Six months today exactly since I started blogging regularly. How much longer am I going to keep it up for? I keep saying this, don’t I? But then, most of the questions I ask on here are recurrent ones.
It has become a habit. Sometimes habits have value in themselves, and sometimes they are valuable because they impose order and discipline on the world, and some of them have outlived their usefulness, but we still stick with them because... they're habits Which is this one?
Well, I must be getting something out of it, or why would I keep coming back day after day? My attitude to my writing has changed, and maybe my attitude to my life, too. Is that a good thing? In many ways it’s a disturbing thing. But things have changed not only because I’m writing about them, my external life has been very different over the last six – make that nine – months from what it was before, mostly because of being involved with the European project. That time is probably coming to an end, officially it already has for the current phase, though there is now the trip to Hungary which is a follow up, and potentially some work on the website, (but I still haven’t heard about that.) Surreality has taken a central role in my life, and some things have shifted, but will there be any deep, long-term changes? What about when the travelling and excitement is over, and life falls back into its old rhythms? What will I be left with then?
I don’t know any of the answers. Things that happen in life trigger other things, and so it goes. ‘Fallen leaves in the night, who can say where they’re going?’ (Roxy Music, makes a change from John Lennon!). Or even better: ‘Words like scattered leaves/Stopped in mid-fall/Into the streams/Of fast-running rivers/Of choice and chance’ (David Crosby). Rivers of choice and chance, I love that image We fall into the rivers, and how can we know where they will take us next?
For too long, it seems, my flow has been stopped by dams and logjams, and I have been caught by these eddies which whirl me round without taking me anywhere. Has blogging become part of that, or does it offer opportunities for freeing up the logs?
It’s about living life through words, which I always did, but previously in a much more private way. Now it is not exactly public, but a strange, half-way place, like nothing else I can imagine. A fantasy world which is intensely private, yet shared with who knows how many strangers? A bizarre kind of exhibitionism, where inhibitions have no place, where all those private thoughts can be taken out and displayed, to see if, perhaps, there’s someone else out there who will respond. And most of the time, of course, nobody does. But the potential is always there. And really, what would it take to make the logs shift, if they were nudged in the right place?

I tried to do an unguided meditation this morning, but it was hard to settle and focus, my thoughts wandered as they had been dong for the previous hour or so while I lay awake in bed. Yesterday evening I thought the pain in my tailbone was getting better, probably because I spent most of the day either gardening or cooking, rather than sitting on it, but it has come back again this morning. If sitting on it is stopping it from healing, I’m not sure what I can do about it.
Not even 6 yet, and here I am staring at the screen. If I went back to bed now, I would probably fall back asleep, after all, I’ve been awake for two hours. Should I do that, switch off the alarm and give in to it? It doesn’t really help though, does it, having a lie in? It just disrupts the pattern even more. But it’s tempting. Maybe I will when I’ve finished this.
But I need to write another 300 or so words before I can let myself do that. Then I’ll post this and check the emails. See if I have any comments to respond to. If not, maybe I will go back to bed.
I was thinking the other day about the difference between writing when you just write anything and let it all come out in a flood, and writing when you have something specific you need to write about. The latter is the real challenge. There’s a problem of confidence – when you don’’t know what you are going to write or how to express what you need to say, you want to get it all sorted out in your head beforehand, it’s intimidating to think of just sitting down at the keyboard, because what if it isn’t there and it doesn’t come out?
I’m not doing very well this morning, even though I’m not trying to write about anything specific. In fact I think I was drifting off to sleep sitting here, I was thinking about Brussels, remembering the last evening we spent there, half a dozen of us sitting outside a bar in the square outside the parliament building – I think it’s called Place Luxembourg, but I couldn’t swear to that. Then we walked back to the hotel to meet the others before going for dinner, and winding up in Delirium, the bar we went to on our first ever night there, almost three years ago, and which we’ve been to most times since. On Friday I uploaded my photos to Facebook, and yesterday I was reading everybody’s comments, probably why I’m thinking about it now.
I have mixed memories of that bar, but at least the last ones are happy. There’s a picture of me right back near the start of this blog, my face full of misery after saying goodbye to the Crazy Frog, which was taken there. I still can’t believe I didn’t invite him to my room that last night on Cyprus. Hey ho, it wouldn’t have made any difference in the long run.

One of those mornings when I really don’t know what to write about. The pain in my tailbone doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Probably because I sit on it too much, but I don’t see how I can avoid that. Some things you just can’t do anything about. ‘What cannot be cured must be endured’.
Seems like there are two sorts of people in the world, the fixers and the... non fixers??? Active people who see things and are always wanting to change them, fix them, make them better, or at least different. And those who accept that things are as they are, that you can’t always have exactly what you want, that not all problems can be resolved, that all actions have consequences, and if you try to make something better you might end up just making it worse, so maybe better to leave it alone and... and anyway, what can you do about some things, which are just so big that you are powerless against them? No prizes for which group I fall into. Is it just laziness? It can probably seem that way. Or fear of the consequences, of the unknown, of making things worse than they already are, better the devil you know? Uncertainty about starting to go down a path and then finding that it’s not how you thought it would be, but now you’re committed, so you have to keep going. Better perhaps not to even start.
Because making decisions, taking actions, is a dangerous business. Of course, not making a decision, failing to take action, is a decision in itself, which has its own consequences. But as long as you don’t open the box, you haven’t closed down the possibilities, the cat may be alive, the cat may be dead, everything to play for. (Which reminds me, Ran never did give a satisfactory explanation for the puzzle about the boxes and the £1000, I’m quite prepared to believe there is one which I’m missing, but I’d like to know what it is). But then, if you don’t open the box, eventually the cat will starve to death, or suffocate, or die of terror, or boredom, bet Schrodinger never thought of THAT one, did he, hmmm???
And maybe there are enough fixers in the world already, people who try to bully you and make you feel guilty for your inaction. They make me feel defensive and confused, and occasionally to jump into some kind of impulsive action for the sake of it, without proper thought, and it turns out wrong, and I wish I’d never listened to them in the first place.
Only a fortnight since I was in Brussels, that bright (but cold) Saturday morning when I set off alone and wandered the empty streets, looking for breakfast, inspiration, incidents, art, something a little different from the everyday: surreality, in a word. Oh, and hot chocolate . Two weeks from today I’ll be in Telford (or in transit from Oxford to Telford), and the week after that, Hungary. I finally got round to uploading all my photos onto Facebook last night, but I still haven’t blogged all the stuff I wrote in my notebook. If I remember correctly, I got as far as that Saturday morning, window shopping.
It’s a nice morning today. I could get dressed and go out, wander the streets, or rather, the countryside. That can be fun too, but I wouldn’t find a hot chocolate without getting in the car and driving somewhere, or making my own. Maybe that is part of the enjoyment in Brussels. Waking up in the middle of a city is very different from waking up in the middle of the country. The possibilities are different.

Because I’ve finished all of the big pieces of work I had to do (for now), I’ve spent this week catching up with things which I’ve been neglecting, like filing and book keeping (or rather, bringing the spreadsheets up to date, but spreadsheet-keeping doesn’t sound quite the same, somehow). It’s hard to get excited about this kind of work, to find the motivation to keep at it, but it can be quite satisfying in its own way. Seems that if there’s something I don’t enjoy doing, it takes me a long time because I keep getting distracted, and if there’s something I do enjoy doing, it takes me a long time because I take my time over it and spin it out.
I’ve also been out a couple of times. On Wednesday I had various jobs to do around the villages, updating the noticeboards, picking up a repeat prescription from the doctor’s, going to the post office etc. Because my errands took me to the local garden centre, I treated myself to a bacon roll and a coffee in the café, on condition that I took my notebook with me and wrote. I found I can sit in the café at the garden centre and write as easily as I can sit in cafes in Brussels and write – they even do Viennese hot chocolate, though I didn’t notice that till I saw someone else with one – maybe next time, though it doesn’t go with bacon rolls. I must try and do things like that more often, who knows, I might even make progress with my writing.
Yesterday I went into town to see my daughter’s end of course exhibition at college and look for birthday presents for Hubby. It was good having her with me, because she encouraged me to actually buy things rather than just looking for ideas then going away and thinking about them and having to come back, which would be my normal approach.
But I’m going to have to go in again today to go to the bank, because I have been finding out more about the summer camp in Hungary, and it turns out that the fees have to be paid by bank transfer and received by them before 1st July, so it has to be done today, and I can only do it by going into the branch. Because it was a last minute decision to go, and we registered on the last possible day (last Friday), we hadn’t been sent the information. Fortunately, my Hungarian friend rang the organisers yesterday to find out what was happening, and I got a very nice email from them explaining all this. I could have done it yesterday and saved a trip into town if I’d known, but never mind.
Last night at meditation it was a very small group, only 6 of us and all old hands. I found it difficult because my bruised tailbone makes it hard to sit comfortably for long periods. We did the meditation of loving kindness. In the second stage, you choose a good friend and think about wishing them well. But while thinking ‘May he be happy, may he be well’, I caught myself thinking: ‘I don’t want him to be TOO happy without me’ – which is rather ungenerous, but at least honest. I think maybe I have a long way to go.

I look at the date on the screen. 26th June, that means something. Matthew’s birthday. Matthew is hubby’s nephew. And Matthew’s mum, hubby’s sister in law, her birthday was the 16th (or the 12th? I can never remember). Didn’t send cards to either of them. Shit.
Start again. How do I feel today? Shit.
Repeat after me. Happiness comes from being satisfied with what you have. From being grateful for what you have. From counting your blessings, from thinking about all those people who are worse off than you. From making the most of the little things. From looking around you and seeing how lucky you are to be who you are and where you are, not to be hungry, to have a home, somewhere nice to live, not to have to worry that it will be taken away from you. These are things many people don’t have and would give their eye teeth for.
How many times have I told myself this? How many more times do I have to say it before it starts to work?
Chasing after dreams will get you nowhere, only back to this place again. This is where you have to stay, have to settle. Learn to love the one who is here, rather than hankering after someone else, because even if you had someone else (and you know that’s not going to happen), how long would it be before you realised you didn’t love him either, then what would happen? It’s just a treadmill, better not even to get on it in the first place. Happiness comes from the attitude inside you. You just have to work out how the hell to change that attitude.
Yes, it’s all your fault. That bad attitude of yours. You’re never going to get anywhere, are you, with an attitude like that?
So, start again. New day, focus on the things that have to be done today. Let go of dreams. Wanting, wishing, whatever, let it all go. ‘Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse?’ Trust in Springsteen, he knows what he’s talking about. That’s the way it goes. Dreams are lies we tell ourselves, lies about how life might be, so why do it, why think about how life might be, when you know that this is how life is?
Start again. ‘This is the day the Lord hath made.’ Well, it might make life easier if you believed that, but you don’t believe it. You’re here because you’re here, because the world is full of people and people make more people, that’s all there is to it, your mum and dad made you because they wanted to, to go through that whole life-creating life-consuming soul-destroying process of parenthood that takes everything we have to give and then at the end of it all, there you are, one more person struggling to deal with being alive.
And that’s all you know, and you can’t make yourself believe what you don’t believe, any more than you can make yourself feel what you don’t feel or love someone you don’t love.

Soon be the middle of the year. I’ve been blogging pretty consistently for almost 6 months now. How many words have I written in that time? At a rough estimate... about 90k, I suppose. Enough for a decent-sized novel – but a bit lacking in other requirements for a novel, such as structure, theme, plot. Characters – there have been a few of those, sometimes their presence has been implicit, rather than explicit, if that makes sense. Not just the people in my normal life whom I refer to now and again, but the fellow bloggers who drift in and out. Some of them have become a presence in my life, in ways I never anticipated. Suzee talks about her ‘vanilla’ life and her ‘kink’ life, and in a way that’s how I feel, that I’m leading some kind of bizarre double (or triple, or quadruple) life. The boundaries become blurred. Though I rarely think explicitly in my daily life that I’m acting as ‘Belinda’ or ‘Melinda’ or ‘Cassandra’, I’m conscious sometimes of their presence or absence. This sense has been exaggerated over the last year by my other other life as part of the trans-European project I’ve been involved in, by the trips to Brussels, Paris and Cyprus, and soon to Hungary. What happens after that? Will the ‘vanilla’ life reassert itself? Or has something changed inside, some Rubicon been crossed, have I reached a new and different territory yet, Terra Incognita?
What will it take to make another step, and where will that step take me? The disorder in the garden is symbolic, perhaps, of my disengagement from the vanilla life (I’ll carry on using that expression for now, because I can’t think of a better one). Could I imagine leaving this house, and what would that mean? As soon as I start to think on those lines, I start shrinking back, it’s just too big and strange to contemplate. Other things in the outside world have to change before that can happen. But what would it take?
Might the completion of my novel be the barrier, the dam, (I’m struggling with the metaphors here), the valve that would free life up and break the stalemate? But it seems farther away than ever. Often I think that it will never happen. And all my academic work has fallen by the wayside, when I go to Oxford in a fortnight, I’ll have to admit that I’ve done nothing over the last year, didn’t even write up last year’s papers and submit them to a journal, as I was planning to. The two things in my intellectual life which mean more to me than anything else are just sidelined because the thought of throwing myself into either one of them seems too… what? Difficult, dangerous, over-whelming?
Change requires two conditions – motivation and opportunity. Put like that, it sounds like a crime in a bad detective story, ‘which of the suspects had motive and opportunity?’ In blog life, it feels as though the motivation is so strong, it seems bizarre that I’ve done nothing about it before now. And blog life, surreality, appears to have taken over. I spend too long here, far too long. I need to get out more.

Woke at 3 again, but today I got up with hubby at 10 past 5. I was nowhere near getting back to sleep, so it seemed pointless lying there for another 50 minutes. So, that’s about 4 hours last night. At some point presumably I’ll be so exhausted I’ll actually sleep through and get something approaching 7 hours sleep, possibly on Thursday after meditation, but it doesn’t always follow.
What do I want? To feel loved, adored, desired. Hopelessly, idiotically, stupidly unrealistic. I wish I could just shove it out of my mind, forget all about it. Actually, my first thought was to ‘be’ loved etc, but what I want is to feel it, maybe I am loved, who knows, hard to tell, maybe there’s even someone who desires me, even harder to tell, but as I never get the chance to feel the truth of any of those things, there is no value in them for me. I try to be loveable, I try to be desirable, but it never seems to be returned. So, forget that part of life, shut it away somewhere, as I have done so many times down the years, and hope eventually it will go away for good and not keep coming back to torment me.
I remember the counsellor I went to 12 years ago having a go at me for beginning my reply to his question ‘What do you want’, with the words: ‘I wish…’ ‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride!’ he said. ‘What do you WANT?’
Why did he say that? What’s the difference between wanting and wishing? If I want things I know I can’t have, doesn’t that make the wanting into wishing? And anyway, I think maybe I was ashamed to admit what it was that I wanted, which was the same then as it is now. And I wanted a job. A job, an independent life, and to feel loved, adored and desired. All of those things depend on external circumstances, they are not something I can make happen for myself, they are all outside of my control. And 12 years later, I still haven’t really resolved any of them. I suppose they all get less feasible with each year that passes.
Yesterday I got a comment on one of my youtube videos of the concert I went to in Brussels (maybe ‘saw’ is a better word than ‘went to’, I didn’t actually make an effort to go to it, it was just there). No one has ever commented on anything I’ve posted there before. He/she said it was the only thing they’d found on youtube from that gig.
I said I’d really only posted it because I had such a good time and I wanted to put it on my blog. I asked if he/she was there, and thought it might be fun to send them the link for Melinda_blog. When I checked their profile, I found that they were Belgian and 27 – it occurred to me that it might actually be Tintin – that could be rather embarrassing! But at least he would know why I was staring at him that night.

Awake from 3 till after Hubby got up about 5:15. I think I drifted off a bit again between then and when the alarm went off at 6. I’m so sick of being tired. It’s two years now since I first went to the sleep clinic. The restricting sleep hours doesn’t seem to work. I suppose I could make my getting up time later, but that would mean admitting defeat, and anyway, I’ve got used to being up early, I’d have to change my whole routine if I didn’t get up till later. And that wouldn’t help the lying awake in the middle of the night, which is the real problem. I get up, I read, last night I wrote a little, I go back to bed, I listen to relaxation tapes, and still I lie awake. Maybe I should make my bedtime later, 1 o’clock, say, which would be 5 hours before the alarm goes off, maybe I would get 5 hours a night without waking up, and I could gradually make the bedtime earlier. But already I’m falling asleep on the sofa before I go to bed. So maybe I should make both bedtime and getting up time earlier. Try going at 10, see what time I wake up. The waking up time isn’t consistent, that’s the trouble. When it’s like last night is probably the worst, because then I’ve only just got back to sleep when it’s time to get up again.
I don’t know. I just have to keep trying.
And cut down stress – or change my reaction to it. Jesus, if I knew the answer to that one...
Anyway, I’m here now, zombified as I am, and I should be thinking of something to write.
I spent quite a lot of time out in the garden yesterday. If it had been raining, I was going to work on my novel (that was the plan), but it wasn’t so I worked on the garden instead. Even more of a challenge. It was difficult to know where to start. I cleared the weeds out of some of the herb garden, try to give the parsley and garlic a chance to grow. I filled the green wheelie bin with weeds and prunings. I did a couple of hours of housework too. But I also lay in the hammock for an hour and read – ‘The Rebel Angels’ by Robertson Davies, I’ve read it before but it’s worth a second read, especially as I can’t remember the details of the plot. It’s the start of a trilogy, and I’ve never read the other two volumes, so I’m reading it again so I can read them all back to back.
I slipped on the stairs and bruised my tail bone. Well, I tried looking in the mirror and I can’t see a bruise, but it’s bloody painful. Then I spent two hours sitting in a theatre seat watching a dance show that my daughter was performing in.

Lie in today. I was awake at 4, got up and read for a while, went back to bed and played my long relaxation tape, switched off the alarm and went back to sleep. I was so tired yesterday, kept wanting to go back to bed. I’m tired now (always am) but probably better than if I had been awake since 4.
The sun is shining, so I’ll probably go out and do some gardening today. I’d made up my mind if it was raining again to work on my novel. Oh well, another time.
I registered yesterday for the writing course in September. It looks from the title as though she has changed the course for next year, so it isn’t one of the ones I’ve already done. She did it so that the group, including those who have done 3 years already, could carry on meeting, though that will only work for one year, the same problem will arise next year when some of us have done 4 years and some only 3. But it’s a nice thought anyway. I did get a lot out of it, just now when I’m so busy with other things it doesn’t seem so important.
Can’t think of very much to say this morning. The sun is shining, but the wind is quite strong, I can hear the trees blowing outside the window, the rustle of the leaves.
We spoke a little over dinner last night, Hubby telling me about the pressure he is under at work, I said a bit about what happened in Brussels. I didn’t say anything about how I’ve been feeling. Will the time ever be right? I don’t know. Should I just carry on as things are, accept life as it is, the devil you know? This is what I have done for decades. If I carry on, will there come a time when I’ll see it was the right thing to do all along, and not feel all this emptiness and frustration?
Finish my novel. Maybe it will be a best seller. Maybe that will give me financial independence. Ha ha bloody ha.
So, gardening today. There’s a lot of work to do, a LOT. It really is a jungle out there. This summer is going to be a write off. I haven’t even got any summer bedding, or anything planted in my containers, just the old geraniums which have been in the conservatory all winter.
Wrote a letter yesterday to my friend in Australia, the one with breast cancer. I never know what to say to her. History repeating itself. She is going through chemo at the moment. I bought her some little knick knacks and post cards in Brussels, I’ll parcel them up to send to her, with a copy of our writers’ group anthology.
My contribution was the story about the eagle, I’ve posted it online too, there’s a link from Melinda. I’ve signed up for that group in September as well, though I don’t know how many times I’ll go.

My computer has been busy overnight, installing updates, going about its mysterious business. I have a usb backup drive, and it’s set to back up my files on Friday night, but I usually forget either to plug it in, or to leave the computer switched on. I left it on last night, but I don’t think it worked.
Thinking about life again. Life seems – strange, challenging, interesting? – but where is it taking me? Back to the same old places again? I booked my trip to Hungary yesterday- I don’t know what happens after that, maybe nothing, maybe something.
I’m tired, maybe I should go back to bed, maybe I would fall asleep now. I woke up at 5, got up, read for a while, did my meditation. Just as the bell on the tape range for the end of the mediation, the alarm on my phone started to go off for 6 o’clock. I came up here and found messages over the screen.
Saturday, what will I do today? Housework probably, try to sort out the mess around here. Looks a bit damp for gardening. I might go to the garden party at the education centre, find out about the writing courses next year. I emailed a friend from the group yesterday to see f she was going and knows what is happening about the courses, but the answers are no and no. But if I don’t go back to the group, what will happen? That creative side will drift away further and further. The novel will never get finished.
So many things I should have done with my life, why does it all feel like such a mess? I sit here and feel sad for myself and sad for the world. At a loss for words – staring blankly at the keyboard, or gazing around the room. Tired. Confused. Wanting happiness, but not knowing what that means or where to look for it. The recent debate about climate change saddens and scares me. Having been aware of it for so long, I have wondered what would happen when the full implications became more widely known. This wholesale denial was predictable, the distortion of the message. People will always find ways of shutting out what they don’t want to hear. I should have paid more attention to the way things were developing, but it is too huge an issue, and I backed off, I couldn’t see a way of tackling it, I looked for smaller topics. But even with them, I’ve never finished anything, never really produced anything worthwhile. I haven’t done anything related to my research work for a year now, just messed around with all the stupid trivia of life. I’ll be in Oxford in just over a fortnight, will that inspire me, being with people who believe in me, or will I just feel that I’ve let them all down?
Frustrated emotionally, intellectually, sexually, creatively, you name it, trapped in this bubble, why can’t I just step outside and find a life?

I woke late and skipped meditation today. Well, when I say ‘late’ I woke when the alarm went off at 6, but I didn’t get up straight away, I lay in bed for another 20 minutes or so. Still tired. It’s as though I’m catching up, though I didn’t sleep badly last week (well, no worse than usual for me). I feel sleepy all the time. I almost nodded off in meditation last night.
I have got out of the meditation habit. It’s a temporary thing, I know it will be better when I can get back into it, I haven’t given up, it’s just that at the moment I can’t seem to get into it. Last night I struggled to focus, quite apart from wanting to go to sleep.
I don’t know what time Hubby got in last night. He wasn’t here when I got back at 10, he wasn’t here when I went to bed at 11, I didn’t hear him come in, I heard him get up and go but I was still asleep so we didn’t speak (not that that's unusual). So I don’t know whether he will be back for dinner tonight. If it’s just going to be myself and daughter, I thought about cooking macaroni cheese, which used to be her favourite, but we’ve never had it very often because hubby objects to the lack of meat.
I’ve realised one reason why I find one of my parish councils so frustrating, even worse than the other one. When I started as Clerk last year, they reduced the meeting frequency to two-monthly, (basically so they could cut down the amount of money they pay me), and said that they would make decisions over email. Currently we have an example of how this works. There is a vacancy for a parish councillor, which has been ongoing for months. When this happened with my other lot, there were four interested candidates for two vacancies, and they were all asked to speak at a meeting, then the choice was made, but it doesn’t have to be done this way, it’s up to the council to decide.
There is one person who half the councillors know who has contacted me and said he is interested. But one councillor has spoken to another friend of his and asked him to come to the next meeting. This other person hasn’t contacted me. Of the six existing councillors, 3 have emailed me and said they want to go ahead with the first guy, one has said she doesn’t know either of them, the guy who asked the second one says he thinks they should both get a chance to speak, and the sixth person hasn’t responded at all. The problem is, they have each expressed an individual opinion, but no one has come to a joint decision.
I’m waffling on a bit, but what I’m trying to say is that this is what happens, each will state an individual opinion, but as far as they’re concerned that’s then the end of the matter, there is no debate, no discussion, no one comes up with a joint decision, no action is decided on. Unless, of course, I do it. Which is not the way it’s supposed to be. But this is why it’s so frustrating.

I’m tired. No surprise there. It seems to be the overwhelming feeling at the moment, but nothing unusual in that. I slept till 5, not bad really, the cat walked over me, hubby got up, no point trying to get back to sleep.
Didn’t get much done yesterday. I couldn’t settle on anything, so I spent a lot of time going through my photos and blogging some of them. Hubby took son to the airport, haven’t heard anything from him so I assume he got there OK. My daughter came round at lunch time so I showed her the photos and chatted to her.
I checked out flights to Budapest, and found that I can get an Easyjet for less than £50. It would be crazy not to go, Gabriella wants me to go and help her present about our project, it’s a summer camp for Eastern European NGOs, sounds like another of these opportunities I can’t allow to slip by me. So, in three weeks I go to Oxford, then Telford, then home for two days, one PC meeting, one governors’ meeting, then off to Budapest. When I’ve booked the ticket and registered.
What else am I going to write about this morning? I have lots of notes in my notebook to type up – am I going to do that, and blog them, or not bother? I did write a lot when I was on my own, I would find a café or a park bench and sit and scribble away. Just silly thoughts and impressions, drivel, as always. No progress on the novel, no poetry, no deep thoughts about Life, the Universe and Everything. So many people saying ‘How’s the novel coming on, tell us when you’ve finished it.’ Yes, I say, when it’s finished we’ll have a big party.
I will type up the minutes from last Wednesday’s meeting today. I have another one this afternoon, but that shouldn’t take too long. Three weeks till I go to Oxford, less than that now. At least I don’t have anything to do this weekend – well, a garden party on Saturday afternoon, at the education centre, I should go and find out about the writing courses for next year, if there’s going to be another one, I’ll sign up.
Oh, here I go again, nothing interesting to say, drifting off into repeating myself, aiming for that 500 word target. This isn’t really taxing, not challenging me any more. I should strike off in a different direction again. Being away (even for a few days) and coming back, guess it will take a while to adjust again, get back into the right mood to think about things, to find something worthwhile to say – insofar as what I say is ever worthwhile.
I can’t honestly say I’ve come back with a different perspective on life, a new plan for doing things differently. Life drifts as always, who can say where it’s going? Each day follows the last.

I’m back. It was good, I wrote and wrote in my notebook over the weekend, though not the last two days when we were working. I was fine on my own, I knew I would be, there were a couple of times when it bothered me a bit, but not seriously. I have lots of notes to blog, and I took just under 200 photos. I’ve got some work lined up, which will be writing and editing, providing content, the details aren’t clear yet though. So many people told me I’d done a great job of editing the joint statement which our group made, I said I just took what was written by the others, and after all, it’s my language, I should be able to use it, but I was very gratified anyway.
Now what? My son has just gone off to Istanbul, hubby is taking him to the airport, I hope he’s OK, I hope he has a good time. He kissed and hugged me when he left, not something he’s much given to. I’ve been hugging and kissing the last three days, it seems.
What now? Work today, obviously, but I have to think about what needs doing. There hasn’t been much mail while I’ve been away, a pleasant surprise.
I didn’t get to say goodbye to a lot of people yesterday, as I was asked to go to the steering group meeting. I didn’t realise I would be expected to stay so long, and I ran out of time for last minute shopping that I was hoping to do, because I had to get back to the hotel to pick up my suitcase, and then to the station. Even though nothing else is planned for the group, this time it feels less like the end than it ever has before. I can sense fracture lines forming between us, though – hard to explain, and probably just my paranoia, but a couple pf people I thought I was close to seem to have drifted away – or I from them, who knows? It will make things different if I become part of the organising group, even if only peripherally – Carlo asked me not to mention it to the others, which makes things a little awkward. If it’s an opportunity for me, I don’t see why anyone should begrudge it, but I have a suspicion that some might. Ah well.
I don’t know what to write. All of this is a bit prosaic. Perhaps the connection between brain and computer needs to re-establish itself, perhaps I’m worrying about my son, perhaps I’m just tired.
I have to check out flights to Budapest today. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of interest in Gabriella’s invitation to go to a summer camp in Hungary in July to talk about the project, just myself and Daniel from Sweden. Maybe the others can’t get away. I will need to check the dates and decide whether I can do it or not.

Last night, in the group, meditation felt good, I felt I could connect with something important. This morning, alone, the questions wouldn’t go away: ‘Why am I doing this? Where’s it getting me? What is the point? Am I achieving anything? Am I just wasting my time?’
I woke at 3:40 today. That really is too early. But when Hubby got up at 5:10, I didn’t see the point of trying to get back to sleep. Maybe I’ll sleep on the train. Maybe I’ll sleep well tonight (or maybe not). Have some dinner, then go back to my hotel room, close the door, sleep.
While hubby was having his breakfast, I went into the kitchen, got the cat food out and measured it into the bowls, even though they weren’t there. I should say something. ‘I’ll give you a call on Tuesday then.’ He glances up, away from his newspaper. ‘Have a good trip. I’ll see you at 8:15 on Tuesday.’ I catch his eye, he sits unmoving, coffee cup in one hand, newspaper in the other, for a split second we look at each other, then his attention goes back to the paper, that's it.
What did I see in his eyes? Anything, nothing? How did it get like this? Whose fault is it? Inside, is he hurting, does he care at all, is he just too bound up in his work to notice that anything isn’t right? Or has it been like this for so long that it just feels normal, is it a relief to him not to worry about having to deal with my emotions? Does he think I’m having an affair? Does he think that if we just leave things, they’ll get better again, maybe next week, after I come back, after I stop travelling? Or is it just that his own work worries are so overwhelming that I just pale into insignificance?
And most of all, does any of this matter to me? Do I care?
I used to think it was better like this, that I needed to cut the ties and it would be better if he stayed at arms length, less confusing. But now I feel adrift, with no one to connect to, which is why, I guess, I confide in this haphazard bunch of total strangers.
A marriage which isn’t really a marriage, an affair which isn’t really an affair, a job which isn’t really a job. Bits and pieces, the whole may be the sum of the parts, but are the parts enough to make a complete whole?
Last night, we did a walking meditation in the middle of the sitting meditation, as we often do. Walking round in a circle, slowly putting one foot in front of another. ‘Be a nobody going nowhere, instead of a somebody trying to get somewhere’ the leader said. ‘Just accept what is and who you are’. And I thought (because I can’t help thinking), how often do I say to myself ‘This relationship isn’t going anywhere’, ‘This job isn’t leading to anything’, instead of just accepting what is, why does anything have to go anywhere?
But today, I’m going to Brussels. And what will I find there? Myself, maybe? I have made no arrangements to meet anybody. From when my daughter drops me off at the station in two hours time, until Sunday, I don’t anticipate any human contact apart from the usual instrumental exchanges with strangers. And how will that feel?

All week, I’ve had a sense of foreboding. Logically, you’d expect me to be looking forward to going away, to be happy and excited. But instead I feel worse than ever. I often get this before I go somewhere, but it feels worse than usual this time, maybe because I know this could be the last time, there is nothing further planned. I still haven’t started packing, I haven’t even decided what I’m going to take. I know it’s not really ‘the last time’, there will be other things, I’ll be in Oxford in a month, but that is different, a different group of people. What might come from all of this? Still life is in this state of flux? Do the old patterns always have to repeat themselves? Can I break the bonds and go soaring?
I have been talking about my state of mind when we moved into this house.. What else is there to say? It was supposed to be a new beginning. It is a beautiful house, though it requires so much work, it takes so much time, it’s not always comfortable. Could I walk away from it? It holds me here, perhaps I am safe here, like with my safe marriage, nothing outside of this, to be here, held tight by life.
It’s raining. I can hear it outside the window, and I remember I forgot to bring the hammock in. I will have to put it somewhere to dry out.
It will probably rain in Brussels. I’ve never been there in the summer before, but I expect it will still rain. So I need to think about what to pack. Check to see if there’s a metro map in the guide book – I’m sure there is. I was planning a lot of walking, but I might have to rely on the metro.
What now? I think I’ve done most of the big things that needed doing. Just the packing and sorting out what else needs to be done – oh, articles for the parish magazine, I have to write two reports about the two PCs. Circulate the minutes for comment. Any other action items? I won’t run out of things to do, because there’s the minutes from last night’s meeting to start on.
I keep thinking it’s Friday, I guess because I’m going away tomorrow, although I usually go on Thursday, so that doesn’t really make sense, it’s more a case of, looking at this as a week, this is the last day.
And when I come back, will I be feeling better, or worse because that is the end? I have been in such a state of flux over the last year, it has been a weird year, a very weird year, another one. I think that life settles down into patterns, that it repeats itself, but the things that repeat are the big things, the loneliness, discontent and frustration, the details change constantly. How will it be if life settles back into dullness again? Into this-is-how-it-is-and-it’s-never-going-to-change? Will it be a relief? Maybe, for a time…I come back to the same place, the place that pulls me back, like this house and this marriage.
I set myself up for disappointment, always. Because how could it be that life could work out the way I want it to?
I just re-read this. Actually, EVERY time it 'feels worse than usual this time'.

Thinking back to that time, the time when we bought this house, I was trying to explain how I was feeling and what led up to it all. I can’t remember where I’ve got to in my narrative, and I never go back and read what I’ve written previously before starting to write in the mornings, so hope this makes sense. Guess I can always edit after.
He rang up one day, and began with ‘You’re going to hate me…’
He had been offered a job in Derby, and he was going. That was it. I never saw him again. This circumstance, however, had more to do with the fact that a year later, when my first journal article was published, he accused me of plagiarism (which was complete rubbish), threatened to sue, it all got very nasty. Twice since then he has tried to get in touch with me – I have received emails from him out of the blue – he must have googled me and found my website. He wanted to get back in touch, but I didn’t reply to either of them.
Well, that is what happened to him.
Over the next 12 months or so, summer 98-summer 99, lots of things happened, and I don’t remember any of them being good. I was still applying for jobs, academic jobs, non-academic jobs, full time jobs, part time jobs, any kind of jobs which might give me some kind of meaningful employment. The result was always the same, the reasons, I concluded, probably similar – I had been away form the conventional job market too long, there were too many gaps in my CV, I’d done too many different things, I didn’t have the right experience, I was too old for anyone to take a chance on. I did various temping jobs, via word of mouth, but nothing that really stuck, that led on to anything else, that built on anything or gave me any kind of satisfaction. The dream of making an independent life for myself stayed just that.
I lost touch with my old social circle at the university, if I saw them again I knew I didn’t belong any more, everyone had moved on. Those years now seemed like a bubble, a dream that I could be a different kind of person with a different kind of life, here I was now, back to being a middle aged housewife, nowhere to go each day, nothing to take me away from home and family, except for the occasional conference papers which I still kept trying to write. Life drifted into a strange kind of limbo.
And during all this, I was coming to terms with losing my parents. Not to mention dealing with a broken heart which I wasn’t able to share with anyone, but had to keep locked away inside.
So that was my life at that time, a life which had run into the buffers, into the sand, which was going nowhere.
It was around this time that we started talking about moving house. It became a big issue for me – a dream that this would be the way I would make life different, make a new start, find something better. I don’t think I thought about it in those terms consciously at the time. But it became the focus of everything.

Thinking about this house, and garden, as I started to do on Sunday, and about ‘what was I doing 10 years ago’, as in La Spice’s tag, has set me off an a train of thought about why we moved here, and what my expectations were. From this distance, I can see a little more of the pattern.
But I need to go back a couple more years to set the scene, to 1996, when life was very different, but maybe I was not so different as I sometimes think.
I was still working on my PhD, not knowing really when it would be finished, or what would happen afterwards. Still very much in love with the man I’ve referred to elsewhere as my ‘Erstwhile Male Best Mate’, and I believe, in retrospect, that he was in love with me, but I knew it would never lead to anything beyond what we had at that time because a) he would never leave his wife and b) we would never work out as a ‘couple’, we would drive each other crazy. (Though there was one wild night, in the middle of a thunderstorm, when we were in my car, and he said: ‘Let’s just take off right now, head off across Europe, go anywhere, leave it all behind, start again, just you and me’ and it seemed like it was a possibility of a different life, of love and excitement and ecstasy, a life which would crash and burn probably in a matter of days, but at least would be alive for that space of time…)
The one thing I was sure of, though, was that I didn’t love Hubby any more, and that was when I told him, that he would always be the father of my children and that I’d always be grateful for so many things, but that I wasn’t happy with him. And against his silence, I asked ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ And the answer I got was: ‘What is there to say?’
So, the plan was made, I was looking for jobs for after my PhD, jobs anywhere in the country, it didn’t matter. I would find the right job, establish my independence, then I would be off, away from him, away from the EMBM, into a new life.
Now we need to wind forward eighteen months, to the early summer of 1998, ten years ago. I was still applying for jobs, still hanging around the department, writing funding proposals, doing odd bits of contract work, like survey interviewing. My mother and mother in law were both dying of cancer, and I was going up to see my Mum and Dad in Lincolnshire as often as I could.
I had created some degree of emotional distance from the EMBM, but this had had the effect (as it inevitably does) of making him more persistent than ever. He was now in the final stages of HIS PhD, also applying for jobs, with no more success than I was having. We talked about putting in research proposals together, of starting a consultancy, he was full of ideas of how to make it work, though I could see that personally it would be a nightmare.
This started as an explanation about how we came to live in this house. But I’ve written over 500 words already, and I’ve barely set the scene. Oh well, maybe tomorrow.

Why do we love the people that we do? My daughter was telling me (not for the first time) about a friend of hers, a girl in her early twenties, who has a little boy of three and is pregnant again, but her boyfriend has left her for another girl, whom my daughter was describing with great disdain.
‘He’ll come running back again’ she said, ‘he always does’.
‘But will she take him back?’
‘Probably’.
Why do people do that, keep loving someone who hurts them? And what about me? Why do I always want someone different from the one I have, and almost always someone I can’t have? I tell myself it’s because I’ve never met the right one, but is that true, does such a person exist? Well, rationally, no, and I always pride myself on being such a rationalist. Ok, that definite ‘no’ is no more rational than a definite ‘yes’ would be, so I’ll rephrase that: not necessarily. Someone who would mean everything to me so that I wouldn’t hanker after anything or anybody else – and who would feel the same about me, of course. It can happen, it does happen, I’ve known couples like that – well, of course, you can never really know what is going on in someone else’s emotional life, but couples who seem happy enough. No, more than that, because probably we seem happy enough to people who don’t know us really well, or should I say, who know me really well. And maybe he IS happy enough, I don’t know, maybe this is as much as he wants, or expects.
I woke when he was getting dressed this morning, as he walked out of the bedroom door, I thought about the fact that he never kisses me any more, not even a little peck on the cheek, how did that stop, why did it stop, when did it stop? About this time last year, I think. Does it have any significance for him? He used to do it. Was it me that stopped it, or discouraged it, in some way? Probably. It was a habit, it didn’t mean anything, and now it’s a habit that has been broken and does that mean anything? I could reinitiate it again, I’m sure I could, if I wanted to, but it would still only be a habit, and would I really want it? No, I wouldn’t. So why bother.
Yesterday I was able to spend some time out in the garden, in the sunshine. The garden is getting wild because I have spent so little time on it this year, everything has crept out of my control, it slips from my grasp and I cannot bring it back. I can think about having a different life, but can I really contemplate walking away from this one? This house and garden surround me and hold me here, they seemed at one time to be everything I wanted, is that what I should do, devote myself to them again, make them my world? I can think of being elsewhere, but not of leaving here. And so I stay. I tried to explain this to my Danish friend, and she said: ‘A house is just bricks’. No, a house is dreams as well, especially one like this one.
And yet, it is too big really for two people, never mind one, were it to come down to one. If he left, or something happened to him, would I stay here alone? No. Sometimes we used to speak of grandchildren coming here and playing in the garden. But every place I’ve ever left, once I had gone, there were never any regrets – apart from when we went to Dallas, but we came back.

Yesterday afternoon I panicked – something which used to happen a lot, but which I have recently been able to keep under control far better. I don’t mean a physical ‘panic attack’, just a sense of something awful happening which was out of my control but caused by my carelessness, and which I might not be able to sort out.
What happened, specifically, was that I thought I had lost my son’s passport. He is going abroad on his own for the first time the week after next, to visit his online girl friend in Istanbul - well, actually, of course, it’s her BROTHER he’s going to see, yeah, yeah His passport expired and he applied for a new one, which came while he was still at Uni, I opened it and checked that it was OK (not knowing at that time that he was coming home as early as he did), and, I thought, put it in the pile with the rest of his mail.
He mentioned to me yesterday that he hadn’t seen it. I did tell him when it came (and asked his permission to open it), but he’d forgotten that. I said not to worry, I had put it away in a safe place – the drawer of my desk, where I keep all our passports. I went to confirm and... could find my passport, Hubby’s, daughter's, our old ones... but not his. I took everything out of all the drawers in the desk, I went through the tray we keep in the kitchen that we dump paperwork into, I went through the box file that has all his stuff in – I went through them all several times. I could feel myself conjuring up worst case scenarios, trying to think what could be done, wondering if he could go to the passport office at Peterborough for a replacement, cursing myself for my carelessness, untidiness, lack of organisation. I knew I was being irrational, that it had to be there somewhere, but I just couldn't think straight. I started to question my memory – HAD I ever actually seen it? Had it come? I was sure it had, but now I began to wonder – they had sent back the old one, was that what I was confusing it with? I was supposed to be cooking dinner, but I couldn’t focus on anything else till this was sorted, I couldn’t let it go because it would be nagging away at me whatever I tried to do.
In the end, in the heap on the floor of stuff I had pulled out of the desk, I saw a white envelope of the right size. I’d been looking either for the passport itself, or a manila envelope. Sure enough, there it was, but somehow I had not recognised it.
I gave it to him, put his mind at rest, went back to cooking dinner, just rescued my puff pastry from incineration, the world went back to rights again.

You may or may not already know (new readers start here) that I’m a lifelong, chronic insomniac. A couple of years ago I went regularly to a sleep clinic for about 18 months. The most useful thing I was told was to have a strict sleeping/waking routine and always relax for half an hour or so before I go to bed, then go straight to sleep, don’t read, watch telly, listen to the radio or do anything else (reading was hardest to give up for me, ‘anything else’ isn’t an issue these days), and always to get up when the alarm goes off. So, my routine is: get ready for bed at 10; read/listen to music, drinking a milky drink on the sofa till 10:45; get into bed and usually fall straight asleep; get up at 6. The aim is to get those 7 hours’ sleep consistently every night, but of course it doesn’t work out like that. Usually I’m awake at some point in the night, if it’s any time after 4 I’m unlikely to get back to sleep, so I’m quite often up at 5. On Thursday night the routine was disturbed because I didn’t even get to bed till half past midnight, then woke at 10 past 5 when Hubby got up.
So, last night I didn’t set the alarm. I was awake from about 2:30 to 4:30, I got up and read for a while, and slept in till 8. I don’t actually feel any better for it, but I’m used to feeling permanently exhausted and just having to deal with it, that’s how it is.
Joebangles says my life is complicated, and maybe it is, though no more so than lots of peoples’, I guess. ‘Normal lives’ I suppose consist of work, done during fixed hours in a fixed place separate from home; home/family/friends, hobbies perhaps. My home and work life merge into one because I work from home on various different things, some paid and some unpaid, mostly paid these days, though mostly not very well. These are the things I have to juggle around and fit into one another, all with various time constraints and deadlines for when things have to be done. But anyone who has had kids is used to having to juggle their time, that was when I it started I guess, before that life fitted into the nice neat pattern that I described earlier, but now, even though I no longer have to deal with school runs etc, I seem to be juggling more than ever.
Certainly the nature of the Parish Clerk’s job doesn’t lend itself to consistent hours, because issues arise all the time, or stuff comes through via the post or email which has to be dealt with, even if I’m in the middle of a big dtp or writing project. Fortunately I don’t have people turning up on my doorstep too often, though it can happen.
Other than that, I live with two men, one of whom at present leaves the house at 5:30 AM and gets back any time between 8:30 and midnight (usually – though it can be later), while the other seems to have completely reversed the hours of the day, goes to bed when I’m getting up and gets up about lunchtime, but hardly ever leaves his room any way. Oh, and two permanently bemused cats, of course. And visits from my daughter, who checks up on me and had dinner with me last night before going to work (at the village pub) at 7.
At dinner, I opened a bottle of wine, intending to drink half of it, but after I’d poured what I thought was the fourth glass, I noticed that it looked as though I was already over half way down it, so during the rest of the evening I finished it off by myself. Not good.