2007-01-27
I’m not a winter person. Generally it makes me miserable - or at least generally when I’m miserable it’s during winter. Lethargy, apathy, indolence, boredom - all here. As a child only snow lifted me from that and these days we don’t ever seem to get enough snow to have a decent shot at sledging. I can’t stand the darkness in the morning, and all those people down south talking about changing the clocks to one hour ahead permanently should try coming up here and seeing what it’s like when it’s damp and cold and dark till 9.30 every day. It’d be easier for them to just change their working hours and leave me alone.Oh dear - I hadn’t intended to make my first missive back for a long time start on such a downer. I apologise. It should have started happier and gone downhill.
Truth is I’ve been unwell for a few days. Not a cold - not ‘man-flu’, something that even Lynne has deemed it necessary for me to retire to bed. And that says a lot. It hit me in earnest during a trip to London earlier in the week when I was being lunched at the fancy restaurant well known for it’s association with stock-cubes (some UK people will understand) and I found myself not only not wanting to eat anything but feeling a compelling need to lay down on the cold floor and go to sleep. (I didn’t - but I slept all the way back to Heathrow, and then in the lounge for an hour, and then again on the plane). It’s a week when there’s so much on at work that supposedly I have to be there. I wasn’t, even when my body was.
Even before the lurgy struck, I was feeling very down. The weekend before I drove Simon (number one son) to his new flat in London. He’s renting a place with three friends and has decided to just go there without a job and hope for the best. Actually I think he had been pretty confident of getting the last one he’d applied for - he has friends on the inside who could feed some answers to interview questions to him - and was pretty upset to fail at the final hurdle. Aren’t HR people wonderful? Completely useless at anything but buggering up other people’s lives and passing judgement on things they have no real understanding of. The feedback he got was that they had rated him good enough to get the job but it came down to a choice between him and one other (fair enough) and they didn’t like his answer to the question ‘would you have applied for this job if it had been in your home town, Newcastle?’ He answered honestly that he would not and they concluded that he was only interested in getting a job in London - not this job particularly. They admitted they hadn’t asked the same question of the other candidate because he lived in London already…You’ll understand the frustration at their inconsistency there! Anyway he decided to just go ahead with getting the flat and at least he’ll not be knocked out on that anti-Geordie ploy. The flat is lovely, well positioned and his friends are good. So far only one disaster - the outflow from the washing machine wasn’t plumbed in - and it’s a positive step he’s taken.
For him. I drove back alone that Sunday and the further I got the more it felt like the end of an era for Lynne and me. He won’t be coming home (at least I hope for his sake he won’t) - it just feels so different from when he set off for University. And his empty room (which Catherine has already commandeered) is full of memories that smart as though he’s died. It felt like grieving for someone who isn’t dead, but really I think I’ve been grieving for a long stage in my life that almost certainly has expired for ever.
So there you go - I’ll try to get back sooner. And as the days dawn earlier perhaps I’ll be a more cheery read!