Having parted with the van https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2802503282138812097) I’ve been contemplating camping. That’s what I did all those years ago after G died. It took a lot of effort and summoning up of courage at that time. I’d never camped before. I didn’t go a lot but enough to get the hang of it. I still vividly remember one wild night having to move the car to protect me from the wind blowing me off and out into the Irish Sea. The tent pulsated like a beating heart almost touching my nose as it sucked in and out. Strangely (or, perhaps, not so strangely, thinking limbically, I slept pretty well). Once P and I had got together we had all those years of van adventures and then I got used (sort of) to doing that on my own and the van offered a different feeling of security (apart from all the breaking down!).

Anyway, I rang a site not too far away and thought I’d book a night. Being a post lockdown bank holiday Sunday I assumed there wouldn’t be any space so thought, if there is I’ll go, if not, never mind. There was. I booked. I didn’t sleep, felt agitated. I unbooked. Sigh.

In retrospect, it didn’t make much sense with going away next weekend and it’s a bit crazy contemplating a bank holiday weekend but the weather is suddenly gorgeous. So many conflicting thoughts just scuppered the scheme.

Anyway, more prepared. Tent assembly tested. Logistics thought through.

In the end I drove over to my friend’s we sat in their sunny garden with two of the grown up kids who were up for the weekend. Then we went and swam and thought I’d better at least tackle that little bit of avoidant safety behaviour and swam a bit further. We discussed the psilocybin treatment experiments programme that was on last week as we swam. So relevant to the whole business of bypassing these hyper-protective emotionally defended parts of the brain (and acknowledging why we are set up to fail and for burnout at work and why it has all become so exhausting with the gaps in provision and the gulf now between us and the next tranche of underfunded services).