Part 14 - June 2013

The unwelcoming Packhorse Inn

June had a pleasant start with a trip up the valley on the country bus and a walk downhill, stopping for a picnic (having just missed the notoriously unwelcoming local Inn) before returning  back into town for a couple of pints. It was very enjoyable but the walking made me really tired and I expected to have a good night’s sleep. Alas it was not to be and I was completely knackered the next day.  However, it was too nice a day for me to stay in sulking so I motivated myself to go out again. We went for a potter round town and bought a few plants for the garden, which in turn inspired us to do a bit of gardening and fixing things outside the house for the rest of the day.

The following week stayed warm and sunny and I kept busy doing some gardening and painting and was even inspired to do some belated spring cleaning, including the windows which were filthy from the late winter snow melt. I just hadn’t had the energy to tackle this job up until this point.   I had planned to take some garden waste to the tip but the car wouldn't start again. I called the RAC out who said the battery was completely dead (so obviously their earlier advice about giving it a full charge and then it would be okay, was a load of rubbish). The RAC man suggested charging it up again so there would be enough juice to get the car to the garage and buy one off them when it went in for its Service & MOT, which was already booked for later that week. He took the battery out for me and helped me put it on charge which was very nice of him (just like in the adverts!) 

On my way to art class that week, I realised that due to a gap as a result of illness and half term, I had no idea what was on the schedule and guess what?  It was bloody life drawing again!  As usual, I hated it and my efforts were characteristically rubbish. That night I hardly slept at all the whole night.  This was especially annoying as I had to get up early the next morning because my partner was helping me to put the battery back in the car for I could take it to the garage. After dropping the car off, I had to wait ages for a bus back from the garage and I was so tired when I got home that I went back to bed but I couldn’t sleep.

Later that day, I went to see the doctor. She didn’t seem to think much of my chronic fatigue theory and simply thought that everything was related to the stupid situation I was in and that once that was sorted I would be fine. So other than giving me another sick note, it wasn’t much help.

On a positive note, I was making good progress with the 5/2 diet and lost about half a stone in two weeks!  I had experimented with different foodstuffs and discovered that if I mainly ate fruit and vegetables I got less hungry, although I had to have some carbohydrate and protein otherwise I had no energy at all.  With this regime, I actually felt like I had a bit more strength and energy even though I was still not getting enough sleep by far.  I reflected that maybe there was something in the theory that this fasting diet lark did indeed increase energy levels.

The week had a nice end to it as my partner got home early on the Friday for once and as the weather was still nice, we went to the pub for a couple of pints and caught up with quite a few people then we had tea out. We came home at a reasonable hour but ended up drinking more when we got home and stayed up too late so I had an inevitably crap night’s sleep and felt worse for wear on the Saturday morning.

Nevertheless, the lovely weather was holding up so after breakfast we chucked some food in a bag and set off for a riverside walk which was very lovely – I had never seen it so full of greenery and flowers before!  We dingled a bit taking photos and slowly made our way to a drinking hole then found a picnic spot above a waterfall.  We came back via the woods, by which time we felt quite hot and tired even though it was quite cloudy (we realised later on that this was probably because the sun was deceptively strong at that time of the year even with clouds, it being almost midsummer) so we had a bit of a siesta and a cool shower to revive ourselves.   In the evening we went to some friends for dinner and had a very pleasant time chatting and looking at photo books, and of course there was lots of eating and drinking.

That weekend, my sister had been to visit Mum and she messaged me on the Monday to say that Mum seemed very weak and hardly able to do anything herself and it was a trial to get her out of the house even to go in the garden.  My sister was talking about benefits and Mum not getting them for 6 months and asked me to do some research into them.  I said yes but in truth I felt that Mum really needed to get referred to an NHS consultant and Social Care to get officially assessed so that she got the care she needed (which I think she knew really).  I was trying to not feel guilty about not being there and was contemplating trying to go later in the week but judging by how knackered I was from just going to Halifax for a bit of shopping, I really didn’t feel up to it.  My partner told me not to worry and agreed with me that it was a job for the professionals.  I rang Mum on Tuesday and felt somewhat re-assured that we were right.  She actually sounded quite cheerful and positive.  We discussed her needing to see an NHS consultant and getting in touch with Parkinson’s nurses.

That night I was really tossing and turning and neither of us was getting any sleep so my partner said he would sleep in another room. I spent some time lying awake, trying to think things through but there was too much conflicting stuff in my head and it was very difficult to separate it all out and deal with it and I became very tearful and depressed.  I eventually got to sleep for a few hours.  When my partner came to see me in the morning, I spoke to him about how the lack of sleep was now really wearing me down after ten months.  He said he thought it was getting better and I said it wasn’t. While I had kind of got used to it, I was going through a particularly bad phase and I felt I was really going to lose my mind if I didn’t get some decent sleep soon.  He said that he would sleep in a different room more often – this would help both of us get more shut eye.  After he went to work, I dozed a bit more but when I eventually got up, I still felt really wiped out and quite tearful for most of the day.

I was cheered up by art class however as I finally got to make prints with the haughty giraffe lino cut I had made ages ago. I also tried a couple of other printing techniques and had a lot of fun (much better than stupid life drawing!) 

Haughty Giraffe in Black – lino print

My partner had also been dabbling in art and came across some weird thing which involved writing without looking down at the paper and it came out looking like writing but it was in fact complete gibberish.  I actually felt a bit freaked out by this but then wondered whether it was Sumerian like in that spooky film The Fourth Kind.  
We later found out that this is recognised as an actual art form called ‘asemic writing’. I.e., it has no semantic meaning so is not Sumerian, which I was strangely disappointed by despite my earlier fear.

We were planning a camping trip for late June, which entailed me driving to a festival in North Yorkshire and possibly then driving onto Northumberland. I was a bit apprehensive as it was a year since I had done that much driving in one go and I expected to get tired very easily and not be able to drive too far in one go. We booked a night in a hotel for the day after the festival so that we would be able to recoup somewhat and from there we could decide whether to carry on travelling further north.

By mid-June the early summer sun had deserted us for a while and the weather became very changeable. That, combined with feeling depressed a lot of the time, was not conducive to me wanting to go out and the following weekend was spent mainly at home, getting stuff together for camping and watching films.  On the Sunday, the weather was still grey and changeable but I was a bit stir crazy so made an effort to go out.  We went into town and it turned out to be Brass Band concert day but we weren’t in the mood to stand in the square and watch.  Instead, we went to the market and to some charity shops then to a cafe for lunch where we could sit on a terrace by the river and listen to the bands.

On the Monday I went for one of my regular visits to a friend and walked with them to the park.  I told her about a letter that had arrived on the Saturday which I quickly read then threw in the cupboard so I didn’t have to look at it over the weekend. The letter was from my boss saying there was going to be a meeting of the Board on 24^th June and I would then hear from them again.  I worked out that this probably meant there would be a letter waiting for me when I got back from camping so I was trying to forget about it for the time being (which was, of course, easier said than done).

At art class that week, the tutor demonstrated some 3D techniques and I showed her the collage that I was currently working on at home and she made some suggestions (she showed me an example of turning it into a mad 3D art which I took a photo of).  However, there wasn’t time to actually produce a full artwork and I spent the time making some pretty paper out of different coloured inks and using plants as stencils.  It was fun but I felt frustrated that we never seemed to have enough time to finish anything.  As I wouldn’t be there the following week (the last session of term), I gave some constructive feedback. My fellow classmates seemed to agree that it had felt quite disjointed and I also said it was disappointing that we hadn’t had the opportunity to make anything of our own to display at the Open Studios weekend as we had the year before. The tutor said that they were fair points and would discuss them with the co-ordinator.

That night I decided to try Temazepam as I had a few left. It was ages since I had some and I was thoroughly sick of not sleeping more than a couple of hours at a time.  I didn’t sleep anymore than normal but felt like I had a better quality of sleep even though I still woke up every two hours or so and had some weird dreams.

I also had terrible tummy ache that week, but I took some Gaviscon and tried to ignore it as I needed to finish packing for our camping trip.  We left home on the Friday afternoon and on the whole, we had a nice, varied sojourn. The traffic was very slow up to North Yorkshire for some unknown reason, but getting onto the festival site and setting up camp was relatively painless. We had a very good Friday night and Saturday – musical highlights included Sicknote, The Orb and New Model Army.  The Sunday was a bit quieter and we were quite hungover so we did a lot of chilling, and no drinking! That is possibly the first time ever I have been at a festival and not drunk alcohol. 

On the Monday I had a bit of a scary experience driving across the muddy site to load up the camping gear but otherwise it wasn’t too bad and we drove from there to Durham.  We had a nice 24 hours there, including some good weather and a lovely overnight stay at a village inn. 

Starlings in Seahouses waiting to be fed chips

The next day we drove to Seahouses and set up camp at Springhill Farm and stayed four nights. The first three nights on the site were lovely and quiet and chilled.  We spent time walking or driving up and down the coast, enjoying the scenery, castles and other seaside-type things.  When we returned from a day out on the Friday evening, tons of people had turned up on the site and loads of kids were running about and playing ball games in the camping field. 

Beadnell beach

I don’t want to sound like a grumpy old woman, but there was a separate playing felid and kids’ play park so why they were playing in the camping field I don’t know. Also that night, some idiots in a tent near us had a massive fire blazing which was alarmingly close for my liking! I was glad we were leaving the next day to be honest.  On the way home we stopped at Prudhoe castle, because we had never been before, which was interesting although I didn’t like getting lost – I took a wrong turning off the A1 and ended up driving round the metro centre for ages!

When we got home, I was extremely tired of course and I had a very stiff painful neck and shoulder.  The muscle at the top of my shoulder felt very lumpy and hard so I did some exercises and massage which helped to ease it a bit. I was trying to work out what had caused it and decided it was most likely the result of all that driving after so long hardly doing any.

While I was away, my employer had sent me an e-mail (which I inadvertently opened while sitting  in the middle of a camping field  and then tried to forget about for the rest of the week) and a letter which as I had predicted was waiting for me on my return. I read the letter on the Monday and it was asking me to go to a meeting the following day which of course was impossible as I had just got back from holiday and had no time to prepare.  I rang the Union Rep who agreed with me that the meeting was too short notice and gave me a couple of dates for the following week. I e-mailed the administrator the dates and also sought some clarification seeing as they were still on about making ‘adjustments so I could return to work’.  What planet were they on?  Why were they still not accepting that I could not go back and agreeing to a compromise? I really felt that it was getting totally ridiculous by that stage! 

I had to wait quite a while for an answer but I thought, if they were sat there waiting for me to turn up to a meeting the next day because they hadn’t checked their e-mails, that was their look out, wasn’t it?