Fuar

Chan eil am brùthadh-fala ìosal agam cho dona an-diugh 's a bha e fad beagan làithean, ach tha a' bhuinneach air ais, agus airson adhbhar air choireigin, tha mi fuar. 'S mathaid oir bha mi fuar tron oidhche. Fear de na rudan as lugha orm sa bhaile seo, 's e an àbhaist an teasachadh-meadhain (no teasachadh air astar) a chur dheth buileach eadar deich uairean feasgar is sia sa mhadainn. Amadain.

In for another flit

I've been staying in this former hotel room for over three years now. It naturally has its disadvantages, but on the whole it's tolerably good. So although I had begun to consider finding something better if the cancer was cured, when my sister and brother-in-law offered me last week renting a studio flat in their ownership, whose previous occupant had died, I was quite hesitant about it. But after the viewing I compared the advantages and disadvantages of the two places and concluded I would accept the offer.

It may be farther away from the city centre (probably more time wasted commuting), and it's in a block of flats within a housing scheme (probably more outdoor noise). On the other hand it has a balcony with a screen door (possibility to air the room regardless of my insectophobia), which doesn't overlook a yard like my window here (probably more natural light through the day); I'd have my own cooker, rather than using a public kitchen (making my meals as I wished); and I'd have internet via cable (presumably faster than my current wi-fi).

Of course, the main thing for me is always noise. There may be some noisy neighbour, kids living upstairs and so on. But the windbag of a neighbour I have here is often a real pain as well, and who can tell he wouldn't leave and somebody even worse move in?

So in the end I decided to follow the 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' rather than 'better the devil you know' advice. What troubles me a bit though is that I feel neither excited nor depressed about it. As if, given I'm not moving back home to Scotland, it didn't actually really matter at all.

Knoxplex works

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.

Untypical Christmastime

Untypical in more ways than one. To begin with, for some reason I had already had a sort of Christmas feeling in late October, when the company temporarily closed due to lack of orders and we all had a week's holiday.

Then on 3^rd December I was diagnosed with cancer, and getting sick leave and not having to attend at work did feel a wee bit like Christmas coming early too, if solely on this account (and despite spending two half-weeks in hospital instead).

But eventually Christmas proper arrived, and after five spent either in hospital, in rehab or visiting my parents, I could once more spend it according to my own wishes. Watching what I wanted to watch, listening to what I wanted to listen to, eating what I wanted to eat and so on, all these when I wanted to. (It's not easy to have a sort of 'British' Christmas when living on the Continent with no other Brits around you.)

The only fly in the ointment was the disease: the related pain, especially at the beginning, and having no idea whether this wasn't my last Christmas ever. But then, one can't ever know that for sure, can one? Still, I believe that under the circumstances I enjoyed it; the proof being that now it's almost over it feels like it went by incredibly fast.

Patrick Gale: A Place Called Winter

Most outcasts banish themselves.

(Dr Gideon Ormshaw as quoted by Little Bear / Ursula, p 187)

Much as I'd like to deny it, and whether true or not about 'most', this does apply to me. I could have remained a closet gay; I could have become a part of the gay 'community'; I could have remained primarily interested in the country of my birth; I could have done more effort to stay in the country of my heart; and so forth and so on.

Then again, I only regret about half the cases. I do regret those that were a result of my wimpiness; I don't regret those that were a result of my individualism. It's obviously best to really belong; it's a lesser evil not to belong at all, than to belong outwardly where one doesn't belong inwardly.

 

 

 

H. G. Wells: Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul

They neither visited nor received visitors. They were always very suspicious about their neighbours and other people generally; they feared the "low" and they hated and despised the "stuck-up", and so they "kept themselves to themselves"..

(about Arthur Kipps's uncle and aunt) 

These two are bringing Kipps up instead of his parents, so it's no surprise that, despite his inclinations, these attitudes of theirs adversely affect his social skills. As the identical attitudes of my parents adversely affected mine.

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Here there was a homeliness, a familiarity. He had noted as he passed that old Mr. Cliffordown's gate had been mended with a fresh piece of string. In Folkestone he didn't take notice and he didn't care if they built three hundred houses.

(about Kipps) 

I was never much observant of my surroundings, tending rather to be lost in my own inner world, which wasn't nearly as bland, as vapid, as insipid. This always changed when I came to Britain, which for some reason feels more like home than the places where I was born, growing up or living for the longest time. But it always changed back again after returning from the Isles.

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He was an outcast, he had no place in the world. He had had his chance in the world and turned his back on it. [...] This was the end of his great fortune! What a chance he had had! If he had really carried out his first intentions and stuck to things, how much better everything might have been!

(about Kipps)

Sadly, having had my only chance to stay in Britain forever, I became complacent and lost it, sentencing myself into a self-imposed exile for the rest of my days. 'Self-imposed', because I can't blame anybody else other than myself for what happened. For 'exile' see above.

James Robertson: The Testament of Gideon Mack

This task of ordering my thoughts and writing them down is doing me good. It brings me ever closer to a conclusion.

(Gideon Mack, p 35) 

One of the great things about writing is that by turning one's thoughts into written words one is forced to phrase them carefully, maybe even reconsider them. That's why I was writing short 'texts', afterwards buried in my desk's drawer, even in those bygone days when a pen and paper were the usual tools; that's why I'm blogging now even though I don't expect anybody else to read my posts.

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I dissembled, as ever.

(Gideon Mack, p 94) 

A gay growing up in a 70s/80s small town, I developed dissembling into such a second nature that I couldn't (still can't) shed it when it became unnecessary, even unhelpful.

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I have no objection to ferries or newspapers or play-park swings or television on the Sabbath, but I understand where the impulse to ban such things comes from. Sundays for too many people have become noisy, unrestful days. I like quiet Sundays, Sundays of thought and reflection, churchgoing, family lunches for those who have families, long walks, long naps in front of old movies on the box; Sundays without supermarkets and traffic, loud neighbours and trouble in the streets.

(Gideon Mack, p 95)

I would list slightly different sets of activities, but heartily agree with the general drift. Unfortunately where I live even DIY is considered a perfect Sunday pursuit, and half the population seems to think that making a lot of noise is imperative for feeling good.

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On 1st March 1979, a referendum had been held, asking the Scots whether they wanted a devolved Assembly in Edinburgh. The result was a resounding maybe.

(Gideon Mack, p 122)

The best summary of that particular public vote I've ever read.

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Everything in my life seemed to be in the past.

(Gideon Mack, p 159)

Since I went into self-imposed exile almost five years ago it feels like however long I may yet be here, nothing really important can happen, because it already has.

What lockdown?

I can understand that for most people something quite out of the ordinary is happening, but as for myself ...

Yes, where I live now I have to wear a face mask in public; to wait for my vernal haircut; to hope clothes shops will reopen before I run out of something through wear and tear; and I can't take my Kindle and go for a few pints in a pub. But otherwise ...

I go to work as usual - we factory menials can't work from home. I keep my distance from my workmates - as I had before. Save for food shops I go basically nowhere else - but then I hardly had for a few years. With the exception of the pub - but there isn't that much difference between reading a book in a cosy pub and doing it in a cosy bedsit. (The pub can be more pleasant, but it isn't always so; and the bedsit is always cheaper.)

In a sense I pity the others, because I know too well how unfulfilling this way of living is. In a sense I just shrug their frustration off thinking "welcome to my life" ...

Blood samples

A welcome break in the day-shift run was the morning of Monday, 24 February: I went to give blood samples so the doctor could see what effect the levothyroxine was having on me. It was quite quick; before going to work I had enough time to go to Tesco, and would in fact have time for a breakfast, if only I knew about some suitable nearby cafeteria. I've been out of the place for too long and it has changed so much that I no longer know much even about the city centre ...

Xmas '19

As usual spent with my parents in their town. Like last year I went on Christmas Eve (not impressed by the new railway company: they only do seat reservation tickets, the PA system was far too loud, with English announcements in Americanese which moreover sounded a pretended, exaggerated one by some local to me), spent there Christmas Day and returned the day after.

The conversations were relaxed, even though we were probably sitting in silence with nobody knowing what to say next more often than the year before. My father seems to be losing it, but only very slightly so far; his cheeks were a bit sunken, but he still looked fairly healthy for a guy in his late seventies. Still, it was a wee bit disconcerting when during our goodbyes he mentioned no longer making any plans further than a year in advance.

Anyway, I survived and on Boxing Day afternoon my end-of-year time off finally began in earnest. (The pub proved to be closed, but maybe that was for the better.)

 

(originally posted on WordPress)

 

Malachy Tallack: The Valley at the Centre of the World

Then, the loneliness had been offset by busyness, by pride and by hope. Now, it was offset only by routine.

(about Mary, p 41) 

I was fairly lonely in my homeland but at least I was interested in what was going on around me. Here in my self-imposed exile, I just keep going on, thanks to inertia and defiance.

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After all, the point at which one becomes old is surely the point at which anticipation is overwhelmed by hindsight.

(Alice, p 188) 

Related to the above. Back then I was aging; now I’m aged.

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There was also the strange, simple fact that her life was no longer a shared event. Anticipation, it turned out, was more difficult to sustain alone. A sense of purpose, of direction, was more difficult to sustain alone. She had lost, almost entirely, that sense of moving forward, of progress. She had lost her own sense of narrative.

(Alice, p 188) 

That’s one of the hardest aspects: you can’t talk about the things, good or bad, which are important to you, because you don’t believe the people you would like to tell them to would care, and you’re still not in the stage where you’ll bore any stranger just to get them out of your system.

 

So you just blog, even if nobody reads it.

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It wasn’t up to him, he said. Nothing was ever up to him.

 

[….] He seemed so passive; not just today but always, as though his whole movement through life had been guided by decisions that were not his own. He was pushed this way and that, like a fictional character controlled by a malicious author.

(about Terry, p 322)

Story of my life. After all, I was brought up to be like that.

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So much of his life was dictated by habit, he sometimes thought. Habit, punctuated by the uncontrollable and the unpredictable.

(David, p 326) 

In fact my attempt at emigrating to my homeland was the only major attempt in my life to do more than just protect the status quo against unfavourable changes in circumstances making it even worse.

(originally posted probably on WordPress)

 

Richard Morgan: The Steel Remains

It probably wasn’t a good idea, but he hadn’t been having many of those since he got back anyway.

(about Ringil Eskiath) 

Ever since I went into self-imposed exile where I’d once lived I seem to be simply carried on by inertia, old habits and past experience. Hardly having any goals I’ve hardly any ideas about achieving them, let alone good ones.

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She missed her home, with an abrupt, almost painful pang, now that she thought she might never see it again.

(about Archeth Indamaninarmal)

I love to see pictures of Scotland on the internet, in particular those of places I know first-hand, but occasionally upon seeing one I need to make an effort to prevent tears flowing from my eyes.



(originally posted probably on WordPress)