It is a very quiet night on the taxi rank, and the church next door is having a prolonged and noisy bell-ringing practice. Worse, my library book is rubbish.
I don’t quite know what I was thinking about when I chose it. It is all about how you can empower yourself if you are a woman, mostly by not telling yourself that you are fat and meditating instead of doing housework.
It is very boring indeed.
There is also a chapter about not drinking water out of plastic bottles. I do not see how this makes you more empowered but if it does then I am streets ahead already, perhaps this explains why people are reluctant to argue with me. I have never seen any need to pay £1.25 for a substance which comes out of all taps everywhere, for free, or at least very cheaply indeed. We have tap water to drink at work for when the tea runs out. We put some lemon and some mint leaves in it, and it is jolly nice.
As well as this, I do not need to tell myself that I am fat. Jumping up and down when I get out of the shower saves me the bother. If there was a bottom-jiggling competition I would be thoroughly in the running for the final heats.
I think that probably I need to renew my gym membership. I have not been since I had flu, and I have almost stopped coughing now, so I do not have any excuse at all. I am just idle. The difficulty is not that I am fat, but that I do not mind being fat badly enough actually to do very much about it. I think that the book is probably wrong about this. A bit of self-loathing might be quite beneficial in my case.
Also I do not do meditation. I have never understood the point in an activity for which I have got to make myself uncomfortable because there is a danger that I will just go to sleep if I don’t. If I am going to do something instead of housework then it is far more likely to be a glass of wine and an episode of A Game Of Thrones.
I have not got past the chapter on meditation. Fortunately I do not feel especially disempowered. It is obvious that I can’t do everything that a man can do. Some things are dirty, or heavy, or just simply men’s jobs, like emptying the camper van loo or putting spiders into the builders’ yard or carrying furniture up the stairs. I am resigned to my womanly lot, and so I would think I can probably manage without the rest of the book. I am going to chuck it into the boot and see if I can find something else.
I am trying to start writing a new story during the daytime. It is all there, inside my head, in vibrant pictures longing to get out, but so far I have not done anything about it. I was supposed to start writing it today, and tidied a space at my desk and saved a few clear hours for the purpose.
The thing was that being idle struck again. My internal resistance to actually getting started was so strong that after half an hour I realised that I was deeply immersed in preparing the figures for next year’s tax return.
I was cross with myself about this, because I do actually want to write this story. Also I would quite like to get my act together and do something with the last one, which I have filed on my desktop and then forgotten completely. There is a play as well. Even if I were just to chuck them on Amazon Kindle at 99p each it would be more productive than anything I have done so far.
Perhaps if I did some meditation it might inspire me to be more organised.
On the plus side I have nearly finished the tax return. I am very pleased with myself about that.
Have another picture of the Lake District. I did not take it today, but last week some time. It is raining today.
LATER NOTE: I found a different library book. This one is about a lesbian gang in Manchester who are killing people and selling drugs. It is far more interesting. So far they have shown no interest whatsoever in meditation, but they do not seem to have been disempowered by it. They have been in several nightclub brawls, murdered some other drug dealers and ridden their motorbikes at high speed around some holiday areas. It does not mention whether or not any of them think they are fat.
