Wednesday 12th December

How did I used to do it?  Work hard all day and then go out in the evening for drinks and a meal and sometimes a party, because I just cannot do it these days.  Either the nature of the work has changed and I am working far harder than I used to, or the same amount of work tires me out quicker, but the last thing I ever feel like is going out in the evenings.  The writing class had a Christmas get together last night.  It had been devilishly hard to get a date we could all agree on, or a time.  The final e-mail said six-o-clock at Pizza Express in Greenwich.  I was running a bit later so scurried off as quick as I could and got there at two minutes past to find….. of course no-one else.  Why, oh why do I constantly fall for it?  I am never late, and everyone else always is – I should have learnt by now.  The next person arrived at 6.20 and we had coffees and a desultory chat both of us constantly watching the door.  Number three came in at 6.45 – this was Irina, the very person who insisted we had to start at 6 as she had to leave by 7.30.

Because she had to leave early and had arrived so late – though she actually lives in Greenwich – she ordered her food straightaway and we other two watched her eat it.  By 7.30 three more had arrived and Irina had left, and we ordered and half way through our not very exciting pizza two other stragglers arrived.  It was a very disjointed but eventually okay evening, but I had been in the place from 6 until gone 10, and was shattered after a long days work anyway.  Ironically most of the people there either do not work in the sense that they have a place to go to, but work from home or can make their own hours.  Consequently I was the only one who would be getting up at 6 the next morning.  And I felt I just couldn’t do this anymore – work all day and then party and work the next day.

Jethro Tull used to sing a great song – ‘Too Old to Rock and Roll, too Young to Die.’  Exactly my sentiments.