Letter number 38: Respite
Dear Alexandra,
Yesterday must have been a better day as I didn’t feel compelled to write — I went into the office, it was quiet though, not many other folk were in, but enough to have some nice chats. It’s weird as some people I encounter I’ve not seen for literally more than a year in the flesh. It’s great to finally reconnect in person with them as that happens.
Lots of Facebook memories pop up of a certain festival at this time of year — maybe it’s linked to the time of the year observations I made lots of letters ago. I remember the first one of them we went to you seemed to get unfeasibly upset that we might be in some kind of trouble relationship-wise, for no reason I could ascertain. I know I’d had too much to drink one night and got lost on the site (impressive considering it was basically a field!), but yeah, it was weird.
Another year after we’d had a cycle of ignoring each other after you’d basically ignored me on my birthday (something you always denied, and I did respond petulantly in fairness) saw us reconcile at the festival. Its motto was always that magic happened there, and I must admit that once we’d put our then differences aside it certainly felt like that! So they’re bittersweet memories tied up with that particular event.
Mostly good though. My frame of mind after we breached our silence has been okay — that silence has resumed for now. Although I did just check the tracking code for the parcel of your stuff I sent you, it’s not been delivered yet — it should probably arrive tomorrow. I wonder if it’ll prompt you to get in touch? It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t, in truth. Part of me wonders if I should’ve pre-warned you it was on its way when we were exchanging messages but, well, it seems a bit late now!
But yeah, obviously lots of those memories on Facebook have us both tagged in them — a couple have been shared, you reacted to one of them. It could’ve set Sherlock Bert off but he’s remaining in the background thankfully. We clearly both need a bit of space and time from one another to process, to acclimatise to the ‘new normal’ — so I’m a little relieved that we seem able to grant that to one another. I just hope you’re not just utilising that space to just check out of reality. But I accept that’s your decision to make.
After work I headed to play football (shock, horror!) — the weather was nice today, our team was unbalanced and didn’t seem to be very organised so it was a bit frustrating. I worked hard though and put some decent running in so if nothing else it was a good workout. I stayed for a drink with S. and M. after the game which was a nice way to finished my out-the-house time of the day, I’m looking forward to further lockdown easing so I can catch up with more of my old work pals from Boots.
Once home I released Sonic after retrieving some packages that had been delivered, then got showered and sorted. I packed up things I’ll need tomorrow — I’m meeting K. for a walk in the morning in Bridgnorth, the weather forecast is shocking but I’ve found my waterproofs, haha! I’m really looking forward to it, I worked with K. in my last job, we got on really well and whilst connected on Facebook have had limited contact because, well, that’s what Facebook engenders really isn’t it?
Hopefully the weather forecast is being pessimistic, it seems to have been for most of the last couple of weeks. But there’s no such thing as bad weather really, just the wrong clothes! I’m prepared for it!
After that I’m going to go see D. and N. which will be great — tantalisingly N. texted this evening to ask if I like lamb, so that is exciting! Since they live near my old work I might have to pop to Waitrose and get a nice dessert or something to take with me. It’ll be great to spend time with them — it means Sonic will be in for a bit of a crap day, but I’ve made sure he had some bonus time out tonight and after football on Sunday morning I’m going to stay around in the afternoon and give him plenty of time out.
I’ve thought to pack a change of clothes to leave in the car too in case I get drenched/muddied up or both. I’m not going to stay over as I need to get back both for Sonic and to get to football the following morning. At home I found a new home for the light-up mirror I bought for you to do your make-up at, E. said hers was knackered so I might pop that in the car on Sunday, I’m going to move the dressing table back to the spare room and have ordered some CD shelves to put in its place.
My CDs have long been rather disorganised — I don’t have that many now being mostly digitised of music these days, but I do like to keep physical releases of my favourite artists so I should really find a better way of storing them. I’m gradually ticking off the things I need to sort out around the house, well, need is a strong word — want to sort out. I keep looking at camper vans online, but don’t think that’s a good plan, but maybe I should get some quotes to get the garden sorted out which does need doing.
These are all good diversions, I think. Once the weather picks up and I’ve sorted out the spare bird cages there’ll be a lot less clutter and I can make the spare room actually be a spare room. If I sort the garden out that’s the house pretty much in decent shape. I want to get some kind of summer-house / shed combination to make it usable as a space — but that might have to follow the groundworks that need doing, I just need to get whoever does that to run a power source down to the bottom of the garden.
That would mean other stuff that doesn’t really have a place to live in the house can be put away properly — the festival sofa that still has our hashtag scrawled on it in permanent marker, camping table, assorted tools and things — they can all be put away for when they are needed. Of course sorting through the stuff stored in my built-in cupboards and a few judicious tip runs will also give me places to store things out of sight too. Trouble is I keep filling my spare time with other distractions!
Distractions are good though, so having some ‘in the bank’ aren’t really a bad thing even if I am blatantly procrastinating over some of them. Maybe I’ll tackle the built in cupboards in the office on Sunday afternoon, Sonic can help with that, haha! I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff I can dispose of in there. Eventually I want to have a harsh cull of my clothes — there’s loads of stuff I never wear, and nobody really needs as many t-shirts as I have.
I’m going to chill out with a book for a while after I finish this letter — in a fit of nostalgia prompted by a Facebook post P. made about reading and enjoying an Enid Blyton book I just bought the Adventure series for cheap on Amazon. I actually bought The Valley of Adventure during lockdown as I remember loving it as a kid and did really enjoy re-reading it. Probably because it has a parrot in it called Kiki. But it occurred I never read the others in the series so I’m going to remedy that!
Reckon that I’ll send the book I bought before to P. as a thank you for inspiring me to end up with a duplicate, haha! I’m sure his missus thinks we are both bonkers. But that’s okay. I can live with that! So yeah, my life seems to be about distractions at the moment — but distractions are helpful, they stop thought processes from stagnating and driving rumination, I’ve been doing much better at that either through engrossing myself in other things or simply catching those thoughts before they take over.
However, I have been in that space before — so that hard work needs to continue to build good habits. There isn’t any room for complacency. So that’s my immediate plan, a bit of distraction and a sensible bed time as I have an early (well, early for a weekend) start tomorrow. I just checked the weather forecast again, it’s still looking belligerently terrible. But never mind! I’m still going to enjoy myself!
I hope you’re doing okay, Bert
