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

Why do I lie in bed for so long in the mornings even though I don’t get back to sleep and I know that lying awake in bed for two hours isn’t going to make me happier, in fact quite the reverse?

Yesterday morning I made up my mind that this morning I wouldn’t lie in bed, but would get up and go to the beach to watch the sunrise, and I could have done it, I was awake in plenty of time and it wasn’t raining, but still I didn’t, I just lay there thinking about it and then got up just before seven and did the usual stuff and felt angry with myself. Well, I did listen to half an hour of radio, but even after that, I still had plenty of time to get up and go if I’d made myself do it.

They say two hours of deep sleep is the minimum you need to stay healthy, and I’ve been getting an average of 90 minutes over the two years I’ve been able to monitor it My fit-bit broke towards the end of last year, and I’ve lost all that historical data, but I got a new one this month which shows my average overall sleep for the last few weeks is six and a half hours, including an hour and a half of deep sleep, which is about the same as it was before.

I am tired – permanently tired – is all I’m trying to say, but I think most people who know me understand that already, I’ve moaned enough about it down the years. I’m tired and I look through tired eyes, and I have no energy or enthusiasm to do anything at all, but I hate myself for sitting and doing nothing and I wonder, if this is the endgame of my life, what then? Of course, there’s no reason to assume that this is the ‘endgame’, but I can’t see the future, I don’t know what it holds or what it potentially could hold, or how I could influence it in any way, or how I would even want it to be if it’s not going to be more of the same. All that running away has brought me here – I don’t mean geographically (I’m happy with that) but psycho-emotionally, I am the same person I kept running away from. Geographically I think I’ve found as good a place as I could have hoped for, but on those other terms I am as stuck as ever I was. All those things that were going to make me a different person, change my feelings about myself and allow me to grasp my destiny – children, PhD, leaving my husband, travelling across Europe, writing a book, moving to the south coast – haven’t made a scrap of difference to the sense that I’m as much a disaster as I always was.

Which might sound as though I see ‘Belinda’ in a negative light, and ‘coming out of my shell’ as progress, when actually I’m coming to recognise that both of them are so integral to my personality that I need to embrace them both.

The other thought that struck me was that these days, and for the last several years, the issues I have are largely concerned with ‘transitions’ in the other direction, when people who think they know ‘me’ are surprised by encountering Belinda – the ‘this isn’t like you! This isn’t who you are at all!’ reaction that I get when I share my self doubt, fear and sense of inadequacy. Though now I come to think of it, that’s not recent at all – it’s been an undercurrent that’s been there for decades, at least as far back as my mid-thirties.

It seems that a pattern is now starting to form: timid Belinda dominated in my childhood, when Melinda, or the Wild Spirit described in ‘Women Who Run With the Wolves’ (incidentally, I think the author should have made more effort to find a synonym for ‘Run’ which starts with a W) was systematically crushed and squeezed out on the grounds that A) ‘good girls’ didn’t behave that way; and B) her aspirations weren’t realistic for such a mousy little nonentity (here I can’t help thinking of Janis Ian’s song: ‘I learned the truth at seventeen/That love was meant for beauty queens…’).

Melinda (and I’m annoyed with myself that I’ve slipped back into using that dichotomy, but it is very convenient) crept out cautiously when I slipped out from under the parental yoke and ran away to the comparative freedom of university, where ‘A’ was no longer being so closely monitored, though I was still often stymied by ‘B’. Then I got married and started work, and found myself staring down the barrel of adult life…

I’ve just got into my stride, and the word limit is looming. And I still haven’t answered the question I asked two days ago: ‘Do I control my thoughts, or do my thoughts control me?’ I think the answer is quite clear – it’s my thoughts which are in charge, and there isn’t a great deal I can do to bring them into line, any more than I can give precedence to either Belinda or Melinda.

In autumn 2008, I worked out all the money I earned from the five part-time jobs I was doing at the time, and worked out that my regular annual income was £8,500. I just looked that up in my old blog, and made the mistake of reading some of the surrounding posts, which has reduced me to tears. So many things still resonate, some are strangely prophetic, and many make me wonder how I got through that time, and fill me with gratitude that I’m in a far better place now. I remember a previous post (before I’d worked out the exact sum) when a fellow blogger had asked in response: ‘Why do you need money?’ I don’t have the exact response, but I did find this:

‘I’m sure people think I’m very mercenary/materialistic when I say I can’t leave because I won’t have enough money, as though I’m saying I don’t want to give up my skiing holidays/ Caribbean hideaway/ new car every couple of years (I don’t have any of those things, BTW, that was a joke)… People with comfortable middle class salaries don’t, I think, quite understand where I’m coming from… There have been times when we’ve not had much disposable income, or when I’ve not been earning anything in my own right, and I’ve managed without things, that’s not a problem, I can do that, if I can’t afford something I do without… But I’m scared of not having enough to live on, of having bills I can’t pay at the end of the month…’

Husband or Cat, 17 October 2008

One comment I got on this was: ‘…I really do not understand why someone of your obvious talents and abilities can under value yourself so much.’ To which I replied: ‘It’s not a question of me undervaluing my talents and abilities, but of prospective employers doing so…’

Three years prior to this, when my husband threatened to leave me over the cat, a door had seemed to open on a different life, but when I called his bluff, he said that he couldn’t leave because we/he couldn’t afford to pay for two places to live, which told me all I needed to know: until I could be financially independent, I was stuck, and I had to keep on compromising. I needed to find a real job before I could start to have a real life – or jump anyway, and trust to fate – which in the end is what I did.

Am I obsessed with money? Financial independence means freedom, autonomy, control of one’s own destiny, self-respect. So don’t talk to me about feminism, because if it’s not about all those things, what DOES it mean?

I found a flat in the nearest town, I had enough money saved up to pay for six months rent in advance, and I moved out in February 2009 (actually collected the keys on 14^th February, also another story – or several). I hired a van, took some basic furniture from the house (agreed with Hubby): desk and chair, bed, small sofa, wardrobe, dressing table etc, and with help from my daughter, her boyfriend and his parents (and Hubby), moved in for good on the 22nd.  It was a Sunday. I remember us all sitting round the big kitchen table in the old house drinking tea, then I drove back into town to find the chippy wasn’t open (I found another one that was).

I also bought some things – a coffee table, various kitchen items (mostly from charity shops or Wilkinson’s, which was a handy 5 minute walk from the flat), and a laptop and pay-as-you-go dongle. I gradually transferred various bits and pieces from the house over the next few months, as I went back and forth quite a lot – my main computer was still there, in the attic. In April, when my daughter and her boyfriend hired another van to move into their own flat, they brought some more stuff for me, including the office furniture and computer, which I set-up in my ‘study’, (the larger of the two bedrooms in the flat).

But an awful lot of stuff got left behind. I always intended to ‘sort it all out’ one day. I did purge some things, but mainly it was to be done in the future, when everything was resolved, when the divorce was settled, when the house was sold… After three years I left the flat to go travelling, and the things I’d taken with me – and acquired over the intervening time – got packed up and taken back, stacked in the spare room and attic. Six months later I came back to England, moved in with my daughter and granddaughter for a few weeks till we drove one another to distraction, then found another flat, which was all attic, fluffy carpeted and pointed ceilinged like a prism, with three windows looking out over the Fens and a flashing star in the top window at Christmas. I intended to sort out the Stuff in the house, and made a few attempts, including throwing out my mother’s and grandmother’s knitting needles and paraphernalia (which I hadn’t used for years, but was to start replacing only a couple of years later).

The decree absolute came through that year (2012), and part of the divorce agreement was that the house would go on the market in the August – when I returned from travelling. That didn’t happen… To be continued.

First, let me freely acknowledge that I don’t feel I have ‘…a purpose…’ in any profound sense. But how much does that matter?  

This is a time of year when there can be a lot of pressure to set goals, make resolutions, plan new habits and behaviours, and generally beat yourself up and set yourself up for failure and disappointment. Well, that’s how I’ve always found it. I don’t want to detract from anyone else’s desire to do those things, but for me – hey, I’m retired, I live alone, and the joy of both those states is the peace not to feel obliged to follow anyone’s expectations but your own.

That said… my purpose last week was to complete and submit my tax return, which I did on Saturday. Now it’s to bring my accounts up to date, which I haven’t touched for the last two months, even though it’s a task I quite enjoy. Moving data between spreadsheets, checking totals and hunting for errors when things don’t tally – to me, it’s fun, it’s satisfying, there’s always a ‘right’ answer, and if it doesn’t work out, there’s always a reason which can be found – it’s like a puzzle, a more complicated version of killer su doku, but one which has a ‘purpose’ beyond just filling the time. Sometimes I think: I could have been happier as a book-keeper rather than as a failed book-writer, and maybe that’s a path I should have chosen years ago, but too late now, I don’t have the right qualifications – (and no, I have no intention of studying for the qualifications now – given my experiences of retraining in new skills during my fifties – creative writing, web design, graphic design, TEFL etc – and knowing where that got me).

Another potential ‘purpose’ would be to put together the book case which I bought from Argos in the Black Friday sales and which has now spent almost two months in two large cardboard boxes in my narrow hall. At one time I considered making it a post-Christmas project, but I decided to start knitting myself a jumper instead (which is coming along nicely, by the way). I’ve been walking past the boxes for long enough now, I don’t notice them any more, and a further disincentive from putting together the bookcase is that I might then feel obliged to put something on it, which might lead me to think about sorting out the stuff in the study, which could very well precipitate a complete emotional breakdown, so probably best not to go there.

So my plan for the day after I’ve posted this is: brush teeth; dry hair; get dressed; eat breakfast; mess around with my spreadsheets for a couple of hours (depending how much time is left after I’ve finished the aforementioned); spend the afternoon in my chair knitting and listening to the radio; get dinner; do bins (mustn’t forget); watch telly. ‘Purpose’ settled – job done.

I’ll be honest, I’m sharing it as an excuse not to write anything new today. Which, now I’m here, doesn’t seem like such a good idea. Some days it just feels like that.

New Year’s Day is quite a potent day for blogging. I feel as though I’ve left a mark on this day several times. The one for 2009 was obviously highly significant, and I’ve referred back to it a few times since.

The Spare Room

The Buddhist New Year party. An evening of reflection, meditation, poetry reading, sharing, wine, food, laughter, friendship. When Chris tentatively mentioned the idea a month ago, I leapt at it.

‘I’ll come, even if it’s only you me and Clare’ I said. ‘I won’t be doing anything else that night.’

It was a good evening, a positive evening, an unconventional evening. What more could you ask for? Better sober with good friends than drinking here alone… I wasn’t clear whether the invitation extended to sleeping over or not, so I took an overnight bag in case, but at around 1:30 the party broke up…

I got back around 2, the house in darkness. Hubby hadn’t left the light on for me, but at least he hadn’t bolted the door. I took my overnight bag into the second bathroom and unpacked my night things. And then I thought…

I went into the bedroom in the dark, got my dressing gown and hot water bottle. I could hear his breathing, soft and regular. This is it, the voice told me, now is the time. It makes perfect sense. Why bother climbing in beside him, one more night? There’s nothing there for either of you, is there?

So I took my things into the spare room. Laid the bag on the floor. Switched the radiator on – the heating was off, but it would be ready for morning. Looked around me.

Checked the wardrobe: full of rubbish, I can sort that out, give myself some storage space in here. I need a bedside cabinet, but for now the clock can sit on the floor.

This is my room now. Why put it off any longer?

Lying in the bed, stretching out, luxuriating. The feather duvet, I will have to swap them over, this is bad for my asthma, but I can survive one night. And I’ll bring my own pillow from the other room tomorrow. But for now, it will be OK.

I woke just after 6, the cat had found her way in and was walking over me and purring. Outside the window, I could hear the fountain in the fish pond. A transit place. I won’t be here forever. But it will do for now.

It was gone 7 before I got up, even though I knew there would be no more sleep. So I did the usual things, fed the cats, put the coffee on. I went back upstairs to meditate, but the mp3 player wouldn’t switch on. Must have left it on all night, I’ll have to recharge it. Then I heard him in the kitchen.

‘I slept in the spare room. Thought that was easier than disturbing you.’

‘OK. I didn’t know what was happening so I didn’t leave the light on.’

‘That’s fine, no problem.’

So polite. We are always so civil with one another. Never any animosity.

The coffee machine gave its sudden final burst of noise and steam. I lifted the lid. Still some filtering through.

He was sitting at the table eating Shredded Wheat.

‘Do you want your coffee pouring now?’

‘Yes please.’

I looked at the chair opposite him. Should I pull it out, sit down?

‘I need to talk to you today’.

‘OK.’ No curiosity, no reaction.

‘Do you want to do it now, or later?’

‘Later.’

OK then. Later it is.

by husbandorcat @ 2009-01-01 – 08:09:45

In the first post of the new blog, I described the actual conversation which I sprung on my husband. It was pointless asking him if he wanted to talk ‘now or later’, I knew that, just procrastination on both our parts. I’d been procrastinating long enough – I suppose we both had, but I couldn’t help but take all the blame onto myself. Also, of course, for me it was exciting, because I was about to embark on a new adventure – running away again. Whatever happened next in my life, I was sure, something good would come out of it.

The spooky thing is that I feel now as though I’m not completely alone, as though there’s someone else in this house who’s still asleep but will get up soon and need to be interacted with. And of course, the same old cat just came and rubbed against my legs.

Ghosts of New Years past. But it’s just an arbitrary mark on the calendar, and I haven’t even got one this year – the last few years I’ve had a Vistaprint one made of my own photos, but didn’t get round to it this time. I’ve honed that old procrastination thing to a fine art, over the years.

Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright

I announced that the smaller attic room would be the birthplace of ‘…the first great novel of the twenty-first century!’ With a legacy from my parents (who had both passed away early in 1999) I bought a new computer (the first time I’d had one that was all my own, instead of sharing a family one), a leather-topped desk and captain’s chair (which I still have) and a suite of flatpack office furniture (which I assembled by myself, but which has suffered after multiple house moves since and has mostly gone). I filled the shelves with books and filled my time with housework, job applications and managing the activities and transport needs of two youngsters who were rapidly morphing into teenagers. I was living in a Grade 2 listed Georgian house and garden, beautiful beyond any realistic expectation I might have had, and I told myself every day how lucky I was.

Six years later, in the middle of an autumn night, I went up into my attic room, switched on my computer, Googled ‘free blogs’, found a site called ‘blog.co.uk’, created my first blog (which I titled: ‘Husband or Cat?’) and wrote the following:

Here’s my scenario…

I have had a cat for nine years. Before we got the cat, my husband always swore he didn’t want one, but since we have had it he has always got on very well with it and has never shown any animosity towards it.
I recently decided to get another kitten. My husband’s reaction went something like this:
Hubby: If we get another cat, we have to get rid of the old one.
Me: We’re not getting rid of the old one.
Hubby: In that case, I’ll go.
Me: OK, you go then.
In spite of this conversation, I went ahead and got the kitten on the assumption that my husband was not serious, and that he would learn to love the new cat just as he had with the old one.
However, he refuses to be in the same room as the kitten, to the extent that he will not eat a meal with myself and our daughter if the kitten is present. When he is not at work, he has taken to spending all his time in a room in the attic.
When I asked him how long he intended to keep this up, he announced that he did not wish to be in the same house as the kitten and would find somewhere and move out.
I offered to get rid of the kitten, but he replied that it was too late and he was going anyway.
This after 23 years of marriage, 28 years together, and never any hint in the past that he was dissatisfied with our relationship in any way.
No one would make this up. This is my life.
What happens next?

husbandorcat, blog.co.uk, 16 October 2005

Enough of knitting and crochet news, and the poem which I still haven’t found, because I didn’t look for it on the laptop, didn’t get round to it. I’m not sure what’s on there anyway, but maybe that’s where all the missing blog posts from 2016 are, it makes sense. Which reminds me that I need to convert all the Word files on my new(ish) laptop to Open Office or Word 2007 before Thursday, when my year’s free trial of Office 365 (or whatever it’s called) expires, and Microsoft start demanding money with menaces. I’m quite content with my legitimate copy of Office 2007, bought in good faith ten years ago and still perfectly adequate for my needs, except I can’t install it on the new laptop because there isn’t a CD player to load the software from. This time last year I wasn’t bothered because I knew I had a full year to work out how to install it on the laptop, or adapt to using Open Office, but somehow I slipped into the bad habit of using Office 365 because it was there. But a decision has been made, and I’m sticking to it.  

Well, none of that is very deep, although I do need to sort it out. I’ve not been putting it off because I particularly don’t want to do it or am nervous about it – in fact I started earlier in the week on some of my files, to confirm it was quite straightforward and wouldn’t take long – it’s just that other things seem more important and/or interesting.

And I will get back to Destiny and the Meaning of Life at some point (no, I haven’t finished with that, even though I’ve stated categorically that I don’t think there’s anything mystical behind it all). Come to that, a Destiny which was predetermined and inevitable really wouldn’t be worth talking about, would it?

I’m just going to throw out this thought for now: all the wisdom life teaches us seems quite banal when you think about it – maybe that’s why it’s so hard to live by.

I have to go out today and tomorrow: this morning, to take Miko to the vet’s for a checkup and blood test to monitor how she’s getting on; and tomorrow I’m going for a mammogram at the hospital. I don’t mind too much – we are both getting older and creaky, and it’s good to know someone is looking out for our health. Miko is less than thrilled, as she can’t have breakfast because of the blood test – I wish I’d got an earlier appointment than 10:30, I didn’t think about it till it was too late to change – must remember next time. The vet is checking her quarterly at the moment, though it seems to have gone fast since the last time.

Yesterday I started talking about fate. My yoga teacher once said that Destiny is what is supposed to happen and Fate is what happens due to our actions, which sounds as though it makes sense, but doesn’t really when you start to think about it. Is Destiny what’s going to happen, or isn’t it? If it can be changed, by individual actions or collective, then in what sense was it ‘predestined’? I’ve been described by people as a ‘gloom and doomer’, particularly with regard to climate change, but I’ve never claimed that it was inevitable, just that trends in the scientific understanding and a knowledge of human behaviour have made it increasingly so over the three (nearly four) decades I’ve been observing it.

When I was an undergraduate, almost half a century ago, I read the ‘Foundation’ trilogy by Isaac Asimov, in which an interplanetary federation developed computer systems powerful enough to model all physical, social and economic trends and predict the future of the galaxy. In the story, the ability to plan for and control the threads of destiny was disrupted, initially by a mutant human who developed psychic abilities and took over supreme power, and although he eventually got his comeuppance (I forget how), events were never returned to their original trajectories. Since then, a lifetime of experience and observation has convinced me that it doesn’t take a mutant dictator to throw Destiny into confusion, just the usual work-in-progress of individuals and groups interacting and living and doing what people do without understanding, or caring about, the outcomes of their collective actions – all conspiracies collapse under the weight of sheer unadulterated human cock-up.

For years, scientists have been warning that we were overdue for a global pandemic – it could have been ebola, it could have been SARS, or bird flu, or swine flu – it wasn’t any of those, but the stories popped up every couple of years in the news, and were forgotten by most members of the public, (apart from geeky doomer-types still harbouring the soul of an over-excitable 18 year old statistics student). Medical and population trends continued to predict it was bound to happen – sooner or later.

Welcome to sooner – and funnily enough, no-one was prepared for it.