Letting go and feeling sad

I’m feeling rather sad at the moment. It is silly really because I have a lot to be thankful for but the fact remains that is how I’m feeling.

I have just finished my PGCE course (1 year full-time) so I am now ready to start on my teaching career. I was warned that it would be hard work and much more intense than my degree – they were right! All the work has obviously left me rather drained and perhaps that it why I’m feeling quite sad about a collection of fairly trivial things?

When Mum and Dad were killed I inherited their house. In the five years since then most of it has been altered – everything except their joint study. For some reason changing that was like a final confirmation that they were dead and would never be coming back. Well now the carpenter and the decorator have finished the work I employed them to do and the study has been transformed. It looks much better than it did but emotionally it has hit me quite hard.

 

I am also feeling rather let down by a (former) E-Pal. We agreed when we started our regular exchange that if things didn’t work out we wouldn’t just stop writing. We both said that would be rude and cruel and that we would always expect to tell the other person that we were going to break contact.

Well Lisa has stopped writing and she hasn’t done what we agreed so I’m left wondering what has happened to her. Perhaps she found me too boring!?

On the other hand it is quite liberating to cross things off of my to-do list- and not just the things that I had done- but some things that were undone.  For example, I’ve had “blog 500 words twice a month” on my long-term list of goals for years.  I finally admitted to myself that I am never going to do that - so I crossed it off.  It’s amazing all of the things you can let go of if you really try.

Sometimes the hardest thing to let go of is our master plan, our agenda, for the way we’d like to go, or look.  My closest friends are both studying for their Doctorates. I had hoped to go down that route myself but it just wasn’t to be – not yet anyway. I’ll put that one away for now.

 

 

 

Life modelling outdoors!

Ours is a happy house at the moment. Stewart got a teaching job last week. His new school is in exactly the opposite direction to mine so we are still going to need to run two cars which is an additional expense. He was up against 5 others at the interview including somebody who had already been teaching for 2 years in Kuwait as an ex-pat. He was very pleased when he was offered the job and he enjoyed phoning up the other schools where he was due to attend interviews to say that he had got a job so wouldn’t be coming. It is half term in our county so we will be able to have a bit of a rest from lesson preparation. 

The weekend after all this excitement I was away on a 2 day modelling course. It was all very last minute – Sally and I were phoned up on Friday by the agency who were panicking because the two models they had booked for the course had let them down at the last minute. The boss lady was very unimpressed “by their lack of professionalism” but pleased that we were able to take over at such short notice. Models dropping out like this seems to happen quite often but I would never let people down like that. Neither would the other Sally. 

There was 16 artists (plus a few husbands and wives) on the course all from the University of the Third Age. The venue was a fairly posh country hotel in Somerset which the course totally filled up. The organisers had arranged a room for the two of us for the Saturday night so we didn’t have to do too much travelling although it was a bit of a rush to get there for the 9:30 start on Saturday. The paying customers arrived on the Friday evening and had two nights at the hotel – we just had the one. 

Saturday was a nice sunny day which was lucky because we spent most of the day outside not wearing very much! Lots of different poses of varying lengths depending on what the artists had sorted out in advance with the organiser. There was one rather creepy man but everybody else was fine. We didn’t have any full nudity as the clients said it wasn’t required but some of the M&S underwear we wore was almost the same thing. The boys call them “Porno Pants” and tease us for only wearing them when modelling. No normal girl or lady would wear them every day.  

When we went in the bar before dinner we were immediately surrounded by men trying to buy us drinks while their assorted wives looks resigned or surprised or annoyed depending on their individual temperaments. 

Sunday was cloudy and cooler so we were indoors. We tried something new which involved just wearing a nightie that was rather short. When we sat on a chair or stood by the window there seemed to be lots of (male) artists shuffling around to get the best view! 

We got lovely feedback from the boss lady and the clients and a decent hourly rate so we can afford to eat better this month!