The Books That Keep Me Sane

It won't be news to many of you that I have some slight mental health baggage. I'm fairly open about it when I have the anonymity of the Internet to hide behind. I've ranted about the stereotypes of mental illness on here before though, so don't worry, you're safe from me today.

Whilst this will eventually be a book-related post, let me provide a bit of background.

My mother and I started decorating my room quite a while ago now, but due to my starting a demanding new job and subsequent bout of physical illness, it was never finished. There's been 3m of unwallpapered wall for months and it's slowly been driving me crazy. Never mind though, we decided tonight was the night to rectify it.

Thing is, we have an old house and the walls have moved, so the pretty patterned wallpaper doesn't match up as it should, a matter complicated by the awkward dormer windows that basically mean you have to wallpaper part of the ceiling. There are joins in the paper where the flowers don't quite (or at all) line up with the flower stem on the adjoining piece of paper. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it was (IS) and I basically had a meltdown.

It's been a while since I've had a proper OCD meltdown but it's not pleasant. On one hand, you can feel the mismatched wallpaper watching you and you feel sick and you're hyperventilating and you can't stop crying... but then there's a little detached bit of you watching from afar with disgust that really just wants you to stop being such a freak.

After a little while, I calmed down enough to sit tensely cross-legged on the bed staring at the wall (Ellie, I love you for talking me down), but just not quite enough to recreate the illusion that I'm a rational human being.

Then it came to me. The absolute, complete only thing that could possibly calm me down was A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Nothing else would do. From that point, my mind latched onto the idea and associated Douglas Adams with peacefulness. I was literally desperate to read it.

Why that book? I have no idea. But the more I thought about it (which I did, at length, to distract myself - hey, I even wrote a blog post about it), the more I realised that there are certain books that I turn to when I'm about to have a large scale freak out.

The thing is, I can't really work out what these books have in common. There are books that I love that I wouldn't feel appropriate for this kind of situation (Jane Eyre, Terry Pratchett, 22/11/63...). I just know that the list below makes me feel safe and keeps me sane when I may not be doing such a good impression of it at the time.

Hanna's List of Literary Sanity

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Pride and Prejudice

Persuasion

Lord of the Flies

The Hobbit

84 Charing Cross Road

We Bought A Zoo  

Harry Potter and the... Whatever, Really

A Christmas Carol

To Kill A Mockingbird

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

There may be more, but as my brain has clicked on to Hitchhiker's Guide tonight, I can't think what the others might be. I guess I'll find out the next time home decorating goes awry!

Which books do you turn to in times of need?  

A quick post about Barcelona!

So I've not been around much in the last few weeks, partly due to being busy at work but also due to an impromptu trip to Barcelona... one of things is infinitely more interesting than the other, I assure you.

Why Barcelona? Well, why not? Late one evening we just decided we should go on holiday the following week, started looking online and after a fun day of scrabbling around trying to get my work to give me the time off, 24 hours later it was booked!

We chose Barcelona mainly based on the good deal we got for a central four star hotel and the fact that I can speak Spanish... which was actually no help at all. Catalan is their national language and they mostly refuse to respond to you if you speak to them in Spanish, even though they clearly understand. Honestly, they're more willing to speak English than Spanish!

I won't bore you all with a play-by-play of my five day holiday, but we had an awesome time.

La Sagrada Familia was one of the highlights for me. It's an in-progress cathedral designed by Gaudi, but it looks like a melted Disney castle. It's just beautiful. Inside, huge stained glass windows dominate so when the sun shines (which is always - hey, it's Spain) the entire room is bathed in different colours. 

We paid to go all the way up one of the towers, which gives you a magnificent view of the whole of Barcelona. Then I had to be dragged down the steep winding stairs, but as the alternative was cowering and whimpering at the top, I can live with it.

It was actually more interesting than my expression would have you believe.

Parc Guell is the other Gaudi must-see experience in Barcelona, but it's very different from La Sagrada Familia. For a start, it's entirely outside which will leave your skin with a lovely red outline of your dress, if you're not careful. Which I clearly wasn't.

This is where Gaudi's iconic mosaic animals are based and his gingerbread-esque houses. He actually lived in the one you can see below, on the left.

We also visited the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, which I didn't find particularly riveting but is a lovely building. It was interesting at first but it had quite repetetive themes so we moved on fairly early. 

We did visit the beach but as neither of us are really 'beach people' and we accidentally stumbled across a nudist beach, we just kept walking!

We went on a cable car ride up the mountain to a tiny little castle at the top. It was part of the Spanish invasion but tends to be visited for the views of the entire city and harbour. You can see for miles and it was a lovely place to just sit and consider how lucky and how happy you really are.

 

For me, I think the city itself is the best part of Barcelona. It just doesn't stop. You can wander through what you think is an average park, but then you turn a corner and you're confronted with the most magnificent fountain you've ever seen. Wandering down a tiny alleyway can mean you end up in a beautiful courtyard filled with quirky little shops.

I swear I nearly cried when we had to come home. I really just 'clicked' with Barcelona. There was so much more we could have seen and done, and we packed in as much as we possibly could. 

If there's a point to this post (other then explaining why I haven't been around much) it's that you really should go to Barcelona. It's so much more than I expected in every possible way and I definitely want to go back there one day.