Hurrah for the weekend

I have really enjoyed this weekend, for lots of reasons including my walk in the park today but more about that and the pictures later.

This weekend has been great because it is the first proper weekend I've had since early November. When I've been off work the days have run into one another and weekends become just another day losing their meaning to me. A weekend is only meaningful if you've been working in the week.

This week was my first one back at work and also my first week working part time. It went really well and when the weekend came around I was so happy. I think this weekend has been the best ever because it has redefined my week and brought me back into the real routine of things. It isn't just that though, in the past I used to live for the weekend and then spend the whole of it dreading the week ahead. Now that I'm working part time, I'm not dreading the week ahead at all, it seems manageable and I'm just glad to be at work at all.

Last week was really busy I was in Doncaster last weekend, started back at work on Monday then on Wednesday my Mum came to visit. We went to see Six Degrees of Separation at the Old Vic. The play was excellent very thought provoking, entertaining and full of surprises. There is one scene involving a naked man, saying any more would ruin the surprise, but this scene certainly got the audience' attention. The cast are excellent and it is much larger than the 3 stars advertised.

After going to the theatre we went out for a meal at the Boisdale a Scottish restaurant and Jazz club. My meal was delicious, I started with haggis, scallops and bacon with butternut squash puree, which was superb, I then had steak which was also excellent. I didn't fancy a pudding so had a wee dram of Linkwood whisky which is one of my favourites.

The rest of the week including writers group and Friday at work (I will usually have Thursday and Friday as non working days.)

I did feel totally exhausted on Friday, but in a really good way, I felt physically tired but not mentally drained and weary as I have often done in the past.

Today I went for a walk along the Wandle, the picture above is of a tree across the Wandle in Morden Hall Park.

Here is another view of the Wandle with a lovely old bridge across it. The Park was very busy today, even though it was bitterly cold. The sun was shining which certainly made the walk enjoyable. I didn't have my proper camera with me so I had to take the pictures with my mobile.

I've got a quieter week ahead of me, though I am looking forward to going to the BFI to see Late Autumn (or 秋日和, Akibiyori in Japanese) part of the BFI Ozu festival

Clumba Park

Today we went to Clumba Park in Nottingham. It was a good excuse to wear my new warm parka, pictured left.

We had a lovely walk with Millie the dog, who loves swimming in the lake pictured behind me, even though the water was freezing















As you can see part of the lake was still frozen

A lot of the water fowl weren't even on the water but milling about the banks instead.












Here is a photo of a view across the lake to the church, the actual house at Clumba Park burned down long ago.

After visiting the park we went to see my brother and sister in law, and my nephew and 3 nieces.

Politics

I have had some fun tonight doing one of those what are your political views quizzes. I come out a little more authoritarian on this quiz than on the political compass one. I have to thank Rich Watts for inspiring me to do this.

My Political Views
I am a left social libertarian
Left: 5.98, Libertarian: 4.06

Political Spectrum Quiz

I don't think I am such a non interventionist - though I did work for the lib Dems for a while so maybe some of that liberalness rubbed off on me!

My Foreign Policy Views
Score: -5.82

Political Spectrum Quiz

No disputes with this one though! Do good, harm none and other wise have fun, is my mantra!

My Culture War Stance
Score: -8.01

Political Spectrum Quiz

The last week

Just a quick entry to catch up on the last week. After making the decision to work part time permanently (or at least for the next year at the very least) my employer has been very supportive. I popped into work on Monday to discuss all of it and came away with a real plan of action and an eagerness to return to work. It was good to see my colleagues and to feel useful again.

On Tuesday I went to a NHS Employers conference on equality and diversity. It meant catching the tube at rush hour, which I wasn't looking forward to. But the journey went really well, although the train was crowded, I didn't feel anxious and just got on with it. The conference was good and I was soon back in the thick of it taking questions from delegates who visited our exhibition stand.

Yesterday was the second meeting of my education recovery course or mad writers club. This week involved a lot more actual writing and sharing what we had written about. It's really absorbing, I don't think I've written so much in a short period of time since being at school! Since leaving uni I tend to type everything, at writers group I actually use a pen. How quaint!

I traveled up to Doncaster (pictured left) last night to visit my parents and the pets, that's Millie the demented dog, Rookie the little black cat and Oliver the big black and white cat.

For those unfamiliar with Doncaster, it's a sprawling market town and surrounding mining villages in South Yorkshire. The town is famed for its race course, rowdy nightlife, and market.

At the moment though Doncaster is in the news for much more unhappy and troubling reasons. The case of the two young boys who tortured two other little boys, is in the news again as the subsequent court case was heard this week. The story raises many disturbing issues around, social deprivation, drug and alcohol abuse, and the failings of social services. I am also rather alarmed by the Tory's reaction to this story trying to make political mileage out of such a tragic set of circumstances. I feel very angry at their tactic of really cynically milking the politics of fear with their "Broken Britain" homilies. I'm not exactly thrilled by the other political parties either though at the moment, but I'll have to come back to this on my other blog I think, The Salmon Leaping at a later date.

Today it just bucketed it down with rain, almost like Japanese style rain. We went to Bawtry (pictured left), a small market town just outside of Doncaster. They have some lovely shops, posh boutiques and homeware places. We had a pub lunch then came home where I read for a bit! A nice day all round.

We are visiting my nieces and nephews tomorrow then I'm heading home, ready for my first proper day back at work on Monday!

Tama the station cat is promoted

A while back (May 2008) I blogged about a cat called Tama who lived at a train station in Japan. Tama became so popular at this train station that many Japanese people would travel to the station just to see her. Recently, in recognition of Tama's ability to pull in the punters she has been promoted to the Railway Board as this blog entry with news video shows.

I am not sure why Tama had to wear some kind of pantomime outfit when receiving her promotion, other than its just the way things are in Japan!

I have to thank fellow tweeter @linagato for alerting me to the latest in Tama's story.

The Masters Snooker

Yesterday Jase and I were at the Masters Snooker in Wembley for the Quarter Finals. I've been watching snooker since the mid 80s but I'd never been to a live tournament. I was really excited about going to Wembley to see the snooker. The atmosphere particularly in the evening was amazing.


We were lucky to see two very different matches. In tha afternoon we saw Stephen Maguire play Ryan Day. It was a tense match which although it finished 6 : 1 to Maguire it was far from a white wash. Both players were having real difficulties and neither were happy with the way they were playing. There is a photo above of Stephen Maguire.

The match we saw in the evening (Mark Selby v Mark Allen) was totally different, it was entertaining with both players relaxed and laughing and joking with each other and the crowd at the start. The match was very close going to a deciding frame after 11 pm at night. There was a century break, high breaks, good safety play and lots of tension. The picture below is of Mark Selby who eventually won.

We had great seats particularly in the evening where we had an excellent view.

I'd definitely go to other snooker tournaments now. I'd love to go to the Crucible in Sheffield and see the world championships.

Telling my story

Telling my story is the name of the Educational Recovery Course run by the Community Mental Health Team I am attending. I prefer to call it my mad writers club. The focus is on creative writing but other art forms can be explored as well. The first meeting of the course / club was today. Not many people turned up, probably due to the bad weather over the last few days I guess, and the fact that it was bucketing it down this morning. So there were 6 of us although 3 were the facilitators!

Due to confidentiality I can't launch in to a jolly description of us all, I'd be mortified if someone wrote about their impressions of me on a blog! But I can write about what we are doing on the course. We will be keeping a journal each for the next 12 weeks, where we will write about what ever we want. The journals are private and we won't be sharing them. We will be reading stuff other people mental health conditions have written, we will be writing about our own experiences in different ways trying creative writing, biography, what ever we want to and sharing with the group what we want to. This will help us build confidence, deal with issues and be more organised I should imagine.

Anyway everyone was very friendly - it was a lot less traumatic than arriving at my first Japanese lesson in the summer, that felt like entering the big brother house! Everyone today was very nice and supportive which is good.

One very important thing that came out of today was, through considering what was worrying me at the moment and taking to one of the facilitators (she is our "peer support" eg she's mad like us) I realised I was being too ambitious with my plans to return to work, to the same job the only real modification I was planning to make was to reduce my hours by 20%. Instead this afternoon I phoned my boss and discussed working 2.5 days a week and working on a discreet piece of work, not being Head of Equality and Diversity any more. It feels so good to have decided this.
A real burden off my shoulders. Maybe then I can concentrate on getting better.

Dreek

I am in a very grumpy, bad tempered old mood today. i suppose I should just roll with it and let it wash over me. Not quite sure what I'm so hacked off about but the following does not help:

The weather is abysmal, damp, dark, cold, depressing or as the Scots would say dreek
The flat is in dire need of a good spring clean and sort out but I just don't have the motivation to start it

Actually there isn't that much to be grumpy about I just am, it's as simple as that.

The last week has been quiet. The snow lasted a few days but is mostly melted, any that remains is in mucky piles at the side of quiet roads or pavements. It looks disgusting, there is nothing more beautiful than pristine snow and nothing more horrible than dirty, slushy, icy remains of snow, in my humble and grumpy opinion anyway.

I'm due to pop into work tomorrow to discuss returning properly towards the end of this month, this may be adding to my bleak mood but on the other hand I want to get back to some normality as soon as possible.

I start my Educational Recovery arts course thing on Thursday so that should be interesting and lift this bleak, dreek mood I'm in.

Snow

Last night and today we had snow in London, the rest of the UK has been hit very badly, particularly Scotland, but in London its quite a novelty to have snow that settles. The media are in a snow frenzy, they have even got a news special tonight on BBC1 called "Frozen Britain" as Kent Brockman in the Simpson's would say, "This news story is so big it has it's own title and theme music!"
Above is blurry picture of me in the snow this afternoon - I had to take it of myself so that's why its blurred. I had been walking home from Wimbledon for about 1o minutes when I took it so that's about 10 minutes worth of snow on my hat.

Below is a picture of the church on the corner of Latimer Road and the start of the Broadway in Wimbledon, the snow was coming down at a fair pace by then.
Below is a picture of the traffic lights on Trinity Road and Broadway in the snow. I hope these pictures of snowy Merton entertain you ;-)

It is amazing though how the most ordinary, mundane urban scenes can be transformed into something magical with a sprinkling of snow.

South Bank

Here are the photos of the south bank I took earlier that I couldn't upload. Laptop now working ok so here they are. Above is the south bank.
Here is the view east along the river from the Jubilee bridge.
This one is a picture of Charing Cross Station I like the sky in this one.

From the South Bank to 1950s Tokyo

Today I went to see Tokyo Story at the British Film Institute on the South Bank. The outing wasn't just a nice trip to the pictures for me. Those of you who read yesterday's blog entry will know that I was taking the underground by myself for the first time in ages and purposely making myself go into crowded areas of London. I'm really pleased to report that both the tube journey, and navigating Waterloo station at 5pm did not cause me much trouble. I didn't feel too nervous or get panicked which is a big improvement from before Christmas.

I took some photos of the South Bank whilst I was up there, I'll have to post them later though as my lap top won't upload them to my blog right now.

Tokyo Story is being shown as part of the BFI's Ozu season. I hadn't seen any of Ozu's films before so wasn't sure what to expect. Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari) is magnificent. Set in post war Japan (it was filmed in 1953) the film deals with themes familiar to me from the small amount of Japanese literature I've read. Themes of rural vs urban, the passing of the old ways, the drifting apart of generations of parents and children. The film is delicate, dignified, and very moving. There is a quality to the film that is reminiscent of the novel Kokoro

I also think the film is totally universal. The older parents who just want some quiet time with their family, the grown up children who are busy with their own lives and children, the resentments of children towards the parents misdemeanors. The gulf between the generations, the marching inevitable progress of the urban over the rural are surely themes everyone can recognise.

There is a wonderful scene where the old father comes home to his daughters house in Tokyo drunk with his drunk buddies in tow. His daughter does not see the funny side of this at all, and although she's portrayed as selfish and unsympathetic her fathers drunkenness when she was a child is alluded to more than once in the film. A child can not forgive the parent for being imperfect.

Setsuko Hara is sublime as Noriko, the actress is rather intriguing as she gave up acting after Ozu's death in 1963 and has refused any publicity since then. She lives in Kamakura, one of my favourite places.

If you are lucky enough to live near a cinema that is showing Tokyo Story I can't recommend it enough.

Thank you Twitter and Facebook!

As most of you reading this know I have been off work for a while now, with anxiety and depression. Today was a hard day for me as most of my friends and colleagues returned to work after Christmas and I didn't, but more of that later. Over the last 6 weeks I have found a great deal of support from my family and friends, also from my online friends at Twitter who have shown great support to someone they have only got to know through short communications of 146 characters or less! In the past when I have been very anxious or depressed I felt a lot more isolated than I do now. I have the Twitter community and the ease of contacting my friends via Facebook to thank for this. So I wanted to say a big thank you to all my friends who have supported me on Twitter and Facebook, I really appreciate it!

Today as I said above has been difficult as most of the UK's working population have returned to work today after the Christmas break. From reading the twitter updates relating to this return to work most people are not happy about being back at work particularly as the weather is freezing. This is the first time in my adult life that I haven't returned to work after the Christmas break; I am still signed off work until later this month.

In one way I'm quite envious of the masses of disheveled, down hearted commuters making their way through London's sub zero streets this morning. I wanted to experience that huge January hangover, back to work, dismalness for myself. I need some normality and routine in my life right now. Over the next few weeks I hope to work out with my boss a plan for returning back to work and the thought of this fills me with both anticipation and doubt.

I still have a lot to work through myself and with those supporting me. (I'm hoping to join a support group run by the local community mental health team in the next couple of weeks.) I will keep you all posted through my blog how that goes and everything else. Over the next couple of weeks I plan to venture out a bit more by myself on public transport (one of the things that was making me most anxious) and visit public places (crowds even small ones, not one of my favourite things when I'm feeling bad.) It sounds really basic but if I can't cope with getting to and from work how am I going get back to work properly. I'm starting tomorrow with a trip to the South Bank, one of my favourite places in London but I have to get there on public transport and it is often crowded. I'll let you know how it goes.

He's behind you!

BushyNY2010 19
Originally uploaded by JasonGDoig

Here is the photo I mentioned in my previous blog entry. A real "He's behind you!" moment. I'm busy photographing a stag much further away whilst this one just saunters past me. Jase couldn't let me know in case he spooked it but he took the photo instead :-)

New Year 2010 - Hampton Court

Jase and I saw the New Year in at the Hampton Court Hotel (above is a picture of Hampton Court Palace as viewed from our bedroom window.) At night the palace was lit up in different, changing coloured lights, very pretty. Below is the view over the Thames and the Bridge at Hampton Court. We watched the fireworks at midnight being reflected in the Thames.
As we were staying in the Catherine Parr suite we got a 4 poster bed, pictured below.
Jase and I had a quiet New Years Eve seeing the new year in together watching the fireworks as mentioned above, from the huge bay window in our hotel room. It was bitterly cold outside so it was lovely to be cosey and warm indoors. We toasted the new year with some beer.

When we woke on New Years Day there was a fine sprinkling of snow over everything but as the day was bright and sunny much of the snow had melted by the time we set off for a walk at 11. As you can see in the picture of the stag in the bottom right hand corner of the picture there was still a small amount of snow on the ground in Bushy Park.
Bushy Park is full of wildlife including deer, water fowl, song birds and bright green parakeets. Jase and I went armed with our cameras to get some photos of the wild life. You can see Jason's pictures on his flickr page by clicking here

All the pictures on my blog were taken by me. I really like the photo of the bird below drinking or is he looking at his reflection?
There was a very grumpy swan on the pond, he just swam up and down menacing the other birds and either running them off the lake all together or as in the picture below forcing the other birds to flap away.
The bad tempered swan seemed particularly upset by the presence of geese. I'm guessing because they are fairly large and maybe not permanent residence on the water if they just winter here. Below is a picture of the swan threatening a goose that he had managed to threaten out of the water and on to the bank. One of my favourite cafes is one on the banks of Grassmere in the lake district. The out door cafe is often pestered by a large swan they call Henry viii who harasses patrons of the cafe hissing at them until they move or leave him food. This swan was just as fearsome as Henry viii up in the Lake District and as this swan lives right next to Hampton Court Palace I think he too deserves to be named after the hot headed, larger than life and aggressive King.
Below is a photo of the poor birds that had been intimidated by the swan into a corner of the lake.

Bushy Park is famous for its semi wild deer. As they are used to people visiting the park they are not completely wild but they are still very wary of humans and you really wouldn't want to get too close to one of the stags or one of his does. I was very patiently waiting for a good picture of this stag, standing very still, being very calm, letting the stag get used to me and carry on with his bark chewing. Whilst I was engrossed in this another stag walked right behind me, close enough for me to have touched him. Jason saw all this but couldn't call out to me in case he spooked the stag or me! Jase took a picture of the scene, me blissfully unaware of the giant stag at my side. I'll blog the picture that Jase took after this entry.
Bushy park is also home to some rather exotic birds, bright green parakeets. There are many urban myths about how the birds came to live in south London but none of them can be proved. I like the myth that Errol Flynn introduced them whilst filming in London.
We had a lovely morning in the park, it was a fantastic way to start the new year.