the cloud of unbeing

Not many stories emanating from Baroque Mansions at the mo: for one thing, to have a story you need a cast of characters (I'm sure EM Forster said that); for another, you need something to happen; and thirdly, you need someone to see it and notice it and put it all together.

I suppose a few things have happened. There were Words on Friday night and a whole thing with Mlle B, who is on the turn from a perfectly nice child into one of Them. I lost my rag a bit, as it is the mother's privilege to do, and the whole thing turned out to have been posturing anyway: having been given permission to sleep at her friend's house, she got a lift home at 11pm, saying she was too tired and wanted to wake up in her own bed.

My elderly aunt made it back from the USA and up the baroque stairs for a Sunday lunch, which the Urban Warrior even managed to be there for (at 3pm, with his friend-who-isn't-his-girlfriend, after I had rung him about 20 times) (but not the Tall Blond Rock God - no, he didn't surface till about 6pm, which was a bit annoying as the afternoon before he'd been all over it on the phone, and no one had actually seen him since the Friday evening). I made the lowest-fat meal in the universe and they never even realised. Fresh pasta in a tomato sauce with aubergine, courgettes, beans and half a pound of the leanest mince you can get, drained and rinsed. The pièce de resistance was mango sorbet mixed up with little bits of meringue and refrozen.

So that was something. But is it a story? No.

I wvwn got a miraculous last-minute hairdressers appointment right after the lunch, which prevented me having to go out in public with my roots showing; but a) it's not a story, and b) I've been off sick again the last two days so no one would have seen them anyway.

Yes, the gall bladder has been twingeing in a way I do not like, though I wouldn't call it pain exactly, and with that my energy levels have plummeted back to sleeping-in-the-afternoon level. (The consultant at the hospital on Friday helpfully said, "Hmmm, I wouldn't say there was any direct link between the gall bladder and this feeling of fatigue... it may be something else." Straight back to thinking it's all psychosomatic and I'm insane and will probably be like this forever, I then remembered my GP saying, "Well, people experience it differently - it sounds as if you're really run-down," and wanting to sign me off again. Which maybe I should have let him. But who wants that.)

There was a point, on Saturday, when I felt comparatively great and had all kinds of plans for writing this and editing that, but after the Sunday Morrisons trip, lunch, hairdressers, cleaning the kitchen etc, that was it, and nothing could happen and indeed still can't. Even if I'd been scribbling away it wouldn't have been a story.

Even today I thought I would. I was also going to look at some work things, just answer a few emails and so on so my colleagues who have emailed me wouldn't have to wait for their information. But when I rang in, my manager spoke so sharply to me - "I'm very happy for you to take it as a sick day but you absolutely can't do any work in sick time, I'm not having that getting all blurry" - I say, well I'll just - and she snaps, "NO!" and not in a nice, friendly way. "I absolutely mean it, I'm not having you..." I was so chastened I could actually feel everything go out of me all in a rush. The stuffing. Out.

Because I could have done half an hour, felt like a living person, made it easier to pick stuff up when I go back (I hope) tomorrow, helped my colleagues and so on. It would still have been easier on my system than going on the tube. I could have been on the laptop in a comfy chair. In fact, I could have fostered some sense of engagement with the job - I could have felt like a grown-up professional person. And if I hadn't felt so governessed I could have done it anyway.

As it was, I never opened even my own stuff, and then went to sleep at 12.30 (in Mlle B's bed) feeling a bit depressed.

And then you're like, "If I were Dostoyevsky I'd be writing through all this." He wouldn't be sitting here in a sort of cloud, or fog. Maybe he really was an Übermensch.*

* And before you all say something in the comments, no, I don't want to be Dostoyevsky! He makes "a bit depressed" look like Christmas Every Day.