Flipping the Bird

My middle finger was signed-off at the Royal Free on Friday.  Prior to the signing-off, my temperature was taken and there were questions.  This did not happen on the two previous visits.  I'm not sure if it was the mutual masking or the strong accent of the nurse, but I simply could not understand the last question.  It ended with "...coronavirus?" so after the third attempt (any more would have been embarrassing) I just said "I don't think so."  It is interesting to postulate that whole lives might turn upon such misunderstanding and embarrassment. 

The finger still looks like it's been in a fight and lost, but it works, and is the right colour now, at least.

As always, I thought I'd take the weekend to get a jump on my week's work ahead, and as always I did not.  A life's habits are hard to change.  Instead I spent the weekend on Netflickery and wondering how my tiny flat got so disgusting when I don't appear to have moved.  Perhaps there exist the opposite of Disney birds that come in and fuck things up for you.

Sunday afternoon I took a walk through Walpole Park, trying to identify where we had waded thigh-deep in the pond during the ladybird summer of 1976, and had squealed at the thought of possible leeches. 

Spare Change

Today I took a walk to the south, down Barnes Pikle to Mattock Lane, around Ealing Green and all along St Mary's Road.  People were out in short things and scanty things, grouped in the long pale grass on the Green.  Shops are on the fulcrum of reopening and there is a feeling of our being nearly through it.  Let us hope.

I've not been down St Mary's Road in a very long time.  Forty years ago this September, at the college that has since been digested by the University of West London, I started and did not finish an art course.  As an extremely poor student in all senses, I would go to the New Inn or the Castle and drink bitter lemon, unless someone else was buying.  The New Inn smelled of creosote, and had sawdust on the floor, so memory tells me.  Peering through its windows, there was no hint of sawdust; the trend for faux Dickensia probably passed a long time ago.

The chippy is now the Kebab Delight.

Several later-famous people passed through the rather plain doors of the college under its various names, but what struck me today was a plaque not to any arty rock stars but Lady Byron (mother of Ada Lovelace), who founded on the site a school for working-class boys, in 1833.  Generally progressive in her views, she insisted the school be run without use of corporal punishment.  Given that my school headmaster was still handy with the cane some 140 years later, that was quite forward-thinking.

Then I walked up to the Tesco Metro where the beggars hang around.  Nobody carries change these days so they are often disappointed.

Ball Handling

I want to tell you about my two companions. 

Much of my life has been spent not achieving.  There is a good reason for this, and it's only partly laziness or not-arsedness.  I look at other people in awe; what they have done, what they undertake,what they have the sheer balls to throw themselves into. 

Every life decision is, for me, underwritten by anxiety.  If you have ever played in the position of goal attack in netball (as I did at school, poorly but enthusiastically), you will remember how the opposing team always had someone tall in goal, blankly looming, blocking your every attempt to shoot.  This is what anxiety does.  It blocks your every attempt to shoot. 

An example of how this works in everyday life:  I'd like to sign up for Zipcar or similar but anxiety says what if you bring the car back and someone else has parked in the designated space.  A person without anxiety would either not consider this, or not be bothered.  It stops me signing up to Zipcar.  It's no good saying this is not reasonable.  Obviously I do find ways around this bastard anxiety quite often or nothing would get done.  But it's exhausting.

So that's my everyday chum, looming over me, standing rather too close while I flail around with the ball, in laddered tights (ah, netball).

The other companion waits down the road, like a very unmotivated, lumpen stalker.  Just waiting for everything to go tits.  And this one is called depression.  Depression has no face, just a powerful vacuum, and it waits until something goes wrong and sucks me in.

These two rather shitty companions tend to get in the way of doing much because all of one's energy is spent trying to be normal, rational, and getting on with life in a relatively productive manner.  And that can be bloody tiring. 

I can and do give them the slip when I can, and that is lovely.  They are not great company.

But in case you wonder where I go from time to time, I'm probably stuck with one or other of these boring bastards, trying to breathe them away.  Oh, you may wonder, what about medication?  Trust me, I've tried.  The problem with taking medication for anxiety is that it tends to be like applying a lump hammer to a pin. 

Life is actually fairly normal, considering.  But like I say, these bastards do get in the way a bit.  That's my excuse anyway.