I went to bed in all good faith feeling sleepy, started nodding off and then the telephone rang. After a short period of tossing and turning I decided that sleep was a long way off still so I got up and stumped downstairs with a my duvet and my book only to be joined by the girlie who had the same problem. We had a midnight feast – though not in the dorm – and watched a spot of Dads Army and she decided to give the sandman another try but I am even more wide awake now than I was then! So, here I am, 1am.

I have been mostly a bit distracted and a bit depressed recently. Oh not in any really heavy way but I just feel unsettled by things that are currently in transit. My girlie is having a gap year but although she is keeping busy she hasn’t found a job that is doing enough to stimulate her and it is worrying me. Added to which hubby announced yesterday that in fact his last day at work will be….this Friday. He ‘retires’ from the police technically at the end of January but with all the accrued time owing he finishes this week. I was expecting it to be December so this has pulled the rug out a bit. He is unsurprisingly quite up-and-down as anyone would be facing the end of a career so it doesn’t make for a relaxed atmosphere at home. And I am so busy at work atm that I don’t feel I am giving either of them enough attention. It doesn’t seem that long ago that the children were at school and hubby was at work and me working only part time I had time to do my housework (and etc.) without interruptions. In a few years everything is turned completely on its head and next week I shall be the only one going out to work. I need time to adjust.

And then there is Christmas just around the corner, which has a habit of creeping up on you while you’re still folding up your sandals. Actually I don’t have fold-up sandals so that is silly.

It has been a busy week at work as I have been doing some update sessions on Confidentiality. As it is directed at all the staff from highest to lowest I have had to break them down into three groups to make it manageable and I’ve done two of three so far. I prepared a presentation, booklets for the discussion group bit, and even made lunch but the best part was to see how much it got people talking and thinking. The first one I was very nervous about doing because there were at least two people in the group whose opinion I have heard on the subject of bad presentations and bad presenters. Today’s, however, was less daunting and therefore almost enjoyable. The performer in me, or rather the attention-seeking show-off in me, does like to have an audience - but I still prefer an audience that is sitting somewhere beyond the apron in the darkened stalls, it’s quite off-putting to see the whites of their eyes. But I even got a little round of applause for today’s session which made me feel quite shiny and nice for a while.

I think I really should try the whole sleep thing again now.

OMG how sad is that- I have had two glasses of champagne and I am pissed. I have had to re-write that sentence a few times.

No it’s not a party. The lady that does our window display for the upcoming play needed an empty champagne bottle and we only had full ones at home. Sooooooooooooo…. I said….well…its easy enough to empty one.

Hubby thought it very wasteful but I said that I can celebrate the fact that I got through my first presentation – of a series of three on confidentiality in the NHS – oh and btw, shhhh, I didn’t tell you that, it’s confidential.

I was so nervous. Partly because I had people attending whose opinion I have heard on the subject of bad presentations and bad presenters. I wonder why it is that when you want to if not impress than certainly not un-impress someone that you just fall apart at the seams doing something that really isn’t a tricky thing to do. But it was fine. Ok so I may not have been the best in the world but it got people talking over the topics and discussing it as a group – I couldn’t ask for more!

I am hoping that the effects of all this champagne on an empty stomach will soon wear off because I have to go out and take photos this evening and they don’t want to be blurry.

The southern rail network went completely to pieces today or least the part I was intending to use did. No less than three broken down trains caused such major delays that I got on a train that was nominally called the 7.31am to London but it’s departure time was in fact 10am. In point of fact I wasn’t really technically entitled to be on that train as I only had a cheap day return but in one of those quirks of fate today was a day for travelling free anyway with no one checking tickets and all the barriers open. That irked me I can tell you. I was only going into Eastbourne to visit my dentist which I was unable to do because the train was about twenty minutes too late for me to get there and I would have turned round and gone home but I had already bought me a ticket so I was determined to use it. To then face a journey I could have done ticketless was definitely irksome. Added to which there was a curmudgeonly old gent on the platform who wished to engage me in a tirade against the railway but my only real problem with the whole thing was having paid for a ticket no one looked at and that wasn’t his beef at all. I wasn’t agitated about the inefficiency of the rail network. I let all that sort of thing go right over my head, people are always complaining too much. I went into a chemist recently and asked for an item which the assistant was unable to furnish me with because the pharmacist wasn’t back from her lunch break, she was very apologetic but I said that it was fine, we all need to have lunch and she was grateful for my uncomplaining attitude. What’s the point in hassling people; it doesn’t make a nicer world. I think I may possibly have contradicted myself in that paragraph somewhat!

While I was in Eastbourne I pottered round the shops for a bit and I tried on a whole load of stuff – only really for the pleasure of seeing me slipping into a size 10 as I didn’t really want to buy anything – then I ambled despondently home, slightly wretched at the lack of usefulness in my day.

I did however get my Santa finished. See below.

The weekend of not doing much was a lovely island in between two weeks and it went much too quickly. Although I didn’t do much I did manage to get a few slabs laid. I have reorganised my vegetable garden a bit - made new raised beds (using my nice new tools!) which has meant taking up all the paths to re-lay them slightly to the left, or right. It has irked me for years that all the beds were different sizes and the paths didn’t meet up in quite the right places, it upset my Virgoan need for neat. I now have all the beds exactly the same size - and I measured and re-measured and spirit-levelled the damn things until I nearly went potty – and all the paths should now meet up and match corners. I don’t have a great deal of patience though and when I want to do a job, I want it done and done there and then. I am having to learn patience however as the slabs I am laying are much bigger and heavier than the previous ones – which means they should lay better - and I just can’t manage too many in a day. Four was really quite an achievement…for a weedy girl!

There have been moments of the day that have been magical. Actually, if I’m honest it was just the one moment but it did last a little while. I’ve missed out on my swimming for the last two Fridays because of the non-cold – which is still, incidentally, hanging round masquerading as a cough. Cue shuffling, tuberculotic hacking.

So having missed the exercise and the compelling smell of chlorine on the skin – I am to be found on Friday afternoons sniffing my forearms a lot – I was keen to get back to my Friday lunchtime treat of a few laps of the pool. I arrived to find the pool completely empty, unusually, and it was serenely blissful to do my lengths in the tranquillity of aloneness. Alone, that is, apart from my own personal life guard, a young man who worked his net alongside me. I don’t know if I looked like a feeble middle-aged woman that might get into difficulties easily or have a sudden heart attack in the pool and need fishing out but I prefer the illusion that my luscious mermaid form gliding through the water was drawing him like a moth to a flame.

Anyway it was quite the most perfect part of the day.

Other parts of it were less adequate of course like the moments of paranoia about people not replying to messages and mails. I don’t know why I get like that – I should get counselling for that maybe!

This evening we went to watch a local group performing The Gondoliers. It was like the curate’s egg, best with a pinch of salt – and a teaspoon. A moderned up version of the G&S classic which luckily had enough novelties in it to keep us awake during the duller tunes. There are always a few numbers in any musical which if it were on television could be usefully used as a kettle or loo stop – but in the theatre you are trapped in your seat and all you can comfortably do is rest your eyes for a few moments. During the interval my mother snared another dead animal story – the tale of a hamster decapitated by a fold-up bed – she is a magnet for these things.

I am looking forward now to a weekend of not very much – ah perfect.

We just finished watching Trinny and Susanna fondling the nation’s boobs. I have to say that it would be a damn sight easier for women to wear the right size bra if bras were made to the same dimensions for each size but they aren’t of course. I didn’t see it all so I don’t know if they covered what women do with mismatched boobs. I guess, like me, you have to accommodate the biggie and use any space left the other side for storage… small bottle of perfume, packet of tissues, biro, spare pair of shoes, etc. And I wasn’t entirely convinced that ‘Zadok the Priest’ was the most fitting pieces of music for nearly a thousand women to launch their bras into the sky to either.

In spite of some sunny and unseasonably mild days it is becoming increasingly clear that Christmas is not far away and so tomorrow the girlie is dragging me out to do some Christmas shopping. I’m nervous at the thought of all that fake snow and be-tinselled nonsense although it’s still quite early for full saturation level – nervous but excited! It’ll be nice to enjoy my day off as a day off, as I haven’t done so for a few weeks, and much as I love work I need a change of scene…

I spent much of the night tossing and turning and coughing. Mostly coughing. It was very frustrating because I did actually want to go to sleep and this is the umpteenth night I have had to drag myself downstairs to the sofa to avoid disturbing others. To add to the unpleasantness Katie, who was presumably irritated by the noise I was making, decided to go get a mouse and beat it to death on the floor in front of me. This was 2.30am-ish and if her motive was to get me out of the room it worked. I thought if I was going to be awake and coughing I might as well have the telly on, a cup of tea, and a slice of bread and chocolate spread. Shortly after that I fell completely asleep for a small amount of hours. A very small amount.

Spent most of the day helping man a stall at an art and craft exhibition. It wasn’t overly well attended but that’s often the way. It’s one way of spending time almost profitably – in my case not at all profitably but that’s the way the cookie crumbles. I invariably end up spending more than I make. Well you can’t say no to the wee lad who comes and asks you to buy a card so that he can buy himself a boat – he will go far in life! At some point I was sitting minding my own lack of business and listening to two ladies talking about dead cats - and wondering what else I could possibly want to do on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

I have often felt quite envious of the apparently exciting and full lives that others seem to lead but it is frequently a complete sham, a cover for emptiness and inadequacy, and the gloss suddenly seems a little tarnished. So, over the last few days I have developed a new appreciation for the quiet, simple little fragments of life that are quaintly amusing and touching. I just have to remember how to see them.

Time to catch up with the internet – sometimes life gets in the way of the important stuff!

The unending saga of the non-cold continues – I have lost my voice. We completely missed out the stage when it sounds husky-sexy and it just isn’t working at all. I still feel absolutely fine, tip top and full of beans but I sound dreadful. And I am a talker so this is really cramping my style. I was supposed to be trailing round places chatting to peops today but had to knock that one on the head – such a pain. I am supposed to be playing a part in a murder mystery play tomorrow and it’s starting to look like it might not the best idea in the world.

Stuff happens.

The other day our next door neighbour – a bit of a fruit loop – had water gushing out and overflowing from the pipe at the front of the house; it went on for hours and was coming from her bathroom. Eventually I had to persuade to hubby to go round and check things out. He was somewhat reluctant as he had visions of her being dead in the bath – in his line of work that’s not a novelty. He was gone for ages. When he eventually reappeared he said that all was now well, a simple problem, the pipe at the back of the house was leaking so she had been running the bath to ease the problem and fell asleep and forgot about it. It’s frightening to think how much water that wasted – we could have bathed a small elephant and still have some left over for a water balloon. She’s a bit of a liability really, she fell asleep cooking salmon one day and it took days for the smell to dissipate – from OUR house.

And then we have the small problem of trying to talk the mater out of joining a transvestite special interest group……….