A day and a half...
Oct. 9th, 2019 04:27 pmOoof. The last couple of days have been A Lot(tm). I seem to be holding up okay, but I would quite like no more unexpected challenging things for a few days.
Yesterday was![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
obandsoller's grandmother's funeral, so I was heading back down to London for the day. I had a train to catch at 8:03, and as is my wont, hit the snooze button a few too many times, but then got my act together fairly quickly once I'd actually made it out of bed and got to the station with about eight minutes to spare. At which point I noticed that the train ticket I'd booked was a paper one that I had to collect rather than a mobile ticket like usual... At which further point I noticed that I'd left my wallet at home. Bugger.
On the one hand, after a little bit of back and forth I managed to persuade the lady at the ticket office to print it using the scan of my passport on my phone as ID so that was helpful, but on the other hand that took long enough that I missed the train. On the third hand, the route I was taking involved changing at Mirfield, which is only about five minutes away by car. On the fourth hand, Huddersfield has about three Ubers in total, and none of them was close enough to get me there in time... On the fifth hand there was a line of taxis outside the station however, and whilst on the sixth hand I couldn't pay for one of them with my phone, on the seventh I thought I'd probably have enough time to swing by my flat en route and grab my wallet. I did this, and having stretched this metaphor to an octopodal extent, of course I then realised that there was only about a fiver in my wallet, and having sensibly decided to avoid the main road the driver was taking me to Mirfield via a series of tiny villages, and wasn't sure if there would be a cash machine on the way. In the end we managed to find one in a village shop, and after tipping heavily I made it to the station with about eight minutes to spare once again, but this time already ticket enabled.
So I sat down on the train and managed to spend an hour or so pottering away at admin in a reasonably relaxed fashion, until I got an email from one of our occasional church tenants, asking if they could hire our hall at the last minute, unless we were also affected by the burst pipe that had cut off the water supplies in the area. "Burst pipe?" I thought, and quickly googled, only to discover that half of the street that the church is on was flooded. Of course this had to happen during the week that the vicar is on holiday in Venice, so a certain amount of frantic emails and phonecalls later I was able to establish that the church itself was not flooded, but didn't have any water, and set events in motion to ensure that the Soup Kitchen we run every Tuesday evening would still be able to go ahead.
This was perhaps not the best way to prepare myself for being a good supportive spouse, but I think we did a good job of looking after one another in turn. We met up at Kings Cross and had a quick brunch before heading to the crematorium. My mother-in-law seemed to be holding together okay, although there was clearly a lot of intense emotion being held carefully in check. I found it a little bit difficult when she introduced me to people as Ramesh's friend, but it clearly wasn't the time or the place to object. A little later when it was just the funeral director she described me as his partner, so it's not that she's pretending to herself at least. The service itself was mostly in Tamil, so I mostly just let the sounds wash over me, prayed silently, and tried to be present for Ramesh. There was a gathering after the service, but it was a moderate journey away and he was feeling pretty shakey, so we took our leave and set off home.
On the way there were more emails about making sure that the church was open and welcoming to anyone affected by the flooding, and a request for church officials to put in an appearance if possible, so feeling rather torn I took a diversion to swing by and check that things were going reasonably smoothly and thank the volunteers who had stepped up. Having shown my face and, I think, helped ensure that the people on the ground felt supported, I headed home so that Ramesh & I could spend a little bit of quality time together before I returned to Huddersfield. The journey home was rather less eventful than on the way out, but it was pretty late by the time I got in, and I decided to ignore everything else on my to-do list and after a short spell of unwinding, went to bed.
Despite setting my alarm for this morning quite late I was still fast asleep when it went off, and getting up and into work was a bit of a struggle. But it wasn't long before more church emails started arriving, and I've spent most of today trying to pull all the threads together to make sure that the church is open and staffed and welcoming, and getting the word out via the local school and councillors that people who need a warm dry space or a cup of tea or some food or clothes should come to us, and that people who have donations of the aforementioned can bring them in. And in retrospect, none of this was particularly difficult or unpleasant, but I have been feeling the weight of responsibility rather heavily, and every time I think I've done everything I need to do I get another email, or remember something else I've forgotten.
Can tomorrow be nice and straightforward please?
Yesterday was
obandsoller's grandmother's funeral, so I was heading back down to London for the day. I had a train to catch at 8:03, and as is my wont, hit the snooze button a few too many times, but then got my act together fairly quickly once I'd actually made it out of bed and got to the station with about eight minutes to spare. At which point I noticed that the train ticket I'd booked was a paper one that I had to collect rather than a mobile ticket like usual... At which further point I noticed that I'd left my wallet at home. Bugger. On the one hand, after a little bit of back and forth I managed to persuade the lady at the ticket office to print it using the scan of my passport on my phone as ID so that was helpful, but on the other hand that took long enough that I missed the train. On the third hand, the route I was taking involved changing at Mirfield, which is only about five minutes away by car. On the fourth hand, Huddersfield has about three Ubers in total, and none of them was close enough to get me there in time... On the fifth hand there was a line of taxis outside the station however, and whilst on the sixth hand I couldn't pay for one of them with my phone, on the seventh I thought I'd probably have enough time to swing by my flat en route and grab my wallet. I did this, and having stretched this metaphor to an octopodal extent, of course I then realised that there was only about a fiver in my wallet, and having sensibly decided to avoid the main road the driver was taking me to Mirfield via a series of tiny villages, and wasn't sure if there would be a cash machine on the way. In the end we managed to find one in a village shop, and after tipping heavily I made it to the station with about eight minutes to spare once again, but this time already ticket enabled.
So I sat down on the train and managed to spend an hour or so pottering away at admin in a reasonably relaxed fashion, until I got an email from one of our occasional church tenants, asking if they could hire our hall at the last minute, unless we were also affected by the burst pipe that had cut off the water supplies in the area. "Burst pipe?" I thought, and quickly googled, only to discover that half of the street that the church is on was flooded. Of course this had to happen during the week that the vicar is on holiday in Venice, so a certain amount of frantic emails and phonecalls later I was able to establish that the church itself was not flooded, but didn't have any water, and set events in motion to ensure that the Soup Kitchen we run every Tuesday evening would still be able to go ahead.
This was perhaps not the best way to prepare myself for being a good supportive spouse, but I think we did a good job of looking after one another in turn. We met up at Kings Cross and had a quick brunch before heading to the crematorium. My mother-in-law seemed to be holding together okay, although there was clearly a lot of intense emotion being held carefully in check. I found it a little bit difficult when she introduced me to people as Ramesh's friend, but it clearly wasn't the time or the place to object. A little later when it was just the funeral director she described me as his partner, so it's not that she's pretending to herself at least. The service itself was mostly in Tamil, so I mostly just let the sounds wash over me, prayed silently, and tried to be present for Ramesh. There was a gathering after the service, but it was a moderate journey away and he was feeling pretty shakey, so we took our leave and set off home.
On the way there were more emails about making sure that the church was open and welcoming to anyone affected by the flooding, and a request for church officials to put in an appearance if possible, so feeling rather torn I took a diversion to swing by and check that things were going reasonably smoothly and thank the volunteers who had stepped up. Having shown my face and, I think, helped ensure that the people on the ground felt supported, I headed home so that Ramesh & I could spend a little bit of quality time together before I returned to Huddersfield. The journey home was rather less eventful than on the way out, but it was pretty late by the time I got in, and I decided to ignore everything else on my to-do list and after a short spell of unwinding, went to bed.
Despite setting my alarm for this morning quite late I was still fast asleep when it went off, and getting up and into work was a bit of a struggle. But it wasn't long before more church emails started arriving, and I've spent most of today trying to pull all the threads together to make sure that the church is open and staffed and welcoming, and getting the word out via the local school and councillors that people who need a warm dry space or a cup of tea or some food or clothes should come to us, and that people who have donations of the aforementioned can bring them in. And in retrospect, none of this was particularly difficult or unpleasant, but I have been feeling the weight of responsibility rather heavily, and every time I think I've done everything I need to do I get another email, or remember something else I've forgotten.
Can tomorrow be nice and straightforward please?
