Summertime, and the living is easy.....

Well here I am a couple of weeks into what we school staff refer to as the 'long holiday' and it's unfolding quite pleasantly so far. This may sound obvious to many but as someone who decided to make a fairly robust all round lifestyle adjustment a couple of years ago it's not as simple as it may at first seem. Gone are the days (or rather evenings) of self lobotomisation. Therefore gone too are the vapourised mornings, the midday scrabbling around for sustenance and the looong afternoons spent checking my smoking supplies and wondering how much longer I could possibly continue in such a vein, feverishly waiting for one of my two favourite hostelries to open their doors and, at least in my imagination, welcome me across their thresholds with open tills. (Actually one of them is open from about midday but I liked to think that, even in the last days, I clung on to some standards and held out until 5pm. Or so.)

Instead I get up earlyish, make coffee and go on line to check emails and follow the progress of my dearest friend who, emerging from a turbulent year woman wise and who also works in a school, has charged off around southern Europa seemingly determined to fill every moment with painfully energetic, if not downright dangerous, activities before renewing his acquaintance with the local beverages in the evenings (and the locals themselves for all I know but I'm far to polite to ask. Until he gets back :-).)

The rest of the day consists of any combination of things such as eating breakfast, shopping, cooking, doing my laundry, sorting out my car/bills/paperwork, putting the finishing touches to my new room in my new house, amassing yet more movies, reading, seeing friends who are my fellows in my new lifestyle, seeing other friends (of whom more another time; maybe) and in particular spending time with my daughters and their mother (of whom more in a moment). I have even spent a couple of hours sunbathing in the local park which, to my mind anyway, is enormous. This, I am given to understand, is 'living in the moment' and a fine way to spend your time it is. Those of a spiritual nature, especially the bloody Buddhists, would no doubt have a great deal more to say on the matter but as I am an atheist of the Marxist persuasion I shall have to take their word for it.



I love this pic. It fits.



My eldest daughter is pregnant with the first of the next generation, leading me to shut my eyes and hold on tight, so to speak, whenever I think about the matter. My contribution, as I understand it, is to 'be around' and be 'supportive' which I think I'm managing alright (although why they insist on knowing the little thing's sex before it's born I fail to understand; apparently it's so that they know what to buy for it beforehand (?!?)).



Her mother has recently taken charge of an allotment and I have been helping her out in her efforts to tame this mini wilderness. It's huge fun and involves getting scored by Hawthorne and brambles, heaving wheelbarrows of decaying organic matter up slopes and breaking up ground which has about two inches of lose soil on top of seemingly solid clay as well as making various compost bins and netted frames. Extraordinarily I keep getting flashbacks to my grandmother's when I was a kid.



As indeed does this!



I mention all this because I am assured that these are the sort of things that people do with their time and they do these things to generate peace of mind. In this way they don't have to put up with that infernal shrieking fear that I and others like me had assumed was normal and can in fact generate their own peace of mind to a large extent. I can even sit up till dawn, as I have tonight, doing this and feel that it is the right thing to do. An enjoyable thing to do. No more terror of insomnia. No more heebie-geebies (Night Fever, Night Fever?). Believe me, people, this is extraordinary, but I am also fully aware that you probably don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. Unless you are like me.