Monday Thursday, November 8 and now I’m a bad dad Sunday third of November day 29

I’m trying to use my headphone lead as an aerial to improve reception, which seems to work but unfortunately it fucks up the microphone. I haven’t written anything for my blog since Friday but I’ve been WhatsApping la B and emailing Belle and writing a long letter of apology to Marie-Antoinette so I suppose I could go and gather all those together and copy and paste them here which I may yet do. Belle seems to think that saying. Full stop. Causes the dictating machine to insert catch or Catchpole at random intervals. This makes no sense to me since I make no noise resembling either catch or Catchpole. Another problem may be that whenever I say stop the dictating machine stops which it just did now but it doesn’t restart when I say start. Having said all this Belle may be right if I say. It makes it. It makes a full stop. And it doesn’t seem to insert catch or Catchpole. And it seems to be behaving remarkably well this morning. When I came up to the caravan at about 8:30 having sorted out a number of problems and fled from the children being very noisy [(there are no deans about apart from me and I clearly don’t count) Ha ha I have discovered what a bracket is in American it’s a parenthesis. Anyway my clever door closer had broken basically it was worn out by the Hong Kong Chinese so I replaced the old sock with a plastic bottle to hold the weights: I hope that will last a bit longer. One of the fuses tripped this morning, unsurprisingly considering the number of extension blocks that Henrriet had fitted in the dining room to accommodate all the kettles and coffee makers. This must’ve happened sometime during the night although I did not hear the fire alarm until I woke up this morning catch up. Oops it’s between catch up again and I said. This time. It also randomly turned the microphone off and I am not quite sure what triggers that. Anyway I turned off the alarm on the big landing and padded along the Corridor to sort out the other alarm, only to find the door at the end of the Corridor appeared to be locked. Why the microphone phones corridor so unusual and what a corridor act actually is I’m not sure. It’s not gone back and corrected some Corredor’s to be Corredor‘s corridor. Anyway I was quite crossed that the door was locked as it is in fact a fire escape. Later I met Sebastian who said he just simply crashed through it so maybe it wasn’t locked just jammed. I have in any case taken out the key and hidden it. For some reason the kitchen and the rectory floor floor were covered in water. I think Henriette may have been excessively keen when washing the floor last night (she was not happy with the job that Jacques had done although he always strikes me as being very punctilious ). As I walked up to the caravan the sky was an almost perfect cloudless blue and the sunshine was positively warm I said to myself at the time I bet it’s raining by lunchtime. I was wrong it was raining by 10 o’clock. I took a party of French people around the estate yesterday and we all agreed that we needed lots of water but an occasional day of sunshine would be nice.

I am leading prayers this week so I turned up at 7:20. only Mia and Lachlan were in the chapel I got Lachlan to read the psalm and he mangled it this as usual - it is poetry not a sacred text; Mia read read the gospel very nicely,  As always. Open square parenthesis [blah B has just WhatsApp to me so I shall break off]

Listening to Richard Rohr talking about the enneagram. He says if I am not enjoying my life at a deep foundational level then I am doing something wrong. I genuinely do not know whether for the last few months I have been enjoying my life at a deep foundational level or whether in fact I’ve been just deep down miserable, but if the latter, I am not sure what I have been doing wrong.Clearly drinking was not a good idea,  maybe my relationship with S was the problem, maybe the way I am trying to be at Bonnevaux is wrong. What Richard Rohr  is saying is that I am pretending, wanting to appear to others in a way that will make them feel good about me. I am certainly not aware of myself doing that, in fact the reverse. I definitely do not go around being good or being busy nor do I really try to make myself less disagreeable than I actually feel. So if I am not being dishonest with myself, perhaps the problem really is out there and not in here. And that I should be brave enough and bold enough to tell it as I see it in my paper to the community. And it is definitely to the community, not to Laurence, the leadership team, or any other little group that thinks it owns the vision for Bonnevaux.

Projecting, denying, splitting, avoiding 

Note for Jim at 5pm I don’t want to start making a home of my room in the abbaye. This place feels alien to me. Where to invest my effort? A car to tow away my caravan, or a van, or buckle down to living here. Which is the horse called disappointment? Staying is the easy option, requires least effort. But leaving is maybe just running away again. Or frightening because there are no certainties. And even if staying is physically easier psychologically and emotionally it feels tougher more challenging. But there is also ego involved, I don’t want to let the buggers win. But I don’t want to stay here half heartedly, grumbling and muttering, being irritable and negative and constantly carping.
At lunchtime Meditation as all the other deans were away I told them the story about the four yogis - they didn’t seem to mind. I’m going back to the caravan to watch Telly and YouTube.
Everyone has gone up to Thomases parcel to do biodynamic Rudolph Steiner type magic Wu Woo on the soil. I declined the invitation. I shall carry-on listening to Richard rR OHR talking about the enneagram. It seems very appropriate to the letter I’m trying to write to the community.