Jump around

The magazine of the British Psychological Society arrives here every few weeks, an uncancelled subscription of a former tenant, and last month it carried an interesting feature about current research into psychological resource depletion--the phenomenon, experienced by everyone, of not having the strength to answer someone, or not being as kind as one could be, or of taking oneself off to the pub for a solitary hour of gazing. The first part of Tuesday felt as though I was in an unethical experiment to test how pleasant I could be to Trina.

Trina snores, and when we sleep together, I am waiting until I can sense her falling into a deep state of relaxation, upon which she will rasp and trumpet for hours. She wakes up refreshed, with an exhausted boyfriend next to her. On Tuesday, my tiredness veined the day. All I want to do is to go to sleep, without you. I was broke, irritated with myself at having no money and so having to rely on her financially, which means her setting my drinking schedule.

However, there is nothing more effective at lifting a man's mood than the delight of having to stop at a level crossing when the barriers are down. We went to Hest Bank, a fifteen minute bus ride north of Lancaster, where the West Coast main line makes its closest approach--just yards away--to the western edge of England, and the beginning, from almost sea level, of the climb to Shap Summit.

It is one of those rather stifling villages that England produces in such numbers, with an attractive unspoilt centre surrounded by the tasteless uPvC'd houses of recent decades, with prominent garages like shrines for the religiously car-owning classes. We were there to have a look at possible mooring places for Trina's narrowboat and to have a couple of pints in the supposedly posh pub there.

Wrong

But no pub can be posh with a fruit machine and staff who send you back to look for your table number. A relative of mine used to run a busy cafe in west London, and used to write insulting descriptions of the customers--"chavvy girl with saggy tits", "ugly blubber-arse and tarty bird in red"--to enable him to find people. They could have put "Attractive, curvy brunette mysteriously attached to raddled bloke dressed like a Geography lecturer at minor Welsh university."

Cementing our passage into middle age, we tuttingly picked up litter along our canalside walk and made a note to write to the Parish Council suggesting they put a bin in the picnic area. Later, we went to the university to see a video installation about "jumping", "[a] name applied in the 18th century to certain Calvinistic Methodists in Wales whose worship was characterized by violent convulsions."

The seven minute film shows people standing in a circle, walking round and smiling at each other, joining and unjoining hands, and then jumping about. It looked like one of those self-expression sessions that people who can't dance pay to go on. I've often thought that a way out of my dire financial straits would be to go somewhere where no-one knows me, hire a big old house and a slightly poofy-looking chef, and feed well-paid gullible people a hotchpotch of navel-gazing artistic activities and inspirational Facebook statuses for a weekend, and charge them £600 each for it.

At night, I woke up with an appreciative feeling that the bed was big enough to almost make it feel that Trina wasn't in it. Uncertainly, I felt about for her. The poor girl was sitting asleep in the armchair with a bobble hat on and a blanket wrapped around her. I called her back to bed. "What are you doing there?" I said, trying to remember what latest big-mouthed unloving thing I might have said. She said she had been determined to give me a good night's sleep, and doesn't snore when she's sat up. She snuggled up gratefully next to me. An hour later, she was providing her free service to vessels in Morecambe Bay and beyond, and I was glad to hear the sound.