The Boss meets Q

After breaking down in sobs in the office during Frankie's holiday absence on the Greek island of Domestos (Not Lesbos as widely rumoured!)the Boss sought an emergency session with his spiritual director Q. Now read on:

"Hi Boss you sounded awfully troubled when you rang me up"
"Yes, it just felt all too much for me, coping with so much going on at work and no Frankie. And however much I slag him off and however imperfectly he performs he makes a real difference. And you know I miss him.... what's wrong with me?
"Hmm... It sounds all too human to me."
"Whatcha mean?"
"Well it's the busiest time of your year, right?"
"Yeah"
"And Frankie, key player in your team is away, right?"
"Yeah"
"Any arrangements in place to cover for his absence"
"Well no, I just got on with things, He had done all he could before he left-"
"Remember how often you have told me that it's an impossible job?"
"Uh huh"
"So when a key player of your team is not there, and let's face Frankie above all acts as your gatekeeper and your emotional lodestone?"
"Whaaat?"
"He carries your emotional side, he allows you to have emotions, he embodies emotions, he paradoxically keeps you on an emotional even keel however strange that idea might seem"
"Oh (pause) what can I do?"
"Well what do you need practically?"
"Some kind of cover while he is away, however imperfect"
"Good and now what about your emotional side?"
"I find it really hard to admit these feelings"
"Yes"
"And I guess as a result they just build up until the dam bursts and the overwhelm me"
"Would it be so hard just to acknowledge your feelings from time to time?"
"The idea sounds simple but..."
"But?"
"I dunno"
Pause
"OK how are you feeling now?"
"Relieved, calmer able to go back to work and get on with things"
"Good."

Frankie's on Domestos

So my colleague Neil asked me recently 'How's Frankie?" How's Frankie indeed! Not here just when I need him. There I am battling into work through the driving rain on me bike get to work gasping for a coffee and no Frankie! (And no Raquel serving the coffee's either!) Then I remember he's grabbed a late cheap holiday on a Greek island - Domestos or something! I am sure he would welcome your emails - frankie.says@live.com as he suns hismelf on the beach!

So here I am in the office surrounded by papers, books, memoes, phone calls, visitors, double bookings, too many meetings, just been carpeted by 3 professors - and no Frankie!

I can't go on (sob!)

Pause

Message from Bill-on-bike - The Boss was rather overcome just then so I have sent him off for an emergency session with Q. Normal blogging will be resumed as soon as possible!

On the road again

Last Friday I snatched a day off work - before the academic year kicks in - for a bike ride on my 50 mile training route around Alderley Edge. Training for what? you might ask. I don't know. I dream about another LEJOG without breaking it into bits. Or maybe a ride in Ireland, Germany, Africa - my list is long.

I felt I was on a mission to do my practice run yet again. This notion of 'mission' seems spiritual to me - 'What do you think Q?'
'If it feels to be spiritual then it is spiritual'
'Right.'

I think there is a lot to be said about what men do because they don't get pregnant! Other things have to be 'birthed' and something has to be done with our energies apart from drugs and rock and roll :).

It was so good to be out in the sunshine, in the open air, in the countryside. I needed this time out from ordinary life, in myself, in, and moving through, the world.

Best to all,

Bill-on-bike

Yet more rain

It was raining when I left home for work this dull Monday morning. I don't like rain after rain after rain. So on with waterproof trousers, over shoes and my yellow cycling jacket. For some reason thoughts and images from my LEJOG ride were with me - maybe because I met up with an old friend Em on Saturday and I talked to her about the LEJOG ride, about growing older, and about how we had many mutual friends with high blood pressure.

I feel a bit dislocated being back at work again after my work visit to Kenya. It almost as if part of my work persona remains over there and the pile of dissertations and assignments waiting to be marked are even less attractive than usual. And the future of my teaching in Kenya remains in the balance.

I wrote a letter to Neil Tennant this week. I hesitate to include the text here so I wont. It was partially a fan letter but much more. I listening to 'Release the Stars' by Rufus Wainwright a lot at the moment and of course Neil produced it.

I am still learning piano, helped by my amazing teacher Rebbecca, trying to perfect my version of Amazing Grace - at least I can play it now with out sobbing. Playing piano is pleasurable but I am not a very quick learner.

Best to all,

Bill-on-bike

Bike, bear and crockodiles

I could not help running this story picked up from the CTC newsletter:

MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) -- A middle school teacher suffered some bruising and a big scratch on his back after he struck a bear while riding his bicycle to school.

Jim Litz said he was traveling about 25 mph Monday morning when he came upon a rise and spotted a black bear about 10 feet in front of him. He didn't have time to stop and T-boned the bruin.

He tumbled over the handlebars, his helmet hit the bear's back and the two went cartwheeling down the road.

The bear rolled over Litz's head, cracking his helmet, and scratched his back before scampering up a hill above the road.

Litz's wife drove by shortly after the crash and took her husband to the hospital. He hoped to be able to return to teaching science at Target Range Middle School on Friday.


Mind you those of us who have had their dingies capsized by a crockodile on the Norfolk Broads think it is quite small beer!
---

Yorkshire, the Broads and Nairobi

A few years ago staying with my good friends Peter and Mary in Bentham in the Yorkshire countryside I went out one morning into there back garden and I was in nature - no longer was there a barrier between me and nature. I felt a bit vulnerable. It feels that way sometimes on the bike especially on my LEJOG ride and especially when I was miles from anywhere in the Scottish Highlands.

When I was on the boat on the Norfolk Broads in August it was a bit similar. I was closer to nature than usual, the silence at night, the clear brighter stars, the great sunsets and sunrises, the sounds of wild life.

Then in Kenya I stayed at the Safari Park Hotel on the outskirts of Nairobi in 25 acres of grounds. My room was in a one of the 2 storey blocks set in the grounds with lots of wood rather like in Austria. I was woke up before dawn by an amazing exotic dawn chorus of birdsong then gradually, then quickly the light of the sun came up. Magic.

I am thankful to be touched in this way.

Meeting Ziggy in Bewdley

Yesterday I posted a poem I wrote after meeting Ziggy my teenage best friend after 39years. On the day I met him I wrote a poem and it does not seem to work as a poem so I am trying it out as prose.

In Bewdley, waiting to meet Ziggy, I am flooded with a wave of memories and feel pretty overwhelmed by them. There was the cafe near the river where I was chatted up by an attractive fair haired teenager but I remained faithful to my first love who, coincidentally or not worked nearby in the hairdressers shop.

Opposite the George Inn I walked passed the turn off to a house where Ziggy and I had been to a party. Ziggy spent some time there talking to a very pregnant teenager. This excited me at the time as Ziggy had written a song about such an encounter a few days previously. But nothing developed unlike the song.

I walked by the River Severn and passed by the spot where Ziggy and I had rented a boat. We attempted largely unsuccessfully to row upstream against the strong current despite the verbal help of an enthusiastic man on the river bank.

Later I saw the shop where once my cousin Phyl had sold baby clothes from and it was now a hospice charity shop. The same hospice my sister Liz left so much money to in her Will forcing me to meet medics and premature babies and their mums when all I wanted to do was to cry...

Round the corner was a bungalow where my Aunt and Uncle retired to and nearby hidden away the gem of 1690s Quaker Meeting House where more recently I heard the Quaker silence broken by the hoot of a steam train on the Severn Valley Line.

Swimming in these memories I wait on the bridge to meet Ziggy.