So ... How's Your Girl?

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Offspring the Younger scraped into the local sixth form and is doing pretty well, despite missing a subject by one GCSE grade, so having to take an alternative third A-level. My company has ‘enjoyed’ a merger and gone mad. As a colleague said the other day the new ‘leaders’ (not managers or anything silly like that) are trying to turn a global company with 5,000+ employees into a start-up. The results aren’t pretty so far. We’re good at what we do, could do with some updating, but that’s not going to work. WFH (apart from the brief interlude in the pueblo) was getting trying and solitary but a very brief return to the office wasn’t a great success. Hybrid working meant that there were about 10 people there at any one time. So, acres of empty space, very few water-cooler moments and plenty of tumbleweed.

I love the work, and I love that I learn stuff all the time, both via clients and via loads of CPD courses. It’s a privilege indeed. On the WFH topic, I much prefer in-person work, what with all the non-verbal material that only really becomes clear when we’re in 3D relationship. We often use so when we mean ‘to such a great extent’. With this meaning, so is a degree adverb that modifies adjectives and other adverbs: I’m still pretty much ‘early retired’ after getting a payoff a couple of years ago. I’m still enjoying the lifestyle and we are financially secure so no real incentive to look for a new job – still the position that if something interesting comes up I’ll consider but I’m not actively looking for anything (I.e. I’m too damn lazy and want people to come to me….). In 2021 my younger brother Martin died in September, just days before my nephew’s long-delayed wedding. The second major event was that in April my mum died. As the nominated visitor, unlike the rest of my family, I’d managed to organise a visit to the (brilliant) care home to see her less than a week before. Fortunately we’d sorted out the house move a few weeks earlier so ‘all’ I had to do was to do learn about probate, do all the maths and fill in the 7 inheritance tax forms! At least it kept me busy and was content in the knowledge that none of my mum’s money went to a solicitor.Working from home has continued and I like it much more than I expected to. It’s now officially hybrid working, so as long as I stay in good health, I still don’t need to be retiring any time soon – it’s always been the commute that I’ve expected to be the tipping point and that’s now hugely reduced… and I’m still a few years away from state pension age. Family all okay, so blessed in that respect. My son has started playing bass guitar, so it’s great to see him get into music and find an instrument he likes. And after 7 years of suspicions, they've finally told me I almost certainly don't have the prostate cancer they suspected I did. It took a general anaesthetic, 51 needle, biopsy though. (See "unpleasant" above. (lol emoji thing)) See also I'm a fortunate man, no mistake, above.

I’ll spare the gore, but after a rotator cuff injury that crept up on me and took weeks of physio to shift (but is now fine) Crohn’s was diagnosed (unusual in one’s 50s, I was told?), then treated, which resulted in 5 days in hospital with treatment-drug-caused pancreatitis (about a <1% side effect, apparently). I would classify this experience as "unpleasant". The arm full of morphine was the best bit. The early effects of this spoiled one of my "holidays", and one (world class whale watching in Indonesia) was put off for 2 years. My June 22 trip to the Galapagos is looking decidedly shaky just now, too. The last two are somewhat first world problems, I grant you. I think the UK is finding that it is really difficult to develop and there is more bureaucracy rather than less once you try to change everything,” he says. “The cost of getting all UK companies stamped with a UK mark rather than an EU mark … it is not worth the cost.” Another strange year for everyone I’m guessing but personally fairly straightforward with only a few speed humps of life to negotiate.

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Probably because I’ve had this lifelong thing about fitness, I’ve no health insurance and my pension planing is piss-poor. This grand canyon sized oversight concerns me, and I, like, really ought to get round to doing something about it, but work this last year has been the highest volume ever. Like every other therapist I know, I’ve regularly had to say no to taking on new clients, something I’ve always found difficult what with being self-employed.

I’m still only part-way through the book I’ve been working on (on/off) for maybe 4 years. Hopefully, I can finish it in 2022. Like the album above, it feels like my last. Maybe it’s largely a product of the past couple of years, though it’s certainly also influenced by the sense of impending doom around the climate/state of the world, but there’s a general low-level malaise or melancholy that I find hard to keep at bay. It’s okay when I’m busy and ‘in the moment’ and don’t have to think too much. Beyond that, I’m stunned that anyone at this point would, for instance, choose to have children. Due to Mrs F’s translatlantic work meetings, studying/sleeping teens, etc, the record player has rarely been on. The good news is, after 10+ years, work is finally underway to soundproof my garage (and have a dedicated WFH box-room office). The hernia prevents me from anything DIY, but Mrs F continues to keep me in the style to which I have become accustomed, so I’m going to pay an electrician to do the stuff I can’t. There are others who will have suffered far more than me, either directly through Covid or indirectly from either health conditions which have been neglected or hating the life forced on them by circumstances. I don’t have any major life-changes to report as everything has pretty much been in stasis; it’s been dull much of the time, but for me not particularly unpleasant. Not having much time away – unable to for reasons above – I had the late October half term off and pottered in the garden. I replaced a rotten fence post and gave myself a hernia in the process. Busy hospitals mean a long wait – I get scanned in mid-January, gawd knows when the corrective surgery will be. I’m in discomfort rather than pain, so can’t really complain, although I’m effectively housebound (again). A combination of life going faster with age (I’m in my 58th year), plus my ADHD tendencies, means that it can be hard to get a coherent sense/shape of this last twelve months. That notwithstanding…Been working with an Etsy Handwriting Artist to copy loved ones handwriting into frameable art and also a couple of special poems I wrote for people using my own handwriting. In other areas, Grant says the UK has been weakened, particularly in its influence and power on the European and world stages. Apart from my nephew Martin and his long-term partner Trish getting married after being together 17 years. A suitably major event, involving two families and loads of friends at a very nice venue in Surrey. A joyous occasion with no hitches once you remembered it had been postponed twice due to Covid.