As the weather this morning was just about as perfect as weather gets, K and I broke with convention and left the cottage before noon on a Saturday - you know, like NORMAL PEOPLE do - in order to source a new banner shot for the village blog. The purpose of the mission was to line up the hem-hem "iconic" church spire - which has appeared in every banner image to date - with the bright red hawthorn berries which have sprouted up all over the place.

Mission accomplished, K stepped out again this afternoon in order to capture a pleasing assortment of seasonal berries and fruits. Here's the rather lovely blog post which I constructed for him.



In a few minutes, we'll be sitting down to a nice sirloin steak supper, served with oven Aga chips, beefsteak tomatoes and peas. (The Saint-Emilion is already breathing.) After supper, our evening will divide: K has elected to stay in and watch telly, while I'll be heading out for the official Farewell Party in the old Memorial Hall, before the demolition/rebuild commences at the end of the month. It's often that we get a Proper Disco in the village, and I intend to make the most of "DJ Shonky Shaun" on the wheels of steel. Well, it's a key stage of my training programme, obviously...

All of which brings me back to the inevitable subject of That Damned Plinth. I've just created a Facebook Event Page for Thursday's Tush Wiggle - so if you're able to attend in person or via the website, then please add your name to the guest list.

Labels: cottage, photography, plinth

Older readers may remember that faintly hilarious photo-spread of our lovely cottage, which appeared in Period Living magazine a few years back. ("Will I be cooking lunch, or will I be cooking dinner?") Well, now it's the PDMG's turn to bask in the limelight, courtesy of a sumptuous six-page feature ("Peak of perfection") in the current edition of The English Garden magazine (available in your local newsagents for the next two or three weeks, hurry while stocks last).

This time round, the prose is a good deal less purple, and a good deal more factually accurate... until you get to "Mike And Kevin's Tips For Tiny Gardens" at the end of the piece, that is. Pruning is crucial! Mulch the beds! Keep the edges immaculate! Oh, it's pure Viz comic.

As for the photos - which were taken over two seasons, mostly at the crack of dawn - they couldn't show our humble plot in a more flattering light. It doesn't always look that good - but it's nice to know that very occasionally, it does.

The photo set was completed by a portrait of the happy couple themselves, enjoying a relaxing (and empty) cup of tea in the spring sunshine. (We got us best Wedgewood Queensware out, as the occasion demanded.) It's a pity that I'm squinting in the sunshine, but will you just LOOK at that healthy glow - achieved by our friend Shirl, who did a cracking job with the kitchen foil, just off camera. (K leaves NOTHING to chance.)

Just one minor quibble: did the magazine have to use the word "tiny" quite so often? We like to think we're "deceptively sizeable".

Stalkers please note: the PDMG will be open as part of our village's Gardens Open Day on Sunday June 21st. And you'll be most welcome.

Labels: cottage, mediawhoredom, pdmg

Since the closure of our village shop at the end of February, weekends in the cottage have taken on a notably different complexion. Gone is the (relatively) early morning yomp through the village to pick up a newspaper, milk, bread, eggs and various other bits and bobs - indeed, gone is the very concept of a weekend newspaper. Gone is the opportunity to bump into friends and acquaintances on the street: exchanging pleasantries, catching up with news and gossip, making plans, extending impromptu invitations. (K's record for "popping out to get a paper" was a socially impressive 90 minutes.) And gone is our regular glimpse at the noticeboard outside the shop, with its various posters, announcements, adverts and miscellaneous pieces of information.

Although plans are well underway to set up a more modest retail venture inside the village pub, there is a subtle but distinct feeling that something significant has been lost. Suddenly, we feel slightly less like a self-sufficient community, and slightly more like a dependent satellite, a dormitory for commuters.

All of which makes the long-awaited launch of our village community blog all the more timely, and all the more significant. We have been planning it for months. There have been prototypes, presentations, strategy meetings, long discussions, calls for volunteers, feasibility studies, brainstorming sessions... why, I even broke a long-held personal rule, and put together a detailed presentation in (hack, spit) Powerpoint.

And now, finally, we have a site which is up and running, with a firm commitment from our team of three to keep it regularly updated. We may not be the first village community blog in the UK (I've found three, only one of which is currently active), but I can safely predict that we'll be the most successful in achieving our aims.

For any of you who have wondered exactly where K and I spend our weekends, the mystery is about to be lifted. Click on the screenshot to access the site...

Labels: blogs, community, cottage, derbyshire, linkage

Sunday night, Derbyshire.

K, getting into bed: I don't think I like the tone of your latest Twitter.

Mike: What, because you were away for most of it? But darling, your return was the shattering climax to the whole weekend! The cherry on top of the cake!

K: God, you're good at thinking on your feet...

Mike: That's not fair! I thought it up five minutes ago, doing my teeth. I knew you'd sneak a peek on your way up...

K: Hahahaha!

M: Hahahaha!

---

Friday evening, Nottingham.

With K away at a Vet Fest in Brum, the city's nightlife is mine for the plucking. Why, I could go anywhere.

So, the Lord Roberts then.

I'm trying out my new(ish) vari-focal contact lenses again, for the first time in several weeks, because I'll be damned if anyone's going to see me in a gay pub on a Friday night with specs on. I don't like this slow drift towards becoming a full time specs wearer, even though these are the best pair of specs I've ever owned. Not that I have any aesthetic objection towards full-time specs wearers per se - reader, I married one - but unlike my fragrant Civil Partner, my specs are not a fundamental part of who I am. Quite the reverse, in fact. And in any case, I'd quite like to be in with a theoretical chance of being cruised. Even if only for a split second: ooh he's nice, whoops, bit older than I thought. Yes, that would do me for the evening. Simple needs. Unchained from that particular lunatic a good few years ago. (*)

Trouble is, these lenses have half-blinded me. The gas lamps in The Park were the trippiest; great whooshing coronas flickering all around, like rushing on a pill, sans the anxiety attacks. In the pub, I can barely see JP's mouth across the table. He's a fast talker, and I'm struggling with ambient noise, and my ears must be due a sluicing anyway. I didn't realise how much I'd been relying on lip-reading. Half-blind, half-deaf, and for all I know I could be the Hottest Stud in the pub, except how would I know a thing like that in my condition?

I settle for being the Enigmatic Stud in the corner who never returns glances.

Not that I'm in the right place for that kind of caper. As a gay venue, the Lord Roberts has possibly the most de-sexualised atmosphere of any bar I've ever visited, in over 25 years of Outness and Proudness (excepting maybe the Retro Bar in London). That's a large part of why I like it here. You can come down with your mates, get a decent pint of bitter (I know!), grab a table and settle down for an extended natter, and all without any of that ghastly business whereby everyone keeps glancing distractedly over your shoulder while you're talking to them. Soft lighting, comfy chairs, traditional theatre-pub decor, no belting club music, no selfish superficial arseholes... how many other British cities are blessed with a gay venue like this one? We take it for granted, but we're lucky to have it.

---

Friday night/Saturday morning, Nottingham.

(*) Believe that, and you'll believe anything. Dot. Dot. Dot.

---

Saturday afternoon, Derbyshire.

This is the first time I've ever taken a taxi from Derby station to the cottage, and on this hot, sunny, glorious day, I'm enjoying the raised view that the Hackney carriage seating affords, adding extra detail to the familiar journey. As the bulky vehicle pushes further into the countryside, leaving its familiar city-suburb-city routes ever further behind, and looking ever more incongruous with its surroundings, so my awareness of jumping between two worlds is similarly heightened.

Past Kedleston: hotel, golf club, National Trust hall, and that fine old red brick wall which even now refuses to yield what lies inside. Through the bland commuter village of Weston Underwood; through Mugginton - Lane End, with its perplexing, mildly irksome free-floating hyphen and its closed-for-refurb pub with the Oo-er Missus name; left at Hulland Ward, gateway to the Peak park; right towards the ersatz Countryside Leisure Experience that is the Carsington Water reservoir (a useful trap for the Derby day-trippers, plodding dutifully in their hundreds along its featureless banks); a wiggle and a twist, and aah, here's where we start, on the approach to Bradbourne, as the landscape closes in around us on the narrowing lane with its treacherous bends, and the green becomes greener, and the hills steeper, and the valleys deeper, and the blossom whiter, and the lambs friskier (mmm, locally sourced shanks from the White Peak butcher!), and here's the church where Alan Bates is buried, and it's not far to go now as the road descends and the home valley opens up ahead, offering the first faint glimpses of the village, and is the cab driver enjoying this as much as I am, thirty minutes outside the city, not a clue where he is, but what a perfect afternoon for a mystery tour, and here we are at last, thirty quid and five for your trouble, you're best off heading back towards the A515 and straight through Ashbourne, ah you know it from there do you, good stuff...

...and the garden looks a picture. Best year yet. We're beginning to know what we're doing at last, we started preparing in good time, and as it enters its fourth year, the planting is coming to maturity. The mulch is down; the roses are pruned, trained and sprayed; the bare patches on the corners of the lawns are filling in; the hardy geraniums are creeping through the circular grid supports; the smaller daffs are still in full bloom; the first of the tulips are popping out; the hot reds, dusty purples and dusky pinks dotted down one side are melding together and making sense; and for now, there's nothing to do except pull out a chair and relax, letting it all get on with the simple process of growing.

So glad I came. Even as recently as a year ago, I wouldn't have bothered, seizing my chance for two nights on the razz in preference to all of this wonder and delight. Our pride and our joy, truly.

Tune out, switch off, settle down.

I don't even bother rigging up the laptop.

Post-jadedness ensues.

Labels: bars, cottage, gay, journal, nottingham, pdmg

Following an extended weekend of punishing physical exertion, I seem to be struck down by a severe case of Can't Be Arsed-itis. Therefore, I shall be blogging in fragments.

---

K was working from home for most of yesterday, which afforded me a brief glimpse into the maelstrom of his professional life.

Firstly: his phone goes off ALL THE TIME. It's a minor miracle if he even makes it as far as the loo. More often than not, he'll be halfway up the stairs before being twanged back into the room, as if attached to an invisible elastic leash.

Secondly: he habitually ends phone conversations with his colleagues in the style of a husky Southern Belle. ("Baa-ah!") Given that he's not a particularly camp man, I find myself somewhat startled by this periodic transformation into Jerry Hall. Where did it come from? Are they all doing it too?

---

Mulching. Such a nice, cosy, middle-class, Friday-night-on-BBC2, Monty-Don-in-The-Observer kind of word. When actually, it's muck spreading. And I f**king hate it. I was not put on this earth to fling filth at Spring Growth. All the Crabtree & Evelyn Gardeners Hand Scrub in the world ain't gonna fix these grime-encrusted pinkies.

---

Since stumbling across it in Bob's Shaggy Dog Stories piece, I have developed a growing obsession with the word "kicky". Particularly when used in conjunction with the word "outfit".

Thus, while pruning the roses yesterday morning, and in place of the usual random selections from my well-stocked mental jukebox, the phrase "kicky little outfit" kept running through my head, like some sort of nelly mantra. I became really quite tormented. As if the pruning wasn't bad enough.

(I was tackling my old nemesis: the sprawling, vicious rambler on the wattle hurdles, which doesn't yield without a struggle. You could hear the Yaroohs and the Yowch You Little F**kers all the way up the lane.)

---

Following the debacle of the collapsed ceiling, the cottage has been equipped with an array of great big f**k-off de-humidifiers, which have to be left running for at least eight hours a day. My dears, the hum is simply deafening. I tried to cover it with the forthcoming Maria McKee album (sent to me by her PR people in advance of a "phoner", as we professionals call it), but K's yelps of objection effectively drowned out all of them. She's a bit histrionic for his tastes.

(Good album, though. I'm quite pleasantly surprised.)

---

And then the dishwasher sprang a leak. All through the cupboard under the Belfast sink, and out over the York Stone floor. A couple of minutes later, and the hand-woven "Boujad" carpet that we brought back from Marrakech would have been a total write-off. As it is, a soggy-bottomed box of Ariel has left ink stains on the elm worktop. Sanding is our only option.

(Note the transparently insincere use of the word "our". I can hear K's snorts from here.)

To think we once graced the cover of Period Living! How that photo-shoot comes back to mock us! Oh, the hubris!

---

On arriving at The Cottage Beautiful on Friday evening, I was fully expecting to find one hundred envelopes waiting for me on the doormat, containing one hundred signed sticky labels from the one hundred contributors to Shaggy Dog Stories. Frankly, it would have been a comfort during this trying time, and the prospect of spending an agreeable evening attaching each sticker to its relevant entry filled me with warm anticipation.

Do you want to know how many envelopes had actually arrived? Can you even hazard a guess?

Thirty-six.

This is where I am forced to wag a school-marmish finger at the Internet. Success doesn't come without responsibilities, you know. I'll bet that the two hundred unfortunate souls who didn't make the book would have had their stickers in the post straight away. So think on.

As for the sixty-three of you who "haven't quite got around to it yet", I have a good mind to stick you all under a "hilarious" Gunge Tank, in front of a video montage of weeping children, set to a soundtrack of something "poignant" by Keane. That'll learn you.

---

And finally, a Troubled Diva Product Placement, totally gratis and uncalled for, because - like Joanna Lumley in the old soap adverts - I simply believe in the product. Indeed, you'll find me quite passionate about it.



Free samples would be nice, though. Contact details are at the top of the page, on the right hand side. Or would rival chocolatiers care to try and convince me otherwise? My loyalties are easily bought.

Labels: cottage, journal, pdmg

Friday evening. We're half way along Brian Clough Way, en route to the cottage, OldEngland in the back of the car as per usual. OldEngland and K habitually spend the first half hour of the journey catching up on Nottingham gossip, and picking over the latest movements and machinations of the city's great and good, before suddenly morphing into a pair of latter-day country squires as we turn left into rural Derbyshire.

During a brief lull in the conversation, I have put a CD on: not for us to actually listen to, but merely to keep the stereo ticking over, so that K can pick up work calls on his hands-free speaker phone.

"Who's this depressing f**ker?", sneers K, no more than half way through the first track. OldEngland has no interest in pop music, and I know he's playing to the gallery.

Oh God, oh God, he's handed it to me on a plate. Calm, Michael. Calm.

"It's one of the CDs which you bought me for Christmas, darling. You know, the ones that you personally select each year from the Radio 3 World Music Awards? The ones which bridge the gap between our respective musical tastes, and which unite us in a shared..."

"OK, OK. I walked straight into that one, didn't I?"

"I only put it on because it was gentle and low-key. Because I'm fully aware that your ideal form of music is one that approximates as closely as possible to silence."

Oh God, oh God, the mileage I'm going to extract from this one over the weekend. As the business wonk chit-chat resumes around me, I settle back into my equally habitual reverie, with a dirty smirk that will see me all the way through Derby.

Labels: cottage, dialogue, journal, popmusic

1. Towards the end of our New Year’s Eve “safari supper”, the six of us were joined by J the church warden (who had missed his flight to Pisa due to the massive security queues at Gatwick airport., but I’m not here to talk about that; “return to work” day is grim enough as it is, so let’s focus on the Nice Things). At five minutes to midnight, glasses in hand, we traipsed out of OldEngland and NewEngland’s cottage, through the church yard next door, and into the village church itself – where J unlocked the door, climbed the stairs to the carillon, bonged the bells for midnight, and knocked out a quick impromptu rendition of Auld Lang Syne into the bargain, as the rest of us chinked and hugged below. Best NYE midnight moment ever!

2. “Dressage Diva” A and I have settled on three pieces of music for her forthcoming competition, subject to final approval from the horse. Professional confidentiality forbids me from disclosing our choices – but I can reveal that we have chosen a jazzy, swingy, Blue Note-y direction, with all electronics and drum machines firmly ruled out, as metronome-strict rhythms don’t suit this particular horse’s swishy, sassy gait. The next step is to re-edit the music to match the floor plan, and to sequence it into a seamless five-minute suite, with as little abruptness as possible between the tempo changes.

3. Out in the PDMG, a local woodpecker has started nibbling our nuts on a regular basis (we hang them from the malus tree which faces the kitchen window). Never having seen a real life woodpecker before, I have been getting VERY EXCITED about this. Wide-eyed child of nature, me.

4. Congratulations to my darling sister, whose Suzi Quatro impersonation won her the New Year’s Eve “Stars in Their Eyes” competition in her local pub. Apparently, there is a video clip. No, you can’t.

5. All those long, lazy lie-ins. Cups of tea going cold beside the bed, as we read, or doze, or surf, occasionally making well-intentioned but half-hearted muttering noises about Getting On With The Day. Given half the chance, I reckon we could cheerfully live like that indefinitely. Sigh. January the second's a right bugger, intit?

Labels: cottage, dressage, family, friends, journal, lists, pdmg

12:20. Outside the village shop, our friend P opens the glass door which covers the communal noticeboard. A loose sheet of paper flies straight out at me, landing at my feet. I stoop to pick it up. It is a hand-written notice, advertising a terrier for sale.

As regular readers will remember, K has been hankering after a dog for months years, in the teeth of determined opposition. He's playing a long game. It's a war of attrition, in which K's considerable powers of finesse (he won't be satisified unless the suggestion comes voluntarily from me) are pitted against my immutable stubborness.

Despite being a near-evangelical atheist, K has evidently enlisted The Almighty onto his side. How mercenary. Truly, he still stop at nothing.

Defiantly, I shake my fist at the heavens. You're going to have to do better than this, God! Cheap conjuring tricks aren't going to change my mind!

12:30. Returning to the cottage, I check K's moblog for the photo of the rainbow which he has just taken (see two posts below). As I do so, a bootleg mix assembles itself in my head, in which Over The Rainbow (Judy Garland) is "mashed up" with Girlfriend In A Coma (The Smiths, as performed by Morrissey at Nottingham Arena a few days earlier). It's a bit of a mess - but as my mental jukebox has yet to be upgraded with Pro Tools, a rough manual mix will have to suffice.

12:40. We decide against trekking out to the Staffordshire Antiques Fair at Bingley Hall, as our advance party has declared itself unimpressed.

14:10. A simple bread and soup repast, before heading into Ashbourne to poke around the shops. P has tipped us off about a place called Eclectica, on the edge of town by the demolished Nestle factory. The owners run it mainly for fun, and so it only opens on Saturdays.

15:10. Leaving Eclectica, we experience a mutual rush of blood to the head, having just bought five darling little glass stopper bottles and an oil painting.

The painting, dated 1995, is by an obscure artist from Moscow, and was originally picked up as part of a job lot at a clearance sale at a now defunct Manchester gallery. It depicts a large ship, seemingly abandoned in an icy ocean, with wisps of white emerging from it that suggest the outlines of birds, or of escaping spirits. In the foreground, indistinct dwarf-like figures are standing on the ice. One is in the sea, arms aloft, drowning. While most of the ship is realistically portrayed, its rear section abruptly blurs, before fading away into thin air. The style is slightly naive and outsider-ish, but not without appreciable technical merit. It is a more realistic painting than we would normally go for, but its weird supernatural qualities have intrigued us and reeled us in.

16:40. Staring into space like a moody teenager in the fruit & veg section of Sainsburys. Decide to Twitter my mood from my mobile.

K (hotly): What on earth are you doing?
M (listlessly): 'S boring innit. Texting me mates aren't I.

16:45. Cheering up now that we've reached the cake section, because I get to choose. My sunny disposition is easily bought.

17:45. Judging by the admittedly scant information on the web, it would seem that, for once, we have landed ourselves a hefty bargain. It's a difficult one to hang, though. Stylistically, it's such a departure that it doesn't really fit anywhere. We may be looking at a mini-rehang.

18:10. Enjoying a respite from bickering over where to put the painting (it's all part of the ritual), as K's mum has rung and she, um, likes a chat.

18:30. Clapping our hands with delight, having successfully positioned the darling little glass stopper bottles on the landing table. Aw, cute.


19:20. Have just missed most of Leona performing Over The Rainbow (equal parts Houston, W. and Cassidy, E., and sensibly sans mash-up) on The X Factor, as I was mixing gin and tonics in the kitchen.

19:45. Chig and I have decided to give next year's Eurovision a miss. The tickets, which go on sale tomorrow morning, are expensive and in scarce supply; all but the very dearest hotels in Helsinki are already fully booked; and I don't much fancy going through all of the many hassles involved, and booking more time off work away from K - and more importantly, so close to the first anniversary of the death of his sister M - merely so that I can repeat the experience which I already enjoyed in Athens earlier this year. It never does any harm to skip a year.

20:15. Flushed with triumph at the end of a particularly delicious supper, K insists that I Twitter the full list of ingredients, and proceeds to dictate them to me. Pork escalopes, Madeira, tarragon; watercress salad, lemon, porcini; and rye bread, for dunking. All the way through the day, he has been displaying a surprising interest in Twitter, often stopping to check my auto-refreshing "With Friends" page as he walks past the laptop on the kitchen table. He's normally only like this when I've mentioned him on the blog, and people are talking about him in the comments.

20:50. Pacing around in my posh clothes (stone coloured Gucci civil partnership jacket, brand new Paul Smith shirt, indestructible six-years-old Prada shoes), in readiness for L&M's 10th anniversary party at the memorial hall. This won't be our ususal crowd, and we're both a little nervous. A quick fag in the garden while K applies the finishing touches, and then we'll be off...

21:25. Down at the memorial hall, we are watching a loud six-piece semi-professional rock band from Liverpool called The Laze, whose members include M's brother. This isn't exactly what we're used to on a Saturday night in rural Derbyshire. Fab!

21:35. The band are playing a number called Your Poppa On Poppers. It is ace, especially with the sax. K and I are brain-storming their influences. Bluesy, rocky, jazzy and proggy. Shades of Little Feat, with a splash of Gong?

21:45. Oh my God, a recorder solo! Adding Jethro Tull to the list, I briefly step outside to get a signal on my mobile. A lone chuffer is out there already. He also mentions Little Feat - the fourth person to do so. Must be official, then.

21:50. They're getting heavier - and proggier, which is surprising for a band so young. The only contemporary comparison which I can make is with fellow Liverpudlians The Coral, whose live sets can also tend towards dense free-form psych-outs.

22:30. The band have finished, and I'm talking to L. He is a landscape artist, whose studio is also in the village, and we have bought several of his paintings over the years. L is telling me about the band, and of their shared reverence for Frank Zappa (of course, Zappa, duh, slap), and that record labels have been up to see them, but haven't known what stylistic bag to place them in for marketing purposes, and of the frustration which that causes.

22:40. E is telling me about his newly launched organic meat mail order site, and asking me how to boost its Googlejuice. I duly pledge a link. Every little helps.

23:50 S and I have just discovered that we were exact contemporaries at Nottingham University in the early 1980s, and that my major subject was her subsidiary subject. So that's why I have spent the past six years wondering why she looked naggingly familiar. Does she remember him and her? Of course she does! Do I remember her and him? Of course I do! We continue excitedly in this vein for some time.

00:20. I am talking with the couple down the road about Devendra Banhart, the Aphex Twin, raving in the 1990s, and the way that young children particularly respond to bass. Evidently, there are sides to this village which I never knew existed before. It is all coming as something of a revelation.

00:55. After hours jam session, yeah! The hall has thinned out, but the remaining lurching stragglers are doing a good job of filling the space. Is it just me, or is everyone here steaming drunk?

01:10. The five remaining band members are thrashing out a cover of Grieg's Hall of the Mountain King. People are hurling themselves off the front of the stage.

01:50. We're back from the party, and I have tracked down the band's Myspace page. Turns out that they have supported Damo Suzuki, the former lead singer of Can. Buzzing around the kitchen as the music blares from the laptop, we still cannot get over just how good they were, and what a great night it was, and how this extraordinary village never ceases to amaze us.

Labels: cottage, journal, twitter

Strolling back from the pre-hunt gluhwein-and-sausages do, where I narrowly avoided being interviewed by BBC Radio Derby on my so-called "support for hunting", a subject upon which I have studiously avoided forming a coherent opinion (as I explained, I was just there for the wine and sausage, and anyway, I could have added - but didn't, becuase you only ever think of these things after the fact - this was a legally compliant drag hunt, and who but the most rabidly misanthropic self-styled Class Warrior could possibly object to a chuffing drag hunt?), a exceptionally large and bright rainbow started forming above the hill - closely followed by a fainter double, sadly invisible on this camphone shot.

Unusually for a rainbow, K and I could see where this one ended: on the lane towards the left of our cottage, and slightly uphill of it.

We decided against an undignified scramble for the pot of gold, which we left by the roadside for the poor and needy. Just call us the Brothers Bountiful.

Labels: cottage, journal

I feel whacked out.

A couple of weeks ago, I took a couple of sick days, with what I took to be a viral infection. Constant fatigue, aching limbs - but no other symptoms. It passed, and I returned to work.

In the last few days, the fatigue has returned - but in a more subtle way, that I can't really attribute to a virus. I go to bed at a sensible time, sleep for 8 or 9 hours - and wake up feeling as tired as when I went to bed.

During the day, everything feels like an effort - even the most straightforward of everyday tasks, even getting up from my desk to make a cup of tea. Give you an example: even when busting for a pee, I'll stay at my desk until I'm absolutely desperate - because I can't even be bothered to go upstairs to the loo.

And it's not only fatigue. My piles have flared up; a couple of days ago, I was in severe pain just walking home from work. I'm back on the bum bullets and the prescription gel. They're under control now, but I'm having to be careful.

The eczema on both ankles has also flared up. I've treated the affected areas with hydrocortisone cream, every day for two weeks. It brings the eczema under control, but not to the point where it actually vanishes.

I went to the dentist today. The "nasty" area around my bottom left cavity has been giving me grief. The dentist says it's the early stages of gum disease, to be treated with a high-powered mouthwash to stop it spreading and doing damage.

Work has been tough for the past few months. I'm been out of my comfort zone all year. Every new task involves areas which are largely new to me, and the information which I need isn't readily available. The work is difficult, but not unsurmountably so. It's just taking a lot of will power to apply myself.

I started the year in China. Shortly after returning, I started commuting to London. For five months, I lived out of a suitcase. Keeping on top of things at home was another struggle, when all I wanted to do was flop out. In the middle of it all, K lost his sister. He has needed a lot of support, and so has his family.

Outside of work, I have taken on a considerable amount of freelance music journalism work. I've reviewed nearly thirty gigs, over a dozen albums, several dozen singles, and the Eurovision Song Contest in Athens. Most weeks during the Autumn, I've been doing two gigs a week, sometimes three.

So the physical problems that I'm experiencing: as K gently pointed out this evening, they have to be stress-related. I may not be climbing the walls with stress, but that doesn't mean that it's not taking a steady toll.

Mercifully - and I have last year's cognitive behavioural therapy course to thank for this - none of this has led the sort of depressive relapse which plagued me in the last half of 2004. I'm proud of this fact. Sure, there has been the odd wobble - but nothing which I haven't been able to challenge and rationalise.

Next week, we'll be on holiday, in gentle, tranquil, relaxing... Marrakech. Hahahahaha! But hey, a change is as good as a rest. I can't wait, and neither can he.

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In amongst all the helpful comments which people have left me (see next post down), these two (from Boz) have particularly struck me.

"Expect to get lost - but don't mind if you do. Going with the flow is part of the fun."

"All the traders will be out for your money, but actually, it's part of the craic. Pretend you're Indiana Jones."

Excellent and much needed advice - because, by default, both situations could all too easily stress us out. I shall bear them in mind, Boz.

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And finally, and just before I retire for the night: in amongst all the madness, we've still found time to cultivate a garden which looked like this, just before the village gardens open day in June. (It's a professionally taken photograph, which may be appearing in a garden design book some time next year. I'll tell you when I know more.)


I'm proud of this, as well.

In fact, I'm proud of the way that I've handled a lot of situations this year.

But oh my darlings, I'm whacked.

Labels: confessional, cottage, health, journal, myself, pdmg