Level 2 Chi Kung Body and Mind Process. Microcosmic orbit.

Decided I had better have a Bayswater day before the nanny disappears. Got my roots sorted at my old hairdresser, where when I casually asked if she had had a good summer, Lena announced that she had found love and would be leaving for Denmark at the beginning of December. It’s a bit ironic that she speaks Bulgarian, German, Russian, French and Italian and she falls in love with an English guy who lives in Denmark. She has promised to invite us to the wedding. Had a late lunch at Grainger (disappointing), then got a neck and shoulder massage. The therapist threw in 15 minutes of reflexology for my knee, which hurt like hell but felt good afterwards. Finished up with a walk in Hyde Park for old times sake – I’m not impressed with what they’ve done to Round Pond but the rest of the park is looking lovely.

Level 2 Chi Kung Body and Mind Process. Microcosmic orbit.

A bit of a fox and geese day today. This morning was the second session of the collaborative art project. I wasn’t looking forward to it as Karen the obnoxious care worker was meant to be bringing 5 dementia patients along and I didn’t think adequate arrangements had been made to make it a good experience for them, particularly given that they had missed the first day. They didn’t show up, but we wasted the first half hour waiting for them.

Level 2 Chi Kung Body and Mind Process. Microcosmic orbit (really enjoyable and fab light show at the end – blues and greens).

After receiving a text from the nanny on Sunday night saying “we need to talk” I was braced for her to resign this morning. She is very part-time (she only does 2 hours each morning and Thursday evening) and her main thing is opera – both singing and coaching others on their Italian diction – so we have always been aware that she would leave if the opera took off. It isn’t such a big deal now that I’m not working. In fact, when I knew I would be giving up work, we briefly considered doing without childcare altogether, but quickly decided not to. This was partly because we really value our Thursday nights out (and I have theatre tickets booked up a year in advance!) and partly because we just never want to go back to the situation where we have no one who the children feel comfortable with. Anyway, she didn’t resign but she does need to go to Thailand from Saturday until mid November. The main problem is the APMP course I am booked onto in the last week of October. Heaven knows how I managed to book myself on a course during what turns out to be half term week. In the end, our lovely cleaner, who I think would very much prefer to be a nanny, came to the rescue and will do that week and the Thursday nights. I am still gutted about missing half term, but the alternative would be to delay the course indefinitely and I don’t really want it hanging over me when I am wanting to be concentrating on making my own yoghurt etc.

Amazon finally delivered the last item for the birthday and Christmas parcel I have been preparing to send to New Zealand (the Christmas posting deadline for surface mail is the last week of September but it doesn’t pay to cut it too fine), and I had great fun putting it all together. For those who have read “What Katy Did At School”, the birthday parcel is loosely inspired by the Christmas box the girls receive at boarding school, except it does not contain any kid gloves! The fun tapered off slightly when I discovered that Royal Mail no longer takes parcels that weigh over 2 kg and that to send it by parcel force would cost £54! I spent the rest of the afternoon repackaging everything into sub-2kg packages.

In the evening, more activity prompted by the imminent departure of the nanny. Six months ago, I bought a bottle of wine as part of a mixed case, which I didn’t then get around to tasting for ages. When I finally did open it, it was to have a glass in the bath after a hard day in the garden, so, when it tasted utterly sublime, I wondered if it was just because I’d spent the day sieving soil. So I had another glass the next day and it was still fabulous – at which point I went online and tried to order some more. No luck – the last few bottles had sold and no one was stocking it any more. Over the last few months I have been doggedly trying to track some down, even going so far as to contact the producer, who confirmed that they no longer have any distributors in the UK, but the only place with stock is a wine supermarket in Calais. So I hatched a plan to make a quick wine-buying trip to France some time during the autumn but before it gets too cold. But with Monique departing on Saturday it was now or never, so we got organised to go on Thursday and return on Friday. Amazingly, if you buy enough wine (6 cases), the shop pays your Chunnel fare. Although we have taken the Eurostar a few times, we have never taken a car through, so that will be interesting.

Finally, I remembered to get Nick to sign my declaration and voted.

Level 2 Chi Kung Body and Mind Process. Microcosmic orbit.

My turn on morning duty, while Nick was out on a long bike ride. Porridge for Katie, crumpets for Dash, huge pile of toast and marmite for Jack. To my relief, no one asked for gingerbread pancakes – I am so bored with that recipe. Did some origami with Katie – it’s ages since we have done this and it was really fun.

After Nick got back from his ride, I helped him with the long-delayed reorganisation of the garage (which should really be called ‘the shed’, since we have neither a car nor any intention of getting one). Over the past two years ‘the shed’ has been gradually filling up with crates of Nick’s tools, dead appliances, and large piles of cardboard waiting to be either put out with the recycling or recycled more directly via the compost heap. Nick bought some shelving a few months ago but a major clear out was required in order to create room for it to be put up.

Level 2 Chi Kung Body and Mind Process (just the once). Microcosmic orbit.

My turn to sleep in, so had a lazy morning, then did Chi Kung. A bit of cleaning and shopping, then roasted a lovely big organic chicken for dinner. Didn’t do anything fancy – just washed it, put a quartered lemon in the cavity and rubbed some rock salt on the skin. Very juicy and tasty. Baked some new potatoes a la Delia Smith (rubbed with olive oil and sprinkled with rock salt), steamedcarrots and broccoli and made a quick salad of julienned courgette with a basil oil and lemon juice dressing. Saved the pan juices from the chicken to make stock. I love chicken soup and, as you can’t get bags of organic necks, carcasses and giblets here, I generally only get to make it from the bones of a roast chicken. And then I usually end up using the stock in a risotto or something, but this time it is definitely going to be soup.

Level 2 Chi Kung Body and Mind Process (x3). Microcosmic orbit (spectacular!).

For some time now I have been feeling curious about what it would feel like to start the day with two hours of Chi Kung a la Richard Bolstad. Today (and cynics will no doubt point out that the timing suggests the lengths I am prepared to go to to avoid clearing out the bloody filing cabinet) I decided to give it a try. I couldn’t really recall how to do the wall-squatting and iron shirtstuff Richard does, but I figured that if I did the Body and MInd Process (which takes just over half an hour) three times and then the Microcosmic Orbit (which takes about 20 minutes) once, then that would pretty much use up 2 hours. So, is it really, as Richard says on the CD ‘always easier the second time’? Well, yes and no. Mostly yes. In fact the only bits that were noticeably more difficult the second and third time around were the shoulder bits – especially ‘claw like an eagle’ – which doesn’t give me any trouble when I only do the process once but was really quite trying on the third go around. And did I feel three times as energised as when I only do the Body and Mind Process Once? Well, at the point where I had done the B&MP three times but hadn’t yet done the Microcosmic Orbit, I confess I felt like I needed a warm bath and a long nap. But after the Microcosmic Orbit I felt great. As the afternoon wore on, I gradually began to feel like someone who has done really really a lot of exercise, or perhaps climbed something very tall.

When I was a teenager, and saw things in black and white, I recall thinking that death was too good for Ian Paisley. Many years later, I almost met him. One of our ministers was doing a speech on the School Fruit and Veg Scheme. I remember she was nervous about it and gave her young speech writer hell because he had used the phrase ‘suite of measures’ five or six times in the course of a fairly short speech! Because she was anxious about it, she wanted us in the box in case supplementary questions came up, but things ran late and she didn’t finally get to make the speech until about 10pm, by which time there were only half a dozen left in the house – Ian Paisley was the one who snored loudly throughout!

Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit (very impressive light effects).

Unfortunately the promising-looking archive boxes at Tiger turned out to be shoe-box-sized so useless for documents, so I ended up on something of a Great Hort Hunt for something more appropriate. Didn’t find anything so I decided to make do with whatever boxes we have lying around the house and then wandered around the supermarket and bought some salmon, and a nice organic chicken to roast over the weekend. Got a bit more of the filing-cabinet purge done but still a lot to go – in “darkness before the dawn” terms, it is still pretty bloody dark!

Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit (really fabulous – amazing light show in blues and violets).

In the normal way of things, I’m not much of a procrastinator – I used to be, but not for the last ten years – for good or ill, the NLP procrastination cure works like a bastard. So I have been surprised over the last few days to have that procrastination feeling. And because I hadn’t really planned any particular activity for these first weeks that the children were back in school, it was hard to tell what exactly I was avoiding. Well today I decided, on a whim, to clear out the racks in the kitchen where newspapers and magazines and assorted other bits and pieces go to die – or rather to spend a while in purgatory before their ultimate fate is decided. Well about 80% of it went straight into the recycling bin, various school library books were set aside to be sent back to the appropriate school tomorrow, a few bits and pieces went into piles for action by either Nick or myself, but the remainder was, inevitably, filing. At which point I discovered what I have been avoiding. It has reached the point where it is no longer possible to get another document into the filing cabinet, which means I need to do my least favourite job and go through and purge it. I hate this partly because Nick and I are a long way from being on the same page when it comes to what should be kept (Nick: everything, me: as little as possible). However it has occurred to me that, now that we have an attic, there is a third way! I can ‘archive’ stuff that isn’t immediately useful and stash it in the loft. I think I recall seeing some suitable A4-sized boxes cheap as chips in Tiger, so I will be down there tomorrow to stock up.

Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit.

Another gorgeous day in beautiful Blackheath. Today was the first day of the collaborative art workshop run by the rather fabulously-named Felly Mistweave, the same person who ran the printmaking workshop I attended in June. Today’s session was mostly introductions and set up. The idea of the project (to bring a group of strangers together to create art collaboratively) is interesting and some interesting people showed up, including a couple of young au pairs, from Finland and Romania respectively, and an Italian translator who is into origami. However I’m not feeling optimistic as, part way through the session, Felly warned us that next week Karen, the resthome-worker who suddenly showed up in the middle of a print-making session with a very distressed dementia patient last time around, will be bringing five similar patients next week. This is problematic on a number of levels. Firstly, the seminar room is simply not big enough for ten people to comfortably and safely use paints, inks, sharp cutting tools and hot irons. Secondly, Karen is the epitome of everything you wouldn’t want in someone caring for vulnerable elderly people: rude, patronising, bad-tempered, inconsiderate. And finally, it is typical that, having decided to bring people to this course, the dates of which have been organised for months, she has nevertheless decided to skip the first day, meaning that most of the second day will now be spent repeating the introductions and admin stuff for the five newcomers. My normal behaviour in this type of situation would be to stick with it, come what may, (a kind of ‘I’ve started, so I’ll finish’ mentality), becoming increasingly frustrated on the way. My promise to myself this time is that, if next week looks like becoming the total shambles I am now half-expecting, I will make my excuses and depart at the first tea break – time is too precious to waste.