Day 194

The time table for today so far:

05:00 – wake up to go to loo; open garden door for cats; go back to bed.
07:00 – get up; Manuka honey; coffee; cigarette.
07:05 – work.
08:00 – breakfast; coffee; cigarette.
08:30 – work.
09:30 – backstretches.
09:45 – work.
13:00 – lunch.
13:30 – work.
14:00 – therapy by zoom.
14:50 – work.
15:10 – call from one of the children.
15:20 – work.
17:30 – walk.
18:15 – shower; back stretches.
19:00 – dinner; dry up.
19:50 – start blog

I just felt like writing it up for a day. It doesn’t actually look like much, and leaves me wondering why I’m so knackered. I know some of the reasons – day after acupuncture, therapy draining, brain working furiously all the time. But compared to a lot of people it’s nothing, really. And getting used still to being back from holiday and asking myself the whole time when I’ll get time to write up what I did on The Mortality Code which I wanted to have done by now, when I’ll get the time to finish the Agios Nikolaos short story (which really has to happen before all the characters fade too much to capture them despite all the pen pictures I wrote down of them).

Therapy was interesting – we hit the same theme of resilience as I’d struck with my acupuncturist yesterday, and the fact that we as parents live with guilt whether or not it’s necessary, and the conclusion actually being that most of the time it’s not, and that we just do what we can (even if it bankrupts us in one way or another). The final admission that, actually, M and I haven’t been bad parents (I also find that very difficult to say anyway, because most parents do feel they have been/are bad parents). I also had an email about exactly that which I’ve only skim-read so far because see above. My therapist said it seemed obvious to her that I was in a good place despite all the traumas since we got back from holiday. And that can’t be a bad thing. Plus a few realisations about my parents that, in the first two courses of therapy, I hadn’t actually reached, which are basically that I was brought up in an atmosphere of distrust/mistrust where even showing emotion was wrong (and where we were told not to play with kids of certain backgrounds because they were the wrong kind), and brought up in an environment where anything that happened in the family had to be kept secret. Little wonder my brain has been screwed for most of my adult life.

There’s not much to say about politics without blowing a fuse. The institutions our ancestors held sacred have proven, once again, that they are not fit for purpose. That this country has for always been based on the system that the landed gentry (ie the monarchy and the rich) make their own rules, and the rest (including the objective law if any such thing exists) has to obey. O said last night he wouldn’t be surprised if we were under martial law before the next six months are up, and I agree with him. And the country hasn’t risen against the oppressors because the country is too downtrodden and exhausted to do so. I am trying not to despair.

I remember the final irony of our holiday – M didn’t need a stamp in her passport entering or leaving Crete because she’s Norwegian, and Norway is part of the European Economic Area, contributes to the EU financially, and abides by all its laws and regulations, so she passed quite quickly through passport control in Greece. I, on the other hand, with the UK now an international pariah thanks to Brexit, needed to get my passport stamped, was subject to extra scrutiny, spent longer being stared at by the border control officer, and was dismissed without even a smile. That sums it all up.

Finally, the biggest disappointment of the day has been how cold it’s been all day. I was waiting and waiting and waiting for the heat to arrive. I’m still waiting, and M has changed back into tracksuit bottoms and cardigan, and I won’t be far behind. Such a shame. Winter is coming in more ways than one.

AGGIE’S ART OF HAPPINESS – CHAPTER 147