Day 220: First Law of Freelancing

Driven by lack of vitamin D to book a holiday.  Feels shocking to cancel work - given that the next few months are looking pretty scanty.  But also very liberating. 

It is only a matter of hours after making the booking that work offers start coming in.  For the period I will be away.  This makes me laugh because it is so reassuringly in line with the cosmic order of things - that the minute you make yourself unavailable, you will be inundated with offers. 

This is the first law of freelancing.  Irritating, but also good.  It seems to stir things up, and keep things moving.  You don't need to book a holiday - you just need some alternative focus of energy.  Years ago, before I fully understood this law, I experienced a really bad work drought.  It had me on my knees, weeping into the carpet.  Evenutally I got cramp/bored, and decided to paint the kitchen.  I think I was on my second brush stroke when the phone rang, offering me a job that covered my living expenses for the year. 

Involve the brush

The key element is that you cannot fake it, by sneaking past the action to the pay-off.  Just THINKING about painting the kitchen, with your eye on the primary gain of breaking your deadlock, will not work.  You have to fully commit to and focus on your new activity.  Buy the paint.  Put the overalls on.  Start.  Then and only then will the magic happen. 

Not needed

I don't understand why this works.  It must be something to do with energy and positive action.  Undoubtedly Prof Brian Cox could explain it in quantum mechanical terms, but I think it's more important just to know that it DOES work.

Seen it happen time after time.  For me and for others.

I recommend it.  At the very least, you'll get a better-looking kitchen.

Day 219: Cake Strategy

Through the rain to Foyles on Charing Cross Road.  A meeting over coffee and carrot cake.  'Please, you must all tuck in.  Frankly, I'm only interested in the icing', says Ivo, nonchalantly backing up his claim with some focused spoon work.  (I should point out that Ivo is not a ten-year-old on exeat, but a very influential middle-aged man.)

It is my cultural heritage to believe that you are required to plough through the carrot cake, however dry it is, to get to the icing.  With any plate of food, I will eat the thing that I least like first, to get it out of the way.  And save the best bit for last.  It has never OCCURRED to me that I could just skip directly to the good stuff. 

Interesting.  I could have saved myself a lot of unpleasant mouthfuls.  Literally and metaphorically. 

Day 218: Leaking Fuel

Today I make the poor decision to go to the supermarket.  I have forgotten that St Albans is hosting a half-marathon, and affiliated 8k and 5k fun runs.  Roads are closed, and I am stuck in traffic gridlock.  I try back routes - gridlock as well.  I am dangerously low on petrol.  This is not good, but there's no point turning back.  It will take just as long to get home.  I think when I crossed the roundabout at the garage, I crossed the Rubicon.  I just didn't realise it at the time. 

Finally make it to the supermarket, but there are no parking spaces.  At all.  I have never experienced this - not even on Christmas Eve.  Go to the petrol station, in hopes that spaces will become available when I'm done.  Four of the eight pumps are out of action, so there are massive queues.  There's quite a bit of ambient rage going on. Fill up - and become aware that my clever locking fuel cap will not lock.  It makes all the right noises, but is sitting on the outlet rather like a biscuit balanced on a cup of tea - charming, but precarious.  Cannot faff around, there are impatient cars behind me.  Have to drive off with fifty quid's worth of petrol probably sloshing out of the tank. 

Still no spaces.  Park illegally.  Do shopping - worry about petrol evaporating out of tank.  Surprised that the supermarket is relatively quiet.  Realise that the parking spaces are being unfairly used by the runners.  Grit teeth.  Shop.  Buy emergency fuel cap.  I'm not sorry to possess one of these.  I might use it for my my mouth.  (Not in a gimpy way - just for stoppering up when energy would be better conserved than wasted.)

Try to get home.  Gridlock.  Try different routes.  Gridlock.  Feel like getting out of the car, lying on the verge and giving up.  Grind teeth and gears. 

A trip that should have taken half an hour takes over two. 

I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.  WHY CAN I NOT FLY, FFS?? 

(OK, OK.  I hear myself.  This seems like an ideal opportunity for the UEFC.  Shhh, now.)

Day 217: Old Baggage

Like this, but nude and in bag-form

Wake up haunted by last night's dream.  In which I have to carry around two rucksacks that aren't actually bags - they're two balled-up, naked old men, gurning and helpless, all white skin, dirt and patchy hair.  They each have a carrying handle at the back of their neck - like the one that rucksacks have at the top. 

I repeatedly forget that I have to carry them round with me, and then I am reminded when they start whinging.  They bang into my legs and slow me down, and they don't smell very nice...

It's a great relief to be awake, and to find that the old man bags have disappeared.  Like those dreams where you murder someone, and the massive weight that falls from your shoulders when you wake and find you haven't.  (Oh.  Just me?) 

I suppose I should give some thought to what the old man bags represent.  I suspect, as with most of these things, they are reflections of the bits of me that I dislike and would prefer to externalise/abandon in left luggage somewhere. 

I know what my meditation teacher would say.  She would say that I need to 'sit with' the old man bags, and show them compassion, rather than banishing them. 

Wonder if there's any chance of getting them to take a bath first?  And perhaps putting some clothes on?  Pants, at the very least...

Day 216: Être et Avoir

Soho Curzon is one of my favourite cinemas - a combination of location and more importantly, the best selection of films available. Narrative, cinematography, sometimes subtitles - and not a cartoon chipmunk to be seen.  Which is great, but only when I'm in Soho.  Today I discover that Curzon Cinemas have an on-demand service.  This is brilliant news.  I am saved from the dreary programming at Watford Vue. 

So I treat myself straightaway to 'Être et Avoir' - a documentary film shot in 2002, charting a year in a tiny school in rural Auvergne.  There's only one teacher, and a mixed class of ages from four to twelve.  The classroom is an ordered, safe place, where the children start to get to grips with the realities of life - concentration, disagreements, injustice, loss - all through small-scale dramas.  The stolen rubber.  The paint-covered hands.  The peer-critique of attempts at writing the number 7.

A beautifully-shot bubble-world, for the bargain price of two quid. 

The antithesis of those sugar-rush, attention deficit, action-crammed films.  And I don't have to sit next to someone eating a dustbin of popcorn.  Result. 

Day 215: Hospitality

An unexpected* visit to Watford General A&E.  I am not the patient - just the transport/vending-machine bitch.  It's been a fair few years since I've been in an A&E department.  I'd forgotten how grim they are. 

Endangered

First hurdle is trying to secure a wheelchair.  Abandon the hobbling victim in the car park, and speed to the reception area.  Have to wait behind a line, while three members of staff have a chat about a fourth person, who is not there.  I jig up and down on my line.  A woman behind me can't contain herself and, with an apologetic glance, CROSSES THE LINE.  She's anxiously trying to find out whether someone with appendicitis has been taken to theatre.  This does not go down well.  'WAIT BEHIND THE LINE!'

Eventually I am seen.  All I want is the damn wheelchair, but we have to do a bunch of paperwork first.  Finally, we're done.  'The wheelchair?'  'Oh, yes...  I'm sure I saw one recently.  Marie, is there a wheelchair back there?  No?  Oh.  Well, you could try looking in Minors.  There are often chairs lying around there.  Or failing that, Acute Admissions.'  I'm off - firstly to Minors, where I go through 'Strictly No Admittance' doors, and past curtained cubicles, charts and equipment.  No chair.  Then Acute Admissions - no chair.  Back to A&E reception, to a laconic response.  'No luck?  I could ring a porter, if you'd like?'  Five minutes later, and it's quite clear that a porter will not be forthcoming.  That's underfunding for you.  Back to Plan A - the supported hop.

Lots of waiting.  Oddly frothy machine tea.  Warm chocolate bars.  A disturbing visit to a loo that rivals a Sunday Glastonbury portaloo.  A trip to feed the meter.  There's a girl standing in the car park, smoking a cigarette.  She's attached to a portable drip, and wearing a leopard print coat and a bored expression.  Wish I had a camera, but I left the house in such a hurry I don't even have my phone.   Back on the seats lining the corridors, watching patients being wheeled past.  Many are elderly, small and vulnerable - isolated on their parapeted trolley beds, lost amidst the tubes and the oxygen tanks. 

As ever, I am incredibly thankful for the NHS.  But it's always good to leave a hospital.  I used to have a teacher who was fond of saying 'If health is not one of your priorities, when will it be?'  He had a point.  While there's nothing more joyless than a healthorexic, there's no need to run full pelt towards ill-health.  Resolve to be a better person.  Again... 

(* Unnecessary - is there ever any other kind?  Who plans a visit to A&E?  Stupid.)

Day 214: Wisdom of Rihanna

I leave the house twice today.  On both occasions it rains brutally hard within minutes.  The downpour is accompanied by gusts of wind that make a mockery of my umbrella.  Now, I've got a reasonable degree of umbrella-mastery.  I know how to angle the dome into the wind, so it's doesn't get flipped inside out.  But there's not much you can do about a weak ratchet.  A soon as the wind applies any pressure the umbrella folds up, swallowing my head like a Venus Flytrap*.  I return home and plan an umbrella-buying excursion, and then have to sit down for a bit, just to acclimatise to the glamour and frantic pace of my day. 

(* This wouldn't happen to Rihanna.  She has three (see right).  A main one (a. umbrella), and two back-ups (b. ella, c. ella).  I didn't have her down as a planner, but this is impressive work.)

My sister calls.  (This is a rare event - we speak a couple of times a year.)  She is anxious.  This is normal.  She suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, and is prone to anxiety attacks on a major scale.  But she doesn't normally call me.  She normally calls my mother. 

And here's the problem.  Mum is not picking up.  V has been trying for the last five hours (and that probably means every five minutes).  I reassure her - maybe Mum is out, or there's a fault with her landline.  And I'm pretty sure that's the case. 

Practical

But then the internal dialogue starts.  What if she's lying at the bottom of the stairs with a broken leg?  What if she's had an asthma attack and can't reach her inhaler?  What if she's licked a live wire/impaled herself on a clothes horse/fallen into boiling jam?  While I'm faffing about making excuses... 

Should I jump in the car and thrash round the M25 at rush hour just in case?  If only I could ring her neighbour - but I don't have his number, and I only know him as Graham (not much good for directory enquiries).

So I ring my brother in Spain.  (This is a rare event - we speak a couple of times a year.)  Perhaps he has Graham's number.  Or surname.

Just as I get through, V rings.  She's finally spoken to Mum - who does indeed have a line fault.  Relief. 

Rihanna would never have found herself in this situation. 

I think we can all learn from her.  Have an umbrella, but always keep a couple of ellas in hand.  Just in case.