My turn to borrow from a song for a blog title (well, this was the title of a Pink Floyd album but it about sums it up for me). I have been feeling very down in the dumps the last couple weeks but I think I am finally coming good again. The straw that broke the donkey’s back for me was definitely the weather.
Call it S.A.D, vitamin E deficiency or whatever you like, grey skies make me miserable, especially when it is June in southern France and they have no right being there. After 3 non-summers in a row back in the UK, I had been waiting impatiently from the moment we moved here to experience some decent sunshine. We had it in spades in April, patches of in May, but until yesterday, NONE at all in June. We didn’t get any use out of the garden all month and I pretty much didn’t leave the house at all.
Getting up each morning to more grey skies and going through the same ritual every day, and being trapped inside all day with nothing to do started to wear me down and make me feel truly aimless. I am sure my serotonin levels must have taken a battering and I was feeling the effects. I always miss our friends back home, and also our monthly weekend at my parents’, but now I was finding myself missing home a lot and even questioning whether I still hoped this move would turn permanent. Basically, I was focusing on all of the negatives about being out here – the isolation, the fact that without a driving licence, you can’t go anywhere, that I have no money left to spend on anything frivolous – and making myself miserable.
Well, after days of wallowing and being no-doubt intolerable company, I finally pulled myself together, on Tuesday. I made a list of everything that was nagging at me and then another list of what we have gained my moving here. That helped considerably! Then that evening, Mum and Dad called and we had a good chat, which also did me no end of good. Dad has also passed some business my way – an architect friend of his whose website was built years ago and needs modernising, so I have something to keep me occupied, and get me a little spending money too. Also, Dave and Rosie will be with us in a few days, followed by my bestest mucker Anna. Really looking forward to both visits. Finally, Monsieur Le Soleil has returned with a vengeance – 26 degrees in a cloudless sky yesterday and today was warmer still – bliss. We were out in it for as much as possible both days and I now feel more or less my old self again. Perhaps I was a plant in a previous life and still feel the need to try and photosynthesise?
The one downside of going out and enjoying the garden is having to leave the poor little puddies inside alone, when they so clearly want to play, or come out themselves. That is the one unfortunate about this house: not one room gets any sunlight. It does make you feel mean to see their little faces peering out at you morosely through the glass door-panel. Well, today we managed to do something about it. Our back door leads out into a small, semi-enclosed courtyard-type space, which itself leads to the back garden and is a lovely sun-trap. Between the three of us we managed to put together a barrier to close it off so the boys could experience a little bit of the outside, and they enjoyed it immensely, I am pleased to report. In all likelihood, this would have been their first ever time being outside in their lives, and we could well believe it based on their reaction to it all.
So, to sum up: after a dark couple weeks, I am again confident that Matt spoke for the both of us in his last entry when he said we want to try and stay as long as possible. The lapse was indeed momentry. Bon, à la prochaine fois! x