Fresh outlook and vitality, I don’t think so, and no one would admire me for it. I am awfully drawn to imperfection though. I particularly love fools, so I can’t imagine why I’m so fond of you lot.

On the other hand, I married a Sprig and he became a Sage, so I do have some instinct to do the right thing.

The meeting went okay, the chairman turned up and we co-chaired it, partly because she hadn’t been around much recently and also because she couldn’t stay until the end. I’ve done no work this evening, to no one’s surprise, but at least I’ve filled in the physiotherapist form (not psychotherapist, whatever Rog says. In fact, treat what he and Dave say with some suspicion. They aim to mislead, which is awfully good for the brain. Pathways and that sort of thing) and the Sage has delivered it. The local cottage hospital is awfully good. A friend of the Sage’s is in there for a couple of weeks’ respite care at present, so he’s visiting every day.

Hoagy Carmichael tonight. I’ve appreciated him since I first saw ‘To Have and Have Not’ which remains a favourite film, largely for the pleasure of watching Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall fall in love and for her nervousness. And simply for watching Humphrey Bogart. Don’t bother with the book, it’s one of those occasions where the film is far better. Anyway, HC is singing his own songs. Another comfort CD for me, very relaxing.

Indeed, as you see, I’m calming down. Can’t be agitated for long, though 3 days is more usual than 2. I hope my new CD turns up tomorrow.

I want to close in on myself for a bit. I’m being pressed for decisions, I have to fill in forms (is there anything more put-off-able than that?), write reports, take control of things that have been pushed on to me, make suggestions that I’ll be involved in following up, take responsibility for things including my health – ain’t it a bitch when you look around and realise you’ve been giving every appearance of capability for so long that people believe that you actually are, when in fact you’re as hopeless and helpless as ever? What I really want is for someone to just take over the boring bits and let me be all happy and grateful, but it ain’t going to happen, and there’s no reason it should.

I’ve made the smallest possible of starts, by phoning and ordering some new contact lenses, but even there I have cocked up. I put in the last one a few weeks ago (they’re monthly disposables) but I hadn’t got around to getting any more. This morning, I noticed a roughening at the side of it and I touched it to check and it split. Thank goodness I noticed, a split contact lens in the eye is terribly painful and difficult to get out. So now I’ve got a -2 in instead of the -2.5 I should have, but at least I had one left from when I had a less strong prescription. There’s so little difference that I can’t actually tell – I’m very lucky, I didn’t deserve to get away with that one.

Anyway, I’m going to get ready now for this afternoon’s meeting, which I don’t yet know if I’ll be chairing or not (the Chairman hopes to get there and it won’t be her fault, but more important family circumstances, which may prevent her) and I’ll fill in a self-referral form for physiotherapy, and then I’ll fill in the form I got this morning from the letting agents. Tonight, I’ll start plodding through the rest after Pugsley and Squiffany have gone home (we’re looking after them for an hour or so). Tomorrow, Weeza and Zerlina are coming over for lunch, so I’ll go in to the market early and buy some lovely food.

If I say it, does this mean I’ll do it? I’m pretending a bit, don’t you think? Coffee first? That would be lovely. No, you sit still, I’ll make it. Would you care for a nice raw carrot or a rice cake with that? I think I might indulge. Yum.

We’re all so English, that most of us wrote about the weather yesterday. Today, here, it was fresh and cold and sunny, which was delightful. It was frosty this morning, and I fell heavily (not that I’m heavy, you understand) on Al and Dilly’s path. The Sage, who was looking after the children, rushed out with Pugsley, wrapped in a blanket, in his arms. He hauled me up; my left hip hurt which makes a change and I have five cuts on my hand but no grazes and I brushed it off.

I realised, last night, that I had cocked up and missed a deadline and wrote to apologise and I’ve been reprieved. How kind. I will confess to those who were nearly affected, of course, because being humble helps others as well as oneself, although one would prefer not to have to be. Dammit. No really, I need God because who else would keep forgiving me? People, of course, because they’re endlessly kind, but my stupidity goes beyond that.

Ho. Well.

There was a mean letter in the village magazine which has hurt me. I know who has written it; there is no name to it and that is not the editor’s policy, but I understand the pressure which has been brought to bear. I’ll have to write an answer and it must be inoffensive and not hurt (ing or ful). I will give it a day or two, I have a fortnight in hand and must consult others. Hasty letters are not good. Hasty emails should never be sent. If your fingers seem inspired to heights of rudery, print, save, reread the next day and then decide what to send. It probably won’t be the angrily written email that seemed so inspired the night before.

Sorry, you won’t have a clue what I’m writing about. Several things. Chocolate calls, I think. It won’t be answered, for I am strong-minded. Dammit. Fortunately, I don’t even try to resist alcohol. Thank the lord for alcohol.

No, I’ve had enough. Sigh. I’ll cuddle the dog instead.

It is, of course, snowing. Ro left for work before I was up, as usual, but was home again at 10. He’d stared glumly out of the office window, decided it was not getting better any time soon and he’s now working from his armchair. It wasn’t snowing here at that time, but now it’s really looking rather pretty.

Fortunately, I have nothing in my diary for today, so am catching up on some office work. I have no make-up on. As the phone rang before I’d washed my hair and I had to bring the phone down to look up something, I haven’t been able to face the cold of my bedroom to shower since. I don’t have in a contact lens. I am dressed, at least.

Al says that the seed order has arrived at the shop, which is very exciting. Though I’m not sure that we’ll grow so many vegetables this year. We were thoroughly discouraged by the rabbits eating all the beans last year and now the garden is rather full of pheasants too. Assuming Dave and I get our lovely wall built in the Spring (still up for that, David dear boy?) we can net in the rest of the veg patch, but that won’t keep out the seven hen and two cock pheasants who so enjoy roaming the Sagacious Acres. I wouldn’t dream of discouraging them.

Anyhoo, what I have in mind is to mostly plant squash and pumpkin plants, because they cover the ground and the fruit is highly saleable, and can all be harvested together, along with a few things I really want, have mostly cucumbers in the greenhouse with just a few tomato plants, and to grow lots of seedlings for sale. Veg seedlings, that is. I used to do flowers in the days before I got so enmired in practicality that I virtually stopped growing anything I couldn’t eat. Time was, I used to grow flowers for cutting and I did flower arrangements for the house every week. I can hardly believe it.

It’s snowed in every month since October, you know. I can’t remember that ever happening before.

Pugsley, saying goodnight after having visited for Sunday evening…

“Sank you, sank you, happy ever ever afters”

– though I have no connection with the Muse of music who is, of course, called Euterpe.

It hasn’t occurred to me before now that music has always been a source of comfort to me at times of difficulty. I know it is nowadays, but I’ve just realised, as I listened again to that Adams piece on YouTube, that it could be a catalyst for a new appreciation for me of modern classical music. And then I thought back and remembered the record that introduced me to the operatic style of singing, which led to the realisation I’m talking about.

I’m thinking back to January 1970, when my father suddenly died. I was 16, my sister was 21 and my mother was 46. I don’t have to describe what it was like, you can imagine or you might know. The year didn’t get better, and one dreadful event piled on to the last and let’s not dwell on that, hey. I can’t remember on what whim my mother bought a record of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf singing operetta. Specifically, this. It was rather downmarket for this highbrow and magnificent artist, but as I never listened to opera, thinking it was a bit screechy, I didn’t know that. From the first hearing, I loved it. So did my mother. We played it over and over. We have always, as a family, been obsessive readers but she was no longer able to read books, finding fiction a trivially manipulative waste of her interest and more serious books impossible to give any concentrated effort to. I could still read, and took refuge in books (usefully, considering that I was taking A levels at the time) but it was hard to take an interest in the spoken voice unless it seemed relevant to us in some way. So we listened to music, and particularly to that record. I stopped listening to the popular music of the time as I couldn’t deal with anything too new or strident or annoying (can you imagine the effect The Osmonds and Slade, for example, had on my nerves?).

As time went by, of course I could enjoy other music too, and this now included opera.

The next time my nerves were in shredses was six or seven years ago, when things were going badly awry at the village school (and then the chairman of governors died suddenly and I had to take over from him), my mother was ill and had been both ill and desperately unhappy for quite some time, and then, simultaneously – that is, some of it literally and all of it within the same month, it all came to a climax at school (I made the right decision, the best possible and I so easily could have bowed to pressure and not done so, which knowledge gives me great gladness) and prospects picked up, my mother’s terminal cancer was diagnosed, Al bought the shop and Ro went to university 300 miles away. We coped, as one does, and I became aware that my children were worried about me. I think they thought I was likely to have a nervous breakdown, which I wasn’t, but I did become a bit intense. Ro suggested I listen to music more, as he thought it would sooth and calm me.

Most music irritated me though or was more than I could concentrate on. I couldn’t listen to ‘serious’ music at all. I listened instead, over and over, to Prokofiev, particularly the Lieutenant Kije suite, on this album. I also listened to jazz, particularly Bix Beiderbecke. Well, at one time, exclusively. After a while, I discovered that I could also take Mozart’s Requiem.

Furthermore, it’s occurred to me that getting completely over all that drama and less than cheerful stuff coincided with my exploration of different music again. I asked Ro to introduce me to some of the stuff he liked, and he was quite reluctant to. Eventually, after my having pressed for this for some weeks, he asked why. I explained, simply, that he had always been willing to come to music concerts with me and listened to them appreciatively, even if it wasn’t his chosen style, and that I respected his knowledge and would like to return the compliment; also that I would like to explore some new genres and didn’t know where to start. He got this, chose some CDs and put them on my iPod ready for a journey I was taking to visit my sister (this was 2 years ago last August). It all carried on from there.

When I get some new music, I tend to listen to an album (always the whole album, and I can’t be doing with Party Shuffle) over and over, particularly if I am unsure whether I like it. And now I’m in the mood to explore again which, I now realise, after this long explanation, shows I’m in a pretty good place at present. You know, emotionally and all that.