Baggins’ World

I know I’ve not written a ‘proper update’ for a long, long time. So, with no silly pictures, fictional anything, poems, or anything else besides the raw facts, a ‘proper entry’! Of course, most of you will know most, if not all of this anyway, but still…

General outline
I’m doing very well - just been discharged from my CBT (training how to think therapy), just ordered the first print run of my new book, I’ve moved into a new flat (which is lovely - and just got broadband installed the other day), work’s much the same as usual and not much else has changed from the last time we knocked heads on google chat.

In slightly more detail
- I got referred for more cognitive behavioural therapy after a ‘blip’ in my gradual recovery from the long-standing depression, and this batch has left me in a better state than ever before in adult memory - able to react and respond to new and confusing situations without turning into a gibbering heap. I’m finding this ability very useful.
- I’ve been collecting a small book’s worth of my writings together for the past coupla months. In the middle of moving and such like, the final pulling-together has taken a while, there’s been one drastic name change of the project and a re-ordering of most of the material, but otherwise it’s been fairly painless. One of my mates is acting as publisher - so it’s not entirely self-published which lends it a thin veneer of respectability that it otherwise wouldn’t have. Once the books arrive, it’ll be going up on Amazon (although I’m still not sure quite how that will work). There’s been an initial print run of sixty-two copies of the first edition (which seems a random number, but leaves fifty to sell after I’ve given away a dozen) - all of which will be numbered and signed.
- The new flat is a ground-floor, two bed-room in the west of Newcastle (almost out at the airport, but not quite). It has its own garden and shed and everything. I was happy in the old house, but found out about this place and the rent was so good I couldn’t resist - also, it’s about time I found a place just for me.
- There’s not much detail to go into about work, except to say that I’ve been working a lot on the website recently and there’s several new bits of it almost ready to go. Next up, a “search this site” box (probably from Google).
 
The end.

It’s very, very late and I’m way past writing these up into some coherent whole, but have a link to the flckr set containing the pictures I took earlier today of the flat:
ta da!

And in the new house, there is as yet, no internet (so I’m posting this early from work).
Which doesn’t excuse the lack of writing before I moved, but it’s my shiny, new excuse for the time being.

By the way, the new place is lovely. Pictures will follow.

According to this Grauniad artical:

Boris Johnson, said the coalition looked like “a kind of cross between a bulldog and a chihuahua”.

I stumbled on this about a week ago. I only just got the PC plumbed into the stereo again, so it’s taken until today to get watched.

It’s very French, but that’s not always a bad thing.

Skhizein (Jérémy Clapin,2008) from Bertie on Vimeo.

PS it looks great in full screen.

Edit:
The video has disappeared, but here’s a link to the film’s official website.

Hi, this is the Monster in Tim’s Head again. Thank you all so much for the well wishes following my sudden absence - it truly has made my heart grow fonder - I had been granted an extended holiday leave for all the good work I’d done. Management thought we could afford to leave the subject alone with his thoughts for a good long while.

It turns out that wasn’t such a good idea, something for which I accept no responsibility whatsoever.

But I’m back. And, boy, do I have my work cut out for me!

Last night, after a very good day (for him), Tim went home feeling a trifle low - a perfectly natural condition after a long and fun day - and with just a few whispers I had him weakly contemplating suicide again, it was almost just like the good old days, as if I’d never left. It was wonderful watching him lying there, struggling, as if his ‘newly found freedom’ had been torn from him, and wondering if he ever would have a chance at being ‘normal’. It was after a couple of hours of this that I made my fatal mistake:

“You’ve always been this way, and you always will.” I whispered - a gem that had worked wonders in the past. Nobody told me that he’d woken up in my absence!

I heard him say, “Don’t be silly,” whether this was to himself or to me I’ll never know. “Don’t be daft, you’ve had a month and a half without any of this bullshit!” And just like that, I lost him.

I should never have accepted the generous holiday offer in its entirety, so much has unravelled and it’s going to be a while before things are back to normal. As ever, your kind thoughts are much appreciated.

Yours,

TMiTH

The Evelynson Foundation had been a quiet success, and, over the years, the hastily-converted family home became too small to house and support the many children, orphaned later in life, who eventually found their way there. Faced with increasing demand and decreasing resources, Evelyn started calling in favours.

Even the children who hadn’t moved in following the wedding had grown up in close contact with Evelyn - initially brought along by harassed carers after repeated demands to “see the nice lady in the white dress” and then more and more under their own steam every year - and although most of them had long since moved away (and not written for years), when they got the Evelyn’s letter, they came running. Amongst those who had ‘lived in’ the devotion was even more marked.

Letters were written; finances raised; land bought; architects, surveyors and engineers engaged; planning permission sought and obtained; builders employed; and, within two years of Evelyn having set pen to paper, she shuffled through a small army of supporters and cut the red ribbon with a pair of garden shears.

That night, she dreamed of the happiest day of her life; she’d never felt so proud.

The next morning, she was found in her bed, wearing a white night-dress and with a smile on her face. She had never looked so beautiful.

It turned out that it had been nothing personal against either the Johnson or Evelynson families - the cellarman had developed a grudge against his employer and, in an effort to ruin him, had found a way to poison every bottle of the best champagne in the place. This was, of course, little comfort to Evelyn, who in one moment had lost everyone she knew and cared about.

In that one moment Evelyn realised exactly what she had to do, and in the eternity of motionlessness that followed, her mind worked and planned and dreamed of a better future quite serenely - until the first toddler to realise that something wasn’t just strange, but very, very wrong, started screaming her little lungs out.

The police found Evelyn slumped against a pillar - her beauty quite different now: cradling that one little girl in her arms - both of them quite dry of tears and so far past exhaustion not even a dry sob escaped them. The other children were gathered about them - those that weren’t sleeping, gazing at this strange, sad lady in her lovely, white dress, who seemed to be the last real grown up in the world, but wouldn’t tell them what to do. They refused to move until she got up and then followed her out of that terrible place.

Evelyn Johnson walked down the aisle with her (only slightly) arthritic father doing his best to both keep up and slow her down. “It’s meant to be a dignified procession from the doors to the altar” the vicar had said, and Evelyn had agreed. That had been at the rehearsal the night before and a million years ago. Now, she couldn’t wait to get to the front and look into her husband, sorry, soon-to-be-husband’s eyes and for him to see how beautiful she was today.

“Even more beautiful than the last time I saw you.” he’d tell her. She never tired of hearing him say that, and he said it a lot - even when her hair was still plastered to her face from the night before and the face in question still had crinkled pillow marks etched into it. The thing was, he meant it.

“Maybe, in the morning, just this once, he’ll not be able to say it, after today.” She slipped her arm out from her father’s and skipped the last few yards, grabbed her soon-to-be-husband’s hand, flipped her veil over the back of her head and beamed full force at him.

The service went beautifully, the best man performed his duties manfully, the maid of honour, hers honourably (going on to catch the bouquet as the bride and groom left the church grounds), and none of the numerous children made too much of a nuisance of themselves. She even forgave the vicar for calling her ‘John Evelynson’ and making everybody laugh as he hastily backtracked one vow too many.

The sun shone, but not too brightly, the photographer was quick and courteous, everybody did as they were asked without grumbling and the confetti didn’t get stuck in any awkward places.

The food at the reception was beautifully presented, the service magnificent but unobtrusive, and her now-husband’s mini-speech was ever-so-well received. She’d never felt more proud than the moment he broke with tradition, walked around the table and pouring extra glasses for the staff said, “But first, a toast to my lovely wife, who looks even more beautiful today than I’ve *ever* seen her look before, let alone the last time I saw her - in a face pack with cucumber eyes. To Evelyn!”

As one, the other adults in the room stood and raised their glasses high. “To Evelyn!”

As one, the other adults in the room drank deeply from their fluted glasses, for there were bottles in ice buckets aplenty to keep them topped up.

As one, the other adults in the room stopped breathing and dropped to the floor - leaving a stunned Evelyn surrounded by corpses and suddenly quietened children.