CYCLE 5 DAYS 18 & 19
Friday 13th December 2019
Up at 5:45 and down the meds as I speed dress to get out of the house and off to the station. Today is a London day at the Royal College of Psychiatrists. I have an easy ride into town and get on an early train. I settle down with the Existential Cafe and read while at least two people around me snore and dribble contentedly as they pretend to be paying attention to the white buds in their ears.
London means my favourite art work. Its nice to look at it as I work my way through bemused foreigners as they are disgorged by the cross channel tunnel trains, or queue to get on one.
I am early enough to get into an almost empty tube train and I am soon stepping off at Aldgate and walking to the RCP. Straight down to the cafe for breakfast and a coffee till my colleagues arrive. We spend the morning reviewing various areas of work and reflecting on the year as we nibbled both savoury and savoury goodies. Work done and we are ready to face the challenge of a London murder mystery.
We are split into teams and provided with the rules and instructions and then we are off to Liverpool Street station to start our investigation. A colleague and set off to hunt down the culprit. The clues are obscure and need a lot of observation and thought to hunt down. It’s cold and my colleague is getting progressively colder and I am getting to a point of flagging somewhat, but I am seeing parts of London I had not seen since I was a child. By the time we got as far as the old Jewish soup kitchen we had had enough and made our way to the Giraffe restaurant in Billingsgate which had been booked for 3:15. We found our way quickly to it and I had the satisfaction of my Fitbit congratulate me on doing 10, 000 steps in the day.
By the time we arrived, two colleagues had already arrived and like us had failed to complete the investigation. I order hot chocolate and we waited for the eager and competitive team to arrive and smugly inform us that they had answered all the clues and had a answer. We did not want to know saying that we would complete it one day in nicer weather. A worthy ambition but I wonder if we ever will. It turned out later that they not only completed it but also got the right answer, perpetrator and weapon. We sat and chatted, ate and drank. It is one of those moments when I miss alcohol. I’m not sure what exactly it is that I miss, whether it is the taste, the socially shared activity or the delusion that I am talking really intelligent stuff when I am actually talking crap. I know that the first thing that goes is judgement, so it maybe the loss of any good sense that I might have that gets in the way of me being un-sensible that I miss. Anyway after good food, drink and company we do the group exercise of trying to work out who pays what. Now after three bottles of white wine this could be a true challenge, but on this day it worked out to a convenient round number. So we walked back to the station through a now increasingly celebratory and crowded London. Some joined in the activities at Dirty Dicks while I and two other colleagues found our way to the trains. It was underground to St Pancras and then a quick spring along to the cheap seats on the train about to depart to Sheffield. I resort to the Existential Cafe again until we arrive back in Leicester.
Home and I am tired, my calfs ache a bit and I sit and watch TV, Have I Got News for You, Mock the Week and the Last Leg, all of which made what fun they could of the general election and the various buffoons and mendacious slugs that are now our representatives in the Mother of all Parliaments. Fun from a sense of powerlessness is probably the best way to describe it. The fear will come later. I retire tired and vaguely disturbed to bed.
Saturday 14th of December 2019
A tricky night as my legs kept cramping up, so I finally get up at about 9am to make coffee and tea and move the car so that the Sainsbury’s delivery can be made at 9:30. I have a headache and return to bed with the drinks. It is my partner who gets up and deals with the delivery and my eldest daughter disappears off into the real world to return at tea time. I get up, tempted by bacon sandwiches and fresh coffee. While eating these I duck tape the box of goodies that is going to Shri Lanka and think about what else there is to do before the great celebration. My partner works out how to order our Christmas foods on her tablet and we do so thus saving us the usual Christmas Eve dash to the shop to collect the dead bird we are so looking forward to. This is a welcome result.
So we visit the post office to send out parcel on its way and walk to the chemist to collect my partner’s meds. Newspaper clutched we return home to a cup of coffee and get ready to go to the garden centre for vegitables and pies. It is also exciting as this is the day I get to buy the Christmas tree that can then be brought in over the week and decorated. Of course I have to risk life and limb to get the decorations out of the loft and play the find the dead bulb game before it can be shown in all its glory.
Tree selected we decide on a drink and a sandwich before we return and load up the tree. We queue at the café until I get fed up with my partner shoving a Dobie’s card in my face as I’m preparing to order, I leave her to it and find a seat, where I look at football scores and think about other things. Our food arrives with the drinks, more hot chocolate. We have some discussion about Christmas presents and the ones I need to select for myself so I go on line and order new clothes that will fit my expanding waist line. I shall dazzle in plum. So with that sorted we decide to leave so I start to place the cutlery and crockery on the tray at which point my partner in an attempt to be helpful, never a good idea, then tips cold hot chocolate into my crutch turning my instantly in to an old man that’s just pissed himself. Not amused, I go to the toilets where, after getting comfortable standing on one leg with my wet leg under the hand dryer whilst waving my hand under it to keep it going and hot enough to dry my jeans, I try to change my image of being an incontinent old man. Had any one come in it would have looked like pervert man trying to fuck a hand dryer. The position to try and dry my fleece was a little more dignified but still required an inappropriate hand movement. At these times I become mute and suffer a serious sense of humour bypass. We pay for the Christmas tree and some wrapping paper and return to the car, which I drive to the front of the garden centre. I leave my partner and collect the tree, which I then get into the car.
Its a silent drive home. I unload the tree and stow it by the house. I then spend time in the laundry putting my chocolate stiff clothes into wash and dry properly. I watch rugby and order more Christmas presents on line for relatives. Early evening arrives and I blog. My sense of humour has yet to return and I am looking forward to the oblivion of sleep, perchance not to dream and just wake up in a new day.
