Part 13 - May 2013

Valley panorama

Early May was warm and sunny which allowed me to do more pottering about outside and I was able to fix the  washing lines which always get ripped down and broken by thoughtless van drivers careering roughshod down the street (I wouldn’t mind so much but it’s easy to unhook them at one end rather than just driving straight through). I chatted to neighbours about the dead eucalyptus tree, which was looking very precarious now and they promised they were sorting it out.  I got loads of insect bites up my arms from weeding the garden so I went for a three-pronged solution: I washed my arms with tea tree, then applied witch hazel and took 2 antihistamines which of course are supposed to help with sleep as well.

At art class I did another crap life drawing – the tutor made us do proper measuring of proportions and it felt like an ordeal rather than fun.  I am just not into that whole ‘beauty of the human body’ lark.  I framed my mushroom still life and put it up on the stair wall - which I much preferred. I made friends with a fellow participant who had recently moved into our street and sometimes we walked back from class together.

I had been trying to get some sense out of the Union and after still not getting any replies to my e-mails or phone calls.  Then, I simultaneously received an e-mail from the administrator at work and a letter from my boss confirming a meeting for the following week.  It seemed to suggest that they had already sorted the time and date with the Union  but I had no idea what they had said and was very annoyed that the Union appeared to have agreed to a meeting without telling me what was going on and what was likely to happen at said meeting.

Later in the week I finally spoke to the Union guy and the upshot was that he felt I should go to the meeting. Following a conversation with my boss, he seemed to think there was a chance of a Compromise Agreement but I had no idea what he was basing this assumption on. I tried to explain how tricksy my boss was but he just said he knew all about this type of thing. I was also trying to explain to him how difficult it would be for me to: a) get there for 10 in the morning, and b) have to be in the same room as that bitch to which he responded that I had to! I swore at him I was so angry! (but I think he’d already hung up). He just talked at me and didn’t listen to my concerns at all!  I had a bit of a chat to my partner about it and asked him if he could have the morning off work to come with me.  Then I thought about some strategies to be able to face the ordeal, and wrote some notes and e-mailed them to the Union guy. He rang me back later in the week and re-iterated that he thought the meeting would be ‘advantageous’ but as before he had no real evidence to support this view so I was not holding my breath.

Sculpture at YSP by Yinka Shinobare MBE

I then tried not to think about it too much as a Bank Holiday weekend was coming up and I wanted to try and have some fun. We spent some of the weekend just pottering about and enjoying being at home together.  On the Sunday, our art friend drove us to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and we looked at lots of art and trees and had a picnic lunch.  We took some daft photos of Barbara Hepworth’s and some lovely ones in the camellia house. On the way back we tried to think of a nice pub where we could sit out for a drink and ended up at the Barge & Barrel in Elland.  We had always meant to go there to try the real ales and expected it to have nice canal side seating.   

As it turned out, it was pretty local and everyone stared at us (including two huge scary-looking dogs) when we walked in but we persevered and sat out in a yard overlooking the canal – well, at least we know now.   
On the Monday we caught the bus and walked up the Wainhouse Tower as it was one of the rare days

At the top of Wainhouse Tower

it was open – 396 steps and ace views from the top!  
 Of course we took loads of photos and I had to wait about an hour for my partner to finish taking his photos which were destined to be turned into a huge panorama.  Afterwards, we walked down to Manor Heath Park which was absolutely packed and managed to find an empty bit of grass to sit on. We ate leftover picnic bits from the day before and watched the antics of people enjoying themselves. 

On the walk back up to the bus stop, we skirted round the tower to look at the remnants of Albert promenade– what a wreck!   
We got the bus back and sat outside the pub for quite a while chatting to various people.  We were invited round to some friends to enjoy a bonfire and after having a bite to eat and stocking up on beer, we went round and had a laugh and looked at stars - it felt like a belated Beltane celebration which was nice.

I then had a couple of days before the dreaded meeting, and tried to keep myself occupied with other things. There had been a hiccup with dance classes as so many of the regulars were off on their jollies so the class that week was meant to be a bit of a recap. I was okay with the waltz, cha cha and tango, but then there was samba (which I’d only ever done once before and it was months ago so it wasn’t really a recap for me) then we started a ballroom jive.  It felt like a bit too much for one session and I got quite frustrated and my left foot really hurt after. I tried to reason with myself that it was good exercise and kept me occupied and my mind off horrid stuff, but I was getting a bit fed up with the style of teaching if I am honest. 

My sleeping was further hindered by road works at night. It was apparently scheduled to go on for several nights and we had no warning about this from what we could recall, so I went on the council website for details and e-mailed them to complain. I got a standard response but then nothing, so that was a complete waste of time.

On the Thursday I had to get up at 6.30 a.m. after hardly any sleep, to get ready to go to the meeting. The car wouldn’t start so we went on train.  It was an astoundingly quick affair. To my complete surprise, my boss did not harp on about ways I might return to work but seemed to accept straight away that I couldn’t go back and we all agreed that a compromise agreement was the best thing for everyone.  I was genuinely stunned and the whole thing only took about 15 minutes including both parties adjourning twice – the idiot Union guy wasn’t going to suggest a figure then it was going to be ludicrously low so I made him up it to the highest amount I thought it was likely to be. 

We were promised a letter the following week with an offer. At last I thought! I felt like I should have been jumping up and down that my ordeal appeared to be almost over, but I just felt so flat and completely drained.  I also thought it was totally ridiculous that this could have been sorted months ago but instead they had caused unnecessary anguish when they could have put an end to it and saved themselves a few grand in sick pay in the process.  my partner reckoned it was because they had to go through their processes (very badly in my view) and the ACAS reference in the company policy is a load of rubbish.  I did tend to agree and on the plus side I reasoned, I had been getting paid and the end appeared to be in sight at last. 

Afterwards I texted a few people about the good news and arranged to meet one of them for a drink the following night.   However, celebrations were a bit premature as it turned out.

That week, my partner also had a difficult meeting at work about his job but when I asked him, he didn’t’ want to talk about it. Instead, he was whingeing about no Vodafone signal – it had been down for two days and so he checked to see if it had been reported. When it did get eventually get fixed at some point the following week, we appeared to have 2.5G.  Why on earth Vodafone didn’t tell anyone they were upgrading and the signal would be off for a week, I don’t know.  Instead, they had a lot of angry customers which didn’t seem like good business.

On Friday night I met my friend for a drink as planned.  My partner arrived later on and bought himself a very expensive strong pint of Mad Dog.  He was quite hyped up due to events at work and was rambling about it, but then he calmed down a bit and we managed to talk a bit more rationally about it.  Our friend went home and we went onto another pub which was hosting a Northern Soul disco.  There were only about 12 people there but the music was mainly good and we chatted to a couple who had run away from Wolverhampton as the locals didn’t like the fact that there was an 18 year age gap between them. 

We had quite a productive weekend despite the fact that I was feeling like I was getting another virus.  My partner helped me get the battery out of the car and we put it on charge from the mains, as advised by RAC. We then decided we should take the car for a run and went to the Mill shop and got some stuff we needed.

On the Monday I had a doctor’s appointment.  She examined me and helpfully (sic) said that my recurring viruses and infections were because I had no reserves and needed a ‘proper recoup’.  On the way back I called at a friend’s house and left a note – I usually called round on a Monday but I hadn’t been able to phone her as there was still no Vodafone signal and I didn’t want to infect them with my germs. 

I was knackered again when I got back home and tried not to get too depressed about always being ill and had a look for some tips on the internet. I found something on ‘adrenal fatigue’ that matched my symptoms exactly and looked at treatments. There was nothing I hadn’t already tried and the on-line questionnaire diagnosed me as having ‘moderate’ fatigue indicating it could take 9-12 months to get better.  I decided I would concentrate on getting over the current virus by resting as much as possible and taking tons of vitamins, then when I was better physically, I would work on the other things such as more exercise.  I ordered some more vitamins from Chemist Direct and had a look at some ideas for tonics/immune boosters but got stumped by cat’s claw – what is that stuff?  I was not surprised to learn that the ‘adrenal fatigue’ theory has no credibility among the medical profession but  reckoned that it made no difference as the result was the same – a form of Chronic Fatigue  which I felt I did have, regardless of the cause.

I was getting uncharacteristically bored by my self-enforced resting but to tell the truth, I wasn’t up to doing much. I felt that I needed some new games to keep myself occupied and we found a version of Transport Tycoon with British train set add-on – very geeky!  When I started to feel a bit better later in the week, I did some thinking about my website and research into starting up as a sole trader.  I found some useful links but got a bit lost in the quagmire of HMRC jargon and wrote a ‘to do’ list instead.  I gathered that it was fairly straight forward to just sell stuff on the market so I planned to see how that went first then build up from there. I also looked for ideas and designed some logos and was quite pleased I had done something productive.

That Friday evening, I was still very weary and was watching films with my partner in the bedroom when there was a disturbance on the next street down. After a while, my partner decided to go out and investigate and I opened the window to see what was going on.  There were some dodgy blokes hanging round and threatening all kinds.  One of our neighbours has called the police but they appeared to be standing around and not actually doing anything. Another neighbour had some posh mates round and they were saying ‘I can’t believe this sort of thing happens here’ if only they knew the half of it – hilarious! 

I still felt unwell and completely exhausted over the weekend and entertained myself with the Eurovision song contest. I know this is sad, but I watched all the entries on the internet – worth it to see the Serbian entry which didn’t make it through to the live final. I invented the term ‘Baltan Bollocks’ though strangely quite a few eastern bloc countries didn’t get past the semis. I tipped Denmark to win which they did but the Romanian entry was actually awesome and was robbed.  Greece got my award for ‘best novelty act’ but if they had won they would have been really bankrupt having to host the contest next year.  The UK entry was predictably mediocre with the well-passed-it Bonnie Tyler for crying out loud.  Why don’t they ever ask anyone young and cool who actually sells records to do it?

At the start of the following week, I rang the doctors for some advice on my constant tiredness and to discuss the possibility of it being CFS. They were sympathetic but not much help. 

I had received an e-mail off my boss late on Friday (true to type) and I went back to read it properly. It said that they needed to consult with their lawyers and wanted another medical report before coming to an agreement with me so more delay!  I was really fed up with it all again.  I wrote her a letter having a whinge about it and telling her that I had been bedridden since the meeting which was almost true and telling her not to use my personal e-mail account again. I put the letter in an envelope with my latest sick note and signed a contract variation which had also arrived recently, getting everyone to work more hours (sic).  I also e-mailed the Union and of course they didn’t get back to me until much later. When they did, they were as unhelpful and predictable as usual – they wound me up more than my boss did, they appeared to be so ineffectual.

Also that week, my sister had e-mailed about Mum who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s by my German cousin who visited recently.  She had copied  two of my brothers into the message which annoyed me a bit because one of them didn’t know about my illness, so I felt compelled to reply to them all to explain my inability to rush to her bedside and I volunteered to carry out some research to help out seeing as I was unable to visit.  I also chatted to some friends via social media to update them on my situation (as I had told them that the end was nigh) and also to see if they knew anything about Parkinson’s, but didn’t find out anything that I hadn’t already gleaned from Google.

I was a bit upset that no-on seemed to care much about my plight.  It sounds selfish I know but one friend said she was even ‘sorrier’ to hear about my Mum which made me feel very sorry for myself, like no-one understood what it was like for me. I also got an e-mail back from one of my brothers who didn’t refer to my condition at all, not even to sympathise.  I know I had my partner but I was alone all day most of the time and sometimes couldn’t even get to the shops.  I told myself not to be so self-indulgent and tried to focus on positive stuff.  I spoke to Mum on the phone and she sounded quite well in herself and relieved that she had a diagnosis, which I suspected she might. 

I went back to my money-making schemes, trying some variations of my logo design and also some postcard and calendar ideas with Publisher.  I looked at some of  my social network accounts and updated my profiles and uploaded some photos. I still didn’t really get Google Plus or Tumblr so I stuck with Flickr and started creating some photo sets.

However, more bad news came in the form of my partner hearing that his whole department was abolished (again) so he put in for voluntary redundancy (again – 4 times in 4 years!).  Complete madness! He was only just writing his own job description earlier in the week but apparently it was all to do with a deficit and having to make massive savings as some dosh they were meant to get from the government was now not going to be forthcoming.  We talked about it and how he was coping and as ever, he told me not to worry and that he was feeling okay.

The following weekend, the weather brightened up a bit and I started to feel better after my virus. We spent some time sitting outside and we went to the pub and caught up with some people and had dinner out. On the Sunday we went for a walk and picked some wild garlic- rather a lot of it!  The bluebells were also out in profusion but it was mainly about the garlic which we were eating the following week until it came out of our ears (and other orifices).  We tried to preserve some by making pesto and a sort of sauce (a bit like mint sauce but with garlic) and also had soup and salads

At the end of May I started the 5/2 diet, which meant eating only 500 calories for 2 days a week. I had been meaning to do this for ages as I saw a documentary about it some months ago and it made a lot of sense to me. I had put quite a lot of weight on over the winter, and had been putting off doing anything about it saying to myself it wasn’t a good idea if I wasn’t well.  But it got to the point where enough was enough – some of my jeans no longer fit me and the goal was to shift enough fat so I could get in them again. I had dramatic results in the first week, and made steady progress into June (more later).

In the meantime, nothing further had happened on the work front and it would be several weeks until there were further developments...

Bluebells in the woods