I have started the long and emotionally painful task of saying goodbye to people. Everything is going to be different when I get back The end of an era. I feel I've resolved things with you. I hope you feel the same. I want you to know that this isn't a goodbye meaning I'll never see you again, I just won't see you in the same context. There was something there today, a spark that had nothing to do with lust or love or alcohol or loneliness, and everything to do with enduring friendship. It felt wonderful.
“Is there anything in there I should attach particular significance to?” he asks, after having waded through my drunken melodramaticisms. “Is there anything I can do to help?” Yes, you muppet, come with me!!!! I didn't actually say that. I know he has his reasons, and I might even bring myself to admit that he's probably right. But what started out as being a good idea for him has rapidly turned into an actual need on my part. I could really do with the company. That batch of angst was just my fears of loneliness and isolation.
It worries me that we only have emotional conversations when we're in the pub. It's not the most healthy, but it's the only time when we focus entirely on each other. I love you, but yet I still can't talk to you about the important things without getting all teary-eyed. I'm really scared of leaving you for so long. Neither of us want to admit it, but I don't think we are as stable as we once were, I am scared that when I go, you will realise that you are actually better off without me.
I am going to miss Food!! My guidebooks enthuse about Nicaraguan cuisine, and I know the variety of fruit and veg available out there is amazing. Costa Rica has the freshest seafood imaginable. But I've just come back from the Darlington Food Festival, and I've been ogling Big Meat Pies and exotic sausages (no innuendo attached), and I'm about to cook rabbit casserole for dinner. Dead animals are an expensive luxury out there, and also the thing most likely to make me sick. In amongst the endless rice and beans, I am going to miss hearty MEAT!!
There's one person in the world who will be very glad to see the back of me. Not that she knows I'm leaving - I won't give the smug little bitch the satisfaction. I did not want to think of her at all, I thought I'd dealt with this ages ago, I certainly have with the one person in all this who actually matters. But I've since found out that she's STILL slagging me off, to total strangers, unprovoked. So I will content myself with ranting about the pathetic, patronising, socially-inept,shriveled-up old cow on here!
A night oot, for distraction purposes. Taiko comes to Middlesbrough! We both love Taiko drumming and we found out that a group we'd seen before, Mugenkyo, were performing in the town hall – an odd venue, in an unlikely town to be honest. It was pretty full though, and the acoustics worked brilliantly. So dramatic! The Mugenkyo drummers are not actually Japanese, most are Scottish (and one Welsh) They have a Dojo where you can go and learn Taiko just outside Glasgow. Sounds fun!! If we can afford it, we're going to try it when I get back!
In another act of “preparation” I calmly went down to the hairdressers (one recommended by Jo) and had all my hair cut off. It is now cropped very short and spiked up. I love it – but the carpet of dry red hair all over the floor in the shop was a real shock! Not just to me either; the hairdresser was very friendly and chatty, and seemed pleased to see me, possibly because I was the only person in there under 70! It was definitely a Blue-Rinse Granny type place. Still, they did a great job!
T'was the night before Christmas, and all down the motorway, ferrets made smells (they were cooped up all day!) We are off to see The Parents, and The Parents have decided it is Christmas tomorrow, and who are we to argue? We have a few presies in the boot, and wine fit for mulling. The ferrets on the back seat are looking forward to running round and disgracing themselves in Grandad's Shed. The usual madness awaits us. Since we are “missing” Christmas, at least with the rest of the family this year, we shall do it tomorrow!!
Well, it didn't snow, in fact it rained all day (very much like December 25th then). But we had an enormous Christmas dinner with Turkey and cranberry and stuffing, and crackers! And the tiniest, most pathetic shop-bought Christmas pudding ever, which Mum gleefully set on fire with whiskey! A pretty convincing festivity then. I think I will miss the parents a lot over the real Christmas, but otherwise, I don't know. I am going for four months, and it's actually been more than four months since I saw them last time, so no real difference there!
"Boxing day" was spent at Vicky and Andrew's/ It's silly given we'ev been friends for so long (15 years now) but i was really nervous about seeing her. After her chillingly final and unexpectedly blunt email a few weeks ago, I wasn't sure what to say to her. We had kinda made up but it was still very strained. She looked pale and withdrawn, not her usual self, and said she felt tired after just talking about nothing with us for an hour. I'm worried about her, but she is still Vicky-enough to say worrying doesn't help!
The problem with having Christmas now, is that I am now in Holiday Mood. I know full well I am going to Nicaragua for work, but going through the guidebooks makes me excited!! I have all mu plans with Carl for when he comes out over Christmas (and thanks to a generud present from the Parents, he can now book his flights, WOO!)Volcano hiking and hammocks strewn over black sand beaches, monkey spotting abnd Flor de Cana rum... I can't wait to share that all with him. I think he'll love it as much as me!
I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, again. Brain just didn't turn off and I couldn't relax. So today I was so tired I felt really emotionally wobbly. Jo and I had meetings about getting our RASC funding bids through, and I got all wound up because, as usual, the Arts Council will fund anyone except people who deserve it, and Darlington is way to small and incestuous. I feel awful about dumping all this on Jo, but right now, I just want to get excited about life in Nicaragua and forget about all this!
I am going to miss Chris and Rachel and especially baby Nini. And our sauna of course. Apparently Chris was adamant that they had to come see me because he hadn't had a sauna in MONTHS – oh, and because they hadn't seen us in ages either! Obviously. This morning I got those two addicted to Mario Kart and while they were racing each other across the Mushrooms with plastic steering wheels, I got to read Nini 'The Pig of Happiness' and prevent ferrets from jumping on her. She was sooo sweet! I am now broody as hell.
There are plenty of things I'm not going to miss. My home town can be spectacularly UGLY at times. Some people are Ugly – not always physically, but stupid and ugly minded. The ones on the end of our road who make walking past intimidating just by being there. Then there's the physical geography. There's a patch of waste ground just off the ringroad which is littered with squashed blue plastic cider bottles, hundreds of them. Sometimes there are toothless old men there, drinking the day away. At least I assume they are old. It's hard to tell.
I am writing this blind - not as in with my eyes shut, but by hand, without the sacred Word Counter. I still love hand writing; my stationary collection/fetish is a tribute to that. Some of my notebooks are so beautiful I can't bear to write in them! My handwriting is not worthy. But, try as I might, I cannot get used to typing on my phone just yet. Jo keeps reminding me of Nanowrimo...do I really want to handwrite 50,000 words whilst on fieldwork? Or even type a novel on my phone?
HELL YEAH.
Why not?
“You may experience dizziness, nausea, mood swings, blurred vision and mild hallucinations whilst taking this medication.” Yes, thanks, I shall look forward to it. At two weeks to go, I thought it was time to start taking my overpriced anti-malarial tablets. But fortunately, I don't have to take them until a week before I go. Lucky me. I have finally finished The Grand Plan for uni, it has taken the last two days solid. It is headache inducing but not impressive. I've got too tangled in logistics, and not got enough detail about my research methods.
Mikus is here! A week early for the party – he´s keen! Sadly he can´t make it next week, but the boys apparently have a lot of geology to discuss anyway, which is probably best done sober. As is becoming obligatory with Mike visits, we went out for curry and beer. Jo joined us in the restaurant, mainly because she got bored waiting for us in the pub. Curry was good, interesting food, however the service was incredibly slow because the restaurant was packed. Never mind, I enjoyed my last restaurant-curry in a while! Don´t think Nicaraguans do curry.
I´ve just noticed I´ve buggered up my countdown on here. Never mind, I´m sure you get the idea, dear reader. Today was spent doing some last minute academic coffee reading, to counteract the conversations about GIS and impact craters that were happening in my front room. These discussions were interrupted by Mike´s announcement that he no longer eats pork. Doh. Quick rethink of Sunday dinner. Think the boys had fun though, and I´m glad Carl has GIS work to concentrate on while I´m away. I want him to get academic again so that he appreciates what I´m doing.
As my last week approaches, my life is reduced to Lists of Stress. Apparently, making organised Lists can help`alleviate stress, or so I´m told, but for me it has the opposite effect. I wrote out To Do lists, and To Pack lists, and Reading Lists and Shopping Lists. And there they all are, immutable, excruciatingly Real, staring at me from my pin board, and boring into my very soul. Lists of Stress engraving themselves on my eyelids. They are right next to my calender, where my number of non-crossed off days is getting smaller and smaller...
This is a bittersweet week, full of Lasts. Last trip to Durham. Last Nero coffee. Last catch up with The Rumble. It´s strange, another person who I haven´t seen for an age, but when I finally do, talking is so easy, it´s like we´ve never been apart. She has a new man and a new car and still no idea what she´s actually doing with her PhD - she can share my suffering in that respect. But it does feel like Times of Change for both of us - putting a lot of shit behind us. And moving on.
I am in my final week and Im in Sheffield for my final ´session with my supervisors before lift off. Peter is Master of the double-edged compliment. He says "of all the students I´ve sent off on fieldwork, you are the one I´ll worry about least." Meh?? Does that mean he has confidence in me? or that he´ll just forget me as soon as I leave?? I said I´m off to London and might stick my nose in the London School of Coffee. This is good apparently. "sticking your nose in" and "fieldwork" are the same thing!!
Ok now I am pissed off. Having an obsessive, totally unattractive stalker is one thing, I can put up with him even if i´d rather not. However, what oversteps the mark, in my book, is the bullshit he spouts. Sometimes I actually think he genuinely believes the crap he comes out with too. For "the get-together tonight is cancelled" read: "I wanted you to come alone, please uninvite your friend." For "I can´t make the party, it´s too painful for me to say goodbye to you" read: "I´ve chickened out of seeing you with your husband." What a prick.
I really do have the most wonderful collection of friends anyone could ask for. Tonight we partied (in Jo´s case, ´like it was 1929´) All those who really mattered were there, with two exceptions, one being geographically challenged, and the other we saw the other week. We "sung" and played Rock Band - mainly badly. We got drunk, naked and sweaty in the sauna. Tattoo-Jo met The Lesbians In The Loos. I was presented with carpet from the pub floor. Ferrets were admired and the Hardcore Four (me, Carl, Ol and D) carried on til 4am! A fab night!!
The hangover... wasn´t actually that bad. Unusually, we´d only ended up with three dead bodies on the floor. All the hardcore four infact, and Hils, who can be excused having driven 250 miles the day before. Apart from eating one of Carl´s infamous roast dinners and playing yet more silly computer games the day sort of faded into a blur. Those dudes are fantastic though, and I´m really glad they all stayed - it made the party continue! However, my Long Drawn Out Goodbye gets evermore melodramatic. I love my friends, and especially my Warly. I´ll miss them all.
I still hate London. After emotional goodbyes to the ferrets, Hils drove me down with me intending to Tube it from her house in Ickenham in order to meet Carl in Victoria. Using the tube with an enormous rucksack is hard enough, especally after a weekend like that, but tonight´s journey was horrendous. The Victoria line now shuts at 10pm, so alternative routes have to be taken. Central line turned out to be completely down as well dur to a "communications failure." After walking back across Ickenham, I finally got to our tiny hotel room at 12.50am!!
But somtimes I love London. I had a day to myself wandering around having coffee adventures (found some truly excellent stuff) and meeting weirdos, including an Ambulance chaser from Brighton who was nervous about working "north of the river", a bloke from Lima making masks in Covent Garden market, and a strange girl - either some sort of spy talking into a tiny headset, or just a genuine nutter reeling off lists of names and numbers to herself. Met up with Soph, Mike and Paul which was great, and stuffed out faces in a French restaurant in Knightsbridge. YUM!
I´d really hoped my last day and night with Carl would be lovely. The LOONY bought me a ticket to the conference dinner and drinks, held at the Science Museum. It was a lot of fun! Good food, free drinks and a ride on a volcano simulator. But then, disaster. Nobody told us the tube stopped at 11 and we had to get an expensive cab back. Then, it was hard to get amorous with Carl because of my itchy bedbug bites. (the hotel is disgusting). Then the fire alarm went off at 1am. Completely ruined my last night!!
I feel awful now. No sleep followed by early morning plus itching, mad dash to airport, idiot customs people repacking my bag twice and removing my toothpaste. (125ml not 100ml, therefore pasrt of the axis of evil). Scanning my shoes for bombs. Long dull flight (they showed Mamma Mia - ye gads). But worse still, I had to say goodbye to my Warly. I cried at the airport this morning, I wanted one last perfect night with him, and that has been denied us. Above all, I just feel so selfish for abandoning him like this again. I´m sad.
BY Bel
