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Wednesday, December 13, 2000
13:09 
Last night was scary.
For some time we've had problems with the double glazing that was put in last year. It screeches and howls like a raging Bain Sidhe. Eric has been promising to get in touch with the guy who put it in for months. Yesterday he discovered that all of his phone numbers have been cut off, so it is likely that he has gone bankrupt.
The gales came in last night. We went to bed and I noticed white dust on my pillow. It was coming from where the window was shifting in the wall. Then I realised that the entire front wall of the house was moving as the wind buffeted it. The noise was horrendous. The window was bowing in and the curtains were moving and I could feel cold air coming in around the window.
Frood and I squeezed into the single bed in the back room. He didn't think it was unsafe the way I did, but he agreed that the noise was infuriating. I worried for the rest of the night about the front of the house coming off. It was noisier than living on the boat. I've never lived in a house not made of brick or stone before, and I hope I don't ever do so again (unless it's decent solid timber, the way the Scandinavians do it).
Tired today. Got a nearly-comforting little note from Kwert about psychiatrists and the way they treat people as a sack of biochemistry. Had dreams that were convoluted and I can't remember them properly, but there was a boarding school involved and I don't think I was either student or teacher but somewhere in between. Some sort of site was involved as well. I don't really remember enough about it.
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Tuesday, December 12, 2000
13:34
And how do they define not hurting anyone?
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13:33
Now that I have my appointment through for the psychiatrist I'm getting really very nervous about it. I can't pronounce her name, for a start, which doesn't instil me with confidence, and when I tried to explain this to the secretary when confirming my appointment, she laughed at me mightily and seemed to think I was some sort of retarded racist. She asked me from where I was calling. It seemed like a very strange question to ask.
I know she's supposed to help with stress management - there's a laugh and a half. This morning I noticed that even when I'm about as relaxed as I get, my abdominal muscles are still tense. I suppose that will be an advantage should anyone ever try to hit me in the stomach. It doesn't bode well for my state of wellbeing, however. I don't know why I'm so nervous. Worried about being branded a loony, basically, simply because I play life by a different set of rules from anyone else. Is that fact that I know enough about the rules most people use to get by with them sufficient? Do psychiatrists still attempt to do a Borg on people and turn them all into socially acceptable examples of humankind, or do they allow the little twists and foibles to remain as aspects of the individual personality as long as they don't hurt anyone?
A friend of mine was in psychiatric hospital for bulimia at one point. They wanted to give her electroshock therapy. Dear gods. The idea of that scares me something silly. ECT for an eating disorder? Will they accept that my depression is a result of being ill all the fucking time, not the other way round?
Of course it would be on the Monday morning just before Christmas as well, wouldn't it? Frood's biggest delivery day.
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Monday, December 11, 2000
17:57
Managed to get my dentist appointment postponed, however, so that's good news.
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17:56
I just came back from Sainsbury's. I think there is something dead on the road, on the barrier lane where the hedges grow. I could smell it. Almost sweet, rank and pungent. Of course it could be the synaesthesia, or an olfactory hallucination. And I hear blackbirds singing even though it was well past dark, and I realised that I hate this place. Strong word, hate. Perhaps I don't mean hate, because it is not that strong a feeling, but it makes me unhappy, living here. The night sometimes seems like a dark mouth with ragged teeth, eating everything that struggles to live here. It is not a natural place. It is not a good place, not for me.
I'm a country girl. I was brought up in places where the strongest smell is likely to be silage and you can sometimes see the Northern Lights. I was brought up in a place where you can smell the sea and people know about spring tides. I can still remember fields full of sugar beet for cattle, and the way the woods become damp and slippery come Autumn. Here I can't even go for a walk, I'd have to take the car to escape somewhere to go for that walk. You don't know people whom you pass on the street.
This is not the right place for me.
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15:39
I think I managed to get some sleep last night, at last. Lots of weird dreams, populated by nearly everyone, including K. I'm so tired. Hadn't had much more than about half an hour's sleep at a stretch since before I went away. I was pretty much dead to the world between 4 and 8am last night though.
Got my next appointment through yesterday. It's at 10am on the same morning that I have a dental appointment at noon. I'll give them both a ring this afternoon and see if I can get the consultant moved to an earlier slot, or the dentist moved to a later one. I don't want to postpone either of them by any significant amount, so if I can get the dental appointment moved, I'll just have to tell the hospital that they have to be sure to be on time because I have another urgent appointment.
I think Nick's going to be down then, which will mean I'm either avoiding getting drunk while everyone else is getting ratted, or I'll be turning up to see the psychiatrist with a hangover.
Very stiff. Need to phone the gym today as well, see what to do to sort out my fees as the bank refused to clear the direct debit. Don't get me started. I wrote them a snotty letter and we'll see if we get any response.
Eric brought home a scalectrix type affair at the weekend. It's not scalectrix, more's the pity (I like scalectrix), but it is good fun. The cars have headlights, and there is a flippy thing with a jump and two loop-the-loops for the cars to go round. We really need a team of midgets to do marshalling for us and put the cars back on, though. They would have to be midgets because there isn't much space for 6 fully grown marshalls.
I moved my stuff out of the conservatory into the bedroom yesterday. I had to fix one of the drawer chests and swap them round, and generally make things much tidier before I could move my stuff. I don't like having to move it. It doesn't usually take too kindly to being moved. But this arrangement seems to be working quite well. It all fits together nicely and creates a great sense of calm in that corner. I had to take out some of the feathers: it appears that dust mites have been eating them I shall have to collect some more come spring. Now I just have to work out how to get some wind chimes up in there too. And see if I can find the cash for that statue.
Andy came by on Friday. He got me, for my birthday, a membership to the National Birds of Prey Centre. There's an excuse and a half. It's the right time of year for seeing the ravens as well, so now it's just a question of hoping the car holds together and finding a day to go. Difficult at this time of year because Frood is always so busy. We went up to the Mitre to go to the Oxford PF moot. It was busy and noisy and I don't like the Mitre anyway. We left early, repaired to The Bear, had a couple of swift gins and gave hugs to Simon. Just trying to decide whether to try the OPC moot at the Port Mahon on Thursday. I'm put off by the talking stick idea - it means that if someone says something idiotic, you can't point it out to them and the rest of the assembly. If there's a talking stick there is a chance of filibustering.
Both Andy and Tam stopped in on Sunday as well. They were on their way back home from visiting Andy's parents. We played on the pseudo-scalectrix thing. Tam was much better at it than Andy. Strangely, this doesn't surprise me. She got bored with it faster than Andy or me, though, and that doesn't surprise me either. I could play with one of those for hours. I get the impression from Andy that I should have spent more time exchanging pleasantries and less time making them mince pies, however.
We watched Gladiator at the weekend as well. I found the part when the black man tells Crowe "You will see them again soon, but not yet. Not yet" particularly poignant. For all that Crowe's acting was a little wooden throughout, I did get a sense of a man haunted by what might have been at that moment. Sadly, we were playing with the pseudo-scalectrix while it was on. I might have to get it out again because it is a good film. The Perfect Storm was pretty good too, although a bit thin and containing a lot of padding, but then I do come from a fishing community, and the sight of the memorial was quite moving.
Definitely need to get hold of one of those statues.
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