Well, can't you just tell I'm back?

Can’t you just tell that I’m back from my holidays!

Not only is it October (which means that the shops are full of Christmas cards, baubles, tinsel and crackers but nothing that is remotely useful in the meantime), but it’s p*****g down with dull grey skies. The train was late this morning and therefore missed its ‘slot’ all the way up the line and got stuck at every red signal between Oxted and Victoria, and I waited 25 minutes for a circle line tube which was, apparently, running a ‘good service’.  

To top it all off, we have no phone nor internet due to a major fault at BT’s end (along with most of Bletchingley and Godstone, so I understand) so I can’t check my bank account to see how much I have overspent on my holidays and The Hubby cannot complete an important job application form which must be done by Wednesday and submitted on line. The BT fault reporting line says the problem is not likely to be fixed until Wednesday 3^rd, which means in more ways than one we are totally f****d! So I’m writing this at work!

I could turn this into a rant, which might at least make me feel better, but mostly it would serve no purpose other than bore you all rigid. But I must say there’s nothing like a good rant from time to time as I’m sure you’ll agree. To be honest, there doesn’t even have to be anyone there to listen or to reply to me, just getting it all out of the system is incredibly cathartic.

I have in the past made the mistake of having the rant without also dealing with the issue calmly and reasonably. It’s an approach which has got me nowhere and lost me a few friends. So now, I tend to rant on here and be reason personified (well, for a while) to resolve it or get what I want. But I still think there is a definite place for the rant, and that it’s very important.

I could never be one of those repressed people that don’t show their feelings at all. I mean, surely we all need an outlet? I always get the feeling that that sort of person must go home and punch through the living room door in frustration, don’t you? Either that or they kick the cat or something!  If they don’t what do they do to calm down and sleep at nights? There’s no way that I could go to bed and sleep (even though emotion and frustration makes you exhausted) if I hadn’t managed to get it out of my system somehow.

Some people, of course, turn to counselling and good luck to them if it works for them. It never has for me, and every counsellor I have ever come across (I saw a couple of them when my first marriage broke down) has been a sanctimonious, patronising w****r (gosh, there’s a lot of swearing in today’s blog! Must mean I feel strongly). And many people I know (but not all) who have seen counsellors certainly don’t seem to have derived any benefit from it, but then perhaps I have a biased and slightly jaundiced view of them (the counsellors, not the friends!)

Anyway, got to knuckle down now for a few weeks until I go away again (the benefit of having your own place abroad is you can go often and cheaply!). Knowing my luck it’ll chuck it down the whole time and there will be a major rail failure at least once a week. Hey ho…..

Not a morning person

I am feeling rather grumpy this morning.

The alarm went off with a bit of a jolt at 6am (The Hubby has to get up that early, not me) with a bouncy Radio 4 announcer talking fairly assertively about politics. I’d like to say here that Radio 4 is not my choice and hasn’t ever been; I am a Radio 2 woman, although less so now that Terry Wogan has retired.

After the usual frantic scrabbling to try and switch it off, making the mistake of instead switching it from radio to buzzer and back again, then The Hubby putting on the light to see what he’s doing and eventually switching the damn thing off, I feeling exhausted.  I was wide awake, so I suppose it’s done it’s job, just unfortunately an hour earlier than necessary. Attempts to get back to sleep failed dismally, and so I decided to get up and come into work early, and leave early this afternoon to compensate as incredibly I have no meetings today except one very short one at 10.30am.

I am not a morning person. It takes me a good hour or so to really come round with the aid of strong tea and splashes of cold water (the splashing is done by me and not anyone else, you understand. That would be unkind first thing in the morning and possibly lead to a murder charge!). I can’t eat breakfast until I have been up at least an hour or more, and so tend to buy myself something when I get up to central London. Usually it’s a bacon roll and a coffee, but this morning it was a Maccie D breakfast of sausage and egg McMuffin, hash brown and coffee. A rare treat, but oh so delicious. Sadly, not very diet! But I don’t like cereal very much, fruit means I am hungry again in an hour and so eat something really sinful, and I prefer something savoury for breakfast, so the options are limited.

I can do the getting up early thing with sufficient incentive, such as catching an early flight on holiday, but I hate it. The Hubby, on the other hand, can leap straight out of bed when the alarm goes off at whatever time and be bouncy and wide awake immediately. It is one of his less understandable and less endearing traits, but one I have got used to. And it does have its uses – he makes the tea at the weekend! Less usefully, he expects me to be fully with it early on too, and starts talking about DIY projects or family finances, which I really can’t deal with. I may have been rather scratchy about it in the past, not sure!

Fortunately this morning I was able to get up in peace, drink my tea and stagger round getting ready for work with no one else there trying to engage with me except the cats, who looked slightly surprised to see me out of my pit so early. No one talks to each other on the train that early, and if people do get on chatting to others or on their phones they soon shush after getting black looks from everyone else who is buried in their newspaper or sleeping. So the train was quite peaceful too. I have now had my coffee and Maccie D breakfast and feel slightly more human, probably a good thing since I have to do a quick staff briefing for 30 people at 10.30.

Having got up so early, I will be grumpy and tired by 9pm tonight. So not really an evening person either.

Actually, I’m not sure what my optimum time of day is. I don’t think I have one!

Suicide or selfish

I am one of the ranks of harried commuters that put up with the vagaries of the train system day after day. When I took my job, I anticipated being a commuter for a couple of years - so far I've worked there almost seven years!

Yesterday, on the way home, it was chaos. Someone had jumped on the track from a bridge between Clapham and Croydon and must have been sprayed everywhere by an express train, because the whole network in that area was at a halt.

I have never understood why you would take your own life. It has always seemed to me that for an adult that does not have a mental illness (and therefore by implication is fully in control of their actions), suicide is the ultimate in selfish acts. It devastates those you leave behind and doesn't really solve anything except for the person that does it. The fallout lasts far longer than a death by natural causes or accident. And to commit such an act in a way that inconveniences thousands of others really pisses me off.

Don't get me wrong; I don't underestimate the despair that financial difficulties or failed relationships can bring. I have been pretty low with both problems myself at some stage or another of my life. But always, at the back of my mind even in my lowest moments, has been the knowledge that in many ways I have much to celebrate in my life. My children, my resilience, my health and my ability to make success out of nothing, even if it takes a while. When the whole world seemed to be against me, there was always something and I wouldn't have made my family suffer by imposing the guilt they would feel if I had topped myself.

Whoever it was that jumped, well I'm sorry for your trouble but actually, not as sorry as I could have been if you'd been less selfish, sought some help and sorted things out with people that care about you or in the remote chance you don't have any of those, proper professionals. You may have felt you had nothing to live for, and you have now shared that feeling with your family. And inconvenienced about half a million people in the doing. Well done.