Only three appointments yesterday, two at the same house, where the dear, 80 year-old man has lost his wife recently. He sees her everywhere in the house and it makes him more sad. One of the interested parties is a man who is about my age, and I don’t see many of them. I realize I am flirting with him but I hadn’t meant to; it’s simply so refreshing not to be hit on by 60 year olds that I am in the faintly ridiculous position of spotting a novelty and toying with it. The rest of the day is spent in the office and this is when I confirm that I am ill suited to this work. I’m really in my element, driving about all day, meeting and greeting, chat and politeness, but, this morning, in the office, knowing nothing of what has gone on throughout the week, I flounder. When I get back to the office, it is so quiet that the others have locked up and gone home. The desk I use when one of the other women is not there is really mucky, as is the phone etc. I think about cleaning it up but realize this could be taken as a criticism, which it would be, so I leave it mucky and bugger off myself.
An email from a friend of mine arrives; she complains that, at work, she is routinely subjected to gruesome accounts of female colleagues’ intimate medical procedures and gynaecological problems. I am all commiseration because I, too, have had years of listening to workplace chats about periods, childbirth and sex lives. Oh please. Later, I wander off for a walk in the early evening sunshine and it is so silent and so beautiful that I flop down on the grass and lay awhile gazing out over the rolling fields, and the mouth of the river, and fall into a reverie. Two men pass by. A few minutes later sounds of women’s talk float nearer and, by the time the two females of the species draw level with me, I have risen up from my deliciously recumbent position in the meadow, alert and tense, something like a meerkat. “I do feel for her. Going down that IVF route is such an emotional roller coaster. I was never prepared for how terrible it was going to be.” I remain frozen in my meerkat position...
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