Lots of things are happening at Chez VP and I’m so glad that they are.

New kitchens are going in, once the old one has been ripped out.

I am reading again and I’m spending time with cats on the sofa.

I’m swimming again after a long break.

I’ve had feedback from the job-I-didn’t-get.

It was amazing feedback and made me feel brilliant.

I had a day so good I wrote it on the calendar, in case I don’t have one again for a long while.  Just to remember.

We’ve been walking on the beach and having baths, burning incense and making plans.

I’m taking photographs.

I’m looking back through old ones and smiling.

I’m having fond memories of people past, and keeping them with me.

We’re going to see a concert tomorrow. A band whose songs take me back to a long-gone, hot Summer.

Spring has sprung and with it, an infectious feeling that I’m back on track.

I’m done with the dark days of winter, I’m ready for the warmth and the light of days to come.

Do you ever get that feeling that you’re on the wrong track?  Today I got to work as I usually do, still hobbling with my bad back.  I started work the same way I usually do, but a cloud came over me at around lunchtime and didn’t lift until about 3pm when the cloud became a migraine and I had to leave work, clutching my head as I got as quickly to the car as I could, not sure how I’d make the 20-odd minute drive home.

I had a feeling that a letter about the outcome of the interview would be coming in the post.  I just had a “feeling” and surely enough, a letter was waiting for me at home, but I didn’t see it until some hours later, when the worst of the pain had subsided and I had slept.  As I opened it, I knew the response and as soon as I found out, I felt a weight lift from my shoulders.

I didn’t get the training position.  And truthfully?  It is probably the only job I’ll be pleased I didn’t get.

After the interview I felt like perhaps the route I chosen wasn’t necessarily the one that was going to make me the happiest.  Sure, it’d get me more money and more responsibility and perhaps more job satisfaction, but it would’ve taken me on a set course and it wasn’t necessarily the route I wanted to take.  I tried to talk myself into it, but my heart (the only true thing you can trust) wasn’t in it.

So now I’m taking stock of where I’m going.  I feel like the track that I’m on currently is not the one that I should be on, or indeed want to be on, and – in railway speak – I’m sat in a siding somewhere waiting to rejoin the main track.  So a bright idea popped into my head that said “listen to your inner voice”.  So I think that’s what I’m going to do.  A lot of other things are happening, I have a funeral to prepare for and I don’t feel like I’ve even had the chance to process that someone I loved dearly has gone.

I looked at myself in the mirror this afternoon.  I looked unwell, sallow and not myself.  I asked Mr. VP how he thought I looked, his reply was “drawn and pale”.  I think I need to start listening to my inner voice for a bit, perhaps she’s more knowledgeable than I am.

Today I found out something I had known was possible but yet came as a total surprise.  It shook me to the core because although it was inevitable, I didn’t expect it and I didn’t see it beforehand.  I wasn’t forewarned.  A couple of days ago my “adopted” grandfather died, at home, peacefully, thankfully without any pomp or circumstance.

He was a huge part of my childhood, both him and my adopted grandmother.  We became such good friends completely by accident, when my own grandmother was receiving treatment at hospital.  It all began with a pair of red shoes, and it lasted as good friendships do, right to the end.  When my own grandmother died a couple of years later, we stayed friends and it was them who acted as my second grandparents.  I played in their garden, talked to their teddybears, drank tea and ate countless biscuits with them.

When we moved from that part of the country, firstly to Lincolnshire, secondly to Northumberland we did keep in touch.  Odd phonecalls and visits when we could.  The most important thing to me is that they managed to come to our wedding, and that I saw them shortly before Christmas.  I have photographs of them at our wedding and I have only happy memories of him because he was that kind of man.

And he was exactly as he had always been, chatty, funny and just… himself.  His body just failed, as it does with time.

He will be missed, I will miss him so much, and I feel for his wife, who will miss her husband.

I was never big on goodbyes.

I stood by the rungs quite still, to hear
And watched his scissors trim and shear:
His voice rings through the leaves so cool
Between these clippings thick as wool.
“I have all the blossoms near me
Where I stand now – Can you hear me? -
All the blossoms, all the flowers
I see as from a hundred towers:
Wisps of wool or flakes of now
Are but petals I let go.
This branch is like my window-ledge
High in the eaves where young birds fledge;
Perhaps I’ll find the wind’s soft nest,
Lined with feathers from her breast

–from Sacheverell Sitwell’s “Magnolia Tree”, 1924

The day off I blogged about before was nice.  It was not spent in quite the way I’d hoped, but it was still nice.  Full of Nigel Slater’s ginger cake (adapted by me, to suit my needs), incense, baths and baking.  Sadly no photographic evidence remains of said ginger cake, but Mr. VP and myself both loved it rather muchly.

The lovely bowl that I made the cake in came from Somerset (all good things do), from a potter called Paul who works in the National Trust property of Barrington Court. Both Paul and the things he sells are lovely – both to look at and to use. I am reminded not only of his lovely workshop but of the time we spent in Somerset this year, each time I use that bowl.

The other evening we took the rare opportunity to make the most of these new longer evenings (oh how I like the clocks changing) and went for a walk along the beach at Amble. We saw lovely things, like a pair of Eider ducks diving for their evening meal, and the sun setting over the land as we watched the gently-lapping tide.  Ginger cake, Eiders and seaside sunsets.

What else have I been up to since then?  Well today, though my usual day off, wasn’t supposed to be a day off at all.  I was supposed to be on a training event in Hull, but due to me having a coughing fit in the middle of the night, and pulling a muscle in my back (it could only happen to me, honestly), I was left in too much pain to be able to drive.  It it something I feel very guilty about, as I know that this course would’ve been interesting and a great learning experience.  But I can’t change things, however much I may want to, and as what’s done is done, c’est la vie.

So today has been full of ironing, doctor’s appointments and painkillers.  Deep Heat is a no-no as I sprayed it on and instantly began scratching as if my skin was not on fire, but crawling.  A most unpleasant experience.  That and those self-heating patches you’re supposed to put on your clothes were a bit of a failure, just because a) they didn’t get very hot and b) they didn’t stay attached to my clothing.  *sigh*  Co-codamol and hot baths it is then.  I’m trying hard not to gripe, but there are times when you just…