I Came, I Saw, I Suffered Immensely
Earlier in the week, I was enjoying being uncomfortable again.
Comfort is a concept I’m not…comfortable with (damn my language and its grammatical quicksands). Comfort is a state of being you should probably only dip into, to enjoy with a contrasting experience in the forefront of your memory. You stamp the snow off your boots, you rub your numb hands in front of the fire, and then you press your nose against the window. It’s cold out there, you whisper comfortably.
Over the last month or so, I haven’t traveled far and I haven’t stretched my muscles enough. I’ve grown lazy and comfy. And now there I was, dragged yet another suitcase of books I still hadn’t read after 3 years of lugging them around York, rumbling across town to my new house for the second time that week (of five such trips)…and enjoying how tired I felt.
It’s a fact. I liked being that tired. There’s a kind of joy that accompanies pushing yourself towards a physical limit – usually accompanied by the humiliation of how far you’ve let that limit slip back recently. Luckily (now I know this will sound weird)…luckily I now get to walk 40 miles a week, to and from work. All I need is my new mp3 player to arrive and get teaching me colloquial Greek and everything will be perfect.
My thoughts were interrupted as a suitcase wheel caught on the kerb, flipping the whole thing over and nearly wrenching my arm out its socket.
Yeah, I giggled into the sky, bring on the discomfort. I want it. It’s good for me. I’m ready for it.
The reply in this little exchange between myself and the Fates came a few days later, when I was struck down with the worst food poisoning I’ve ever experienced (or possibly it was the Norovirus – in which case, the piece of mackarel I bought from Morrisons is blameless and I apologise to it unreservedly).
As I lay on the bathroom floor for 6 hours under a warm coat I’d managed to drag over myself, too weak to stand, shaking so hard I couldn’t press the buttons on my phone to ring work to let them know I wouldn’t be turning up, and occasionally dragging myself a few feet to visit my two friends Ralph and Huey, I realised that actually, discomfort can be a bit of a bitch.
Location:
In my new house, somewhat to the west of York, a brisk and not overlong walk from the train station, surrounded by shops, five of which are charity shops which have already supplied me with 3 perfectly-fitting work shirts and some expensive-looking work trousers for the price of a standard paperback book from Borders. (Alas, Borders. *dabs at eyes*).
In the dining room, cables snaking everywhere, one of them to my phone which is siphoning the Internet out of thin air at a surprising lick and squirting it into my laptop (thanks, T-mobile – your web’n'walk is a wonder).
Status:
Weary from shifting possessions and from walking 36 miles in one week, 18 miles carrying rucksacks and dragging suitcases bulging with stuff I’d forgotten I had until I dragged it out from under the bed.
Slightly sick, from eating things I maybe shouldn’t have from the Italian bakery stall at the food fair in the middle of York today. (For example, sugary flaky cream horns, stuffed with Nutella. “Yeah mate, it’s-a One Pounds and Ninety Fives per 100 grams – so *weighs* that’s Eight Hundreds and Twenty Three Pounds Fifty, mate, grazie mille.”
Slightly scared of the amount of books I have to read and move along to the local charity shops before I can see the floor of my new room. (Oh, and my new housemates/landlords have almost exactly the same reading tastes as me, right down to owning the other half of a travelwriting series of books I’d recently started collecting – so I’ve got their books to read too).
Feeling like:
I’m in the right place, at the right time. This is a good place to go home again…and to leave it behind for a while.
Coo.
