The Tall Girl from Somerset 19

11.00 to 11.30

After any stop Anne had difficulty starting again, like the engine of a reluctant lawnmower that has to be kept running.  After a break there was a block which prevented her from getting down to the work she had just left.  She stopped for coffee at around 11.00, and after coffee she once more had to find the will to continue.  Sometimes the solution was to divide up her work into smaller chunks.  “I’ll do this job, and then that one, and by twelve o'clock I’ll feel better” This meant that she could at least begin to work again.  The problem was not the work in itself.  Once given the OK by her mind, she knew that she could do it extremely well.  The problem lay in feeling “right”, in being able to start.

1.30 pm

After lunch the re-start was the same, but worse.  The start of the afternoon had always been difficult.  Sometimes she retreated to the toilet to sort things out.  The loo!  Thank heavens for the loo!  For Anne, it was the only place of privacy, away from questions, away from people, away from the phone and away from any demand of action.  She could lock the door on the world.  If you added up the daily minutes, how many hours of unhappiness had she spent there?  And, she wondered if there were others like her.  How many people had retreated there to think, to recover, or to cry. (Well, it is ‘el retrete’, 'the retreat', in Spanish, Harvey had told her.  How apt!)  How often had Anne gone there to feel right, get OK, clarify things and sort herself out before the next challenge, the next job.

3.00 to 4.00 pm

For years, even at school, the mid-afternoon had been the worst part of her whole day. Three o’clock to four o’clock was a trough.  It was the doldrums of the day. It was the dread, dead hour from 3 to 4. The energy of the morning had passed, and the calm of the evening was yet to come.  At three in the afternoon, life seemed to stretch ahead, forever.  Anne always made sure that she had some solid work ready to fill this hour.  When 4 o’clock came, and perhaps with it a cup of tea, it was like cycling downhill; it was easy, there was no need to pedal; it was freewheeling downhill until the evening.

6.30 pm

Going home was bliss.  She left the faculty library, stepped outside, heard the door close behind her wit a gentle swish, and she breathed the free air of the street.  The day had been faced and completed.  She had done well.  She had met difficulties, and she had resolved them.  Now there were no immediate demands.  “Just find your bike, Anne and cycle back to your room.”  If she arrived in time, there was the comfort of “The Archers” (though it was so short) and the pleasure it gave of listening to people battling with the practical problems of life, so earnestly, while she seemed to be struggling with the universe. 

8.30 pm

On good days the evening was OK: cooking pasta, making a salad, listening to Radio 4 or to records of Mozart.  On bad days she longed for the safety of the 9 o’clock news. Thank goodness for the news and for the uncle-like newsreader.  Things fell into perspective with the events of the day.  How could she bother about her worries when there was famine in the Sudan, or a multiple accident on the M5 motorway?  How could she feel so low when there was such suffering in Guatemala?  It was, she told herself, selfish indulgence to worry. (She sometimes wondered what the attraction of the news was for everyone else.  For her it was a haven, but for the rest?  Why were people so interested in catastrophe and disaster?)  After the news it was easy.  The day took care of itself until bedtime.  But it would all start again tomorrow: facing people, doing things, throwing herself into challenges, committing herself to one task after another.

The worst days were those when she never managed to cut the cord and forget herself.  On those days she never surfaced, never got out of herself, never really got stuck into her work.  She sometimes went through a whole day and was never able to lose herself entirely in either work or pleasure.  It was as if a plane starting on a long flight never left the ground but taxied the whole way to its destination.  On those days the only way she could get through was by using the temporary solution.  “Forget it, Anne.  Get this article/ letter/ phone call done, and then think about it all again after that.” This postponement of concern could, at worst, go on all through the day, and she progressed in hops from one task to the next.  She never really started, like an Oxford day in mid-December that never really gets light.  These days of worry sapped her energy, though luckily she usually reacted to them, and the day after a bad day was full of committed bustle. What annoyed her most was the fact that she knew she had the ability to do so much.  She was “firing on three cylinders” to use a phrase of Uncle Henry’s, although he was referring to his old Morris Minor, not to her state of mind, which thankfully he knew nothing of.  How well we disguise ourselves!  She felt that she could  achieve great things if only she could give herself completely to the business of each day.  If only!  If only!  “Wishers were ever fools!”  She was never totally productive; a part of her was always being held back.  Given a free hand, what might she do?    Who knows!  We are what we are, warts and all, even those invisible warts, the warts of the mind!  Without them nagging her, she could do so much.  As it was, she had almost finished her degree and was on course for a first.