the accidental girl

I woke up this morning with that feeling of resignation and lethargy you get when it's the end of the working week and the weekend is so intangibly close. Then I realised it was Saturday and bounded out of bed looking forward to my swim at the pool and a day of reading and drawing.

Everything was going so well. Can I share a tip with other potential sunners- if you sun yourself, wear suncream but moreover- don't use the spray stuff. I used some l'oreal spray cream thing today (because I'm worth it, ho ho) and unfortunately it soaked in so quickly I couldn't keep track of where I'd sprayed and where I hadn't. With the result that I look like a leopard now. At least I know it works, right??

Oh well, all in all a good day. I'm reading "snow" by Orhan Pamuk at the moment.. it's making me think a great deal about what motivates people to believe certain things and find it interesting to get an insight into how differently minds work in other cultures...

Tomorrow is sunday.. I think I'll walk into town and try to cross to the turkish side on foot. There's a new crossing at ledra street. Well, an old crossing but it's been reopened this year. Maybe I'll go and visit the inn on the other side, it's full of craft shops, fun times. Maybe I'll practise my Turkish and buy some baklava (mmmmmmm) looking appealling already!!

My back is finally on the road to recovery. Even so, I was bullied into going to see a doctor yesterday despite my protests of being mended. There's no NHS here and a mere consultation costs about the equivalent of two days' work. Hence my protests- all my money is going towards Amazing Adventure 2008.

Anyway, I lay on the bed, with difficulty, in my pants. The doc then prods around a bit, I say ouch at the appropriate times, he bends my legs, fine, then he asks me to "clench my buttocks".
"-"
"Clench them please"
I clench
"Harder."
I add what I assume is more force, trying to make my bottom seem very clenched as opposed to just clenched. In fact, they're so super clenched now that my cheeks are in danger of being sucked into themselves.
He prods the general area.

Don't know what he was looking for but he didnt' seem to find it. I then had to walk about a bit feeling a little silly.

No matter, I'm just happy to be able to walk again! Tomorrow I shall go for my second run of the holiday. I'm so excited!!

Ok, so panic dies down.. I'm not going to be paraplegic. It's only a slipped disc. I say 'only' but it's still bloody painful. And surely it shouldn't happen to a 24 year old! At least not on a regular basis. So, once I figured it out, I massaged my spine and since then I've been able to walk, carry stuff etc.. still not cured but I'm mobile. Hurrah!

To celebrate, I went to the beach. Instead of lying at home feeling sorry for myself, I lay on the beach feeling sorry for all the beached whales aka size 40+ tourists rolling about on the beach.

I just hope I can start running again soon or I'll look like them before long.

Ok so my magnificent plan for my metamorphisis over the summer has been interrupted. Badly.
I can hardly walk!! I tried to get out of bed this morning, rolling on one side was agony, rolling onto the other was hell and then, trying to sit up was like winding up a crank in slow-mo. Once I'd mastered being out of bed, the next step was figuring out how to stand straight. I could just about hobble around the flat at 90 degrees but this would be impractical in the cruel, exterior world where everything is so.. upright.

Never underestimate how lucky you are to lower yourself in and out of chairs, put socks on, get in and out of the bath..
Sheesh.. I sound like an incapacitated old lady! I figured out why this problem has been happening more and more this year. I stopped doing my core excercises.. I felt my crunches weren't making a difference on the tone of my stomach and as running was having more effect, I just stopped. DO NOT STOP is the answer..as soon as my back is healed I'm back onto the old crunches and sit ups and the rest of it as fast as possible.

My boss took pity on me and bought me some muscle relaxant gel and tablets. So I'm in a sort of deluded haze between faint twinges and being perpendicular to the ground.

A good excuse to laze by the beach tomorrow! Bring on the medicated haze and sunshine and hope it's not a lethal combo!

Day 2:

Have already managed to acquire three tone skin due to badly applied suncream. Backs of legs - badly burnt. Bit where, irritatingly, my bra strap crosses, also badly burnt. A 50p sized area of agony.

Also, remind me that as a confirmed tomboy, not to attmept heels over a long period of time. I've just broken my lower back again and just moving about is painful. I feel about 80 years old!!

On the plus side, it was my first day at work and my boss, with endearing gratitude to my services, has insured me on his car. No more 2 cylinder, sello taped and age worn rides for me no no!! I have a 3-cylinder astra now. This may, in part (the 3 cylinder bit), be fabricated. I am, however, insured on his astra.

This would be all put right if the hot water tank had decided not to stop working during my stay. Cold showers may soothe burns but they don't help seized lower backs. Wish there was a friend here to massage me. Oh well.. on with hermitude..

At the end of an arduous year, both in terms of work and in terms of emotion, I have dragged my broken soul to Cyprus. This is where I come for some sort of purge. To cleanse myself of the destruction of the previous year. My meticulous and spartan routine leave me to evolve. I replenish my soul by reading all the books I meant to read but neglected because of a busy schedule, I run and swim all the miles I should have but just didn't have time to and I sit, think and assess the moments which changed me.

I've started my monastic living a bloated, cynical and tired version of myself. In my experience, living here a while transforms me. The sun cheers me up, running makes my body lithe again and the good food and books nourish my soul until I return, replenished and devoid of caution, to my real life.

This is the closest I'll ever get to running away.

Day 1: My first run around athalassa park. This is my temple, running in the heavy scented pine and eucalyptus as the sun warms my back helps me to mull over moments lost. To remember nuances since assigned to 'memory'. The ritual of my run soon takes on a whole new life. The water tumbling in my bottle is the strings, played like a mazurka my heavy feet pounding a slow but steady rhythm. The melancholy breeze tickles the leaves and that would be the flute. I hear the music as I run.. I think through of how much my year has changed me and I realise quite how much I've buried, I've hidden for self preservation.
M is not longer a daily thought. His presence in the darkest caverns of my mind were a surprise.. How did he get relegated to the areas best kept for truly painful memories?
I can't remember why I was so intoxicated by him. I've shoved him so far away that I can't even picture his treasured smile anymore. I suppose it's a good thing but how am I supposed to use the feeling I had for himas a point of reference for my next victim when I can't even remember how he kissed?

The slosh-slosh of my water brings me back to reality. I've skirted round the high points of the park, the Kyrenia hills in the distance bear the flag of their desperation. The sun begins to sink. It's time to drive home and to remember how to drive after a year of inactivity.

Some things are best left unearthred. However innocent and benign they seem, it's best not to tackle with a tiger cub. They grow to be big tigers...

Following great uncertainty, four years ago, I changed from law to engeering. I haven't regretted it since- even though the pay gap between lawyers and Engineers is laughably obvious.

Anyway, I'm just burrowing my way through a sparse exam timetable at the moment and I've been thinking about what I shoudl do for my dissertation next year. Or, thesis, as the university like to call it. Ok, so it's for an MEng but still, dissertation sounds less frightening. It's a relatively important choice as I'm currently toying with the idea of a PhD. However, my heart is in one camp and my head in two others.. All to do with the rather blurred and suspicious area sitting uncertainly between engineering and architecture.

So, one is a practical choice, sustainable building technology with a view to sustainable mass housing. Probably in the area of mass production, construction times and methods and materials engineering. There's a good PhD offered at Cambridge and one at Strathclyde. Arguably the opposite ends of a slightly prejudiced scale.

The next is building repair and restoration. This is an idea I've been mentally ruminating for a while, seeing how it tastes, feels and sits within my mind. I quite like the idea of preserving beautiful and historically important structures for the future, saving the world one old building at a time. Similarly though, the research in this is more geared towards the mathematical modelling of how restoration works. Which is less mesmerising. At this uni at least..

Lastly, it's taking engineering more towards the artistic side.. sculptural engineering- think Frei Otto, Calatrava, Candela, Heinz Isler. I'd like to explore the potential of space and structure. The possibility of working as a structural artist. Hence a thesis in large span roofs or lightweight structure would be appropriate but it's not really well provided for at this university so I'd be going in relatively blind, with no guide dog.

Decisions.. At least I have the summer to think about this. Next step will be to find a suitable partner to work with.

So this time last year I was on site in Africa working with a foreman on government school projects. I didn't like it wholly at the time, mostly because I was treated as a curiosity (being a female Engineer) and secondly because there wasn't much work to actually be done. The calculations had been put through and the foreman and contractor were set up as it was. So I spent my day learning how things were done over there until eventually, the company ran out of money.

I kind of miss it now. I keep remembering the malt beer and meat bread I'd have for my lunch. And the bean stew with shitung. I should call my boss again soon, especially as he said I was to consider myself his daughter!! I hope I can go back one day soon. Maybe once I've graduated I'll go and spend a couple of months visiting properly as opposed to working on a placement.