On the need to blob

I had bad dreams last night. I dreamed I was waiting in a hospital to be examined, pretending to be ill, because I didn’t want to to go to school and work towards exams. The doctor said there was nothing wrong with me and then someone (my mother? my big sister?) was looming over me, remonstrating with me, telling me I needed to go back to school and buckle down. I realise now  that the person lowering over me, berating me, was me.

It’s probably because yesterday I went for a short bike ride (not because I thought ‘Ooh! I want a bike ride!’ but because of the drive to keep fit and a wish not to waste the sunshine) and then I did absolutely NOTHING for the rest of the day but cook a roast veg lasagne and read Illyrian Spring. I was so tired that soon after lunch I got a slice of white bread out of the freezer that was left over from a Christmas recipe and had it toasted with butter and golden syrup.

Then I read in the sunny bay window.  I did go and sit at my painting table for a few minutes but didn’t have the oomph to pick up a brush. I was utterly and completely pooped, so I went back to read. I was so pooped I couldn’t even face walking up the garden to water the sweet peas in the cold frame after tea. 

I realise now what the dream means: I am not just tired from a difficult week, I am exhausted with trying to make the days count. I am done with it. This last year of the blank diary, a year devoid of warm and close interactions with friends and family, a year of no time away from home, a year of forced retreat from the world that I did not want to waste, is coming to an end. Now all I want to do is blob. It’s all I have the energy for.

And the only way for me to blob is to be away from home, where I am free of self-inflicted demands. 

I sat in my favourite place on the Trail yesterday morning

(and incidentally, look at the difference, thanks to the freezing cold spring, from the same day two years ago)

Yesterday, behind me, the cowslips were beginning to flower.

This is what I feel like...

...a tiny flower emerging into who knows what? For example, is it safe now I am fully vaccinated to go to London to see the Tracy Emin/Edvard Munch exhibition, and the Hockney exhibition? I have no idea. 

All I know is... I need to blob.

I am going to Northumberland for a few days, and I hope I’ll feel better when I get back.

I hope it will be like this:

and not like this:

May 8th 2019

Whatever! I am going to blob.

Northumberland spring 2010