Whittling

[j4]

Went to the bank and after waiting for nearly an hour (they said 20 minutes, they lied) finally got to talk to a human being. Apparently I haven't incurred any charge for exceeding the overdraft limit yet, and they've now given me a temporary limit that's a bit higher until the end of the month, by which time my salary will have gone through.

They did however insist on updating all my details (they still had me down as unemployed, despite the fact that I told them when I got the job at ProQuest, and told them how much I was getting paid; they also still had my parents' number as my daytime number) which was horrible because the bank man just looked at me as if I was stupid when I said I didn't know the exact figure for my take-home pay, and didn't know how much we still owed on the mortgage.

Thank you to juggzy for some useful suggestions by email but I really think the answer is that I just have to stop buying things. At all. I don't need anything else really. And I need to shift the mountains of useles stuff that I already have. I also have to stop lending money to people, and buying things for other people on the understanding that they'll pay me back as soon as possible.

I hate money. I hate all the Stuff I own, at the moment, too; I just want to throw it all away. And then run away to an island somewhere and eat berries and fish, and think for a bit, and make some pretty shapes out of sand, and then die.

* * *

Just so tired. Tired and shaky and headachey. Yesterday on the way home from work I came so close to just lying down on the pavement and going to sleep. Today I knelt down to put some of the shopping (thanks to sion_a, we have food tonight) in my rucksack and just couldn't get up. I just stayed kneeling there thinking "I should get up", but somehow I just couldn't. I could visualise myself getting up, but I couldn't make my legs obey, for a few minutes. I think, in retrospect, I wasn't sure why I should get up. My head hurts, and my limbs feel half-numb, as though it's taking longer than it should for signals to reach them and/or get back to my head. And if I rest my hands on the keyboard I can see them shaking.

Wish hoiho could be with me but he's got family crises to deal with. I feel horribly selfish for wanting him to be here when he's worrying about the people he cares about & wants to be with them. Now worrying too that if he knows I'm not well he'll just say I'd be better off without him, which isn't true. :-( Guilt, stress, guilt.

Was wondering about going over to see my parents tonight after the concert, staying for most of tomorrow -- somewhere that's nearly home. I'm just scared that a) I wouldn't be able to manage the drive in this state, and b) if I do get there I'll just cry the whole time and then they'll be worried about me and not want me to come back to Cambridge until I'm feeling better, and I can't call in sick, ever, not after the last job. At least not unless I have something really obvious that I can point to like a broken arm, or measles, or something.

* * *

Town was heaving, with all the nausea that the word conveys. Looking up Sidney Street from ... not Carfax, no, what do you call the, where the barrier is, outside up along from what was Joy and is now Eat (named for our modern gods) ... the hordes of people looked like an army of tiny dolls, picture-perfect with their miniature gesticulations, open-mouthed and mindless and terrifying.

[Somebody is itching to correct me on the road-names. THIS IS NOT A TECHNICAL MANUAL. Try reading rather than debugging.]

Comments

[nja.livejournal.com]

Was wondering about going over to see my parents tonight after the concert, staying for most of tomorrow

If you do this (any weekend) and you feel like a walk round a deer park with a middle-aged beardy with a tendency to get distracted by small birds and interesting holes in the earth, give me a call / email. I can't guarantee berries and fish, but there is a pub nearby called "the badger's sett" or something similar.

And check your holiday year - we certainly don't go by the academic year, our holiday entitlement starts on Jan 1st.

[lnr]

It's October to October in Cambridge. 30 days plus bank hols, if that helps Jan.

[j4.livejournal.com]

For admin staff as well? (I'm not academic or academic-related.) Must check my contract. The other people on my team said it was academic-year but they tend to forget that I'm a different type of staff from them.

Sigh, I haven't seen you for ages... *hugs*

[j4.livejournal.com]

That sounds lovely. Bradgate Park? Didn't know there was a badger pub nearby! But then I was a bit young for pubs (and not as bothered about badgers) when we used to picnic there.

This weekend's out of the question now since I've only just woken up (too shattered to do anything last night) and I have to be back in Cambridge this evening. But thank you for the offer & I will bear it in mind.

[nja.livejournal.com]

The pub's actually in Cropston. There's a genuine badger's sett on the track up to Cropston Leys.

I'm sure even in Cambridge there are places you can go where (to invert "Cheers") nobody knows your name, and which don't cost much. Wicken Fen, for example. You don't have to go to Tahiti to get away from it all. I appreciate marshes are not everyone's idea of a good time, but you get the idea. You wrote something recently about doing nothing but not really doing nothing in the right way, the key's to make a conscious decision to really do nothing for an afternoon or a few hours in the evening, because it has value to you and everyone needs time when they aren't worrying or doing (here comes the ambitious parents' phrase) something constructive. Nobody needs to do things all the time. I'm going to start rambling on about Bertrand Russell's In Praise of Idleness and World Government now, so I'll stop and go and look for some yellowhammers.