A Year and a Day.

A year and a day on from when I moved to this flat the world looks a very different place. On that day snow lay on the ground and we were expecting more. I was terrified out of my wits and had barely eaten for two weeks. I was wracked by self doubt, despair and devastation. My future felt so bleak and I was only warmed by the kindness of my many friends who turned out on that day to help me. I am truly blessed with my friends.

Today the sun shone on the hottest February day on record. My fear is banished. I'm back at work and thriving. The tough days do not send me running for the cover of a darkened room and a comforting duvet. Thoughts of my own destruction are far away. I have a beautiful flat where everything works, an agent who does what needs to be done and home security the likes of which I have not known since I moved to Hertfordshire. And I'm back somewhere close to my best without the mania of October.

Life being thus I have awarded myself an extra opera night. I was away at the weekend with the lovely Jayne. Back in Cambridge where I feel so linked with my life. The sun shone then too. The journey home was not great but I made it.

This evening I cooked stir fried fish with black beans and a trickle of chilli oil, very good. My culinary adventures will continue to play their part in keeping me sane and monitoring where I'm at.

Work is not easy at the moment. Unprecedented demand, people being off and tough complex casework. Had everyone turned up today I would have seen eight people in a day. Can't keep doing that forever. But I will persevere and take each as it comes. I try to remind myself that I am good at this. Such a far cry from a year and a day ago.

I return now to my Handel. Take care out the there and enjoy the early spring sunshine.

I Heard a Voice.

Into the Setting Sun.

Driving home today I left the campus just as the rain clouds were clearing into the setting sun. A brilliant orange orb low in the sky it heralded the end of a difficult day.

Difficult partly because I'm playing catch up after missing a few days last week. Difficult as my colleague is unwell. Difficult because supply can't keep up with demand. But most difficult is the anger I have witnessed in the last couple of weeks. We are human. We get things wrong. We try to do the best we can. But we don't always succeed.

The weekend had been difficult after a brutal Friday. I did make it to London. The meal in China Town was pretty poor. I bought some opera. And I marvelled at how it has changed there since that four months I spent in hospital there in 1994. The run down seediness of Soho is not quite so evident. The restaurants I ate in are all gone. Prices have rocketed. Swarms of people litter the pavements all bustling to get where they want to be now. And in the middle, little me, reminiscing as I so often do and wonder what might have been.

It was good to be back home today. I'm not slipping back into the maelstrom that was this time last year. I'm taking it a step at a time and managing each day to make a start on something.

Sausage and mash was my simple supper. I've cleared up. I have Classic FM on and wondering what to do now.  A little Beethoven might do the trick and another chapter in Howards End. Here's to brighter, less rainy days with light covering our steps and progress without anger be achieved. See you soon.

I Heard a Voice.

Tudor Music, Sunshine and an Enforced Break.

I don't very often get to hear Choral Evensong on Radio 3 in the week. Yesterday was different though. And so wonderful to hear music from the Renaissance. A turbulent time in England certainly. And Catholic Spain vying from supremacy. England uncertain of its religious identity it was a time of fear, suspicion and danger. But what music!

The broadcast was from Leeds Cathedral and featured both Tallis from England and Victoria from Spain. I didn't really get that sort of music when I was younger. We certainly recorded a number of masses from that century. They were lost on me as long and difficult. Now I rejoice at their magnificence.

Being home on a Wednesday was not exactly planned. As I alluded on Tuesday I have not been very well. What it is remains a mystery and my attempts to see a GP were in vain. Today at last though I'm beginning to feel better.

I didn't go in today but hope to tomorrow. I did take a drive and walk in the country. Unseasonably mild the sun shone and I listened to the songs of the birds. For the first time since the weekend I feel at peace.

Back at home I'm listening to Radio 3 once again with Falla's opera La Vide Breve. More music from Spain although a very different era. Recently I have felt that sense of wanting once again to go to Spain. To eat tapas. To enjoy the sun. To see the culture. Whether my anxiety or purse will allow that I'm not sure. I do hope one day I feel sufficiently strong and robust to travel again. It is something to look forward to.

Enjoy that beautiful day out there if you can.

I Heard a Voice.

Under Inky Skies.

Under an inky sky and pale light of a setting sun I left my office at 5 pm yesterday. It had been a busy day. I hadn't known where to start but managed to make some progress. The day was marred by discomfort having woken with abdominal pain but nothing too serious. Not sure what was going on and trying to forget about it the rest of the day progressed as normal.

Fully expecting to feel fine this morning it was not so good that I woke in more discomfort. I called in to cancel the day then went back to bed. I woke three hours later thinking I must be ill. Uncertain if it was worth bothering a doctor I instead elected to stay home in the warm. Now approaching 4 pm there is no change.

Handel plays and I'm content to ride it out. I will cook later but am sticking to the copious amounts of water I've already consumed. Sarah is coming tonight for kefte kebabs. I did text offering to cancel or carry on but as yet no answer. So I while away each hour and wonder what will be.

This unwell interlude is merely trifling. Mentally I feel pretty good after the setback of the end of last week. That I can bounce back from the hard days is a good sign. There will be more to come of course but my armour is not fatally pierced, my resilience of intellect still holds sway most of the time. And I feel I'm doing something useful.

Life without purpose is soul destroying. How to stay depressed is to do nothing. As Shakespeare brilliantly pointed out in King Lear "nothing shall come of nothing". O how foolish I was back then not to seize the opportunities that came my way. But I was kept stuck by my own fear and knowledge that to start to do was to mean a massive cut in income. That was the battle I fought again last winter when defeated by circumstance and burn out I floundered on what my future might be.

A year on illness aside normality is somewhere in my grasp. But I still need to take it a day at a time.

I Heard a Voice.

A Walk in the Fens.

There is a certain beauty to winter sun. Not the winter sun discovered by hopping on a plane and seeking out sunny beaches when the cold comes here. No, that pale, ethereal light on bitterly cold clear days that brings joy to my eyes and soul. I'm appreciating nature in a way that has changed in recent years. Is it a sign of middle age? I prefer to call it distinguished.

On Sunday afternoon Miriam and I set out for Wicken Fen and did a short walk around the nature reserve. The National Trust is a magnificent entity that belongs to our nation. Through reeds and fen we walked as that beautiful light bathed a Sunday afternoon. Glorious.

Back at the visitor centre and ticket office they had fine things for sale. I bought some local Cambridgeshire honey and some horseradish and cider mustard. Armed with these and some home made plum chutney I made my way home through the wet grey day that was Monday in the disappointment of the Rams defeat. But I had fine things to try.

Today was a little mixed. People didn't turn up. I had no time for lunch. I sat on a stall at an open day and saw a grand today of six people in three hours. Then I came home. Then life brightened up. I marinated a chicken leg in a mix of the honey and mustard, added some fresh thyme, salt, pepper and rapeseed oil. Baked for thirty minutes the result was sublime. How much better is food when one sources the best ingredients?

Content and full I'm listening to Maria Callas singing Verdi and sipping a chilled glass of white Rioja. My unwinding time is so precious to me. Without it I fear I would never have climbed out of the black hole I inhabited a year ago.

After this I will immerse myself in E M Forster. Enjoying Howards End but only make slow progress. See you all again at the weekend.

I Heard a Voice.

Saying Goodbye, So Many Years Ago.

On a wet, grey Monday afternoon I found myself back in Cambridge waiting for a train. With nearly an hour to wait my mind drifted off to another time. Another time another place. To a sunny summer day. That day marked the end of one part of my life and the beginning of another.

I said a tearful goodbye to Rachel on that summer day all those years ago. A day later I graduated from Cambridge and the last bastion of my defence against mental illness crumbled into the dust. I would remain in touch physically with her for another four years. Then like a ghost she left my life without saying goodbye and was lost forever to posterity.

Silly really so long later to always remember that day when I pass through Cambridge. A few years later I returned to Cambridge hoping to rekindle that love affair with a place that has played so large a part in my life but that Cambridge had died long ago. Like us cities age and change. Deep down I would love to go home to Cambridge but I fear I'm better off sticking with what I know now rather than harken after an age long ago.

The rest of my journey was uneventful. The rain falls here too but I'm home in the warm with the radio on, some belly pork to roast and an evening of leisure. Work can wait until tomorrow. I had sincerely hoped that when I posted today I would be proclaiming the Los Angeles Rams as Super Bowl champions but sadly it wasn't to be. Half the team simply didn't show up as my American brethren put it. Who knows what the odds might have been on a 13-3 scoreline for two of the highest scoring offenses in the NFL. But that was that. Social media is lit up by angry Rams fans ranting. Sadly that sort of vitriol is all too common on the internet. Why do people have to be so vile and unkind when they are unhappy?

I will leave you now. Enjoy February, spring is not too far away now.

I Heard a Voice.