Category: time

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Bleuuurrrgggh

Hey ho, switched on the computer and it took me four attempts to realise that the reason it wasn’t accepting my password was because the caps lock was on. When it occurred to me, I thought: ‘surely there’s usually a message to tell you that’ and then saw that there was one but I hadn’t noticed it. It hadn’t been switched off properly, so when I got on it went straight to Facebook and I started scrolling through that, ‘loving’ friends’ pictures of their cats and laughing at cartoons.

I’ve been to Sainsbury’s already this morning to find that they didn’t have any of the usual cat food (trust me, it’s not worth buying any other kind), and, more seriously that they didn’t have any Marmite. I asked a young man who was restocking the bakery shelves, and he showed me where it should be and said ‘it’s in short supply everywhere isn’t it?’ Is it? I didn’t know, and I’ve completely run out. ‘You could try one of the larger stores, or’ and he lowered his voice confidentially and pointed across the road: ‘Tesco’s!’

I will return to Tesco, but I wasn’t about to go over there with my three bags of shopping from Sainsbury’s, so I came home.

I had a bad night last night – they’re never good, but this was particularly bad, and I don’t know why. I tried listening to two programmes I’d downloaded, and they were both pretty depressing, one the fifth episode of a series, and I’m not sure if it’s the last or just the last I’ve downloaded, and the other the start of the second series of something else. They were oddly similar, both about feisty women in history, one being Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the other a fictional Icelandic woman from some period in history, which come to think of it could be about the same. The actresses sounded very similar, both with Northern English accents (in Eleanor’s case, presumably to emphasise her provincial back ground) – I suppose it could even have been the same actress, but I haven’t checked. I’m not sure I want to listen to any more of either of them, not even in the early hours – as I said, they were both very depressing, although Eleanor was the less sympathetic of the two.

Although I’ve lived with this insomnia all my life, so that it’s part of my life, I still keep wondering if there is any better way of dealing with it. I lay there doing my downwards-counting in my head, and thought: well, soon it should be warm enough to be worth getting up and sitting in another room when I can’t sleep, even though it’s never helped when I’ve tried it before. But I feel so tired when I’m lying there, I don’t have the energy to get out of bed – and that of course carries over to the morning as well, I never want to get up, but I also hate lying awake.

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Catflap Incident

Tuesday again – tai chi again. I’m more relaxed about it this morning.

I got up early – 6:15 – because my cat came and got me. That’s not unusual, mostly I ignore her but today I got up because I needed a pee, and as soon as I got out of bed she ran in front of me to the top of the stairs. When I came out of the toilet, I looked over the banister, and there she still was, half way down the stairs, looking up at me meaningfully. So I followed her downstairs, went into the kitchen and opened the back door for her to go out.

This follows a strange incident yesterday evening. I was sitting in the front room crocheting and watching telly, she had gone out into the hall, and suddenly I heard a banging noise as of something being knocked over, and an almighty feline shriek. It sounded as though it was inside the house, so all I could think was that one of the neighbouring cats had got in while the back door was open earlier, they’d found one another and there’d been an altercation. I walked round the house calling her name quietly, and expecting a large ball of fur to fly past me, but I couldn’t find any cats or other signs of destruction. I came back downstairs and opened the side door, and then found her sitting outside, the other side of the catflap.

You may know that I had this catflap put into the ‘side’ door – so called (by me) not because it is actually on the side of the house but to differentiate it from the ‘back’ door which is at the end of the kitchen. The ‘side’ door is at the end of the hall which runs from the front door to the end of the front half of the house which is connected directly to the next house in the terrace. There is then another bit of hall going to the left, and the back part of the house, consisting of the kitchen/dining room downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs, is attached to the house on the other side, but on the side where the door is, there’s a narrow space – same width as the door – between my kitchen, and a wall, behind which is an equivalent space and the neighbour’s kitchen. (This is where – I suspect – my neighbours were sneaking out and smoking dope in the lockdown last summer, but that’s another story.)

She has never to my knowledge used this catflap, but I think that must be what happened last night. I guessed the shriek was because there’s a drop of a couple of feet on the other side. When it was installed, I built a ramp for her with bricks and a plank, but when my son was carrying bits of shed from the hall into the garden, I moved it out of the way.

I don’t suppose she’ll ever try that again.

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Monday

Already written my NaPoWriMo poem for today – and, incidentally, I seem to have resolved my issue with the keyboard. I turned it upside down and shook it vigorously for a while, watching the crud cascade out from between the keys, and although I’d already tried that method several times, it seems to have dislodged the specific bit of crud which was causing the problem and for now the problem has gone away (without my having to buy a new keyboard).

Well, all that happy news has got me started, but I don’t know where I’m going from here. Except that I’ve just discovered that I have two avatars on WordPress – possibly three, if ‘Southsea Storytellers’ also counts. Sorry, I just got distracted again, into trying to work out how the ‘community’ feature works on WordPress. I really know nothing about the software I use every day – except the bits I use every day. I’m probably using it all wrong.

But that’s how I found out about the other avatar – from the community feature. I saw a picture of my own face from 2008 in Paris, not a bad picture but terrible resolution when it was squeezed onto an avatar. I clicked on it and it took me to ‘Gravatar’ which , rather disturbingly, had a ‘Contact me’ followed by an email address I still use – fortunately, no one has bothered to contact me through that route, as far as I’m aware – or maybe they’ve all been trapped by the spam filter.

I don’t really know what I’m doing and I don’t know what to say about it. Pretty much sums up my attitude to life this morning. I don’t know why I write 500 words a day. Sometimes it works and sometimes it just goes horribly wrong. Mostly I feel better for doing it, but today it is just a massive slog.

Sunny at the moment. I’ve got no plans to go anywhere today. I might go to the knitting shop – I said that last Monday, when they opened after lockdown, then I found out that I have to make an appointment (it’s a really tiny space) and I didn’t feel like committing myself to a specific time so didn’t do it, even though I’d been waiting for it to open to get a 5.5mm circular needle, which I need for one of the jumpers I’m making (the old one is on the verge of breaking, with one of the needle ends coming away from the connecting plastic wire, if that means anything to you). But I’ve got plenty of other projects I can be getting on with, and even if I finish it I won’t want to wear it till next winter, so there’s no rush.

I just remembered I haven’t typed up the poem I wrote yesterday morning. A couple of the words were quite hard to read, I think I’ve got them now, but I’d probably better write it up soon – if I want to keep it.

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(Non)Poetic Thoughts

This morning, I wrote a poem while I was still in bed, after I’d finished listening to the last volume of Maya Angelou’s autobiography on BBC Sounds. I was thinking about her poem: ‘Still I Rise’ (that expression occurred in the final episode), and about my life, and the things she went through and my wimpish reaction to the things I’ve gone through, which boils down just to being myself, the me I am inside, rather than the external struggles she had to deal with as an African-American woman in the 1930s-60s.

Poems written at that time of day tend to dissipate quickly however hard I try to hold on to them, so I grabbed a notebook and black Crayola colouring pencil (all the pens in my desk having dried up – a reflection either on modern technology or my dependence on it) and wrote it down.

I wanted to share it, as an accurate reflection of my inner feelings towards myself after listening to the words of one of the greatest female writers of my lifetime, but I thought of the likely reaction to my honest thoughts about myself, especially the ones that come first thing in the morning, and thought better of it. I will, however, type it up, pack it away and probably read it to my therapist on Thursday.

One of the lines I rejected included the words: ‘I wish I could believe I deserved…’ – at the time I thought it was part of a killer ending, then forgot it, then remembered it while doing yoga, and realised it was best forgotten.

‘What a string of woolly verbs!’ I thought to myself. Let’s take them in reverse order, as being the closer to the object of the line (which was probably another verb: ‘to be’, followed by some complimentary and hence wholly unrealistic hypothetical idea of myself). First, ‘Deserved’ what does that mean? It’s completely subjective. Does a convicted murderer ‘deserve’ a second chance at life; to rot in jail for the rest of his/her natural days; or a speedy execution? ‘It all depends…’ which is why we have jury trials and other complicated (and expensive) systems of justice to decide such matters for us. You can’t talk about whether anybody ‘deserves’ any particular outcome without taking it from a specific point of view.

Next: ‘believe’, which is also subjective, though in this case it’s clear that the subject, ie) the one doing (or failing to do, or incapable of doing) the ‘believing’ is myself. Why am I incapable of believing I deserve whatever goodies (probably praise, or love, or happiness) I had in mind? Arguably, ‘belief’, or ‘disbelief’ just is what it is, but if I had to justify or rationalise it, I would probably say it was based on the evidence of a life-time of living inside this head, and as no one else has access to that mental space, their ‘beliefs’ can be discounted.

And finally: ‘wish’ the woolliest of the lot – enough said.

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Morning Walk Continued, and NaPoWriMo Stress

Two observations about yesterday’s blogging attempts; firstly, the post on here was written in a notebook while sitting in the park, without the benefit of automatic word-counting until I got home and typed it up and discovered I’d written 700 words, so I saved the last 200 for today. The other issue was that I hadn’t got a clue what to write for NaPo, nothing came to me till dinner time, when I thought of something quickly and shoved it out.

Here is the last 40% of what was in my notebook from yesterday:

…

…

Eek, it’s not on the PC, because yesterday I sat downstairs and typed it on my laptop. There will be a brief delay while I run down and email it to myself…

…or maybe I’ll carry on with what I was going to say about napo first 9dammit, still got that problem with the keyboard and still haven’t ordered a new one).

When I started the NaPoWriMo poem(s) this year (consciously using the left shift key now), they kept coming every day, but I was aware that this was a risky strategy

Over the last few days, although only half way through the month, I felt that I had reached so far into the dark, that I was obliged to start coming out. By opening Pandora’s Box, and acknowledging the Hope that hides at the bottom, I started turning it around – although that wasn’t at all how I was feeling. Is it a good idea to have a crisis bang in the middle of a narrative? And after all, hope isn’t always to be trusted.

…Then I remembered that the gates to the garden behind the Natural History Museum were open when I passed the other day, and as that is quieter than the Rose Garden I decided to go there – it’s on my usual route. I found another sunny bench near the tree where I used to go to outdoor yoga classes last summer, and sat with my coffee and notebook, listening to the birds and the sound of tennis racquets and writing this (which I’m now transcribing at home).

I know it’s not unusual for people of my age to grieve for the past: the career, the family times, the children now grown up, and so on. But I think I grieve more for the future, or futures, in which I was going to raise a family; study for a PhD; live in a big house in the country; end my marriage and live my own life; go travelling alone across Europe; write and publish a book; move to the seaside. Now when I look to the future I see that my son-in-law is planning to build a ‘granny annexe’, so that when I’m no longer capable of looking after myself, I can return to Bedford and live with them. Which is reassuring, in lots of ways, but what else is there? What about the years – hopefully many – between now and then?

Linda Rushby 15 April 2021
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Morning Walk

I remember in a previous life – about ten or twelve years ago – having a conversation with a man at a conference in Oxford. I wouldn’t say he was a friend, exactly, but I had met him at previous conferences. The gist of his message to me was this: that I was unhappy because my life was chaotic, and he suggested imposing some structure on myself by getting up early and going for a walk with him and a group of other conference attendees.

I said he wasn’t ‘… a friend, exactly…’ but looking back now I can see he had a deeper understanding and empathy than most of the other people I met at those events, who were eager to tell me how great I was, but never noticed what was going on under the surface.

Anyway, I don’t think I met up with them, due to some mix-up rather than intent, but I remember walking alone by the canal, taking pictures of the narrow boats.

The other day I mentioned that I’d gone for a walk, with that same intention of improving my well-being. I don’t think I said that afterwards I had a miserable morning, full of buried rage, but I’m sure that was just coincidental.

Today I woke around the usual time (four-thirty to five), but some time after six, when I was thinking about getting up once the heating came on at six-thirty, I dozed off again and slept in till half past seven.

I got up and dressed, and instead of doing my yoga/tai chi routine I decided that I would make a flask of coffee and go for another walk. As I walked, I thought about the mornings when I used to walk to the swimming pool – which is now closed, of course, and has apparently done so for good.

I walked to the beach, and then along the beach, briefly thinking of doing tai chi in the stretch of damp sand and scattered pebbles between the waves and the ridge which marks the usual high-tide line. It was later than I usually walk, there was at least one wild swimmer, but also two ladies in anoraks with bicycles behind the cafe, who I thought could have been two of the regulars, now presumably dried and warmly wrapped up.

I went up the steps by the crossing opposite the Rose Garden, my usual route. I hadn’t stopped outside the cafe with my coffee, as I usually do, because there were clearly people there preparing to open up. I’m not sure what the rules are now, but I know they’ve been operating a take-away service, and they have tables outside. I found a bench in the sunshine in the Rose Garden, and spoke to a robin – I invited him back to my garden, but warned him that I have a cat, albeit an elderly, dopey one, and he cocked his head and looked at me, but didn’t take up my offer.

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grim

I didn’t write yesterday. It was one of those utterly grim mornings when I couldn’t think of anything which wasn’t… utterly grim, so I couldn’t bring myself to say anything at all.

I did my napowrimo thing, but thought; what can I say/ it’s not even half way through the month, and if I’ve reached the darkest point already, what am I going to do for the next two and a half weeks? (Seventeen days counting today). To add to the frustration, the shift key on the right side of my keyboard has stopped working, which means it’s a pain to do the capitalisation for NaPoWriMo 9and if I don’t keep on top of it lots of other things go down the toilet, like question marks, brackets and i0.

But the keyboard thing isn’t really relevant to my general feelings of despair, and I just need to get round to ordering a new one. I came up with a Napo-etc poem yesterday, but couldn’t quite bring myself to use the word ‘hope’. That’s the problem, isn’t it? When you can’t see any hope you can’t wish it into existence from nowhere. It doesn’t matter how irrational that is, that sense of everything falling apart. What makes any one morning feel any worse than any other? All mornings are shit – if you choose to write in the morning, it’s not surprising if everything comes back to moaning.

But if I’m honest, I know exactly why yesterday was so hard – because it was the first session of tai chi in the park – as opposed to on Zoom – and I’d been dreading going out and interacting with other people – even a nice, friendly group of people whom I used to see every Tuesday morning. Did walking twenty minutes to the park make it somehow worse than three minutes to the community centre where the classes used to be? No, not particularly. Anyway, I could have driven, but that would have meant finding a parking place near the park, and another one near home when I got back, and I need the exercise. The fact that it was in a new place probably did enter into it somehow, even though it’s a place I’ve driven past many times, it’s still a new walk and a new location. But mainly it’s the experience I HAD AT THE END OF THE FIRST LOCKDOWN (not shouting, just demonstrating that because I’m trying to use the left hand shift key I keep getting caps lock instead without noticing. Also, on the sentence I started with ‘Anyway’, I accidentally hit the ctrl key, and when I glanced up everything I’d typed so far had disappeared, because it had done ‘select all’, and I carried on typing – I didn’t realise that was what had happened, but I managed to keep hitting ‘undo’ till it all came back).

I have to go out again today, for a Covid test, but at least that only requires the minimum of human interaction.

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Morning Walk

When to stop
and when to go.
When to try
and when to no.
Questions always in my mind,
seeking things I never find.

I used to think there’d come a day,
when things at last would go my way.
I’d show the world a happy face
and life would fall right into place.

That will not be,
it is not me.

I take the thoughts that come to hand,
and turn them into words that scan.
And though I struggle finding rhymes,
that happens too from time to time.

Linda Rushby 11 April 2021

There was a trailer on Radio 4 yesterday for a programme about how going for a walk first thing in the morning can improve your health and wellbeing (I haven’t listened to the programme – yet).

I decided I would do it this morning (go for a walk, not listen to the programme), then lay in bed and listened to the second episode of ‘Sweeney Todd’ instead, and by the time I checked the sunrise time on Accuweather, it was almost six already and I had no time to get to the beach for 6:19 to see it. But I got up anyway, dressed, fed the cat, let her out into the garden, made a flask of coffee, found a notebook, let the cat back in, found my glasses, found a mask, found my notebook again, found a pencil etc etc and left the house, came back for the mask, came back for gloves, and was walking down the road shortly after seven.

It’s been a while since I had a morning walk – other than to the doctor’s for blood tests, which has happened twice in the last few weeks. The second time was last Friday, and I thought about walking on to the beach (I was half way there) but decided against it as it was grey and dull and I wanted to come home and hide. It was dull this morning when I left home, but the sun came out while I was sitting on the prom drinking coffee.

I’ve written two poems, one NaPoWriMo one came to me as I was on my way there – actually before I left home, when I put my hand in the pocket of my winter coat and pulled out some pebbles, which made me think of Virginia Woolf, who filled her coat pockets with stones before drowning herself in the river. The other popped into my head when I was in the loo after I got back, as you can see above.

I’ve been meaning to say some more about my NaNoWriMo poems, obviously I’ve made it to Day 11, I think it’s working okay so far, but yesterday I felt completely at a loss till I found the seeds in my desk drawer – which I haven’t planted yet, by the way. It feels very risky, setting myself this task – though of course it’s not really ‘risky’, I could stop right now and it wouldn’t matter…  

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Problems of Affluence

Just been to Sainsbury’s to buy hot cross buns, because I realised last night I hadn’t got any – haven’t had any this year – and today is the day when it’s okay to have them for breakfast. I wanted those, and little prawns to go in my salmon en croute for dinner (but they only had king prawns, which won’t work, so it’ll be salmon, mushrooms and parsley en croute), and eggs and smoked salmon for breakfast one day over the weekend, and maple syrup to have with waffles another day, and chocolate for Sunday because I realised I hadn’t had any since I finished the Christmas leftovers – which has been quite a few weeks, but not necessarily the whole of Lent – actually, forget I said that, because I just remembered I had some chocolate truffles for Mother’s Day.

None of that would have been possible in my childhood, because the shops would have been shut on Good Friday, as well as Easter Monday and, of course, Easter Sunday, just like every other Sunday. (Actually, I have a feeling they might still be shut on Easter Sunday, but not sure about that.) I remember one year, when I must have been well into my teens, because I went into town on my own on Easter Saturday, and my Mum had asked me to pick up a loaf of bread, and everywhere I went was sold out, from which I learned the lesson to make sure you’ve got plenty of bread for Easter weekend, until the world moved on and made that obsolete. I was quite annoyed when the shops started opening on Good Friday, even though I wasn’t a Christian, because what’s the point of traditions if you’re going to ignore the fundamentals in that way?

Now I’m more relaxed, and anyway, I make my own bread. But when I was shopping earlier in the week, and planning today’s dinner, I bought cream for the sauce filling and was thinking what else I needed for today (except the hot cross buns, obviously) and it struck me – I always have fish on Good Friday, but making it so fancy is definitely observing the letter not the spirit of the tradition – salmon en croute is not exactly fasting. On the other hand, I guess it’s pretty tame compared with what the Renaissance popes might have had, so why should I worry?

That’s when I started thinking about Sunday as well, and chocolate, and my birthday, which is next week – the second one I’ve had in lockdown. Last year I didn’t plan anything special, but when the day came I went to Tesco and bought a cake and a bottle of prosecco, then ordered a Chinese takeaway for dinner. Tomorrow is my takeaway day (alternate Saturdays), but the question is, do I skip it this week and leave it till my birthday? Hadn’t thought about that. Seems daft to have two within a week of each other. Decisions, decisions – the problems of affluence

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Lost Hour

On a clear, bright morning in spring, it would be good to set out on a new adventure, in search of a new life.

But today is neither clear nor bright, just dull and grey with the sound of the wind between the rooftops. And there are no new adventures in the offing, nor, most likely, any new lives to be had which are substantially different from the present one.

Just to say, that first sentence popped into my head as I sat down at the computer. I know it sounds like the start of something, but I’m buggered if I know what. Except that the first phrase – up to ‘spring’ – has a nice lilt to it, as though it could be the first line of a poem. Quite clichéd though, like all those folk songs that start on the lines of ‘One morning in May…’ but which, come to think of it, descend into tales of lust and seduction (when sung by Steeleye Span), and sometimes betrayal, revenge and horrible death.

Well, that’s got those cheery thoughts out of the way.

I put my bedside clock forward last night at bedtime, and when I woke it said 5:20, which was good because I thought I could get up at my usual time and slip quite easily into the new time frame – but in reality I ended up lying in bed anyway listening to podcasts and not getting up till seven. Then I messed about with changing the central heating clock, which was easier than I expected, but as I’ve been doing it every six months for the last four years I should have got a bit more proficient by now. The thing that still bothers me though is that there are two programmes, one for Monday-to-Friday and one for weekends, and I can’t work out how to get onto the weekend programme to change it. At the moment I have it coming on at 6:30 in the week but not till 7:00 at weekends, it took me a while to realise why it was still cold when I got up on Saturdays and Sundays. The instructions I have are on the inside cover of the little box, small print and hard to see, so I have to take it off the wall and into a well-lit area in order to read them, but even then I can’t find out what I need to know. I can override it by pushing the ‘up’ or ‘down’ buttons to adjust the thermostat, so that’s what I do in the mornings if it feels too chilly, but I would like to sort it out.

Other than that – and something falling through the basket of the dishwasher and jamming the rotating arm so that everything which should have come out clean is covered with crud which has baked on during the drying part of the cycle – there aren’t enough words left to say anything else – except I had to unravel my jumper again yesterday.