It's a tough one, this. I've just had a fortnight's holiday, so it might seem a bit ungrateful (if that is indeed the right word) to say that I am tired. But I've also had some form of illness that isn't Covid-19, because the series of tests that I've done have all come up negative. And whilst it hasn't ever been quite so debilitating as the original CV-19, it has been hard to look after all the small people in the house with swollen throat glands preventing me sleeping. So there you go.
But things are changing in the world outside, and that's helping. It's brighter, things are growing in the garden, and we can get outside more often. We've even played football in the park. Unbelievably wholesome, as was the trip to the swimming pool this morning. There's something odd about the lack of people there - the atmosphere at Hillsborough is dependent on it being slightly too busy - but at least we were there, doing that 'pure fun' thing I've written about on here before. It's a welcome distraction from the oncoming storm of rubbish that will undoubtedly accompany this next half term in school, where we attempt to assess the kids without making them do GCSEs. You'll be surprised to learn that our assessments resemble the GCSE exams in a lot of important particulars, except for the fact that we have to mark the bastard things ourselves. Ho hum. I am still missing the creative writing that just isn't happening for me at the moment. I'm desperately hoping that the inspiration will come, or the willingness to write rubbish, or the energy, whatever it is, without me having to do anything else. It feels as though over the last couple of years the characters that spoke so loud to me, the scenes that appeared in my head and wrote themselves, the desire to unload all of that onto the page, in short, my writing, has gone quiet, disappeared to some distant place that I can't quite access. I'm not sure what I'd do to get it back, but we'll see over the course of the next couple of months whether a more definite return to normal - with a bit more of a certain trajectory, we hope - signals that return. I want to find that closeness to my story again... I'm not sure how to go about it. |
Andy RichardsonWhen to the sessions of sweet silent thought Archives
March 2022
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