What is the point at which it’s not worth trying to go back to sleep? It seems to be getting earlier. Today it was 4:20 when I woke. Given that it takes me at least 2 hours to get back to sleep, and my normal getting up time is 6, I wonder what is the point of waiting for sleep to return? I’m tired, but not relaxed. I get up, read for a while, go back to bed, lie there, feeling the tension, trying to still my mind. The irony is that I made my rising time earlier to try and escape this problem, but it has just shifted it. I thought about switching off the alarm and letting sleep come when it will, I did that one day last weekend. But I’m used to having this time in the mornings now, I don’t like to give it up. So, I got up at 5 to 6 (resentful at the hour and a half I had wasted), fed the cats, did my meditation, came up here to the attic, started to write.
I heard a trailer yesterday for ‘Desert Island Discs’ with a composer, I think his name is Howard Goodall – somebody Goodall, anyway, like the chimp lady. He was saying that ever since childhood, he has always had music running through his head, all the time, and he just has to catch it and write it down. It took him a while to work out that not everybody has that. That really is pretty amazing. All I have is words running through my head all the time, and have had ever since I was a child, some of the time I write them down, mostly I just let them drift away from me. I’ve always taken it for granted. I don’t know how unusual or normal it is, I don’t usually think about it in that detail. But maybe if it’s possible for some people to have this thing with music, maybe it’s not so normal, maybe not everybody has it, maybe some people have images, or numbers, or mathematical formulae, or coloured dots, or, like Homer Simpson, cans of beer. Who knows? But the way he said it really struck a chord with me, a feeling of ‘That’s exactly how I am with words!’ How much control do I have over the flow? Some, obviously, not as much as I’d like, probably I could have more if I trained myself better. If I HAVE to write something about a specific topic, rather than just letting it flow, I can do it, usually, most of the time. But most of the time I just don’t bother, I write whatever pops up That’s what I’m doing now, what I do every morning.
I’m going to do some gardening today. It’s about time. I need to get out of this machine and into the world for a while. I’ve got many things out of the way, but there is still more to deal with, more that needs to be done in the next two weeks. I just haven’t thought it through properly yet. But I’ll have one day trying to sort out my weedy and neglected borders.

I came to a decision yesterday – I thought hard about what I was going to do on my ‘spare’ day in Brussels, got out the Paris guide book, thought about the places I didn’t make it to last time, and the places I want to go back to, and decided I would definitely go. I still have my card of the Eiffel Tower and the caption: ‘The only things I’ll regret are the things I don’t do’ above my desk. So, I went online to book the ticket – but then I found that the fare quoted was only one way, and that a return fare would cost twice as much, almost as much as it cost me to go from London. So, it seemed a bit daft. Then I went to the Eurostar site to try and find the trips it offered me when I booked my ticket, to Bruges and Ghent. But I couldn’t find that either – maybe you only get to it when you actually book. So, I will stay in Brussels after all, but I’m going to have a good look at the guide book and find some places I haven’t been and things I haven’t done before, rather than just mooching around aimlessly as I usually do.
Someone at meditation last night referred to the question: ‘What would you do if you only had a few weeks left to live?’ I think I would set off across Europe by train, maybe visit all my friends, or at least the main ones. Maybe take the Orient Express, or just head off east. Go to Prague, definitely, and Budapest, I can feel an itinerary forming in my mind, maybe go further, into Central Asia, possibly the Trans-Siberian Express... But, for now, I’ll content myself with planning a trip to Brussels.
At tea break last night, I got talking to a lady who hasn’t been coming to the group for long, only since the full day session in February. She had recently split up with her partner when she started coming, and now lives on her own. She spoke very positively about it, as a new beginning – I guess she is a few years older than me, though not much. She asked me particularly about my work situation, but then she said, ‘What about the rest of your life, how is your personal life?’ and my initial silence said it all I guess. The long standing members of the group know all about the cat business, they supported me though it. But it was strange talking about it again, explaining it to someone else. I take it so much for granted, I forget how bizarre it actually was, from the point of view of someone who doesn’t know us.
Well, forget that. Friday today, and, amazingly, Hubby is home, not driving down to Basingstoke for the first time in ages, though I didn’t know until I got back at 10:15 last night. I’m hoping (naively, I know) that the weather might be fine enough to get the barbecue out – it will be first time this year, if so. The last few years we have started our Friday evening barbecues at Easter, but maybe we'll enjoy it more because of the anticipation - deferred gratification, and all that

I have booked my ticket for Brussels. Our meeting is on Monday 16th June, and we are meeting on Sunday afternoon to rehearse the presentation, but I have booked to go on Friday and come back on Tuesday. That potentially gives me Saturday on my own, as I don’t know who else is going early. So, I’ve been wondering about what I should do that day. The options I’ve been considering are: Taking a trip out into the countryside, maybe a bus tour of Bruges and Ghent; Staying around the city, maybe doing a guided tour or mooching around the museums; or taking the train to Paris.
I originally thought about trying to go to Paris on Friday, staying there Saturday, getting the train to Brussels on Sunday and coming home from there, but it was much more expensive to buy two one-way Eurostar tickets than one return.
I could do this, but.. what would I do? Just to go there, with no plan in mind? Might I just find myself lost and aimless? Would that matter? There would be no point in thinking of doing any of the tourist things, the Eiffel Tower, the museums, I would spend my day in queues. Last time I was there, I felt this great happiness from just being there, but… would that work again, being there on my own? Should I, romantically, find a café and just sit and write? But I could do that in Brussels – or London, Cambridge, even Bedford. Aaaahhh, but I would be in PARIS!
Indecisive as ever, I can’t decide what my heart is telling me to do. To go and be disappointed – wouldn’t that be terrible?
Last night, I was still awake when Hubby came to bed. I thought about reaching out to him, just to hold another human being for once. But what would have happened? We would have lain together for a few minutes until he fell asleep, then I would have to extricate myself, he would groan and roll over, and I would still be lying alone, with the same thoughts and feelings. Better to leave things as they are, not to try and cross the distance, to close the gap, to feel myself drawn back in, when I know that ultimately I will only find myself back in the same place, the one from which I have started to extract myself.
Does the fault lie in me, in him, or both of us? There was a time when I didn’t feel like this, was it inevitable from the beginning that this was how it would end, two people living parallel lives in the same space? He hasn’t changed. What did I expect? I don’t know. I clung to him in those early days and assumed that any inadequacies in the relationship were all down to me, that if I worked at it and made a commitment and tried to adapt myself, everything would be all right. I don’t know what he is thinking or feeling, how can I know, how can anyone ever know? Are we so unusual? Maybe lots of couples end up this way. What would he do if I said any of this to him, how would he react? The same way he did last time, I guess, with silence. Would it be a surprise, would it be a relief, would he just dismiss it, knowing that I probably wouldn’t do anything, just as I never did anything last time I threatened to go? That time, I always said, it was circumstances that kept me here. Circumstances change, but have they changed enough?
Should I suggest going back to Relate again? Would that do any good? Well, for a start, it’s not feasible at the moment because he wouldn’t be able to get time off work for the appointments. And anyway, my heart isn’t in it.

I don’t want this to turn into an obsessional account of my sleeping problems, but last night was BAD.
I went to a meeting yesterday evening, not of the PC but of another committee, which consists of 2 parish councillors, myself, and two other residents. At some point in the proceedings – and this wasn’t pre-meditated – I told them that they might have to look for another Parish Clerk. The Chair, who I spoke to after the last meeting, was there, but the others didn’t have a clue. In part, I think it was attributable to my Former Favourite Councillor buying me a pint of mild – I told him I was only expecting a half, and he said, ‘I know, that’s why I didn’t ask’... anyway, as the evening wore on, my mood was anything but mild.
When asked why, I said it was because, of all the things I do, this one gives me the most aggravation for the least reward. One of the other guys said ‘Reward?’ in a slightly scornful and incredulous voice, as though there was something wrong with the idea that I might hope to get something out of it for myself. Yes, I replied, both financially and in terms of satisfaction. I also said about not being prepared to turn down more interesting opportunities for this, and that I’d spoken to my family and friends, and everyone was in agreement that I should give it up.
I think I gave them food for thought. They asked who else they could get to do it, and I gave them the name of the lady who advertises the clerks’ posts. But we’ll see. I haven’t burnt any bridges yet.
One of the bugbears is the noticeboard. This is right across the road from my house, outside the village hall, and yet I have this big, inexplicable block about actually walking over there and putting stuff on it. It just doesn’t seem very important. The Chair last night made a comment about it, she has offered to take it over, but even getting my head round getting the stuff together and calling her to come and do it seems too much effort. I know this is daft. She was commenting that I hadn’t put up a notice about an event on 7th June, and was saying that it will be too late because people won’t know about it – she also remarked that I’d put one on the noticeboard in the other village, and how nice that noticeboard was - I did that because I had to go over there, I knew I could leave this one. I said don’t have the time or the motivation, she said she thinks it’s the motivation. She could be right, but the time is the main thing – even something which takes a small amount of time is difficult to fit in when there is so much else which has to be done- it just goes down and down the priority list. It’s four months now since I went on training for setting up a website, provided by the County Council and using a Content Management System, I just need to spend a couple of hours tidying it up and getting it ‘live’, and I haven’t even done that.

The words aren’t flowing this morning, it’s difficult to drag them out from where they’re hiding. My shoulders ache from hunching over the keyboard, I roll them and they crack and groan. Maybe I’ll book myself in for a massage, an indulgence, but why not?
The question I woke with, was: why is it so hard to believe that somebody likes you? I’ll rephrase that, because I don’t know whether it’s just me. Why do I find it so hard to believe that somebody likes me? And how might this seem to them, whoever they are? A lack of trust, perhaps? But it comes from insecurity, this assumption that they don’t care, not directed at them, but at myself, this assumption that I’m not loveable.
How do we learn to love ourselves? How do we learn not to? What is it that drives out those feelings of warmth and caring? I can’t think back now, to put myself into the mind of the child I was. I believe, intellectually, when I think about it, that I was loved, just as I love my own children. But I can’t say I remember feeling loved. Do I feel loved now? I feel my daughter’s love, the one human being in the world who every says ‘I love you’. My husband? I guess he still loves me, there again, he has never told me so in so many words, it has always been something I have had to take on trust, assume that he wanted me, as much as, at one time, I wanted him.
I suppose I have always had this ambivalent relationship with being loved. My first husband loved me – or said he loved me – in an oppressive way which made me feel – well, if that’s how he feels, I guess I should love him back, and I tried to convince myself, even though even from the earliest times I wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. By comparison, perhaps, the restraint and silences of my current husband came as a relief.
I have female friends (non-english ones) who seem to love me extravagantly, in ways I find hard to understand, I have to take their affection on trust, because it seems implausible, I don’t see in myself the qualities which I assume they must see in me, they seem deluded in some way. Although I’m always grateful for this kind of attention, it doesn’t seem authentic, because I don’t understand where it comes from, and so I’m wary of accepting it in case it will suddenly be withdrawn – when they realise I’m not worthy or I don’t deserve it.

I posted a link on Melinda yesterday to a short story of mine on another site, in the hope that I'd get some comments, but nothing so far
http://www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/Eagle-Flight.107861
Bank Holiday Monday. It does have a slightly different feel, though I don’t know why because I will just be sitting in front of the computer, as always. Might take some time out to do some housework, as I didn’t get round to it yesterday. Hubby will be around, of course. We were talking about possibly getting the barbecue out, if the weather was like Saturday, but that doesn’t seem very likely.
Why do I do this every day, sit and write about the trivia of my life? I don’t really know any more – well, actually, I suppose I do – apart from habit, it’s because if I keep on writing when I think there’s nothing to say, sometimes that is when the gems appear. Not that that has happened much lately.
Sometimes I know in advance what I want to say, sometimes it comes to me in meditation (when I’m trying to stop the thoughts from coming altogether.) Sometimes I have to sit here with the keyboard under my fingers before anything will come at all, and then I have to keep going with nothing to say and sometimes, just sometimes, something worthwhile will emerge.
There is no quality control, no editing (beyond the obvious, typos, spelling etc). There’s an interesting thought. Does ‘typos’ have an ‘e’ before the ‘s’? As a child, I was taught that words ending in ‘o’ always have an ‘e’ before the ‘s’, no, change that ‘always’ to ‘usually’, because there are exceptions. Anyway, the Microsoft spell checker doesn’t like ‘typoes’.
I digress. And somehow, I don’t think that particular digression is going to turn into a ‘gem’.
Five hundred words is really too much for a blog entry. But this is my journal, and 500 words is my discipline. To cut it down to something more coherent and succinct would be far too much effort. Some famous writer (possibly Dr Johnson?) is alleged to have said: ‘I’m writing you a long letter because I don’t have time to write a short one’. I know exactly what he means. Far easier to ramble on than try and think how to cut it down to what you really want to say (assuming you know what it is that you want to say).
Which reminds me of what I was doing yesterday morning. From our two workshops, my European group are producing a document to be presented in Brussels next month. The contributions from the rest of the group have come in, and the organisers have produced a combined text, but it’s going to be up to me to edit it into ‘good’ English. This is a challenge, because how far do I go? I must be careful not to take away the flavour of what has been said. This has been produced by 27 people from 27 different countries. And apparently (I discovered yesterday) I am supposed to be incorporating the results of an online survey of the 27 as well. Might have been nice if they’d mentioned that to me in Paris. Well, maybe they did and I’ve forgotten; if I’d been asked, my answer would have been ‘Sure, fine, no problem’. I love doing stuff like that. All unpaid, of course, but I am trying to get some paid work out of them at some point, so it’s a good opportunity to show them what I’m capable of.

Went to a 60th birthday party yesterday, a lady from my writing group. In my head I thought it started at 2:00pm, so I was working away in the morning, went at 1:10 to get ready, looked at the invitation and realised it started at 12. I thought about not bothering to go so late, but I was glad I did, she was very relaxed about it and I wasn’t even the last there. The food was wonderful: bread, cheeses, pate, salads, meringues, cherries, champagne… catered by the Cheese Kitchen on Castle Road. (I love Castle Road. When I went to writing I used to park in a side road and walk along there to get to the training centre. If I ever go back regularly again, I may do a Technomist on Castle Road!
There was a good contingent there from the writers, and it was nice to see them all. I got the obvious questions (after they’d finished teasing me about being ‘fashionably late’): ‘When are you coming back?’, ‘what have you been working on?’; ‘How’s the novel?’. They have been the first audience for my novel, which I’ve been reading out to them in instalments. Given that they are all quite elderly (mostly retired) and not exactly fans of fantasy, they have been surprisingly enthusiastic, and I’ve been grateful for their support.
I chatted for a long time to the lady who is currently editing our annual anthology. I haven’t been for ages, but I sent her a short story via email before Easter, one that I wrote for an assignment when I was still doing the creative writing course.
I only really write stories when I have to do them for assignments. I have done three years of classes now, they only run for two terms, so it has been 6 courses all together, which is the complete cycle. There is a very strong group of people who started a year after me, and they will be continuing in September. The afternoon group (the people at the party yesterday) are made up largely of people who have completed the course.
Although I certainly don’t have the time to spare, I feel sad that I probably won’t have classes to go to next year. They are very stimulating, and I’ve really enjoyed them. The tutor at the end of last term was saying that she might develop a fourth pair of courses, starting in September, so that our group (there are two others in the same position as me) can keep together. But then the same thing will arise next year with some having done all four years and some not. And the funding arrangements change next year (2009-10 academic year), which will make it much more expensive for graduates to do such courses, the priority being given to non-graduates, who will continue to be subsidised.
We talked at the end of term about stetting up a group of our own, perhaps meeting in a local café, but nothing has come of that so far, and of course I’m too busy to think of such things at present. I hope I can continue. But there’s only so much you can do with the time you have.

Getting up at 5:30 (I was awake at 4:45) has given me a good start on the day. I played the whole of the ‘Cultivation of loving kindness’ section on my meditation tape – that was where it had got to. Usually I just do a couple of sections of it, but today I did the whole thing because I had time. I mostly just use the tape for guidance over the time, there are bells which ring every 10 minutes or so, so it gives me an idea how long I’ve been there without having to check the clock. Today, because I was early, I thought I would go through it until my alarm went off. Towards the end, I started to wonder about whether or not I’d remembered to set the alarm last night. I could have just carried on until the end of that section of the tape anyway, but I opened my eyes and found it was 5:55. As soon as the last bell had rung for the end of the meditation, the alarm went off as well.
In the final stage, feeling loving kindness towards all living things, my mind started to wander off to think about the 6 degrees of separation theory.
(For some reason, the first hotlink, which gives a less technical and more intuitive interpretation, doesn't work, but you can cut and paste the URL into your browser).
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci932596,00.html
http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/sixdeg.html
Ever since I met Ken Clarke last month, this has been bobbing around the back of my mind. Through having met him, I’m one step away from Thatcher and her cabinet, and all the people she must have met, the political establishment of the 80s and early 90s. And, of course, that includes Ronald Reagan, and through him the Hollywood of the 50s and 60s (probably through that lot I can quite easily get to Kevin Bacon.) then I was thinking about meeting Anthony Giddens at the Royal Geographical Society conference last year – well, ‘meet’ is not exactly the right word, more, shook his hand because the woman I was with asked him for his autograph for her daughter (weird, I know). He must be a link to all sorts of people, but then, I have loads of contacts into academia. And my brother, in his career as an oil industry executive, must have met people all over the world, including meeting Prince Charles at a reception, so that’s my entry into the royal family – though of course, the Ken Clarke-Thatcher line would have led that way as well.
Also, as well as all these establishment types, my tentacles reach all around the world, first across Europe (where I know people from all 27 EU member states), and the US, and basically all over through people I’ve met at conferences. But also, at second hand, given that my hubby and brother, actually most of my family, have travelled a lot, I have all the people that they’ve been in contact with too. Oh, and the boy from my childhood who became a guitarist, I guess through him I have contact with the folk music scene over the last thirty years, and he now lives in California, so that is another link with there. And what might have happened to all the people I knew at university, they could be anywhere by now?

A dirty plate by the side of the computer. That’s a bad sign. No matter what, normally I don’t resort to eating my food while I’m working. But yesterday…
I’ve really enjoyed the last few days. To have one big thing to work on that takes over from everything and pushes all the other crap aside, so I can just sit and do it. I love that.
Which tells me, I suppose, what I should be doing.
I’ve always thought that I wouldn’t be able to find enough work in the dtrp/editing line, so I have to hang on to the other things. But if I can persuade the MOMD in Oxford to give me more to do – and I know he has a huge backlog of stuff that needs doing – there should be enough to keep me happy. Just as long as he can afford to keep paying me for it. OK, so I haven’t invoiced him for the work I’ve already done yet,. Largely because I feel bad about all the delays, I feel I let him down. I know, I know, that’s pretty stupid. And then, if the work on the European website happens, they said that could be a day a week. But what I’m not clear about with that is whether/how much they’d be able to pay me. But if that came off – and I could do some more work with the MOMD – and I still had the magazine – I would have enough to keep me going – and if I gave up the clerking altogether , maybe enough time to write too.
Not that I’m ready to give up clerking yet. But I am seriously thinking about getting out of one of the Parish Councils.
One of the things which has been pushed aside in the last couple of weeks is an application for funding to the County Council, which has to go in by the end of the month. If I don’t do it, that would mean us losing £7,000. Maybe if I ‘forget’ to do it they will sack me for gross incompetence? I mentioned this to Trish at meditation last night, but she told me I had to stand up to them and tell them I was going and not let them bully me into staying. Well, bullying isn’t the right word, I guess ‘emotional blackmail’ would be it!
The other dilemma in all this is that I have agreed to go for the ‘CiLCA’ (Certificate in Local Council Administration). I have done the training, and the final step is to put together a portfolio of work, which will be examined. Part of me says, why should I bother putting in the work for something I’m not really interested in or committed to any more? But the two PCs have already paid for the training and registration of the portfolio, so I feel obliged to go through with it (or pay them back).
But something which occurred to me in the last couple of days, is that it’s worth going through with it anyway, even though it will mean doing that extra work (probably over the summer, when hopefully things will ease off a little). Because once I have that, unless things change drastically, I will be in a strong position (added to my experience) to go for any other clerking jobs which might come up. And although that sounds mad, given how much I complain about it, it gives me a safety net. If the dtp/editing/web design side of things does fall apart, as long as I keep up my contacts, I shouldn’t have too much trouble finding work – there are always councils advertising for clerks – and schools are even more desperate for governors’ clerks, I could easily have a full time (though not very lucrative, admittedly) business doing that if I’d followed up all the requests I’ve had. So, I need never be out of work – even if it’s not the work I really want to do, and it might never pay me enough to be financially independent – at least it’s relatively interesting, I’m experienced, and I could be qualified, and it’s better than stacking shelves in Tesco.

The magazine has to go to the proof readers today – or as much of it as is ready. In the post, so they can get it tomorrow, look at it over the weekend, then they won’t be able to send it back till Tuesday, so the editor will get all their comments on Wednesday, she will ring me up and go through it on Wednesday so I can make the final changes and get it into the printers by next Thursday, because they need it by Friday at the latest in order to get it back to the office by the despatch date, so they can get it all sent out so it can get to the members in good time before the conference…
I enjoy doing it, throwing myself into it, getting absorbed, getting a real buzz. Busy but not stressed. It blots out all the stressful things.
But last night I woke at 3:30 – my son was playing music, I don’t know if that was what woke me but I could definitely hear it after I woke. I went and asked him to switch it off. But then, of course, I couldn’t get back to sleep. Still awake when hubby got up at 5:30, though I was asleep before the alarm went off at 6. didn’t get up straight away, I was waiting for the snooze to go off, but I hadn’t put snooze on. In the end I got up at 6:20, skipped meditation.
While I was lying awake, that was when the stress came back, all the other stuff that’s been blotted out. It’s so great to have something big to focus on and get really absorbed in, and to be able to ignore all the rest, but they can’t be ignored for ever.
I don’t feel much like writing this morning, although surprisingly I’ve already done over 300 words. I have some more stuff to blog on Cassandra about evolution, written on the Eurostar on my way to Paris, it needs to be transcribed out of my notebook. I bought a new notebook at St Pancras, I had a couple of hours to kill, but it’s not a bad place to kill time. And then I sat and wrote and wrote in my notebook, and some more when I was on the train. Can I lose myself in my head and just write? It doesn’t matter what, if I keep going long enough, surely something worthwhile will come out?
That might sound – optimistic, arrogant even, maybe wishful thinking – except, it comes from experience, I know it’s happened in the past, that is the way to make it happen, just to keep going. Persistence, that’s my method of getting through things, slogging away, sticking with it, getting past the obstacles. Maybe that’s my downfall too, I keep on putting up with things for too long when I should walk away. It’s hard to get that balance right. And now I need to write four more words, and what more words are there?

What do I want from my life? I keep coming back to this question. Someone else asked me again yesterday. Whenever I have tried to answer it, I’ve always been stymied by the immediate proviso that what I say must be realistic and achievable. So, being a famous writer living on a Greek island is ruled out from the start, as is being a struggling writer living in Paris with a 30 year old lover, or being a writer who earns enough to travel around the world with a laptop going from place to place and being paid to keep sending her words out into the void. Hmmm, there’s some kind of a theme going on here. But they all fall down in the face of paying the bills and staying on good terms with everybody.
Does it matter? Who cares what I do?
I am in this strange place now the children are grown, a place of potential liberation. But what do I do about it? Everything is tied up with the idea of financial independence. I must be one of the last generation of women to feel like that, we’re all supposed to have our own careers, but what happened to mine? My best chance of having the security to do what I want to do is by staying here, but how does that make me feel? Well, I don’t need to go into details, if you’ve read any of this blog you probably have a pretty good idea about how I feel.
I tailor my aspirations to what seems to be achievable, but even then I’m constantly being disappointed, life never works out the way I hope it will, people turn out not to be who I thought they were (and why should they be?)
Life is bringing me new opportunities now – potentially. I’d be a fool not to take them – but I have to let go of the old ones. And that’s hard, really hard – to let go of the side and strike out into the deep end, to let the water hold me, to be suspended, with my feet not touching the bottom any more. The things I hold onto are the things which support me. I hold on to them as a drowning man holds onto a piece of driftwood, in the middle of a limitless ocean. Am I drowning?
Look at your life, see the good things, hold onto the good things, cherish them. But the good things hold me back too, they are the plank that keeps me here in both ways, it stops me from drowning, but it also stops me from moving on. But how can I move on when I don’t know where I’m moving on to?
This is a unique moment perhaps, a critical moment. I still have health (and maybe some modicum of looks, for what that matters), but who knows how much longer that will last? I had this feeling ten years ago, when I finished my PhD and thought I would be able to get a job and support myself – but that never happened, academia didn’t want me, no matter how hard I battered on its doors. And the children were still young, so I became resigned to staying, to playing happy families, to carrying on with life as it was, the easy route. But now?

Late today. Hubby has left already. Is he early or am I late? Bit of both, I think. The alarm woke me, but I still lay there for a while coming to, till the snooze went off. When I sat down for meditation, I remembered I hadn’t switched the coffee on, went into the kitchen and he was already there having breakfast. When I came back to get my coffee, his car was just leaving the drive.
I woke up thinking about Going somewhere’s comments about sex. Don’t know why, that wasn’t what I’d been dreaming about, I remember what I was dreaming about and it wasn’t that, it wasn’t at all interesting, just about a big house with lots of rooms. A recurring theme in my dreams, though I wouldn’t say a recurring dream, because they’re all different. But when I woke I was thinking about her comments that nothing is better than sex, and wondering what that could be like, that sex which is better than any other feeling. I do like sex, but I have to say that when it happens it never lives up to the expectation, and I can’t say I remember a time when it ever has.
So, what does give me that kind of ecstasy? Being in Paris last week, just being there and knowing I was in such a beautiful place for a while filled me with joy, but that’s not really the same thing. Falling in love and believing the other person loves you back, that is amazing, but by its nature it can’t last and you can’t keep repeating it that many times, it just happens like a shooting star, then it’s gone and you think, ‘well did I see it or didn’t I?’ and apart from an impression of intensity and then loss you never really know whether it was there or not.
And kissing. I like kissing, real deep, hungry kissing. I started thinking this when I was trying to meditate. If I think about it, I could work out the last time I kissed somebody like that. I tried not to think about it, I was determined not to think about it, but then I remembered, it must have been this time of year, and it would have been ten years ago, 1998. So there you are.
Well, there is no point in thinking about things that are never likely to happen, no point in beating yourself up about them.
I guess I have to go along with AC Grayling and say that happiness comes from achievement, from getting things done. Of course, there is a big difference between bliss and happiness. I guess I’d settle for either. But bliss always brings regret in its train. It never lasts, it can’t last. I guess one definition of bliss could be ‘a feeling which exceeds the anticipation leading up to it’ – not a very good definition, I admit. But that’s part of it. When something happens and it’s even better than you expected it to be, and you get that sudden feeling of, ‘wow, if that was possible, anything’s possible!’ Not something you can ever plan on or make happen, obviously. Life either throws you these things, or it doesn’t, and that’s that.

Ran asks: ‘Why do you care about your feelings?’ A daft question – aren’t the two synonymous? I look them up in Chambers. The definition for ‘to care’ is like a found poem:
‘To be anxious; to be inclined;
To be concerned; to mind;
To have affection, fondness or regard for;
To provide for,
Watch over,
Look after.’

The one for feelings is more prosaic:
‘Consciousness of pleasure or pain; an impression received physically or mentally; tenderness; emotion; sensibility; susceptibility.’
So, why should we be anxious, or concerned, or mind about our consciousness of pleasure or pain? Well, we just are, or, I just am. If we’re not anxious etc etc, does it really count as pleasure or pain? Maybe anxious isn’t the right word. Let’s say ‘emotionally affected’. But that gets circular, doesn’t it? Doesn’t emotionally affected effectively mean the same as ‘feeling’? So, it’s a tautology. I care about my feelings because of the way they make me feel.
One of the aims of meditation, though, is to be able to observe your feelings without engaging with them. So, in the mountain meditation you sit like a mountain while the feelings which pass through your mind are like the weather which blows around the mountain but doesn’t really affect it. I remember reading or hearing somewhere (though I can’t remember where or when) a distinction between ‘feelings’ and ‘emotions’, on the lines of, feelings are the sensations which you feel (obviously), but emotions are the way you react to them, and you can make a conscious choice as to how you will react.
One of the phrases we use in the loving kindness meditation is ‘May I/he/she/they/all living beings be free from suffering’. In one sense, this is nonsense, because the inevitability of suffering is the First Noble Truth (‘shit happens’). So maybe what it means is freedom in the sense of consciously detaching yourself from experiencing suffering, not in a callous way, but as Bob Marley says: ‘Free yourself from mental slavery/None but ourselves can free our minds’.
But who can do this, except maybe the Buddha? And anyway, yesterday I didn’t ‘feel’ inclined to detach myself from my suffering, the way I chose to deal with it was to write it all out, and thanks to the kind people who responded gently. And thanks too to Ran for making me think, as he always does.

I’m so lucky. I mean, really, really lucky. Look at all the people in the world who are really suffering, all the people who have died or been injured or lost everything in the disasters of the last few weeks, who have lost their loved ones. I look around me on a beautiful morning with the sun shining in through the windows of my lovely house and I try and I try and I try to count my blessings, and I know how selfish and despicable I am to fail so miserably to be happy when I have so much to be grateful for.
Yes, I’m back here again, back in this place. Why why why does it always come back to this? What will it take to make me happy? What is the point of it all? Everything turns to dust. What have I done with my life? What is the point of living like this, the only chance we get, and yet what have I done? I’ve wasted everything, everything that comes my way because nothing has any value and it all leaves me feeling empty and wanting and I can’t see any alternative.
So, is that all I’m going to write about today? I can’t think of anything else to say. The same old same old, the acknowledgement of unhappiness, the impossibility of finding a way of making things different, the recognition that I should be happy, that if all the things I have don’t make me happy there is something fundamentally wrong inside, some deep and ineradicable flaw in my psyche, the sense of failure that I am so incapable of this simple thing, the guilt at my selfishness and stupidity. What if I’d lost a child, what if I’d got cancer, what if I’d lost my home or someone I loved in some awful disaster. Then I’d look at me as I am and feel nothing but rage for my stupidity. Why can’t I see it? Why can’t I do something about it? Why can’t I find a way out of this mess? Stuck here in this place where I’ve been so many times and the rage boils up inside me and I look at my life and my feelings and I know it’s all my own stupid fault, that I’m here because this is what I deserve for not being a stronger person or a better person or a kinder or more loving person, but just this self-obsessed, whining, hateful person who sits surrounded by the mess and chaos of her life and complaining about it and waiting for someone to come and rescue here when the only person who can do that is herself, only she doesn’t know how or doesn’t have the guts to do what needs to be done or can’t see a way through and out of the mess.
And here I sit and cry and cry and if anyone asked me why I was crying I wouldn’t be able to tell them because I don’t know myself, and I don’t even know what has brought this on, this awful feeling of clarity and seeing the emptiness and hollowness at the heart of everything, I just know that it is true and right and this is they way life is. And maybe after I’ve written this I’ll feel better and can go back to getting through the days again.

Got an email from our son on Thursday: ‘I'm probably coming home tomorrow, if that’s ok. My car is making some horrible noises so it might break on the way. Sounds like exhaust issues again.’
This wasn’t quite the first communication we’d had from him since Easter, but almost. I replied, asking if this was for the summer or a flying visit, how had his exams and project gone, is everything finished now, I’m cooking lasagne is that all right? (used to be his favourite, but he’s still on this low carb diet),don’t forget your AA card and make sure your phone’s charged up…
Hubby was sceptical when he got home at 7:15 last night and there’d been no more word. We ate our lasagne a deux and shared a bottle of wine, first meal we’ve eaten together since Sunday, which was the first one since... the previous Sunday.
Just after 8, the door bell rang. He couldn’t find his house key. Yes, he’s now home for the summer.
I played the CD yesterday that my friend from meditation lent me on Thursday night. Typical 60s/70s folk, brooding ballads of death and betrayal, but the guitar playing is pretty amazing. I’m just a sucker for an acoustic guitar played with real skill – partly because I failed miserably to learn it when I was a teenager. I have a memory of sitting in the back garden on a summer day hearing him practising in his own back garden a couple of doors away.
I had a look at his website, looked at the photos, tried to see if I could recognise the boy I knew. He’s a very good looking man, no doubt about that, and he was always a charmer – not that he often turned the charm on to me. I wondered about emailing him. He lives mostly in California now, but he does tour, maybe I’ll find out when he’s coming over here again and see if I can go and see him play.
That got me thinking about another never-quite-but-might-have-been boyfriend, from my student days, the one I think of as ‘the one who got away’. I tried googling him, but didn’t recognise any of the possibilities. Of course, my surname has changed (twice) since then, so no chance of him ever tracking me down, even if the thought ever crossed his mind.
My daughter came round yesterday lunchtime, she usually works in the village pub on Fridays, but wasn’t yesterday as the landlord is away on holiday, came round anyway just for a chat and to see my Paris photos. We have a meeting in Brussels in June, on a Monday/Tuesday, and I was planning to go on Friday and stay for the weekend, even if I’m on my own, it will still be fun, I can sit in cafes and write if nothing else. But I had this idea in the week of going to Paris on the Saturday and then getting the train from Paris to Brussels on Sunday. I went through a few days of thinking ‘no, I couldn’t possibly...’, yesterday I checked with the hotel in Paris and confirmed there would be a room for Friday and Saturday, then started to look at the Eurostar tickets. That’s when I found out that even though when you book your tickets, you pay separately for the outward and return parts of the journey, you can only get the cheap tickets if you are booking both ways, and two singles would be much, much more expensive. So, in a way it’s a relief because I don’t have to make that decision. But I have this card above my desk (well, it’s somewhere in that mess) with a picture of the Eiffel tower and the caption: ‘The only things I’ll regret are the things I don’t do’.

When will I catch up with myself? Always running, never getting anywhere. Well, not quite true. I do get somewhere, but I never get to the end. And why would you want to get to the end? Not the end exactly, but a place where I can pause and not think about how much further there is to climb. I can lose myself in the act, but I want to lose myself in nothingness, in inaction. No, not inaction, in non-thought. To do something which will allow my mind to rest, or to wander off into other paths. But that can’t happen until all this is done.
(Hmmm, mixed metaphor in there. Am I climbing, or am I running? Interesting thought).
I had problems with my meditation this morning, technical problems, in that my walkman isn’t working right. Yesterday I thought it was batteries, but I put fresh ones in and I could hear the tape going round, but no sound came out. Maybe it’s the headphones. I have got a spare set, if I find them I can try. So I had an unguided mediation, without even the bell to measure the time. I could have put it on the main stereo. It’s something I need to resolve.
I’m surrounded by things that need to be resolved, stacks and boxes that need to be filed, stuff that needs to be cleaned. All around me life looks at me reproachfully. Yesterday the cat wanted to play, but what could I do? I run from one thing to the next.
I didn’t go to pilates last night, I decided to stay here and work instead. I went to meditation, though part of me wondered whether I should. I think I’m dealing better with the stress than I used to, hanging on to the threads, I feel as though I’m walking several very big dogs on leads, and they all want to run off in different directions, I have to hang on tight and hope that the others will behave themselves while I’m giving my attention to each one at a time.
There is a lady at meditation, an older lady (even older than me), in her 60s I’d say. We were talking about folk music a few weeks back, the old folk scene from the 70s which I had pretty much lost touch with, but she still follows the old bands and artists, like Donovan, Fairport convention, Richard Thompson et al. Her son works in the music business, I don’t know in what way, but he has introduced her to a lot of these people. I was asking her a few weeks ago about a guitarist who was my neighbour when I was a child, he is a year older than me, he’s the one I was caught cuddling with in the street when we were tots, the one I considered my ‘boyfriend’ until he properly discovered girls and joined the ranks of my brother’s friends who teased me. Anyway, I asked if she’d heard of him, and she said she’d ask her son.
Last night she brought a CD for me to borrow. It says on the sleeve notes that he lives in the USA now, but he also talks about Scunthorpe folk club. It has to be him. I haven’t played it yet, but I will. And there’s a web address. Maybe I’ll look him up. I wonder how he remembers me, if at all?

I don’t know how I feel this morning. Get up, start again. So much to do. Just have to keep going, it will be fine, do what you can and you’ll get there in the end. I spent yesterday focussing on the magazine, and will do the same again today. When I’ve got a big wodge of that out of the way, then will be the time to look at some of the other things. I have got a meeting this afternoon (school govs), I am now 2 sets of minutes behind, but that can’t be helped. I have some work to do from last week’s workshop in Paris, we need to create a presentation before the meeting in Brussels, this is 27 people of 27 different nationalities working together online to produce this thing, and as the native English speaker I have been nominated as the one to pull it all together - well, actually, there is the Irish guy as well, we were both told that this was what we would be doing when we were split into teams, we also have an Italian and a Czech working with us. Because all the other groups were generating the content, we didn’t do much apart from brainstorming actually in the session. I was going to send them copies of the latest version of the presentation I do about the project, just for ideas, but it was too big to send as an attachment. This could be a problem.

It smells as though something has died in the hall. I noticed it yesterday, and had a look to see if I could find it. I thought maybe it had crawled under the grandfather clock or the bookcase but I couldn’t see anything. Maybe it’s under the stairs, which is a dark pit where things could rot for months without being noticed (apart from the smell).
I think about the scent of honey. On Thursday night I walked from the Gare du Nord to the hotel, it was one stop on the metro, but I hadn’t sussed out the metro, and I’d found it on the map, so I walked instead. It was fine, I found the hotel, the reservation was OK, I went to my room, unpacked, changed, had a look at the guidebook, realised that Sacre Coeur was only about as far again the other side of the station. It was mid afternoon. I texted a couple of friends to see where they were, but I knew they would be arriving at different times and we probably wouldn’t get together till the evening. So I set off to walk, and on the way to the station I met Hanne from Denmark and Simonas from Lithuania, who had just got in from the airport, and fixed up to see them later.
I walked up into Montmartre, the one main tourist area which I didn’t see the last time I was in Paris. Walked up through the gardens to Sacre Coeur, saw the city at my feet, breathed in the scent of the orange blossom, what more could I ask for? Found a table in the café at the foot of the steps, ordered a coffee, took out my notebook, and wrote, and wrote, scribbling away about nothing, my usual drivel.
As the train left St Pancras I had sent a text round to several friends, saying ‘On my way, bye-bye London, Paris here I come!’ My fingers being pretty clumsy, I accidentally sent it to someone else in my address book, a woman I like and get on well with but don’t really see that often, just if we bump into one another every now and again we swap numbers or email addresses and promise to get in touch, but never do. (Only last week I found a torn off slip of paper in my purse with her land line number, and an out of date pocket train timetable with her email address). The last time I saw her was at the hospital last summer when I went in for my ‘boob job’ (ie lumpectomy), she works there and we just met in a corridor.
Anyway, the message went before I could stop it, and on the train I got the reply:
‘…And who might you be? Don’t recognise the number. Y didn’t u ask, I could do with a break’.
I explained who I was and that I'd texted her by accident and got another reply:
‘Oh my god. How r u? Take it ur well. Who is the fella taking u away from the rat race?! Have a good time. Enjoy yourself.’
‘No fella, sadly’ I reply. ‘It’s kind of work – yeah, right! Take care, love…’
Sitting in my Montmartre café, I write all this into my notebook, along with the orange blossom and the view and Hanne and Simonas, and the pleasure of anticipation.

I failed miserably to resign from the Parish Council last night. I didn’t say anything during the meeting itself, but I did try to start saying it to the chairman at the end, and she realised what was coming and said: ‘No, don’t say it, please don’t say it, we couldn’t manage without you, I couldn’t manage without you, you’re the only one who knows what you’re doing, I’m learning from you all the time.’ So, what could I do? But I will try to cut corners, try not to be so conscientious, try not to get stressed over it. I will try. I also wondered about keeping track of the hours I’m actually working, and see if I can get paid more realistically. In one way, you could say I’m in a strong position, because if they argue, I can say, ‘Right, I’m going, I don’t want to do this any more anyway’. On the other hand, of course, I’m still going to be living in the village. That is the big problem, do I want to be known as the woman who let down her neighbours? Against that, who REALLY cares what goes on in the Parish Council?
Well, anyway, I’m still Clerk, and I have a gazillion things to do. And we are still going to have bi-monthly meetings, which was supposed to reduce my workload (so they can pay me less), but has certainly increased my stress levels because there is so much to juggle between meetings.
But in my heart… I’ll always have Paris.

Back again… only a few days away, but it doesn’t take much to provoke a re-evaluation of my life – in fact I’m pretty much doing it all the time lately.
What about now? What am I doing here, as in, sitting here in front of my computer writing this stuff, not in the more general existential sense. Should I continue? It feels strange today. I’ve been writing while I was away, I bought a new notebook at St Pancras and wrote all the way over on the train, about something totally different which I haven’t written about before. On Thursday evening I sat in a café in Montmartre just below Sacre Coeur, writing in my small notebook, just for the sake of being able to say I was sitting in Montmartre in a café writing. Though the Left Bank is actually more appropriate for me. I did some of that yesterday morning.
I made a pilgrimage to Shakespeare and Company. I heard about it on the radio a couple of years ago, a book shop started by an American in the 50s, where he allowed struggling writers to stay rent free in exchange for working in the shop. I’d forgotten what it was called, and I didn’t think to look it up before I left home, but on Thursday (over café crème in Montmartre) I decided that was the one thing I really wanted to do while I was there.. Fortunately I managed to find it in my Time Out guide, so I found out what it was called, and that it was on la Rue de la Bucherie, in the Latin quarter, and which square on the map in the back of the book, but I didn’t have a large scale map with a list of roads.
So, yesterday morning, when everyone else was still in bed (it was a late night on Saturday, naturellement!), I went there by myself on the Metro and wandered around in the sunshine. I found a city map and located the street, then went looking for the shop – which, as it turns out, is directly opposite Notre Dame. Imagine waking in a tiny little attic room and seeing that out of your window every morning. So, I’ve decided this is my new spiritual home. I will live on the Left Bank and write and improve my French by taking a 30 year old lover.
But in the meant time I have a Parish council meeting tonight. Should I resign? I am seriously thinking about it. If it is stopping me from taking more interesting opportunities? I don’t mean living on the Left Bank with a 30 year old Frenchman and writing (at a push I might even settle for 35). But Carlo has asked me to stay for a ‘steering group’ meeting after the Brussels meeting in 5 weeks, to talk about working on the website. When he mentioned it before, I’m sure he said it could be a day a week, which would be a big chunk of time. And if I got more involved with editing for the MOMD in Oxford, that would take up a lot of time too. These are both so much more interesting than the PC.
What I am arguing myself towards here is something quite drastic, I guess. Do I have the courage to do it?

Someone asked me the other day why I write so much on this blog. As usual when faced with a question like that, I was a bit at a loss how to answer straight away. Popular advice for would-be writers is to write every day, to exercise the ‘writing muscle’. And that is what I do, by writing 500 words every morning. But that begs a couple of questions. After all, aren’t there more constructive and useful things I could be writing? My novel, for instance, or my other ideas – why focus so much on myself, my feelings and my life? Well, the answer to that is easy – because it IS easy – writing this kind of drivel takes very little effort. Rarely am I at a loss for words, they tumble out of me and demand to be set down.
The other question, is, why on a blog? Why not just in a journal, as I have done for so many years? The answer to that is quite complex, and it’s taken a couple of days for it to percolate through my brain and emerge blinking into the daylight (oh, how I love those mixed metaphors). It’s partly to do with emphasising the discipline aspect, I think. If I am writing for a potential audience, then there is e