Part 16 - August 2013

Waterlily house, Kew Gardens

Despite having a resolution to my plight, I did not feel that my health was improving during August. The continuing sleeplessness was not helped by the weather which was at times oppressive and it was often too hot to sleep. However, there was a break in the heat heralded by an awesome thunderstorm on the first Friday night of the month, which was preceded by a fantastic orange sky.

The main topic of gossip on the street concerned a mystery cat which had suddenly appeared as if from nowhere. It spent most of the day sitting on the wall near our house, trying to be cute to passersby and angling to get fed (which worked on one of the soppy neighbours but not on me). 

My major occupation at the time was starting to write this blog. I had been keeping a diary and notes of what had happened to me and I planned to use it in some way for several months, but just couldn’t face it while I was still going through ‘the shit’.  It took me a while to figure out where to start and it was very hard and painful at first but I knew it would be good to get it out of my system in the long run and help me to move on.  Also, it got me back into writing on a regular basis. What I didn’t expect and what spurred me on to continue, was the knowledge that people actually read it including current friends and friends from my past, and I got some interesting feedback confirming my suspicions that this type of thing is endemic.  I had struck a chord for sure: as my Mum had said, ‘there’s a lot of it about’.

At the weekend, my partner started a crow drawing project.  He drew 5 different ones over the weekend – a strange obsession I didn’t understand but it kept him out of trouble. I dragged him away long enough to go out and look at the classic cars which is an annual tradition.  I have already got loads of photos of the same vehicles over the years so I decided to go for a different angle and chose ones with ‘smiley faces’ and posted them up on Skydrive. 

The following week I tried getting into doing more exercise as I felt flabby and also it was meant to help me feel better, mentally as well as physically. Nevertheless, lack of sleep reached epic levels again.  

DWP had written to request a whole list of documents for my ESA claim and I wrote a covering letter explaining that when I made the claim I was officially employed (although not being paid) whereas now I was officially unemployed.  While I was in the middle of doing this, the post arrived which included a letter saying my claim for ESA had been approved!  I was a bit confused but reckoned that this meant I was entitled to the contributions-based benefit and that the documents were to assess my claim for the salary-based benefit, although the letter said I wouldn’t get it because my partner works over 24 hours a week.  So it was all a bit Kafkaesque – no wonder the benefits bill is so huge – it’s all the stupid admin!

On a positive note, I made the acquaintance of the proprietor of the new bead shop, a very nice young woman, who  put my name on her list for free jewellery making workshops.

The original village well?

Later in the week, I met a friend I hadn’t seen for a couple of months for drinks and a long chat about both our situations, the state of the world etc.  That evening, a friend who loves to go walking called round and after a coffee, we set out for an evening walk. We arranged to meet my partner at the bus stop but we missed the bus by about two seconds and there wasn’t another one for ages.  Some random guy asked if we wanted to share a taxi so we did, and we walked in the beautiful evening light up a country lane, then looped back and went to a country pub for a bite to eat and a pint in the beer garden.

 On the Friday, I had some errands to do in the next town so I decided to have a look in the market hall and found some very reasonably priced saltmarsh lamb.  

I waited to buy some but I almost didn’t bother as when I thought it was my turn to be served, I started to ask for what I wanted when the butcher said ‘wait a minute,  Derek was next!’  Of course Derek was about 90 years old, like everyone else in the queue except me so I felt like saying, ‘if you only intend serving people you are on first name terms with you won’t be in business very much longer, judging by the demographic of the clientele’.

A smiley car at the vintage rally

On the Saturday we went to the Halifax agricultural show with a friend and in the evening we went to see the Buzzcocks. We had arranged to meet another friend in there who was going really early, so we managed to cheekily ensconce ourselves at her table quite near the front.

The Buzzcocks (aka Steve Diggle show) were very good but the sound was pants.  After the gig we bought some mementoes including Buzzcocks rock which I later broke (see the album ‘disintegrating sweets’) then ended up in the bar until quite late. We chatted to various people including our mate before walking her home.  It was already getting light when we got to bed making it even harder than usual to sleep. 

The following week I decided to try getting up at the same time every day in a bid to break the pattern of not sleeping much during then night and then lying in bed late and feeling tired all day.  I asked my partner to bring me a cup of tea at 8 o’clock in the mornings, whether I was awake or not, to make me get up. This seemed to work a bit.  Although I wasn’t getting much more sleep and was still waking several times during the night, the sleep I was getting seemed to be of slightly better quality so I started to feel more positive that things were moving in the right direction.

I had been wondering if writing this blog was actually a good idea as it was churning all the shit up again, and I gave a lot of thought to whether I should continue with it.  However, I did truly believe it was cathartic and on balance I decided the benefits would outweigh the negatives.  It was about me taking back control and trying to get something good out of the whole horrid experience.  I started to think that when I had finished writing about my actual experience, I might do some analysis and research into how widespread this type of thing actually is and try and get a voice for us downtrodden victims of the (mainly) public/voluntary sector passive-aggressive bullying culture.

At my next doctor’s appointment, she came up with three suggestions for helping me to break the cycle. 1. Using sleeping pills every night for a week (which I decided to try the following week). 2. More counselling (I was not convinced this would help but said I would think about it), 3. Anti-depressants (again!  What is it with these GPs wanting to get us all hooked on this stuff?  I tried to explain I wasn’t depressed but she said I was exhibiting signs of depression, which I later realised was true. Writing this blog has helped me to trace the pathology of my illness which in turn enables me deal with it a lot better, but at the time I thought, what does she know?  Does she even know what happens to your brain chemistry after stress?) 

When I got home, my P45 and last pay slip had arrived which made the situation feel a bit more real. We were going to London the next day for a long weekend with my sister so I was looking forward to putting all the shit behind me and having a good time.  My sister had managed to book tickets for an exhibition we tried to go to in April but it was fully booked, so we had planned a special trip round it.

Unfortunately, our journey down was a bit fraught as the mainline train from Leeds was cancelled and so was the next one, and when we finally got on one an hour later, it was running late and of course packed out.  By the time we got to London we didn’t have time to do much so we walked down to the Strand and re-discovered a pub we used to go to in the olden days – still nice and reasonably priced - and wait for my sister to finish work.  I texted her and she said she might as well meet us in there so we had another drink and I updated her on my news and we compared notes on Mum as we had both been to visit recently. 

A clever picture of me at Kew gardens by my partner

That night I was very hot and restless but I slept eventually for a few hours.  I got up early the next day and as we didn’t really fancy the West End in the oppressiveness of a London summer we decided to go to Kew gardens. We spent all day at the gardens looking at the fantastic trees and other vistas, greenhouses and galleries and trying to photograph parakeets (of which there were thousands).  The temperate house was shut which was a bit disappointing but otherwise we had a lovely day and of course took tons of photos.  We mis-timed our journey back and travelled across London in the rush hour crush which took about two hours. That evening, my sister cooked us a meal which we enjoyed out on the patio along with a few bottles of wine, and watched more parakeets and other wildlife (of which there is more in the South London suburbs than here in semi-rural Yorkshire!)

Palm house at Kew gardens

On the Saturday we got the train to London Bridge and walked along the south bank.  We had a look at Borough market and the Rose theatre (which is still being excavated) and Tate Modern where we went up to the top and snuck behind a door marked private so my partner could do one of his trademark panoramas.  From there we walked over Waterloo Bridge and onto the British Museum and waded through millions of tourists to get to the ticket desk but it then turned out we didn’t need to as they just wanted to see the confirmation e-mail. The exhibition, ‘Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum’, was pretty good. I was surprised how many large frescoes there were and impressed that it included the woman with the gold earrings.

However, there was an over-emphasis on wine and willies; a fact which we overheard many other visitors commenting on (though brothels were conspicuous by their absence).  The exhibition was curated in the style of different rooms in a Roman townhouse which was interesting but didn’t give you a sense of what life on the streets was like at the time.  After, I decided it would have been better without the lame film at the start of the exhibition and instead, the space had been used to display models of the two towns and exhibits showing civic buildings such as the temples, bath houses, agora, and normal shops (not just pubs). I did feedback my ideas to the British Museum but they never replied.

It took about two hours to go round the whole exhibition and of course we went in the gift shop as well where my partner bought a print of a bird from one of the garden frescoes.  Afterwards we went to a Taz restaurant at the end of the road and shared a huge Turkish meze – very nice, especially the bulgur wheat and aubergine dishes, but the lamb on humus was a bit weird and I wasn’t keen on the mussels on sticks.  My sister was going onto a party in Blackheath to which we were invited but I was absolutely shattered after several hours’ walking across London (again!)

We all got the no. 24 (Boris’s new bus) to Charing Cross and left my sister to catch a train straight to her friend’s house and we got the train back to her place where we availed ourselves of the huge Sky telly which she never watches.

That night I slept 5 hours straight (all that walking must have tired me out!)  I tried to lie in a bit later the next morning but with little success.  We had arranged to see some friends and went by bus to Deptford. They took us on a tour of Deptford High Street which, despite claims of trendiness, is exactly the same as ever except with fewer pubs and more bookies and pound shops.  We went for a drink in another of our old haunts before getting a bus back to their house which went past the housing co-op where we used to live. It was only when we got off the bus near our friends’ house that we realised it was in fact literally round the corner from where we lived all those centuries ago – so weird!  When we got back to their house we had a lovely dinner and drank beer and wine and chatted lots. 

On the Monday we left my sister’s soon after 9 and on the way to the station, I got some antihistamines from Poundland, as I had a horrendous mosquito bite on my foot (from the Friday night out on the patio; I hadn’t noticed how bad it was and by this time, it was the size of an egg and very red and itchy).  Back in Leeds I took charge of my partner’s wheelie case and he went to work.  I almost fell asleep on the connecting train home! Also, my shoulder had knotted up in a very painful way, largely due to carting luggage about.  I went straight to bed when I got back and slept for about an hour.  I then managed to unpack and sort some washing out and that was about it.

When I ventured out to check on our garden the next day, I discovered that the pesky cat that had been hanging around had found a spot to sleep in at the top of the garden and flattened the plants.  I shooed it away and re-arranged some rocks so the cat wouldn’t be able to sit there anymore, and also sprayed some anti-cat stuff around for good measure. I chatted to the neighbour who had been feeding the mystery cat. She had ascertained that it belonged to another neighbour who had gone on holiday and had paid someone to feed it who obviously hadn’t.  They were back now so why the cat was still hanging around at our end of the street was unfathomable, unless it just hated them (well, he did wear one of them knobby Guardian hats).

That week, I tried the GP’s idea of taking Zopyclone every night for a week to see if it broke the pattern of crap sleep and tiredness, but it didn’t make any difference.

Later that week I went to meet someone from work (the only one I trusted after what happened to me).  They gave me loads of stuff that was apparently out of my office, most of which I had completely forgotten about and some of which I didn’t even recognise and wasn’t convinced was actually mine (I mean, who owns a thesaurus these days when there’s the internet for that sort of thing?)  We said we would keep in touch which was nice. When I got home I sorted through the boxes and took some pleasure in throwing some of the stuff in the bin.

On the Friday night I met my art friend at the pictures to see The Worlds End (alright but not as funny as Hot Fuzz).  Half way through the film, we were trying to remember the name of an actor and simultaneously realised who it was, turned to each other to say his name and banged our heads together.  This hurt quite a bit and we were nursing our bumps then laughing, and a tosser in the seat in front of me turned round, told me to shut up and hit me on my leg.  I was so angry!  I hit him back on the shoulder but not hard enough and he ignored me.  When the film finished, I confronted him and told him he was a wanker for hitting someone for laughing during a comedy film.  He got really arsy and we had a scrap and he broke my umbrella (so glad it was a crap old one).  During the altercation, I was totally unaware of anything else going on around me but I found out later that my friend apparently intervened.  Then my neighbour from art class appeared and said the guy had been really laying into me .  I was really shaking and later observed how it was quite interesting how the confrontation had made my adrenalin levels sky high again. 

My partner had just got back from work and was waiting for us outside our local.  I was telling him the story and he said he wished he’d been there as he really wanted to hit someone (due to shite at work). We had a drink and I managed to calm down and then felt totally flat as my adrenalin levels subsided.  Our friend went home and we went onto another pub and stayed out until quite late.

On the last Sunday of August we went on holiday to Zakynthos.  We had a lovely time despite the crap facilities (which I have written about in ‘Letsos Hell’).  It was very relaxing but not very restful and I was still stuck with the usual problems including the now seemingly interminable sleeplessness...