Energy

I never understand those who are always the same: either always on the go, rushing and achieving and leaving you breathless with their lists and accomplishments, or always idling about, doing very little, very inclined to let you put their kettle on when they want a cup of tea. I have friends of both persuasions and find them lovely but exhausting in their different ways.

The achievers are like living in a wind tunnel. It's all terribly impressive but you can't hear yourself think. The idlers are like living through a veil. In the end it's all too misty and slow and you long to jump up and cry for "For God's sake, just do something!"

I understand both because I am a composite (an adler? an iver?). But I swing about and can be found either curled up by the woodburner reading old copies of Good Housekeeping, wandering through the garden vaguely kicking things or suddenly gripped with a frenzy, throwing off achievements like a toddler throwing off clothes.

Hopeless, idle, drippy, droopy day to day. Yesterday was the last day in a mad achieving couple of weeks. I leapt up early, determined to clean and shine so that the Shropshire crew would see my house at its best, not all covered in spiders' webs and crumbs. At nine o' clock I decided I hadn't bought enough food (I always do this, and with drink too) and whizzed about making soup and pastry for a quiche, picking the last of the courgettes, cleaning up the cat sick. At 11 I was laying the table and by half past I was ready. It was a great day, full of laughter and talk. The weather behaved itself and even the cockerel strutted his stuff as if to order. I should have gone to Welsh last night but at about 7 o' clock the stuffing ran gently out of me and I gave up.

This morning I have been working in a desultory fashion and this afternoon I was going to plant all the lovely things I have waiting, presents from yesterday: agapanthus, japanese anemone, inula, and cyclamen that I bought last week from the WI market. But it is a damp, grey day, neither raining nor really dry. I can't see the hilltop across the valley. From half way up the valley side the fields disappear, gently dissolving into murk. Ian has gone to a funeral and I am drifting about, settling to nothing, not even getting round to letting the hens out or to collecting the post. I don't like myself when I am like this but I have learnt that it just seems to happen sometimes. With company I might pull myself out of it but on my own I'll just weeble about. It's better just to let it be, to go with the flow, put another log on the woodburner and have another herbal tea, look up again how to look after penstemons and forget it by teatime, google mindlessly and blog, because that is the nearest today will come to an achievement.

The diet has gone sliding away too, put aside yesterday to eat banana cake and whinberry pie (yum, thank you CCA and SBS) but today it seems so hard to get back on the wagon. The bread is calling gently and insistently from the bread bin. It's a good job there is no chocolate of the dark, black variety in the house because I would already have yielded.

So here is the deal with myself: get out of my slippers and go to the village and sort some things out and I can have two glasses of bodran's rosepetal wine with Gardeners' World.
Done.
Hmm, moments have passed and I am still sitting here. Let's have another go.