I've been awol for a long time. I know, I should tell you something you don't already know, right? Still, you cannot beat starting a post with a little bit of rhetoric. I've made no mystery of my dislike for summer in many missives I sent you and in many posts over the past two years. But something, or rather some things, happened to me over the past few months to make this summer my crappest since time immemorial. It's a funny thing, in a way, because I cannot really tell you about anything earth-shattering; it was not. It's not even anything as grave as to grant this pervasive sense of helplessness and tiredness that has affected me since May.
Part of me knows that, since taking up a new assignment in January, I had been working full steam ahead up a learning curve that, soon after the beginning, turned into a greased vertical line. It stayed that way all through to the Jubilee, when I took the week off to go to London and have a fantastically good time, while it instead turned into one of those crash-and-burn scenarios when your body, at once sustained by adrenaline and lack of sleep, merely gives up on you. And the sense of uneasiness that has stayed with me is all down to something I really hate to admit to: I haven't been ok since. Not even near ok. To throw my legs down the bed in the morning requires an effort that often leaves me with watering eyes.
Yesterday I drove for a good hour to take myself out in the sticks where I endured an MRI scan on my spine. The whole point to go so far from home was down to the inadequacy of the MRI close to home: this one is a closed machine, the other was open. I'm a bit scared of being slid into a coffin while I'm still alive and so opted for the drive but I cannot tell you that the experience was particularly pleasant all the same.
By the time I made it home in the late afternoon, I felt even more queasy, sore and tired than I had done in the morning. Then I woke up at 2 am and didn't get back to sleep. I was unable to drive to the office, as vast amounts of anti-inflammatories and painkillers wrote me off for the rest of the day. It's now evening, and I am toying with the idea of eating something but I've got nothing inspiring in the fridge (and by inspiring, let's face it, I really mean comforting) and I cannot quite believe that I picked up a packed of 'half-fat' cookies in Marks the other day because if you go to Marks you definitely need to buy the full fat variety.
So there my dear gentle reader, that's where I've been for the past few months, down with my face in the gutter, slowly crawling through broken glass both at work and at home, where one of my dogs is particularly old and where I've therefore very much struggled to get to grips with mere ageing and all that it entails, whether it affects humans or animals. Talk about new, life-changing experiences...
Equally, I've thought of you often. When I occasionally checked my stats and saw that I was still clocking up approximately 1,000 visits per week, I did wonder about those readers. Sure, many land on here as they're trawling the net for biographical details on vampire literature and for many other topics I've written about, but I do know via the mails I receive, especially every time I throw a Creative Times out there, that at least some of you are still checking in for something new. And it's a bit kick-in-the-teeth-esque, isn't it, to leave your readers without a word after all. So here are the things I've occupied myself with when feeling a little bit better since we last spoke...
I've subscribed to The Agatha Christie Book Collection and have figured out that in approximately three years from now I'll own all of her books. I get two a month and I'm utterly addicted. Some I had already read, some others are new to me, such as The Mystery of The Blue Train which arrived yesterday. If it's only half as good as the Orient Express...
I'm taking Tammy's wonderful course, The Museum of Simple Things. Registration has now closed (too bad for you!), but I'm sure that more is to come in the autumn. And while you wait you could always get a set of lovely prompts that Tammy has created.
I went to The Phantom of the Opera in London and have been wondering what took me so long. I'm also reading the wonderful book but I must warn you that the musical is to the book what Ford Coppola's Dracula is to the novel of the same name. Over-romanticism has turned the monster into the lonely wretch worthy of our affection. Still, I'd rather be with Raoul any day. Don't forget the hanky when you go...
I picked up a Polaroid Spectra for a song in a charity shop. Then I read Instant Love and spent £££ in Impossible Project film.
I've read lots of other books, including the very wonderful Creating Time. More on this one very soon...
