In Limbo

In Limbo ©

By

Michael Casey

I’m in Limbo right now, and in pain, ok I’ll shut up about the pain.In Limbo because my girls are out with their aunty having fun and fast food. They are rice eaters after all, so a chance to have fast food is a change from the Chinese diet they get from mum. I’m here waiting and having a think, yes I do think, if you just watch my writing you think its too fast, as I hit the paper with another idea, 1300 coming up I think, 1,100,000 words or there abouts.

Thinking has been a big part of my life, if you work funny shifts and strange hours, with even stranger people, and I’m not just talking about myself, then you have time to think. You are in perpetual Limbo, its a Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday afternoon and its your 3 days off on the shift pattern. Everybody else is working, except you, you did your 3 days 3 nights 3 off this week, now you are in Limbo.

So you get to think, this was before the writing arrived, I was 28 or so when it did. As you are like a lost piece of luggage waiting to be collected you have time to think, about everything and nothing. You are in Limbo Land, and no I don’t mean on a beach dancing to music and getting drunk as you slip under a wire. Its time to dream and time to hope and even to pray. Or just listen to BBC Radio 4 all day, and I did a lot of that, 20 years worth, 8 till 28. Hence my posh Birmingham accent, or accident as my wife called it when she first leant English.

In Limbo Land you walk the streets while everybody else is at work, you take the dog on a 5 mile hike to pass the time. You dream of living by the woods and throwing the ball for Patch or is it John Noakes. You dream of having a 60 acre wood as your back yard, if only the shifts don’t kill you first, 14 years of shifts is no fun, especially if 50% is nights. Its like walking through a scene from The Living Dead, and that’s how I felt due to the constant changes to sleep patterns. The first day off was always the recovery day.

This explains my life for those 14 years. Years later working in an hotel was even more physical. My neck size went up an inch to 18.5, and my chest went up 2 inches to 46, my stomach also went up two inches as the food at CPNEC Birmingham was always great. I imagine it still is, if they want to come and take me there to give a food revue now that I’ve morphed into a full time impecunious writer.

I did have Limbo times at the hotel until everybody decided I could help everybody else while I was waiting for the peaks. This was great fun, though very tiring, 12 hour shifts standing all day with 3 hours travelling on top. Yes, really. I did love it though and if you have 2 toddlers to feed anybody’s work ethic is very high.

So much for work, I don’t do any of that any more, I am now a hausfrau. I’m in Limbo right now hoping that this house that arrived out of the blue can be ours. Otherwise we’ll have to forget our bigger house plans. You are in Limbo for a few hours or days as you wait for the owner or vendor in posh speak to decide do they want your offer. All in all this past year of house hunting has been exciting and horrifying in equal measure.

Vodka martini shaken not stirred, or beautiful on the snaps but you couldn’t kill a Spectre on the inside. Has potential, if you demolish it and start again. Great area, if you don’t mind wearing body armour. You have to read the adverts to believe them. You always have to go to the area, or google earth the surroundings before you bother looking at it. If no measurements are given even though the photos look nice on the Wide Angel photos, to make things bigger, then its because the house was built for the 7 dwarfs.

So Limbo is a strange place be, not as bad as awaiting trial, or queuing at the registry office to record a death, or waiting for your new wife to undress on your wedding night. Then you know something nice will happen. But Limbo is like waiting for your lost property to be returned to you, only the watch they have in Lost and Found is the fake one, not your real Omega, no matter how shaken or stirred. You don’t even know how long you will be in Limbo, your watch is lost you cannot judge the time. You are too tired to hum, your mind just drifts, like watching Politics.

Then Limbo ends, What Trump is President?