Raining again today. It IS January so it could at least snow. They keep forecasting it and then backing down. Every year I promise that I will do something that makes use of January, rather than waiting for it to pass. This is a whole month of my life. When I am finally standing in front of a firing squad, how I will long for those lost weeks. I also try to think of people who look forward to January for some reason because it is the high point of their year. People who ski or hunt or perhaps take a holiday in Barbados because it is so f@cking dreary here.

My husband has finally managed to sell his childhood home now that his mother is dead and his father is pretty much senile and will be in 'sheltered accommodation' for ever. (He was a sort of miracle baby, born when his parents were unusually old). It is a family house, built in the orchard of his great-grandfather's house and my husband and his brother were both born there. Now all the family have died or gone and the new owner will probably build in the garden. They are doing a final pack-up this weekend and then driving a vast lorry down here with the more precious stuff. My husband asked me to come over and spend the last day alone with him and his brother so that I could dig up various rare plants to take away. Err............... No, no, no. How horribly sad and peculiar that would be. Surely they would rather just be there together to say goodbye to everything? I notice that there was no mention of my sister-in-law going but she has a reputation for distancing herself from difficult family occasions. As I am a forward thinker, I cunningly zoomed down here and then pretended that I had made an informed decision that I would be more helpful clearing spaces etc. ready for them.

I am such a coward about public displays of emotion. I think it is because I cry a lot while I am alone so now anything can set me off and I have got so used to it that I have to keep leaving the room when watching TV with other people. I look at teletext news every morning while having coffee and am regularly sniffing away at the endless reams of miserable things. I thought once, 'WTF are you doing? Why don't you just NOT put this on, so that you aren't starting every day full of sad thoughts?' . But then I decided that it was pathetic to go through life not knowing and at least I was letting my feelings out with all the muffled sobbing and anyway I seemed to be addicted to teletext and turned it on automatically. Actually, when I have been on holiday without newspapers and with weird TV news about impenetrable Italian, or whatever, troubles, I have found that I just switch the same feelings to smaller problems inside the family. And get all muffled sobbing and brooding about those instead.

I vowed last January that I would visit every city listed on the European weather teletext site. That I would spend a weekend once a month in a different one until I had worked through them. What fun that would be, even if I went alone. Have I done that? Of course not.

My brain almost instantly began to rubbish the whole idea. 'So and so has been to thingy recently and said that it was really disappointing and dangerous'. 'You don't like flying and all the planes are going to be blown up anyway'. 'Expensive hotels are so dull and you might as well be anywhere but cheap hotels are scary and you will be raped'. 'You hate talking to strange people who often turn out to be very boring and these people will be FOREIGN so you will be speaking ANOTHER LANGUAGE stupidly and badly'. 'You don't really care that much about old churches'. 'You will have to take all your meals alone'. 'You are very bad at getting to sleep but if you take a sleeping pill you will not hear the rapist breaking into your room'. 'You are good at being by yourself but wandering round a strange city on your own is actually incredibly sad and lonely'. Oh, all right, it was obviously a really stupid idea. Well done Brain. I can always count on you to show me the sensible path.
- posted by Iris @ 1/22/2004 12:29:00 PM comment