Month: May 2023

Exams again today. They’ve changed, particularly since Covid. Everybody still comes to the same place, but often they bring their laptop and have an online exam. Tip-tippity-tap-tap. Hours of fun. Often if it’s not too busy I learn something or think through something but I’m all out of projects at the moment so I just did my job instead. I was vigilant. The vigilation was successful put in.

They’re a nice lot, but often they are nervous and it gets a bit pongy in there. Up all night revising on pro-plus, two hours sleep, no time for a shower, run for the train. The exams are usually really arcane. It’s rare that I even understand a question. I get asked to clarify things that are unclear from time to time, but even if we think we know the answer we have to feed it back to the academic. If we guessed and guessed wrong it would be foolish. Still I read the papers and think about it. There’s a lot of maths, but occasionally it’s food for thought. Marketing etc. Business. Things I might do well to be better at.

I might find something to think about for tomorrow as its another double shift and if they are doing the online exams it is pretty simple to run so long as they are technically competent, and they aren’t usually undergraduates. I’m just moonlighting as an invigilator. “This is my old man job,” I find myself saying to a colleague. “I can make a bit of extra money when my knees are gone.”

Then home and I thought I was going to get shot of the fishies, but that’ll be on Friday now instead. They are off to a new home as I’m having to get things out of this flat. Farewell fishies soon.

Not the most thrusting day today. Two exams, a sandwich in the sun, and a chat with my brother. Now it’s late and I’m not sleeping too well. Noisy brain full of nothing. Bits of unchangeable past dancing with bits of notional future. Perhaps I’ll treat myself to a spoonful of sleepy medicine. Earlier than I like to start for the next few days / weeks.

A spot of rest. That was delightful.

Beltane is all about fire and flowers. Burning away the old. Dancing around poles. Putting the virgin in the wicker man. Making daisy chains.

We wandered down to Beach Box Sauna. Lou has been volunteering and had made enough credit for both of us to book forty five minutes in the great big new horse box sauna there. It has a huge window looking over the stones of the beach. There must have been twelve of us in there and it was HOT.

There’s always one person talking loudly about their business. This one sells “high end” clothing. We got the blow by blow on supply and demand, before the topic inevitably shifted to the menopause. “This is coffee house talk,” Lou observes. There are only three men in this horse box. I’m pretty used to the subject having had mostly female friends for a long time until recently.

I can filter out the garbage, and it was HOT so I was in heaven. She was very adamant that you should LIFT. I think she meant weights. My mind went wandering.

Honestly I’m better at thinking when I’m hot. I had two good ideas in that sauna and wrote them both down when I left. It’s why pretty much all the revolution happen in Spring. It’s easier to think and easier to leave the house.

After about twenty minutes in there I was a lobster and Lou and I pulled out and made the long stoney walk down to the tide. Big swells, so the easiest way to ensure a quick plunge was to wait until the big wave pulled back and then lie in front of the next one. I’m less inclined to fearlessly dive since I shaved off the front of my face in Uruguay. That did the trick and soon I was swearing loudly and aiming to get myself back into the hot place. We did so.

It’s a good discipline, the hot cold hot thing. I feel calmer and warmer for it. The good feeling carried me all the way back to London and now here I am in a hot bath and getting ready for three weeks of mayhem with no more days off. I’ll snatch my moments when I can, and remember these calm beachy days. Much like this 25 year old seal who is mostly basking at the moment before stocking up on local fish and busting it back to the big cold sea.

The low light of this flat in Brighton. The sound of the sea and the gulls…

I grew up with the sound of gulls, and then London happened when I was thirteen. Going back to places where they wheel and cry helps plug me into ancient memories of warmth and comfort and safety. The years up to thirteen were spent either by the sea or in the mountains, and they were bright safe protected years. I was perhaps in a bubble waiting for a spectacular shattering. But it gave everything thereafter this foundation of warm comfortable safety.

Coming here now is a tonic. We won’t have long together in the coming months so snatching time with Lou is important. Everybody in the world is descending on Brighton for Beltane, but up here it’s a long way from the lagered up crowds on the beaches.

We went to Stanmer and took the high road. We found the motherlode – a huge fairy court of bluebells dancing in the beginning of May. Just in time as well – their moment is so fleeting. Their dance was almost over, the rot already setting in. A great shock of them though after all the rains. Big and small and albino and bright. You can almost hear the music of the fairy court just a sliver of time away weaving and rushing past our heavy logical stone world. We stood and breathed them in. The yapping dogs and groups of youth faded into the wind and we were there with jackdaws and wind, the simple ancient sounds of an English woodland. Mushrooms coming up now. Nothing tasty I’ve seen yet. Turkey Tails and Witches Butter.

We had another roast at our local haunt. Chicken and everything beige with gravy. A ginger ale. And now I’m bathed and warm and very soon to get into a warm toasty bed and sleep my way into may and fire and Beltane and the inevitable summer.