Surprise - A look back

Here we are - end of another year. I dislike the repeated 'round-up of the year' news programmes, but nevertheless find them fascinating. Maybe I should attempt one myself, on a personal level. Something a bit distasteful, but clenching my teeth and buttocks, here goes:
The first half of the year: all I remember is the increasing, rising to near-panic, feelings of horror as the exams approached. The all-consuming nature of frantic revision and the knowledge of how little I knew. Many promises were made internally: never again would I leave it so that it was so desperate, etc. But I hadn't - I started in the Christmas holidays, just as I am now....
The horror of the exams in the barn that is the RDS pavillion, the little rickety desks, with their hard chairs, the unpleasantness of finding oneself sitting next to a fidgeter or someone who stinks of fear. This is etched on my memory, but so is the relief of the trial ending and pleasure of the long summer ahead, the ability to travel, see friends, actually read for pleasure again, or not to read, the choices, the choices...
Loved my month in Italy, almost unalloyed delight. OK to be alone, surprisingly, except eating a problem. Inever did grt over that entirely, but it worked out well, as I lost a stone in weight, gained in the first half of the year, as I crouched over the computer/books/notes and cards, rarely stirring for exercise.
Then to learn that I had done well in those terrible examinations, genuinely unexpected results giving me a present of pleasurable pride, which would have been lovely to celebrate with someone, but any old way, a delicious thing to savour as I went on my sight-seeing way. The number of monuments, parts of galleries and sites in Italy that were not available to the public through'restauration', was frustrating, I have to say, maybe up to one quarter of the things on my 't0-see' list were unavailable. Rome was surprisingly delightful, Florence was wonderfully exotic in a miniature way, but noticeably more expensive, and all the places that I didn't visit...Venice, Sienna, hardly bear thinking about.
Later, visiting old schoolfriend in Brittany felt like pure indulgence. Archaeology all around and very little did I do or see, but the bits I did were very special, because of their rarity maybe. I don't know what it is about Brittany, especially the bits off the tourist map, but it marvellously relaxing and I just pottered about, with odd trips to the beach, bits of bricolage and dog-walking and music festival-going that turned out disappointing compared to last year's feast of Bagad.
Returned to do a month of paperwork, catching up on applications and the boring things of maintaining life in a 3-student-household, catching the tail-end of the garden's summer, lots of cleaning up to do and getting ready for 2nd year of course.
The start of the academic year: I may have done better than expected in my exams, (but no prizes, so no swelled head) but this is another ball-game and I feel a weird feeling of having to live up to expectations, entirely my own, which takes a while to get over. The grind of essays reasserts itself, with the usual difficulty in accessing books from the Library and then finding time to read them. The administration is in a tailspin over the course structure and at the end of the year, we have no idea of how next year will be organised, which is very unsettling. Halfway through the course, I am not feeling as happy as I might have expected. I am tired of the relentless intensity of the pressure to produce, when there has not been time to research a topic adequately, let alone inwardly digest the information constantly streamed at us. The recurring thought: 'this is not education, just processing', becoming a disappointing refrain. Occasionally, I really love it, sitting in the Library, even in one of their supremely uncomfortable plastic chairs, just enjoying discovering some unexpected aspect of some topic.
I am poorer this year, buying far fewer books, but reading more, not feeling so lost in the welter of subject-matter, but still struggling to attain the level where I want to be. Still struggling with abstract concepts, critical and analytical thinking and not quite achieving control over them.
Years' end finds me enjoying what is essentially the only break in which to enjoy reading for its own sake, but trying to stay focussed and hope to forestall the awful panic that inevitably builds towards May and the dreaded exams. And then there were the kids.......

Stephen's Day calm before the storm

The Big Relaxo! How nice now that the hysteria and anxiety of Christmas is essentially over and the tears of frustration and disappointment have been dried, the washing up is finally done (by me) and I can sit back to enjoy a few weeks of holiday. This is the only real break we have in the academic year, so some serious reading must be done, but I have ensured that the stack of books that I want to read are enjoyable, so it need not be too arduous.
Yesterday went off reasonably, that is not perfectly - how could it ever be? General disappointment at the lack of presents, even though debts forgiven represent quite a bit of money, it isn't the same as boxed sets of expensive smelly stuff or large books from Amazon or electronic gadgetryor --- any of the other things I have been rather bitterly reminded that I could have bought. I did comparatively well, getting Valentino scent and a Bonsai banyan, which will be lucky to survive our central heating. And a non-academic book on Celtic Art...
At least food was on the table, reasonably on time (5pm, because daughter between shifts at the Nursing Home), organic lamb for us, beef burritos for son (don't ask).
This morning, daughter describes the Christmas feast leftovers that an Eastern European employee brought in for them - crab, salami, fishballs and pickles. She loves that kind of thing and must inherit the taste from my Russian-Polish origins, along with her Russian name.
The French eat oysters and other seafood for Christmas, we eat smoked salmon here, but Christmas turkey is not eaten on the Continent as far as I know (or in our house, ever).
Ireland is getting more multi-cultural, though and the taste in food is gradually changing. I wonder if oysters will ever become a Christmas staple here?
I just cut a yellow rose in full flower from the garden, to bring inside.
It isn't Boxing Day here, it's St Stephen's Day, but that doesn't make much difference. The few days respite before the drink-fuelled craziness of New Year's, which I find genuinely scary, and the further alcoholic menace of a 21st birthday (offspring), for which I am ill-prepared, are most welcome and I am determined to wring some enjoyment out of them.

Crinkle wrinkly

OK, so I don't particularly like Christmas. Still, it's better than Hallowe'en, that nasty evening that has turned into a month of stupid bangs. Christmas is a month of buying rubbish and eating the sort of food that you wouldn't go near the rest of the year. It will require 3 months-worth of penitential starvation to remove the half-stone of extra flab gained - if you can be bothered, in the rush of returning to work/study/real life in January.
Presents are a nightmare, so much so that I've nearly given up. Sometimes I have some things I've bought specifically for certain people, sometimes I have a few gifts from my holidays, which didn't get given/sent at the time, which come in handy. My kids just want the money and lots of it, so that sorts that out, because by the time they have claimed their whack, I'm broke.
Cards I do enjoy sending, except they have to be bought so early in the year, if I want to be sure I can get the ones I want. Yes, I'm fussy that way, always Giles cards for RNLI and other Charity cards to make up the numbers of smaller cards I need. If only we could hold it at cards and one day of gluttony, it could be fun. The religious activities mean nothing to me. If the urge to be charitable in other ways comes over me, I feel quite free to exercise it at any point in the year. I think all the winter months might be most appropriate for the homeless, if they can survive.
Whatta Scrooge I am, yes I admit it.

Season of death and examinations

It goes on; I can't remember another pre-Christmas like it. I'm not counting but word comes of a fellow mature student killed in a house fire. This is the 3rd local death by house fire within 10 days that I know of. Also, death by air-bag, friend of friend, and several other serious car accidents.
The running over of a young mother by a huge truck rolling back over her, in front of a High Street full of horrified Christmas shoppers, was perhaps the worst of all of all for traumatic impact over the greatest number, but we are only at 13th December.
The last 2 years have seen huge tragedies occurring right after Christmas in far-flung parts, having international impact. Not this year, please, I keep thinking. I'm feeling nervous and not too jolly, at the same time telling myself "Pull yourself together and stop feeling so paranoid".
The weather: perfect. My work: finished for now, although the huge pile of reading awaits, as always. This time next year I may be unable to think of anything except exams, being in the thick of them, or else they being imminent. I know people who have exams this year on 21st December at 6 PM!! Isn't that the height of cruel and unusual punishment? This year I am merely sympathetic; next year: it could be me. If I survive that long......

a feeling like vertigo

What a very unnerving and sad few days. I'm torn with grief at the news of the sudden, unexpected death of a boy of 19, whom I hadn't seen since he was a child. The repercussions through his family and mine, since his sister was my daughter's best friend and frequent visitor to our house.
But I didn't really know him at all, and the parents had moved away and had never been close friends of mine. But the fact that this tragedy has hit them, has hit me too and I can't bear to think of the pain they must be feeling.
It follows a string of local tragedies, a teenager died in a house fire and a mother run over by a truck. Somehow my daughter seems to be the connecting link, all friends of friends, fewer than 6 degrees of separation is too close for me.
A minor earthquake last night - unusual but not unheard of in this part of the world.
Things vanishing mysteriously, without any trace, friends telling stories of robberies and vicious attacks in previously quiet rural areas.
I feel weird, sad, bad and old and wish I could just hibernate until next year, wake up and have everything all right again.