Highlights of a day in an endless winter

Dear Reader,

I know that things are not as good as they could be. I know that I should leave asap if only for the sake of giving the cowboy a fresh start in time to still have children, but I still cannot find a definitive plan to move on and indeed move away. So we still  try to look after each other as best we can and enjoy today. One day at a time.

On the way here I provided the entertainment by being a sort of living juke box. I sang for about an hour somehow, on and off, with a limited variety of songs that work accapella that I could actually remember and start to sing in roughly the right key. I think the 'setlist' went something like:

'Caught A Lite Sneeze' Tori Amos

'A Sort of Fairytale' Tori Amos

'Get Outta My Way' Kylie Minogue

'Timebomb' Kylie Minogue

'Fine Day' Opus II

'The Fear' Lily Allen

'Den Andra Dagen I Mai' Idde Schulz

'Little Digger' Liz Phair

'Army Dreamers' Kate Bush

'Fuck and Run' Liz Phair

'Help Me Mary' Liz Phair

'Divorce Song' Liz Phair

'Smells Like Teen Spirit' Nirvana

'Extraordinary' Liz Phair

Not a great deal of variety of artists, I'll grant you, but it must have been entertaining enough because the cowboy didn't put the radio on again. And when we got to the flat, I somehow felt I'd just been warming up for a gig and felt a little deflated at having to be quiet now, in this sleepy little tiny town.

Ironically, today, the day the clocks went forward to summer time, it's been even more like winter than when we arrived. It snowed overnight and continued today. I had disturbing dreams and really didn't sleep well at all. Lots of memories from the past that I really could do without right now. And a dream about searching for a Muppets mug before leaving the UK. What the hell was that all about? I think a gremlin lives in my head. A Muppets-loving gremlin, of course.

We went for a walk in the snow and I wore so many layers I felt like a small, fat michellin man. But thankfully we didn't walk for too long and it was nice enough to enjoy walking in the snow, scrunching and crunching about without my toes being wet and cold for too long. 

I just don't move well in 6 layers, that's all, and I'd rather leap about to Kylie Minogue as exercise than traipse through the snow while it gathers in my eyes and on my scarf and my nose runs so that I frequently have to take my gloves off to blow my nose.

But when we got in we treated ourselves to a strange kind of cake in the shape of a ram (they were everywhere in the supermarket, so the cowboy bought one) 

and had a cup of tea. And I did get an egg for Easter. Though it wasn't a chocolate one. It was a big plastic one with a bag of m&ms inside, which was lovely really. 

I'm quite happy to have some m&ms to munch on from time to time, and it reminds me of the snacks we had with us in the car when we went on our road trip across the US. Hard to believe it was nearly a full year ago now.

I guess that's all I had to say.

I've still got tummy ache which doesn't seem to have gone away since yesterday. I think it's an underlying feeling that this has got to stop soon. I have got to formulate a plot, an exit strategy, a way to move onwards and upwards.

Fond Easter wishes,

Ms. Platform Edge.XXX

Poverty and other preoccupations

As you may have guessed, work and other depressing things have been getting progressively more difficult, tedious and time-consuming.  I have had to write a letter of resignation, an email of explanation and a further email to confirm that the reply hasn't changed my mind.  All the while I'm being totally messed about by this particular institution, to the point that I am now losing money due to their disorganisation and have had to re-do adverts and search for work in any viable ways that I can think of in order to try not to lose out all the more.  I'm not even getting to take time off properly, because I'm not being given much notice of the work that 'might' be available.  So hello 'hand-to-mouth existence' once again.  My, we are such old friends...

I can't even find time to do anything creative as I'm still between meetings and organising things and my life is filled with the kind of tedium that saps every last drop of inspiration or creativity and kills it dead in an instant.  The expression 'burn out' comes to mind, but that has already happened.  That was probably two weeks ago at least.  I am now on the edge of the platform again, and to quote a Kate Bush song I often play, I'm "wondering what on earth I'm doing here".  Back in my usual spot.  No particular hope, no time to go out and see anything, do anything, not even enough money to buy something to cheer me up.  Such as nice shower gel from the rather posh, Body Shop-equvalent here, Yves Rocher.  Even though they keep taunting me by sending me leaflets detailing the appallingly small discount I could get on things, for having a loyalty card and having stupidly given them my address.

Whoever it was that said, "I've been rich and I've been poor.  Rich is better," knew what they were talking about and not only that, probably knew that even when you've got a tiny bit of money, it's no use in helping you if you've been under-investing for over ten years and the next time something breaks down (and let's face it, that may well be me) you're going to go bankrupt.  The worst thing about poverty is that it is simply BORING.  That aspect alone could finish you off.