Well, I didn’t get an acknowledgement of my job application, and yesterday I started fretting that it hadn’t been sent properly. Until I got a phone call asking my when I’d like to go for interview. So, I’m going at 10 tomorrow morning.
I started on the Internet search I agreed to do for Yves yesterday afternoon. He wants some initial results by Thursday. So far I can find bugger all. This is not good. I should have started earlier, but… isn’t that always the case? Still haven’t got all the other crap out of the way. I should have worked harder at the weekend instead of messing about. I haven’t done the minutes from last Wed’s meeting, well, not finished them yet. Two more on Thursday. I sent out the agenda for the PC yesterday but I haven’t done the financial report. Made a start on it yesterday evening before I went to pilates. I really must do that today but I need to have something to show Yves as well.
The last two insert pages for the magazine went off, but now she wants me to send the programme and the mag to the web designer for the website. Except I have to go through it first and take out all contact details for people who might not want their contact details on the web. And, of course, I won’t get paid any extra for that because I just get paid for the printed magazine. Apparently (and I only got this second hand from the editor), the web manager was grumbling that she can’t use stuff in the format I sent her. Well, she should be able to use a pdf, that’s all I can send. Unless there’s some way of saving it from In Design to html, I don’t know, never tried. Might be, I suppose. I don’t think there’s any way of saving it to Word, I’ve got a feeling I’ve tried that. Anyway, the formatting would obviously all be messed up.
This whole idea of putting more stuff on the website is an effort to save costs, because they only pay for the printed version. What I’m not prepared to happen (and I said this to the editor, who agrees with me) is for me to do a lot of work formatting for the web, which I won’t get paid for. I know the honorary officers work really hard for nothing. But they all have others sources of income.
I can’t even begin to think about what the implications will be if I get offered this other job. I am at least going to have to do the November issue. I did hint to the editor a couple of weeks ago that if things didn’t get any better I would be looking for a proper job. And I don’t quite know what’s happening with the web design work for Carlo. I haven’t had any feedback from the initial stuff I did for him in the summer, the next phase (including trip to Berlin) is supposed to be in the autumn some time, but I haven’t heard any more. I think I might have to carry on with these things for the time being. I will find out tomorrow when they would want me to start. I suppose if I was coming from another conventional job, I would have to give notice. I need to check what notice I am supposed to give to the PCs and schools. At least I could drop them, though I feel bad about leaving them in the lurch. And there is a huge backlog of filing and sorting out that I will have to do before they get into a state where they could be handed over to someone else.
But if I get a job with a normal working week, all the other stuff will just have to fit round it.

Monday morning. Another week. Creative writing this morning.
Back home yesterday. I came home mid morning to sort out the problem with the fonts and finish off the programme and email it to the client. She is getting it printed and copied today, hope she likes it but if she sends me the material at the last minute what can she expect?. Then I printed off the agenda and minutes for the PC meeting and went to put them on the noticeboards and through the letterboxes of the two councillors who don’t have reliable email. I ended up at the garden centre because there is a notice board there, and bought some winter bedding. I even got some pansies – I decided a few years ago that I was sick of winter pansies and I would try to manage without them, but yesterday I succumbed.
How do you know when it’s right to walk away from a situation and when to keep pursuing it? I’ve upset somebody unintentionally – not anyone to do with BCUK – and they told me not to contact them again. I was just being my usual jokey/sarky self and I don’t know exactly what it is that I did/said that caused this reaction. There’s a part of me that always wants to fix things, that wants to say: ‘I’m sorry, whatever I did I didn’t mean to, please can we forget it and be friends again?’ but I don’t see how I can when I’ve been told to get lost. Marian once told me, in a totally different context, to ‘walk away with dignity’ and I know that’s what I should do. But it’s hard when all the loneliness and self doubt kicks in. Hey, I’ve got other friends, I can afford to lose one, especially someone I’ve not known for very long. But the feelings tap into something very deep inside me, they take me right back to situations from my teens.
I hate people to think badly of me, even people I don’t know. I want to be liked, to be seen as a ‘nice person’. I worry endlessly about how I come over, what people think of me. I know it’s stupid: why should I care? But I do.
The experiment of being away for the night was quite a good one. I did have feelings of loneliness and insecurity, but I got through them. This is what I am trying to learn, to face up to those feelings, accept them and adapt, rather than running from them as I have in the past. There will always be another way out.
I haven’t heard any more about that job application yet. Admittedly the closing date for applications wasn’t till Friday, but I thought I would at least have had an email acknowledgement. There again, they’re probably busy with other stuff, I shouldn’t go judging people, there are probably lots of reasons why they didn’t do that, nothing to do with not being interested . I always do that, speculate about things and try to work out what’s going on, trying to second guess everybody and everything, and tying myself into emotional knots.

I had a bit of a dark night of the soul – well, not night exactly, more evening. That feeling of being alone, and what if no one wants me, how would it feel to completely alone, just me. Rather like the feelings I had on the Saturday evening the last time I was in Brussels.
I stayed out in the garden until some time after 5, struggling to read the screen of the laptop, then brought it in to the kitchen and started on my work. And found that the version of In Design on the laptop doesn’t have Gill sans, which is the main font I use for the mag. So, I did the main layout for what I needed to do (a single page insert of the programme of events for the year), but will have to finish it off at home on my own machine.
That took me till about half six, when I drove to the chippy, bought myself some dinner and came back here. I was thinking about having a drink, I drove past Tesco and wondered if I should go and buy something, but couldn’t decide what, about the only thing that goes with fish and chips is beer (other than tea), and I didn’t really fancy that. So, thought I’d have a see what Jan had, but other than a couple of bottles of white wine in the fridge, which I didn’t feel I could open, and a half empty miniature of Beefeater in the cupboard over the sink (who opens a miniature and only drinks half??? Maybe she just takes a nip as and when required!), I couldn’t find anything. I later discovered a bottle of Sardinian liqueur – Mirto, never heard of it – in the pantry with the potatoes, and thought about trying that with my coffee, but forgot – shame, I like trying unusual liqueurs.
So, a Saturday without alcohol for me, though I don’t think that entirely explained my mood. I ate my fish and chips at the kitchen table with the laptop, checking my emails, and finding that not one person had contacted me – not one. In fact, I didn’t have a single email all day. Which is pretty unusual.
The evening whiled away without me really knowing what I wanted to do with it, and the Internet response was really slow and I kept getting frustrated. I did some more work, made a start on the minutes for Wednesday’s governors meeting. I went on to Facebook for a while, I haven’t been on there for ages, I used to do it a lot last year before I got back into blogging. I went on to the BBC site and did listen again on some quiz show chaired by Clive Anderson, then listened to the Radio 4 classic serial, about the Scott Antarctic expedition – one of the ladies at writing on Monday recommended it because my assignment story last term was partly about Antarctica. While I was doing that, I started playing Free cell. At 10, I made myself some cocoa and got ready for bed, as I would at home, checked again to see whether anyone had emailed me (no) , played another couple of games of free cell. Went to bed and to sleep about 11, woke at 3:45, got up about 4:15 for an hour, went back to bed, still awake when my alarm went off at 6, I switched it off, but half an hour later the bedside alarm went off (I know I was asleep then because I was dreaming), took me ages to work out how to switch it off – especially as there is one either side of the bed and I tried the wrong one first time.
So, that was my exciting evening of freedom.
The cats, however, are a joy. Really sweet and friendly. Wish I’d brought the camera.

I’m late today, I slept badly, woke with the alarm but then lay in bed awake for half an hour before I got up.Then I did the mountain meditation, which is a relatively long one, but I thought I needed it, though I don’t know whether it helped. To learn to accept that all things must pass, the highs and the lows, that I am not my emotions, that I can just be myself and detach myself from these feelings of loneliness or unhappiness.
My friend Jan has gone to the States for a month, and she asked me to house-sit and cat-sit for her. Although it seemed like a good chance to get away and find out how it would be to be on my own, I didn’t feel I could say yes because I didn’t know what hubby would think, what he might suspect. So my daughter and her boyfriend are doing it instead, but they’ve gone away this weekend, and I said I would stand in.
I went over yesterday morning, picked up the keys and saw them off, then went back again in the afternoon and fed the cats. Today I’m planning on going and staying the night. I wonder how it will be? I know they don’t really need me to be there, they would probably be OK for two nights and not run away, but I want to see how I feel. My daughter’s laptop is there, but I’m not sure if I’ll have Internet access as it’s on a mobile aerial and I couldn’t get it to work yesterday. So I might not post tomorrow.
But I’m going to take lots of work to get on with. Actually, I have to, because I have some which has to be done this weekend, and I need to catch up/get ahead of myself on the rest.
I love my friend’s house, I could see myself living alone somewhere like that, with two cats. How would it feel? Would I be able to cope?
The loneliness came over me again last evening, great black waves of it, wave after wave crashing over me with no solution in sight. And this morning too – Saturday morning again. Why do I feel this way on Saturdays? That’s why I played the mountain meditation.
I want to escape and find a place where I can meet myself, face to face, and know that I’m a good and loveable person. I want to find compassion for myself. Should I try for a reconciliation with Hubby, again, knowing that probably nothing will change? There I go with the ‘shoulds’ again, well Marian’s not here to tell me off. What if it did change, if it really changed, what then? If he could really turn it around, and open up about his feelings, and be more affectionate and loving, would I want him then? How would I feel about that? When it happened (temporarily) before, when he tried, what did I feel? Relief, I think, that life could settle into its pattern and I could enjoy other things for a while and not be fretting about it and wondering if I was doing the right thing.

Forgot to switch the coffee on. Usually I do it while I’m meditating then go and pour it out when I’ve finished and bring it up here to drink while I’m writing. I will have to go down and get it in a few minutes when it’s ready.
I was out all day yesterday, went to a Clerks’ one day conference at Chilford Vineyard just south of Cambridge. I took all my pilates and meditation stuff with me because I thought there might not be time to come home, as it happens I probably could have come home for half an hour, but I took a leisurely drive back through the Cambs and Beds countryside, took a few wrong turnings, I don’t mind that, it was a nice afternoon and I had the radio on. I got into Bedford with a bit of time to spare so I went for a wander round tesco, bought some bras and a jumper and a necklace, and ended up having to rush to get to pilates as usual as I had to change in the loo when I got there.
A lady I was talking to at meditation last night suggested I should try to look at things from Hubby’s point of view, she is the second person to have said this recently. This is very difficult, partly because I think it will make me start feeling guilty and get me back into that mindset of thinking I have got to stay again, but mainly because it’s just so hard for me to know what he’s thinking. I’m sorry, that sounds like such a cop out, but after thirty years of trying to work out what he’s thinking I still struggle. I guess he might suspect I’m having an affair, but if he does he won’t do anything about it. He probably just thinks something on the lines of, I am going through one of my phases and will come round eventually and everything will be all right again. Well, all right from his point of view, I suppose. All right meaning that things won’t change very much, I will still be here and that will be that, things will just settle into their usual patterns, not that they are actually that different from their usual patterns anyway. I don’t know whether he even thinks there is anything wrong, or if the turmoil is all just in my head, and it only seems unusual because I am explaining it to people who aren’t used to it and for whom it all sounds strange.
I don’t know why he doesn’t seem to want to have sex any more, but it’s always been me who initiated it anyway and I haven’t tried to initiate it lately, maybe if I did he would respond, but I don’t really want to, I’m not sure those are the signals I want to send. I mean, the only signal I’ve had that he doesn’t want to is that he started getting up earlier at the weekends, maybe I’m just imagining that he’s gone off it, putting two and two together and getting five as usual, always second guessing instead of asking.
I guess the reason I am reluctant to try talking to him is that at the moment I can feel a distance between us, which is what I will need if I ever make the break, but if I start talking to him that will suggest I want a reconciliation, and I suspect it will just slide back into the status quo again. If I do that, I’ll never find the strength to leave. And that is what I think I want.

I spent a long time yesterday thinking about Trevor’s comments on my post from a couple of days ago, and it quite upset me. The one where I mentioned about saying something to Hubby and him not responding, just an off hand remark really, it wasn’t that important – I mean, both what I said about it in my post and the original comment, whatever it was, it was so trivial I can’t even remember now, just something about the cats, probably.
Trevor says: ‘that’s not normal’, but what does ‘normal’ mean? It’s normal for us, it’s just the way life is, that is the way our relationship is, it has been forever. He’s not putting me down or being disrespectful, certainly not intentionally, it’s just the way he is and has always been. Like I said, what I had to say was so trivial I can’t even remember what it was, and anyway, nobody’s at their best first thing in the morning, and who wants to be disturbed when they’re reading, unless it’s something important, which this obviously wasn’t.
It doesn’t particularly bother me if people don’t listen to what I say, any more than if people don’t read my blog, I’m used to it, I really don’t expect anyone to be interested in anything I have to say, why should I? That’s for them to decide, not me. I don’t expect the world to take any notice of me, I say stuff, and if people respond it’s nice (well sometimes, depending on what the response is), but if they don’t, I don’t hold it against them, it’s my problem, not theirs, it just tells me that what I was saying wasn’t of interest, or relevance to them, and after all, why should I expect it would be? So I don’t expect anything, and I’m not disappointed.
I’m just a bit shocked that Trevor reacted so strongly and seems to think I’m endangering my health by living like this. But this is life, what am I supposed to do about it? You just get on with it, don’t you, that’s what most people do, you just make the most of it and try to see the positive things. Sometimes Hubby listens to me, he doesn’t ignore me all the time, it’s not like it was three years ago. It just depends, as I said, on whether what I’m saying is worth responding to or not, and if it isn’t, well, as I said, that’s my problem, not his. We don’t argue, he doesn’t beat me up, he doesn’t criticise, not deliberately anyway, he pays the bills, he doesn’t stop me doing things I want to do. OK, we don’t socialise together, share our feelings, kiss, or have sex, but I bet that’s true of lots of couples our age. I’m not going to change him now, and anyway, I don’t think people should try to change their partners, you just have to accept them for who they are and try to adapt, I’m sure he’s adapted to me in lots of ways.
Yes, it would be nice to have a relationship that was a bit more loving and sharing, but I’m married to this man, I made a commitment to him, and I owe him. And I have nowhere else to go. So I just have to make the best of it.

PS He just shouted 'Bye' up the stairs.

Late today, the alarm didn’t go off. I heard hubby moving around, but the first time I looked at the clock it was 4:45 so he’d obviously just gone to the loo, I must have fallen back to sleep and when he got up again later didn’t notice, it was only when he came back in to clean his teeth that I looked at the clock and realised it was 6:20. I said: ‘Didn’t the alarm go off?’ and he said ‘No’, and I said ‘Shit, must have forgotten to set it’ and that was that. So I skipped meditation.
Went to the second night of my evening class last night. I tried to finish off the exercise in the handout yesterday afternoon, adding a couple of links to the page we’d created and no matter what I did they didn’t appear and I couldn’t for the life of me see what was wrong. Then I went back to the beginning and checked through everything I’d done. I was playing around with it last week changing the background and text colours, and as soon as I reset the background to black, as it was in the original, they appeared – I just couldn’t see them because I’d made the background blue – durrrr!!!. I didn’t have time to finish the exercise then, we spent some time in class doing it and she had some additional ones for those who’d finished during the week (not many had), so I moved on to them. I wasn’t the fastest and I wasn’t the slowest. She said we don’t have to do the exercises at home if we don’t want to, but I’m going to try because practice is always good. Anyway, I like coding, I always have, it can be tedious and frustrating but there’s something very satisfying about getting it to work.
So, that’s one more thing I have to do, but I’m not going to think about it like that.
I wrote my application letter for this job yesterday, and I dug out my CV, it does need quite a bit of tweaking as the last time I had it was to send it to Yves, so it emphasises my research skills and give a list of publications, none of which is going to be at all relevant. I’ve pared it down a bit, but probably need to do more. I never know what to do about my voluntary activities, I used to list them all because I have such huge gaps in my employment record, then the tutor at a course I went on about improving your employability (hah!!!) said ‘You never have time to work!’ so now I don’t know what to do. Also I don’t know whether to list all my clerking jobs separately, obviously if I got a proper job I would give those up, but that might not be obvious.
Well, I can only do what I can and see what they think.
I wasn’t sure whether to be up front about my age and say something in the letter about, ‘I know I don’t have the profile you’re looking for, but feel my maturity is an asset because…’ but thought it was probably better just not to draw attention to it.

Hubby’s going to Nottingham again today. He’s in the kitchen eating his breakfast. I came in from my meditation and got myself a cup of coffee while he ate his toast and read the paper. I spoke to the cat, and then said something to him about her but he just carried on reading the paper and didn’t respond. I poured my coffee, got the milk out of the fridge, said ‘I’ll see you some time this evening then’, he said ‘Right’ without looking up. Why do I try when I know that he’s not going to respond? I’m sorry, I’m moaning again and I shouldn’t. I don’t care whether he speaks to me or not, but I feel as though I ought to care. It’s just how he is, I know that by now, I don’t want to change him, how would I feel if he did change? It’s too late for that. Do I feel resentful, should I feel resentful, am I entitled to feel resentful? I don’t know. I guess I feel a bit sad though. Do I want too much? I’ve tried just to accept him as he is. I don’t know any more whether this is normal or not.
He just shouted up the stairs: ‘Right, I’ll see you tonight, bye-bye’. Maybe I’m being too hard on him. He was reading the paper, after all.
I was going to start on Yves’ work today. But there was an extra Parish council meeting yesterday evening, and now I’m gong to have to write a letter summarising their views, and get it in by Friday. Every time I think I’m catching up, something else happens. And I had a phone call yesterday from the new boss lady about the magazine, there are two pages of supplements to go in it, she’ll get them to me for Friday and she needs them back for Monday so someone can copy them in the office. So I will be working most of the weekend, for £60 because the charge is £30 a page for inserts. She said ‘I’ll do the layout for you’ but having the layout in Word and then redoing it in In Design is not as straightforward as it sounds, I still have to do it, and if it’s in tables it’s a pain to do.
Come on, stop whinging, things could be so much worse.
I read out my ‘character sketch’ at writing yesterday, it went down well as usual, that’s the first time I’ve left it till Monday morning altogether, I’ve finished off on Monday before now, but this time I was just starting from scratch, though I had some idea in my head of what I wanted to say. It turned almost into a piece of flash fiction, I might post it.
I haven’t applied for that job yet. I’ve got a huge mental block about doing job applications.
Is it normal, though, when someone is talking to you, even if you’re reading, to completely ignore them and not even acknowledge that they’re there or have said anything? Even if they’re just talking rubbish. It’s normal for him, I should know that by now. If I don’t like it, that’s my problem for putting up with it all these years.

Won’t write too much today, I’ve just written 300 words for the assignment for my writing class. Bit naughty leaving it till the last minute, I know. I don’t usually leave it quite this late, I have been known to finish it off on Monday morning, but I’ve usually at least made a start before then. No more than 2 minutes reading out loud time is the rule, but mine is probably a lot less than that. We did several exercises last week, one about a landscape; one about non verbal communication and one where we each had a photo of a person and tried to interpret from it what the mood of the person was and then identify the clues that gave us those ideas. The assignment was to write a character sketch of that person using some of the other elements we had discussed, not to describe them directly but to put over something about their mood and personality.
I haven’t done my CV for that job yet, I will do, maybe this afternoon. But yesterday morning I got an email from my Belgian friend Yves, offering me some consultancy work, doing some Internet searches for him. It will only be short term, but it sounds potentially interesting, and he will pay me 300 Euros a day, so I couldn’t say no. It’s stuff like that that I won’t be able to do if I get a normal job. But unfortunately I can’t rely on there being enough stuff like that to keep me going. Which is another reason that keeps me stuck.

Late this morning, I was awake from 3:15 till about 5, back to sleep, switched off alarm when it rang and then fell asleep again till 7:15.
Spent yesterday morning doing my tax return, been putting it off for months, well, not putting it off exactly, just not fitting it in. It has to be done by the end of the month, but towards the end the website gets a bit busy so I thought I’d better get my finger out and get it done. Not a difficult job, there’s not that much to do, though this was the first year I’d had to include the dtp as well, had to make sure I included all the costs. And the good news is – they owe me just under £200! The bad news is, of course, that that’s because the amount I actually earnt last year is so piddling that the PAYE I paid (I’m paid for the school governors on the County Council payroll, and they give me a standard tax code) was more than enough to cover what I owed. Still, every year up to now I’ve got the whole of that back because I didn’t earn enough to even reach the tax threshold. So I guess that’s progress. And this year it’ll be more because that only covered two issues of the magazine.
I had a look through the job adverts in the local paper yesterday and found one for a designer/website administrator for a small local company. They want someone to manage their catalogue for them and update their website using a CMS (content management system). They say it will suit a new graduate, and the money is really low – but still 3 times what I earnt last year. It would be a proper office job, so would cut down my flexibility. But even if I ultimately want to be freelance, it wouldn’t do any harm to my CV, and regular money would give me more options.
They ask for working knowledge of Quark Express, Illustrator and Photoshop, and In Design would be an advantage. I have good knowledge of In Design and Photoshop, but little of Quark and none of Illustrator, though I’m confident I could pick them up easily. I guess it’s a question of whether they think my maturity and experience in other ways makes up for lack of specific knowledge with regards to software, aft all I’ve got a proven ability when it comes to picking up and using all kinds of software.
Anyway, we shall see.
Of course, if I did get it, there would be all sorts of knock-on implications, obviously I’d drop the PCs and schools, but would I still be able to do the magazine, and what about the rest of the European website work I’ve agreed to? Maybe if I hang in a bit longer I’ll get more clients and things will start to take off in the direction I want them to, and I can keep my flexibility – but maybe not.
Still, I haven’t even applied yet. Cross those bridges if I come to them.

I woke at 5, should have got up, but I didn’t, I just lay there, thinking round the same old circles, till the alarm went off, and even after, not making any progress, not reaching any conclusions. Not going back to sleep. It’s really bad for me to lie awake like that. Then I got up. Sat for a while downstairs. Did the mountain meditation.
I feel as though I could go back to sleep again now, though I didn’t sleep badly, 6 hours probably, that’s OK. Should I do that? Get back into bed, close my eyes, let it wash over, give in to it?
I’m in a sad place again. Don’t know why. It often happens on Saturday mornings, I don’t really understand it. Sad and lonely I can hear the church clock striking 7 as I doze over the keyboard. Time drifts past me.
I often get these feelings of melancholy or despair on a Saturday morning. Why is that? Just coincidence, I guess. Or too much brandy and wine on Friday evening, maybe.
Drifitng off again. What am I imagining? It’s as though I’m sliding into dreams. Come on, I’m up now, I need to be doing something.
I haven’t had my coffee yet. At the weekends I leave it till 7:30, a hangover from the days when I used to get back into bed with hubby. Don’t bother any more. Should I try this morning? No, just leave things as they stand.
I’m not getting anywhere. Maybe I should just call a halt, say that’s it, I’m not going to get to 500 words today, what does that matter? None of it matters of course not, nothing matters. Everything just drifts past, some days it feels good and you’re happy about it, others it doesn’t and you have to hang on to what you can and try and pull yourself through it all.
I always say that writing 500 words is easy because it’s just free writing, it doesn’t matter what I say. But there are times when I struggle. The writing class on Monday had a mix of people who had been in previous years and new students. Talking at coffee break, one of the new people seemed impressed with my 500 words, but I tried to explain, as I always do, that it’s nothing really, just a waste of time, to be honest. And yet I keep on doing it. Discipline. The discipline is just sitting here and letting it come out.
Another woman, the only other person who has been going for as long as I have, 3 years, was saying that if my novel isn’t going anywhere I should start something else. But then that would just be yet another thing I’ve started and never finished. Everything is there for this novel to work. It’s just me that’s the problem, finding the mental space to let it develop. Not so much the time as the capacity to let it enter me and take over.

Who is up at this time of day? Not just me, that’s for sure. Lot’s of people have to get up early. Maybe not so many do it voluntarily though. I was awake at 5 today, not bad.
I went to the alumni lecture last night – more specific than that, the ENVIRONMENTAL alumni lecture. I saw one person I knew, he was a student in my department when I was, and he’s a senior lecturer now. I mentioned I might be looking for work. He doesn’t know of anything specific at the moment, but at least he said let’s keep in touch. He also said that it’s even worse than it was 5 years ago, when I walked away. I told him about my GM related research, and he seemed impressed.
We also had a bit of a chat about the climate change debate. He, like many scientists, thinks it’s just a question of explaining to the public that the period of uncertainty we were going through 20 years ago or so is now over and the science is very clear and well understood. I tried to put over to him the levels of cynicism I have encountered and that, the greater the certainty and more forcefully the arguments are expressed, the less people want to accept them. There is still such a strong and naïve belief in the rationality of people, that if the facts are explained to them they will understand and accept the need for change. I found the same attitudes among people at the Royal Geographical Society conference too. But rationality doesn’t figure too highly in most people’s belief systems.
I was also talking to a couple of other people who were bemoaning the attitudes and lack of scientific understanding in the media, and the inactivity of politicians. Twas ever thus. Funny how everybody blames the ‘politicians’, a useful catch-all term of abuse, as if somehow if we could find the right ‘politicians’ everything else would fall into place. Politicians reflect society. It is the combined actions of individual people which accumulate in the mass to create the shit we stumble through. There really are no solutions that will ever find political support, because what needs reforming is so fundamental. The whole mess we are in (environmental, economic and social) has been predictable, and predicted, for so long, and no one has succeeded in doing anything to prevent it, because no one wanted to know about it.
Oh well. That’s life.
As for my life – well, I had an interesting evening. A couple of good talks and some nice people to chat to. I was talking to one woman who is in a similar boat to me – gave up trying to find research jobs, retrained as a teacher and is now supply teaching, it’s a living of sorts but she’s frustrated that no one is interested in using her scientific expertise. She worked for an environmental consultancy for a while after she graduated, but in her words the job mainly seemed to consist of copying maps and sending them out to people. ‘I thought, is that how we’re going to save the planet?’ she said. ‘By copying maps? And the money was crap.’ Well, if I can stop the contractors who empty the dog pooh bin from driving over the wildflower meadow to get to it (the latest complaint I’ve had to sort out), at least I’ll be doing my bit to help save one tiny bit of the planet that means a lot to some people in my village.

Copy date for the parish magazine today. Two articles to write; one for each PC (it’s a joint magazine between 3 villages, because we only have one vicar between us – think ‘The Archers’ – actually at present we don’t have a vicar at all). I write an article each month for each PC, just a summary of the meeting, supposed to be 250-300 words but it’s always twice that long because it’s hard to get through it in any less. And they never edit it down. So, got to try and do that this morning before I go to the hairdressers, send them off to the Chairs for agreement so I can get them to the editor today. Hate doing it so last minute but it’s been so hectic lately.
Sent the artwork for the magazine to the printers yesterday, I send it as a pdf, now I have to wait for the proofs. I was still changing it yesterday morning, the new president decided at the proof reading stage that she wanted lots of changes, not really for her to say, we (the editor and I) have gone along with some of it, but seems like she is trying to do our jobs as well as her own. She is on the editorial committee, the time to raise issues like not having italics in headers and cutting down the number of different fronts is at a meeting, not 24 hours before the thing has to go to the printers.
And she has cut down the length to save money, but some of the money that’s being saved is my income. Her idea is to have briefer articles in the mag and complete articles on the web, because that will save printing costs, but if she then thinks that I will do the work of formatting the articles to go on the web (for no payment, because I am paid per printed page), I am going to have to say I won’t do it. I hate being in this situation where I am the only one getting paid, because it makes me feel uncomfortable about asking for money. It’s the same with the organisation in Oxford (the work from there has now died a death because they couldn’t afford to pay me) and the Parish councils/school governors. I can’t run this as a business because I’m so used to doing stuff voluntarily that I find it very difficult to charge for what I do.
Anyway, I’ve moaned about that before.
I did hint to the editor yesterday that things are not great and I might be looking for a full time job somewhere, I am tired of working 150% of the time and get 60% of the money, her comment: ‘so then we would lose you altogether’, and they wouldn’t find a professional desk top publisher as cheap as me, god knows what they would do. I can’t even think about it.
I really do enjoy it all, the design, the editing, and I know I’m good at it, but I don’t know how to be professional about all this.

Went to the first session of my web design evening class last night. I’ve been thinking about doing it for about three years. There isn’t an introductory course on the timetable, there’s ‘level 2’ and ‘level 3’ and they use Dreamweaver. When I first thought about doing it, we didn’t have Dreamweaver, and it’s so expensive couldn’t justify getting it. I’ve done a few websites, but self taught, and I’ve always used Frontpage, which we have anyway, I think it came with the computer. Then I got the student edition of DW included in Adobe SC3 which I got for my daughter when she started her graphic design course.
So I signed up for the level 2, hoping it would be OK. When I mentioned it at meditation group last week, one of my friends said: ‘You know all about that, you could give the course, couldn’t you?’ Well, nice of her to say, but of course I don’t, I’m pretty clueless really.
Anyway, went last night and of course I got there late, as always, only a few minutes but I guess the tutor had been saying something about the content, because he was saying ‘If anyone thinks this is going to be too basic for them and would like to switch to the Level 3 course there are some places available’. Then the level 3 tutor came in and said that she was having to start from the beginning anyway because she had some degree level students in the group who’d never done anything but were required to do the level 3 course, but that she’d be going through it quite fast. They said there would be no commitment to stick with it and we could swap back after the first couple of weeks if we decided we’d rather. I really liked her, so I thought I’d give it a try. I was glad I did because she’s great.
We spent the first half of the class going through all the introductory stuff about the college and also she spoke a bit about the history of the world wide web and Tim Berners-Lee. Then after the break she started us on html. I’ve never coded with html before, but it really is a doddle – well, obviously, what we were doing is very, very basic, but the basic concepts are really straightforward. She gave us an exercise to work through and some handouts. She also said at the end that the other class will spend 2-3 weeks going over what we covered last night, so I’m glad I swapped.
So, I have got another activity to add to all the others to try to keep me busy and my mind occupied and find ways of being happy and satisfied. Because I can’t see any way of changing my situation, for all the reason I gave yesterday, I have to find ways of distracting myself to try to make it as good as it can be. Of course, each new thing I take on leaves me less time for the others. But maybe out of all this mess I’ll find something worthwhile.

Woke at 4, got up for a while, went back to bed, stayed awake till the alarm went off then went back to sleep and dreamt about the Crazy Frog, of all people. Haven’t thought about him in ages. A bit more explicit than my usual dreams. We had just got naked then loads of people started coming into the room. Woke up and got up at 6:40. Pretty tired now. I’ve got my dreamweaver evening class tonight, hope I can stay awake.
I fell into an old, familiar pattern of thinking yesterday, and couldn’t see a way out. I’d more or less made up my mind that, emotionally, I have to go, it’s just a question of finding an exit strategy. I need to find somewhere to run to.
But I need to be able to support myself. I won’t take anything from him. And to earn enough from my present activities to pay rent and bills, I would have to take on a lot more work – probably another couple of parishes at least. And that’s just not on. So, I would have to get a proper, ordinary job. And I just can’t see how I’m going to find one. If I could find one commensurate with my qualifications and abilities, I’d be well set up, but I don’t see any way that is going to happen. The chances of anyone giving me a job like that are even less now than they were three years ago, or five years ago, or ten years ago. It just won’t happen. And if it did, I’d have to give up on everything else, the writing, the dtp/web design, the research, because I know when I was working full time before, I didn’t have time for any of those things.
So, this is what it has always come down to, to have any of those things I have to stay with Mr Meal Ticket. That is the compromise I have made, to try and give myself space to do some of those things I wanted to do. (Except, of course, I’m not doing them anyway. But I might do, one day.)
But when I looked at it yesterday morning, it seemed that that was the only way – to stay and try to find satisfaction in those things, to accept that this is the way life is, and I’m not going to be able to change it, no point railing against it, no point beating myself up over it, just accept it, give in to it, find ways of occupying myself, throw myself into work, try to make it as good as it can be. After all, whoever said any of us were entitled to find happiness in this life? And what does that mean anyway?
I was talking to a friend about it after writing, and she said: ‘You have choices’. Do I? Do I really? Or is it just Hobson’s choice?
Round and round the circle I go. The only way out would be if something totally unexpected came out of the blue to break the deadlock – like, someone offering me a job, or, even better, a long term, reliable project that I could carry on doing in the way I have been.
I’ve been told I have a talent for writing, I’ve been told I have an amazing brain, I’ve been told I’m an attractive woman, and I do believe those things, although it’s hard for me to admit it, because I was raised to think it was wrong to say (or even think) such things about myself. But realistically, am I ever going to finish my novel, complete my research, find the love of my life?

I broke the head phones for my mp3 player last night. That’s the third set I’ve got through in the month or so I’ve had it, but the other two were both freebie ones – one from an audio bus tour of Budapest, and one from a plane – while these were the ones that actually came with it – which is not to say that they were particularly good. I’ve got two sleep tracks that I try to listen to regularly, one is the ‘insomnia buster’ which I’m supposed to listen to in the daytime, and the other is the ‘fall asleep’ one, which, obviously, I’m supposed to listen to just before I go to sleep. I normally end up listening to the insomnia buster in the evenings, when I’m relaxing on the sofa, and the fall asleep one when I get into bed.
Last night I actually fell asleep on the sofa listening to the insomnia buster one. I have an alarm on my phone at 9:15, and I keep putting it on snooze. At 10:00 I go and get ready for bed and make myself a mug of Horlicks, which I sit and drink and listen to Enya’s ‘A Day without rain’ album on the CD player till another alarm goes off at 10:45, when it’s time to go to bed. That’s my routine, ever since I went to the sleep clinic, and the alarm every 10 minutes is to stop me falling asleep too soon. But the phone has stopped ringing, it just vibrates and buzzes now, so I think I must have slept through it one time. I woke up at 10:40, which messed me up completely, because I was still dressed and hadn’t had my drink, and that is an important part of the routine. When I woke the meep was still going, but I think the cat might have been playing with it.
Anyway, I put the milk on to heat up in the microwave and came upstairs to get ready for bed, then remembered that I’d left the computer on, came up and found a bunch of emails in my inobx which I started answering, but it was being really slow, taking about 5 minutes to open, read, reply to and send each one, then it got slower and slower so that it wouldn’t send at all, kept saying ‘Sending failed, try again?’ and I had to give up. I hope I haven’t picked up something nasty from somewhere.
And after all that lot, when I finally got to bed (11:30), I found that one of the ear pieces was missing from the headphones. Had to miss the fall asleep and do my meditation this morning on the speaker.
Going into town for my creative writing class this morning, so I’ll have to try and get some more, though I don’t know where to get them from. Probably need a new phone too. But I’ll get my daughter to do the research on that one and let me know what I should get.
Everything starts this week, creative writing this morning, writers’ group (which I may or may not go to depending on work and time) tomorrow afternoon, and Dreamweaver evening classes tomorrow evening at 6. I’ve had to move pilates from Tuesday to Monday to fit it in, so I’ll be there this evening, it’s an hour later than the Tuesday sessions so I won’t get back till 9. and on Thursday evening I might be going to an alumni evening at my old uni, haven’t had any acknowledgement yet.
But I don’t have to go anywhere on Wednesday – the first time since we started rehearsing for the show, about 5 months ago.

Woke up before 5 again. At least it seems to have settled into a pattern though maybe this is me deceiving myself and maybe it will change again. I am spending too long lying in bed awake again, I should really get up, but it’s dark now in the mornings, even at 6 it’s pitch black. So I lie there and listen to my falling asleep tape (mp3), and think about… well, I won’t say what I think about, if you don’t mind. But I should get up. It’s no use saying: ‘Oh, well I might fall back to sleep’, because I know I won’t. Tomorrow, I’ll get up. But today I just lay there till 5:45, and then I got up.
When I finished my meditation, I went back into the kitchen and found the young cat sitting on the table. She knows she’s not allowed up there, but every so often we find her there.
Yesterday I walked round the garden for the first time in a while and found that a small cox’s apple tree had keeled over and is lying at an angle of about 30 degrees. Neither of us can work out when it happened, because we can’t remember the last time we saw it. It’s probably due at least partly to the weight of the apples, all the trees are covered, it’s going to be a huge crop this year. The roots aren’t sticking out of the ground, we (or rather Hubby) have decided to leave it until it has finished fruiting and is due for pruning, and then see what to do. The green gage tree blew over last year in about May, that was a bit more drastic as it was a big old tree, we cut it back till it was reduced almost just to the main trunk and one branch, and then Hubby, son and son’s friend managed to heave it upright between them and put some props under to support it. It seems to have pulled round and had a crop this year. I love plums but I’m not so keen on apples, they’re OK cooked, but raw they give me indigestion, I can’t eat a whole one.
I dug over the garlic bed yesterday, as it is time to plant it, and was also thinking about getting some more tulip bulbs. Then I thought: when is garlic harvested? (late spring/early summer). When do tulips flower? (ditto). What does that say about where I think I’m going to be next year? But you have to go on living life, don’t you? Someone said to me the other day, I need an ‘exit strategy’. At the moment, I don’t have a clue. I have reached this point emotionally, but practically I’m wandering around lost, still in limbo, still unable to see what I should be doing, so I keep putting it off and putting it off and waiting for something to happen, some change of circumstances which will make the road ahead clear, just as I have done for years, even though I know it will never happen.

My desktop has been filling up with files again. Yesterday evening I tidied most of them away, so now there are folders around the edges but a space in the middle to read the slogan:
‘Be here now. This is the only place you need to be. And from this place, all things are possible’.
The photo, taken last November by Hana (I’d filled up my memory stick), is of Yves and Petra’s wall in Brussels. To the left is a poster of a beatific young Tibetan monk, below, the top half of a picture of possibly the same monk apparently reading to an elephant, to the right, the slope of the stair case. All in golden sepia tones – not because that was the way she set the picture, but because those are the actual colours of the wall and the posters. And in the centre, that phrase, hand written, in English. The only place you need to be. All things are possible.
Life seems to be descending into chaos around me again – not just because of the files on my desktop. I have a row of ring binders and lever arch files on a spare desk against the wall of the study. They are terribly difficult to keep under control because of the triangular shape. They just don’t stand well against each other. I have large, heavy boxes at either end to try and keep them in place, but the files themselves have been getting more and more unruly. If I sort them out, line them up and leave them there, they are OK for a while, but it’s when I have to start taking them out to use them that the mischief starts. They start leaning against one another, then I take another one out and find that some of them start to tend towards the horizontal and before I know it they’re pushing one another out of the way and spreading further and further from the vertical. Then yesterday I tried to straighten them up, and the inevitable happened, first the box at one end fell off, depositing all its contents (bank statements, letters, old cheque books and paying in books, and ledgers) all over the floor behind the desk, shortly followed by the other one (old correspondence from before I took over as clerk three years ago, which has never been properly filed.)
Chaos.
I surpassed myself with my time keeping on Thursday too. What with the usual last minute trying to find stuff (money, phone, watch, bag, keys etc etc etc) and do stuff that needed to be done, and getting changed, and finishing off what I was doing, I got into the car to go to pilates, looked at the clock, and realised it was two minutes before it was due to start. And it’s a 15 minute drive away. If I’m lucky with the lights. Well, my car clock is a couple of minutes fast, but even so… I did start to drive, but thought, as I have to leave early on Thursdays anyway to get to meditation, it was really a bit pointless going. So I turned round and came home.
It all reminds me of a poem I wrote a few years ago. I’ll dig it out.

Went to meditation last night, it feels like a long time since I was last there, but it’s only three weeks because I’ve only missed two sessions. Still it felt as though I’d been away for ages. I’m finding it very hard to stay focussed at the moment. Although I meditate on my own at home in the mornings, I tend to skimp it and only do a short time, and my mind wanders all over the place. It was wandering last night too, very difficult to concentrate – well, you’re not supposed to concentrate, you’re supposed to just observe, let whatever happens happen. But what happens lately is that my mind shoots off in all directions. It’s too full of stuff.
I might not be going next week as there is an alumni evening at my old university, a couple of lectures specifically for alumni from the environmental area. So, I will go and try and do some networking. I applied on line, and I got an acknowledgement email, but no other details, so I don’t know whether I’ve got a place or not.
I hate networking, I hate meeting people I don’t know, I hate making small talk with strangers, I hate having to sell myself. I’m hoping I’ll might meet someone I do know, that’s the idea. Most likely nothing will come of it. But I always think you can’t ignore those opportunities when they come along, because you never know where they might lead.
What if I got a proper job? What impact would that have on the rest of my life? Would I be more stressed or less than I am right now? Well, cross that bridge when I come to it, if I ever come to it.
Well, life has led me down some strange paths lately. Or maybe I’ve led myself, who knows?
Someone came to meditation last night who started the same time as I did, but hasn’t been for about three years. It was funny to see him again. When we started, four years ago in January, he had just dropped out after his first term at Cambridge, and didn’t know what he was going to do, so had come back to Bedford to live with his parents. He went back and started again the following year, and now he is about to start on his Masters, like my son. He said to me last night: ‘You were writing a novel, weren’t you? What’s happening with that?’ Ohhhh, don’t ask.
Proper job, novel, running around in circles chasing my arse, stay here, go somewhere else… no wonder I can’t focus. And all the while the clock is ticking in the background (well, not literally, I need to try and get it fixed, it’s been stopped for two years now, but it’s going to cost so much), but you know what I mean, metaphorically, time is passing and I’m getting older and still I’m in this position of limbo and not able to see how to move forward.

What to say this morning? The magazine went off to the proof readers yesterday, and the first governors’ meeting of the new term was last night – actually just a committee meeting. I only took three pages of notes, but the discussions went on till almost half past ten, mostly about electing a new Chair. The old chair is standing down, and the Chair of the Parish council, who is also a governor, has put herself forward, against my advice because a) I don’t think she should take on any more, and b) I think there could potentially be a perceived conflict of interests – not that I think she wouldn’t be perfectly scrupulous herself, but it’s about the way it would be seen in the village. (This isn’t the one I was moaning about on Tuesday, BTW, it’s the other village, the one I don’t live in). So, they were discussing whether she could say she was standing as ‘interim’ or ‘acting’ chair, and my advice as Clerk (though I haven’t checked on the legality of this yet) is that she not propose herself, but that we wait till the meeting (in a fortnight), and if some one else comes forward that’s fine (though none of us could think of anyone likely to do that, which is why she volunteered), but if there are no candidates, we have it minuted at the meeting that there are no candidates but that she volunteered to be acting Chair. Because otherwise I can see her being stuck with the job, and, as we were saying, people might then think ‘oh, that’s sorted, we don’t need to think about it any more’. Of course I need to check the rules, because it might be that in that situation the Vice-Chair is required to take the chair, and she doesn’t want to either because of other commitments. We shall see.
We were setting (provisional) dates for the meetings for the academic year, and I realised that I hadn’t written all the dates for the other school in my diary – and they were all set in July – I’ve got them written down, but not in my diary. The same thing happened last night because I was trying to write them in the minutes and didn’t have a chance to put them in my diary as well because by the time I’d found the place they were discussing the next one. I need to plan out all the meeting dates for both schools and both parish councils. And hope I don’t get into too many nasty situations where they’re all bunched up together, but it’s inevitable that that will happen. And if I audition for Carousel, I have to make sure that the first two weeks of May are free. This is why I didn’t do any shows for two years, because it just gets too complicated.

My daughter came round yesterday, she needed to go and pick up her last lot of wages from the village pub, and when she got here she asked if I’d like to go for lunch so we did and it was really great. We sat and chatted about the show, and about her new job, which she’s really enjoying at the moment. The boss and wife have been away the last few days, most of the staff are quite new because it changed hands recently, but sounds like they’re working well together as a team and she gets on well with most of them, so although she was worried about the responsibility it worked o