Eleven days to go
Feb.08, 2006, filed under Miscellany
Which means only 9 working days.
People keep asking me if I’m:
- Excited;
- Relieved;
- Demob happy; and
- Whether it has sunk in yet.
The answer to all of these is quite simple: I’m having kittens. Not in the sense that I’ve turned into a mad cat lady and am buying three of them to replace Scrogs (which is what Sharon next door does when one of her thousands of cats gets run over): in the sense that there are a million and one things to do and because my sense of time is a bit screwy, I know that every day I have less time to do them and I don’t even know where to start.
Last night Frood did the bathroom ceiling, which had been mouldy and grubby owing to the previous occupant’s strange decision to put wallpaper on it. The house now has this smell that sends me straight back to my childhood, when we spent the summers doing boat repair. That always involved scraping paint and sanding. It’s a distinctive scent that I’d completely forgotten, sort of layered and flat like a Wall’s Viennetta. And Frood looks kind of cute all covered in paint dust.
Today Pingu, who works for my new employers, tells me he has seen my name on the company email address book. I already have a mailbox there. Now that, for some reason, is freaking me out. Here I am, supposed to be getting Charlton Musgrove finished (after 4 years of wrangling) and Chard out the door, and leaving the Groundwater reviews in a fit state for some other muggins to take over, and suddenly I’m just floored by the thought that this is actually happening.
I’ve sent out the invite for the farewell lunch. I’ve asked our Events Officer (Hummers) to arrange a goodbye to Englandshire party (although I think I’m going to have to sort that out myself). We’ve had the estate agent around to value the house. I’ve realised that I never have to change my password on this machine again, and if I’m stingy I probably won’t have to buy another packet of coffee for work here before I leave.
And I’m still not entirely 100% convinced that I’m doing the right thing. Because I know that really I want to do something that makes my non-con life mesh more with my consensus life, and given that the job I do for the Old Man is messenger, the whole cycle courier thing is more than just an idle whim. I was at a wedding a week ago and the brother of the bride told me I was too old to be a cycle courier. If I go off and do this job then I’ll have spent another couple of years at least not giving it a go. I’ll be even older.
Those of you who have known me for a long time, long enough to have known me during my previous life, might have some idea how odd and incomprehensible this sensation of growing old is to me. I didn’t expect ever to feel this because I didn’t expect to last long enough. Funny how a new job, a fresh start and a new beginning can actually make me feel decrepit and aged and past it.
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Singularity
~something that is singular as (a) a separate unit, or (b) unusual or distinctive manner or behavior; PECULIARITY;
~the quality or state of being singular;
~a point at which the derivative of a given function of a complex variable does not exist but every neighborhood of which contains points for which the derivative exists;
~a point or region of infinite mass density at which space and time are infinitely distorted by gravitational forces and which is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole. Sight
