Wall

Two people in the office, one of whom is me. There should be eight. Staff shortages. Illness. Holidays. The phones don’t stop. Clients arrive at the wrong times for their appointments. Apart from one five minute meltdown in private, automatic pilot takes over. Long hours. Uber-stressed. Dreaming of handing in my notice and living in penury on porridge and baked beans. I feel diminished, powerless, when life shrivels down to just one thing. Work.

And yet. I like to be working for the common good, and this organisation definitely is. To be part of a close team. To have structure. They are a democratic and friendly bunch, no heirarchies. My request for a three day week is, allegedly, on the cards for next spring. It would be sensible to wait and see.


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Impossible to even think of anything except work, never mind write it down. Zhoen comes to the rescue with a satisfyingly minimalistic meme.

The sixth photograph from the sixth folder.

A wall. Hmmm.

But what a wall, made of downland flint, inseparable from chalk and created over vast stretches of time on the ocean bed. Flint placed to show the patterning to its best advantage, small pieces of red tile as contrast, set in mortar like so many jewels in velvet.

Taken near Chichester Harbour. Early 2006. A lifetime ago. I’d recently acquired the digital camera .....

If the meme appeals, just run with it.