The Remains of the Day

It was nice to walk into the office having cleared so much of the backlog yesterday. I had a pretty good day too, feeling on the front foot most of the time. I’ve decided the secret of coping in a crazy world is making some conscious decisions about what to react to and what not to react to. And only go into the office two days a week. That makes a lot of difference when it comes to managing your energy; two days working at home enables you to be proactive and pace yourself in a way that the hurly burly of the office never allows.

Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel prize for literature. That’s good. I saw him at the Hay festival years ago and thought he was the most boring person being interviewed all week. All year in fact. Might have to read some of his stuff instead of just watching the films they’ve made from his books.

Sitting in a coffee shop at the end of the day I was struck by the sheer diversity of even boring everyday life. Maybe that is his secret. Lifting the extraordinary out of the mundane. And yet big things are going on around us the whole time; like the butler in Remains of the Day who is concerned about the placement of the cutlery but has people all around him making decisions about the fate of nations. There was a message in that story about being ethical and connected to the world around you.

When all is said and done the remains of today are not the starting point for tomorrow. We can move on. But what we need from one day to the next differs. Yesterday I needed peace and a chance to catch up. Today I needed people around me and something to stretch me. Tomorrow I definitely need a chance to plan ahead in an uncertain world.

Priority one may be getting TSM into a better place. She has a stinky cold, is exhausted and is not sleeping well. I went out for paracetamol, Night Nurse and lozenges this morning... that’s what you call a cocktail...