Looping back to fill in the gaps...

Or maybe not.

After Valentine's Day, there's a gap until the first day of Spring... which is such an eventful period, it doesn't feel right to skip it all. Given the immediacy of these blogs, neither does it feel right to just type in all of the handwritten stuff I kept while I was off line... which includes this paragraph:

'I remember this pace of life, this treadmill, this constantly chasing my tail, never having time to think, to dream... to draw breath! Always late for everything... when I worked full-time and number one son needed more maternal input, and I was studying, and trying to write... and had a partner to help shoulder chores and share childcare, which he did very willingly (though he did have two of his own - triple the workload of one!) Around then, I had the diagnosis of asthma hmmm... suffocated?'

And I wrote that before my computer decided it couldn't cope. Which, historically, tends to happen when I actually need a break...

So it's lovely to read:

'As dusk creeps over Frome, the birds liven into the twice daiy aria which marks the cusp of night and day. Sitting in the Dissenter's Cemetery, nibbling a snack from the deli while I begin Ian McEwan's Saturday, it's growing colder. I must move before I chill. But this delight is down to 'trek training'. Any other time, I'd have gone straight home.'

It's not all pressure to squeeze everything in - or is it?

'This waking early is both gratifying and worrying. Great to be keeping up with the pace of my life, but as I've got no prospect of timetabling rest and recuperation in until after October, there's anxiety, too - that I can't sustain it. I've always been cyclic - full-pelt followed by crash.'

I manage a lie-in today. Nine thirty - which is kind of laughable for somebody who used to be able to sleep happily until lunch-time at weekends!

An old friend called today. She's just had a tumour removed. She's younger than me, too. News like that these days just makes me think, 'so I've got hep C - so what? People die of all kinds of things. My hep C might not be the thing that kills me anyway.' My attitude to it has gone through so many changes since my diagnosis...

Enough for one night.