A client at the health farm in which I cooked and was general friendly face, once acted out her first 2 seconds of the day to me, whereupon her first glimmer of knowing where she is, her eyes open and she sits up simultaneously and promptly gets up glowing and alert. The idea was hilarious and I did this for a whole year when I was 21.
I hope to return to this, as recently I wake up never quite feeli ng the energy and total refreshment that I know sleep likes to give you. I feel a little murky and clamped with thoughts about nothing consequential or at least practical. I tickle an arm and enjoy the look of my empty bedroom, all bric-a-brac doing its circusing in other rooms. But there is a quite noticeable heaviness in my tummy, which could quite believably represent every bit of disappointment ever registered in the past, and whose power keeps me in bed for as long as half an hour. It is the past, as generally the day ahead right now is appealing. But I do sit up and do 5 minutes pranayama and 10 of meditation – the last remnants of spiritual practice – and which I have done since I was 10, though for years it was for over an hour each morning. I have no regrets that it is so little now. That 10 minutes is very effective, and then…
As soon as I get up and move the tense tummy is gone or put aside as energy starts to flow in me. I do a running jump with attempted splits frontwise, yelping inside as I hit the lounge (not literally every morning) and make for drawing the curtains. And I want to do everything. Drinking appeals, tongue-scraping appeals, filling 2 litre bottle with water to consume by bedtime appeals, heating sesame oil for quick massage appeals, breakfast appeals, switching on email appeals, going to the loo appeals, even baking a cake appeals and some times happens. If my inner tyrannical regime allowed it I might play a song on the guitar, draw a quick picture or listen intently to a fave rave of the moment. Lately the regime is a little nasty-work-ethic-dictator-like but elections are frequent and new blood is always around the corner.
Nearly always I reason out in an absurdly micro-anxious way, which of the above it is best to do first. Sometimes I resolve to work immediately after pretending to play the drums for 1 second to use the excitable energy that shoots around inside upon bum hitting the cold of the pine toilet seat. Just like everyone yeah? Woooeee! Thrill! Ra-ta-ta-taa-ta-ta-boom. The bathroom is often cold as I leave the window open and close the door at night. You see my neighbours below sometimes blow out smoke and it comes up around the soil pipe. They wouldn’t have passed the "block-of-flats-trained" test. The neighbour opposite reckons they are a sandwich short of a picnic. Smoke smell is margerinely worse than the terrorist attack gas clouds of body spray that seep up in the morning. The best is both together carried by a good steam. Laaarvly.
From bed to code. When it happens there’s a nice feeling that by 8.30 I’ve done one and a half hours work already. And then put oil on low gas, empty bin, scrape tongue, check email whilst brushing my teeth to find I am engrossed and my mouth no longer can contain the amount of foam that has built up and it spills out around the abandoned protruding brush onto a leg, soon to be replaced by fast warm strokes of nutty oil - if I haven’t let it smoke. If it is smoking when I catch it, I wonder whether the benefit of the oil is outweighed by the slight burntness. I usually use it anyway as cannot bare to throw away consumables like that. Lush anyway. If I’ve not done the quick sesame once over for some time, my skin soaks up the oil like blotting paper, feels as though the pores slurp it up like noisy tea drinkers.
I’ve been through fried-egg on sourdough phases, fruit salad and thickthick yoghurt, pancake and banana, steamed millet and oil and sprouts, cereal, 2 sourdough toasts with butter, honey and tahini, millet porridge and mashed banana, banana and soy smoothie (I’ve a fab recipe there), and also stewed then pureed date/ apricot/ raisin/ cardomom with soycream and flaked almonds breakfast phases. As I eat I either look at my wall see below
which is a bit static at the moment – need some new things up, or I watch a 15 or so minute of a self-episoded film or lowest of the low and rare: a snatch of Trisha in which grim people have lie-detector tests on whether they have been unfaithful to their tearful, doubting lover. I once did shed a tear over a breakthrough in communication between a mother and daughter on this show though. A show called Nikki survived 3 showings on me on the basis of her being somewhat perfectly formed.
Living alone makes clothes seem quite an inconvenience some times, especially in the summer. And working at home adds to this. It can also add to neurotic thought patterns that need interrupting by a separate flow from another human. When I do go out or my boss/colleague arrives for a day of dueting on our side-by-side networked laptops, choosing stuff to wear can be arduous. Depends on how needy of a partner I feel as to whether it is the same as yesterday or something that I reckon on being more zappy.
I used to be in an office by 8.30, strolling through an open plan office, semi-smart, gauging whether the next pc-human partnership to be passed wanted to be said hello to. Folks in southern-England tend to be less warm-hearted in such matters. The most appalling revelation of this came when I did my birthday duty, which is to move some donut bags from the office birthday shelf in Tescos to the kitchenette work surface above the huge box of fabulous computer-hacker snacks at work(quavers, monster-munch, skips). And then to do an office email saying that they are there. I was horrified to see within seconds, response emails coming in like football results wishing me happy-birthday from my hug-giving, risk-taking, dream-fulfilling 50 or so 90% male colleagues. I didn’t do donuts though. I could have done juicy pineapple and melon and mango chunks but they wouldn’t be impressed. My radical diversion of hacked up pieces of smarties-chocolate cake was logistically a piece of piss however.
Etiquette working at home is a veritable piece of piss. What is more lying down facilities are provided, unlike most workplaces here. Although I have used spaces below desks in classrooms, sickbays in colleges and spaces below full-size snooker tables for the highly effective power-nap. Dutch owners of spaces below full-size snooker tables in my rather statistically unsound survey have proven to not like this happening.
Once breakfast has happened and I am in front of the laptop, clean and shiny, I enjoy the routine and feel blessed that my work is *so* hassle free. I don’t want it to always be that way but for now it beats facing a class of 30 kids and air-conditioning and bosses that repeat what they have just said with irritation in their voice when you say you haven’t understood their last technical statement– of course you always understand then don’t you? It feels good to know what I’ve got to do. Many of the tasks are repeats of old ones, there will be a few new logical problems, some code mending, adjusting, designing, researching. I had planned to season my very dry working week with an afternoon of voluntary work with children perhaps. That hasn’t happened yet as I have been absorbed by playing in the evenings which has taken away that time.
What luxury to sort the tasks into much less brainy, painful on the brain for having to hold many logical factors in short-term at once, and admin etc… and the admin ones get done when I am tired or need some light relief. And I do them to the music of many favourite artists. The more brainy ones in silence and in small portions.
The day is coloured by the odd blog activity and the sumptuous treat of reading emails written just for me. Or I meet someone for lunch sometimes at granolahead feeding hole : the treetops café. See a sample menu below and view out the window.
And if the downstairs folk slam their front door, I run to the window dead fast. And if they are off up the road then I steal a clang on my piano. I’ve been learning Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata almost since I began playing a year ago.
Only 10 minutes away through the buzzing city centre which is mostly pedestrianized. I’ve lived here as an adult for 4 years now which is lllooonnng for me and after that time the same faces start to pop up and I frequently get someone to say hello to on a random trip to buy bananas, return CDs to the library or try an electric piano out. I relish the familiar face feature as I plan to move on eventually so it may not always be there.
Buying bananas is best done at a mainstream supermarket if you want organic. I remember the first day a reserved checkout assistant said hello to me at the inauguration of our point of sale. It was some 5 years ago and I did a double-take. Then it was so obvious that it was the latest point number 1 on their now 8-check point service training plan, designed by a corporate committee, as they were all doing it like children being told my their mother to say hello to "the man". But they got better at it and weirdly enough to my mind the regime hello has become a good thing.
This is around the market place in the afternoon in winter time.
The characters round the market are fun to observe (sometimes quite actively), the vendors, the elderly folk eating their chips, the working men eating bacon and ketchup butties and mushy peas with mint sauce, standing up in their overalls and yacking in the fantastic local accent which I love to slide into – very refreshing change to my usual plummy eloquence. Some days I probably use it for as much as 20% of speech, Indian accent 15%, American 15% and the rest default straight me.
Or I enjoy cooking something for my boss and I when he’s here – which is once or twice a week and that’s the right amount. I do it in several sudden dives into the kitchen for 5 minutes of rapid chopping and pouring and stirring. He doesn’t eat at regular times nor good stuff often so I feel a sense of achievement in getting a savoury tasting stewy thing or whatever down him at lunchtime. Whatever could be black-eye bean Indonesian affair with lime juice, tomato, tamari, tahini(instead of peanut butter) and cilantro accompanied by maize porridge so thick it’s like dough – Africans pull pieces off to scoop up the gravy. This combo is great with something crispy too: fried thin tofu strips or grilled mackerel. And he’s very receptive to the nosh and so am I. We chat about women, self-development, the social circle through which we met here in Norwich and software of course. In some ways we’re not quite on the same wavelength and others we totally are. I enjoy both as I get to see another facet to everything through his differences – especially to business and money, as he is a self-made man. I’ve worked with another very different such guy who set up an ayurvedic healthfarm which began this post.
Norwich marketplace
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