November.

The month of November causes me to feel flat emotionally & mentally. I have a feeling akin to not having any excitement, joy & energy sucked out of me, a metaphor for these feelings would be that I feel like a bath of water that is slowly draining of water. The warm & the bathing effect of the warm water ebbs away leaving the bath empty & cold (with the bath toys-rubber ducks(!) washed up on the bottom of the bath).
In Birmingham, November at the moment is dank, dismal, foggy ( or is that just my mood??) and covered in a thick layer of grey cloud. I try to tell myself that above that layer of greyness is a clear bright blue sky but its damn hard to paint that picture into my depressed cognition. The once golden leaves are all off the trees, lying strewn on the ground, wet, sodden memories of the summer gone.The trees bare, remind me of wire coat hangers denuded of clothes.


Outside today it was drizzling, people looked through each other, wore clothes the colour of which reflected their countenance & the weather.
I know all this sounds miserable, a scenario to sit at home with & listen to the great Leonard Cohen singing Joan of Arc. I don't know! However....Lets be optimistic... maybe I/we should see November as a period of calm before the storm of enforced joyousness that is Christmas. That time of complete financial & gustatory insanity. Maybe we should prepare for Christmas- for Advent appropriately & live a little bit more austere before we all go ape-shite at or around Christmas.
(Can you tell that at best I am a tad ambivalent about Christmas!??)
Charlie Coal has the best idea though. November to him is the same as any other month except that  (as we speak) he's stretched out on the sofa sleeping dead to the world in the heat of the wood burning stove. Smart cat that lad!!

O well... toss another log on Woolley, make a cup of cocoa & put a Leonard Cohen CD on the player.
Happy November everyone!

The work

I meant to post this on Friday last but i was tired out physically, mentally and emotionally. Not to mention that it took me almost one & half hours to drive the 9 miles from my work place home on Friday!-The traffic was awful , its just that the UK is too small for the amount of cars that people have with the majority of cars having 1 person only in them at peak times.
Be that as it may. I think now that I'm not working full time I feel more. I mean, that when I was working 40+ hrs weekly you get so caught up in the daily hassles, everyone's issues blur into one & you haven't the time to think & reflect. But now.... well I have the time to reflect upon the grief, the personal turmoil & torture that some of the individuals I encounter are or have experience(ed). And you know....these days I often feel overwhelmed with unhappiness after hearing & sharing their stories. A Kleinian like my Katie would call what I'm experiencing 'Projective identification' ,what ever. All I know is that the feelings I experience on a Friday evening after 2 days of work in a community mental health team are not pleasant & I often feel drawn to tears. But if I feel like this how do the poor people I have seen feel?
Some people carry so much upon their shoulders.....

Children & Family

This weekend has been entertaining, joyful & has caused me to reflect on upon the era of our lives that Kate & I currently find ourselves in.
We took a drive up to Tadcaster in beautiful North Yorkshire stayed overnight with our daughter who married in 2010. We all went to the classic Leeds grand Theatre we we saw & listened to Toumani Diabate. He hails from the African republic of Mali & plays an instrument native to that country called the 'Kora'.  It was a dream to behold & to listen to well worth the £15. Whilst there our daughter looked after us, cared for us, cooked our dinner & breakfast-altogether cared for us. I reflected upon the times when these situations were reversed. When as a child we cared, cooked for her (I guess we still do!) & when I sat up all night with her boiling a kettle of water to keep the atmosphere in her room moist as she had the croup. She was, is & will always be our little girl. But now this little girl is a woman, & caring for u, & teaching a class of (sometimes) unruly 13 & 14 yr old teenagers! Ah how time changes roles!
Then tonight, our baby-Esther goes out on a date with a boy! The last one of our children to begin their hopefully long & painless flight from the nest. I know that I am her father, & I'm biased but she looked stunning!! Have a look for yourselves people & please, please be honest. Do you agree? She has her moms good looks I reckon, but there's some little part of me in there somewhere to!

But: She's out at the movies as I type & I hope she'll have a great time and pray that she'll be safe. God help this guy if he breaks her heart! But in truth the reverse is more likely to happen!
What I'm trying to say is this..... that holding tight with loose hands is painful, difficult & reflective.

Rest In Peace

This week end saw the death of one of a great British eccentric. He was a tireless worker for various charities & 'Fixed it' for lots of kids. I refer to the death of Sir Jimmy Savile.
Sleep well Jimmy.

A rant about cafe/coffee bars in the UK

What is wrong with the Brits? please don't all shout at once out there, because I could spend the next half dozen posts telling you things which you may not have thought of as wrong with the Brits & our culture.
However there is one thing that really pisses me off BIG time.
Its this: I love my coffee, I love it black & strong, I like it at home & I especially love to linger in a cafe chatting with a mate or watching the world pass by.
But this is how it goes in the UK: You go into the cafe/coffee bar & have to queue up to order you drink at the counter, You stand there & carry it over to your table yourself & then the Cheeky bastards expect a tip or else there is a large cup placed nearby  the cash register for the customer to put a tip in!!
Now tell me-what am I giving a tip for??  Its not for the privilege of being served at the table!
On the continent you sit down in a bar, cafe,or coffee bar & the waiter comes to you in moments to take your order & then returns with your coffee, whatever in a short while. But here in the UK its as if its a chore for the staff to serve you & that we (the customer ) should be damn grateful to be served at all.
Its happen twice to me in the last couple of days. I have incidentally tried just sitting down & waited for a member of the staff to come & serve me but only to be ignored.
Yesterday Kate & her friend Sharon were in a local cafe. They had two coffees, & Sharon ordered & ate brunch. They then sat there for some 45mins chatting. Then as lunch time drew near the waitress came over & asked them to vacate the table as they needed it for the lunchtime!  WTF!! I'm sorry but I think I would have made a scene of this kind of very poor customer service. I've had enough of being taken for a prat.

Wockley est de retour de la France!

Vernon Cathedral

Oui! I am! And what a return journey, what a lovely (though it was damn hard work) time we had.
I've eaten my first plate of Snails- Escargot- which were delicious served in their shells & swimming in garlic & herb butter. And en route home suffered a 3.5 hour traffic jam on the infamous M25 London orbital motorway which is surely the largest car park in the UK?)
Vernon is a lovely town, steeped in history, near by Monet's garden, museum & garden. I visited these & would recommend these as a must if any of you plan to go to France. Unlike the residents of Paris, the people of Vernon aren't rude. rather they are civil, they smile at you & are friendly & warm.
The worst point of the (working holiday) was the day spent at Euro-Disney. We took the 45 teenagers to that hell hole which at worst is akin to entering one of the 7 circles of Hell & at best 7 hours spent in one of the most surreal environments surely in the whole of Western Europe.  The kids however were very well behaved & all turned up at the pre agreed meeting time in time for the return trip to Vernon.
I spent a wonderful day in Paris with my daughter & brought some nice clothes, ate some superb food & drank exquisite coffee. French home cooking served by my family-Pascal & Maire was beyond description.It was the closest thing to gastronomic paradise i think that I'll ever encounter.

I won't bore you any further with my rantings & raves about my love of France & all things of French, but I'll enclose a couple of photos of Vernon & may post a couple more at a later date.

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france....

From today til around the 21st October I'm off to Normandy in France. Last yr I went with my daughter, who teaches in York (of the Minster) & 30 odd (& 'odd' being the operative word her people!) 14-15yr old kids from her school & another school in York.
You know I'm sure I posted about this trip in 2010!) Whatever. I'll stay again with Marie & Pascal in the lovely town of Vernon, the trip is marred though by a day at Disneyland Paris which for me is like entering one of the 7 circles of hell. Still its a small price to pay for 8days of France.
I will miss Kate, Esther & of course Charlie Coal loads & I'll post again later in October.
Au-revoir fir now!