life is a slog February 07

I don’t know if it’s the gloomy weather, but January and February have felt like real sloggy months and I have been quite low. I still suffer from sad dreams which are shadowy in memory, but basically involve FH, the omnipresent Gill, who of course I have still never seen, and being rejected as inadequate or unlovely in some way. I never remember the detail which I could challenge or analyse in the cold light of day, but wake with a HUGE sense of dread, sorrow and despondency which completely envelopes me in utter wretchedness and usually takes until lunchtime to shake off. Of course it’s debilitating and frustrating because I seem so unable to control when they come. I should be used to them by now because I’ve had them for nearly 5 years and of course they were far worse and vivid in the beginning. It makes me sad that I should still be suffering in this way when I consciously try so hard not to be bitter or to look back. I remember the Relate counsellor saying to me right at the beginning that some people let out their emotions in tiny drips because to do otherwise would engulf them in madness. I hope my drips will end one day.

We did eventually get FP’s house finished and left at 11pm on the Sunday evening before the tenant arrived on the Monday morning. FP put up the side gate in the dark while I varnished the bedroom floor. It has taken us weeks to sort out all the boxes at the other end. TOOLS! I have never known so many tools in my entire life. Not only FP’s collection of 58 years, but 80 years of his dad’s collection! We have had to put a new roof on one of the sheds to ensure they are stored appropriately. Bemused as I am, I am not mocking. I am a new convert to B&Q. I joyously traipse after FP to discover some little plastic wrapped nugget which is the exact part to replace a malfunction that means I don’t buy the whole thing new. And FP has a mission to convert me to doing my own DIY functions. I can now clear my own drains and use a sander. He keeps saying to me, ‘why do you think you can’t do it?’ I am not sure I really want to learn how to do all these things, but saving money and getting a good end result is quite satisfying.

As the contracted period of my London job comes to an end and I don’t know what will happen in the next 6 months I am trying to look ahead, because I believe that if you do look forward and plan, things are more likely to happen. I have decided that in the short term I am not going to look for jobs, but hang on in the hopes that they will give me something however limited. Basically right now I don’t have the energy for all those applications, interviews and geeing myself up to compete. My master plan currently involves travelling once J2 finishes secondary school which will be September 2009. I will be 50 and FP will be 60 so if we don’t take our gap year then it may never happen. I have decided this will need a lot of planning especially as we will try to work en route. We have already returned to Spanish lessons in the pub as South America is high on my list plus the Silk Route, New Zealand, Australia, parts of Asia – Vietnam, Cambodia, India, China and Canada. I am telling you all this so you can remind me and hold me to my dream if I start to get wimpy. I’ve already said to FP that I will have to keep coming home because I will miss not being there for the children. FP has an alternative scenario of x months away, x months at home depending on how the Scarman work develops and Can Do Freedom Travel.

In the meantime we have booked to go to Madeira for a week over my birthday. I always remember my friend Louise saying to me after she had been there that it was beautiful, but full of old people and of course that doesn’t matter now – I do old. However, hairdresser Wayne says lots of his hip and trendy clients are going there. Whatever. We are staying very centrally in Funchal so can walk out and do stuff at nights, but I want to walk the levadas and hire a car/ take a bus to see all of the island while I am there.

The children are fine. J2 has been skiing this half term, the super-fit ‘chiselled’ J1 has got a part-time job with Ann Summers which should be interesting. We went to the theatre with him in Hackney last night to see Stephen Berkoff in his own play ‘Sit and Shiver’ and he informs me he is having specialist training in selling dildos – seriously! A*, in between writing brilliant essays, is gearing up for her 21st – email messages from uni friends abound for ‘le grand surprise!’