IT’S BEEN AN EXTREMELY ARRRGH MAKING DAY.  Starting, as so often, last night.  The Samaritans training is brilliant* but EXHAUSTING and, furthermore, I come home so wound up I can’t sleep.**  So I got to bed very late,*** got up very late, and was still staggering around wondering why the teapot was in the washing machine and where the on switch for the kettle was, when Pooka started barking.  Nooooooo I’m not articulate yet, I tried to say, and failed on ‘articulate’.  URK, I said.  GLORP.  Raphael, who is used to me, said, I have the new frabzle orbling for your printer and I’m in the area, I could drop it round if it’s convenient.  Bromgle? I said.  Glid?  Okay.

. . . While you’re here, I said, letting him in twenty minutes and a major upload of caffeine later, would you mind looking at—?

AN HOUR AND A HALF AFTER THAT†, I am now really far behind, and I was planning on a lightning raid to the garden centre to buy snapdragons before they run out of PINK, and Peter had been swept off to visit distant family for the day by Georgiana who has the stamina of a marathon runner for driving†† so I have to wash my own lettuce for lunch, and the first thing that happens is that I open the refrigerator door at the mews and Peter’s box of eggs, he having been in a hurry that morning and perhaps not putting it back quite scrupulously enough, LEAPS OFF THE SHELF IN THE DOOR AND SPLATTERS ALL OVER THE FLOOR AT MY FEET.†††

Also the hellhounds aren’t eating again.

I didn’t make it to the garden centre.

And I remembered at the last minute that I’d promised to ring bells at Crabbiton again tonight.  I’ve slightly inadvertently made myself a regular.  I’m pretty demoralised about life in general‡, Forza is intimidating, I’m not up for intimidating, the Sams’ usual training evening is also tower practise night and I’m not going to risk ringing Sunday service when I’m not coming to practise.  But I don’t want to lose all that grimly acquired mediocre semi-skill either. . . . I think I’ve told you that Wild Robert has started teaching at Crabbiton again.  So I’ve been going along.

So tonight on the one hand it was AAAAAAAAUGH because I was looking forward to a nice quiet evening at home with my husband and on the other hand it was, oh!  Wild Robert!  A man who can create a stimulating practise out of nothing, as he did last week when there were only four of us and one of us couldn’t ring much, is worth some loyalty, or some getting out of your chair when you don’t want to.  As I should remember from my still-nostalgically-recalled regular practise nights at Ditherington, till the tower captain and the only local who ever came, pulled the plug.  Also, about tonight, I’d promised.

Wild Robert, who is an evil, eyebrow-wiggling ratbag as well as an inspired teacher, made me call a touch of Grandsire, not the relatively easy one where all you have to do is remember the little bit of the overall pattern that you’re comfortingly limited to, but a proper touch where calls dislocate you distressingly too—and I haven’t even called one of the simple ones in years.  My first attempt tonight was a total disaster.  T. O. T. A. L.   Made worse by the fact that only Wild Robert, the tower captain and I can actually ring Grandsire touches, so some of the other people were questing off in interesting directions and had to be hauled back to order by Wild Robert who was also having to unstick me from the brambles and briars about every half lead.

Over the course of the evening I improved.  Somewhat.  But it was such fun.  I used to love bell ringing. . . .

* * *

* And, something I thought I would never say, in part because I’m not in the habit of putting myself in the way of such experiences, I have learnt to love role playing.  I HATE ROLE PLAYING.^  I’m so distracted by how unutterably stupid and phony and useless it is that I absolutely don’t learn anything and I feel unutterably stupid and phony and useless and CRANKY with it, that kind of cranky that makes you feel you don’t fit in your own skin any more, which furthermore has probably broken out into spots of angst and frustration.  Arrrrgh.

In somebody or other’s defense, possibly mine, Samaritans role playing is a lot closer to reality than most of the situations where this mutant device is employed.  You’re pretending to be a Samaritan phone volunteer and one of the real Samaritans^^ pretends to be a caller.  All the trainers have been Samaritan listening volunteers for yonks . . . and I’m also rather intrigued by the apparent strong streak of dramatic flair thus revealed in the Samaritans community.  Granted that when you’re in the hot seat you’re a trifle preoccupied with GLEEP WHAT DO I SAY NOW but we split up in teams so we get to listen as well as (fail to) perform and I’m telling you the trainers are convincing.  They’re working from a script, but since they have to adapt to what the sweating trainees say, they have to be good at thinking on their feet.^^^

But adapting to what someone on the other end of a phone line is saying is, of course, what Samaritans are good at.#  In our introductory evening the presenter said that the listening skills you learn by being a Samaritan do bleed into the rest of your life and if you’re not careful you’ll find yourself being a very popular person for unloading on.  Ha.  I plan to leave my nice, warm, empathetic## self in the cupboard under the stairs at the Samaritans and pick up my cranky cudgel on my way out the door.

^ I don’t remember what I said about the role playing in the Street Pastors training, but it won’t have been friendly.

^^ I should perhaps say real Samaritan organization volunteers to avoid confusion.

^^^ Although we’re sitting down.  Ahem.

# Supposed to be good at.  I’m not amazingly fabulous but I think I’ll make the grade.

## One of the Samaritans’ big deals is empathy.  Sympathy suggests emotional involvement, which is devoutly to be avoided;  empathy is getting alongside someone, seeing their situation from their point of view—which is what we’re trying to do, so we can offer emotional support.

** The worst thing is that WE’RE HALFWAY THROUGH THE FIRST MODULE.  By the end of this month we’ll have our mentors—each new listening^ volunteer has a mentor for the first few duty shifts—and by the end of June we’ll be, you know, live.  EEEEEEEEEEEEP.  Remind me why I thought this was a good idea?

^ Which is what it’s called, although it includes email and texting and the occasional streetmail letter.

*** I like the long evenings, this time of year, but I could really do without the early dawns.

† So there’s this app that won’t load.  He ended up downloading the latest update of the frelling OS to persuade it that Astarte is a happy home for apps, which instantly made every other app say ME ME I HAVE AN UPDATE TOO I WANT MY UPDATE.  A lot of them don’t bother to ask politely first either, they just instantly go into catch-up mode.  I hate opening an app that I can more or less use and discovering they’ve made it new and shiny and thrilling and utterly unfamiliar.  Life is short.  I don’t want to waste a lot of it learning New and Shiny.  The now-successfully-downloaded app had better be WORTH IT.

†† What with to and from her home as well as the trip itself she must have been behind the wheel seven hours.  I couldn’t drive that far before I had ME.

††† I should have let the hellterror deal with it.  She wanted to.  I thought the eggshells might disagree with her.

‡ We have the head of the local branch of a five-star national home help company, as recommended by Peter’s doctor, coming for a chat and an assessment tomorrow.  Siiiiiiiiiigh.