Perhaps I’ve lost my blogging mojo (and I know it happens to everyone from time to time), but I’ve had little-to-no inclination to post anything. The thought of sitting down to compose something has made me feel tired and more than a little irritated.

I know that it could be a symptom of the return of depression and that’s set me worrying that the world could get darker again. I’m an anxious person at the best of times, but recent happenings do not bode well for a mentally-content Soupster. Having had a few days where the pain of mourning wasn’t so intense, floods of tears on Thursday night and memories of the night after my Dad died suddenly as clear as the moment they happened indicated that all is far from well.

Of course, I wasn’t surprised. I’m not stupid enough to believe that I’m going to ‘be ok’ for a good while yet. Not even two months have passed. I’m stuck in this for the longhaul and that’s just a fact. I had, however, hoped that the quiet few days signalled that – perhaps? – I was going to get off lightly. Perhaps the years of soul searching and trying to understand the world (and, indeed, my own mind) were going to pay off and see me now in an excellent position to cope with all this?

Well, who knows anything these days?

Let me tell you what I do know: life is about instability now. The world is upside down. I know that it’s perfectly plausible for a parent to die at any time. It’s perfectly plausible for anybody to die at any time. Similarly, the economy is still in the shitter, so redundancies are part and parcel of that so that we’ve been hit by two rounds in four months is also not that surprising when you consider how things are looking for the UK at the moment. I suppose I just never thought these things would happen to me. Together.

A couple of months ago, my life was beginning to look pretty good. I’d gotten through the first round of redundancies and was moving out to Woking. My plans were coming together: live in suburbia for a year, maybe a year and a half, then move out to Wiltshire and rent a house with The Mechanic. We can both get to our places of work from there and explore a life together, properly together. A year of renting and, assuming all is rosy, we’d buy. If it didn’t work out, we’d go our separate ways and I’d come back up towards London. Although we won’t focus on that latter option.

Now, I’m grieving for my Dad.

And the team has shrunk again… and again… and again (our Irish PR colleague has also resigned) and it feels very much like: “Oh God, what are they going to do with us next?” They (being evil overlords) can do whatever they like and we are very much at their mercy. We either just take it on the chin and get on with whatever changes they impose or we leave. That is very much the vibe. There are no conversations to be had. This is not a two-way thing. I feel vulnerable and exposed.

On the one hand there are whispers of the company being broken up and sold off,  of mergers and acquisitions, of the team being forced out at some other point anyway. On the other hand, some of my colleagues have poo-pooed this as “scaremongering” by people who have no idea what is going on. The truth of the matter is that even they don’t know what is going on. Nobody does apart from the chief exec and his right hand man and they don’t let any of that information out of the ivory tower. Past experience as shown that they say: “we’re fine, we’re fine, we’re fine, we’re fine, we’re fine… ohhh, that! Well, now that we have to face up to it, yeah, apart from us being totally fucked, we’re, you know, fine.”

So the complete lack of trust in in what the senior management team tells us is a big problem.

And to feel like that at work on top of in my personal life now that the protective blanket of doting parent is removed, is scary.

Let’s not even consider the Dad stuff. Just the work stuff. Do I stay or do I jump ship? I know you’re all going to say: “Just start looking at what’s out there, no harm right?” Well, you forgot that this is me, we’re talking about. I’ve managed to go and complicate the situation. I can’t say anything right now. I hope I don’t have to say anything more about it, to be honest, because it saves me a dilemma, but check back for more on the subject in the next couple of days. I might even tell you what I’ve gone and done.

I am a total fuckwit.

My PR colleague and I came in to work today and sat down at our desks to get on with the morning paper scan. Our manager, who is Head of PR, was in the office with us today. She swivelled her office chair around and said that she needed to have a word – “before you get settled down for the morning”.

We went into a meeting room and sat down around the table. She informed us that she had resigned yesterday morning.

We all smiled and got on with the day. I laughed and joked as usual. I don’t think anyone realised that this feels like the final straw for me. I can’t take any more change.

It feels like I have lost a major ally. Our manager looks out for us, she has fought for us, she provides protection. And now she is going.

Yet more upheaval. I walked home tonight desperately needing to talk to my Dad. The world has never been so uncertain. I can’t picture the future. I understand why some people go home and just end it all.

Sometimes when I am walking somewhere I look at the person walking in front of me and try and work out which famous person they look like from behind. Everybody looks like at least one famous person if you’re only considering the back of their head and general body shape.

This morning on my way to the office I followed Krishnan Guru-Murthy through the underpass beneath the train station.

Have you followed any famous people (actually famous or pretend-famous like this)?

On Friday night, I went out with some people from work. When I moved to Woking, finding new – and local – friends was a priority after settling in and getting the flat sorted. Of course, I went on holiday, returned and got a nasty cold bug so was in bed for a few days and then my Dad died. My lack of local friends initially resulted from lack of time, and then with Dad passing, it came down to priority shifts and generally not being able to face the daunting task of trying to find people to spend time with and convince them to like me.

I have now managed to get mostly on top of the important issues resulting from my Dad’s death. Apart from the grief bit, I mean. The funeral has been arranged and held. The police side of things was closed. The trauma scene cleaners went in. I finally got into the house and got important paperwork. The memorial has been held. The solicitor is now contacting banks, building societies, mortgage providers, the council, utility companies, insurance companies, the DVLA, Dad’s place of work (etc etc) to draw up a picture of my Dad’s finances so that it can all be assessed and distributed to me and my sister through probate. She and I have been in to the house and removed valuable items and put them into secure storage (yes, I know that a house is secure, but more likely to get burgled than where these items are now). We’ve started to spruce the house up (only cleaning so far) and began to talk about what we intend to do with it (lick of paint, new bathroom floor, new kitchen worktops then sell, sell, sell and hopefully be able to mentally move on from the family home as the accident scene).

The house aside, the only big blot on the horizon is the hearing and final coroner’s report. It’s coming up. I can’t remember the date. I know it is in my emails, but it was one of those pieces of information that I got at the start of all this and it slipped to the back as other more immediate worries sprang to the fore. Now that it is firmly at the back and escapes me, I am in no hurry to check my emails to be reminded of the date, as easy as it would be. My uncle is going to attend. He will tell us the final cause of death without having to listen to the brutal details and specific injuries. In time, we can ask him for a copy of the report when we are ready to face that, but it’s too soon.

I found living alone through this a small mercy. I have sometimes needed people around, which is why I bolted to The Mechanic’s for the two weeks immediately after Dad died. I could be a crying wreck without fear of judgment. His family took me in as their own and didn’t bat an eyelid to the ghostly pale figure that sometimes appeared puffy faced from The Mechanic’s room or sat with them at dinner without eating. They are a kind bunch anyway but they extended even more warmth in my direction and, a month and a half on, I can feel that they tread a little more delicately than they used to. I have needed people around that care.

But at the same time, I am relieved that I haven’t been living in my old flatshare since my return to “normal” life. I have been able to have Very Bad Nights without anyone else knowing about them (save The Mechanic who has sat on the phone to me, or my work colleagues who have politely overlooked the big black bags under my eyes). But as time has passed, I have felt a little isolated so in recent weeks, made some moves towards restarting my social life, meeting up with friends in London a few times, making some calls to others. And Friday marked the start of trying to find some friends in Woking.

It was a good night, apart from that final banana sambucca, which signalled an end to my night at 10.30pm (although to be fair, we had been out since work). It seemed like a good idea at the time but as soon as it disappeared down my throat, I felt wrong. Just wrong wrong wrong. I made my excuses, blaming the early start for my hair appointment, and left. I might have accidentally popped into McDonalds for some chips in a bid to mop up the alcohol swilling around in my belly, but it was no good.

By 11pm, I was christening the toilet bowl in my flat.

The Mechanic is, as his moniker here indicates, a mechanic. He conforms to stereotype: big, broad, hairy and bursting with testosterone. He hauls cars around the workshop with his bare hands and brute strength.

On the surface of it all, The Mechanic doesn’t appear to be one of life’s Great Thinkers. He doesn’t seem to ponder the universe, or consider too deeply thoughts and feelings. If you ask him how he is, more often than not, you’ll get a simple and straightforward: “I’m alright, how are you?” The world is as the world does. He has his cup of tea at 6.15am every morning (unless he is running late for work) and gets on with it.

On a day-to-day basis, the Mechanic is what one might call “a bloke”.

All. Man. Grrrr.

And I love him for that.

But I also love him for the immense sensitivity that he hides underneath the greasy overalls and oil-blackened high-vis bomber jacket (as well as the Proper Man Beard and armpits so pungent that the smell knocks out small children).

Yesterday, as the blog post indicated, was my Dad’s birthday. I had taken the day off work because, finding even ‘normal’ days increasingly difficult to navigate (and I thought this was supposed to get easier with time?!), I knew that spending his birthday in the office would result in Bad Things (for me, for my work and for my relationships with colleagues). The Mechanic and I went to the pub for dinner on Tuesday night, both too tired to consider cooking for ourselves, and over a drink The Mechanic informed me that there would be no lie in for me the next day as he had organised a surprise. I would need to get up and be out of the house with him by 8.45am.

Dad’s birthday dawned and The Mechanic got up and left for work before daybreak without waking me up. He returned at 8.30am and made me get up. To minimise disruption to his working day, he told me that I would have to drive to my surprise on my own behind his van (as he couldn’t take any more time off work to collect me later that morning). I followed his van along the road out of Market Town intrigued. He turned off at his friend’s house and I followed, thinking that he was just stopping in to see his friend quickly. In the car park, The Mechanic informed me that no, he wasn’t visiting his friend but we were here for my surprise.

His friend’s wife runs a health clinic from the house and The Mechanic had booked me in for an aromatherapy full body massage! He passed me the money for the treatment, got in his van and off he went.

Now, I’ve never had a full body massage before. The lady who did it gave me a wonderful back, neck and shoulder massage once so I knew it would be nice if that was anything to go by, but it was just amazing. And she wasn’t supposed to be in work: she has two small children and she always takes the half term holidays off, but having heard about my Dad and that it was his birthday, she came in just to give me the treatment. She chose lavender oil for relaxation, ylang ylang for its spirit lifting and chilling out qualities, and orange for distress and emotional shock. An hour and a half later, and I was almost floating.

It didn’t take away the sadness, but it made me realise that I am very lucky to have The Mechanic. Yay for The Mechanic.

Today should be is my Dad’s 59th birthday.

Happy birthday, Dad.

This photo was taken on his 40th. Elle and I made that cake. The urchin on the left is me.

Today, you can find me in my flat, where I am working from home in my lounge and spitting with rage. With everything that has been going on of late, waking up in the morning and lying in bed looking at the ceiling just wondering “what is the point?” has not been an uncommon occurance. Yet, up I got. Even in the sharpest early days, where the physical pain was excruciating ALL THE TIME (rather than in sudden, holding moments that disable until they pass), I managed to get myself out of bed and get ready to face the day.

I had a bad night last night, waking regularly throughout the small hours. At 5am, I woke again to a strange noise that got louder and louder. Sweat broke out across my body, fear that something strange was happening. I realised then that it was one of the rats at the water bottle, but the noise went on and on and on and the drinking sound was much slower than usual. I got up and went down to check. It was Sybil. She’s not in a good way at the moment. Old age is really gaining on her now, as if speeding up its claim on her to make up for the bounce she had until relatively recently. She struggles to walk, her back legs being half dragged along, but mentally, she seems ok.

This morning, the radio came on in my little flat, just as it does every morning. I lay there a while in my bed, again wondering why I bother to get up anymore. Then I got up and went through the morning routine. Dressed and pottering about, I switched on my Blackberry and it vibrated to life with a backlog of emails from when I turned it off on leaving the office last night. Maybe I should care more, but since Dad died and since my company dragged us through the consultation process yet again, I just can’t be doing with having it on outside of my working hours. When I walk out the office door in the evening (and as of yesterday, I am walking home in the dark), I don’t want to be bothering with work for the rest of the day.

In the joblot of emails that now sat in my Blackberry inbox was one from Internal Comms Woman.

Now for the back story.

A few weeks back, just after I returned to work after nearly three weeks off when my Dad died, ICW received a Google Alert (indeed, so did I, most PR people set up Google Alerts). She forwarded it to me (like I hadn’t seen it) and said that she felt this particular story would be good for the intranet. Our intranet front page is a news page. She asked me if I would write an article for it?

Well, I said no. I explained that my workload since returning was sky high and that given all the other commitments and EXTERNAL deadlines I needed to meet, I was sorry but I would have to push back on it. Hello? I have just been off for nearly THREE WEEKS. My boss didn’t pick up my work, so does she think it just disappeared? She replied to say that she understood and not to worry.

Fine.

Except someone else somewhere in the business wrote something and sent it through to Business Marketing Team (under Evil Marketing Woman) and Business Marketing Girl sent it through to me, apologising because she knew this would create more work for me.

Fine, fine. Really, it didn’t matter. It was half written already, I was going stir crazy trying to pen my thought-leadership piece on [something pioneering] in the water sector and I figured I could take a quick break from that and edit this blasted news item. So I did and I sent it through to ICW, along with a portrait of the person in question (this is an article about someone attending a conference that nobody has ever heard of. Seriously. This is what ICW classes as ‘news’. See how UNimportant this is!)

Done.

I then get it sent back to me by ICW with this email:

I’m not sure about this one because it is specifically about [Person] and so perhaps it is better placed on the [Business] pages instead although it is about an event. Is there any way that we can make the story more about him representing the [something] industry and about what his team do at [Company] ? e.g. ‘[Person] highlights [Company's] [Software] at conference’. Will have a think and get back to you today. Let me know what you think too; value your opinion on these things! BTW, definitely think we could run a story on the [recent press release ]story. What do you think?

Firstly, my mouth dropped open at the “I’m not sure about this one” comment – she had hassled me just weeks ago to write it! Secondly, the changes. Last time I checked, the intranet came under the Internal Comms Team, therefore sorting out a stream of news for it is her problem. Yes, helping to find news for that communications vehicle does come to me as well – the PR team deal in news, so we identify relevant stories and pass information over. We write articles, sure, but if she wants to make changes, what is wrong with HER making them? I already told her how swamped I am.

Fuck it. I made the fucking changes. I sent the fucking piece back to her with one line response: “Changes made. Please use with the portrait I sent through before.”

This morning, the buzzing Blackberry vomited up a response from her.

Soupy,
Thanks for the prompt response on this.
Before I publish I was wondering if I can get your opinion on this… I think we need to assume that many people reading the story will not know what [Softaware] is. I was wondering if it is beneficial to add briefly some information on what [Software] is, when [Company] started using, where and why, and the benefits and any future plans for InfoWorks. Do you think you would be able to add in just a few sentences to give this background? Also perhaps a line on the prestige of the conference?
Hope this all makes sense. I just need to make sure that anyone reading the story gets an idea of what [Software] is and what this story means. 
Let me know if you want to discuss/query any of the above. 
ICW

Hence the spitting with rage part of this blog post. DO NOT SEND THIS SHIT BACK TO ME TWICE! I already said I DO NOT HAVE TIME! I fitted it in to get you your pissing news item ABOUT NOTHING! I then fitted it in again to make your ridiculously particular changes ABOUT NOTHING! You cannot be SERIOUS about expecting me to spend any more of my time on this piece of shit ABOUT NOTHING. Do you HONESTLY think anyone is even going to click on that fucking headline and read this NOTHING story?!?!!??!!?

Furthermore, YOUR JOB IS INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS! In the time it took you to send me that fucking email, you could have made the sodding changes yourself! Done YOUR JOB! I have enough to do with my own job. In fact, I HAD enough to do with my own job before the consultation, before they effectively DOUBLED my workload by adding an entirely separate business stream into my PR responsibilities. Take that, take my time off for bereavement leave, take the fact that I can’t concentrate for more than about half an hour at a time, and piss off!!! Why should I do YOUR job as well as my own?!?!!?

Some people just live in this sugar coated bubble, totally oblivious that these things just don’t matter.

I am still furious, hours and hours later.

I don’t know now many more straws I can take on my back before I totally lose it.

Yesterday evening, as daylight slipped away an hour “earlier” due to the end of British Summer Time, my Dad’s immediate family gathered at the bottom of the garden. We stood in a horseshoe formation beneath the knarled old branches of the oak tree, beside the flower bed where my grandparents’ ashes had been spread years before. My uncle had raked the earth at some point recently, in preparation. He took the large burgundy urn from my hands and the miniature jam jars that my aunt had cleaned up earlier in the day and poured some of the ashes into them.

Elle and I had wavered during the day; The general upset of the memorial service had shaken our decision to scatter him. It wasn’t so much that we didn’t want him scattered here. Indeed, there was no doubt in our minds that he should rest now in the same grounds where he came into the world nearly 59 years ago. But the act of opening that urn and spilling its contents meant we had to confront, again, the reality of his death.

Uncle Chris passed the jars to us, and we put them in our coat pockets along with a handful of acorns. There is a reason the house was so-called, you see. The original house is no longer there, of course. My uncle bought his siblings out of their shares a few years ago and built a beautiful home for him and his wife to enjoy in their (early) retirement. My Dad – in his urn – had spent Saturday night and most of Sunday in their study, which occupies the same space that used to be the front living room when my grandparents’ house stood here. My Dad was born in that front room.

Despite the ebbing of the light, gone 5pm on a late-October evening, the ashes were bright against the dull earth. Chris scattered first, then me, then Elle, then aunty Sue, watched by our cousins, Chris’ wife aunty Ann, The Fencer and The Mechanic. The fine powder almost glowed in the moonlight. There seemed to be so much. We poured some around the base of the oak tree.  Chris had explained in the day’s (less formal) eulogy that, when my Dad was a child he had built a working lift for hauling small boys up into the uppermost branches of this tree using a counter-weight. Those that braved the lift had access to the den he had constructed up there, away from prying adult eyes. The counter-weight had once crashed down out of the tree and knocked out one of their friends. Possibly not a surprise. But incredible to think that a child designed and realised it.

The eulogy also brought forth many more stories, perhaps not fit for the formal ceremony in Croydon at the start of the month. We were treated to the recollection of a now-infamous incident, whereby my aunt and grandfather happened to come up behind my Dad’s car on Stock High Street when he hadn’t long been (legally) driving. But there was nobody in the driver’s seat. Instead, there was my Dad in the passenger seat, having come up with some way of changing gear and turning the steering wheel from there.

Why?

Well, as Chris explained, my Dad’s answer to most things as a precocious child (teenager, young man) was: Why not?

As a young adolescent, he used to walk around the village trailing an empty tin can behind him on a string. If anyone stopped him and asked: “why are you dragging that can around on a string?” he’d reply: “because it’s easier than trying to push it.”

We learnt that one day he rigged up his record player to stereo speakers and placed them in the thick hedge that runs along the front garden alongside the road. He got hold of a recording of a steam train and waited for some unsuspecting passerby to come along, before playing it at full volume and laughing at the expression as the poor sod thought there was a steam train coming full pelt at him.

We found out that he managed to get hold of a key for the chapel and would let himself in on a Sunday afternoon when it stood empty after the morning service and play the organ that we only had to look to our right to see. He taught himself to play the piano sitting underneath it, facing outwards into the room, with his arms crossed over above his head.

So many extraordinary tales of such an extraordinary man. So many people there from his past, people he loved, people who loved him and who had been moved by his very existence. The reverend who hosted the service – a relative (I think everyone in Stock is a relative somehow) – asked the elderly man who used to be the vicar when my Dad was a boy to say a few words. He stood up, mostly-blind, half-deaf, and delivered a moving and off-the-cuff tribute to my Dad. He talked without preparation for a good 15 minutes, recounting the warm relationship they had had, from when my Dad turned to him as a troubled young man wanting to leave Cambridge University (and he did) to more recently when they picked up their friendship after some 33 years.

I don’t think my Dad ever realised how much he mattered to people who knew him. He was forever underestimating himself. I hope he turned up and paid attention, although I suspect he was sat there, at the back on the left wishing everyone would bugger off and leave him in peace to play the organ to his heart’s content.

It was exhausting scattering the ashes, and I was thankful for the dark rushing in, allowing Elle and me to screw up our faces in that really unattractive way that you do when trying to fight with tears. Chris raked them into the soil and the family walked back up the garden to the house, leaving us alone there to reflect. We stood side by side, warm hands around mini jam jars in pockets. We said little.

A friend of mine looked at me like I was truly insane recently, when I explained our intention to keep a little bit of the ashes. I talked the decision down aloud, chuckled that it was a silly thing to do. I wish I hadn’t now. I wish I had met his eye and stated quite simply that, until you lose someone who means so much to you that they are a part of you, you simply cannot understand. Wanting to hold onto that person desperately is more than a ludicrous notion. It goes beyond want, safely in the realm of need.

Don’t look at me like I am stupid to keep some of my father’s ashes. My grandfather kept my grandmother in a pot by his bedside for years – until he joined her in death and they were scattered together. Elle and I will be able to let go in time. We may return with our jars one day and empty them out at some important time for us. We may find some other place to scatter them. We may just keep them. We don’t know. But we need that for now. In the same way that I need his reading glasses in my lounge, and will take back the leather wallet currently in my uncle’s office when he’s done with my Dad’s bank cards, I just need it. For, while I felt lighter knowing that the urn was now empty and my Dad is where he belongs and not coming back to my Woking flat, I knew it would have been a mistake not to keep a little bit near me. For now.

And Chris is going to grow a chilli plant in the urn next summer.

This post comes to you courtesy of my Blackberry. I’m in The Mechanic’s van in a traffic jam on the M25.

For weeks now, the Highways Agency has had large yellow signs up along the M3 announcing that the slip road off the M3 northbound at junction 3 will be shut for roadworks on the night of Monday 26th October.

Fine, we thought. It wouldn’t affect this weekend’s travel for us.

Yesterday, I drove my Dad’s Saxo VTS down to Dorset from where it has been outside my Woking flat for the past week. We’re going to do it up before selling it – and actually might keep it. The plan for today was to run up to Woking in the van with the rats, drop them off and pick up my Dad’s urn before heading over to Leatherhead to get my cousin from the live-in college where he is undergoing specialist training to become an accountant (specialist education for those with brain injuries). From there, the three of us would head up to Stock in Essex, the village where my Dad grew up, which is still home to some of my family.

Tomorrow, we are holding a memorial service for my Dad in the village chapel. The general plan is to scatter Dad’s ashes in the garden of his childhood home. It’s where he joined his brother and sister a few years ago to scatter their parents. It is where he would want to be, the right place for him.

The people at the Highways Agency that make road closure decisions, in their infinite wisdom however, have shut the junction 3 sliproad today with no warning. The first day of half term where parents the length and breadth of the country load their children in to cars and join queue after queue on Britain’s main roads. Joy.

Yeah, I know that life rarely goes to plan.

But I didn’t expect to find myself walking home to my flat night after night feeling utterly heartbroken and with so little shame that I let my tears fall openly.

It’s always Bono’s fault. It’s always the stars in the sky. It’s always the quiet of the affluent suburb of Woking that I have to walk through. It’s always wondering What If he hadn’t died…? What If he was just at home in his house, drinking a Bud and reading some book such as “Who moved the stone?” and not really fancying going to work in the morning? What If he just called to wish me good night? What If he sent me a text tomorrow just to say “hello”?

I know.

I know that this is a long, horribly drawn out and excrutiatingly lonely experience and one that cannot be soothed no matter how many friends look sympathetically at me over a pretty red flower in Pizza Express (thank you Account Monkey). I know that there are perhaps years to be lived before I am even remotely comfortable with the idea. I know it is shit and it will be shit for a stupid amount of time.

But nothing stops me wishing. And nothing stops the dagger sharp pain. Ironic really. Dagger sharp glass and all that. Fucking shit. Fucking fucking shit.