Freedom!
I'm on my second day of annual leave and it's marvellous. My last day at work was pretty hellish, getting my supportee packed and ready to fly off to stay with her dad, plus the usual cooking and cleaning and paperwork and a lot of organisational stuff. And all done under pressure of time because we had to be ready to go to her last keyboard class in the evening.
Yesterday I slept quite a bit, then I went into town to satisfy a desperate need for books and chocolate. I got three books from the Oxfam shop:
"My Secret History" by Paul Theroux, a novel which I had from the library some years back and liked very much.
"Spies" by Michael Frayn, a new novel for me, though I have read and liked other things by him;
"The Feeling of What Happens" by Antonio Damasio, which is about consciousness and emotion. I'm not sure how I'll get on with this one, as I did not like his "Descarte's Error", but we will see.
The Oxfam shop has a much better selection of books than any of the other charity shops in town, though it is a lot more expensive than them too. The three books cost me £10 in total. (In most charity shops, paperbacks are usually no more than 50p or 60p each.)
Still, it's cheaper than buying new, and as I was feeling so exhausted I couldn't really cope with going into Waterstones and being faced with so many books to choose from. I haven't been to the library for ages. I have to be in the right mood to go there, or it makes me feel depressed. It's not a very good library to begin with, and I spent so much time there when I *was* suffering from chronic depression that I think the associations are just fixed now.
The chocolates were rather disappointing. Not sure if this is because they weren't very good quality, or because I have become unused to milk chocolate and find it all pretty sickly now. (For some time now the only chocolate I've been having is a square or two of good quality dark stuff (70% cocoa) after my evening meal.) However, disappointing as they were, I somehow managed to eat them all!
I still have something of a cold, but luckily my brain has started to function again. I am in the grip of a new project which I think I will talk about in a separate post.
Yesterday I slept quite a bit, then I went into town to satisfy a desperate need for books and chocolate. I got three books from the Oxfam shop:
"My Secret History" by Paul Theroux, a novel which I had from the library some years back and liked very much.
"Spies" by Michael Frayn, a new novel for me, though I have read and liked other things by him;
"The Feeling of What Happens" by Antonio Damasio, which is about consciousness and emotion. I'm not sure how I'll get on with this one, as I did not like his "Descarte's Error", but we will see.
The Oxfam shop has a much better selection of books than any of the other charity shops in town, though it is a lot more expensive than them too. The three books cost me £10 in total. (In most charity shops, paperbacks are usually no more than 50p or 60p each.)
Still, it's cheaper than buying new, and as I was feeling so exhausted I couldn't really cope with going into Waterstones and being faced with so many books to choose from. I haven't been to the library for ages. I have to be in the right mood to go there, or it makes me feel depressed. It's not a very good library to begin with, and I spent so much time there when I *was* suffering from chronic depression that I think the associations are just fixed now.
The chocolates were rather disappointing. Not sure if this is because they weren't very good quality, or because I have become unused to milk chocolate and find it all pretty sickly now. (For some time now the only chocolate I've been having is a square or two of good quality dark stuff (70% cocoa) after my evening meal.) However, disappointing as they were, I somehow managed to eat them all!
I still have something of a cold, but luckily my brain has started to function again. I am in the grip of a new project which I think I will talk about in a separate post.