Move It

One thing I've become terribly good at is putting my entire life into boxes.  I'll be celebrating Valentine's Day with a second negative COVID test (hopefully) and then next day I'm on the move again.  Not far, just down the road. I could probably do it myself with a big enough trolley.  But I have two masked and gloved chaps named Marco and Rafael doing it for me.  That makes them sound exotic like teenage mutant ninja turtles.  I fear they might be just men with ven.

Who knows how this next phase is going to go.  I'll have more space, for sure.  I can put up my pictures and paintings.  I can sit in an actual kitchen to have my vast amounts of coffee.  But I cannot get over the feeling of its being a prolonged glamping.  Nothing feels like home.  I'm not sure when last it did.

If I could tell you I have decided to settle down I would, but I have not.  With the state that the UK is in, I am drawn increasingly towards my second country and may well end up back in Brussels.  I know Belgium is probably just as corrupt, but at least it is still part of the EU (as am I, according to the chip in my Belgian ID card).

But for now, I'm an Ealing girl, as once I was many years ago.  The resonance of remembered Ealing still holds me in a sort of embrace.  It's a fairly cold embrace at the moment, with most things being shut.  But I could be in a lot worse places.

Driving Miss Crazy

I last drove a car in 2012.  Before that I think 2008.  So most of the last 13 years has been spent not driving.  It had reached the point where just thinking about driving made me feel sick with anxiety so, although I have a Belgian driving licence, I did not drive once in Belgium

Recently I've been wanting to get through this because I want to be able to use a car.  More specifically next weekend.  So I signed up with a car share thing.  I figured that if Tom Cruise (just a few days younger than me) can pilot a helicopter in a death spiral in the mountains of New Zealand, I could drive a Hyundai around Ealing.

I'd love to tell you it all went perfectly but trial run number one yesterday failed completely because there was something wrong with the keypad in the car.  Trial run number two was this morning.  The car was completely frosted, so I spent about fifteen minutes trying to work out the heating and the wipers.  Then the car wouldn't start: unsurprising as it was 0 degrees.  And then, bingo bongo, I was away.

Having rarely driven a new car, and certainly not one this new, everything felt sharp, and a bit too twitchy.  Bear in mind my first car was a 1976 Chrysler Sunbeam, which was like driving a rhino.  Out on the road, I was absolutely fine.  The only problem was when I went to put petrol in and couldn't get the cap off (I've googled it now), gave up and then found myself locked out of the car, with the swipe card inside.  Fortunately, car keys do still work as keys, but I had a bit of a wobble there.

Coming back to the car park, I executed a perfect parallel-park without using the cheating screen.  It's just like riding a bike.

Getting through this has been a major thing, so I'm pretty pleased about it.

Not On Mute

As ever, I am preparing to prepare to move.  My life over the past nine years has mainly consisted of packing up my stuff. There is something of happiness about it, as if one is going on a long trip.  A bit like Dracula with all his boxes of earth going to Whitby.  

I'm not sure yet where I'm going.  There are many options open and yet seemingly closed.  I have applied for a lot of jobs and not got a single interview.  While this could be for a number of reasons, I'm fairly sure it's my age.  There is no getting away from or around this.  However excellent my skills and experience,  I suspect employers see someone who left school before they were born as not the right fit.  A lot of equal opportunity policies don't even include reference to age, and I suspect there is unconscious as well as conscious bias.

But I'm not discouraged, and will keep applying for things.  In the meantime, I do need somewhere to live that is more than a prettily padded cell, particularly as this working at home lark seems likely to continue.  The most sensible thing would be to put everything in storage and go back into a house-share, until I know what I'm doing.  

One would think at nearly 59 I should know what I'm doing.  Recently, before we entered the current stringent lockdown, I had a lovely walk with some old schoolfriends.  Refreshing very old friendships has been one of the nicest things about coming back to the UK.  And a tiny, almost inaudible voice said this is where you are supposed to be.  Now, one should always be wary of little voices telling you things but this one seems to know something I don't.  

Perhaps I should just stop pushing against the current, and be still for a while.  Maybe that is what to do.