I had to re-read what I wrote in my previous bike related post (See: And Ends), to know what the state of play was the last time I wrote about my bike. I’m kind of glad that on the issues I was having with the bike I can report a completely unchanged outlook. Ridden it for many miles sine the day I fixed it all back together and so far nothing had gone wrong.
Well nothing has gone wrong with the bike, but due to the issue I had with it I ended up spending far more of my budget on getting the bike fixed and working again than I should. So, the last two weeks have been trying. I’m pretty much out of food now, I have bread (homemade) and flapjack (ditto), some butter and marmite (later: a metric tonne of baked beans and tuna). But that is it until I get some money on Wednesday. And that is actually quite a lot of food, I won’t starve, my main issue is as a false teeth wearer I have a constantly dry mouth and an unpleasant taste in it, I need foods that moisten and remove the taste. And I have run out of everything like that. I should have had the refund from Tredz to keep everything ticking over and to make sure my insurance payment was ready to go, but even though I submitted my invoices to Tredz well over two weeks ago, I still haven’t received anything. “It’s on its way…”, “we’re sorry” and “it’ll be with you in 2-3 days…” which to clarify I specifically asked if it would go out that day, “absolutely…” Yet I’m still waiting and still flat broke.
As for my job, which I was semi-relying on to help pay off my loan, I’ve done three hours since Christmas, I get that trading is tough, but zero-hours contracts – even if nothing has ever been stated to say it is a zero-hour contract means I get precisely nothing if there is nothing to do. So I’m looking for work too, which given where I live and what transport I have access to is really, really hard. One of the major downsides to living where I do, which leads me to wonder if I’d be better off moving where I can find a job, but then I realise that while I do pay to live here, it’s basically less than I would have paid for a week in Leeds when I lived there 25 years ago. I really doubt that rents have remained level since then (they haven’t), so if I do move somewhere else, I’d need to massively increase my earning potential, which isn’t going to happen. And while I’d love to write and pay the bills that way I have to be realistic, I need to be writing ~10k words a day, at the moment I’m lucky to manage an average of ~5k on the good days, on bad days I delete stuff that I deem unworthy of being read again by anyone. I have some great ideas; I just suck at writing them out and am far too self-critical.
Needless to say the last couple of weeks have been very difficult, which means the soul cancer that is depression is knocking at my door once again, I’m even struggling to actually go out on my bike. Though that in part is due to not having any money (safety net for when things go wrong) and anxiety that if I do go out something will go wrong. Afterall, it has done so already, what else can go wrong and how expensive will it be? I think another thing is that when I am not depressed, I find it far easier to shake off not having the best of store cupboards, I have tonnes of food I can eat or make (missing marge and eggs, but I’m sure I could make something). But the depression makes me see everything in the darkest of lights. I literally have nothing to eat, is the depression talking.
And then of course depression also means my sleep schedule goes all out of whack, I get to the point where all I want to do is hide from the world and then go to bed and hope to dream nice dreams, so the world can look better when I wake up, leaving me writing blog posts at 3am as I went to bed at 7pm to wake up at midnight. Then tomorrow I will be tired when I really want to stay awake (assuming the depression lets me). I won’t go back onto anti-depressants, I don’t like the way they make me feel.
Apologies to the rather disjointed post, when my frame of mind is better I will try and reframe what I have said here.
TL:DR Tredz suck at paying their bills which makes me depressed.
Oh and the title comes from a poem by Anne McCaffrey and comes from the book Dragon Singer which is the second book about Menolly one of the key characters in later books. Petiron is a harper (story teller, musician and teacher) who retired to the place Menolly lives as a child and was her main confidant and teacher, when he died she wrote the poem for his funeral, (this all takes place in book 1). After being rescued from where she was then living due to an existential threat (Thread) she ends up at the Harper Hall, and many of the “twiddles” she penned are used as chapter headings. It happens to be one of my favourite poems.
Menolly’s “Song for Petiron”
The tears I feel today
I’ll wait to shed tomorrow.
Though I’ll not sleep the night
Nor find surcease from sorrow.
My eyes must keep their sight
I dare not be tear-blinded.
I must be free to talk
Not choked by grief, clear-minded.
My mouth cannot betray
The anguish that I know.
Yes I’ll keep my tears till later
But my grief will never go.