"Are you open to new light, from whatever source it may come? Do you approach new ideas with discernment?"
At first sight this may seem self-contradictory, but it isn't: hard as it may be, it is possible to approach new ideas without prejudice, even when they come from what we consider an unreliable source, while giving due consideration even to those coming from a reliable one before accepting them.
The chance of some more snow is almost zero; as far as I'm concerned, this means that winter proper is over. Luckily though, spring hasn't come yet: after dark the temperature still usually falls towards, or even below, the freezing point, so that opening my window I don't risk inviting insects to my bedsit. Inviting the smell from the nearby coal-powered boiler room seems the lesser evil to me, so long may this last.
When the doc told me this mornig the tumour was smaller but not yet operable, so we'd wait for another three months before another CT scan and a consequent decision about futher steps, it looked just too good to be true - cancer regressing and three months' holidays before me. So I immediately began worrying what bad luck I was in for.
Turned out the bad luck was all about my sick pay. I haven't got a penny for after 17 December, and I seem unable to find a way of making some administrator do what they're paid to do instead of telling me that it's another administrator's job and can you please call this number sir?
I made some half a dozen calls today, which for me is the equivalent of acting for a few hours as an interpreter between two foreign speakers after just a five-day beginner's course in each of the foreign languages. I was more knackered than after a full shift as a factory operative; and yet I only got to a stage when I could temporarily make no further step, not to actually resolving the matter.
So maybe I have before me three nice months off most duties, maybe three months of arguing with bureaucrats and worrying about ending up hungering on the street - and not because of boozing. Every now and then I have a new reason (new in particularities, the generalities are familiar by now) to hate this country.
