I don’t know where that sentence was about to take me, because I have a sudden memory of that idiotic wax museum, the first morning on Cyprus, the two of us, waiting for each other, hesitating, lingering, letting the rest of the group overtake us, wandering through that ludicrous artificial landscape, close but shy, touching each other on the arm on the excuse of pointing out something which neither of us was actually interested in looking at, because all we wanted to look at was each other… well, all I wanted to look at was him, maybe he was feeling the same, maybe he wasn’t, how will I ever know? And outside, the rest of the group sitting on the steps, waiting for us to catch up, were they wondering where we’d got to, were they rolling their eyes and thinking ‘those two!’, putting two and two together and making five, when the sum was really three, or maybe three and a half?
And life consists of these half hidden mysteries, which never quite come into focus, and didn’t Joni Mitchell write a song called The Moon at the Window?

Meditation first today. It wasn’t a conscious choice, just that I was getting ready after feeding the cats and thought, oh, I haven’t done my writing yet. So I decided just to go ahead and see how it worked out. I think it will be quite an ad hoc thing how I decide to do it from day to day.
The moon was behind the clouds today. It’s just peeping through now, if I turn and look out of the window I can see it, but I deliberately have the computer set up so my back is to the window. The clouds are moving quite fast, I can see them passing, the wispy bits around the edges black across the light face. But now the heavy clouds are here, and have obscured it again, which is just as well really.
I’m later this morning; I was awake from 3:30 but eventually got back to sleep so that it was the alarm which woke me. Which may be partly why my head wasn’t buzzing so much that I had to come straight here, as it does sometimes when I’ve been awake for a couple of hours already before getting up.
I feel better this morning, whether because of the extra bit of sleep, or the meditation, or something totally different, I really can’t say. Cheerful, but not very verbal. I can hear the blackbird in the garden, the clock ticking, the hum of the computer. Hubby opening the bedroom door on the floor below me. The little cat’s bell – she has a different tone from the old feller, you can never confuse them, perhaps it’s the way she moves, there’s a real buzz of energy and urgency when she’s around, she’s so full of life and madness, whereas he is much calmer and more controlled, as befits a ninja.
I have been thinking about a photo which was taken on Cyprus, which I will post on Melinda (I have filled my quota here). It made me think (or maybe I was thinking this way to start with, and that’s what made me think of the photo) about how we never really notice other people’s reactions to us - well, maybe that’s me, maybe I mean I never notice other people’s reactions to me. I don’t tend to think about my having any impact on other people at all, it’s back to the childhood insecurities again, the feeling of being invisible, of passing through the world like a shadow, and if you’re noticed it’s probably in a negative way, so better not to draw attention to yourself at all. Hmmm, that does sound like it could be just me. Anyway, I’ll post the photo and you (assuming there is a you) can see what you think.
And that’s another thing, which is actually closely related. I write without any expectation of being read – the same thing really, not expecting to be noticed, or that my words will have any impact on anyone. I know I do have regular readers, and I’m very grateful to them, and I hope this doesn’t sound as though I’m devaluing them. But (and I know I’ve said this before) while other groups of bloggers regularly get caught up into conversations, I feel – again – very much on the fringes. A solitary soul, throwing my words into the void. Just me and the cats and the moon.

When I meet new people, to begin with I am very shy and reserved. I have written about this before. It comes from way back in childhood, the little girl standing on the fringes of the group. But as people make overtures to me, and I start to relax, eventually I start to believe that maybe they do like me after all.
But then it all starts to matter too much, I feel I’m being too demanding, that this person means too much to me, and maybe they don’t like me as much as I thought they did. I hover uncertainly on the edge again, running from the smallest rebuff, something which probably wasn’t even intended as such. And I think, I’ve alienated them, they’ve realised I’m not the person they thought I was, or they wanted me to be, and now I’ve scared them away, and I thought we were getting on so well, and I just want it to be the way it was, or the way I thought it was going to be, and why does this happen every time?
So then I tell myself I have to just walk away, and accept that things don’t always go as we want them to. That life is a lonely business (I know that, all right). And sometimes, even when the doors are wide open, you can’t make people come in if they don’t want to.
In theory, recognising this pattern of behaviour should help me to change it. So, if I were going to start all over again, from here and now, what should be my first step?

I struggle over my 500 words. The words are there as always, but now there is a barrier, a dam, because I know they will be read. I resolved to blog every day, at least until the end of the month, but this stuff is too raw and dangerous, even for me. Suddenly I am no longer confident in that anonymity which used to open the gates and let my soul out into the words.
I stumble to 500, and think, I will go and meditate, then come back and read what I have read and see what I can salvage. I go downstairs, and through the curtain over the small window at the top of the front door, I see the full moon. I open the door, step outside. The moon seems to radiate cold as the sun radiates heat. Even as I watch it, I am conscious that I am forming it into words, thinking of how I will express it. I pull my dressing gown closer, watch the bare branches of the tree grasping towards the white light, listen to the blackbird singing.
Back in the house, I light the candle and incense, open the curtains wide and position myself to see out of the window. It takes a while to settle myself, trying to get the posture right, fretting my brain, fidgeting, I remember I haven’t switched the coffee on, go to do that, I notice the time, later than I thought. But I will do this. I have made a commitment.
I start the tape and watch the moon, mocking me, enticing me through the glass. I will conquer desire and find equanimity. Focus on the body, when thoughts arise, congratulate yourself for noticing what has happened, then gently bring the attention back to the part of the body we are giving attention to. Toes, ankles, shins, calves, knees… where have we got to again? Close the eyes, the candle flickers, dancing past closed lids. Open them, the moon is there, watching through the window.
My mind is busy with these words. They need to be written down, there is urgency in them. Find a notebook. No, they will stay, they will still be there. Trust me. Just take this time of quietness, and all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.
The tape sputters. The batteries have died. I will sit in silent meditation. How long? How will I know how long? Breathe. Watch the candle.
The moon smiles at me. I blow out the candle and pour the coffee to bring back upstairs.

2:40AM. Bangs, scufflings and scrabblings in the bedroom. I know exactly what’s going on, I’ve heard those noises before. Question is, what do I do about it?
She had it cornered behind the dressing table, poor little thing. I wasn’t going to grab it in my bare hands, I’ve tried that before and got a nasty nip (not that I blamed it, it wasn’t to know that I was trying to help it.) I grabbed the cat and moved her out of the way, emptied out a Tampax box that was to hand, got the beastie cornered by the dressing table (with help of cat), grabbed it by the tail, dumped it in the box, took it downstairs and opened the back door – to meet the other cat running over to see what I’d got. Actually, he was more interested in coming in the back door, so hopefully the beastie got away OK.
Then, of course, I was awake till about 4:30. But no palpitations, at least (though I had the same problem again at bedtime).

Still feeling distinctly weird and woozy. Probably should be out in the fresh air. Stuck in front of the computer is probably the last place I should be, but here I am.
I need to write this abstract for the conference in Oxford. I haven’t been putting it off exactly, just not doing it. And the old crisis of confidence is kicking in, the way it always does. And I know how ridiculous it is, but there it is and I have to get through it. I want to go, I really do, see the MOMD again and my aussie friend, the one I told about the Lump, and who told me to be happy because life’s too short, and said he was pleading with me not to give up. And I’m on the Steering Group, with those two and the really nice American girl who’s doing a PhD at Cambridge and sat with me on the bus on the way home last year, and a funny American guy who was really enthusiastic about my suggestions for the Call for Papers.
But it’s so long since I’ve even thought about anything academic. I say that every year, but somehow I manage to pull something out of the hat. I know, I know, but I don’t know what to do this year. I was thinking about talking about the European project, but I feel like it’s not really academically rigorous enough, a bit anecdotal, not my usual sort of thing. I’ve been asked to talk about it at a British Federation of Women Graduates day in April. And I know it needs more publicity. So, I thought I’d talk about it at Oxford and the Royal Geographical Society this summer.
Well, all I can do is give it a go, give it my best shot, all that crap.
Nothing’s happened about the work I was discussing with the MOMD. I think we both got too busy with other stuff, then too diffident about calling each other to fix up a meeting. Stupid to let the opportunity pass by. There I go again, shooting myself in the foot as usual.
I don’t know why I’m feeling so rough physically, unless it’s just sleep deprivation. I’m not happy about this new sleeping pattern, the last couple of nights, not being able to get to sleep at 11 and then being awake at 1.
Funny, because of the meditation day yesterday, I thought I’d be feeling all chilled and good today. But I just feel like I can’t be arsed with anything.
Well, talk of the devil. Just got an email from fellow-steering group member the MOMD with his assessment of the first batch of 10 abstracts. Yep, that’s the other thing I’m supposed to be doing. Come on Belinda, get a grip. The thought of seeing HIM again has got to be enough of an incentive, surely?

The early part of the night was as disturbed as the night before, and I noticed the heart palpitations again. This is a bit worrying. I did have a cup of leaded tea, but that was at lunchtime, should have been OK. Maybe it’s eating chocolate in the evenings, but I’ve been doing that for three weeks now and it hasn’t been causing problems. I’m beginning to wonder if my throwaway remark about menopause might be correct. Bugger, that’s the last thing I need right now.
After I got back to sleep, I was awake again at 5, and stayed in bed till 5:30. I’d decided to move the alarm forward to 6 anyway. I went to a meditation day yesterday, the first of three being arranged by my meditation group. I was saying that the main thing which stops me from meditating regularly is lack of discipline and lack of time. But if I can get up half an hour earlier, I can do my writing first, and then meditate before breakfast. Which might even stop me from getting too drawn into blogging as well. Or at least I should be in a better frame of mind when I start.
So, that’s what I’ve decided to do, starting from today. But getting up half an hour earlier still gives me more time for blogging as well
And hopefully, confining my sleep time still further should help me to sleep better in the earlier part of the night.

First I couldn’t get to sleep, then I was awake early in the night, about 1:30-ish till gone 3, then I woke again about 4-ish till gone 5, then must have gone back again till the alarm went off. I could feel my heart palpitating all night – I think there must have been some dodgy chemicals in the chorizo, before anyone jumps to any conclusions. Of course my mind was racing too, but that’s inevitable. I’m still feeling hyper now – hyper and exhausted at the same time, if that makes any sense. And hot. Maybe it’s my age.

I was in the utility room getting some meat out of the freezer for tonight's dinner. And I thought 'what's that awful smell?' Or rather, I knew what it was, but I didn't want to know.
ten minutes later, I was working in the study when I noticed it again. 'Where is it this time?' I thought. 'Don't say she's started doing it behind the book cases again, like she did when she was a kitten ...Unless of course it's stuck to the bottom of my slipper...'

I've just had a phone call from Beds County Council (in my official capacity) asking for contact details for the village hall. There's me thinking someone just wants to book it for a meeting... but no, this is 'in case we need to evacuate people...'.
I'm glad we live on a hill (bit of a rarity round here).

Yesterday evening I spent some time reading the meditation book I got for Christmas. I’ve been going to meditation classes for three years now, and they’re great, and I love the people I meet there, but in between them, typically I spend more time reading about it than doing it. But the bit I was reading last night suggested asking yourself: ‘Why do I want to meditate?’ and writing down as many answers as you can come up with. So I gave it a go, and filled up a side of my A5 notebook with the following (which I write here without editing, so there’s probably some duplication):
· To find peace, calmness, equanimity.
· To be happy.
· To still the thoughts.
· To kill the dragons.
· To stop myself hurting myself.
· To find out who I am.
· To prove that I can do it.
· To prove it to myself.
· To stop wanting what I can’t have.
· To allow myself to do what I need to do.
· To find a place to be me.
· To understand who I am.
· To be able to help others.
· To be able to manage my emotions.
· To be able to see the beauty of the world.
· To learn compassion.
· To learn to focus.
· To learn how to rest.
· To find a place from which I can move forward.
· To find the path and follow it.
· To become a kinder person.
The next exercises were to write down my values, what is important to me; and to describe my ‘vision’, my map for where I am and where I want to me. I think I’ll blog those another day.

Woke at 4:45 today, and I decided to get up and get a head start on the day. I’ve been thinking (for ages) that I need to get more exercise, but the question is always, when to fit it in? Evenings are very often taken up with work meetings or other things, and when they’re not I think I need some relaxation time. Ironically, I found it easier to fit in when I was working full time, because I could go to the university gym during lunch hours or immediately after work, whereas working from home it becomes something that has to be scheduled. I enjoy aqua gym, but haven’t done it in years. I got round to looking up class times a couple of months ago but other than thinking it would be a Good Thing to do, I haven’t taken it any further. But when I drove the daughter into college on Tuesday, I found myself driving home past the pool at about 9:40, when the class starts at 10, and wishing I’d got my kit with me. So, as I’m going to be doing that again today, and there are classes on Thursday too, maybe this is the time to try it. Of course it means I probably won’t get started on work until 11:30, but if I can then work without a break until 6 (when I leave for pilates) that’ll be 6 solid hours. And I can do some on Sunday to make up. Well, I’ll see how it goes. There have to be some perks in not having a ‘proper job’.
Hubby got home yesterday afternoon, and though I can’t say I missed him exactly, neither was it unpleasant chatting to him, telling him about the cats and the pheasant (we’ve come to the conclusion that neither of us can be arsed with the plucking and drawing, so I’m going to pass it on to a friend who’s more countrified), and discussing what to do about getting a new washing machine. Such is the fabric of our life together.
I’m wondering again about the value of this obsessing over relationships. But it does feel more constructive this time around. So I’ll stick with it for a while and see how it goes.

Late today. My routine has been disrupted because no Hubby. I switched off the alarm, and didn’t realise I was dozing, but when I looked at the clock it was 7:20. If he were here, I’d have heard him get up at 7:00. Not that we see one another at breakfast time. I get up first, feed the cats, grab a cup of coffee then come up here blogging/facebooking/500 wording. By the time I finish, and go down for breakfast, he has usually had his and started work (we have ‘his and hers’ studies, in the attic). Occasionally our paths cross in the bathroom when he’s cleaning his teeth and I’m showering, but normally he’s finished and gone before I get there. Yesterday I tried to make the effort to be in the kitchen for when he went out, not that I needed to bother.
Yesterday evening was a bit disturbed as well, apart from having to deal with what the cats dragged in (or failed to), then taking pics of it (when I got back from pilates) and blogging about it.
http://melinda-in-surreality.blog.co.uk/2008/01/15/maybe_it_fell_off_a_tesco_s_lorry~3582504
Then I decided to watch telly (normally hubby sits and watches telly in one room, and I read or listen to the radio in another room – it’s a BIG house). I had two films I recorded before Christmas which I’d never got round to watching, so I thought this was a reasonable opportunity: ‘Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ and ‘The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou’.
Well, I’d missed recording the beginning of H2G2, and started watching it when they were already on the Heart of Gold (I wonder, en passant, if Douglas Adams was a Neil Young fan? Hmmm, I remember him mentioning Bach and Dire Straits in ‘So Long and Thanks for all the Fish’. But I digress). The bit where they find out about Deep Thought and the Ultimate Answer. And I stuck about 5 minutes of it. How could anyone DO that??? How could ANYONE possibly think it was a good idea? What were they hoping to achieve?
Well. Words fail me.
I watched ‘The Life Aquatic’ for two reasons: the soundtrack and Bill Murray. ‘The Life Aquataic Sessions’ by Seu Jorge is one of my favourite albums.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6l8zrsf4LY
The film was… OK, I guess. ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’ on water. Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon and Owen Wilson were in it as well, but they were all dressed, haired and made-up to look much less attractive than usual. And Cate Blanchett’s cut-glass ‘British’ accent was the worst I’ve heard in years (why did they make her do that?) It was good enough so I wanted to see it through to the end, and not good enough that I would ever have gone back and watched it another time, so I stayed up and watched the whole thing, which made me later to bed than usual.
I’ve never been much of a box goggler, but these days I find it far too much of an effort. Which is weird, because I guess most people would say it was more relaxing than reading. But I just can’t be doing with it any more.

When I started writing this, I was totally devoid of inspiration. I've written 500 words all right, but they are all banal stuff about writers group and the Parish Council meeting last night (which went on till 10:40), and whether the buses will get through the floods or I'll have to go and pick up daughter and take her into college. this is probably a good sign because it means I’m not being introspective.
But now hubby has gone off to work in Warwick. normally he works from home, but he has something going on up there which means he will be away all day today, tonight and most of tomorrow. So I'll be on my own tonight (with the cats), and I don't mind that so much,per se, but suddenly, after he left the house without a kiss or any sign of affection at all, I suddenly felt the desolation of - what if there's nobody out there who wants me at all? what would it be like to be completely alone and unwanted? and I guess it's that terror that keeps me here after all.

I dreamt last night, I don’t know what about, but bizarrely, just before I woke up, I was talking to Stephen Fry and saying, ‘You might think I’m just some innocuous little person, but don’t you believe it.’

Yesterday, apart from blogging, I spent a lot of time messing around with my novel, and got discouraged. It’s not enough. Because I couldn't see how I was going to get to the end, I decided to turn it into a trilogy (there are good reasons why that makes sense), so that I could complete the first volume and have something to send to publishers. But the first volume, even when it’s done, won’t be enough for publication – 50,000 words maybe, as things stand. I’ve got 40,000 so far, but it DOES need a LOT of editing. Far too wordy and rambling, too much narrative, not enough 'in scene', too much ‘show’, not enough 'tell'.
Hmmm.
And I still haven’t got anywhere with writing any more of it. I reached a halt, and now how do I start again? I used to just write the next 500 words, sit down each morning and do it. And it’s pretty OK, though as I say there’s far too high a proportion of narrative, it needs to be a bit more ‘punchy’. Maybe because my mind works in narrative, it tells me stories. But I can do dialogue too, sometimes I can hear it in my head.
What I’m doing now (and have been doing for the last year) is going through the draft that I have, editing it, and reading it out to my Monday afternoon writers’ group – not every week, just sometimes. And they seem to like it – well, some of them do, this is a group of 14 people, you’re not going to please ALL of them. But people have said to me ‘I want to know what happens next. And it’s not the sort of thing I would have thought of reading’. It’s fantasy, not everybody’s cup of tea. But though it’s set in a pseudo-mediaeval world with gods and goddesses intervening in human lives, it’s really about people, and as somebody said to me once, ‘you make them behave and think just like we do’, which is rather the point.
At the Monday morning (taught) session last week, the tutor was telling us about a friend of hers who’s a psychologist, and can’t write fiction because he’s too aware of people’s motivations and can’t make that imaginative leap. And I wondered if that is part of the reason why I, as a social scientist, have to set my fiction in a different world from this one. Maybe that’s a little far-fetched, but it’s an idea. There is very little magic per se, admi