Glimpsesofcolour

…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…

Have just discovered on sorting through my emails that I had completely forgotten being asked to do a cover quote for a forthcoming book on being an LGB Christian. Fortunately the deadline is still a couple of weeks away, so there’s still time for me to read the book. Judging from chapter one, it is going to be really good. Don’t know the publication date yet, so can’t give any further details.

I have no idea why they asked me. Unless they have found out about my lifetime habit of falling in love with gay men. Perhaps they just thought I would be someone who wouldn’t have a knee jerk conservative reaction.

Now that I’ve recovered from the summer and its various aftermaths (is an aftermath something you do to relax after a maths lesson?), I am beginning to get enthusiastic about w*rk again. Trouble is, I have three to four books which I’d like to be writing all at once! I’m sure this will wear off…

Meanwhile I have typed up two of the three poems I drafted at the weekend. I think one is almost ready to send to a competition.

Something with which I disagree has been eating me in the night. Why is it that when you have insect bites, one or two of them always itch far more than the others, even when you keep re-applying bite ointment?

And another thing: why are men incapable of standing still when talking on a mobile or cordless phone? I watched a man on the platform at Edgware Road yesterday, talking animatedly into his mobile, and the whole time he was pacing to and fro, round and round. He must have made half a dozen circuits of the place where I was standing (never, of course, noticing me standing there). The Grouch does this too: if he talks, he has to pace. It doesn’t occur in normal conversation, just when he’s on the phone. Is there some mysterious gene that makes men do this? I’ve never seen it done by a woman.

The first astounding thing about working on the Horrendous Piles of Papers (est. ca 2005) is how much of their content can be immediately tossed into the recycling basket. About 90% so far. The second astounding thing is how, when long unseen areas of desk are exposed, can they be so dusty? Surely the dust didn’t slink under the paper? These things are marvels the like of which we have not seen in our days.

Not only is LUST an anagram of SLUT, but RIBALD is an anagram of BRIDAL. I am not sure what this signifies other than that I have been playing too much Word Twist on Facebook.

I am not sure what to think about the discovery that someone found my blog by searching for ‘brothel clock’. I am almost certain I have never blogged about any such thing.

Something strange is happening to me. Having spent my entire life having unrequited crushes on one man or another, for the last few years (not sure how long) I have suddenly discovered I’m not in love with anyone. I think this is probably good (and I’m sure my husband appreciates it). But I also haven’t written a single completed poem in that time. Could the two be connected? Do I have to carry a hopeless torch for someone in order to write poetry? (Or is the dearth of poetry from me a gift to the world?)

Actually, I haven’t really written any poetry since I won first prize in the Barnet Open poetry comp four years ago. This could also be connected – now I’ve won a first, I’ve stopped trying. Or it could be that the prose and poetry workshop I went to for a while has completely killed my poetic inspiration (it certainly didn’t help it).

To return to the torch-carrying subject, it does sometimes feel as though I am having an unrequited relationship with God. But not always.

So what I’m trying to work out is this:

Is it a) that things go better when I am feeling better or b) that I feel better when things* go better? And contrarywise, as Tweedledum would say, is it that things* go worse when I’m feeling worse, or that I feel worse when things* go worse? All I can say is that when I’m feeling good, all sorts of little things* go right, and when I’m feeling bad, things* seem to go from bad to worse. But which is chicken and which is egg – well that’s a mystery.

And if I could solve this conundrum, would I have the secret of feeling good all the time?

*(‘things’ meaning everyday occurrences, like whether the bus comes on time or whether I have the correct change for the pay and display).

Blogging is quite definitely like marital sex. I know I mentioned this before, but it becomes more and more apposite. Lots of excited activity at first, then interest and energy tail off, and eventually you reach the point where you really can’t be bothered any more. Perhaps the answer at this point is to start a new blog? However I’m not very happy about the implications of this for the ethics of marriage…