I find it very hard to take sick leave; even to admit that one is electively staying at home seems to be to take the attitude of Mr. Charles, above. However, the head cold that has this week felled me saw me spend Friday in a condition largely similar to the pictured layabout, only sicker.
Physical illness usually plays havoc with my mental health, too, but aside from some wandering anxiety I have been feeling okay. Indeed, the sorrowful torpor that I expected to take me down for a fortnight or more lasted almost exactly a week, then ceased, giving me a couple of healthful days before this virus made its home in my head. So swift was the former’s duration that I felt somewhat embarrassed that I wrote about it. What might have changed, then, to make my mental take-down that much shorter?
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Friends, I have been out and about, which is why there has been so little activity here of late. I italicise those adverbs in order to convey, in some skinny way, the exhilaration of having a break from the every day. Not the tender pleasures of life at home, in which the señor and I slowly consume our merged collection of DVDs (“it’s only a film, h-bird,” he said as I gripped his arm during the final two or so hours of The Seven Samurai), and in which the too-longness of the dogs’ nails is recorded in the score-marks on our arms as they attempt to insinuate their hairy selves into our couch-sitting, all at once. No; the every day from which I have happily flown is the predictable minutiae of work: interesting students, affable colleagues, tasks completed without too much throat-clamping pressure of time (unlike the first-semester blues), but a routine so familiar to me I sometimes dream it and think my day’s finishing when it begins.
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I enjoy my job, but it consumes most of my waking hours, at least in terms of mental energy. This semester’s early teaching starts mean early nights (I have become as jealous a protector of my sleep as a dam of her pups) and the space between finishing work and retiring is usually spent in listless bouts of housework or in the company of Señor Mojito. As a companion he can’t be faulted—we have cooked some delicious meals, drunk some good wine and followed the whole season of Rock of Love with its multiple personifications of feminine competitiveness and expressive flipping of the bird—but the lack of idle moments in my life at present leave little time for journal-keeping. I’m aware too that these pages developed as a counterpoint to the early days of my job, a way of keeping the self I cherished from being absorbed by the testing conformities demanded by professional life. Now that there has been a shift, both in me and in the requirements of my job, I no longer need to write in order to stop myself from disappearing. This is a good thing for me, but not so much for those who would like to read more here, more regularly.
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It has been a month of bone-grinding intensity at work but also of high-kickin’ vivacity after hours, which all leads me to hope I am charming rather than irritating in a state of near-permanent sleep deprivation. Mariella breezed in from the Old Country at the beginning of the month for a fleeting visit, looking fit and magnificent with hair the colour of a pool of blood. She, Archie and I spent a reasonably riotous evening at a sushi restaurant, putting bubbles (Archie’s choice) and chardonnays (Mariella’s) to bed, along with eating sufficient raw fish that I dreamed of a hundred sea-borne souls entering me, and have now crossed over to the side of fishless, seafoodless right. As Archie later said: the best way to give up eating fish is to go out with a bang.
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The Gin Council, that shadowy organisation, is back in session. To this end, it seems pertinent to post that Señor Mojito and I have been enjoying drinking Christie’s, a local distillation that seems to be part of the Lion empire, which comes both as standard London Gin and in a New Zealand variety, not dissimilar in presentation to 42 Below, and very likely designed for the same consumer, yes? The Christie’s tag reads thusly:
A blend of classic and uniquely New Zealand botanicals were quadruple distilled to provide a heightened citrus flavour. Horopito and kawakawa add undiscovered warmth and roundness to this premium gin.
The aroma, clearly influenced by lime, leads to a magnificent colourful and complex taste with a remarkable smoothness. The result is a well matched refreshing gin perfect in cocktails and a luxury for blending with tonic or your favourite mixer.
We have had martinis, gin and tonics, gin and lemon squash and gin over ice. It tastes very well indeed.
I have been no diarist of late, my slowness of mind consistent across most areas of my life. My carpets have a fine coating of dog hair, my desk at work is woefully untidied, and all those things which, caught up in the high energy of travel, I assumed I’d do as soon as I returned home, remain, by and large, undone.
Such lethargy isn’t doing much for my length of sentence either, as you can see above.
I have, however, this evening finished putting rather perfunctory captions and descriptions on my holiday photos, which you can see as a set here and indeed view in slideshow if you wish. Each of these images has of course its own story, some of which I still hope to include here in time.
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The idle pleasures of these days
31 December, 2007
in O internet, at home, commentatrix, in Aotearoa, the social round, we are family
Among the many themes with which I could clad this year’s experiences is Meeting People from the Internet. The Christmas presence, earlier this week, of Stephen and Kathy, completed a happy trifecta which began with meeting Jo and Lisa in Wellington in February, followed by Heather and of course Fran here, around the end of the first semester.
Bearing in mind Stephen’s history as a North Islander (and allowing for cultural changes wrought by Kathy’s transplanting from south to north for the last few years) I took the elevated approach to a night out. We wended our way along the Summit Road from Dyer’s Pass to Mount Pleasant, noodled out to Scarborough for a walk on the promenade at high tide, where the surfers were being thrown against the rocks like hydro-powered lemmings, then drove back into town for dinner at the Dux and a final rendezvous with the dogs at home (“what,” said Stephen, “if it’s pronounced Soh-burn?”, which has pricked my imagination ever since).
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