[little gems] to ease the perspiring brow

My little car in Mill Hill during my last "troubles"

Interesting being stateless and destitute because it focuses the mind wonderfully in analysing the situation and some things are borne in on you:

1. You’re not really stateless as everyone has some passport and you’re never really destitute because there is always a little left;

2. You’re not without friends and you find out now who your friends are and whom you thought were but turned out not to be. Blog friends have fallen into both camps and one just notes for future reference and passes on. It’s essential to realize the limitations to this. You can’t depend on the very best person for more than a certain time. He or she would allow it at a pinch but you must not and when it’s time, it’s time. One little addendum is that it’s essential to stress that you go with only deep gratitude and a mental note that this kindness is to be repaid asap, not with any ill will of any kind;

3. It’s essential that when you’ve defined your little living space, you first keep it scrupulously clean and tidy, fighting the depression as far as possible and then start to extend your influence in this to the rest of the space around that. Delighted to see we have a bucket and mop at the ready in this place. Also, you start to see hidden benefits, little gems you hadn’t seen at first. For example, the people I’m with are not here and the automatic washing machine, used once in four days, is a boon. That’s not poverty.

If you lose your housepride, you’re dead or dying in my book – this is what I was brought up to believe. Once, camping in the forest, we put up a bivouac of sticks and undergrowth and then I saw the first thing she did was to put together a brush and sweep the place out – a space which had been forest floor up to that point.

Last time I was in this state I still maintained the vehicle in the above photo and used it once in three days for short hops over to Hendon or to drop into Marks and Sparks food store. It cost nothing to keep it washed and people didn’t really believe I was in the state I was but one tank of petrol was to do a month. On Sundays I walked down to a little group at 8 a.m. at a lovely church, St Michaels and All Saints, for communion. My actual address was “The Moorings” – what had been a stately house and had now fallen on hard times. Still, it looked good on paper;

4. You’re not without your things and you probably came away with your triple-head philoshave, laptop, some nice clothes and so on. So you’re really not living without – the ability to do this post now on my Mac and then try to negotiate getting it on to the net comes later, via the usb stick. Should I have to fly next week, unfortunately over half of this has to be left and stored.

5. Routines become sacrosanct. It’s 10 a.m. now and it’s coming up to Elevenses at the hotel. There is a little side bar with really the most friendly faces [and not just for commercial reasons – they’re staff, not the owners although the owners are good people too]. The main thing for me is to be able to converse in Italian, in airconditioned comfort, in beautifully ornate surroundings, to read La Sicilia at leisure and learn, learn, learn and all for very little outlay. I reason that as I’m likely to be a regular here for years, however small each outlay, it will eventually add up. When I start to accrue again, the ante is upped of course.

6. Possibilities do open up if you have some skills, are prepared to find work immediately and do some praying. The worst thing possible is to close yourself off and start chanting woe-is-me – you have to expand contacts – you’re going to need them to help your own friend sooner or later once you’re set up again.

7. Your health is an absolute essential. If you’ve trained in the gym in the recent past, then even though you’ve atrophied a lot, the body does remember and when you exercise again [impossible not to in this hilly terrain], it stands you in good stead. You have to refuse breads and pastries and stick to meat and veg, beer, water and the occasional treat of coffee and chocolate. Lots of water.

You need to get to bed early. I put it to the Sicilians yesterday that they eat at the wrong time – in the middle of the night at 1 a.m. They shook their heads and said no we don’t – we eat at around 10 p.m. when it gets cool and then get to bed as most of us work the next morning early. I’m dropping off about midnight myself and am up at 7 a.m. to do the domestic chores.

Where we do disagree though is in what constitutes a meal. Yesterday I ate with two young ladies and one young man and later I said to one of them that that was my meal for the day. She was horrified – but it was a snack of prosciutto, salad and melon. It was enough for me. A beer in the evening with some nuts is a good supper in my book. I’m not doing pick and shovel work, am I?

8. Lastly, it can all be killed of by the stroke of a bureaucratic, Sword of Damocles, pen of State. You have to recognize reality and certain impossibilities. I have a miniscule retirement fund o/s but first I have to write to them and they must put it to various boards and the thing takes a month but it’s killed off at this moment by the uncertainty of where I’ll be in a week or so from now. Ditto other possibilities which take a longer time than the rate at which the cash is dwindling [slowly but surely].

You can be sure that all possibilities are being explored and attended to and anyway, the thing must resolve itself in the next week, one way or the other – it has to.

The alternative is mindboggling.