I dreamed that the world had fallen apart around my ears and I was having to cadge cigarettes off Sacha Distel. As anxiety dreams go that's a doozy.
In the scheme of things I've good a quite comfortable life: I have a job and food on the table; a house and a bed and a small warm woman; and generally speaking nobody's trying to kill me on a daily basis.
I have to remind myself of that. I feel massively burned-out at the moment. Work is work and barely worth the mention (if you're desperate to know: the workplace is utterly fucking stupid at the moment and shows no prospect of getting any better). There's only so much utter stupidity you can be exposed to on a daily basis without its starting to chip away at your self-confidence.
Not been a weekend for recharging batteries - quite a lot on this week and not much space for getting some kip and not worrying about the time.
We must be due a bank holiday soon...
I was asked: "Why don't you do a few posts dealing with this week's big news event?" The answer, frankly, is that there is nothing I could say about the bitch that wouldn't be ungracious, divisive and ultimately futile: she's been gone a long time and we're still living with her legacy of hard-faced men doing well out of the recession.
I was mulling over the differences between our colonial cousins in the Unites States and us over here in Wonderland. I've been doing this a lot lately what with one thing or another. We get to hear about the contumelies and brouhahas of the American body politic and I've enough friends, acquaintances and colleagues over there for me to have news feeds full of their various arguments for and against one or other course of action.
Over here, we tend to forget that the United States is a foreign country. And a very different one at that. The idea that it's the same as us but bigger, or worthy somehow of being patronised as a younger sibling with lots of big ideas that could easily be transplanted over here is, of course, a nonsense. We struggle to get our heads around the Tea Party and they struggle to understand our love of socialised health care. They have the constitutional right to bear arms, we have the constitutional right to make fists in our pockets so long as we don't make a fuss about it. This last point came home to me the first time I went to visit friends in the Wild West and we went shopping. Standing in the queue for the till I glanced at the mither merchandise. Where we'd have had sweeties or chocolates or copies of "Hello" magazine ("Dame Flora Robson shows off her amazing baby bump! Exclusive pictures inside!") they were displaying shotgun cartridges and boxes of bullets.
We need to respect our differences, they're what makes the world what it is. And we need to be careful when we try to transplant ideologies from one place to another that they're both viable and appropriate in their new environment.
Some more post titles lost to the mists...
All those things I put off until I had a bit of time to do it...
An after-works drink with Ken Barmy at The Duck and Pullet.
For the past decade and a half we have shared stories of the black and bleak madnesses of the running of public libraries and laughed uproariously at the absurdity of it all.
We found nothing to laugh at in the climate of the day.
Apologies to all of you lately.
Strolled through T.J. Hughes at lunchtime. Very depressing, not much left except kitchenware, which probably says too much about the locals.
Lunch with my cousin. We've not seen each other for over a decade and have never really been particularly close. Lunch is an affable enough affair, we chat about this and that and catch up with family ailments. He's a nice enough chap, though not without his eccentricities.
I feel like I'm neglecting a lot of people lately. I hope to catch up with things some time. Soon, I hope.
"You'll have to start watching what you eat," said the doctor.
Oo-err.
"Why's that doctor?"
"You've got it all down the front of your shirt."
It's been a lovely, sunny autumn day full of that crisp splendour that makes a walk in the woodlands so very, very wonderful. So I wasn't chuffed to be hanging round the station waiting for a bus to take us into town because some scallies had nicked the lead off the roof of the signal box down the line. And then, having got in, having to negotiate my way through the cordon sanitaire they've had up all week to keep the latest bunch of nitwits away from the consequences of their fantasies. Last year it was New Labour, this year the Tories, next year who knows, save that there'll be a ring of steel around the City Centre yet again. I've been trying my best not to go off on one about it, so I wouldn't even have mentioned it here save for a conversation I had with a couple of folk this evening. "They have to do it for security reasons," insisted one.
"Bollocks," replied the other. "Both parties are supporting wars and curtailments of civil liberties because we're all targets now. If we're all targets now we should all have proper security, not just them buggers. It's nothing to do with security. It's all about keeping the political classes safely cocooned from everyday reality."
"They do go out and about every so often you know. MPs' surgeries, constituency visits, that sort of thing."
"They're just playing at being shepherdesses in the gardens of Versailles."
"What?"
"If it was really about security, they'd put the political classes into some sort of quarantine."
"What sort of quarantine?"
"Well, I was thinking something like Rockall..."
So there we were. I'm not sure why. The salt spray played with our senses and time itself became but an irrelevant abstraction. People we had never met before, nor yet would meet again, joined our party for no apparent reason and left with the same indifferent ease. A sense of becalmed aimlessness frittered away what little reason I had left and a numbing calm overwhelmed my soul.
All in all it was a real balls-acher of a bus ride.
I'm catching my breath over the bank holiday weekend. There's a lot to be done - the garden's threatening to invade the Western World; the house is a tip; and there are some scary work deadlines looming over the next few weeks; and I don't care. I've caught up with some sleep and I've reminded my family what I look like and that's pretty much as far as it's going.
I've been overworking lately and it tells. What should just be the ordinary aches and pains of middle-aged life are more niggly than usual and all the usual allergies are kicking in with a vengeance. They're much of a muchness, the problem lies with my reactions to them. Waking up with a panic attack at quarter-past two in a morning isn't a good idea; especially when it was past half one before you get to sleep. Idiotic.
A couple of people I know have died recently. A great pity, they will be sadly missed. Another had been incommunicado lately and we wondered if we'd somehow upset them. It turned out that she was in a hospice: she didn't let anybody know because she "didn't want any fuss." It's difficult to be cross in the circumstances.
Prudence, Caution, Deliberation.
The Hermit points to all things hidden, such as knowledge and inspiration,hidden enemies. The illumination is from within, and retirement from participation in current events.
The Hermit is a card of introspection, analysis and, well, virginity. You do not desire to socialize; the card indicates, instead, a desire for peace and solitude. You prefer to take the time to think, organize, ruminate, take stock. There may be feelings of frustration and discontent but these feelings eventually lead to enlightenment, illumination, clarity.
The Hermit represents a wise, inspirational person, friend, teacher, therapist. This a person who can shine a light on things that were previously mysterious and confusing.
I must have been doing the cat's shoelaces
when this lot came a-calling.
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