Everyone for your chats and texts and emails. I feel like we're not in it on our own.
I had a really nice weekend. Saw Dad on Friday, and we had the longest chat we've had in ages. He told me about the time he met my Mum, and it made me cry. Then I headed to cambridge for a party, and got to talk to people I've missed very much, so that was good. I slept until an absolutely astonishingly unprecedented 12pm the next day, and caught up from the sleepless nights. I then went and played around on the ramparts of Johns with Rocky, who has the best room ever (Jason's from last year). We took Guardianesque fashion shots, and he played the flute to the total bemusement of the tourists passing below. Then it was a rushed trip back to London to meet Caroline and Shreeya for dinner. We went to Invitation, off Brick Lane, and Shreeya said it was almost as good as her mum's cooking, which was high praise.
Anyway, the net result of all this was that I woke up Sunday morning feeling actually quite positive, and feeling like I could dare to pray again. So I did.
The funeral for my brother's friend is next Monday, at the same church as so many of our weddings and funerals have been. They said yesterday that the family have found some surprising peace in the middle of it all - and I know what they mean by that. We experienced it when Stuart died, and more recently after the immediate shock of Dad's worsened condition we've somehow found an inner island of peace.
One of my colleagues used to sit next to Stuart in maths - and they got drunk together sometimes. How weird.
I have to write a 500k bid by 2pm tomorrow, but I'm so tired I'm having severe 'word-finding difficulties'. I just can't write. It is taking me ten minutes to write sentences, and then they are rubbish ones anyway. Nyeek!
It's nearly the weekend, and there are three parties, and all I want to do is sleep and maybe do a bit of decorating, and maybe mess around on boats for a bit.
Last night 'Jeremy and Rebecca' went to the Oxford and Cambridge Club on pall mall. It was very beautiful. I am well up for it, but Jeremy seems to need some persuading...
Dear Diary,
I am dyspraxic. This doesn't mean very much in practice, except for when I am tired, when it means I am quite clumsy.
Yesterday was a horrible day, and I spent a lot of it weighed down by a gruesome migraine. We had to get this big bid in, but my migraine and tiredness meant I was having severe word-finding difficulties, big problem for fundraisers!
Anyway, today the bid was finished, about an hour before it had to be in London Bridge, so I popped it in an envelopee and set off into the rain to hand-deliver it. I had several amusing moments crossing London Bridge with an umbrella the size of a plate, but more hilarity was to come. I arrived at my destination, and fought my way through the hordes of other Third Sector bidders to get to the desk. And that was when the drama began.
I slipped on the wet floor, skidded over to the desk, 'BANG!' slammed my left arm down on it and headbutted the little LDA lady in the face with my rasta hat. The bid landed in her lap, and I pulled myself up. Another woman screamed and a couple of guys came and picked me up, asking in worried voices if I was alright. 'I'm fine, I'm fine, here's my bid', I cried, adding it's a bit soggy, sorry! Can I have a receipt'. I will forever be proud of my self-control, as I fought the waves of hysteria that threatened to engulf me, and made for the door.
Once outside, and still in the pouring rain, I tried to make my scheduled video call with Jerry, but in the end had to make do with a voice call because he works in the sticks. That was when the hysteria came, and the relief of having the bid in, combined with awe at the sheer visual comedy I had just created with my fall resulted in me shrieking random syllables into the phone, punctuated by sobs of laughter.
And then, to top it all off, once my umbrella and I had fought our way through the driving rain across London Bridge, and sat on the train, a kindly old lady tapped me on the knee to tell me my shirt was undone. Of course there were six builders in my section of the carriage, how could it be otherwise?
So the experience, embarassing as it was, set me free from the stress of the last few days. I am heading home for some dry clothes, and will write the next bid tucked up in bed.
Sometimes being dyspraxic is very funny!
To persevere in hope of summer.
To adapt its broken promise.
To love winter.
To sleep.
To love winter.
To adapt its broken promise.
To persevere in hope of summer.
This poem does something to me. It puts all that I am, and all I have been, into words. If there was no other poem on the planet, I would survive, because of this one. It is one of the most real things.
If I have a daughter, she will be called Sisu.
It has been a hectic week, and there are still 4 days left! I've been promoted at work but not had a pay rise yet. I've broken through some barriers in some relationships, so that's good. And last night, when I woke up at 2am and couldn't get back to sleep, I made some peace with my maker, and that was good too!
I feel quite a curious mix of excitement and trepidation. I know some really good things lie ahead, good in the sense of being real, and worthwhile, rather than necessarily pleasant. But also some hard things lie ahead, things to be faced, and borne and such like.
And can I just interject (to myself) at this point and say that I have the best 3 brothers in the whole world? We've just been chatting abut how much we've all changed, and who grew how much in how many years, and who will end up the tallest. I remember waking up so frightened in my teens and while at Uni, scared that things might hapen to them. Not the big bad things like being hurt, or getting into hard drugs, but the little slippings-away that make so many families so sad. There was the odd occasion when one of them would come home late, bleeding, and I'd want to fight the world on their behalf. On both my parents' sides there's just loads of family breakdown and lack of communication, and people who haven't spoken in years, but me and my little bros, well I can imagine us racing round Little Paddocks on our Zimmer Frames.
So good things and hard things are happening at the moment.
This week I had a bit of a knockdown blow to my pride. I spent an evening chatting with my brothers. Just chatting. Sure it was about the big stuff, faith and death and loss and hopes and bitterness and forgiveness, but it was just a chat, and I was just me. And then as I went to bed they both came to knock on my door and thank me for the chat, and I realised that all the roles I try to ply for them, and probably for others too, are meaningless if I don't give me. My brothers don't need another mother, a chef, a homework consultant, a cousellor, a super-sister, or a wrestling partner (thank goodness) - they just need Bex. I have lots of friends who need help of various sorts, and in those instances my eldest-child complex kicks in and I role-play as the guru, but when all is said and done I don't know if that actualyl builds healthy relationships. The problem with all those roles, and the others I play, is that they're impossible to maintain at all times. I couldn't even play uber-wife for 3 weeks. But I could be Bex all the time.
And I feel enormously flattened and at the same time exhilarated by this. I feel flattened because so many of the things that make me all puffed-up are actally just air, but exhilarated because I'm free...
So I'm sorry for the times I've tried to play roles to you all, when I could've just been Bex, freckles and all.
Today was nice - I had a 'protein style hamburger', which basically means lettuce instead of bread at Hamburger Union in Soho, which is not political, but will be my new haunt. I also saw Liz, and that was very good, and I introduced her to some London friends. I like mixing friends, and it's a lot better than mixing drinks. I got a bit giggly on Sangria, but it was only because I didn't have enough water, honest!
I got home to find that my big little brother had waited up to make sure I was safe. I find that very disconcerting, and it further proves my point that they don't need me anymore!
And today was also library day. I'm stony at the moment due to the transition between weekly and monthly pay, but there is still much consumery-joy to be found at the library, or Idea Store as they are known in Tower Hamlets. When I was younger I used to read in nooks - under the stairs, in my wardrobe, tucked down the end of the bed, but there are no nooks in my present room. I want to read under the chair, but I think my legs won't fold up that small - suggestions on a postcard...