Whichever way I turn, another huge, vast problem looms at me until it seems there is no escape and even my dreams are fretful and anxious (when I can actually get to sleep, that is.) I was practically sobbing at work this morning, completely unable to pull myself together, where, as a final straw, I was confronted with about a zillion books to deal with. Fortunately I was rescued by the marvellous library manager and after a cup of truly foul but highly caffeinated coffee laced with aging soya milk that separated, I managed to get going again.
It doesn’t even matter what all these problems are. Everyone has them in one way or another. What upsets me mostly is that at the bottom of every single one is a lack of money. “If I had money, this wouldn’t be” is the line that goes through my head several million times a day. I still dream pathetically of winning the lottery, though I almost never buy a ticket (can’t part with the £2). I would settle for winning the £25 thousand cash prize on the Dorset Cereal camper van box but though I’ve eaten tonnes of Dorset cereal in the last year, I’ve not yet managed to buy the lucky box.
And then, when my dreams begin to run out, I think perhaps I’ll get lucky with my writing and actually write something that sells and makes money and I can live off it and live happily ever after and all those problems will just vanish and everything will be just dandy. And then I remember that so far I’ve been the saddest failure of a writer there ever was and have to turn up the radio VERY LOUD indeed so that I can block out every aspect of my life.
But to follow that famous bit from Carmen with "O Quam Sauvis Est"* by some bloke called Alonso Lobo is just sublime. And I’ve just discovered that if you select a programme to listen to again on the Radio 3 website, it lists the pieces played so that you can pick just that piece to listen to no matter where it is in the line-up. Bloody magical, that is.
* Google it.