Glimpsesofcolour

Searching through my stats, in particular the search terms, which turned out to include ‘rude places’, I am reminded that yesterday after leading worship I sat down next to a church friend and during a conversation on the swiftness of time, I quoted ‘my days fly faster than a weaver’s shuttle’. Which would have been fine except that after the word ’shuttle’ I paused for a moment and then found my lips and voice forming the word ‘cock’. All on its own. Fortunately the friend was the sort to which one can say such things, even in church…

Yet again I overslept and left too little time to go swimming in between breakfast and lunch. However, I made it to the carers’ relaxation day in time for lunch (which, having had breakfast at 10.00, I didn’t really need) , followed by ‘healing’, from a lady who laid hands on my head for a long time and claimed she was giving me extra energy. I wasn’t entirely convinced, but it was quite pleasant anyway. I then had a face massage which was fine except when she slapped me on the chin rather hard and repeatedly. Apparently it helps with lymph drainage.

Was so relaxed after all this (it’s good when it stops) that I felt like going straight home, but I managed to get to the gym, have my swim and jacuzzi time, and get home minutes before my son. I am Superwoman!

Tomorrow is a regional conference of the National Autistic Society at which I’ve booked for a workshop which I’m sure seemed very relevant at the time, but the subject of which I’ve now entirely forgotten. Have to be at Baker Street at 9.30 which is a time of day I didn’t think existed on Saturdays.

Have just noticed that the word ‘time’ appears at least five times (six!) in this post – is my subconscious telling me something? Must be a side effect of being mistaken for a pensioner the other day.

…is that you can sing ‘On top of spaghetti All covered with cheese, I lost my poor meatball’ etc, to the tune of Dire Straits’ ‘Brothers in Arms’. Betcha didn’t know that.

The last four or five days have been uniformly grey, not only in the weather but in my mind. This morning I didn’t get up till 10.45 and consequently didn’t start my work till nearly 12.00. However (which is better than yesterday) I managed to get down to planning the service for Sunday, in spite of the fact that I didn’t have the ‘worship bag’ which has sample hymnbooks and all our resource materials in it. I got a lot further than I expected, because I had resources for Poverty Action Sunday and Homelessness Sunday, which we are combining this week.

By the time I finished that, I was feeling better than I had since nearly a week ago. Amazing how therapeutic creative work can be. Of course uncreative work, such as doing the washing up, can be therapeutic too, but it’s harder to get down to because one has to keep repeating it every day. When I am most down, however, I can’t summon the energy to do any kind of work. I just have to wait until the clouds begin to pass over. Which makes me feel pretty helpless.

PS The title for this post is of course ironic…

The other day as I wandered along the Broadway (that leadeth to distraction), I was stopped by a ‘charity mugger’ or chugger, asking me to support the Mental Health Foundation. His exact first words to me were ‘Are you a pensioner?’. When I somewhat huffily explained that I am not, and people usually tell me I look younger than my age, he replied ‘It must be your hat’. What?! My sparkly red baker boy hat, is a pensioner’s hat? I am still recovering. This was definitely not a good day. And I am afraid I have not signed up to donate to the Mental Health Foundation. Their representative did not do my mental health any good at all.

Should I be worried that I have started to call my husband ‘Dad’, while our son calls him ‘Ed’? There just seems to be something wrong with that…

Went to a session of my new choir this lunchtime. It’s a lot harder work than the old voice workshop – we are making a foray into Fauré (just had to get that in) and are supposedly performing, with several other choirs, at the Cadogan Hall at the beginning of March. Anyway before we started I was chatting to the lady sitting next to me and she said she lived at ‘the other end of the world’. On closer examination, it turned out that what she meant by ‘the world’ was Muswell Hill! It made me wonder about how far people are able to see more than their own little enclave…

The other day I heard from a Facebook friend who had met someone who remembered me from a long-ago women’s weekend in Bruges (when apparently, I was very sick on the Channel crossing to Zeebrugge). Any road, as they say in the Midlands where I come from, this friend of a friend remarked that I was a ‘real character’. I can’t help feeling flattered by that; it has long been my ambition to be eccentric, and now it seems I already was 25 years ago, without even trying. Nice.

So finally, after three days of no school last week (with GB thereby missing a German test yet again), we get a message saying there is school today. Only to find him just before school time saying he has a bad stomach ache, and can’t go. I tried asking if anything about school is worrying him, but he couldn’t identify anything. So one more day getting behind with coursework etc.

Oh well, I managed in spite of this to get back into some kind of work routine. It feels like Christmas has only just finished, and even now I can’t tell if it’s safe to go back into the office (ie across the landing into the spare bedroom…!). Still, I did finally take down the Christmas tree yesterday, with much sadness (I hate that task) and to the accompaniment of a CD of the Vienna Philharmonic doing the New Year concert (the Vienna Boys’s Choir singing German Christmas carols is my accompaniment for decorating the tree before Christmas).

Feeling a bit shaky after a day’s work, and not looking forward to doing minutes at the Inclusion Group tonight, but at least I’ve got some important admin done.

My son sweetly sent me a beautiful gift-wrapped link to Google Chrome, which he said was the best internet browser ever. I downloaded and installed it, and set it as my default browser. It kindly imported all my bookmarks, including all the links to Firefox sites which I no longer wanted. I then discovered it is almost impossible to delete bookmarks in Google Chrome for Mac. But I persevered and found a way to do it.

Then I gave up on it for the moment and went to log in to the Wibsite. Whaddya know, it had forgotten my saved password. I then had to hunt around Chrome’s online help, which is a nightmare, for advice on this. It turns out that in Chrome for a Mac, there is currently no way of transferring saved passwords, at least from Firefox. The powers that be are working on it.

Reader, I abandoned Chrome and went right back to Firefox as my default browser. Maybe I’ll try Chrome in a few months when they have caught up with Mac users. It’s all part of the evil conspiracy against Mac users….