It’s October and there are only two months until Christmas. I wrote down the list of things I need to get done at work before the end of the year. It’s not long but it makes me realise how much still needs to be done. But it also helps me to focus on what are my key deliverables for the year and what are the nice-to-haves. If I can do one action to move three key deliverables forward every day that’s a good thing.
To stop the year getting away on me, and because I often panic at this time of year (“we’re running out of year!”) I’ve also written targets for home for the rest of the year. Some of it is necessary life admin like clean out the shed, do a general declutter of all the rooms (these are ticked off already); but some is fun, like schedule a Belgian night and a pie night. (Pie night is coming in November.)
Summer this year felt very short. It felt like it was something that happened in other places, not here. It also feels like it was switched off very suddenly and we’ve been flipped rapidly into the grey of winter. It feels like it hardly ever stopped being grey since last year.
After taking most of this year out, I’m back at choir for the end of year term. I’m looking forward to the Christmas concert and going for curry afterwards. As an added sense of achievement, I’ve managed to get onto the choir WhatsApp group. The WhatsApp group activity seems to centre around people who know each other well having a chat and sharing private jokes and making plans to go for karaoke. But I didn’t join in the aim of participating in the chat, I joined just to be informed when important things happen. (There’s nothing more frustrating than hearing people say “I’ll pop the details on the WhatsApp,” and knowing you don’t have access to that information.)
Last week I was in hospital for a procedure. I’m coming to realise this is a term people use for some kind of embarrassing medical issue that you don’t want to talk about in mixed company. My procedure was not embarrassing but it is difficult to talk about in mixed company so let’s just call it the Malik procedure.
The Malik procedure went well. I was in and out in one day, at home on the sofa for a cup of tea by 4pm. I was a little sore but mostly nauseous (from the anaesthetic) and tired (probably from release of mental stress I’d built up in the weeks before imagining all kinds of worst case scenarios. Catastrophising comes more easily when I’m stressed.
Some good news, I’ve surpassed my reading target of 36 books for the year and I still have some months to go. I’ve been reading a couple of detective series this year: Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell series (Mary Russell being the wife of Sherlock Holmes, don’cha know) and Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series. Both series are set in a similar time period (1920s/1930s). I’d say the Mary Russell books are better and Maisie Dobbs is easier. But they are both ‘comfortable’ reads.
Does reading a series make things easier? You know the characters, you know how they like their tea, how they work, how their relationships are; a lot of the introductory work has already been done for you. You can think, Ah, this is the bit where Mary luxuriates in a bath and then eats a huge meal after a particularly gruelling bit of investigation; or this is where Maisie sits on a cushion and meditates on her current investigation. (They are very different characters, Maisie and Mary).
I was listening to the soundtrack to the Commitments this month. I remember having this on cassette and playing it in my car. It’s good driving and singing along music.
But it got me thinking about cover versions. When a modern artist does a cover version and popularises an old song, does that open the door to a new generation discovering “old” music? Can I say that Paul Young was my gateway to soul? Was I aware of Marvin Gaye before hearing him mentioned in connection with the Paul Young cover versions?
If you doubt my theory, consider the number of young people who have probably discovered Kate Bush after Running Up That Hill was used in Stranger Things. Not quite a cover version, but using something old in a new way to reach new people.
I hate that I have dull dreams. Husband has all kinds of exciting space pirate dreams, but me, I dream about work.
I’m looking through the funding files beginning with A, looking for a particular funding agreement. I know it’s in here somewhere and I have to find where this money came from and how much of it is left. I find the file and realise it belongs to a different team, not my team, and I’m annoyed. Why are they getting me to do their work for them?
That’s the kind of dream I have.
What are you dreaming / reading / singing / planning as we enter this last phase of the year?
Tales from Tobhamhor 