Letter number 34: Incommunicado

Dear Alexandra,

This letter is unashamedly a journal/brain dump for my benefit — I honestly don’t really have much I want to write to you at the moment. I think that’s a healthy thing, it’s not a tantrum or ghosting or anything like that. Last night I took a couple of precautionary paracetamol to fend off any potential side effects my Covid-19 vaccine might manifest, I woke up early feeling absolutely fine. Who knows if the medicine helped or I’m just one of the lucky ones who doesn’t seem to have any symptoms from it at all.

The injection site is a tiny bit tender if I prod it, but there’s no bruising and you can’t even see where the needle went in. I’m really pleased! Maybe making sure I was well fed before and after the jab helped, who knows? Either way I’m certainly not going to complain! Whilst I awoke early I did lounge about in bed for a couple of hours watching banal rubbish on TV (Dinosaurs on Disney+ — I remember loving it back in the day, watching it back I’m not too sure why — but it’s good background noise!).

Probably the best thing about today was that I spent most of it at home. In the morning I pottered around sorting out the dishwasher, wrapped up presents for nephew and sister-in-law and wrote cards for them. I’m off to theirs tomorrow after football as it’s nephew’s actual birthday. They’ve got a bell tent set up in the garden and it looks like a mini festival, maybe I’ll take my uke over and torture them with some songs, haha! Maybe not.

I spent lots of time playing with Sonic, I’ve been trying to encourage him to have a bit more independence — to fly to his play stand to grab a snack, or to go back to his cage for a drink/food on his own. He’s starting to do that. In truth because I’ve generally flitted in and out the house he had been getting lots of time out but in small windows so he didn’t really need to, but now I’m letting him out for longer periods as I’m happier being at home than I had been in recent weeks.

Mum and Buddy came around early afternoon and we drove to Ticknall to do the walk with the old tramway tunnels — quite a gentle 5.5 miles, but really nice and interesting scenery, somewhere a bit different (for them at least!). We had a cup of tea when we got back, I’d been keeping half an eye on the football results as the season gets near its end it’s quite funny watching how Derby seem to slide ever closer to potentially getting relegated. They basically need to not lose to Sheffield Wednesday in the last game to avoid this.

There’s also the unlikely possibility that Rotherham could win their remaining two games and overtake them too. Good fun. Amusingly Forest could have done Derby a favour in beating Wednesday today, but only drew 0–0 and missed a penalty. Now this is definitely written for my benefit, you wilfully hated everything to do with football, although did get quite into one of the international tournaments a few years ago, I forget which. That’s okay though, we can’t like all the same things!

After Mum and Bud left there was more time to spend with Sonic, I put films on that it didn’t matter if I drifted away from as I knew them quite well already. I made more progress encouraging him to fly around the place for himself instead of wanting to be in your face the whole time he’s out. Bless him, I am conscious that the impact of everything I’ve been through has an impact on him too. I think my turning a corner is really helpful for him too.

This morning I booked tickets for the one day mini-festival S. has organised at the place he just moved to. He’s organised a great line up and it’s for a great cause — originally I was planning on just driving there/back — but that would be silly. It’s a 3 hour odd journey each way, I’ve done sillier, but eventually I relented and bought a camping pass too. Which means I’ll either need to buy a tent (or a van? Ha, no, not that again!) or find someone with space for me to crash. There’s lots of friends going, so that could be an option.

My general policy on things like this, much like with M.’s birthday party, is to simply ascertain whether I’d like to go or not. If I would, then I’ll confirm or book it. I’ll worry about the possibility of you coming if that transpires, I don’t think it’s very likely as you’d need to get there, you’d need to camp which you hate, you’d probably need your Dad to come which I doubt he will. You’d also need to re-engage with your festival friends, which I don’t think you will either.

So clearly I’ve thought about it. The risk is pretty small, and it turns out you do come, then that’s a great sign that you’re emerging from the virtual cocoon, I guess. It’s not until September, that’s four months away and I’m sure everything will seem much clearer to both of us by then. I think I might have to buy a bloody tent though, haha, I thought my tenting days were over! But well, I can’t keep driving to and from things that are really far away it’s good to have the option to stay over even if it’s a hassle.

After having a lazy cereal bar breakfast / lunch I made a lovely roasted sweet potato, ginger and garlic chicken and spinach stew. It was a HelloFresh recipe so designed for too but since I’ve done well on burning calories and am still using vaccine recovery as an excuse to indulge I just troughed all of it! It was lovely, proper comfort food in a big bowl! Then it was more Sonic time, he’s had a busier day than normal bless him!

I’ve worked out that I think I can remove a layer from Frankie’s cage to make it a lower height that could work really well as a holiday/travel cage for Sonic. I spent quite a lot of today looking for something suitable if I wanted to take him either to a friends’ house if I’m staying over or even on UK based holidays (as Aunty B. suggested) — so I’m going to experiment with that when the weather gets warmer and I can commence operation clean-the-birdcages. It’ll save me some money which is always good!

Sherlock Bert has stayed very quiet still, which I’m pleased about. I have the occasional thought that leads me toward him but I’ve been able to swat them away. My Facebook memories today threw up a song I posted of me playing on uke that was one of our songs. It doesn’t last long though, and it’s still a lovely song (perhaps not with me performing it!), and whatever sentiments I attached to it were true of the time even if not now.

Healthy functioning or what? I do idly wonder how you’re doing from time to time, but I try not to let those thoughts linger, and seem to be succeeding most of the time. It’s usually when I’m driving, strangely, I noticed it on the way back from football last night — thankfully I seem to have been able to limit those trains of thought when I’m sitting at home where it always used to take root and consume me. 8 days since our last contact, and that doesn’t feel like the end of the world any more, and around 4 since I last checked to see if you’d posted on Facebook.

I probably post on there every other day or so, but only typically banal and trivial social media things. Getting vaccinated, Sonic related things. No more posts on my publicly identifiable blog, the last thing I posted on there was about the vasovagal episode, the two before that were more related to the mental struggles I’ve been grappling with. I’ve not felt drawn to continue the series, I might do as I move through the more formalised therapy sessions. I might not. Who knows?

But yes, for now I’m trying and somewhat succeeding in remaining present — and making plans for things to look forward to. Football and birthday celebrations tomorrow, a walk in the Peaks with A. on Monday, back to work on Tuesday, obviously lots of football next week too, the weekend after I’m planning on meeting K. for a walk somewhere between where we live. I must ask Mum if I can kidnap Buddy, he’s great with other dogs and she has a stunning collie, and they’re my unashamed favourites!

And then further out things, a few gig tickets here and there, the mini-festival I mentioned. I’m actively going to reclaim the things I want to retain from our shared world — it’s a world I was a part of before we were together, and I’ll be buggered if I’m going to let sentimentality or associations drive a wedge between me and it. I’m definitely not planning on getting back to peak gigging-and-festivalling Bert of 5 years ago or so, but I’m looking forward to dipping my toe again a little.

Also Logical Bert put his foot down with Optimistic Bert (or whatever name I gave him before!) and deleted the ridiculous dating bit of Facebook. It’s far too soon to be thinking about that, even idly without clicking ‘like’ on anyone, and frankly, it’s just not really likely to be a good way to meet somebody when it does feel like the right time. In the past that time has come when I’ve least expected it, and not necessarily been looking for it. Of course the passage of time and not getting any younger is concerning, but there’s no point in leaping headlong into something else this soon.

I hope the time we’ve not been in communication has been of benefit to you too — maybe it has. In some ways it seems like ages, in other ways not so much. It’s weird. It’s strange we can have so little to say to one another after all the time we’ve shared, but our relationship was always a little odd, and well, it came to a close quite catastrophically so maybe we need that time to let the dust settle before we work out whether we can reopen communication channels. I’m not closed off to the idea, but I’m not desperate to initiate it either.

I think that’s probably a healthy attitude.

I hope you’re doing okay, Bert