Category: autumn

Posted on

Van Outing

After breakfast yesterday I decided that, despite what I’d said about self-isolation, I would take my van out for a run (one of those semi-commitments I’d made that I was talking about not wanting to face up to). The only brief encounters I had with other people was when I went into Sainsbury’s en route to the garage where I keep the van and bought picnic ingredients (wearing a scarf over my nose and mouth, naturally).

The guys at the garage (not the one where I keep it but the one where they fix it) had made me promise solemnly that I would take it out regularly and keep it running, now that they’ve not only replaced the battery (yet again) but fixed up a butterfly nut to make it easy to disconnect the battery every time I leave it. The problem last winter was that the previous new battery they’d installed was too tight for me to disconnect (even using a spanner) so I’d left it standing from November to January, and then, after they’d charged it, only took it out for a 10 mile drive up and down the seafront (I thought that would be enough but apparently it wasn’t), and it was dead again by the time I tried again in March. After that, we all know what happened, and I don’t think I should really be held responsible for that, but six months without being touched at all left the battery completely useless, so they had to replace it again.

Going out in the van is one of those things that you’d think should be a real pleasure, but I still have to psych myself up to do it. It’s not that I’m nervous about driving it as I used to be (except when it comes to reversing and parking), it’s just like everything else, it always feels like it’s going to be a hassle and I’d rather just stay at home.

But it’s been on my mind that I need to take it out more regularly, so, as yesterday was bright and sunny – after a couple of rainy days – I thought I’d take it over to my favourite park on the South Downs, about twenty miles away. The pleasure of it is to park up, go for a walk, brew up a cup of tea or coffee, get out the camping chair and have a picnic. It’s not as if I couldn’t just do that in the car with hot water in a flask, but it feels like camping even if I then turn round and come home.

So that’s what I did – except that although I had tea bags, water, milk and camping stove, I’d taken all the cups out last time to put through the dishwasher and forgot to take one with me. It was windier and colder than I thought, and I hadn’t taken a coat, so didn’t feel like a walk. So I sat in the van and ate my sandwiches.

Posted on

Back Home, Reading and (Not) Writing

I was wrong about the equinox being yesterday, it’s today. I didn’t check. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel any more equable.

Yesterday I was tired all day – not surprising as I always feel that way the day after a long journey. So I didn’t push myself to do much, not even unpacking. Today I still feel tired, and I have a headache. That may be down to dehydration – on holiday I was careful to keep drinking plenty of water, but yesterday I didn’t bother. I feel slightly queasy as well, which may be because I didn’t eat much on Sunday. Yesterday I ate more like my normal amount of food – not as much as on holiday, more than when travelling. Actually, come to think of it, feeling queasy first thing is not that unusual.

Guess I’ll be tired again today though – largely due to reading from about half past three, when I first woke, to nearly six, finishing off the last book I’d been reading on holiday. Because that’s what I do on holiday: in the airport; on the plane; on the hotel balcony; on the sunbed; drying out in the sun after swimming; in the shade; flat on my belly with the sun on my back; in bed at night. There’s nothing really to stop me reading all the time when I’m at home – but for some reason I don’t.

Now I’ve finished my holiday reading, I’ve gone back to ‘Out of Sheer Rage’ which I mentioned a while back. It’s a very dippable book; quotable too. I picked it up again on the flight out. It’s as much fun as a novel, but not quite so obsessive in the sense of having to get to the end to find out what happens. Because nothing much does happen, there’s no plot as such, it’s just about trying and failing to write a serious book and in the process writing this rambly, chaotic, engrossing book – which may be why I like it so much. This morning, on the loo (forgot to mention that in my list of holiday reading places, though it’s my main one when at home), I read two things which really struck home, one about coming home after living abroad (which I highlighted and must try and share), and another about not being able to write when you have seven days a week to do nothing but, and thinking that maybe having a part time job would make one value one’s free time more and hence improve productivity.

Anyway, I was going to write more about reading and writing, and reading and not writing, but I’m running out of words. That sense you get when on holiday that you could really sit down and do it and write something worthwhile when you get home, and that that’s what you’re going to do, really put your back into it at last. Which is great, until you actually get home and realise there’s not a hope in hell.

Posted on

Equinox – Back Home

Equinox. Equanimity, equability, equilibrium? Time to restore all those things? (though I’m not sure if the second is a real word, and if so, how it differs from the first. To be ‘equable’ is to have ‘equanimity’. But the rule of three prevails.)

Miko has made it plain she wants me to come on the computer. So here I am/we are, she on the desk, currently looking out of the window, with her tail caught up between the last two fingers on my left hand

Arrived home at nine-thirty last evening, after a fairly stressful – because not very well planned – journey back from Heathrow (bus to Woking; another bus to Guildford; train to Fratton; then taxi home). By asking for advice from real people, not trying to find it online, I avoided the rail-replacement bus most of the way and the connections worked like a dream.

And as for the holiday and wedding, booked over a year ago, almost cancelled the first time when Thomas Cook went out of business, but reorganised through the efforts of the bride (my daughter) negotiating directly with the wedding planner and the hotel and rebooking the flights (which were changed again as recently as a couple of weeks ago, from Gatwick to Heathrow). Then this strange spring and summer, of not thinking about it – at first because it seemed so far in the future, too far to worry and plan on it ever happening, not knowing what the situation would be by the middle of September, whether there would be relative freedom of travel or we’d be back into the second wave by then (never seriously thinking it would ‘all be over’ in time). Then Cyprus opened to British tourists from 1st August, on condition of getting a negative covid test within 72 hours of flying, and it started to seem like it might happen after all – so then all the stress and panic of having to prepare for maybe going or maybe not going, and that awful last week of having to organise the tests and not knowing until the day before we left that I was actually going.

After all that – it could have been a massive anti-climax. It wasn’t. Wonderful hotel in a fabulous location, lazy days of relaxing and swimming, playing with the grandchildren, watching them play, eating too much, drinking too much, walking on the seafront and reading in the shade. And a beautiful ceremony on Thursday, overlooking the sea; the bridesmaids (all seven of them, in ages from four to not quite ten times that) in blue, the bride in an elegantly simple cream dress, my little girl, so happy, after all her herculean efforts to keep this dream going. Feeling like minor celebrities in the massively under-occupied hotel, as total strangers among the fellow guests smile and say hello afterwards.

And now, back home, with unpacking and washing and Miko reminding me of my morning writing ritual, wondering what happens next, and where life goes from here.

Posted on

Not Writing About the New Forest

I said yesterday that today I’d write about going to the New Forest, but when I try to start there are so many other things I’m thinking about, like I got up at 6.00 because that’s what I decided I should do, although that’s still not ‘first thing’ because I’ve been awake since 4.00, reading and listening to the radio. And at 6.00 it’s still dark, so that’s how it’s going to be from now, probably till March or maybe April, I’m not sure.  

I thought I’d come straight to the computer and start writing, but I fed the cat and let her out, then wondered whether to make coffee, because usually I do my exercise first, and then should I use my espresso pot or the Tassimo, which is quicker but only makes a small cup? And thinking about how I should start, where I should start, about moving here and what it is about the south coast for me, and when did I first go to the New Forest, what is the attraction? And issues around the van, because it’s brought me so much stress and expense down the years, but I have to not think about that, and that’s a split infinitive, but apart from the fact that it’s quite passé to care about split infinitives, it’s important because what I was trying to say there is subtly different from how else it could be said: ‘can’t think’ or ‘mustn’t think’ is different from a choice to ‘not think’ about something, so arguably that two word phrase is a verb in itself, and ‘to not think’ is the infinitive form of that compound verb.

Speaking about ‘choice’, the choice about coffee is a decision in itself, with the factors of speed, flavour and quantity of coffee all having to be taken into account and balanced, and the outcome of that decision (to prioritise speed and use the Tassimo) is that the coffee has already gone and I haven’t finished writing.

Which reminded me of a conversation I had yesterday with the garage man about keeping UHT milk in the van (his suggestion), but once it’s been opened, it only keeps as well as normal milk, so I might as well just take a small bottle of fresh milk with me each time, which is what I do.

This is how my mind works all the time – bouncing from one apparently trivial and meaningless thought to another. I used to assume that it was the same for everybody, but that other people were better than me at cutting through the crap and dealing with it. Now I’m beginning to understand that it goes deeper than that. That’s why the idea of ‘thinking visually’ blew my mind, though I’m now coming to think that that’s probably not as prevalent as I’ve been led to believe – I honestly don’t see how it could be. Thinking is thinking and it’s made up of words and depends on words, and that’s that.