Saturday, January 18

Last night everyone had a full night’s sleep or something very close to it. This morning we had a weekend breakfast with the wrong number of people sitting in the wrong seats.

Now I am walking to Prisma. The winter sun is out and the snow is glistening. I am using a Vince McMahon power-walk in the belief that it will make me feel better. My rationale is that gestalt therapy teaches that you can work either way round. You can teach the mind to think in a specific way and the body will adopt the required gestures and attitude, or you can train the body to move in a certain way and the mind will adopt the corresponding feelings.

By the time I get to Prisma it will have worked. I will feel like the most powerful person in my own wrestling federation. I will buy the little we need and walk back.

This feeling will fade away as I walk home with the shopping. Apparently you cannot power-walk properly with your hands full. Even so, I will arrive home feeling better than when I left.

Irma will go to see Tarkku and I will stare out of the window. By 16:30 I will be feeling tired enough to go to bed. Later, before I actually go to bed I will listen to music for the first time in the week. Specifically, I will listen to Bruce Springsteen singing his version of Dream Baby Dream for the first time, and I will find it surprisingly uplifting; possibly because I remember the original and what it meant to me.

Uplifted, I will, after a brief kerfuffle, fall asleep for nine hours.