Ups and downs 2

is rather more attractive. Yesterday evening I caught a bus to Marble Arch and wandered slowly back to the Strand via Hyde Park, Green Park and St James. Food at Hyde Park deli (horrifically expensive but I was on an expense account), sitting in the sun watching the waterfowl and people, and rereading The State of the Art.

People do enjoy themselves in London parks. Lots of families, lots of couples, and a fair number of singles with books. And many football players, cyclists and rollerbladers. Noticeable that being swamped in a burkha doesn't seem to prevent women from playing games with their children or strolling with their partners. I still have very mixed feelings about the clothes but the more you see the women the less stereotyped they seem.

But I couldn't live here. Walked back after dark, got to Trafalgar Square and headed down into the subway. Very eerie at night, with no-one around. And parks are good but you walk for a while and you're out of them again.

Off to catch a train shortly; we are going to play disc golf this evening. It's a pastime that entertains me even though I take roughly twice as many throws to get to the green than everyone else. My putting's passable however. And that's out in the proper countryside.

Nothing much happening, otherwise. Ordered some euros to go on holiday with. Practising my German by muttering under my breath- the structure of sentences is OK but the nouns are mostly missing, which makes being understood a little tricky. On the other hand I can probably get by using the English nouns in the German sentence structure (or just speaking English like every other tourist).

Made chilli. Lots of chilli. It's meant to be enough for 18, which means that it will be easily consumed by 9 people with large appetites. But at least its a start. I might make some curry tomorrow. Freezers are wonderful things.

After three months of instability, I'm feeling rather better again. So hopefully life will return to something like normal. Albeit with a shrunken brain.

Been cutting and drying the first lot of herbs from my garden- not sure what I'm going to do with them once dried, but the garden needed some heavy trimming, and having bunches of herbs hanging from the mantelpiece makes me feel all earth-mothery.

I'm reading Hal Duncan's "Vellum" at present; I don't have much idea of what it's about but it is rolling over me quite nicely. I suspect if I put it down for more than 24 hours I won't pick it up again though. It would be inaccurate to say that the characters don't stay the same from one page to the next, but it is often quite difficult to recognise them in their different incarnations.

We went to queue for the HP; bad mistake. 40 minutes in the rain being abused by drunk clubbers. But finished the book on Saturday, before the spoilers caught up with me. Apart from the last few pages I was fairly impressed. We also went to see the 5th film, which was considerably better than the 4th one; this time they'd cut the right bits out and left the right bits in.

No other news. It's still raining. The canal is not overflowing, due to the presence of lots of overflow pipes. I have no idea where they go but it seems to be working at the moment.

Bipolar disorder "shrinks brain"

Sitting in my office with damp socks, having just been out for lunch. Fridays are like that sometimes.

Good things have been happening recently. Beloved is considerably better, and has shed his old boss permanently. Son finishes school today so we don't have to kick him out of bed in the mornings for a whole 6 weeks. I extended my weekly visit to London this week, sneaking in a quick overnight visit to Reading (entertainment mostly up to scratch, but "Free Enterprise" was unwatchable- maybe if you're a male geek it's OK...) and then meeting up with a very good friend who I haven't seen for ten years due to continental (and hemispheric) separation and his rather delightful family (I spent some time teaching the baby to bang her spoon on the table, so I shall be fondly remembered).

German campsites now booked, despite some language difficulties- we ended up at one point with a Komfort Travelwagon, when what we really wanted was a small patch of ground to put tents on. I hope all is now sorted.

Jekyll has turned into compulsive viewing, rather to my surprise.

Contemplating the midnight run for Harry Potter tonight. Depends on how much it keeps on raining.... I'd really like to finish the book before being told the ending, but my hopes aren't very high.

Been writing again. Thought I'd stopped for a while, but the BBC printed the cutest picture of John Barrowman and James Marsters and it sort of went from there. On the plus side, writing when less high was more controlled- I felt I had at least some say in what was happening, and it got a complete rewrite at the end, unlike earlier stuff which somehow seemed as if it would break if I changed a word. Still very obsessive though- 24 hours in which I really wasn't able to drag my mind away to anything else- I had the day off yesterday and apart from the occasional hanging out of washing, I did nothing but lie in my hammock in the sunshine typing away, cursing my optical mouse and squinting at the laptop screen, for about 8 hours, then the same indoors all evening.

The other problem of course is that, controlled or not, there is no getting away from the fact that my plot range is considerably smaller than that of David Eddings. All I seem to do is gnaw at the same damn relationship from different angles; what does it feel like, what does it do to you, how does it end and how do both of you survive it? Twenty five years to think about it, and I'm still trying to create meaningful answers out of throwaway lines in TV shows, and pretending the result is entertainment or even art. No wonder the idea of therapy scares me witless.

Why not, after all?

Gave Son the job of choosing the destination for a week's holiday, in the vague hope that he might manage some enthusiasm about the outcome, and with a fairly non-existent budget. He decided he could do with practicing his German (and picking up some cheap games) so we have flights (bad, I know, but too short notice to organise trains) to Frankfurt airport, it being considerably cheaper to get to from B'ham airport than anywhere else in Germany.

With some difficulty (it appears that the English don't go to Germany, and when they do fail to go,they only fail to go to Berlin or Munich) I have found a couple of campsites, one run by the Mainz canoe club, which has to be a good bet, and the other in a forest somewhere. We aren't actually going to Frankfurt itself, it being big and noisy.

So that's in about a month's time. Hurrah. We come back a week before Party.

So glad I'm taking all three mood stabilisers. Because THEY ARE NOT WORKING! Nor am I, to all intents and purposes. My dear policy colleague, who is always so nice about my work and so appreciative of the technical support, was getting distinctly irritated today.

Him "What's your technical advice advice about the urgent issue on X?"
Me, " Sorry, that email looked a bit boring so I stopped reading it."
Him "Arrgghhh!"

He waved me goodbye with a very firm "We will talk on Thursday." And a sigh.

I guess there's a difference between knowing someone's bipolar and finding out just how they change from the person you are used to dealing with. And the way it can be rather different every time; one high will be fast speech, endless jokes and overexcitement but a huge level of involvement in whatever's going on (he's met that one already), another time will be like this; permanently distracted, with no time or interest in work or normal conversation.

I'm writing. Pretty much every spare minute. I wrote all Sunday evening. I wrote on the train on Monday morning. I sat in my hotel room and wrote for 4 hours last night. I wrote on the train coming home; nearly missed my stop because I didn't want to lift the pencil. I wrote over a cup of tea, waiting for Beloved to pick me up. We finished off our game of Antiquity and I wrote between turns. When I'm not writing its in my head anyway, phrases, images.

I've written a long biographical screed about important things. I'm painfully aware that it's a bit like those pastel books with dreadful titles about miserable childhoods that I wouldn't dream of reading (except that mine isn't miserable, just weird). The urge to complete the catharsis by publishing it somewhere is warring with the knowledge that no-one wants to know this stuff, and why should they? If it turns up here, the urge won. I suggest you skip it. But just writing it has helped. Some things, unexpected things, trigger emotional storms; if I can understand where they came from, go over things yet again, I can find some calm again. Emotional storm really isn't me.

I've also written a story. Sort of story. In fanfic terms it's angst/character study I guess. Notable for a lack of sex and (graphic) violence; very unlike me. But the themes are what I need to write about at the moment. If you read both together it would be obvious. It's on its third iteration, and getting better. But then I would think that. I'll post it to A Teaspoon... shortly and see if anyone likes it.

Day off tomorrow, as usual. Beloved has the day off too; he's finding getting back to work very tiring. Though he reckons a day off with me at the moment is more exhausting.

My story is calling me.

In a fit of hypomanic enthusiasm I've joined the Bipolar World webring.
If I feel too exposed to the world I can always leave again.