Friday

Such an unproductive thing, to discover wordpress works on my phone,  on a night where, for the first time in several weeks, I am on my own and not working frantically to a deadline and the dull grey lonely sadness seeps quietly in past the noise of the TV and the sugar of the tea and I am deeply deeply unhappy. Will update with a solution once I found it.

Sun in the sky, You know how I feel

I gave myself the best Christmas present.

To avoid that awful dread of the first day back in January, I came in to the office in the blurry messy space between Christmas and New Year for an uninterrupted hour or two in which to tackle the stack of papers all over my desk.

Just before looking at them though, I thought I’d do a bit of a tidy up.

Armed with a the suitable playlist of ‘Tunes to Tidy your Room to’, a few Cupasoups and plenty of post Christmas chocolate, I spent two days in there.

Such that, this morning, while everyone gloomily arrived back to workspaces full of last year’s mess, I arrived at my shiny clean empty desk, in its new position facing the window (why did I spend 18 months facing the cupboards?) without the boxes and bags of crap that had piled up around it over the last year, with instead a few colour coded folders, neatly arranged files and newly dusted and polished keyboard and screen.

I hung my coat on the door, placed my cup of tea on its coaster, sat down in my beautiful new space and grinned out the window.

It’s a new dawn. It’s a new day. It’s a new life for me.

And I’m feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeling good.

In Lights

‘Sorry, s’cuse me, sorry, hello… Can I just – excuse me,’ I very Englishly make my way through the massive crowd,considering that I should have made myself a staff badge. Or at least put on a High Vis.

Alan’s friendly voice fills the sound system over the Market Place, as more and more people gather around the Town Hall. ‘… and these great guys who put up these lights every year for you all….’

Ok, I still have a minute at least, I can get through this crowd of prams and santa hats in time. ‘Excuse me…. could you- thanks…’

Amid the hundreds of expectant happy faces, I spot Adam, and head thankfully towards him, where my space is beautifully saved.

‘Oh thank you Adam. God, look at this crowd!’

‘I know,’ he says, taking notes for the Wiltshire Times. ‘Was it like this last year?’

‘Not even half. Wait, are we standing in the road now?’

‘Yeah, the traffic is just turning around, they can’t get by at all! Did you get a good shot from upstairs?’

‘God yeah, people are all the way over the other side of the roundabout, what do you reckon, two thousand?’

Alan’s voice is back on the speakers, leading the crowd in an excited countdown.

I carefully position the camera towards the Town Hall, take a deep breath of beautiful cold night air, and get ready to click.

‘Three… two…. ONE!’

A hundred thousand lights come on, the sky fills with fireworks, the crowd cheers and squeels in delight, snow flurries over us from high above and I stand there in this awestruck crowd of Melksham, trying to take as many photos as I can while tears fill my eyes.

The pictures never do justice to the moment, the minute, the few seconds of utter perfection that is the switching on of Melksham’s Christmas Lights.

The fact that the build up happens right outside my office window means I have at least a glimpse of the months and months of creativity, dedication and endurance of the happily high-vis wearing constantly committed Christmas Lights guys who start work as soon as the leaves begin to fall. I see some of the several hundred hours up ladders, affixing many metres of cable, garland and festive string; attaching homemade shooting stars, snowmen and trees to lampposts; carefully tracing the rooftops of the entire high street with a perfect skyline of brilliant bulbs. Throughout November, I help where I can with the best art project in town, delivering messages, taking pictures, making tea for the team when they let me, watching in awe as each new line of lights goes up, waiting with as much anticipation as the guys for the evening, months of work later, when they, and the town they love, will finally see the result of their amazing effort. It is a complete privelige to be there in the middle of that delighted crowd for that glorious moment when the black silhouette of the Town Hall in its dark Market Place, along with the shadowy buildings and empty trees in every direction, are all magnificently transformed into a dazzling illumation of amazing light.

Two hours later the crowd, full of happy Christmas spirit, has drifted away to warm homes and cosy pubs. The volunteers have finished picking up the litter and lost gloves, the road closure signs are taken down, the burger van drives off with a nod of thanks and the Market Place is quiet again.

A few of us stand on the pavement in the still cold night, staring up at the lights.

‘It’s all pretty awesome isn’t it?’

Stars cascade silently against the dark sky around the brightly illuminated words: ‘Melksham Christmas Lights.’

‘Yeah, it’s alright.’

London to Melksham

I love Paddington Station. It is full of so many of my favourite things: people, of course, London people, in all their many coloured multicultured beautiful criss crossing anthropological wonder; also that buzzy full up of happiness sense of social and soulful satisfaction from a weekend in London that necessitates a passing through Paddington; as well as the sheer level of professionalism and perfection in a public transport experience that justifies the ridiculous prices; plus of course the glorious anonymity of being one speck of humanity in this vast sussurating crowd of Londoners; and that wonderful moment when, paper cup of tea and train ticket balanced expertly in my hand, with one ipod earphone playing some suitably sounding Stones, I join a crowd of strangers, who are united only by their attention to the noticeboard and a vague sense of the West Country about them, and we stand patiently, observantly, watching the electric description of the 9.30 to Bristol Temple Meads which is ‘preparing platform,’ until we hear over the tannoy, ‘Platform three, for the…’ and before she’s finished, this entire crowd turns and moves as one, pouring down platform three, moving fast but not running – we have six minutes – with the assured well organised front of the queue smugness that ensures a seat for the next two hours sailing through splendid scenery towards Wiltshire. We have learned the hard way, that when your train is leaving at 9.30, you need to be there at 9.00, to stock up on required sustenance for the journey, use the necessary facilities for 30p  (too risky to leave your seat on a crowded train), and avoid the frantic sweaty sprint from one end of the vast station to the other, past the endless rows of first class carriages, only to spend a whole journey hating the rail service for charging you £61 to stand in the freezing train corridor among the bikes and prams and whiny children.

When I’m in London I spend a lot of time in crowded places, watching in fascination as thousands of anonymous beautiful strangers pass by. This is the humanity I’m a part of, the great flowing huge magnificent species of us, in the vast civilizations we have created, full of immense buildings, quirky little cafes, complex communication systems and a sophisticated network of roads, railways and airports that connect it all together. I am regularly awestruck and overwhelmed by the magnificence of life when I’m in London. I always wonder how to bring the brilliance of London to Melksham, how to replicate artsy little shops, glistening great sculptures, awesome parks and gardens, fabulous pubs and restaurants, all full of the delicious cultural and social richness that flows through the city.

It rains in Chippenham. And I run through the town over the flooded river and make my 234 bus back to Melksham.

This question of humanity, civilization, populace, of course it occupies my mind because my job is all about working for and sustaining and supporting the little civilization that is Melksham. But after a weekend contemplating and being overwhelmed by the vast complexity of it all, I do find myself somewhat bewildered and frustrated by the lack of purpose in the whole of humanity, and my role in working for it. When I worked for the church it was very clear. The clarity came from a misguided, incorrect and fundamentally flawed concept, but it was razor sharp in its focus. You protect and guide the little ones and bring in new ones in order to create and perpetuate the purity through the lifelong mission of cleansing 6,000 years of sin out of the blood of the world and restoring all humanity to sinless happiness. That’ll do nicely. And every meeting, email, phonecall, presentation and piece of paper had such a powerful purpose because it was all for that, for saving the world. It is easy to work 80 hours a week when you believe your contribution has that sort of significance.

So in my current role, which I love and am daily grateful for, I do find it hard to muster up a similar clarity or enthusiasm of purpose for simply sustaining the civilization of this few thousand, working for the good of Melksham, a populace who are all very nice, very lovely, friendly, thoughtful and beautiful people. Who I do love, whatever that is worth, while the purpose of humanity is to simply exist, and keep existing, having a nice a time of it as you can without causing the non existence of each other. And we work damn hard in our roles of maintaining a quite nice existence for the people of Melksham, keeping it full of flowers, Foresters Park Field Days, Food Festivals and films, but really, in the big scheme of things, which I get a glimpse of in the great chaotic crowds of London, it really doesn’t matter. We are little bits of our species and even our greatest sorrows and most exhilarating joys don’t actually matter. Really. Except to each other. For this little bit of time that we are here.

And my bus sails past a huge collection of litter along the A350 by Asda and I am dragged back quickly to the reality of what my job is for and in fifteen minutes I’ll be back at my desk sorting out arrangements for the next Tidy Town Day and even if it is less awesome than cleansing the world of 6,000 years of sin, I’ll do my gosh darned best to cleanse the A350 in Melksham of litter.

Hello

It has been such a while. Such a long and stupid Food Festival filled while. My life has been eclipsed by work, which I resent. Or I did, until my name was mentioned in a discussion on facebook about who should switch on the Christmas Lights this year, upon discovery of which I nearly cried with the honour and glowing warm fuzzy feeling of love it gave me. ‘Because she works so many more hours than she’s paid for,’ was the reason.

And fair enough, I do.

And people notice it and value it and appreciate it.

And that makes it worth it, right? Does it? But that’s not why I do it. And I don’t want to switch on the lights, I’d rather be running round in the rain making tea for the people who do switch on the lights. But it is undoubtedly nice to be considered. Very nice.

Maybe this is the time to examine why that serves as such a motivation.

Or maybe that’s a boring subject for my first entry back after months and instead we can have a look at the reason I came back which is to reignite and realign and reaffirm the ACTUAL point which is to WRITE MY BLOODY BOOK.

I reached 200,000 words back in April, which seems to have freaked me out a little and I have left it untouched in the laptop for five months. I could blame the Food Festival but I found time to watch a whole season of Breaking Bad so that’s no excuse. I thought, therefore, if perhaps I could put a choice snippet here every now and then it would help me get used to the idea of my life in print and help me get back to the task of whittling the thing down to a manageable, presentable size.

I go about my life in Melksham so happy and distant from the first 30 years of my life; I forget the mad swirly wierdshit that shrouded my youth, and every now and then I catch a glimpse of where I came from, and smile wryly at my current self, all in neatly ironed shirt, enjoying biscuits and tea in the office and chatting with my lovely colleagues about some contentious agenda item for the next meeting, or the latest bizarre complaint we have to solve, while just a few years ago I would have never imagined I would have such a normal, stable, wonderful job.

Rainy

Lessons for today:

1. The 17th century landscape gardens at Stourhead are surprisingly fun in a deluge of rain, as long as you keep moving, as – apart from a couple of smug well waterproofed walkers who giggle at your obvious ill-preparedness – you have the whole place almost to yourself, complete with regular shelter spots under magnificent tree canopies, or in the delightfully surprising stone grottoes, arches and mini Roman temples along the walk.

3. There is a volunteer who is available to give you a guided tour at 11am, but she will look at you with a forlorn expression pleading that you won’t ask her to go out in that pissing rain, please.

4. The Stourhead gift shop – even with the outdoor adventure section – does not sell umbrellas.

5. You are not allowed on the famous Palladian Bridge when it’s wet, as the delicate grass can be worn away by your interfering feet, but you won’t find this out until the end of your adventure when the stern lady at the ticket booth makes a point of waiting till you leave to call you over to her window in order to crossly point it out to you. Even if you have gift aided your ticket fee.

6. A Panasonic Lumix Camera is a stellar survivor of the rain, regardless of the warnings in your warranty.

7. Stourhead is a mere 45 minute journey from Trowbridge, but watch out on that roundabout into Frome – the roundabout that featured as the ‘something beginning with R’ that I spied with my little eye, in fact – as the steep curve of it is incredibly slippery when wet.

8. An hour and a half walking around an impressive landscape garden in the rain will cheerfully turn a sniffly little cold into full blown flu by bedtime.

Labyrinthitis

So my first week with this bizarre dizzy unilateral vestibular dysfunction has taught me a few of the things you can’t do with Labyrinthitis which include using machinery, driving, remembering you put a pizza in the oven, having a coherent conversation with a rather baffled lady at HMRC, remembering you put bagels in the toaster, hitting the smoke alarm in the ceiling with much accuracy, staying awake in the doctor’s waiting room, sending a text or reading on the bus, surviving a week of work without going home early at least twice, making sense of area board grant applications (sorry!), staying warm, laundry, crossing roads with certainty, shopping, Aikido, finishing most sentences and

But on the plus side, things you can still do with Labyrinthitis include curling up the sofa under a duvet being unusually impressed with films like Looper (thank you trailer for spoiling nothing of this genius film), having the beginnings of thoughts that seem really creative and clever although the ability to follow them through always dances cheerfully out the window, making a start at the dishes so you feel justified to put another pizza in the oven, scrolling through pages and pages of facebook updates to give you the sense of some meaningful social interaction by scattering a few ‘like’s about, phoning your mum to wish her a rather gigglingly happy birthday, sipping tea out of a flask on the pile of mats at the back of Aikido (because when you have carved Thursday nights out so gosh darn fiercely, you WILL keep your commitment to the art, even if it’s just to watch them dizzyingly throw each other around while you huddle under three people’s coats to stay warm), skyping America, listening to radio 4, watching a bewilderingly terrifying 3 episodes of Utopia back to back – my good lord who thinks this stuff up? – and playing grooveshark tunes at full volume because a potential side affect of this silly disability is permanent hearing loss and I am grateful, despite the blurry imbalance and confusion all over my head, that I can still hear – and dance a few ambitious moves to – this magnificent music.

 

Starstruck by Melksham

Being in Melksham this week is like being in London during the Olympics. The town stands with its head held high and looks around with a cheeky sparkle in its twinkling eye. The crowd that came out to see the lights last Saturday in the rain showed a valiant community commitment that other towns can only begin to envy. Will they cancel? They asked. Not a chance, this is Melksham, Paul said, it’s just a bit of rain. And on a weekend where flooding and torrential downpours forced towns nearby to give up, Melksham proudly, defiantly, unwaveringly, went ahead with the Christmas Fayre and Turning on of the Lights. And umbrella wielding, Santa hat wearing, neon light swishing, they came. Melksham people came out in their masses and gathered at the Town Hall and shouted out along to the countdown and cheered magnificently as the lights went on, the music resounded and great streaming bursts of golden light filled the night sky. No spangly celebrity to switch on Melksham’s lights; instead the genuine treasure of a community loving heroine in Jean Harris, surrounded by the team of utterly heroic splendidly hard working rain soaked Christmas Lights Group. I had tears in my eyes, weaving through the immense crowd to try to capture the moment in my meagre camera, to bottle the buzzy grateful excited joyous group hug of community spirit that swirled and danced around under the Christmas tree in the rain.

Then this Saturday saw the final fabulous addition to the majesty of Melksham’s illuminations as the Longford Road Lights joined the party. Alex stood quietly back and watched as people crammed round his house, gasping in awestruck delight at the hundreds of figures, features and festive fixtures that utterly cover the entire building. Santa, elf and reindeer were on hand to capture many a grateful donation in their sparkly lit buckets while the masses admired the weeks and weeks of Alex’s arduous work.

Back in the High Street, you can’t walk far without hearing some comment or exclamation of delight at how fantastic our lights are, how impressive the tree is, and how predictable and paltry are the lights in every other town. Our display doesn’t only look fabulous, but each light twinkles with a little more sparkle when you have seen for weeks the hours and hours of florescent clad volunteer time spent battling icy rain and wind atop many a ladder, pouring energy, thought, planning and guts into securing every fitting, networking every cable and attaching every light.

And the festive sparkle spreads through the shops as well, from Santa’s Night on the Tiles and ice skating meercats to the fabulous journey of The Night before Christmas along a trail of window displays. Even the humbuggiest person can’t help but smile at the proliferation of presents, polar bears, penguins and splendour that people have proudly displayed through the town, under its sky full of astounding stars.

 

Sitting at the bus stop after helping facilitate the Town Council’s distribution of 28 grands worth of grants to the comunity (and having downed three glasses of wine – in the altruistic interests of tidying up), the late night harmonica lady starts up on the bench next to me and instead of moving away I sing along and grin into the full moonlit hurricane free night sky over Melksham and I love everyone.

I love it

I love my job so much. I never knew such a diversely active, involved and community engaging role existed. Every time I walk down the high street I’m carrying some item of adventure – silk flowers to fill an empty shop window, posters for a Jubilee Field Day, bunting for the Freedom of the Town Parade, surveys for shopkeepers, Melksham in Bloom posters, Monty Halls flyers, Parking redemption receipts, Town Team invitation letters – and usually while reading a Melksham News full of the latest upates on everyone else’s adventures.

And then this week in my between work spaces my hands were full of the extra adventurous accoutrements of Melksham Comic Con, a committee I joined 6 months ago with little understanding of the sheer amount of work it would require in these few weeks. But after many hours of programme compiling, sponsorship invoicing, sign making, poster sticking, and my absolute favourite – Oh I’ll do that! I’ll do that! – Gotham city backdrop painting, it looks like everyone’s efforts mean that all is in place and Melksham is set to be the lucky recipient of an incredibly well organised fun packed day of comic book and sci fi fun times this Saturday.

Added to which I had a huge wedding’s worth of flowers to do at Cleeve House with Liz which Wednesday evening was finger rippingly full of, and which God bless her, Liz finished off today in time for the bride’s visit to check on progress.

Before which there was a choir committee meeting – sure we can have it at my house – on Monday, and then a Relate Young People’s Focus Group presentation at Cleeve House today which involved the most ridiculously convoluted sequence of administrative minutiae to get three young people in two taxis with the requistite consent, directions and safeguarding required of anyone under the age of 18. Still it was worth it as in an event full of senior members of local government (including five members of the mayoral chain gang of which Relate were most impressed) the young people’s bit was the only one that got any applause.

I have slept 5 hours a night this week and I think that is why I am so incredibly – and a bit irrationally – happy.  Did we work out that this is called workaholism and is in fact a disability?

I honestly don’t care. Yet.

I love being this busy. I love the fact that I have to get up at 5.30 in order to make sense of the tangly web of adventures that each day holds. And that I do, still, all around the edges of an already packed and buzzy full time job, get it done.

I was proud of my young people tonight, that they had got there, prepped, ready to speak, and with a colourful successful succinct display board. But I was even more proud of myself that I had managed to orchestrate the whole complex concoction in tiny bits of time on the bus and in lunchbreaks in the last few days.

Something of the adrenalin associated with massive challenge here to examine further with a professional perhaps….?

But I am so happy.

And actually, suddenly, so incredibly tired.

gnite

 

Bank Holiday Guilt

My sister phoned and said yes, Happy Easter. So are you happy? And I said well, no, and we went down the usual exploratory Sunday afternoon adventure that is our curious amateur psychoanalysis of our stuff. And it came down to a mixture of two types of guilt, what a surprise. Feeling bad for not doing work over the bank holiday weekend and feeling bad for not being able to relax either. Such a productive mix. And she said why don’t you just let yourself be someone who can relax and do nothing sometimes? And I said yeah but I don’t think I want to be that person.

Why not?

Oh the usual, need to save the world.

And then what, people will parade you through Melksham and say what a great job you did?

No, I don’t even want that. I just want to fix the world.

What, so then mummy and daddy will come home?

Ey?

Well, if you grew up your whole life knowing that your parents weren’t there because they were off saving the world and the world still isn’t fixed then it would make sense in the mind of a 5 year old that if you help them fix the world then it will be fixed sooner and they’ll come home.

Oh.

And we know that irrational decisions you made out of fear and anxiety when you were 5 are the ones your rational adult self acts out whether they make sense at 35 or not.

Oh.

I discovered later on that you can weep your eyes out while hoovering and actaully make no sound.

It is a relief, I suppose, to realise that all that drive and passion for the community that manifests itself in hours and hours of staying up late worrying and planning and wondering and working way above and beyond all my hours in every job I have ever had plus a pile of extra voluntary fingers in a confusing and overwhelming pile of voluntary pies has not been out of a genuine altruistic concern and care about people, but out of the angry logic of a child who wants their parents back.

It’s a relief. But its a bit depressing too.

And instead of an anxiously excitable workaholic approach to my return to work tomorrow, I feel the normal bored sort of mundane acceptance that this is what we do to pay the rent.

I’m sure it will pass, and whether it is out of a drive to save the world or simply the desire to do a job well, I do love my job, I am so grateful for a real and gorgeously normal nine to five, with such fabulous colleagues for such a lovely town, but that deep passionate desire to throw my life and soul into the community has somewhat waned in its fervour.

My task now is to find the same motivation from a far healthier place.

Bloody. 5 year olds ey.

New

I have a new job. Further to my last post about two months ago. I should have written when I was excited and giggly and buzzy about it, not now when I stumble out of it after a week, eyes glazed and sleepy with a fuzzy cloudy haze all over my brain as I am baffled by how entirely and utterly a full time job swallows you up.

Welcome, said my sister, laughing, to a real job.

I do like it though, how focused and sharp I am when I do work. I carve out 45 minutes in the morning before the 7.50 bus to do things I would have had a luxurious whole afternoon to do before – make birthday cards, arrange flowers, order things online, do dishes.

And at work I just power through my tasks, crossing them off one by one, loving my desk, my office, my sparkly new computer, and most of all my glorious colleagues! What do you think of this, how should I layout this, what word should I use here? I love colleagues.

And I love having an office that I leave. I go to the Library to do some of my other old job while it hangs in the limbo between coordinators and I get here to the computer and my brain says no. No you shall space out and chat a while first.

But, in conclusion, oh my God, how great is it. It is so great.

Thank you

Torn torn torn

If I have a few minutes spare before my bus at Melksham, I let my feet, (and often the weather) guide me as to where to hang out. The Town Hall foyer today proved partially providential in the ten minutes I lingered there, as it provided a chat with Jon about counselling opportunities in primary schools (limited, unfortunately), some cheery banter with Cameron about the possibility that it is not me but my driving instructor who needs a bit of a push, and a most fortuitous conversation with Stephen Gray covering such topics as the Sainsbury’s community grant and what might be done with it, the massively successful sell out Jon Richardson tour (of which I am not only proud owner of two tickets, but also a poster with MELKSHAM ASSEMBLY HALL listed alongside venues like LONDON LEICESTER SQUARE THEATRE and DUBLIN OLYMPIA), and the fact that, yes, what a coincidence, I am currently looking for further employment.

So now I sit in the Art House Café, with one strongly brewed pot of tea and one fresh off the photocopier application form for the position of Deputy Clerk for Melksham Town Council.

I can tick every box. Not only tick, but I can imagine giving fabulous examples and impassioned enthusiasm for every box in an interview.

It comes with all those wonderful normal things like holiday pay, sick leave and pension, many sensible miles away from this risky self-employed write my own cheques out of a very unreliable pot of grant money weird universe that is a Community Area Partnership coordinator.

But it’s full time.

And I’m so torn!

I love my job at MCAP, too much of course. Tuesday for example, I worked 13.5 hours for a job that is supposed to take 3 hours a day. None of it is really claimable, as to arrange and prepare papers for an AGM doesn’t have to take as long as I did, but I threw in all my free other hours simply because I wanted it to be fun, colourful, full of pictures and activities. People are giving up their evening; I want to give something back. It was a great evening, people didn’t want to leave, we got a handful of new volunteers, a collection of post it notes full of ideas for how to be more inclusive, effective and open, and a pile of colourful paper flowers scribbled full of creative and inventive ways that MCAP can help the community. Most of all, we had 30 people who left the meeting with a smile, some new contacts, a belly full of cake, and a sense of pride and happiness in our fabulous community.

And I giggled excitedly all the way home at the sheer brilliance and wonder of the Melksham Community Area Partnership. I love it.

And I don’t want to give it up.

But it is a luxury really, for the retired or the stupidly wealthy, to be able to throw so many voluntary hours at a thing that you care about, and is not a sustainable or realistic way to continue.

I do need, most urgently, another job. And I will only be able, honestly, to put my heart into one that is community focused, people-centric and aligned with the ethical and spiritual requirements of my soul to spend my hours doing some actual good for the world, and not for some anonymous person’s bank balance. Or even just for my own, for that matter.

And Town Council is so very similar to Community Partnership, OK not in procedure and position in the community, but in aims, values, purpose. And it is more powerful and recognised and structurally significant than the partnership, and does, by virtue of a few thousand pounds a month more, get more done.

And, much as my siblings who grew up here still question me bafflingly from their various new homes of London, New York and Madrid, I do love Melksham. I could give my hours to Melksham. I already do, nearly all of them, except this way I would actually get paid for each one.

The major difference is the faff and hassle of getting to Melksham by 9am every single morning. Wearing a skirt and blouse as well. Not that I don’t like dressing smartly, I love it, but you do save so much time when your work arrangements allow you to stay up till midnight finishing the steering group papers and still arrive well slept at your desk at 9am, albeit in your dressing gown with a bowl of muesli.

And of course the major thing for this year, my big 2012 plan, is to get my book done. My book, which I have been chipping away at for years but, with only one part time job, I could actually devote every afternoon to and get done this year. Or so I thought, until Melksham time has already managed to spill over into writing time for 4 of the 7 working days so far this year.

And again, it is a luxury that I can’t afford.

Torn, torn, torn.

I think it comes down to this. Can I hand over my role in the partnership to someone else? Am I too possessive and emotionally tied to this role that I don’t want someone else to have it? All my work that I have put in for two years to get it to this place, the massive bank of contacts, relationships, information, the pages and pages of data, research, opinion, not to mention the amount of frustration, anger and tears I have overcome to get it this far?

Deadline in two weeks. I will think, and I will look out, and I will see.

But my god above I could do with some holiday pay.

But, look at this, I have always been trying to get the Melksham Community Area Partnership to work closely with the Melksham Town Council, so if I was in the town council, well there you go, I could link the two together so much more, I would have an overview of everything, I could play such a key role in addressing all the things that the partnership has identified, that the town council actually has the power to solve!

I would of course still support MCAP with hours and hours – I could join the Steering Group! Ha. And whoever took my place, I’d be there for them for as long as they needed.

Hmm hmm hmmm

Happy New Year

Thank the universe that Helen is doing the bath half this year. I joined her two years ago for 6 months of painful training for the 2010 one, and after the few minutes of elation at the end – I jut ran thirteen and a half MILES!’ – I decided not much was worth that kind of pain again, and happily won’t be doing it this year. But, for the moral support, and the obvious benefits to my health, I go running with Helen anyway in training.

This morning, the first run after a very lazy chocolately Christmas break, we met up outside the park at 6, laughing at the self-inflicted punishment of the task. I had on too many layers as usual, judging that the discomfort of too hot at the end is far more manageable than the bitey pain of too cold at the start.

We managed fifteen minutes. Fifteen good minutes though. As the cold air stung my lungs, tears streamed from my eyes and bruising pain thudded through my legs, I smiled up at the stars. Nice. I was still smiling on my favourite bit, the walk back home, where you meet an occasional grumpy cold person on their way to some very early shift, and smile at them with a smug I’ve just been for a run – I know, at this hour!  And in the dark still emptiness ofFore Street, I heard music.

What’s that now?

It seems to be coming from a van parked outside the bank.

‘…because you’re amaaaaazing, juuuuust the waaaaaaaaay you aaaaaaaaaare.’

But it’s so loud, filling the courtyard, resounding among the dark silent shops, swirling around the silhouetted Christmas tree. Is this some peaceful gradual wake up call organised by the residents to gently rouse the whole street at 6.20? Ah, I see, no residents. Loud music. Cheeky, but disturbing no-one.

A man was heaving boxes from the van onto the doorstep, getting on with his job to the triumphant soundtrack.

Morning, I smiled.

He nodded and carried on.

Something of the unexpedness of the music, and the shared 6am weirdness of the street struck me as simply wonderful. Trowbridge is usually packed with people, the fussy bustling crowds of town centre shopping, but at this odd and eerie time of day, you can own the high street. It’s yours. In my cheerful post jog joy, I thought it was mine, but no, it was the delivery man’s.

And it made me so happy.

And so, with a combination of some adrenaline finally pumping itself round my lethargic body, and the unexpected happiness of a soundtrack to this January morning, I have just sat at the laptop and steamed my way through around 20 emails, fast, effective and fabulously focused.

I’ve got it back, thank you. Happy new year.

 

January

I have had such a deliberately empty, peaceful and stress free break. I did nothing very tricky, avoided all forms of stress (including my family) and started mindfulness meditation. I was looking forward to this, Tuesday 3^rd January, to sit back here at my desk and ‘return’ to work – well, return to the spare room where the laptop is – assuming that my brain would be neatly and tidily clear of the confusing blocks and emotional cloudiness that shrouded my whole MCAP role last year.

And I got up early, did some tidying, showered, dressed nicely and did my hair (makes me feel like I’m going to an actual workplace) and sat here nice and punctual at 9am.

And I can’t do it.

The same cloudy messy confusion sinks sadly back into my soul, the same messy stack of emails crowd my inbox, they didn’t go away or get easier, and the hundreds of colour coded post it notes full of tasks and projects are still exactly where I stuck them a few weeks ago – a couple have fallen down and been diligently replaced – my futile attempts to organise and categorise the hundred strands of my job, still just as annoyingly ineffective as before.

And it makes me sad.

I imagine if I was at a real workplace, I would be getting a cup of tea now and chatting to colleagues about their holidays, dancing on ice, and this horrendous weather – ‘I know!’ – but on my own here I feel a small chat to you will help straighten out my mind and get me back into work mode.

Across the country there must be thousands of people right now sitting at their desks, staring out the window as the sad gloomy heaviness of their tedious job sinks inevitably back in. You can feel it physically in the body, as the shoulders tense up, the brow furrows and the neck crunches into its familiar droop over the keyboard.

 

I think many people must quit in the first week in January.

All inspired

It is interesting that as soon as you outline and categorise the priorities for the Melksham Area, people, projects and plans seem to providentially pop into place to address them.

Of course these things were going on/would have gone on anyway, but having a document against which you can write a delighted ‘IN PROGRESS!!!’ makes it seem so much more coherent, cohesive and coordinated.

I am baffled, always, by how uncoordinated everything is. I have been making a list. It’s got 700 groups/projects/venues/organisations/charities/events in it. I thought such a master database must surely exist somewhere, until I started trying to make one and realised just how complex it is. And why no-one’s done it. And in my visio-spatial brain I am extra confused until I can physically capture, colour-code and categorise everything, which – without a very swish 5-dimesional illustrational tool –  is not looking at all easy. Bowerhill Residents Action Group is in Bowerhill, made of all different ages, meets in Bowerhill Village Hall; is made up of people from the area – some residents, some parish council, some others; has projects that take place in the area, under all sorts of themes like youth, environment, inclusion, education, volunteering; is voluntary, gets funded, runs projects, meetings and events.  So, you could try to categorise it geographically, demographically, financially, socially, thematically, politically, but you’d soon get very frustrated. As with Poulshot Village Trust, Atworth Traffic Action Group, and Seend Aikido club (which meets in Potterne).

The levels of categorisation are vast.

Anyway, I digress. I came to express delight and surprise at something that IS coordinated. That does link up.

I just met with Jenny, the Wiltshire Digital Inclusion Coordinator, whose job it is to give everyone in Wiltshire the opportunity and skills to get online. This ticks the huge ‘Increase internet access’ box in the Community Plan chapters of EDUCATION, ECONOMY and INCLUSION, as well as the ‘Develop opportunities for volunteering’ in nearly every theme. She’s running a pilot scheme in Melksham – lucky recipient of so many fabulous pilot schemes – and wanted to meet me to discuss how best to go about making it happen in Melksham.  And I happilygave her all the data I know, all the contacts she’ll need, all the venues it could happen at, all the groups who might want to get involved, and the fabulous array of local online opportunities to incentivise online embarkation for the digitally reluctant. We chatted excitedly about the possibilities, the people, the places, and I left with a slightly springier step and a comfy little smile into the drizzly grey drab of dusk.

Because.  As soon as you have an actual thing, a project, a concept, an idea, that needs this messy tangled sprawl of a community to get spread across, then the network suddenly comes alive. The informational blood fills the beautifully complex arteries of the community cardio-vascular system, and it takes shape. The thing comes alive, it moves and flows and breathes and lives.

It is only at moments like this that I can feel the actual tangibility of the Partnership, the weight of it, the thingness, the whattity, it stands clear and solid out of its usual messy hazy murk. I want to commission a 3D animator to make a visual expression of this complex thing I’m trying to portray.

But without such a superfluous resource, I turn to wordpress in the Library, in this warm happy hub of happenings, while a toddler giggles in that corner, elderly people read papers over there, teenagers type into facebook over here, rain lashes down on the roof and bits of tinsel twinkle around the tables.

Either way, I’m happy.