big day yesterday; bigger decision today

On Thursday night, waiting for 4 o'clock the following morning to come around, I watched "Breakfast at Tiffany's" for the first time in years. I can't say it is a really terrific film, but certainly by the end, with Holly relenting and going back to rescue the cat she had so cruelly abandoned only minutes earlier, I was blubbing like a baby. Tears poured down my cheeks in a good old fashioned weep that was almost ecstatic in its release. My cats, however, were a little nonplussed; even a little distressed by my wailings and so I felt I had to rein in the most uninhibited, and loudest expression for their sakes.

Tried going to bed at 11, took nearly 2 hours to get off. When the phone call came to say she was approaching the airport, I was deeply asleep. On the way there, in sub-zero conditions, though with a clear skies, I dared, after carefully checking for other traffic (there was none) to venture over a red traffic light. Immediately I was aware of 2 flashes. So I am presumably for it, £60 fine and 3 points on the licence. Oh well, it's not the end of the world. I have lived through other periods in my life when I've had 3 points against my name, and I can live with it.

On our return journey it began snowing heavily. It came down in large uniform flakes falling quickly and almost vertically. And falling on tarmac frozen for many hours, it settled instantly, as if by magic. In the space of just 1 mile along the motorway, the prevously clear road was now an uninterrupted layer of white, and getting thicker by the minute. By the time we got home 20 minutes later, there was a good 5 cm accumulation.

Friday morning, sleep deprived, but glad to get my girl home again in 1 piece, I go into work for morning surgery. I return home at lunchtime, but I have to be back at 2 pm for my annual appraisal. This is a 3 hour dissection of my PDP ("personal development plan") over the previous year. 30 hours must be accounted for. I chose my appraiser at random from a list, and in the event turned out to be a Malaysian female, perhaps 28, and totally Anglicised. She proved an intelligent, warm and remarkably easy person to work with. She was particularly interesting about her take on China's role in shaping the world's future. The 3 hours seemed to go by very fast (I had only 1 recourse to a sly fag break), before she seemed to be winding it up. I was scared to ask, "So, do you think I've made the grade this year?" and also perhaps because it was fairly obvious from her body language that I had. Inter alia, she told me how the hours requirement for appraisal is due to be increased, to 250 hours in 5 years (from 250). And tellingly, also how there are certain techniques of "accounting" of time, if you will, by which the "score" for some kinds of work can be doubled or trebled. Thank God. I wasn't looking forward to having to keep up the same level of post graduate study as a full time doc, even though I'm only 22%.

By the time I left the surgery it was dark and snowing again. Clearly several centimetres of fresh snow had fallen. The larger arterial roads were passable, if treacherous, but side roads and lanes, such as the one leading to the garage at the back end of our garden were calf deep in soft, luxurious and virginal snow. Half way up it, 50-odd metres to go before my shed, I finaly lost traction completely. I got out and went up to my house to request my wife's help. We remained calm very well, and between us were able to get it as far as just outside the garage entrance. The snow was at least 15 centimetres deep by this time, and I could not get any grip at all. Finally I sent my wife to enlist help from a neighbour while I occupied my self with digging all the snow away from the car and its sharp-right hand turn up into to the entrance of the garage. In very few minutes he had come, and tutored me in the arcane art of "rockinng slowly back and forth" as he invited me to do. I was't entirely sure what he meant, but did what I thought he meant, and damn me if it didn't wactually wrk very quickly. In no time my dear car was safely ensconsed. I offered a bottel of wine to my neighbour in gratitude, but he wouldn't take it.
"It's just what neighbours do", he explained. He was right, and behaved most gracefully as always.
We collapsed into bed at last somewhere around 9, and slept long and extremely well.

AND TODA'YS HEADLINES:

The main story today is Pelagius's decision to leave the home he has lived in for 27 years and buy a new house in some rather more salbrious area in our fair city. And he vowed that the project would be completed by the end of next year.

Asked to explain (this coming from a man who had always hitherto maintained he would be perfectly happy to die in his current residence). Dr Pelagius said it was about money and using it to enhance the quality of one's life. True, he lived in a lovely rambling Victorian house he had grown to love, with its relatively big garden and large garage at the end of it. But when he had fallen in love with the house in the 80s, he had paid scant regard to the brutal maxim of "location location location" To buy a house of similar qulaity in a "naicer" area, even it just meant that he would not have to clean the diarrhoea off his back step, left after some junkie had given himself rather too much of his chosen hit and had lost control of his bowels. Just missing that would be nice, he said.

COMMENT, FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT AT THE SCENE

I was there this afternoon when Dr Pelagius talked to the press, and I can say there was a gleam of determination in his eye, make no mistake about it. Clearly the effects of losing, first his wife and then later son in that house are not miniscule, even for a tough mind like Pelagius's. But I think the key here is in what he himself said: "money". We know he is selling his surgery premises to his partners shortly, and will elicit some profit from the sale. Plus he is to retire next year, allowing him access to his very generous pension fund. Part of his package involves a not insubstantial substantial lump sum. Then the profit on the sale of present house. Factor in to his existing savings comes to a figure which should enable him to take that jump into a more leafy part of the city he seems to need so badly at this moment in his life. Perhaps the good doctor is looking forward to undertaking a big project partly to give him some other meaning for living in his first retirement year. I know for a fact he is terrified of that apherism which says that in the over-60s, retirement itself is a major cause of death. And knowing him, I think we can all be sure he'll fight against it with a fierce will.