Fortitude

Oh, hello blog: I thought I'd lost you - incipient senility leading to forgetting username, and all that.

I turned forty a couple of weeks ago. It was brilliant - ten friends came to Edinburgh, we ate and drank obscene amounts, we walked up Arthur's Seat, all that sort of thing. It was odd to have people with me: I have got used to Edinburgh being largely a solitary pleasure.

I leave this project on 31 March to return to London, with distinctly mixed feelings. I haven't enjoyed the work, and have had one of the worst colleague experiences of my life, but I've loved the place itself. It's felt rather like living in Istanbul did: a discrete, glittering experience quite unconnected with everyday life.

But just now, being forty feels horrible. I feel old, miserable and tired. I rushed around like a mad thing yesterday and it has completely destroyed me today - I have had to keep going back to bed for little naps, like some Victorian invalid heroine.

This morning, I realised that my usual makeup was making my face look like a powdered, idiotic travesty of a pantomime dame. I scrubbed it all off and did something different, and added to my list of things to do "when I'm back in London" - get a makeup lesson.

That list currently includes:

Go to the dentist and get a checkup and two back fillings replaced:
Investigate tooth whitening:
Get the boot light on the car mended:
Sort out pension arrangements:
Buy flat:
Get job that requires rather less travelling about.

And on the seventh day, I shall rest.