Settling Down
22 November

Well, I suppose inevitably, as time goes on, Ross and I are setting down into a routine and the current situation becomes more normalised and less of a surreal rollercoaster ride. We accept the good days and the bad.

Ross overdid it last weekend when his parents were here. I guess he didn't want them to see that his is so discomforted. Maybe he's afraid that they will whisk him away. Maybe going home would be just one more defeat. Anyway, he forced himself round Tesco's with them and kept his energy levels up to entertain them and the moment they were out the door he pretty near collapsed into a heap of aching muscles that lasted til Wednesday. Still, that's part of our steep learning curve. There's a price to pay for over-doing it.

Work was better this week. For the first time in about six months, I spent some time midweek doing things creative, what I really enjoy doing, writing course materials, distilling ten years of knowledge and experience into prose that is informative and understandable to people without my knowledge. Fair perked me up it did.

Some social contact on Wednesday night with a colleague from work brought light relief. Colin returned from a working vacation in Ghana and it was good to talk with him. Unsurprisingly, he had wise words about Ross's ME. Sean also e-mailed in with support.

I've been in contact too with Rod and Dale in Seattle. It's unlikely now that Ross and I will be making our planned trip to West Coast America. But we'll do it sometime. However, holidays have been in our thoughts. Both Chris in Köln and Roland have suggested that we should try for some winter sun. Roland made the mistake of suggesting a cruise down the Nile in the week that 62 tourists were massacred in Luxor. I think I favour Madeira. Quite, relaxed and 15-20°C, which feels quite acceptable in early February.

Surprise phone call from Phil on Monday morning. Possibility of some freelance work up in the North West. We'll see how the energies go. But it's tempting.

Cambridge Chris has been forwarding a number of good jokes. I liked this one particularly.

Gay man walks into his local gay bar, walks up to the cutest of the bar staff and asks for a double entendre.

What should the bartender do?

Give him one, of course.

Many contacts with family and I'm seeing Gill and Robert later today.

As you can see, it's a long list of people who I've been in contact with recently. And that makes a great change from postings to this Journal over recent months. Sometime over the summer, I began talking with people less and less. Eventually I stopped writing for this Journal. I suppose I should have guessed that something was going on. I suspect that as Ross was gradually becoming more tired, I was unconsciously picking up the slack and becoming more weary myself with less energies for other people. Easy to spot in retrospect, the old 20/20 hindsight, and, in truth, I think that I did know that something was changing. I just didn't know what it was or chose to put it down solely to feeling unsettled at work and being discomforted by my sister's wedding.

Another thing that has prompted a re-assessment of my lack of communication was the conversation I had with James a couple of weeks ago. Somehow the conversation got round to commitment and relationships and from nowhere I came up with this test that, for someone to whom you were really committed, you would fling yourself in front of the gunman's bullet to protect them and that you could tell the depth of your love as to whether or not you would do it without thinking or indeed whether or not you would do it at all.

We agreed there were some people for whom there was almost no choice. For me, that amounts to blood ties - mum and dad, Linda, Robert and, surprisingly, since I've seen little of him, my cousin, Trevor. Then, there are people for whom there is a matter of choice but for whom you'd do it anyway without thinking. And for me that amounts to Ross. Finally, there's the list of people for whom you might think about it or you might react without thinking - and, for me, that list probably includes just Gill and maybe, at a pinch, Colin in Brixton. Not surprisingly, since it's a drastic test, it's a short list. The rest, of course, are dead.

Anyhow, although most of you readers are dead by that test, it did get me thinking a lot more about the other people in my life and prompted me to consider being more considerate.

Lest you think that I'm the only one with social aspirations, Ross has also been visited by his College friend, Nerys, who brought all sorts of greetings from fellow students. And we're off for a meal with our next door neighbours this evening.

Opera visit last night. Verdi's Falstaff done by ENO. I've been mentioning to a number of people recently that I must be getting middle-aged, stale and jaded because little that I've seen this year operatically has stirred the passions. Well this performance went a long way to restoring my faith in matters operatic.

The first two acts certainly were a delight - the third less so but then again I still have firmly fixed in my mind's eye the magic woven by Peter Stein's Welsh National Opera production. There were a number of things I would quibble with - Falstaff to me is more autumnal than winter in its setting but then, musically, I heard more ice in the woodwind than I've ever heard before so maybe there was some justification for it. And that really was the nub of the success of the evening's entertainment - what happened on stage fitted what the music said, it worked with rather than against the sound world of the piece.

Many good performances, keenly observed but the vital thing was that this, of all pieces, needs to be experienced as an ensemble work - and here it was. A good two thumbs up, I'd say.

Ross didn't go so I went with another blast from the past - Fred. Good to see him again. Looking well and coping well with the fact that his partner, Dave, is in the middle of a long stint doing research at Berkley, California. Don't think I'd like a long distance relationship like that.