Today is a whole new world

I've been down in the dumps lately. In actual fact, as an opening statement that's fairly redundant, since I pretty much only write on here when I've been down in the dumps (is this true? -Ed).

A confluence of factors has led to a vicious circle of not really wanting to get out of bed or do very much with my days: the easiest to explain of which is most probably my lower back. It's been giving me grief now continously since early April. I've since had an injection into my back muscles (a cure which seems only to exist in Germany!) which numbs the muscle forcing it to relax, thereby giving the affected area time to pull its socks up and sort itself out. The doctor who pressed the plunger failed however to tell me what to do while I was in my little window of suffering-free heaven. Needless to say, I abused the privilege of being able to move freely by proceeding immediately to leap about, play table tennis, chop wood, drive to the countryside and, most flagrant of all, to sneeze in my hayfeverish fashion without first clutching my back in self-defence. What a hussy I was these 4 days, the very epitomy of Sodom rebuilt in Europe's banking heart. When the drugs wore off though, as is so often the case with drugs, my world came tumbling down. I managed to convince myself for an entire day that the imperceptable, gradual onset of cripplement was just a phase in the healing process and that my best course of action was to keep moving. The reality was soon driven home though, and I was driven miserably home while those around me had house-warming parties and enjoyed their youth.

Since then the situation has once again improved, and I'm going to get another injection (delivered under the counter, for free, without a waiting list, by a local plastic surgeon: I know his assistant!) on Wednesday and this time I will show my physical weakness the respect it deserves, and do nothing but stroll and sit up straight in cafes.

Additionally to my back based blues, I've come a cropper in my quest for the knowledge of all things, in that I had a most unproductive meeting with my Thesis supervisor, who told me, when discussing the mini-paper I'd written for him over the previous few months that I need to "do something else". This is as discouraging a piece of advice as one could hope for, and I suddenly felt like the end of the world (by world I mean my Masters) was nigh, and I was never going to be able to get it all done in time.

Secondly and most boringly (I put this in the middle to hide it away: always begin and end well) I've got a lot less money than I'd thought. It turns out that the concept of looking at your bank balance and remembering what you've got works about as well as remembering that Michael Owen is only 19. He may have been only 19 when you first heard about him but now he's a right old bastard and no one outside of his immediate family wants to know - and so it is with my bank balance. I've been safe in the knowledge that I've got x amount of money in my account (don't worry, those of you who don't like maths, I'll keep the equations to a minimum) for so long now that I've actually got x - y euros, where y is a number greater than zero. This discovery shocked me and made me realise that crossing the English Channel on the high seas in a hired van filled with my possessions is not going to be one of those financially neutral activities you hear about like picking grapes in the rainy season.

This, coupled with a long time in Zimbabwe followed by a short pause and then a quite long time in England has left me these past two weeks feeling completely unlike a student and even less like a human being, as I've lain uncomfortably around in my shorts, waiting for my back pain to disperse, and my dissertation to be written. I hadn't seen campus for what seemed like an age, and the thought of me still being part of the great knowledge machine I vaguely knew was still pumping away as I stayed in and drank coffee seemed to be absurd.

But nothing ever lasts forever (to quote Echo and the Bunnymen) and I'm sitting here in the relative paradise of the House of Finance computer room (I refuse to call it a lab: where are the guinea pigs that are supposed to be wasting their hours striving to run in what is really just a wheel leading nowhere... Oh wait) which indicates that several things have changed.

Firstly I'm able to sit for extended periods. This is a major step forward in the slow lumbering healing process of my lumbar and I'm already remembering what it feels like to be a person. Secondly, I had a long moan to my flatmate yesterday about all of the above, even though I knew that, being a man, he would try and offer me advice, which I wouldn't want to hear, and I would just add to the list of people I don't want to talk to. It turned out, in fact, that I am also a man, and heard his very sensible advice with very sensible man ears, and have today acted upon that advice which led me to the radical change in outlook which has allowed me to talk of being down in the dumps in the past tense. Or at least in the present perfect continous (but that doesn't have the same ring to it somehow).

The advice had two parts to it, and was as follows: a) you can choose to change your situation if you want, and b) your situation is easy to change and you could do so tomorrow. That was it: just stop feeling sorry for myself and go to university and get something done. And what a difference a day has made. I'd been in the House of Finance on campus for about one minute forty when a man I vaguely recognised came up to me and asked me if I remembered meeting him one day last year. I didn't but I didn't tell him that, and he went on to tell me that he was writing a paper for an important conference and would I be interested in earning 20€ an hour correcting the English. I told him I would be very much interested.

The next person I spoke to asked me what I'd done with the brilliant idea I'd had for a research project. This is the same brilliant idea to which my professor's response had been "do something else". He told me the idea was great and I should pursue it nevertheless. When the third and final person told me I should ask Prof X, who seems nice and is running a course on the very subject, I could have kicked myself for not having thought of it first. I emailed him a brief summary of my idea and he got back to me straight away saying it sounded "extremely interesting" and could he have a copy of my first draft. Yes Mr. Professor. Yes you can.

What's the moral of this story? I'm damned if I know, but one things for certain: I'm not as happy sitting on the sofa at home as I think I am, and I'm going to try and remember that, the next time I don't feel like getting on that U-Bahn.

See you soon, England.
Rob