Newbury Town Hall on the last day of Summer 2012. See the brown leaves on the tree? Autumn is here. Photo:Vegemitevix
I’ve been feeling a bit blue this week. Unlike the weather. It hasn’t been blue, so much as it’s been grey- unrelenting grey – as if all colour has been leached from the sky. It was sunny on Saturday afternoon, but after that we have been plunged head first into winter.
Yes, I’m still taking the pills. Thanks for asking. I’m not over it yet. Perhaps I never will be. It’s just that things are stressful back in the jungle.
My Dad used to say this when I was a little girl. He’d recount some terribly involved story about work and then he’d pithily quip ‘meanwhile back in the jungle’. When I was very young I asked ‘what jungle?’ I was expecting he would tell me all about lions and zebras and monkeys. I didn’t understand figurative jungle creatures in those days.
He had a whole stock of these phrases.
I remember him stopping the car by the side of the road just out of Lautoka, and calling back over his shoulder as he marched off into a sugar cane field:
“Just off to see a man about a dog.”
I waited for two weeks for that new dog.
Back in our jungle, the house is still mid-renovation. Yes we have a kitchen that works but that does NOT mean it is finished. We still have kickboards loose and lying on the floor, and a box of serving platters that appears to have taken up residence in the bathroom, perhaps indefinitely? My Englishman has been brilliant at getting all the cupboards in and even getting the cooking appliances working but it still isn’t quite finished.
I mean, we still have an old fridge on the carpet in the dining room!
The kids are in a holding pattern and are cranky with it. As much as I understand that, it doesn’t make it any easier to manage. We are all feeling unsettled – me included – and having to keep battling on knowing where we’re going but no idea how we’re going to get there, is difficult. (Or how we’re going to pay for it!!)
My kitchen calendar (from New Zealand) features spring flowers – brilliant yellow kowhai – whilst outside my Hampshire home it’s crinkle leaves cold. I typically love Autumn but this year it feels menacing and I dread it.
Newbury – a quaint market town in Berkshire
Commit no nuisance. By Order. – old sign still adorns the 18th century building.
The Kennet (or is it the Avon?) canal runs through Newbury.
On Saturday the Englishman and I went for a walk through Newbury to try and enjoy the last of the English summer sun. I’m glad we did as the very next day the whole country was lashed by rain and chilling temperatures. But even in the midst of a bright Saturday afternoon in the beautiful old market town I felt a sense of dread and impending doom.
Fear of the unknown?
Quite probably.
But what I fear isn’t easy to overcome. The thing I fear most of all, is my own lack of strength. How do you fix that?
We’ll get there. In both literal and figurative senses of the word. Meanwhile back in the jungle we’re ok. I made peace with the lions and monkeys years ago.
What helps you to manage the blues?
