A desultory morning

Rain falling – a very fine rain so that one hardly notices it, and yet it is the kind of rain that soaks easily through clothes so that one soon becomes drenched. Hoping for a warm day the same as yesterday, I had rushed from the house without a coat, and by the time I got round to the decrepit old wooden shed where I park my car (one of the old barns and sheds of the former farmyard) I was very wet. However, as I was already late leaving for work there wasn’t time to go back and get anything more protective.

A desultory morning in the office, and with so many people on holiday the place seemed almost deserted. I think of going on holiday myself. To Normandy perhaps, or Antibes, or New York. Or my extravagant dream of taking the Queen Mary II to New York, and trains across North America to Stockton in northern California where I have friends who own a ranch (actually the former Director of the Los Angeles institute where I once worked as an intern - she married and moved to the north of the state). On their ranch they have their very own (exhausted) gold mine.

But I know I will not go on holiday. The Probate dispute drags on, taking day after day of my holiday entitlement. The house costs so much to keep up that there never seems to be much of my salary left each month. And one has to consider, however reluctantly, the implications of taking more than a few days off work – the rapacious nature of office politics means that anyone taking a long holiday would inevitably come under attack.

Like so many aspects of my life, there is no option but to go on as before.