That's a tricky question. Why is it that some days you feel you can take on the world but on others you just want to crawl into a hole?
I bet you can identify with the following. You feel absolutely exhausted, get home, slam the door behind you and say " that's it world from me for today. I don't want to speak to anyone or see anyone."
I've mentioned before that I have what I refer to as recovery days when I deliberately make sure that I have nothing on so I can just let the day pass me by. Ironically these are often the days when I get a lot done because I don't put any pressure on myself to do anything and anything I do is a bonus.
I have tried to analyse why some days I can cope and take on the world and other days are a real trial and I can't come to any real conclusions. It helps of course when good things happen, when somebody makes a nice gesture or praises you but even then you can feel low. Conversely you can feel confident and chipper when things aren't going quite your way.
I've come to the conclusion that there aren't any real answers and you just have to go with the flow. For me, the good days outweigh the bad and there's always my writing and you my readers to cheer me up and I hope it's a two way thing and that in some small way I can cheer you up when you're feeling down or low.
*. *. *
Watched a decent film a couple of nights ago entitled The Windermere Children. Based on a true story, it was about a group of 300 Jewish children who survived the holocaust and were liberated from concentration camps. They were sent to Lake Windermere to recuperate and it was all about the way they came to terms with their past and faced a future in a foreign country.
There have been a number of similar films in recent times and it always strikes me how many of those featured used the horrors of the past to become important contributors to British life. One of the main characters in this film was Ben Helfgott who became a British Olympic weightlifter and was knighted for his contribution to Holocaust awareness and education.
When I see films like this it always reminds me of Norwich's Joe Stirling, a Jewish boy who escaped Germany and became a leading citizen in Norfolk and is immortalised in the book "Escaping Hitler" by my friend Phyllida Scrivens.
The only disappointing thing about The Windermere Children is its setting. It wasn't filmed in the Lake District but in Northern Ireland.
*. *. *
Holidays are always good in broadening the mind but they do bring chaos to a routine. We are due back on Friday evening which means the weekend is going to be rather chaotic. On Saturday I have the final proofs of our book to go through with John Head and then Hethersett Herald to finish and publish (a couple of days later than usual) and then there's a Norwich football match and my diary to catch up on. If I'm holidaying in the UK and taking the car I take my diary with me but it's so large that I don't take it abroad for two reasons - it's too large and cumbersome to carry and I would hate to lose it or have it confiscated.
On our first visit to Russia which would have been around 1974 we were told that border guards would take anything they either fancied or didn't understand. I tested this by having with me a copy of the New Musical Express which would obviously be viewed as British subversive literature and sure enough it did get confiscated much to my amusement as I had finished with it anyway. I was probably fortunate not to end up in some Gulag in Siberia but you don't think of things like that when you are young.
I was asked the other day what my next writing project is once the massacre book is out. Well of course it's the autobiography which I still have to finish editing and then it will be the book on my first year of blogs during lockdown. I know I've mentioned all this before but I do like to keep you all up to date.
Another aim when I get home is to get rid of this damn cough and cold which has been quite miserable. I can put up with the sneezes and the sniffles but the cough just wears me down. It's no surprise that I picked it up, having been around so many people in the past few weeks who have been suffering to various degrees.
*. *. *
Yesterday I wrote about what I felt was an exaggeration in the mileage in a story about the closure of a post office in Wymondham. A number of you have said it is indeed over four miles from Jarrolds' in Wymondham to our post office in Hethersett Library. I still dispute this but will check out the distances once I'm back home again.
*. *. *
Yesterday we took the Shuttle Bus to Funchal. It's a lovely city and once the clouds disappeared, the sun came out and it was warm.
We walked through the town and colourful market and then got the cable car to the mountain top and a massive cheeseburger. One thing I learnt about Madeira is don't order a cappuccino. It always comes with a sickly sweet cream. The first time I had one I thought it was a mistake but it's now happened on three separate occasions.
There were a couple of very large cruise ships in port. I half wished I was on one of them. But I always wish that when I see a cruise ship.