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Dust (contender for most boring title of the week,

We have the builders in. One builder, to be precise, though he’s making enough noise for at least three of them. What is the collective noun for builders? A hod of bricklayers. A blade, no, a saw of carpenters. As the masonry drill gnaws into the walls, perhaps a dusting of builders would be appropriate at the moment. Dust is incredible in its tenacity and enthusiasm. Dust motes dancing in Brownian motion through a shaft of sunlight are a wonder to behold. Thick choking clouds of it are less so. And I thought he was working at the side of the house today and so left the windows open at the back. I don’t want to hurt his feelings by shutting them while he’s working directly underneath them. Or, more prosaically, I don’t want to startle him so he falls off the ladder. I’m not that sort of doctor. There’s a brief respite at the moment as I’ve just supplied coffee and a KitKat, so I think I’ll go and pull them to.

That may be better, though dust will in, as it were. I didn’t think I was going to be able to write today, the noise and vibration were creeping through my body, conducted by bones and muscle (and damped by fat), paralysing what passes for my brain. It didn’t seem so bad last week. Perhaps I’m losing my resistance to it. Leaving lunch too late has left me wobbly, so I am self-medicating with strong tea.

The revolution is on hold at the moment, pending a thorough review of my finances. It’s best to have some sort of plan when sticking two fingers up at the boss. Anyway, my immediate boss is pleasant and I have no wish to be rude. It’s those at the top of the tree I have a problem with.

I really have got everything the wrong way round. Frustrated rebellion at thirty-mumble, conformity masking independence of mind at sixteen. When I was sixteen I had the arrogance and self-belief that the age brings. The image I had of what I wanted to be was strong enough to set me onto a track which time proved to be a dead end. I chose the subjects I was good at rather than the ones that interested me. No, that’s not entirely true. I chose the subjects I was good at and liked at the time without giving a thought to the possibility that the sixteen year old wannabe scientist might mutate into a thirty-mumble wannabe author with a yearning for an arts degree. Whoever thought it was a good idea putting impressionable teenagers in charge of the first stages of adult life needs their head examined.

I really do boggle when I look back at Teen Angelfeet, she who played the drums in a school band and really thought it feasible to do the same at home (future echoes and consideration for the neighbours ensured that it didn’t happen), she who walked the school corridors dressed as Tom Baker’s Doctor Who for the hell of it, she who chose her degree course by tossing a coin. She’d be appalled at what she turned into: a neurotic wraith who worries about everything and can’t make a decision for fear of it being wrong.

Perhaps I should learn from her. After all, she got what she wanted: the letters after the name, the chance to say “Trust me, I’m a doctor” and mean it. So what if sixty-something Angelfeet looks back and wonders what on earth I was thinking of jacking in a steady job with a pension? I can’t help thinking it would be far worse to look back and wonder why on earth I stayed in a job that’s stifling my soul. Ooh look, melodrama. Too much tea and self-pity, not enough action.

But perhaps I need to shake things up a bit, regardless of timid conformity. Like the walls of the house, things will be better when the dust settles.

Or so Teen Angelfeet tells me.

Posted by Angelfeet on 2008-05-21 14:19:22 | Rating: