Day 153 - Yellowy Green Spring

I swam before it was too late - before 8, anyway. Not 7, as intended, but not bad. The yellowy green of the willow tree has started. That's leaves, that is. They're coming. Everywhere I look, there are signs of life (except in my cloudy head).


Some of that work is back, it seems, with dates I can do only by possibly sacrificing a trip to Berlin, which is shit. But without the work, affording the trip was going to be tricky, and I can't be in two places at once. I can't really justify turning down 5 weeks' work for a trip of a few days. It's not certain yet - I have to find out more things - but it's likely. And I need to get back to structured work. I really do. I achieve so much more when there's something I have to do. I feel better. I need homework. I need answerability. I need structure.


In the evening, the Ladies' Pond AGM - quite an affair, run by the formidable Jane, who chaired the meeting with such confident firmness that there were no more than moments of dissent and talking over before Jane would shush everyone into obedience. I'm not sure what decisions we took, but I am now a fully paid-up member of the KLPA. I have nothing to prove it, like a spy, but soon I will start receiving a newsletter and after that, the sky's the limit! There was a lot to discuss. Dams, moving changing rooms, to pay or not to pay... it's an interesting culture. There was a lot of commitment and strongly felt opinions expressed. 


I saw lovely Ruth, Corinna, Olga, more Ruths, a Mary or two, some Jeans and a Jo, a Melanie and oh, so many more. There are many inspiring women in that crowd. It's a refreshing thing. Just because people are older and sometimes frailer than us doesn't take away from the shape their great big lives have taken. There are brains and hearts and hands in that room that have done very impressive things and who to continue to love this pond with a passion. 


Everyone brought food. Lots of mini sausages - the worst meat ever that goes down so well at an event like this. Quiche is a staple. Nobody except me ate the crap crisps I brought along. Pity. I wonder what will become of them. Lemon cake and Scotch eggs. You'd have to pay me quite a lot to eat one of those.


Cycling up there, I saw a man with white lights on his rucksack straps, sitting mid-chest like illuminated nipples. That pleased me. He was all lycra, too, and whizzing by, so I didn't get to ask him if that was intentional or not. The lights from so-called Suicide Bridge are really impressive. The Shard and Canary Wharf and a great big line pointing to them. 


How can I need more sleep? I can't. But I do.