Oh, oh, oh. Predictable, maybe, but oh, that pond! That heath!Frankie, striding out, all pink like a sausage, just as I arrived. You are not pink in the water. I've tested this. You're white, because all the blood goes from your limbs inside to feed your vital organs and keep them warm. But the second you step out, that's it. Cerise, some of us. And when I wear my gloves (which is always, since I started) that skin stays yellowish white - it doesn't pink up with the rest.
I think it's time for the neoprene socks to come out soon. This morning, it was 5 degrees in the water. Before I got changed, even the changing room ladies were wide-eyed and noddy. They'd all been in already. They were saying how nice it was, and how very cold. You won't stay in long today... that kind of thing.
I walked in slowly, as usual. There was nowhere near the shock of when you go from sauna to cold water. Not that. BUT there was cold that sets in. The bottoms of my feet, near the front, that widest bit... they felt like I was standing on an electric hotplate. You can't tell, with that level of cold. It feels like burning. That sensation grows and grows. By the time I get out, there's no sensation.
I REALLY don't want to go to Scotland on Wednesday. I want to stay here. Anyone know of people who might like to pay a modest amount (about £100) to stay in a flat in Edinburgh between Christmas (or Christmas Eve) and new year? Or who is very lovely and looking for a flat to live in, and eventually even buy? Oh, that's what I'd like - someone to do that. Please?
My day today was full, sometimes fraught. I enjoyed, though, the smell of the launderette, and its warmth. I found a pig in Oxfam - a stuffed one - very pink and new. I did some work, had some ideas, failed to do some of the urgent things, did others. I bought Benylin and cocktail sausages for Ruth. Gherkins for me. I declined to buy a vegetarian cookbook by Linda McCartney because her face was on it everywhere. Hers, and the mental image of an ageing Paul McC, have the capacity to put me off my dinner whatever's in it. Bless them hard and all that, but honestly, I couldn't face it. I bought one (second hand, of course) with prettier pictures. Says it all.
I took my knitting on the tube. A talking point, it seems. I'm sure I've seen it many times. Maybe it was my clumsiness that made it mentionable. Some smiling Spanish girls. They wished me well and thought it looked relaxing. A staring man. He said nothing and did not crack the tiniest of smiles, but watched and watched and didn't look away.
Just bear in mind that whatever I do, knitting-wise, I suspect I shall never make one of these. No knitted vegetables for me. I say that now...
A lady opposite laughed when I took out my knitting. I didn't know why. Just before her stop, she (Sharon, her name was) mentioned that 'that's my thing' and helped me with a stitch. She showed me a scarf - THAT's what she makes. It was brilliant, lovely, pleasing. I took Sharon's card.
Ruth's fiddle party, after an afternoon of Crisis briefings. David, from the North, commented amply on the knitting, between playing and eating mince pies and the aforementioned cocktail sausages. Dirty, dirty meat, those things. I did so very much enjoy them.
Good skyping, Rob. Good snipping, Lilley. Good proxy-contact, Sarah Lonton, through your daughter, who makes me proud for you. She is such a creature - so much like you and so different too. What a very good job you've done, both of you.
I am grateful that things can change so much. Yesterday, I had moments of grim-faced darkness of the soul. Today, nothing has changed, and here I still am. Things are not perfect. Some things are, in fact, deeply uncomfortable. But I'm still here and that weight has lifted, the one that drags down from inside the belly and inside the mind. Half a day of that? What an improvement. It's not banished for ever, but it really was just a brush, not a body bag.
Thank you for that and for good souls around me. Thank you for answers to things, in shapes I'm not expecting.
The moon tonight all soft behind the clouds, and small, high up. I didn't catch it early, when it might have puffed up all big and got in before the rain.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Oh, it's nearly tomorrow. So much more to do, to be grateful for, to be.
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