annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary

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Two

I know there were two things I wanted to write about but I can only remember one, so I'll crack on with that and hope the other comes back to me as I go.


  1. I did my first writing group for the staff at the recovery centre. It was very eeek! in the build up - I was asked to do it because the member of staff who sits in with the clients group I run had spoken so positively about it, then I was asked to do it specifically on a Tuesday as they close to clients at 3 on a Tuesday, and they all wanted to come, which felt both scary and exciting but irresistible. Ten of them came, plus the writer-in-residence and it went really, really well, although I was too tense to write, but that was OK. At one point, which lasted for almost ten minutes, every single person apart from me was writing, with all the pens moving swiftly across the paper and that magic silence you get when everyone is lost in a task. When I said that the hour was up, a couple of them were genuinely amazed at how quickly the time had gone. So, hashtag proud, that's me and hoping it can happen again and that I can maybe get paid in the end for doing writing workshops.

  2. And I did remember the other thing, a story that starts in 1976 when I worked as a waitress in a cafe called Fodda in a town with a crap private aeronautical engineering college that attracted lots of foreign students. The Portuguese speaking students all came to our cafe and stole the menus because Fodda means fuck in Portuguese. Over time I got to know them and became very fond of the two Brazilians, who both rented rooms in houses alongside me at various times. One was dead perky and clever and when he realised how crap the college was, managed to get onto a degree course at the local (very good) university. The other, in retrospect, got clinically depressed and drooped around doing less and less until we virtually packed his bags and sent him home to his parents in Rio. That was in about 1982. Well he only turned up yesterday, forty years down the line, as an old man, but almost exactly the same.


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Apart from now being an inspector in the Rio police, for fuck's sake - with a badge and photos to prove it. I mean, really??? Him??? But it was great - after just a couple of minutes it felt like we knew each other again and we walked round the old town and went to the airport, where the college has been taken over by a proper one and the guy invited us to come in and wander round the hangars, which was a bit fucking exciting, and I left my car keys on a bench which I didn't discover till we were back at the car so we had to walk back to get them and back to the car again, which was a bit fucking much, then went and got my sis, who also knew him and we went to the pub and talked for hours and all good but who'd have thought it? A cop!

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And I've been on the beach a bit too:32F75D76-BD52-47ED-8716-5F764ABE9ADB

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I am grateful for: old friends, velhos amigos; opportunities; having the sense to cancel the woman who was meant to be giving me grief counselling but who cried and made me dread seeing her; feeling a bit better; a warm bed on a windy night

 

Sleep tight

11:49 p.m. - 20.09.18

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