frustration

I should be in bed, letting my poor arm heal, yet here you find me, hours away from the new year, eating a cracker, drinking a G&T, and blogging one-handed. I'm feeling frustrated because of the arm, and also a little angry: it seems a neat summation of my year, actually. Looking back at my blog, it appears to have started with all good intentions, then fizzled out gradually. Sometimes I wonder if this isn't a summation of my life as a whole - frustration, anger, promise, disappointment.
However, it would be wrong to say that I actually feel anything negative in general right now. Instead, I feel, well, just feelings: a desire to wallow in the now, and exult in the ability to do so. Yes, there are worries and difficulties ahead, but I know that they are surmountable. I know that there are still many weeks of pain and inconvenience ahead of me, yet pain is a thing of temporary duration ultimately, as are, bluntly, all those sensations we either cherish or seek to avoid. Simply what is now is what needs to be lived through: And knowing that that which pains me will soon be past, and that which pleasures me is either now, or will be soon, or glows in my mind, how can I do anything other than exult?

Dealing with it.

At the fracture clinic, the doctor poked the lump that hurt, twisted my arm one way till it hurt, then twisted it the other way to see how much it hurt that way, nodded approvingly, and said 'keep the sling on, and come back in a couple of weeks and we'll see how it's getting on. By the way, if you start hearing your elbow go 'click', get to A&E; we'll need to put a pin through the fracture to hold it all together'.
By a pin, he meant 'we're going to shove your elbow in a metal halo to immobilize it, then whack a titanium bolt through all those lovely nerves that pass over the outside of the joint, then leave it sticking out for a month.' This, of course, has had the effect on me of nervously listening out for every single crackle and pop my whole bloody arm might give. I don't want my arm out of action for any longer than necessary. As I have found out, it isn't just my arm that has been rendered of limited use - it's had an impact on everything I do.
Well, I hear you cry, so what's new? After all, it's not as if it's something that doesn't occur on a daily basis to thousands of people. However, it's the first time it's happened to me, so I can only talk from my own experience. Starting with what I'm doing right now, I have a limited range of mobility and dexterity in my left hand, meaning that I'm doing most of the typing with my right. Next, I keep waking up around half past four in the morning, my upper arm and shoulder aching from the position I need to keep them in to keep the elbow supported and comfortable: Also, I have to take the sling off every now and then during the day to flex my arm as much as possible. And then, of course, I need to deal with the further limitations in everyday life. I can't cycle for six weeks to two months, meaning my main source of exercise has disappeared. I can't cook, or rather I can't do anything that involves chopping, dicing, holding stuff firmly, twisting (unless I use my legs), or anything above boiling stuff. I'm beginning to wonder how I'll get to work and pick up the kids on a thursday afternoon, seeing as I can't drive.
See? It's a whole world of fun. Yet despite all this, I'm well aware it could have been much worse, and it makes me wonder how people with serious injuries cope.

three pics.

Nur, Sean and Angus; Branch and lamplight on a very foggy night; and a pen which appeared from God knows where that I found in my coat pocket.

I don't half choose my moments...

you find me, less than half my Crimbo shopping done, workplace stuff still to do, dosed up to my eyeballs on paracetamol, codeine and G&T, with my left arm in a sling and a fractured radius. I came off my bike this morning: I was going downhill at full pelt, when the TOSSBUBBLE driver in front of me, decided to brake suddenly to let someone driving a similar Chelsea Tractor into the entrance to the posh nursery training college. I braked, but my rear wheel locked and skidded on a greasy patch, and off I came, all my weight landing on my elbow. I would have kicked myself for falling in such an amateur way, had it not been for the fact I was in shock and screaming agony. Well, it could have been worse - at least the driver in the Chelsea Tractor behind me actually deigned to not run me over. Also, a passerby gave me a hand, and eventually drove me to the local surgery - thanks Ruth. After a suitable bit of bellowing on my behalf - by now, it was REALLY hurting - the practise nurse told me to go to A&E. Wonderful.
Three hours later found me in a sling at home. Just what I need for the festive season.
And yet, strangely I don't feel that pissed off, that frantic or that miserable: I don't have any little voice in my head screaming 'Why Me?', futilely. It just is, and it could have been worse, and I will get better. Of course, it's bloody inconvenient, but I'll work around it.
Anyway, festive greetings to all, and Eid Mubarek!

Really Stupid Things Said On TV, an occasional series:

...on Breakfast on BBC this morning, a debate about the increased moving away from Christianity at Christmas, and in particular some schools are now not doing nativity plays in case it offends people of other faiths. In amidst the torrent of rage emailed in by viewers with too little to do in the morning, there was this little gem:
'Primary schools should be holding traditional Christmas activities and the meaning of Christmas. After all, the nativity play has been held for over 2,000 years.....'
Someone needs to do a bit more in-depth reading, methinks.

It's late on sunday night, I have classes tomorrow, I feel vaguely ill, yet still I have to write something, mainly because I haven't done anything about it for a while. Over on my ELT blog, I'll be writing about the English UK Teachers' Conference in a bit more detail: Suffice it to say, I did a bloody good job of it, and succeeded in getting people talking about my ideas. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay for the whole thing, as I got a dreadful migraine and had to get out of the place.
I blame the migraine on the stress of doing the presentation, although to be honest it could be a whole gamut of things right now, mainly focusing on the banks and why they are such twats. The halifax have been chasing Nur for a non-existent debt, and I'm afraid to say that I have been phoning them up and sounding exactly like the sort of jumped-up idiot I've always hoped to avoid becoming, threatening this, that and the other to the sod on the other end of the line. In fact, banking call centres have for some reason become a bane to me over the last month or so. To add to my current state of general irritation and incipient apoplexy, we have observations going on next week.
And yet, at the same time, it all somehow doesn't matter. Don't ask me why: It's just this feeling I have that in some obscure way that I don't really understand or even see exactly, everything's turned a corner and is about to get better. Maybe it's because I'm on the verge of being forty and giving up.

God, I'm knackered. I haven't been sleeping particularly well for the last couple of weeks, but I'm damned if I know why. Just general stress, I suppose. It's not helped by snoring either - I've actually managed to wake myself up a couple of times.
Had a pleasant weekend: Invited Ruth and Harriet, a couple of work colleagues, plus their spouses over for an early-ish dinner. Nur made up an absolutely enormous spread, after I'd suggested some meals and she decided to make the lot - Haydari, Sigara Boregi, Acili Ezme, Zeytinyagli pirasa, vine leaves, tavuk kalamar, Hasanpasa kofte, taze fasulye - the full works. A good time had by all, followed by fireworks and sharing out baby clothes that Sean had grown out of.
We also now have a larder full of food that will need to be demolished.

what a banker!

Sodding banks. Or rather, I should say, sodding call centres located in exotic climes, employing local people because it's cheaper than paying some miserable scouser to sneer at you donw the end of the telephone line. To explain: In the past few years, I've had some difficulties with my credit card payments, to which end I've been diligently paying a fixed,interest-free amount regularly. Recently, they sent me a letter saying that my credit card rights had been reinstated, and that I would get a new one in the post. This duly came, late, followed by a letter with my credit card pin number. During lunch yesterday, I was passing the bank and decided to give the crad a try, just to make sure it was working. I put it in the Hole in The Wall, punched in my numbers, and the bloody machine swallowed it and told me to phone a particular number. This I did, after copious swearing: after all, it was a brand new card. After explaining to the call centre employee that I didn't know my card number because it was a new card, he passed me to another centre, where I explained the situation again. The operative took my bank account details, then promised me that another card would be sent out within five days.
It was only later, when I was in a supermarket, that I found out that the stupid ARSEHOLE had cancelled my bank debit card, not my credit card!
Cue, then, an hour of incresingly angry phone conversations, punctuated by a call centre operative giving me a phone number that redirected me back to her call centre! And, apparently: a) I will have to grin and bear it about my bank debit card and b)my new card and my credit account have been cancelled, meaning that should I want it, I will need to re-apply, even though they have just re-issued the bloody thing in the first place!
Needless to say, I am not what you could call a bobtail in a felicitous mood.
Apart from that, Halloween went rather nicely.

sean's birthday

Uh? Where did that go?

..the past year, that is. Sean is one year old tomorrow. Time really has flown. I read in a report in, I think, the Guardian, that the reason that time seems to speed up as we grow older is a) because each day is an increasingly lesser portion of the time we have spent alive and b) we simply don't have as much sensory input as we age, mainly because we are used to and increasingly inured to our environments, but also because of the myterious hormonal creakings of the chemical lab we call our brains. One report even suggests that, by the time we hit 40, we have actually experienced 71% of our lives in terms of new input. This would suggest that, at 39 and two thirds, I am already not just past it but might as well jump in a grave now and have done with the whole thing.
Well, as Oscar Wilde might have said on a bad day, bugger that. I'm not ready to slip into a pair of slippers and dribble into a bowl of porridge just yet. Anyway, I fully intend to enjoy tomorrow.

Rugby.

Arse. We lost. Since the world and his wife's opinion will be published by tomorrow anyway, I may as well as have my say. Good match, but England lost it on the discipline issue - something they forgot about from the France match last week. And the disallowed try was a joke.

efficiency drive.

I'm not posting here as much as I would really prefer to, nor am I getting on with all the other things I need to do, such as doing the Dip. (ground to a halt, again) and putting together my presentation for the English UK conference: I find having work and family is enough work. two jobs, in fact. What I really need is to be able to organise what I do more efficiently. However, my preferred mode of work involves a sprawling tower of papers, quite often in several locations. I keep intending to put it all in one place, but what is the best?
For this reason, from next week, I'm going to do an experiment. Paper vs. computer; filofax vs. desk diary;blog vs. outlook; post-its vs. everything else.
or something like that.

Censorship and The Editor.

'Whatever you do,' said my wife the other day,'Don't write about our guest. She'll be embarrassed to read about herself, sleeping on our living room floor.'

And, out of respect, I decided to write nothing until her penultimate night with us. However, I see nothing to be embarrassed about: Bilge is a thoroughly pleasant and good-tempered person, and while we've had to work around each other a bit over the past three weeks, I would much rather have her staying safely with us than in some dodgy bedroom-cum-storeroom with no proper lock in the dangerous end of town.

I was thinking of calling this post 'What Will The Neighbours Think?', because it isn't really about so much external censorship as the internal feeling that someone's watching you and judging you. This, I must admit, isn't helped by the knowledge that certain people are avid readers of my output of drivel. Well, hopefully avid. Well, hopefully readers. Except for when I'm feeling particularly down, I tend to restrict what I say here, and indeed in everyday life. But why?

Because, I think, I am by nature a pessimistic person - not that I look for the negative things in life: I just see them lying around as it were. In one way, this is advantageous, as I'm extremely good at planning and strategy. On the other hand, I'm always looking at what will go wrong rather than enjoying that which is alright right now. In other words, I find it hard to live in the moment. And because of these frets and worries, I occasionally freeze up entirely. Displacement activities (such as writing this when I have other things to do) appear, and then I feel that I have an insurmountable obstacle in front of me.

But I was talking about censorship, or rather my own internal editor. Because of this tendency to over-forward think, I get anxious as to how others may percieve me: as such, what I write may, I think, cause offence, and so stuff that on its own is entirely innocuous doesn't get put down on the page. Or, somewhere inside me, a voice starts saying 'that's rubbish, everyone will laugh at you for an idiot if you write or say that.' And it's a very hard voice to ignore, even if I know it to be true. What I seem to be looking for is approval from everyone, something that is clearly absurd. I then end up doing nothing and saying nothing, which is equally absurd, especially for someone who should, at his age, know better.

S0 - any suggestions for turning of the editor within?

Is it possible to believe this fuckwit?How this man can claim to be a leader of others beggars belief. Probably buggers it as well. I despair of the rampant ignorance, stupidity and cynical manipulation that pervades those who seek to rule others.

Anyway, I cheered myself up on sunday by going for a stride over the local hills.

Situations and decisions.

Isn't it strange how, when everything seems to be on the gloomy side, when work isn't going well and your money situation is bad, when you're feeling as if you're on your own and lying face down, all of a sudden Life leans over you and starts to deliver a damn good kicking?
Two things: one rather dumb, the other another reason to tear my hair out, followed by an observation. On friday, the new Vice Chancellor delivered a welcome speech in the large lecture hall. There were some two hundred teachers and lecturers packed in there. I'd arrived a little earlier, and had got myself what I thought was a decent seat high up, even though I wasn't really in the mood to listen to my putative new boss. Anyway, once the audience had trooped in and spare seats had been found, the VC began. At the same time, one of the wardens turned on the extractor fan, and that's when I found, rather stupidly, that I had sat beside the fucking thing. It rattled and banged, and I had to endure an hour of some bloke far below me, waving his hands about and mouthing words I couldn't possibly hear. I couldn't get out of my seat either, as the place was packed. I had no choice but to grin and bear it.
Saturday saw me taking the car for its MOT. For some reason, we get it done on the opposite side of town from where we live. I dropped it off, then spent a few hours pootling round town, during which I was forced to buy myself a new pair of trainers because the crappy pair I had bought a while back were no longer wearable - in short, my feet were in agony. Another bit of cash to worry about. I came back to the garage, to find the mechanic with a pious concerned look on his face - the kind where you start to think, 'OK, what's this going to cost?'
'It needs some work, I'm afraid'.
Two Hundred Bloody Pounds' Worth of bloody work.
This month, on top of the usual things I can't afford, I now have the car, the phone bill, and Angus' Judo Club. Oh, and it'll be Sean's birthday on the 25th of next month, for which I will have no cash to buy him any presents.
So, stuffed once again.
Sitting in a bar later that night, watching people yell and stagger and realising that I didn't reallt want a drink I couldn't afford in the first place, I reflected on the situation: How has it come to this? It struck me that I was there, right then, as a result of circumstance, but also of a morass of undirected decisions - or karma, if you like. The situation with the lecture: well, I should have checked where I was sitting first - then I might have heard what was being said, and not been left in such a foul mood. A simple choice, really, based on direct observation. The money thing however, that's more complex, and is arguably the current result of a whole slew of personal decisions and events beyond my control. Going back to the lecture, I realised that it was a neat summation of a certain point of view: I couldn't turn off the fan, so I had to endure it - in other words, it was something over which, once a certain decision had been made, I had no subsequent control. The situation with the money had me thinking to what extent I could control it, and make decisions from which I, and my family, would benefit. Then the old phrase entered my mind:
Give me the strength and courage to change the things that I can and the patience to endure those things that I can't.
So, what changes? What gives? Which road do I set out on now?
And the thing is, I'm not alone. The majority of us live these lives tangled in the morass of poor decisions and half-whelped intentions, and we call it life. Very few people have this single, tight, determined line, leading to what they want.

Things that piss me off - a random list.

1. Drivers, especially of Audis, who try to kill me on a regular basis.
2. Being asked to do things because someone else can't be arsed, and because I'm seen as an easy touch.
3. A certain colleague who asks me, ALMOST EVERY TIME I SEE HIM, how to set up his webmail and printers on the computer he happens to be using at the time - and then he never listens to me.
4. bar using a credit card, having no money even for a loaf of bread.
5. earning amateur wages for a professional job.
6. having my boss use me, and use other team members, to prop up a system that is failing from overwork.
7. nearly suffering a complete meltdown of my physical health because of the stress of work.
8. nearly being killed by idiots in Audis. Oh, I already mentioned that. worth repeating, though.
   
9. being in debt since God knows when.
10. not being able to afford new clothes for my children, for my wife, for me.
11. not being able to afford to go to a dentist.
12. Having to count out every single penny before even considering spending.
13. feeling utterly isolated at work.

fuck it all. This is a world that craves that stupidest of things, money, and confuses consumption with happiness.

Ye gods, and I know that this is becoming a regular complaint, I'm knackered. I managed the grand total of one hour's sleep last night, thanks to Young Sir. Unsurprisingly, I've had not the most wonderful of days. Bollocks to it.
Here's a picture of Young Sir having his hair cut by his grandmother, and Karen with Tootsie. Karen's the one on the left.

Busy running in circles.

Chaos at work, mayhem at home...will I ever get five minutes' peace? I am finding it remarkably difficult to get time to study, or indeed, space. Whether this is because of external influences or internal, subjective interpretation of the situation, or a combination of both, is entirely up for debate. One thing is that it is very hard to string together a coherent amount of time in which to complete a task, such is the pressure to get 'things' done, both at work and at home. I feel like I'm chasing my tail half the time.

Directions.

There is a recurring dream I have, albeit one that has become rarer in recent years. I am standing on a long, narrow road, silky black, standing in a void. All around me is darkness, except where I am. The path behind me fades into darkness, a single route. However, in front of me, there are myriad roads, all stretching into the unimaginable. And I don't know which one to take, so all I do is stay in the same place, first moving towards one road, then hesitating, drawing back, then moving to another, and so on, yet I do not know which path to take; And I end up staying the same. Well yes, it's very obviously a dream reflecting my uncertainties and hesitations in real life. Yet it's still a problem - which way next?
As the more astute observers among you may have noticed, I am nearing my 40th birthday, always a time when people are expected to take stock of their situation, wave goodbye to their hair and youth, and say hello to a widening waistline and a collection of pastel-coloured pullovers that increasingly become polo-necked as one begins to acquire a wattle and collection of chins. At this age, I should be somewhat more comfortable, not only with myself, but also in terms of personal circumstances. Instead, I find myself completely broke and wondering what the hell I'm doing at work.
The point, I suppose, is: Is it worth it? There are days where I find teaching an utterly fascinating exercise, others where i turn with weary disgust from the idiot mounds of bureaucracy on my desk and the ton of stress I feel under. Last year, had it not been for my timely jaunt to Corfu and having to do jury service, I am sure my health would have broken because of the stress of managing the exams in my department. Certainly, I do not want the same this year, but I find myself worried about a whole raft of things: money, study, preparing a paper for a conference, money, debt, work, exams, money again. My sense of discouragement at my current predicament is palpable.
However, in the last sentence, the word 'current' is important: I do not know, and cannot see, what's round the corner, and this is both a comfort and a worry. A comfort, because it may be better: A worry, because, it may be the same or worse. This invites the question: Do I stay on this same path, or go down another, or a different one? And so I hesitate, move towards one road, stop, move back, move towards another, hesitate, draw back, stop, and so forth. Perhaps it shouldn't be a case of my moving along the road: Maybe I should let the path flow under me.
However, all this to-ing and fro-ing doesn't solve my current fiscal dilemma. I need to clear our debts, and currently I'm in danger of sliding further backwards, clearly undesirable. It is an enormous pain in the arse. I need the directions to Mr. Fiscally Happy Land.
Who knows? If I find it, I might even end up with enough money to buy myself an Audi with which to try and kill EFL Teachers on bicycles.