Summer's day

 

Some things change, some things remain. The anxieties of lockdown have been an experience some could not have imagined but pretty much normal for me. And cold, rainy and windy afternoons I'm July are not new unfortunately. A typical Scottish summer. It is not lost on most either that this was the week schools would have finished for summer. After a warm week last week when they would normally have been in class it's a dismal affair thereafter with days lately painted in greys. Not that we have anywhere to go.

We had no holidays planned this year. For one we cannot afford it and additionally if we could then I now can't go any way. I do feel though for all those people who work all year looking forward to that 2 weeks or however long under the sun by a pool relaxing. Everywhere you look there is mental anguish of some sort. And without those planes to take them away the are left here windswept, cold and miserable. It is a real shame.

It's a couple of factors added to the existing ones which have created a sort of communal angst. This pent up frustration was threatening to spill over over the first few months of lockdown and then finally it did. All it took was a perceived green light when the sun came out. People went a bit mental. They were drinking far too much and in that cocktail or sun and sand with a twist of blowing off steam they started brawling and being generally annoying. There have been some poor sights to see in my own street and no doubt across the land. I cannot help thinking if the heat wave had continued we could have seen even uglier more prolonged scenes resulting in many public disturbances sadly. So maybe the rain and cold is not so bad at this time. Maybe it is needed even to let the dust settle and hopefully when the sun returns people will be a bit wiser having gotten their ire out of their system. We'll see.

Forty

This week I turned forty. Not memorable for so many reasons. Feeling really ill now and starting to get worried. Apart from fevers, cold shivers, burning up and all the rest I am very chesty. Its the lurgy. But I worry more that its moving into a chest infection. Horrendous coughing fits in which I am struggling to get a breath and therefore panicking. Really not good at all.

So the last thing I needed was visitors. It being a big birthday though how could I turn people away. But I really was not up to it. Feeling as shit as I have felt for a long time and lots of worry over that I was in no frame of mind for people with visitors. I think I would have crawled to bed and gone to sleep if I had known that seven hours of my fortieth birthday were to be filled with visitors.

A scene from the day. The day I was dreading. Not because I was saying goodbye to my thirties and a reluctant hello to my forties but because of visitors. The type deep down I want to visit but this bloody anxiety won't allow me to. My mum, my sister, her kids and my inlaws. Everyone who came, everyone who didn't and my own little family were all very generous: beers, sweets, a cover for my kindle, a hoody top and lots of money because I'd asked for that primarily in my bid to save for a new camera. A proper camera. One with changing lenses and lots of options. Still undecided. Obviously DSLR is the way to go for picture quality but I'd drawn to CSC for their size and the fact I would walk about with one without looking like a tourist.

Lots of anxiety. Plenty of the horrible derealisation where I felt I was watching everything from the sidelines, shudder. Got through it though. And it didn't help that I am so damned ill still. Just can't shake this thing. I think a call to the doctor is imminent because its getting worse.

Now I am in my forties. There I said it. Hope they are better than my thirties which is a conflicting thing to say because I worked for half of that decade of my life, got married, went on holidays, had friends, travelled and best of all my three kids were born. Just the anxiety clouding it all.


Drinking lots of black tea with honey and a slice of lemon. An attempt to get rid of this cough and ease the throat. Not sure it is doing much at all but I keep taking it. All delivered in a 'Mr Grumpy' cup which was my daughters' idea. With good reason of late too. Of all the Mr Men they decided that is who I was. Children say what they feel. It says a lot and I cannot disagree with them. Ive got a much shorter fuse nowadays.

The weather has been much the same. On a walk with the boy which turned out to be my last of the week- on Tuesday. There goes maintaining my walks. I was on schedule the first two days of the week covering two and a half miles. Ahead of schedule even but I then found I just couldn't go out feeling so ill. So I am frustrated. If it was just laziness I could pick them back up this week but I won't as this illness is not improving any.