So I have a tendency to feel like the world (human and not) is ganging up on me, I’m plagued with upsets that keep me reeling from one set of knock-on consequences to another without anything just working. And yes, this is partly just the depression and anxiety talking, but I think it’s also to do with lack of contingency for things going wrong.

The journey back from Saturday’s gig was frustrating because, by the time the concert had finished, I had to get on the last relevant train out of Warminster. Then it was late, which looked like meaning I would miss the last relevant connection at Bath. Then that was really late, which meant I got on it but had no idea if there would still be any connections at Didcot to get to Oxford (though that would probably have been a resolvable problem). Given I was going home and so didn’t have a set time to be there, one train in reserve would have taken the stress out of it – I would just have read a few dozen more pages of War and Peace and got on whatever I could. Without the contingency of a later train, it was a stress-fest.

And a similar thing applies to desk work where my department is overstretched so if I can’t do something because it’s delayed and I have something else on my plate by the time it arrives then finding anyone to do it can be nigh-on impossible and/or lead to me doing unpaid overtime.

And, with appropriate modifications, to many disaster-prone areas of my life.

Now you can take this too far. The back rack on my bike came detached from the bike a couple of days back, dumping my viola case onto the road. Possibly should have depended less on the bolts, given they’d already rattled undone once on that fitting … but I didn’t. Either way, the soundpost on the viola fell down (they’re held in place by the body squeezing on them top and bottom, so fairly easy to knock out and definitely a professional job to put back). Now I do need the viola, or at least a viola, for tomorrow evening and again and more crucially for a paid recording on Saturday. But it wouldn’t be sensible to pay hundreds of pounds to have a spare viola (and presumably a spare violin, spare bows … ) just in case one gets damaged. I need the money to put muesli and lentils on the table. (No, not mixed, fool.)

Nonetheless, I think it is rather naive of me to believe implicitly plans will work out in practice as defined, pretty much every time, rather than allowing for a certain amount of going wrong. It reduces how much you can do to get one bus earlier, allow for traffic holding up your bike journey across town, etc. – but it might just take the edge off the feeling of walking on collapsing bridges.