I AM tired…so tired. Drained. Sapped of life; brain as numb as my arms and legs that move to a zombie rhythm. It’s not that glorious, warming tiredness that comes from manual work well done which will be assuaged with a long bath, a glass of wine and the slow slither into a cool bed.
No, this is a bone-deep, seemingly never-ending daily fatigue where effort of any kind is just too, too, much.
It hit me the day after Parliament went into recess.
I no longer ‘had’ to switch on to the droning doings in the House; no longer ‘had’ to frantically update my followers on twitter with the latest stupidities or bon mots; no longer ‘had’ to click back and forth between news sites, desperate not to miss something.
Like the MPs, I was now technically on holiday, and my alerts were coming fewer and fewer as the hours went on.
Except of course I wasn’t and I’m not. According to many, and who could blame them, I am permanently on holiday living as I do in south west France.
I can, almost always, rise when I choose, sleep when I choose and even live off vin rouge, oven chips, crisps and chocolate…should I choose, which, as you know, I do. Often.
So, what is all this ‘had to’ then?
Actually, it’s only writing this that makes me question this rather bizarre state I’ve been in ever since the Brexit referendum.
Why have I felt the need to, mainly via twitter, express my views, tweet out weighty and not so weighty newspaper opinions and features on the unfolding horror?
Why must I watch the late news, the newspaper reviews, then tweet out the headlines and the first edition stories to those followers still up?
If for some reason I can’t, I get quite twitchy as if I’m turning out a first edition newspaper and I’m pushing deadline times.
In fact, I rather feel sometimes as if I’m running my own mini news desk as I pick and choose international stories to ping out across, across…well, wherever. The kitchen?
I do, however, get a great kick out of beating others when I put out a fact gleaned from a foreign source that only gets picked up much later.
Utterly bloody bananas really.
No-one is paying me for this, in my eyes, superb service; no-one is waiting with baited breath for my daily updates; no-one probably gives a damn if they get their Sky headlines before publication.
Well, let’s face the truth here as to why I’m doing this. It’s time I did.
When you’re dumped from your job (don’t let’s dress it up with the made redundant words) you live for a time in a slightly manic parallel world and, if fortunate enough, take some pretty excessive options.
Hell, I’ve written enough already about how I came to end up in a field in La France Profonde with a well-known fear of the dark, the countryside and the need of a black cab lifeline. So, I won’t bore you with that again.
But that’s now quite some time ago and I’ve gone through – and troubled you with – the despair, the misery, the lows and yes, the highs of my life here.
Always, though not quite stated, was a deeper truth or rather need: a sense of purpose. Or rather the lack of a sense of purpose.
I firmly believe we all must have this or else we can all too easily just float away untethered into a restless, permanently unsatisfied, always yearning for something else, state of being.
Out here the migrants channel that into gardening, painting, cooking, socialising and seem, seem, to be rooted and content with their lot.
That could never be me and it would be better perhaps if it were.
I only do one thing well – words. I’m an observer, an outsider, a teller of tales, a reporter of the sacred facts. A believer in my trade even in these dark days when often the word is not truth but propaganda.
I’m also a sprinter not a marathon runner so no great tome will be created in the winter nights in Las Molieres.
I like a beginning, a middle and an end…if not necessarily in that order …but wrapped in a small package.
I've always liked to turn the notebook pages over at the end of the day and move on to the next story. Leave the last one behind.
And what a story we’re living through. For that’s what it is to people like me even when personally affected by it.
Brexit. A story of greed, ineptitude, corruption, parochialism, arrogance, ignorance and woeful errors of judgement. Breathtaking in the scope of its horrific destructive potential.
Illuminating in its shattering of any public beliefs in the goodness of their representatives who daily divest themselves of a right to govern.
And I’m not there…in the heart of it all. I’m here, in my field, on my Mac running my news desk.
But I am here and I’m still churning it out.
What’ll I do in the recess? My dears, I have my dispatch boxes to work through.
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