 |
| Midsummer evening sky |
The sun seemed to be celebrating
the meteorological start of summer on the 1st of June, which was
nice. We packed a picnic and set off to
catch the country bus. When it arrived ,
it was like one of them cranky things you get on holiday but it only cost £2.50
for a day ticket. I am sure last year it
was over six quid but in the meantime other bus fares had gone up. I wondered
if they were completely random.
 |
| View from the ridge |
At the end of the line, we
started walking round the reservoir, taking in the scenery and wildlife including the ground nesting Linnets which replied to the noise of my camera (very obliging). When we were halfway, we
stopped on a nice bit of wall to have our picnic. However, the sheep that hitherto had not
seemed interested in us started coming towards us. This might sound daft, but I had been
attacked by sheep in the past and I got rather anxious and started to pack
things away so we could make a hasty retreat.
My partner thought I was over-reacting but they started following us
back down the path and I refused to go any further. Instead, we took a bridleway which took us
quite far up. We wondered if we could
stay up on the heathland to walk back and tried a few different routes but were
thwarted by tussocks and marsh. I got a
bit panicky at one stage.
 |
| A lesser spotted Linnet |
Eventually, we found the proper
path back down but when we got to the ridge, the sheep had moved right onto the
bridleway blocking our route. I weighed
up the level of fear I felt about going past the sheep versus clambering down
the rough hillside. The sheep won and we
managed to bypass them. My partner said ‘I
don’t believe you just clambered down a 1:2 hill’, to which I replied that it
was better than the other option!
After all this, I was
exhausted! We caught the last bus back
to town and had a small recoup in a pub beer garden. Reading the freebie events diary, we had a
laugh at all the witchy raiki listings. I was almost falling asleep so we went home
after one drink.
Although I had enjoyed walking
on the moors, the small traumas made it quite stressful too. When I had trouble
sleeping that night, my thinking crystallised a bit more: I was saying last
month that whether I drink alcohol or coffee or watch telly etc. makes no
difference to my sleeping and I added to
that neither does being literally exhausted!
My Stupid brain just will not shut up!
After two terrible nights, I
had a think. Amongst all the crap, I
decided the biggest factor was the treatment and therapy lark. I kept telling myself that I was doing the
right things for myself and that I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to,
but it still annoyed me how ineffective the system is in treating mental
illness. There had been some stuff on
telly recently about how facilities for severely ill people are inadequate and
badly funded which I agreed with, but there was no mention of what it is like
for those of us with mild to moderate illnesses. As my art neighbour said the other week, if
there was proper psychotherapy available for people like us, the overall NHS
budget would probably be miles less as it would stop people getting really ill
(physically as well as mentally).
My sleeping improved slightly mid-week
and I also managed to kip when I had an afternoon siesta, for three days in a
row which was remarkable and made me feel so much better in the evenings.
On the Monday morning, I felt
rather sad and depressed the next day. I
reflected that I would love to get up earlier especially with the days being so
nice and long but I just couldn’t because of the lack of sleep. Despite my continued efforts to be positive,
active and tell myself it was getting better and will be even better soon, it
was still so hard a lot of the time.
I worked on my blog for May –
which took me until Tuesday afternoon to finish. When I stopped, my head ached
of course, but I was pleased with the amount of illustrations it contained.
In the afternoon I went to do
some errands and cursed myself that yet again, I had timed it just right to
coincide with parents and small kids infesting the place after school. It was even worse than normal, with it being
post-half-term -I heard two women saying to each other they had nothing in for
sandwiches. It wouldn’t be so bad but they
let the kids run amok like it’s a playground and one woman was blocking the
whole aisle with a trolley and a massive pram.
It was all I could do to keep calm amidst all the self-entitled
middle-class parenting smuggery.
My brother rang and we chatted
for a while before the inevitable question came up of him visiting for the tour
de farce (as he is a bit of a cycle nut).
I said yes and left things quite open, but the next day it dawned on me how
packed everywhere would be. We were also
attending an event in the big town on the Saturday, which meant some planning was
required.
During the week, I kept busy
with some housework and sewing and worked on my photos from the Sunday walk. I
also had an idea about how to finish the zombie film plot which I was pleased
about after struggling with it for three weeks!
At art class that week, we
carried on with our lino prints and chatted lots. I got the gen off my art pal about her trip
to Portugal – the short version is that the boyfriend turned out to be a psycho
so she ran away got an early flight home.
She was due to go back to work the following Monday and we talked about
money not being everything and seeing how it went.
On the Thursday afternoon my
friend with the interesting ailments came round and we chatted about all sorts
including health issues, therapy and swimming and said we would definitely go
swimming next week.
That night I took 2 Temazepam
and was asleep quite quickly and had a really good night. I felt so much better as a result – almost
verging on happy! The Sun was also
shining which helped a lot.
 |
| An interesting find! |
On Friday afternoon I went for lunch
with a good friend followed by a walk in the woods. We spent ages pootling round looking for old
bits of pot and she found an old iron hook in the stream. We then carried on uphill and admired the wild flowers before going to the
local country inn. Her walking friend arrived and we chatted
about all sorts and shared funny and grim stories.
Then we got the bus back down to town. We were hungry again and I
suggested chips but she wanted to go to the coaching inn. Then I realised I’d lost my baccy and knew it
would be on the bus so I ran to the terminus and sure enough, it was
there. We went for dinner then my
partner texted to say he would meet me at the pub round the corner. However, we were both very tired so we went home
after one pint.
 |
| Wild iris |
On the Saturday we had planned
to go to a local festival but the weather was atrocious and we thought it might
be a wash out. Our good friend down the road had texted to see if we were going
but I got the message late. Instead, I
decided to do some baking and carry on sorting files out on the new laptop.
The weather
brightened up in the evening and we went into town but it looked like it was
full of drunken nobs so we walked along the canal, taking pictures in the lovely
evening light and had a pint at the canal side inn.
 |
| Canalside reflections |
On Sunday morning I awoke late,
after a mediocre night and felt very groggy.
The Weather was quite nice but I was too tired to go out. I was also put off by the handmade parade
shenanigans and some awful happy clappy music we could hear (I had to shut the windows
it was so loud). We sorted our DIY ‘media
centre’ by getting rid of an archaic computer and my wii and connected my old
laptop to the telly – suitably loaded up with video software.
On the Monday, I had to be up
early for a counselling appointment. she
wanted me to consider something called EMDR (Eye movement desensitization and
reprocessing) so
I said I’d think about it. During the
following week, I did some research into EMDR and other therapies. As a result, my thinking went along the lines
of on one hand, the counsellor was the first person I had seen in a
professional capacity that recognised I had PTSD symptoms and gave me another
option for therapy. But on the other
hand, it was all so limited to what the NHS was prepared to fund. Also, practitioners appeared
to push the therapies that they were qualified in. I wondered why there was not one impartial
source of information that would just tell you about ALL the options and how
they might help you so you could make an informed choice about what was best
for you. However, I texted my art friend
to ask her professional opinion about EMDR and she said it was a good proven
technique and after talking to a couple of other people I decided to go for it.
 |
| Urban artichokes |
On Tuesday evening, I went
swimming with my friend with the interesting ailments. Whilst walking from the bus station, we
marveled at the ‘edible’ artichokes. The pool was much busier than normal and I had
enough after half an hour; there were too many kids splashing about. We got changed back quickly and managed to
catch an earlier bus back. Despite being exhausted, I had an unsettled night
again and managed to hurt my leg on the bed to add to my usual tribulations.
Later in the week I did some
research into film production companies which went quite well. After a few false starts I found two or three
worth trying and also looked at some other websites including the writer’s
guild and I went to the library for the writer’s yearbook.
During art class I finished my
print then we did some watercolour stuff but I thought it was a bit babyish.. My art pal was still doing her print and I
stayed to help clean up and walked back with her. We talked about the therapy stuff and about
how she was coping being back at work.
That night, I took two Temazepam
and they helped a bit – I still woke a few times but had some better quality
sleep in-between.
 |
| Railway junction |
The next morning I went
to the big town for some errands. I had
been meaning to get round to this all week and finally managed to muster up the
strength thanks in some measure to the pills.
I picked up tickets for an event when my brother would be visiting and
did quite a lot of shopping including buying some fresh herring (It was very
cheap and tasty and I wondered why I hadn’t seen it for sale before, although
it did have a lot of fiddly bones which might explain it).
When I got home, I was hot, exhausted
and starving. I sat outside a bit but
needed to go in and lie down for a while. However, it was too bright and noisy to sleep
and when I gave up and got up again, I noticed that my next door neighbour and
a couple of her friends had commandeered our bit of garden wall and were having
a picnic. I was rather annoyed at this
as I had planned to go sit out again myself. I went and told them it was my
space and that it wasn’t very fair as her garden is three times the size of
mine. One of them apologised and they
moved and I hoped I had not created any bad feelings but I felt I had to stand
up for myself as we have such a small space we can call our own. Part of the
problem was that I had rescued an old bench of hers a couple of summers back
and which might have made her feel as if the space was hers too. I came up with some ideas to reclaim it and
put them into action later in the month.
 |
| What an idiot! |
The next morning I could hardly
move and felt very stiff. I could hear
men using power tools again and when I looked out I saw that some pavement
repairs were being done (in a very bodgy fashion). I went out to the post office and thanks to a
helpful link via social media, I was able to post the free Sun newspaper back to
them – the day before, pics of Ed
Millipede holding a copy created understandable outrage on Merseyside.
Televisual entertainment became
dominated by the world cup. I had
wondered if I would get into it this time with all the protests in Brazil and
FIFA scandals but I am afraid the allure of watching some world class
international football won out. It was no surprise that the host nation won the
opening game but they managed an own goal and were awarded a very dodgy penalty
in the process.
Friday evening brought a
much more entertaining match wherein NL thrashed cup holders Spain 5-1 which
was a bit of a shock. My partner was watching
it whilst on a train making his way home.
Our texting went thus:
Him: WTF? You watching this?
Me: Yep. More
entertaining than last night’s fiasco innit?
Him: Very true. Ha ha! WTF?
Offside my arse...
Me: Yeh, but some good football nonetheless
Him: Indeed. As I am (approaching
a dead zone) my picture might die soon... Boo!
Me: I have pressed record in case
Him: Ha
ha! More WTF! Old codger goal again!
Me: Have you noticed the Dutch fans ‘living like the captain’?
Him: Ha
ha. Indeed
Me: And another goooooooooallllll!!!
I drank too much wine and felt
quite iffy the next day. I did some photo
art using Photoshop and Lightwagon (a great new free ipad app.). My partner also cut and dyed my hair just in
time to watch more football. England vs.
France was a good game and England tried very hard but still lost. When I went to bed there was a bit of
external noise but not too bad considering that the pubs were allowed to stay
open late specially for the game.
We decided that the incessant
ramblings of the football commentators was quite soporiphic especially during
those late night games!
 |
| Bhangra! |
On the Sunday we got the train
to go to a local city festival where a friend’s band were playing. We laughed at kids playing in the fountain,
took photos and ‘walked on water’ before going in search of food. The nice shish restaurant we used to frequent
had gone (the main square was all Witherspoons and Costa Packet now). We circumnavigated the festival stalls and eventually settled on Catalan fish and
rice. We came across a bhangra band
which was quite entertaining before finding a spot in front of the main stage.
 |
| Our mates' band |
Our friend was doing a hasty
set up with the band but he gave us a wave before they started. They played mainly their old stuff, although
they did one or two from their latest album, and finished with their big 1990’s
hit which was a crowd pleaser. As there
was another act after them, they were limited to a one hour set.
Afterwards, we went backstage and
chatted to our friend. After being quite
solvent especially during the previous decade, things seemed to have slowed
down for the band and they only had a few gigs lined up over the summer which
was a shame.
They were driving straight
back to London so we said goodbye and headed home. I felt quite odd and almost
fell asleep on the train.
Despite this, my sleeping
reverted to type. I pondered the
prospect of my next counselling/therapy session. I reasoned there was nothing to worry about. Despite this rational thinking I felt
dreadful when Monday morning came round; really unrested and depressed. Never mind, I thought, the therapist will see
me at my worst won’t she?
As it turned out, the therapist
asked me how I was so I said ‘not great.
I haven’t slept much’ to which she said ‘why’s that?’ I hid my irritation at the stupidity of the
question and said ‘you know, the usual stuff, and sometimes it is particularly
bad’. There was a bit of chat about what I had done that was good in the
previous week.
For most of the rest of the
session I was holding these things in my hands which buzzed alternately as she
got me to imagine that I was on a beach and concentrate on what I could see and
feel, and then pretend I was in a cocoon.
She also talked about other relaxation techniques (most of which I
already used but the butterfly hug was a new one on me – and sounded daft), Then
she asked me about the best and worst things that had happened in my life and so
I mentioned three off the top of my head.
I reflected that if I had known she was going to ask this, I would have
come prepared with some good ones!
She said that at the next
session we would work on the bad stuff. She
was going on holiday so the next session would not be until the start of July. I
went away thinking that it wasn’t what I expected and found it odd that we
talked about bad things at the end rather than the other way round. But I had promised to keep an open mind
through the process and see how things developed over the next few weeks and
tried not to dwell on it.
I spent most of the rest of the
day on my draft blog even though the early start and the therapy session made
me very tired. Later on, I did some
relaxation and tried to sleep. When random stuff came in my head, I just told
myself it was not the time to think about it and it seemed to do the trick and
I slept about half an hour. I felt quite
refreshed when I got up again and as it was sunny I put ITV player on my ipad
and went outside to watch football which was annoyingly 2 minutes behind real
time.
That night was also much better.
Again, my new relaxation tactic seemed
to work (which I didn’t think had anything to do with the ‘cocoon’ thing) and
only woke once or twice. I got up
straight away when the alarm went off the next morning and set about doing some
research from the library books. I was trawling through the writers’ yearbook
when my partner came down and started whingeing about moths eating his suits.
I made a number of suggestions
but to no avail. He said I wouldn’t like
it if it happened to me and I said no, but it’s not the end of the world. Then
I said why he didn’t ask me how I got on with the counsellor yesterday. He apologised so I started to tell him about
it. I also mentioned the improved sleeping
but doubted that there was a direct correlation. He agreed then he started talking about
people he knew who had gone to therapy and said that he thought it was a load of rubbish tracing trauma back to one single
event. He thought it was more to do with people’s egos. The conversation thus took a different turn
than I expected and I tried to bring it back round to how I felt.
I spent Tuesday visiting my art
neighbour and writing letters to film companies. I got cold feet so didn’t send
them off straight away. When I went on
my regular swimming date that evening, the receptionist let my friend with the
interesting ailments in free because I had an orange dot on my PTT (The orange
dot meant technically I could have a ‘carer’ with me which I thought was a hoot
and I never thought of using it before!) The pool was quiet at first then became really
busy and I got sick of being splashed by kids and having water up my nose.
That night, I was very tired
but couldn’t settle. I tried to order my
thoughts which was pointless as I was too knackered to think anything sensible. Instead, I forced myself to concentrate on
the sounds of the river and eventually slept. The next morning I reviewed my sleeping which
basically confirmed my gut feelings. The
correlation between a particularly bad night and feeling crap and depressed the
next day, and between a good night and feeling much better (apart from anything
else, I felt elated by the fact that I had actually had some decent sleep) was
stark. I really wished that I could take
pills more often but I was scared of dependency.
I sat outside in the sun and read
up on tips about writing and was really inspired by ‘write fantastic
non-fiction’. As well as advice on style
the book also sparked off other ideas. I
was motivated to print out my film submission letter. I was glad I had because there was quite a
lot of tidying up to do. Of course all
this work made my brain hurt so I had a rest and started on ‘Girl, Interrupted’
which was also for research but an easier read.
There were only five of us at
art class that week. My art pal was at an open day and someone else was moving
house. Don talked about what we could do
for the last few sessions. I had
actually come up with an idea for a personal project but Don confused the issue
by suggesting we did a psychedelic watercolour painting and I found that I was
unable to decide which to pursue. In the
meantime, I carried on with the painting I had started the previous week, and
Don kept interfering and telling me to use more blue.
When I got back, my partner was
watching football in which Spain were getting a right pasting from Chile. As I observed on social media, Spain were like
England – they could be great, or they could be shite. They were truly shocking!
On Thursday I went shopping and
bought some watercolours for my mum. When I got home, I did some more tweaks to
‘all Nighter’ and actually plucked up the courage to e-mail it to two film companies. I got auto-replies straight away. One said they didn’t accept unsolicited
material (but the next morning they sent me a personal e-mail which was very
nice of them and told me to contact Creative England). The other said they needed
a hard copy so I made some alterations and posted it the next day.
 |
| Posh nobs at Ascot |
The news that day inspired a
couple of funny scenarios. In the morning,
we snorted in derision at posh nobs at ascot with ‘the wrong type of top hat’
and their £1,200 dinner – how could it cost that much for one dinner! I said someone should blow it up and we laughed
at the images that conjured (not that I ever would of course – I am far too
nice and also a coward).
In the evening, my partner came
up with a funny inspired by a newscaster’s mistake – Possibili-tree (which sounded like some local right-on empowerment workshop session). We also watched
England being beaten by Uruguay which meant they would probably be coming home
early. I managed to not get too stressed
as it was only football and also inevitable as they appeared to have reverted
to type.
That night, I took 2 Temazepam
and was falling asleep reading. I slept for five hours in one go which could be
a record! It was just as well because I
had a long day on Friday visiting my mum.
She wouldn’t even open the paints I had brought her. Firstly, She said she wouldn’t do it because
of all the setting up involved (which is what my sister had predicted would
happen) and secondly because of not being able to do things with her hands. I decided I had officially given up now; if
she wanted to sit around doing eff all, then so be it, I was out of ideas.
It was lovely and sunny when I
got the train home so I went by the local pub and sat outside with a pint and
some friends and acquaintances. We got
chatting about writing, and associated stuff (a friend’s sister had also gone
through a similar experience to me – yet another one!)
We were getting updates on the football
and Italy lost which meant England were out.
We agreed it was for the best as it would be less stressful watching the
rest of the World Cup. At about 8, I thought I had better go home - I was
hungry and would have been drunk if I stayed any longer.
 |
| Spot the falcon! |
On the Saturday we went to the
agricultural show in the next town of which the highlight was the falconry
display - the big falcon flew off and didn’t’ come back! We also watched the tractor parade and took
photos of disturbing vegetable babies. I
won a finger puppet in a herb spotting quiz and we bought some old reference
books and a lupin plant for our American friend.
We travelled via two buses to
our American friend’s house up on the tops and got off a stop early so my
partner could follow ye olde field boundary wall and I tried not to get narky
even though my ankle really hurt from all the walking earlier.
 |
| Disturbing veg baby |
We had known our American
friend a few years but never visited her house before. She had a ten year old daughter with autism
who has high level needs but was also awesome and fun to be with. I gave her
daughter the finger puppet and we sat out in the back yard and chatted. My partner played with her daughter and
taught her to use a proper camera which she loved. For dinner there was Tex Mex – the pulled
pork was a revelation to me. We stayed
a lot longer than I expected enjoying the lovely long evening with it being
midsummer. However, we got attacked by
midges later on and I subsequently came up in lumps all over my face and neck.
 |
| Finger puppet |
Over the weekend I had to put
up with a droney radio noise coming from somewhere outside all night, which was
very hard to ignore. On Sunday morning I
felt terrible having literally snatched about three hours’ sleep in total. However,
I got up and after a cuppa and a bath I felt a tiny bit better.
We
sorted photos from the previous day and my partner posted one of a
scary veg baby which did indeed disturb some people and he was in hysterics
about it. Later on, he suggested going
for a walk. As I still felt terrible I
wasn’t overly keen but it was sunny so I said okay. We walked along the canal and round the park then
into town. We looked at the brass band
in the square and had a peek at the vintage fait but it looked rubbish so we
decided to get a cold drink and sit on the terrace. We had posh lemonade – nicey but pricey.
After three nights’ running of
putting up with the constant radio drone, I eventually got some sleep in the early
hours of Monday morning. I must have been in quite a deep sleep because my
partner came in to wake me up. I was
annoyed and thought it was obvious after the lack of sleep over the weekend
that I had intended to sleep in! I felt
really depressed, could barely lift my head or focus my eyes, and we talked
about the lack of sleep. I then realised
that the radio outside was on all the time but I only heard it at night because
of the lack of other sounds.
I tried to get to the bottom of
the mystery. I asked the man who owned a
workshop behind our house and he said it wasn’t him. I wondered if it was coming from next door
and asked a bloke who was staying there but he assumed it was us or another
neighbour. Then later on I realised it
was definitely coming from the shed directly beneath our house. I considered putting a note on the door, and
then it just stopped. What a relief!
I finished reading ‘Girl,
interrupted’ and read some books about writing.
I made notes about improving my blog and getting more readers. Later in the week, I got some ideas about turning
my blog into a book in its own right. I started
making amendments and identifying threads that I needed to follow through to
turn it into a coherent narrative.
Good quote:
“For nearly a century the
psychoanalysts have been writing... about the workings of a county they’ve
never travelled to, a place that, like China, has been off-limits. Suddenly, the country has opened its borders
and is crawling with foreign correspondents; neurobiologists are filing ten
stories a week, filled with new data.
These two groups of writers, however, don’t seem to read each other’s
work
“That’s because the analysts
are writing about a country they call Mind and the neuroscientists are
reporting from a country they call Brain”
Girl,
Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen pp142-143. Virago Press 1995.
When I went swimming with my
friend with the interesting ailments, the receptionist asked us if we wanted a
receipt and my friend giggled. I told
her to stop or she would blow our cover.
The pool seemed a bit quieter but there were a few serious swimmers. Between
them and two women who appeared to be bobbing along gossiping, it was hard to
navigate and we had to choose our moments especially as my friend was blind
without her glasses. I joked it should
be her with an orange dot on her PTT and I was her guide!
When I got home I found out that
England had drawn nil all in their final World Cup game (well, at least they
didn’t lose). Italy were also knocked
out which was a shock, but Suarez bit one of the Italian players – dirty
bastard! I was so incensed I went on
social media to declare that Uruguay should be disqualified! He became a figure of much derision and after
a four month ban by FIFA, he did eventually apologise at the end of the month –
having protested his innocence up to that point.
In a bid to reclaim my paltry bit
of outside space, I had ordered a new garden bench which was due to be
delivered on the Wednesday. Whilst
waiting for it, I did some cleaning up and moved the old bench over to near the
car parking spaces. I put some old plant
pots in a box so that passersby could help themselves and also chanced my arm
by putting a box of old car stuff out with a pot asking for money. Needless to say, I did not make a bean. Being an idiot, I hadn’t realised the bench
would come flat packed. My partner got
home just before I left for art class and by the time I got home, he had built
the bench and placed it outside.
At art class I got a print
framed for the ‘open studios’ exhibition which was quite exciting. I started a watercolour of ‘psychedelic
roofs’ with my new paints seeing as my mum didn’t want them. When I asked Michelle how her house move had
gone she said ‘it was the most stressful thing you can imagine’. I felt like replying ‘I bet it wasn’t’ but I
held my tongue. I walked back with my
art pal and another new friend. We
talked about holidays with friends, and I related the tale of when we went to
The Hague years back (see ‘anecdote’
below)
Mid-week, my sleeping was even
worse than usual. Even when I was dead
beat and too physically exhausted to not be lying down I had problems relaxing. Despite using all my relaxation techniques, I
couldn’t stop my mind wandering. One
night, I woke at about 4.30, it was light and birds were tweeting and I tossed
and turned for an hour before getting back to sleep.
On the Thursday I started to feel like I had a virus. I carried on with errands and chores had a
rest but couldn’t sleep even though I felt crap and could hardly lift my
head. When I got up again I was very
woozy. However, I had arranged to go to
the flicks with my art pal to see an old locally-shot film. I reasoned it was too late to cancel so I took
some flu plus and bravely soldiered on.
When I got to the cinema, there
was no-one there apart from three girls shouting ‘bogies’ at passersby. When my art pal arrived, a small queue had
formed amongst which we were the youngest by about three decades. During the ads - which were not tailored to
the demographic at all - I told her about the fight I had last August (see blog
part 16). We enjoyed the film, although
it does have an odd, sudden end like they ran out of money.
On the Friday I went to see my doctor. I talked to her about my virus but said I
seemed to be getting less of them than I used to, and considered that it might
be linked to my realisation about being bullied for 10 years. We discussed the therapy lark and I bemoaned
the fact that there was not one single source of information for all the
therapies available and expressed my frustration that nothing got to the root
cause of the problem; it was all just sticking plaster stuff. She agreed but I tactfully didn’t point out
she was the same – treating the results of my illness rather than the
underlying issues.
She told me that like in other
fields of medicine, mental health practitioners tended to specialise in certain
types of therapy so that was why it was impossible to get generalist advice
from an expert.
She gave me a script for more
Temazepam as I was finally running low. There was a massive queue in the chemist
and after that and a couple of errands, I was fit to drop when I got home so I
grabbed some food and went back to bed. I decided that I was going to give in
to the virus and be officially ill over the weekend.
My partner got a HDMI lead from
the local computer shop so we could plug my laptop into the bedroom telly and I
watched a lot of Glasto footage from iplayer.
I did get up to eat curry on Saturday evening as it was a bit messy to
eat in bed and watched a couple of DVDs downstairs but other than that, I stayed
in bed.
On Sunday our American friend
texted my partner to ask him to go and take photos of her and her daughter decorating
a tree for the HBAF. He ended up joining
in the craft fun which amused me no end.
Her daughter also made a song up called ‘(my partner) is awesome’ so he
officially had a fan now!
On the last day of June, my
partner went to work early as he had been rumbled for getting in late (well, he
had a good run). I still felt feeble
with the virus but was hopeful that I would be well enough to do some housework
and shopping later in the week before my brother arrived for the tour de farce
madness the following weekend...
Anecdote
– A Mad New Year
In the late 1980’s we lived in a
housing co-op in south east London. Our
local pub was frequented by an assortment of hippies, punks and other
subcultures, many of whom also resided in our co-op. We had a lot of friends and went to the pub a
lot, as well as to underground clubs and gigs.
It was the week between Christmas
and New Year and we were enjoying a liquid lunch with one of our housemates
(Scooter) and a Canadian couple whom we had met at an all-night Goth club some
months before (Bob and Nan). Scooter was
a mainly calm, easy-going chap which belied his appearance. He was a six-foot punk and always sported a
neat Mohican and bovver boots.
Nan was very friendly and
sociable. She was petite with short
blonde hair and elfin features in stark contrast to Bob who was very stocky and
large. He was also a bit of a brute and
had an AK47 on his living room wall.
This worried me a bit, but I put up with him because I really liked Nan.
We were discussing options for
New Year entertainment when Bob mentioned that Holland was the place to
be. We had been to Amsterdam at New Year
a couple of years back and agreed it was more of a deal there than in the
UK. However, I had not thought it was so
great that I wanted to repeat the experience.
Bob made it sound like The Hague
would be much more fun, like one awesome street party and Nan suggested we all
go. They said that they had friends
there and we would be able to stay with them. Within minutes we had agreed to
the escapade and made hasty arrangements as New Years’ eve was only two nights
away.
The next day, Nan rang the travel
company and reserved five tickets for the boat train. I went up to the mainline station with her to
collect the tickets and the very next day, we were on our way! We took the overnight ferry during which we
stayed up drinking and did not sleep a wink.
We arrived at our hosts very early in the morning. They were understandably quite surprised to
see a troop of five dishevelled post-punk revellers on their doorstep. Jan and Tink looked very normal and
respectable and I was afraid they would turn us away. However, they invited us in and we had an
introductory chat over a cuppa and made plans for the day. It was decided that we should go to the
market to get supplies so we could cook a meal later. They teased us with smelly Dutch cheese which
we politely declined. In the afternoon
we were directed to a spare room furnished with a couple of mattresses so we
could get some shut eye before the evening festivities.
Bob may have had a lot of faults,
but he cooked a mean tomato ragu! After
dinner and a couple of drinks, we asked if we should head out. Jan and Tink informed us that nobody went out
before twelve, so we had a few more beers.
They were going to a party, to which we were invited, but we preferred
to find our entertainment out on the streets.
At the stroke of midnight, we
emerged from the small house and wandered about in search of fun. We were confronted by scenes of mayhem on
every street corner. There were mobs of people
marauding all over the place, a good percentage of whom were obviously young
immigrants, with fireworks going off willy nilly and bonfires in the middle of
roads – including cars being set on fire!
It was not quite what I had expected at all - Amsterdam had been a very
sedate affair compared to this!
We were wandering the city
aimlessly when all of a sudden Bob started shouting like he was in a war zone
and we started to get a bit jittery that he was drawing attention to us bunch
of weirdoes. Then he just keeled over
and was lying face down on the ground.
Obviously, for a big guy he had trouble handling his liquor.
Due to his size, it was difficult
to move him and we had trouble deciding how to deal with the situation. Eventually we found a shopping trolley and
managed to lift him in so we could push him along. We had no idea where we were or how to get
back to Jan and Tink’s place. We
stopped on a bench in a small park for a rest when I spotted a police station
across the way. I went to explain the
situation. They said they couldn’t do
anything and told me to ring an ambulance, which I did. The ambulance came, took one look at Bob,
said ‘oh. He’s drunk’ and drove off
again!
We discussed what to try next and
Eventually Nan flagged a taxi down. As
she knew our hosts’ address, we got there without further incident. We dumped Bob on one of the spare mattresses
and then Nan said ‘shall we go to this party now?’ I was rather aghast ‘what? You’re just going to leave him?’ ‘Yeah sure.’
She replied, ‘He’s just drunk.’ So off
we went to a lame party with nice music and safe people...
The next day, Bob remembered
nothing of course. We indulged in the
Dutch New Year tradition of going to the seaside for a stroll, followed by more
beer before catching the ferry back to the UK.
That was easily the most mental
New Year I have ever had!
