Sorry, couldn't find a decent one of Misty Moisty, but I prefer this one anyway

Nice video - no pics of Justin though

Thanks to Marian for brining this to my attention!

Fog outside the window. It’s the last day of August. Autumn on its way.
Well, it’s all very arbitrary, of course. We set a date, or someone sets a date, and maybe someone else sets a different date, so there is a convention that the seasons start on the equinoxes/solstices, but another convention that those are in the middle of the seasons, or that the seasons follow calendar months, so that September, October and November will be autumn. As long as we’re consistent when we use those dates for the purpose we need to use them for, what does it matter? We know when it feels like autumn and when it doesn’t. All categories imposed from outside are arbitrary.
I just did the mountain meditation, trying to experience yourself with the solidity and immutability of a mountain. Detaching yourself from the emotions that pass by and through you. This is difficult when you feel unhappy, but it’s not easy when you’re feeling happy either. When life is good, you want to hold on to those feelings, but you know they’re not going to last. So the answer is, don’t try to hold on to them, let them pass through and over you as well, because you know they will pass, and when they’ve gone, what then? So you have to learn to insulate yourself from those extremes and accept life the way it is, the good bits and the bad bits, the fog and the sunshine.
Well, I said ‘have to’ – being prescriptive again. We don’t ‘have’ to do anything. Life is about choices. But it’s hard to avoid using that sort of language, and sometimes trying to avoid it becomes an extra burden you place on yourself and makes things even harder. How do you talk about these things without saying/implying that one course of action is better/more desirable/ preferable to another? And as soon as you say that, you’re saying ‘this is the way to go’ or ‘that isn’t the thing to do’. How can you just explore the options openly, without making those kind of judgements?
It’s good sometimes to just ride the waves of life, and see where they’re taking you. ‘Fallen leaves in the night,/Who can say where they’re going?’ The fast running rivers of choice and chance. There I go again, throwing out random song lyrics – well, not random, because I keep coming back to them again and again. Trying to ride the waves, or the currents, or whatever they are. It’s a question of time scales. Waves are short and here and now, currents operate on a longer scale. It’s all fractal, and where we draw the lines is arbitrary, like how we decide what is summer and what is autumn, or whether we're sad or happy. Some things you just know, without having to analyse them.
I feel like I want to fall back to sleep again. That’s unusual. I slept OK, almost until the alarm went off, last night and the night before as well. I slept badly earlier in the week, I must still be catching up.

Start again, back in the place. What a week. Well, only half a week really, but it just feels so intense.
I come back inspired and full of ideas, wanting to get back into that world, to be in a place where ideas and conversations are everything, except it’s not really like that is, it, it’s just my romanticised view of things, it’s really a world of insecurities and tedious admin and irritating colleagues and deadlines and overload and stress and wondering where the next contract is going to come from. Like any other life, really, alternating between tedium and panic.
And now it’s practically autumn, the new year in academia. Time to get your head down, turn back to the dark, indoor half of the year, to turn inwards, but also to start new projects, to get the mind working again.
And what about blogging? I’m not sure it’s how I want to spend my time any more. It’s served it’s purpose, got me through the last eight months or so, and led me into some strange places I never really anticipated. I sit here this morning and I don’t know what to say. Other things are occupying my mind. So maybe I’ll just leave it at that for now.

When I went into the sitting room – my ‘quiet room’ – to meditate this morning, there were feathers all over the floor. Oh, great I will have to clean in there before I go.
I haven’t done my usual cleaning and hoovering this weekend. A whole (three day) weekend spent on the computer, trying to get all this work sorted out before I go away.
I hadn’t done anything about the navigation . This is where inexperience comes in. Every site I’ve done up till now I’ve hard coded the absolute locations of the links, which means that the links from one page to another can only be done when they’re in their exact final positions on the server. Which would mean that it would all have to be done at the last minute, by the guy in Rome.
I sent him the first three pages a fortnight ago, before he went on holiday, and asked him to let me know if there were any problems. When I didn’t hear anything from him, I just forged on, trying to get as much done as I could and hoping I was on the right lines. But yesterday, his first day back, I got an email from him asking why I hadn’t done the links.
I read and re-read the Dreamweaver help section, trying to sort out how to do it, but it just made me more confused. The Adobe help facility, I’ve concluded, will explain complicated things in minute and exhaustive detail, but when it comes to easy things it assumes you can find those out by yourself and doesn’t bother telling you. So while I was struggling to get my head round navigation bars and recordsets and creating databases, it turns out I don’t need any of those things, creating the links between pages is very simple, just a couple of clicks and a drag and drop. But I only discovered this about 5:00PM yesterday, when I was in the middle of cooking dinner and running up and down two flights of stairs to check on it all and try and make some progress.
So, I went through and set up all the links after dinner and a campari and soda and half a bottle of wine. Which means I will have to check them all this morning, and also go through the folder deleting any old files I need to get rid of, then zip the whole thing up and send it off to Rome.
I haven’t started my packing – well, there’s a pile of clothes on the dressing table stool which were sorted out from the airing cupboard, ready to go. I haven’t done the PC correspondence file – I’ll have to do that before I go, leave it here and send round an email saying if anyone wants to pick it up they will have to come and get it from hubby. And hoover up those feathers.
I didn’t get a timed train ticket, I’ll just pick up a period return at the station. So I can go whenever, as long as I get there for Registration at 5:00. Oh, I didn’t write that extra slide for my presentation either. Never mind. It will be fine.

Been aiming to get the website finished by the end of the weekend – ie today – to send to the guy in Rome, because he is going to be back this week. Nearly there – a lot closer to there than I would have expected a few days ago, I am just going through page by page, adding the navigation buttons and checking that things look OK and are lined up properly. I decided against trying to do the navigation because I guess he might have to do it again anyway.
Then it occurred to me yesterday that today won’t be a holiday in Italiy, so he will be back at work today, so really I should have had it all done before now and sent it to him for this morning. Oh well, didn’t happen.
So, I spent most of yesterday working again, as expected. No feedback about the draft agendas I sent, and I haven’t done the correspondence file yet. One of the councillors wanted to look at the planning app for a plan which is going to appeal, I told him to come round and pick it up and I would have it ready for him, I haven’t and he hasn’t.
Off to London tomorrow. Haven’t packed yet, haven’t gone through the presentation, haven’t done the extra slide. It’ll be fine, I’m not worrying. found my memory stick – oh, think I might have said that yesterday. Repeating myself again.
So, after tomorrow, I won’t be round for a few days again. And after that, I might ease off on the daily blogs. Not sure. Sometimes I can write 500 words about nothing, and sometimes I actually have something to write about.
But that’s it for now.

Slept well, don’t really understand why. Broke the rules, stayed on the computer too long, didn’t play my tapes, sat up writing, went late (only ten minutes or so), but I slept through till just before the alarm. Or rather, I may have been awake once and back to sleep again straight away, can’t really remember.
I got quite a lot of the parish council work done yesterday, stuff that I’d been putting off, or rather, just ignoring, all week while I focussed on the website (or tried to). I sorted out the correspondence which had just been piling up, sent off a response to a consultation just in time (due in on Tuesday), wrote draft agendas for both and circulated them. The agendas are a pain in the bum because they have to be very detailed and cover everything that will be discussed in the meeting. The standard: ‘Apologies, Minutes of last meeting, Matters arising, Finance, Planning, AOB’, is not acceptable – OK, it provides a framework, but that’s all. Nothing is supposed to be discussed if it hasn’t been notified in the agenda beforehand. Which means I have to go through the previous minutes to work out which of the items have made any progress since the last meeting (which is when I remembered I needed to reply to the consultation), go through the correspondence (including emails) to see which require action/discussion, go through the invoices to find out which ones need to be paid. I mostly keep on top of it all, but it is a pain in the bum, and some things inevitably slip through the net. But having a really thorough agenda does help the meeting to progress smoothly – well, it would if the Chair managed it a bit better, and if I could keep on top of all the crap and not keep losing stuff and forgetting what the various items refer to.
I have had a couple of minor altercations with one of the councillors over my agendas. ‘Half the stuff on there shouldn’t even be there’ he told me once. ‘If this was a business meeting…’ Well, it’s not a business meeting, it’s part of the democratic process, and as such everything has to be itemised and notified, so the public, in theory, and if they could be arsed, can know exactly what’s going on. Except that of course they don’t bother to try to find out, they just moan that they’re never informed and never consulted, as though they expect the information to be automatically inserted into their brains by osmosis.
Oh well, rant over.
At least I got it done, and it wasn’t as traumatic as usual, maybe because I knew I had so little time I just got on and did it. All I’ve got left is the correspondence file – one of the PCs likes to have the correspondence file circulated in advance of the meeting so I’ll have to do that today, it’s just a question of sorting out the stuff that needs to be looked at from all the stuff which has come in since the last meeting, and putting it in a file with a circulation list on the front.
So today I’m hoping to get back to the website, and try to get it as close to completed as I can. And run through my presentation for Thursday. At least I found my memory stick. If only getting the rest of my memory back was that easy.

Neither of the guys who usually lead the meditation was there last night, but I took my MP3 player, because I’ve copied my meditation CDs onto it. It’s an amazing little thing, because it has a speaker and I just put it in the middle of the circle and everyone could hear it really well. In fact, when the bell rang at the end we all jumped because it was as though there was someone in the room actually ringing a bell.
There is one lady, Mary, a few years older than me, who has been coming since the spring who left her partner about a year ago and has been coming to terms with being on her own. I have had quite a few chats with her recently about my situation. She is usually very upbeat and strong, but last night she was in tears, she didn’t say it was about anything specific, just that everything was getting too much for her, and that just when she needed it most she was finding it hardest to stick with her meditation and she didn’t think she could do it and was getting angry with herself over it.
Of course, we have all been there, and we said so. I don’t know how many times I’ve felt like that. She said she felt as though she had started on this path but now she doesn’t know if she can do it or where it is taking her. And the answer is that you just get back onto the path. Or not, it’s your choice. I say that because there was an implicit ‘should’ in that sentence’.
I get so stuck on the ‘shoulds’ and ‘mustn’ts’ of life. If someone gives me advice, I take it as an order, for instance, my other friend who said the other week: ‘You need to get a job’. When someone says things like that to me, my mind always runs on to why I can’t do it and what might go wrong if I tried.
We did the mountain meditation, and it was perfect because it is all about recognising the solid core of yourself, being like a mountain, while the storms and sunshine, day and night of your emotions pass around you, which is exactly what we were talking about.
I was talking to Mary at the end of the session. She thanked me for the meditation and said it was just what she’d needed and she felt so much better. In fact everybody thanked me, which was a bit embarrassing, as I pointed it wasn’t me leading it, it was just that it was my mp3 player. But Mary was asking me about how things are going and I got quite defensive. Because the dilemma I have had is this idea that the way to find happiness is to accept life as it is and stop wanting it to be different. There are two messages in my head: one is ‘count your blessings’ and the other is: ‘always put other people’s feelings before your own’. And I suspect that trying to live up to these two principles is at the root of a lot of my unhappiness.

I went out yesterday to the Henry Moore house and sculpture garden in Much Hadham, Herts, about an hour’s drive away from here. I went because a friend had invited me, but I didn’t have particular expectations, I knew about HM of course, and I always enjoy those kind of cultural outings, I like to stretch my knowledge and experience. We had a tour of the house and studio, which was fascinating, a pub lunch and a guided tour of the garden. I always love visiting gardens, and it is a beautiful typically English one, I thought, ‘I’m quite happy just looking at the flowers’ until we got out into the main area, and there were the sculptures. I have to say I was gobsmacked, they took my breath away. I will post some photos. They’re smaller than I anticipated, and wonderfully tactile, you are encouraged to touch and stroke them, to knock on them and hear the echoes. I’d urge anyone who gets the chance and is even vaguely interested in arty stuff to go and see them. We had a guided tour, but it’s possible just to go and wander round. There are a couple in the middle of a field with sheep around them, he did loads of drawings of sheep as well, I’d always assumed they were up on the moors, knowing that he was a Yorkshireman, but apparently they were in a field behind his house in deepest Hertfordshire.
There were five of us ladies in the group, a friend of mine from Cambridge (Maureen) who had organised it, two friends of hers, one I’d met before and one who was new to me, and a friend from Bedford (Jan) who hadn’t met them before but whom I’d invited to go with me because I knew she’d enjoy it and would get on well with Maureen.
Jan’s claim to fame is that it was she who gave me the kitten that caused all the trouble three years ago. She is older than me, divorced and lives alone. Maureen is also older and divorced, and of her two friends, one is divorced and one recently widowed. In the car, I updated Jan, whom I haven’t seen in ages, about the state of my marriage, and she told me something about her experiences of getting out of her marriage when she was about my age. Over lunch, I explained the situation – Maureen knew something about the cat incident but I hadn’t spoken to her about the way things were going lately. I felt sorry for the widow, who obviously misses her husband and must have found the conversation quite painful, but what struck me about the other three was how confident, assertive, relaxed and happy they all were. Maureen said how friends who had known her for years all commented that once she was divorced she was a different person, a very old friend apparently told her that she had gone back to the girl she was before she married. I said how I feel a different person when I’m away from him. They all inspired me.

Missed the alarm this morning and woke at 6:20. found my phone on the sitting room sofa, I must have either forgotten to take it up with me last night or had it in my pocket and it fell out when I got up at 4 and went to sit downstairs.
Awake half the night thinking about sex again. Dear god, a woman of my age, horny as a frustrated teenager. How pathetic. Talk about ‘Desperate Housewives’.
When I did get back to sleep, I dreamt I was staying in a hotel, or more like a student residence, it was the last day and I needed to check out, there was an old fashioned room phone and there was a message on it that I hadn’t listened to, but something happened because my time had expired and the key didn’t work and the phone didn’t work, and I couldn’t check the message and I hadn’t even started to pack, and I tried to explain to someone on the desk that I really needed to find out who this message was from and what it was about, but no one would listen to me.
For some reason the kids were there and the cats were there (and some guinea pigs and rabbits – or maybe Modone without the pancake). The old cat was very ill and poohing everywhere, we were all walking in it, he was howling, when I saw him he had lost so much weight he was about a third his normal size, all thin and bedraggled with pooh in his fur and I knew he was dying, and I was desperately trying to call the vet, but of course, the phone didn’t work.
Not nice, erotic, sensuous dreams then, just the usual bizarre nonsense with an undercurrent of doom.
Actually, Ninja is due for his annual check up, trying to get him in tomorrow or Friday and the vet’s receptionist is going to ring me back with an appointment. They’re at sixes and sevens because the vet’s mum died last week, nice woman, lived in the village. I met her a few times, not that old, it was cancer I think. My daughter knows all about it because the funeral was on Monday at the church and the reception after was at the pub, though she wasn’t working that day. The daughter (vet) is a regular at the pub, and L says she is very upset about it all, naturally enough, so I have been a bit hesitant about calling to book him in.
Well, you never know what’s round the corner, do you? Live while you can, I guess is the message.
The corollary is that you never know what’s going on in your neighbours’ lives either. Well, I don’t, but that’s mainly because I don’t tend to socialise in the village, I only find stuff out through my Parish Clerk role or L, who of course does know it all, being the barmaid. But even in a place this size, I guess it’s still possible to keep secrets.

I’ve just finished writing 500 words that I’m not going to post. Honestly, even I sometimes have thoughts that I’m not prepared to blog about. So, what do I do now? Should I try and come up with another 500?
My head is so full of stuff lately, frustration is what it’s about, I think, but you’ve heard enough about that, I don’t want to go into any more details. The one thing it’s not full of – and should be – is work.
I slept really badly again last night, and the night before. All this accumulated exhaustion, at some point it will all give way and I’ll just have to sleep. I wish I could go to sleep for however long it takes, but it never happens that way. Still I’m used to it, I can keep going, I cope because I have to.
I think we all feel like that, for different reasons. Each of us puts up with stuff going on in our own lives, which seem to outsiders to be more than anyone could bear, but we just get on with it because we don’t have any choice. It’s like the story – I have no idea whether it’s true, or just one of those myths that gets circulated – that if you put a frog in boiling water it will die, but if you put it in a pan of cold water and then bring it to the boil, it will survive.
Actually, if it is true, how does anyone know that? Has someone done it as an experiment? What a horrible thought.
Well, that’s my thought for the day, then. Sorry I haven’t get anything more exciting to say.

Terrible night last night. Couldn’t get to sleep, then I was awake from 2:30 till gone 5. Did write something, though, but I’ll give it to Mel to blog – or rather, on the new group that someone kindly invited her to join, completely out of the blue. Seems appropriate. And when you see the content, you’ll realise that that might be why I couldn’t sleep, if my mind was running on those sort of lines.
So, I’m wiped out today and it’s pouring with rain, and I’ve got a mountain of work to get over this week. Was going to work yesterday, but because the weather was nice I spent some time gardening, then had to do the housework, and what with a spot of blogging here and there, suddenly it was time to cook dinner.
Amazing how quickly the days pass NOT because I’m having fun, just because I’ve got so much to do. Wish I was a bit more efficient at getting it all done. As I’ve said before, I waste a lot of time, especially when there’s a lot to be done. Yesterday in the garden, for example, I probably spent half an hour wandering around aimlessly trying to decide what I should do first. And it’s even worse when I’m tired, as I am today. But, needs must, too much has to be done before I go away next Tuesday. Then when I get back, it will be straight into the magazine publishing, and two PC meetings and a governors’ meeting within a week of one another.
Hubby told me on Friday that he has decided to take this week as holiday. Well, there won’t be much gardening done today, could it be that events in Beijing have affected his choice of holiday dates? Surely not! He had the telly on at 8:30 on Saturday – for the rowing apparently – heaven help us all!
Not sure what else to blog about. Maybe I’ll cheat on my 500 words today and count the piece I’m going to do as Mel as part of the quota.

There’s a widely held myth that men in general are more interested in sex than women in general. The logical corollary of this is that any woman who wants sex and isn’t getting it only has to stick her head above the parapet and say ‘Shag, please!’ to be inundated with offers.

Does this make said (hypothetical, of course) woman some kind of sexless freak if, despite her best efforts, she still can’t get what she wants?
Yesterday morning, Hubby walked into the bedroom when I was getting dressed. I was all nicely clean and scrubbed from the shower, had put on my bra, and was bending down to put on my pants. After 18 years of yoga, I always bend from the hips to give my hamstrings a good stretch, so I was basically folded in two, with my naked arse up in the air and presented towards him as he walked in.
So, what did he do?
What any red-blooded male would do, of course.
He stroked my pussy. And spoke to it. Both of them, in fact, the tabby one and the black one, curled up together on the bed. He said:
‘Are you two playing nicely together?’
He had to squeeze past my naked rump to get into the bathroom, but he was very careful not to make any contact, not a slap, or a grope, or even an affectionate pat.
Since I was 16 I’ve fretted over whether or not the boys would fancy me. I’ve never really experienced being pursued by eager males, and this has been a source of worry and frustration for me down the years. Because I’d love to have more sex, I feel as though I’ve missed out, and I don’t understand why it’s so difficult, if not impossible, to find it, given that men are supposedly so eager for it. The only explanation that makes any sense is that there is something inherently unsexy about me, something so repulsive that it puts off even the horniest of men. I try to tell myself that this isn’t true, I look in the mirror and think ‘For God’s sake, I’m not THAT bad am I?’. I’ve read all the self help manuals, I’ve done everything I can to boost my self image, and yet I come back time and time again to the simple fact that men, when they meet me, however interested they may seem in advance, just don’t want me.
Is it lack of confidence? If that’s the case, then it’s insoluble, because it’s impossible to gain confidence if you don’t have confidence in the first place. This is a loop I have been round so many times. I try to psych myself up, tell myself I’m beautiful, and that any man would be lucky to have me. I can tell myself this enough times that I almost start believing it, and then I meet someone and I get the same reaction I always get, so what happens to the confidence then?

Yesterday evening we had a barbecue – a family Friday tradition, not a party (we don’t do parties), just the four of us. And, also according to tradition, I was the one who did the barbecuing – don’t ask why, I can’t remember how it started, it’s just that’s the way it is. Well, thinking about it, it probably started when Hubby was still commuting regularly instead of being based at home, so I started by lighting it so it would be ready when he did get home, and just went from there.
Anyway, that’s how it is. So on a summer Friday afternoon I sit in the garden listening to the fountain and the birds and the wind in the trees and drinking a margarita (though yesterday I had to ration out what’s left of the tequila, half for this week and half for next.) in previous years, sometimes I’ve had mint juleps instead when we’ve run out of tequila or triple sec, but that hasn’t happened this year.
So, I was sitting by the barbecue drinking my margarita and eating tortilla chips and Doritos creamy dip (that’s the other part of the tradition), and my daughter came and sat with me and chatted.
‘How old’s that barbecue?’ she asked.
‘Must be over 20 years’.
‘You had it before you went to America?’
‘No, we bought it IN America, I just can’t remember whether it was before or after S was born’.
‘Do you remember…’ she started talking about our previous house, barbecues we’d had there, and the time when S was going to cub camp and we had a camp fire on the patio. Mad things we did when they were small.
‘I still miss the old house sometimes’ she said. ‘I grew up there.’
‘Well, really you grew up here. But you were little there.’
‘Yes, that’s what I meant. How old was I when we moved? Ten?’
‘No, 11’, I said, then thought again. That would make it 2000 – no that’s not right. ‘Yes, you were ten.’
‘My childhood was split in two, between there and here. Ten years there, and nine here.’
I looked around the garden, thought about leaving this place, about telling her that we were leaving this place.
Later, her dad came out with the watering can for his tomatoes, telling her how many he’s got, showing her his peppers.
‘He does love his fruit and veg, doesn’t he?’ she said to me with a grin. ‘It’s so great that he’s got this garden, well it’s great for both of you really,.’
She’s right. It’s all very well to talk blithely, hypothetically, about selling the house and being able to buy two smaller places, but what would that mean? Throwing away the kids’ childhood memories of home, throwing away his vegetable garden, the only thing these days that he shows any interest in, ripping apart their lives? For what?
What am I looking for? A better sex life. I might dress it up as ‘love’ or ‘finding myself’ but, if I’m brutally honest, that’s what I’m hoping for. Is that worth all that disruption? Particularly, as there are no guarantees that I’d find it, in fact, given the way most men react to me, it’s very unlikely that I would, I’d just be laying myself open to a constant stream of disappointments, rejections and further shredding of what’s left of my self respect.
So, I stay. Squash my feelings of disappointment with life, squash my ridiculous longings for something different, resign myself to living without it. After all, I’ve spent most of my life living without it.

Someone said to me the other day: ‘we can all be whoever we want to be’. That’s easy for him to say. Personally, I tend to find I’m stuck with being me, and there doesn’t seem to be any way of avoiding it. Circumstances conspire to keep you (me) in your (my) place, or to keep going back to the old places, the ones that draw you down like a magnet – or – no – like gravity, like quicksand, like thick, black sucking mud. Yes, that’s a better metaphor, because the more you struggle, the more you get sucked down. You have to stop fighting and give into it for a while, because fighting will just absorb all your energy and leave you exhausted and defenceless. Speaking of which, I think I’m coming down with a cold.
But I slept better last night, woke and looked at the clock at 4:45 and thought ‘that’s not too bad’ and then went right back to sleep again until just before 6. Probably going to meditation last night helped. Doesn’t always, but sometimes it does.
At meditation, one of the more experienced people said: ‘You are not your thoughts’. You have to try and detach yourself from them, and recognise that they are only transitory. ‘Have to?’ you don’t have to do anything. I got picked up last night for saying ‘should’ about something, but I find it’s unavoidable. To step back and feel that openness of possibility, how do you do that? There are better and worse ways of being and doing, that is inevitable. We cannot detach ourselves completely from judgement, we can just be more or less explicit about it, and when we’re not, when we think we’ve escaped and don’t acknowledge it even to ourselves, that’s probably when it’s strongest.
Who is Melinda? She’s part of me, of course, I know that, I don’t try to pretend anything different. But I don’t control her, I can’t dictate when she will appear. Perhaps I could try to observe the conditions that encourage her? Well, alcohol helps, though not inevitably, sometimes it throws me down deeper than ever (especially gin). Humour is important, not jokes, which can be tedious, but observing the idiocies of life, because life in itself is tragic-comic enough without trying to contrive ‘funniness’.
What can I do? I’m still not ready to move out of this place. Can I find ways of disentangling myself, just gently, nothing extreme or irreversible, just preparing the ground? Emotionally, I have been doing that for the last year, we have established this distance, no physical contact, no outward signs of affection, no sex, two people sharing a space but not each other, and yet being perfectly civil. How does he feel about this? Has he noticed a change? Is he waiting for me to say/do something? Does he think it is a temporary situation? Does he think about it all? Maybe he suspects I’m having an affair, that would be pretty ironic. But I have so much work between now and the end of the year, I should just focus on that. No space to do anything else.
Oooops, I said ‘should’. Silly me.

It’s cold this morning. Summer’s almost gone. Woke at 10 to 4, got up at half past 5. I’m back in the dark place again. Every time I look at my life, I know I’m not happy with what I’ve got. But when I start thinking about alternatives, it’s hard to see, on past experience, how I could ever find anything better. Efforts to change, to try something a bit different, just knock me back. So, if I gave up what I have to try and find something better, that is probably what would happen, more disappointment. Might as well stick with what I’ve got, at least it’s familiar. And that is what keeps me stuck. I might talk about making a break with the past, starting again, but I know I will never do it, because I’m too scared of what will follow, and too sure that it will be a disaster. It’s hard to keep on hoping in the face of repeated disappointments. It feels like hope is just a delusion, something that protects us from recognising how shit life really is. My relationship with my Hubby may be pretty unsatisfactory for me, but at least he’s here and has stuck with me for 30 years, however much of a pain I am to live with. Don’t suppose anybody else would be prepared to do that (not that I anticipate another 30 years, but you know what I mean). So, my choice, I guess, is to try and patch things up with him and carry on as we are and hope things get a little better, which they might for a while (on past experience). And hope some great revelation happens that means this time it doesn’t all go pear shaped again. Maybe I should give up blogging, walk away from all this, stop torturing myself with ideas that I can make my life different. Just accept what is, and stop wanting to fight against it.
It seems like for the time I have left, however long or short that might be, I can look forward to more of the same, and try to find those little things to make me happy, or throw everything away and probably end up with nothing. Not much of a choice.
Went to London yesterday for an editorial meeting. On the train down, I thought I would try to write something, not just drivel, but something constructive, try to continue my novel, as I was saying yesterday. But I just ended up with a blank page with the date written on top. I tried and tried but it wouldn’t come, like it never comes, I just can’t make myself get into the place where it comes from. So, what do I do? Write what I can, or write nothing at all? Maybe nothing at all is a better option than this. I picked up the Metro that was left on the seat and did the su doku. If trying just leads to sitting staring at a blank page with nothing coming out, why try? It’s worse than nothing. Might as well read instead, because you’re not achieving anything.
And at the meeting, which was the first one with the new President (ex Treasurer), her main priority seems to be to save money by cutting back on the magazine – ie) by cutting back on what they pay me. That will mean less work for me, but the kind of work that I enjoy.

My morning meditation is quite short, just a few minutes to focus and settle myself. It can be quite effective though, it’s a small ritual, something I need.
Then I do my writing. Every day. Such effort, for something so trivial. But is it an effort? No, not really. Another small ritual. I very rarely put any serious thought into it.
I was wondering again yesterday whether I could spend this time on something more constructive – like, adding to my novel. Is it a different kind of writing, this writing without editing? Well, not in that respect, because I don’t edit my novel at first draft. Except for content, of course. And this isn’t edited for content (well, only to some extent), it’s just as it comes, flowing out of me. To write fiction, I tell myself, I have to get into a special place. But is that strictly true? Is it so much harder? I think I need time to get into it, to immerse myself, so that it runs through my days and is always nagging at me. But could I do that deliberately? With all else that’s going on in my mind? Could I sit on the train to London this morning and get my head back into that place where I can write about my heroine?
Blogging is a terrible time-waster, someone said to me yesterday – although maybe it’s fairer to say that it absorbs time, how can we say that nothing comes out of it? I wonder sometimes if all my discontent and unsettledness, my feelings of wanting to change my life, my ideas of starting again, of seriously contemplating leaving my husband, have arisen from blogging, from dwelling on these thoughts. Would it be better to let well alone, not to stir up these feelings? I felt the same about counselling, the counsellor I saw when I was doing my PhD made me think this too, and when I looked back I was glad then that I hadn’t taken his advice. And yet, I know the discontent is real, and has always been there, a yearning, it is just the way that I’ve dealt with it that has changed from time to time. A few years ago, pre-cat incident, it was about feeling that life might have been different, but wasn’t, that those kind of ideas are just for stories. But how long can you keep writing stories to avoid living your life?
That seems to have brought me back to my original theme again, about writing. If I finished my novel, would that free me up in other ways? Would that bring me independence? Unlikely – extremely unlikely.
How about integrating the different parts of my personality? They are all parts of me, I know that, I don’t genuinely think of myself as a split personality. It’s just a convenient metaphor for the different parts of me. Sometimes it would be good to draw more on Melinda’s flirtatiousness and sense of adventure in real world situations, such as meeting new people. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t What does that say? How can I use that?

Terrible night. Two things happened for the first time in a while: I didn’t get round to playing my ‘insomnia buster’ tape, and I was awake at 2:30. I’m not saying that the two are necessarily causally linked, just making an observation. When I got back to sleep I had a long and complicated dream in which I was trying to get it together with some bloke but events kept conspiring against us, as they do (well, they do for me, maybe they don’t for you). Then I woke about 5 to 6 and thought I’d wait for the alarm, but next time I looked at the clock it was 10 past, which is weird because I swear I remember setting the alarm. Not that it mattered, because I was awake anyway, but it was still weird.
And it’s pouring. Really pouring. Coming down in buckets.
I feel pretty tired this morning, even more so than usual, not surprising really. I said ‘really’ again, one of my favourite words. Well, this is me just drivelling to my 500 words, and it all adds to the total. If it was something I was properly writing, I would cut out the repetition in the edit, but it’s not, so I won’t. I was tired in this dream as well. Kept yawning in the poor guy’s face, and trying to explain that it was nothing personal, it wasn’t that I found his company boring.
Life ebbs and flows, doesn’t it? What’s that supposed to mean? Oh, nothing really. (Really!) Just something else to say when I can’t really think of much.
Now I feel I’m going to be shoving ‘really’ into every sentence.
Went to rehearsal last night, picked up some flyers about the show, and discovered that it’s going to be a week earlier than I thought – on the website it says 13th/14th, but it’s actually going to be the 6th/7th September. And I’ve changed dates for a hairdresser’s appointment and a governors’ meeting which was set for the date which I thought would be the last rehearsal. Never mind.
It was a bit chaotic last night. We were trying to run through the whole thing but by 9:30 had only got to just after the interval. Well, of course, we kept repeating things. We did the opening number, ‘Wunderbar’, all the way through three times, and the central section of it, where some people are waltzing (not me, I don’t dance) a couple more. There were lots of people missing. I don’t think we’ve had a single rehearsal with everybody there. But it will be fine. On the night, we won’t have to repeat anything, in fact we won’t get the chance.
It looks as though I might not be allowed to wear the red dress though, because I told her it isn’t full length. Which is a pain, because I’d really like to, and I can’t see that I’m ever going to have another opportunity to wear it otherwise, because I’ll never go anywhere in real life to wear it. And I was so chuffed that I could still get into it, and I thought it looked quite good, even if the photo I posted is a bit embarrassing. Hey ho.

I spent some time in the garden yesterday – not long, because a lot of the day was taken up with housework, but some.
There have been times when I’ve got really into gardening and found a lot of enjoyment in it, both the doing and the planning, it has become all absorbing. But it doesn’t last, I’m not consistent, I go off it and other things take over, and it all gets neglected. This isn’t good with gardens, you have to be consistent. But a lot of the time the efforts are disconnected from the results. So, I might put in lots of effort in the autumn or spring for results I’m anticipating/hoping for the following spring or summer respectively, but by the time the results come along my attention has waned or is elsewhere. And that seems typical of life too, always either thinking of what will be or what has been, fantasies or memories, or even what might-have-been (more fantasies). But happiness, so they say, or at least contentment, is to be found by dwelling in the here-and-now. What about deferred gratification, focussing on the anticipation of future happiness? A sign of maturity, so they say (There ‘they’ go again? Who are ‘they’? Same ‘they’, or different? Must be different, sounds a bit contradictory here).
Well, I started to talk about gardening. Because what I was thinking about was the way that I get absorbed in different things, something will take over my life and enthusiasm and time for a while and I’ll throw myself into it completely and feel as though I’m happy as long as I’m doing it, and this is the answer; things like gardening or writing or drawing or cross stitch or listening to the radio or doing su doku, for god’s sake. And as long as I keep doing that one thing I’m ‘happy’, and so I think, if I just keep doing that, I can be really happy. Only, it never lasts, I get bored and go on to something else, or nothing else, or it all gets squeezed out anyway because there’s no time. What is my obsession at the moment? Blogging, I guess. It tends to push other things out, elbow them out of the way and barge into my life so that I have to keep coming back here, to this place.
It would be good if I could make writing the thing that takes over, proper writing, not this drivel. Sometimes in the past it has happened like that, and I’ve been able to make progress. But then it all dries up and other things take over. I’m not consistent, like with the gardening. I want to choose to sit and write, to keep adding to the pile of words until they reach some kind of satisfying resolution. But it’s too difficult and too scary. No, not difficult, I’ve done it before, I know it can be done. I wrote some more of my Hungary blog over the weekend, from memory, just put myself in that place in my head and wrote down what happened. I could do that with my novel, perhaps, put myself in the next place in the story and write what I see and feel and what happens. Sometimes the words come when I’m doing something else, and sometimes I have to make myself sit down and find them.

Last week I had a heart to heart with my daughter about her future. Over the last few years, she dropped out of sixth form, did a national certificate course in graphic design at the local college, which finished this summer, but then decided that’s not what she wants to do. She’d put off job hunting until she got back from holiday, and when she started to think about it she was despairing because she had no ideas. Six months ago she was thinking about doing graphics at university, but now she’s decided it’s not for her, she’s had enough of college and was disappointed in her grades, doesn’t want to work in an office, had started looking for shop jobs, wants something full time, but hasn’t got a clue what she wants to do long term. When I was her age I went off to uni to get away from my parents and give myself three years to put off the decision (and meet lots of boys), but that’s not what she wants.
On Wednesday at rehearsal I was chatting to a woman who works as an air hostess for Monarch airlines, and it dawned on me that this was something she might possibly like to try. This lady also knows my daughter – they did panto together a few years back. She’d been asking after L only the week before, and I’d told her about this worry over her future. She thought it sounded like a good idea, and suggested L have a look at the airline websites. Luton airport is a fairly easy commute from here, so it would work well.
I didn’t see L until Friday, and told her the idea then, because I wanted to tell her face to face. In the meantime, without telling us, on Thursday she had been for an interview for a trainee assistant manager’s job at a pub in another village, but didn’t hold out much hope because of her age (she’s only 19). She liked the cabin crew idea, however, and said it was something she thought about a few years ago, but didn’t think it would be possible. I warned her it’s not as glamorous as it seems, but she was still enthusiastic, and downloaded an application form from the Monarch website.
Then yesterday, the landlord of the pub rang and offered her the job. To start with it would be bar work and waitressing, as she’s currently doing at our local, but it would be more hours, and they will train her so that she can get her own licence. It’s what she knows and what she’s good at, but now she’s got this cabin crew idea into her head she likes that too. We told her she should take the job, because it’s a definite offer, it’s a start, and she can always think about the other thing a few years down the line when she has got some more experience under her belt.
Nice to see her happy and enthusiastic about something. She can’t wait for the day when she can say to some toe rag: ‘Oy, you, out of my pub!’ – the Peggy Mitchell of North Beds.

It's in the last paragraph of this:

http://husbandorcat.blog.co.uk/2006/01/07/it_s_snowing~448259

I'd actually read the first bit, about the snowman-nappers, then moved on
I knew it was Jan 06 though - I was write about that

[Ed's note: Ooops, obviously, that should be 'right'
But I left it in and just pointed it out, because it seems quite appropriate!]

‘Have I ever been happy?’ Oh, what a question. How do I know? Not sure I even know the meaning of the word..
Happiness is something which comes in little, short flashes, like sunlight through the clouds in the evening of a gloomy day. It’s a good meal, or a nice bottle of wine, or having fun with friends. Walking around the Latin quarter on a Sunday morning and listening to the bells of Notre Dame. Or standing under the full moon… no, that’s not happiness, that’s something else, I’ve no idea what, but something else.
I didn’t kick the cat this morning, but I spilt her food everywhere. It’s that dry crunchy stuff, so it wasn’t too messy. She had fun hoovering the bits up from the kitchen floor, doing it quickly, as if she thought she shouldn’t be and that I’d tell her off. I didn’t mind, she was saving me a job. Her brother joined me for meditation again, watching the smoke rise from the incense.
Sometimes I feel happy after meditating, especially with the Thursday evening group. We did a walking meditation out in the garden this week, alternating between focussing on walking and being inside yourself, then looking at what is around you. I got very absorbed in a lavatera flower at one point, then a rose bud, then the swifts flying over head, weaving a pattern against the blue of the sky, the clouds moving and changing colour.
Sometimes gardening makes me feel happy, I haven’t done nearly enough of it this year, too busy with work and travel, and when I wasn’t, too preoccupied with other things to find much pleasure in it.
Falling in love, being with someone or knowing that you’re going to see them, anticipating it – is that really happiness? It’s too intense and too mixed with fear and the knowledge that it won’t last – like a flower that has bloomed too quickly, with no robustness behind it, doomed to collapse into a mess of rotting vegetation. So why bother? You know it will end in pain and hurt and regret. And yet there is nothing which can match that feeling, it’s an addiction, a longing, a craving that makes everything else pale in comparison and won’t let you go once it’s got its hooks into you.
Sometimes when work goes well, that makes me happy. When I’m writing or thinking or creating something and it comes together, I remember writing something about this a long, long time ago, maybe I’ll dig it out. [Ed's note: just spent half an hour going through my posts from January 2006