This is it!

Well - here goes!! Months of solitary meditation have finally given me the courage to do what I've been fantasising about for a few years now.

I'm sending in my resignation today. I've spoken to my line manager - who was very supportive and excited for me - but today I write and post the letter. WooHOOO!!

It is really strange how this 'timing' thing works. My daughters, who have seen me longing to leave work for ages, once threatened to resign for me if I didn't. "Don't go back in September!" they pleaded, at least a couple of years ago.

I had to explain to them that the time just wasn't right. I don't particularly know why it wasn't. I just knew it wasn't. And over the months (which became years) I got more and more frustrated with myself, and then began to feel scared that I had lost my nerve.

After all, a large part of what I do for other people is give them the courage to go for their dreams. I am a great believer in it. Why couldn't I do it myself? I inwardly blamed myself for getting stuck in the very trap I had always wanted to avoid - being too highly paid to leave somewhere. All the jobs which interest me would mean a salary drop of at least ten or fifteen thousand pounds - in fact many of them are voluntary.

No matter how many times I reminded myself that I have had ample empirical experience of the Universe Providing, I just couldn't do it.

My enforced time out, often in a lot of pain (no, make that excruciating pain) has given me time to think about many things. One of them was just how much I really wanted to leave my job. No one particular reason, I think I've just got very close to burning out in what amounts at times to being a Social Worker but with no power to change anything (I know they have little enough themselves).

I also had time to sort myself out a bit spiritually. I've been reading a lot and meditating and it began to dawn on me that those people I've always admired - the ones whose stories appear in magazines under titles like, 'I MADE A NEW START AT SIXTY!' or 'LOSING ALL MY LIMBS DIDN'T STOP ME CLIMBING K2!' all began somewhere. They all had the same feeling I did, and the only difference was that they had acted on it.

This wasn't a new thought - indeed, I had encouraged my daughters to try living abroad quoting those very articles. So why couldn't I live my own dream?

I realised that a lot of my dreams had got lost along the way. Sad - but not in fact my immediate problem.

I took time to think about what was keeping me in a job which was feeling like more and more of an uncomfortable fit. Instead of going through all the ways it used my talents, I allowed myself to sit (I had plenty of time for that) and feel how very wrong it felt inside. In fact I began to dread going back.

As I meditated, I began to see an old-fashioned set of scales, and I realised NOTHING outweighed my need to leave. As I've told many people, nothing is more important than your mental health. I did a few sums and saw that I was not in the financial trap I had allowed myself to imagine.

When I spoke to my line manager, she was incredibly supportive and excited for me. "I wish more people would have your courage," she told me. "Too many people get stuck for life and daren't move on."

My point exactly! And I heard myself say, "If I can get through the devastating pain of the last few months, there isn't anything I can't do."

And finally, I believed it.

So - today I am jumping. I have always known in my heart that I would never have the option of knowing what came next, that I had to create a cognitive dissonance of sorts before the next move became clear. But I know there IS a job out there. As I have told many people, you don't always have the luxury of seeing the path ahead, but when you look back, it always leads right to where you are today.

Having the courage of one's convictions feels a lot better than fearing the future!

Getting there...

I had quite an eventful week... I saw a specialist (not 'The' specialist, as in, 'The specialist who operated on me'). He was charming and jolly, told me I have osteoarthritis in my knee, and said I 'can have a new knee sometime - but God knows when that will be!'

I remarked that it was ironic that I'd injured my knee whilst trying to lose weight to protect it. He said, "Oh you don't need to lose weight!" (I do - about 40 pounds I reckon!) but later admitted that the pain will be better the slimmer I am. So - here I am again, back at the gym. A new gym this time, with a pool and a Personal Trainer who seems reassuringly knowledgeable about her work.

That word 'osteoarthritis' was a real shock to the system. I came out of his office feeling fine, and then had a delayed reaction as I walked through the hospital, feeling tearful and wondering if I was doomed to be a cripple.

However I'm not one to dwell on negatives. I am really proud of how I have coped with a really difficult year, and I'm sure it isn't unconnected to my determination to hit Fifty running! Well, I shan't quite be doing that - unfortunately my two favourite gym activities (running and rowing) are off the menu now, but I shall just have to find something else I love! I do feel a little sad because I know that exercise and fitness is a long-term thing, and I thought I had started in good time, two years before my fiftieth. I've told my PT (Jade) that she might have to boost my morale a little and help me be excited about what I DO achieve by my birthday - but it's still over 3 months away and I'm sure I shall see quite a difference.

I saw the doctor, who has signed me off until May 27th - so I shall be going back into work for the last day of term. I can do that! My BIGGEST news (the thing I couldn't talk about earlier in the year) is that I have decided to leave my job and see what comes to fill the cognitive gap... It's a calculated risk - Plan A is to do Supply teaching - but I am thrilled because I have been getting frustrated with myself; I've been wanting to leave this job for over three years, and I've never quite plucked up the courage before.

It's finally occurred to me that after the last few months, I can probably cope with pretty much anything. I am so good at encouraging other people to follow their dreams, to go for it (whatever 'it' is) - and it's been strange to see myself unable to do that. I felt there was some reason, that the timing wasn't right... but deep down I feared I'd lost my nerve and would never be able to leave.

And suddenly - the moment was there, gleaming in front of me like a polished gem, and I seized it.

I resign at the end of this month (my line manager was very supportive) and my contract ends on the 31st August - the day after my fiftieth birthday.

Exciting times!!

Birthday Girl!!

This was very remiss of me. Sophie Cat was 15 on the 8th of May. As I'm a single middle-aged woman, she is obviously a very important part of my cliched life! (Can't do accents, sorry!) She is such a character and has rather taken over my Facebook page these last few months, when I've been confined to the house and had very little else to write about and take pictures of!

Sophie has always had a healing ministry and has taken great care of my knee. This week she suddenly got up from where she was lying on the sofa and got into a very strange position with her front paws gently on my knee. The look on her face was one of prayer (you don't have to agree, but it really was!)

This amused me...

The other day I was in WHSmiths and I kept hearing this weird, high-pitched little voice go '"TCHOOOOOO!"

And I realised it was a woman about my age who was doing the first part of a sneeze (the spluttery part) and then waiting two seconds and then SAYING, "TCHOOOO!" as though she had been taught how to sneeze.

The third time she did it I began to laugh - it was somewhere round the back of a huge bookcase and was coming at me from random angles - and the fourth time I started to guffaw....

And then realised I was next to her husband. Who was obviously very embarrassed.

We all left quite hurriedly. But it was one of the funniest things I've ever heard!

Dancing the Political Limbo Dance

So - here we are, still waiting! Serves us right for having our Election under a retrograde Mercury, perhaps... Fascinating stuff, the first election I have ever stayed up all night for (usually I drift to sleep around 2am). Even the cat seemed to be taking an interest.

I think Nick Clegg is playing a very clever game here - I hope out of reasoned honesty, but who knows with politicians? He has been seen to Do The Right Thing and if talks with the Tories come to nothing, nobody can accuse him of not trying (although they will, obviously, this being politics). And he is now talking to Labour, so anxious supporters can't say he wouldn't talk to them... I fear despite the heightened similarities between policies, there is much UnCommon ground. Milliband scares me, and I can only imagine the tabloids if we ended up with a Prime Minister called Balls...

It is very interesting to watch the younger people I know and realise how much I am NOT an idealist these days. There is a clear online split between those who remember the LibLab pact in 1974, and those who don't. Personally I feel more anxious about the current Labour party than I do about the Tories, though I accept this may be misguided.

My concern about Cameron has ALWAYS been that I wonder if he is truly naive enough to believe that he could carry the whole party forwards. There is a reason we use the word 'conservative' to mean people who prefer the old ways, after all.

I am fascinated to see Clegg and Cameron apparently morphing into the same person (with a touch of Blair and Paul Merton thrown in on Clegg's side). If they do work together, they could superimpose the images and save on posters.

So - watch this space. Part of me wonders if at some austerely-set breakfast table, Prince Phillip is urging the Queen on: "Come on Lizzie, it's the only thing you haven't done and you may not have long left - call a ruddy Election! You know you want to!"

Time will tell.

Meanwhile, I go to see the surgeon today to hear exactly what happened when he looked inside my knee - and hopefully to find out when I will be able to go upstairs without grunting like a geriatric female tennis player serving an ace.

Plus ca change...

"...and when he got in his car, he called her a BIGOT!" The woman's face was incredulous.
"No," her friend replied, ""he said she wor BIGOTED."
"Same difference i'ntit? Whatever. He shouldn't have said it."
The bus changed gear to turn left into Pankhurst Street. There was a squeal from the little girl across the aisle - her mother gripping her arm just a little too tightly as the bus swung round. I caught her eye and flinched at the pain I saw; the stoicism in that little face was far too practised for someone so young.
"SHURRup, Emily, or you'll not be getting any tea," the woman said roughly.

A protest rose to my lips but died instantly as her mother glared defiantly at me with an air of savage challenge. The two friends behind me were still talking politics.
"Did you see the debate last night?"
"No - I'm not interested. They're all liars. They don't care what happens to the country as long as they can line their pockets at the tax-payers' expense. I don't vote for ANY bugger, I don't."
"What - yer never vote?"
"No I bloody don't, Jackie. Why should I waste five minutes of me life when nothing's ever going to change?"

There was another squeal from the little girl. I glanced across, avoiding her mother's gaze, and our eyes briefly met again. Her face was contorted into an expression of mute distress. Was I imagining it, or was that a fading bruise on her cheek?

"But I always think we SHOULD vote, Sandra - I mean... women DIED so we could vote. I teck it very seriously, I do."
"Bully fer you! I just don't trust ANY of 'em. Look at what THIS lot have done. Bled the country dry! Taxes, VAT, benefits cuts... do they think we're bloody stupid, or summat?"

"Emily! STOP it, yer little sod." The words were harsh. I couldn't see what the little girl was supposed to have done, but her misery was tangible. I squirmed in my seat, cold fingers of unease gripping my chest, but unwilling to speak in case I made things worse. And anyway, what could I possibly say? I felt powerless to extricate this little girl from the grip of a malevolent authority.

The bus reached the end of Pankhurst Street and pulled into the terminus. The remaining passengers stood up and slowly filed to the door. Emily and her mother were just ahead of me; the woman pushed her impatiently towards the exit and the child tripped and fell heavily onto the pavement. It must have really hurt - blood was seeping from her knees - but she made no sound, even when she got a clip round the ear 'for being bloody clumsy'.

Sandra and Jackie were still arguing about whether it was worth voting. My eyes were still on the sad little figure going home to God-knew-what.
"The point is, Jackie, nothing's ever going ter change."

I was afraid she was right.

The woman with the drip on her nose.

I still can't drive after my surgery. So when I had to go to town to post off my novel to an agent, I caught the bus.

I've always loved buses. When I was tiny my Mum and I sometimes used to take the bus on a Friday to see a friend of hers. It was a trolley bus - and all these years later, I still remember the excited hum as we rattled along the roads.

When we lived in France I usually drove, but sometimes I would take the bus to Antibes, marvelling at the scenery as it wound through the beautiful little villages on its way to the coast.

Yesterday I spent the obligatory half hour in the Post Office, felt an excited little skip of my heart as my precious parcel disappeared behind the counter, had a delicious lunch in the Veggie cafe, and set off for home.

There were a lot of people waiting at the stop. I was glad that I had remembered to get there before rush hour. To our dismay, a totally empty bus pulled in and left again without picking any passengers up. I witnessed a heartening little exchange between a middle-aged woman at the stop and a young couple who walked past, which went something like this:
Young man: "Ey! Sithee our mother! Yer reet?"
Woman: (grinning) "Aye! Ah wor reet an' all before you showed up, yer bugger!"

I love Derbyshire!

Eventually another bus arrived and we piled in - and by now it was a crush of people pushing rather anxiously to get home and start their evening. An old lady sat next to me. She had a distant, vague expression on her face so I didn't intrude by speaking to her, as I very often do. (Random conversations with strangers are one of my great joys in life). I noticed her beautifully-coiffed hair - almost remarked on it (I like to give compliments) but thought better of it as she looked frail and I didn't want to frighten her by forcing well-intentioned conversation on her.

The bus pulled away and as we drove along the passengers were still trying to settle, gently swarming up and down like bees on a hive. I glanced at the woman next to me and saw that she had a drip on the end of her nose - a drip as perfectly formed as a crystal ball. Part of me was disgusted (I have had an 'issue' with nasal discharge since my first day at school - the only thing I remember was Alan Wilcox's nose running into his milk as he drank it), and part of me was fascinated. I could see another woman passenger glancing surreptitiously from time to time; we were both, I'm sure, waiting for the moment when the drip would fall from her nose and land on her hand. It occurred to me that she might sneeze it off, as my cat sometimes does, and that she might well be facing in my direction when that happened. I edged towards the window.

Now I heard a humming sound. I don't know whether it was the old lady or a phone somewhere behind us, but in my mind she began to take on a more sinister persona, the Mad SnotWoman of Chesterfield, who sits on buses waiting - just waiting - for the drip on her nose to be fully ripe before breaking into loud singing, jumping to her feet and shaking her head, spattering liquid bogeys to the winds.

I could feel that my whole body had tensed up. Did she know about the drip, I wondered, which was still hanging, defying gravity, larger by the second and yet tenaciously clinging to the end of that ancient nose. Could she perhaps not FEEL it? I felt helpless - it isn't done to wipe a stranger's nose, after all... and then - she was only a mad old woman, probably she didn't mind...

My fellow passenger was watching more openly now, as amazed as I was that still the drip was growing larger. I suddenly felt as though I was in some black and white short, as though we were in some Brechtian silent movie.

And then...

...she patted her pocket furtively. And fruitlessly. This changed everything.

She knew. She was no longer some batty old woman with no awareness of her bodily functions. In my mind she shrank back from sinister ogre to elderly, probably lonely, woman who knew that her last shred of dignity would disappear with the drip.

What am I thinking??? Suddenly I felt ashamed for giving those thoughts headspace. I had been thinking how she reminded me of my mother, that vague, unseeing face... and how Mum once escaped from her care home and went on an impromptu (and unpaid-for) bus ride to a town about ten miles away.

There was a brief window, a moment when I could intervene before she forgot what she had been looking for, and I seized it.

Fumbling in my bag, I found a tissue - I'd used it to catch a hay fever sneeze, but on balance I knew I would rather have had that than the miraculous Drip. I spoke to her for the first time.
"Would you like a tissue?"
She started, suddenly focusing on me with eyes which seemed perfectly sane. I repeated my offer.
"Oh! Thank you! Thank you so much..!" She was all smiles and relief, and attacked the drip with relish, folding the tissue again and again over her humiliation. I murmured how annoying, how you never have a tissue that one time you need one... she gladly agreed.

And then we talked. We spoke of politics, the weather, foreign places we had both visited... This was an educated woman, my neighbour on the bus.

She got off before me. I saw her shoes for the first time. They were faux-crocodile, in shimmering, metallic pastel shades which exactly matched the colours running through her skirt. This was a woman with style. A woman who cared about her image. A woman whom I had left to sit with a drip on her nose because I thought she didn't care.