It's a sunny (yes!!) Sunday morning and we "should" be tackling the garden (the conventional term for the patch of overgrown waste ground at the back of our house). Instead we head off into central London for a morning chamber concert.
I am feeling below par, and have an irritating cough. So, in the manner of somone listening to airline safety procedures, as soon as I sit down I clock the nearest exit so that I can make a break for it if necessary.
Brahms suits my mood, being calming and melodious. Unfortunately it is so very calming that I catch myself nodding off at several points. However, this passes unnoticed, as the average age of the audience appears to be about 70.
They are a terribly civilised crowd, despite some unseemly elbowing in the ribs in the rush to get to the sherries. Naturally, Husband and I are back out into the street long before things deteriorate. I am in a slightly self-piteous mood which lasts all through our assault upon the garden (yes, we return in time to undertake this task) and until we arrive at the 6pm Support Group meeting.
I am accosted as soon as we walk up the path. Will I please be the main speaker tonight, as the one booked has just cancelled?
I really really don't want to. I mean - really. As well as the cough, I now have a headache and a queasy tum, and I am feeling extremely vexed because my Kindle has stopped working, my laptop won't let me onto the internet, and today I was forced to ask a teenager in a phone shop why I could no longer access emails from my mobile phone (answer: "you need to enable your cookies". wha...??? It was simpler to just give her the phone and let her sort it out for me....). I have developed an irrational hatred of information technology over the past 24 hours, and this has translated itself into a consequent and equally irrational resentment towards most of humanity.
"Yes" I hear myself say.
Bugger.
Husband sees me sitting up at the top of the table and makes questioning gestures. I give a miniscule jerk of my head towards the woman who asked me - someone in comparatively early days who radiates conviction and good recovery. My mime is intended to convey the message "how could I say no?" and Husband laughs quietly to himself.
It is always a humbling experience being the main speaker at a meeting, and this evening even more so. Because I have known many of these people for years, and some recall meeting me at their first ever meeting. I am described by one attendee as "a strong woman with so much to give". Good Lord. This makes me feel like a terrible fraud, and I am only glad that I never try to be something I am not - for example, being quite honest about the fact that at one point today I wanted to take my laptop out into the street and smash it to smithereens with a hammer. (And I am Not Kidding. I had actually taken the hammer out of Husband's toolbox and placed it by the front door.....).
I still can't quite accept it when people say nice things about me. I seem far readier to listen to a very small minority (yes! my less-than lovely co-worker clique) who have painted me as a demon....
Two hours later I am back at home, feeling extremely unwell all over again. So I don't quite understand how I was able to sit for 90 minutes in the meeting, first talking and then listening, without at any stage feeling ill. Except that the woman running the meeting clearly knew what was good for me better than I did myelf...
It's all very strange and very miraculous.
And terribly, wonderfully, addictive.
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