Turning point

I let go today. A one hour handover then I let it go for three more weeks. Now I have a new mission: get fit and plan the future.

Not that these two help...

I decided to keep a chronology of my day today. Don't read on unless you are really in to the minutiae of another person's life ...

6.00 I get up. I don’t feel like I have slept, am thinking about work, and am hot and sweaty. I feed the cats.

6.20 I drink tea and make a list of things to do.

8.20 The GP calls and is very supportive. She says she will do a certificate for me to collect.

8.45 I put the clean clothes away and am reminded of a quote from a high court judge in the 1950s. He admitted he was a poor Judge, indecisive in the matter of sentencing. “It is rather like those odd occasions at home when I am required to put away the clean laundry” he said. “I never know what to hang, what to put away and what to reluctantly let go”.

9.02 One of those automated telesales calls. “Hi! With winter nearly here it is an ideal time to take part in the national window recycling scheme…” Well I didn’t know winter was nearly here. Unless it’s a Game Of Thrones reference …

9.30 I make a pineapple and banana smoothie.

9.50 Monty comes in and I feed and groom him. He sheds enough hair to stuff a pillow and doesn’t look much different afterwards.

10.45 Have to make an effort to avoid falling asleep. 

11.28 Walking into the nearby town centre I see a woman carrying two umbrellas. I didn’t even know it was set to rain …

11.33 As I walk along the canal I see a man with half a lager in a glass, picking his nose whilst sitting on a bench. He is a long way from the nearest pub …

11.38 Arrive in local town centre and realise that I had forgotten the cheque I wanted to pay into the bank, which is the reason I came out in the first place. Decide to go home and get the cheque on the grounds that at least there will be double the amount of exercise involved and I will thus be following Doctor’s orders. Can also take the pills I forgot to take this morning. Yes, poor concentration and memory is an aspect of what I am going through.

11.42 I see a delivery driver parked up on the pavement causing an obstruction, but its okay as he has a large laminated card on his windscreen with the Amazon logo on it. Presumably  in today's consumerist society an Amazon delivery makes the driver  at least as important as being a doctor on call.

11.52 Collect the cheque, take pills, and give a snack to next door’s cat who looks thin and hungry.

12.03 Walk past the man on the park bench again. He is still drinking his lager and picking his nose but now he's talking to himself as well. Interestingly, this makes me feel better about myself …

12.07 Am walking across the town square when my fellow blipper 58 Daisies calls out, waving and grinning. She tells me Andrea Ledsome has dropped out of the Tory leadership contest. We go to Pret a Manager and drink coffee, and have a good rant about Brexit and I tell her about my situation. We realise in conversation that our daughters (now in their mid ‘twenties) went to school together.

1.15 I buy baby clothes in Next at my wife’s request, for a work colleague with a new arrival. I now feel hot and very tired and am am beginning to wish I hadn’t committed to a handover call with colleagues at work at 1.45

1.30 I get home and sit down and start to feel anxious. The news contains a clamour for a general election as Theresa May has no mandate. God please no. It won’t make things better. I’m no Tory but my response would be that her leadership is irrelevant; the party she is leading has a mandate and she is just following the manifesto they were elected on. The Labour Party would be a general election embarrassment. 

1.50 My teleconference starts

2.25 It rains really heavily. I think of the woman with two umbrellas.

2.45 My teleconference ends. I feel tired and emotional and I realise more than ever that my  love-hate relationship with work has descended into simple weariness. I mouth “I’m tired of working / and scared of retiring” to myself, to the tune of “Old Man River”.

3.15 I go to collect my GP certificate from the surgery at the end of the road

3.30 I fall into a deep sleep with my laptop on my lap

4.00 I wake with a start and decide to get on with my life.

NB: only the very last entry is important ....