Getting up

My first alarm goes off. 7.38. Mobile phone, relatively melodious. I don’t need to get up. No-one will notice. It’s been somewhat like that since I stopped being employed by the university. I always feel horrid in the mornings. often very horrid. But I do some stretching exercises, albeit with a lack of joy. Clanging raucously, the second alarm intrudes harshly. A beside clock given by my son, Jonathan, thus of special value. It is 7.41. I grumpily press the stop button. Maybe a bit of stretching left to do.

What is different is the nature of the day that lies ahead. I have in the past spent a fair percentage of time ‘in isolation’ (writing etc.), but that was not the norm and it was my choice. I bath and dress ‘properly’, keeping up appearances, which seems to be a matter of morale, oddly. I shave every 2 or 3 days – my grey growth means that the 9 o’clock shadow no longer appears. Just spikiness. I am planning some more some video communications with family and friends, and would prefer not to look a negligent mess – but that also applies to audio phone calls; odd.

I do have a support structure, the people I call ‘team Kemp’, who all have equal value to each other and to me, including Steph, who does housekeeping – at more than the recognised distance and on the grounds that she is helping to care for a cussed ‘old’ b*****’ in an at risk category. In the team, she is of course what used to be called a ‘sweeper’ in football. (There’s more gruesome puns where that came from). Remember Franz Beckenbauer. Judd, my long-term PA is key mid-fielder, organising the shape of the team and linking defence to attack. Caroline, my agent is a powerful striker, driving lucrative (I hope) contracts into the financial goals. Johnnie, my accountant in St. Andrews, keeps goal with uncanny agility as the tax-person strives the net the maximum score. (Ed. this metaphor is becoming strained).

Tania is encouraging me to put the blog on some part of the social media. I boycott most of them because of their exploitative nature, esp, Facebook, on which I have been stalked!!  Let’s see. Numbers are not the issue for me.