We've just come to the end of that peculiar week in which we travel to work in the dark and come home in the light.
Awaking at 6am and journeying to Edge Lane for 8am so that I can leave at 4pm and be home before 5pm only serves to exacerbate this phenomenon.
It has been persistently wet over the past couple of weeks with more rain promised. Various Utility companies are no doubt pleased by this as they seek to replenish the reservoirs. I'm thinking that it's mainly down to the plethora of hurricanes and tropical storms in the Caribbean this year but 1998 was also wet. Was that a bad year for tropical storms too?
It's also been mild. As I drive into work at 7:30am, the electronic clock cum thermometer which I pass has regularly been showing 12-15°C. Thursday was the warmest 27 October since 1888. Which sort of shows that warm October days are not a recent thing.
Returning to work on Tuesday brought very sad news. One of my former students had been murdered the previous week, stabbed to death outside a pub during the day just off Lodge Lane. He'd had his problems when he was with us. Not in the training room; there he seemed to know his stuff.
But he had a criminal record for a youthful misdemeanour committed some fifteen years earlier. Whether it was the case that this held him back or whether, in fact, it was because he was allowing the criminal record to hold him back we shall never know. Certainly, it never seemed to be his fault whatever happened. But he deserved chances to get his life back on line. Not a knife.
All of this took the focus away from change and achievement at work. The change came with news that John has been manoeuvred out of work - oh, why am I pussy-footing? he's been sacked because he's been off work ill more often than he's actually been in attendance. This is both sad and a relief. How we would have coped with rehabilitating a drunkard I do not know. The achievement was my new course in Microsoft Project which had its first iteration and went very well indeed.
It being half term, Ross took one of his usual jaunts over to see his parents whilst I succumbed to the cold I have succeeded in not having for about three weeks now.
This also scuppered my sort of plans to organise a shag for myself with this young man
whose name is Paris. One of the bonuses of being a non-smoker has been, shall we say,
an increase in blood flow. In previous times, I might have expected Ross to jump all
over this opportunity but not these days it seems. I'm getting very grumpy about this
as I don't remember signing myself up to a life without sex. And note the
"Harumph!" factor in that sentence.
I have tried broaching the subject, honestly, but this is one of those areas of miscommunication between the two of us. Consequently, I usually end up feeling bad about myself - something to do with having spoilt the peaceful equilibrium - and I end up no further forwards in understanding Ross.
So, I was all ready to try girding my loins for a little unilateral action when my mucus membrane decided otherwise. And so I ended up moping at home on my own.
Actually, aside from this cold, I have actually been feeling pretty damn good so far this autumn. Very little of the usual onset of winter blues. The eczema which usually appears on my calves, shins and ankles has not materialised. And I have stopped taking my daily dose of inhaled steroids for asthma (I wonder if this is linked with having a new mattress).
So, what did I do? Well, I painted the walls of the music room with a second coat of the paint whose colour I am not that certain about. I took a phone call from Roland and ended up having a pint with him in The Edinburgh. I shopped for food for me and Ross and cooked a nice gammon steak for myself in the evening along with a couple of glasses of a pleasant shiraz.
Sunday dawned. The hour had gone back and both Nutkin and Jemima were looking forwards to Ross's return. I decided to try glossing some of the skirting board and picture rail but alack and alas the undercoat and the gloss did not take to each other and it was a mess. I was upset but Ross said we'd simply have to get another undercoat and leave it all for another day - which pissed me off since it feels like the job is beginning to drag again.
So, we settled down to watch the start of the new classic serial on TV - Bleak House - and first impressions were good. And then an early night were we cuddled and continued listening to Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy. Fabulous fantasy for an autumn bedtime.