I am writing this early because I am going to go to bed.
I am still wallowing in the after effects of a cold, which according to the mighty Internet is now called Sinusitis. This is a medical term for a headache that won’t go away, usually accompanied by chronic self-pity, both symptoms I have very definitely got. I have alleviated the worst of this with as many drugs as I think I can get away with without looking like a self-harmer, but am now so profoundly tired that I can hardly see, and my eyes keep closing of their own accord. Hence I am going to write to you, take the dogs out, and go to bed.
I am not going to go to work. This has been made possible by a very, very welcome parental subsidy. I was grateful for this, and will also be happy once the headache has subsided and my watery, bloodshot eyes have opened again.
I have had a busy day. You will be pleased, although not as pleased as I was, to hear that my tramp was not in the Library Gardens last night, and so presumably he has found somewhere else to stay, since I have not heard on the village grapevine that any corpses have been found anywhere, and I would have known by now, I have been to the Post Office and everything.
This morning it was very pleasant indeed to wake up to a tramp-free home. It was not misfortune free, the cats do not seem to wish to use their litter tray during the hours of darkness, but once that was cleared up it was all right. I would observe that there are some advantages to a blocked nose.
I did the usual animal-feeding and laundry chores, and then the dogs and I set off for a walk. We have not been anywhere for ages, and the sun was shining brightly so I thought I would go up the fell and have a Good Think about my story. I have not written a single word of this for days and days, and I was beginning to think I needed to get on with it.
Thinking is an important part of writing, even if you are only a Guardian journalist. I spent part of yesterday evening listening to a talk given by my Cambridge course which included, amongst others, a Guardian journalist as a speaker. It featured what I considered to be the immortal line: Of course we will never tackle the climate change problem until we first resolve our very ableist attitudes.
You might not be surprised to learn that this left me entirely perplexed.
Ableist, as far as I could tell – it was not a word I have come across before – seemed to mean the insensitive belief that it is not a good thing to be disabled. Apparently you are not supposed to think this, which surprised me. I have always thought that it is not at all a good thing to be disabled. I wouldn’t like it, and was disappointed to discover that this made me a Non-Correct thinker.
I was further puzzled by the what seemed to be an entirely unsubstantiated implication that the world might be getting warmer because of this belief, but everybody else nodded in virtuous agreement, so I was in a minority, certainly in Cambridge. I had my microphone switched off and was trying to get ready for work whilst I listened, so it seemed too difficult to argue.
The whole talk was very much along these lines. It was about Writing and Well Being. I thought it might include some helpful advice for getting rid of headaches, so I was looking forward to it, but it didn’t. It was an awful lot of clatter about Being At One With Nature. Frankly it was so much over my head that I didn’t even understand the questions. Maybe I am just too dim for Cambridge.
Anyway, this morning I was inspired to be At One With Nature myself, and took the dogs up over the fell.
It was still minus four degrees, even in the sunshine. The world was a sheet of terrible ice. This continued even up the fells, where the tufts of grass poking through the frozen snow looked as though they might provide a reliable foothold, but in fact were frozen into a smooth surface.
I got very close to nature indeed. Several times I got so bruisingly close to nature that it was quite difficult to get back on my feet again, and there were a couple of bits where I had to crawl. I think the soles of my boots have worn a bit, and they are not quite as good at gripping as once they were. Since I am their third owner, and the first two owners were a member of the PT Corps and a pupil at Gordonstoun, they have seen some considerable use.
I have attached a picture, to save a me a thousand words. The whole four-mile round trip was much like this, and it took ages. Even the dogs kept falling over, and there was one moment when I thought we were all three going to descend back to the bottom of a steep hill in one undignified plummet.
I did no thinking at all. I was too busy trying not to put myself in need of the Mountain Rescue.
Still, it was refreshing.
It is so very, very cold.
I am going to walk the dogs and get an early night.
