Saturday 10^th July 2010

I am desperate to keep real life at bay just a little longer; to permit myself to wallow (yes I know that’s not the right word – but I don’t care – you’ll know what I mean) in the starry ethereal light of the past week.

My to do list has been pruned, which is more than can be said for the spent lilacs now thankfully, gloriously hidden from view by the profusion of other untamed shrubs and not quite as small as I thought they’d be trees. Especially the glorious glowing golden green Beech that seems to have had a year like my youngest did in 2008; outgrowing every shape and space it inhabited within a blink of an eye.

Some decisions have been made and a new order is emerging. What matters? What is now? I shan’t bore with a list of activities, expectations and tedious to do’s that have missed the cut. They no longer carry sway. They are on the plane home.

This morning dawned early, as it has a tendency to do this time of year, but I resisted all calls to service until almost 7 am. Well, it is Saturday. And a fine one it is too. Yes, I know it is raining and grey. But it is a light high grey and a soft warmish gentle rain. My garden is happy. I would almost swear I can hear something delightfully pastoral, Canteloube, something of the Auvergne on the still, moist air. My discipline to write is abandoned to the overwhelming desire to walk and run in the rain. However, along with a key, an inhaler, an anti histamine and a tissue (the full support vehicle will follow at a discreet pace) I manage to sneak my trusty old Sony V.O.R into my running belt. It can double as extra resistance in light of another kilo accidentally dropped in the past week. Note to self. Eat. Not too much.

Sure as eggs is eggs, whilst absorbing the droplets from sky, tree and grassy verge a permanent low grade smile on my face, thoughts unbidden tumble in. Nothing seems to overwhelm or prompt a need to expound into the little microphone. A few broad ideas for a story I decided to write late yesterday; some recurring shape of trees imagery; a little note of the sounds and smells of the morning but they can wait. They are not earth shattering.

Hot coffee, cool toast and a warm shower then a brief trip to the village shop, where on route no fewer than three people bemoan the ‘dreadful’ weather. I cannot help myself. I argue. Where were they this lovely week past? Breezy perhaps it has been from time to time, less than 28 degrees in the shade I will grant you. Some white or even grey scudding clouds and the odd, very odd spot of rain until yesterday afternoon. Perhaps none of them have ‘enjoyed’ or endured weeks on end of 28 degrees plus in the steaming, stinking, sticky south east. Perhaps they require a good dose of 2 daily 90 minute commutes in a tin metal box on one of London’s Orbital Car Parks, pumping out enough carbon and heat to feed a cave family for a month; or the all too frequent inhumane sufferings of strap hanging the tube daily, when just as every fibre of your being is lurching forward yearning for natural light and pure fresh air to breath the wretched little thing lurches to a halt in the almost sightless mire of the Under Ground. Or perhaps we are just hard wired to complain about weather, all weather, all of the time.

Another coffee and I scan the local papers, not least because I have to for my work. I alight on a nice little photo story about the retirement from a local primary school, of a teacher of my acquaintance. One sentence, seemingly grey, mundane and innocuous, was to raise my temperature; alarm bells, like a level crossing klaxon flashed at me. Part of the imaginative leaving presentation included a Disclosure Form (blank I assumed), so that the teacher of close to 50 years standing today, may as is decreed by dome faceless scaredy cat nonentity, tomorrow apply for a certificate of propriety should she wish to ‘pop in to lend a hand’.

Just WHAT, I want to know, not for the first time, is that about? Why is it still necessary for someone with at least one current, if not likely several, Full Disclosure (Criminal Records Check for the uninitiated) certificate to have to complete the identical self same time consuming and costly paperwork every time they volunteer to give any of their time and skills to the service of the young. Why is it not yet possible to do this once, perhaps reviewed every few years (I am being very very very generous here since I am as yet not convinced that anything in this process is actually designed to safe guard children) and for each individual to have a single certificate that cann be cross checked if required?

Who is making money out of these processes – and why do we continue to let them. I will not be alone in being able to paper my house walls with the dratted things. Some un common sense is called for, even such red tape and beaurocracy IS keeping some people in employment.

Here endeth today’s rant. Time for some therapeutic cooking and maybe, just maybe, a small very dry martini.