Writing Wednesday

Well hello there! I woke up this morning, at the reasonable hour of 6am and decided that today is a day I write. This is the most joyful thing about working for myself: I can make that decision. And, as I put in some hours at my desk on Sunday while the football was on, I can do that with a clear conscience. 

This morning I had time to do a quick Spanish lesson, followed by a Scottish Gaelic one. Five minutes of each, via Duolingo. I've been doing the Spanish, on and off, for about 2 years or so but the Gaelic is new and I'm doing it simply because I like the idea of it. So far my favourite word has to be 'snog'. Pronounced snok it actually means 'nice'. Which snogging is, so it all works out. 

My favourite word in Spanish? Esta aqui. Which means 'is here' and feels very grounding. I also like that the 2 can be smashed together: esta aqui snog. Here is nice. 

Which it is. 

Also nice? Narcissi purchased on a whim. 

I've also started doing some exercises I found on the Versus Arthritis website. These are stretches and there are ones for specific areas of the body but I tend to stick to the morning, day and evening sessions. 15-20 minutes, whatever time of day I chose, to keep things moving, muscles supple and joints lubricated (isn't lubricated a dreadful word?). Today, I did the morning ones and then headed for the kitchen feeling in the mood for muesli. 

This I make myself: oats, seeds from pumpkins, sunflowers and poppies, raisins, ginger (good for inflammation caused by arthritis), topped with grated apple and zapped in the microwave for 30 seconds because I don't like cold milk. Do I feel impossibly smug about my virtuous breakfast? Why yes. Yes I do. And should the rest of the day go to pot and I finish it by eating nothing but toast, no matter. I'm ahead of myself. 

Mornings and evenings also involve a dose of swamp juice as prescribed by the no-nonsense acupuncturist. Bless her, she describes it as a little bitter. A better description would be "the cocktail I'll be served when I'm in hell". I follow it with a peanut butter chaser to try and neutralise it. 

Nice too? The first hot cross bun of the year. 

Last night, we finally managed to catch up with the latest Stanley Tucci episode. Oh my. The urbane coolness, the suavity and understated sexiness of the man. And Italy, although Italy's sexiness is more one that flaunts itself with deep eyes, lowered husky voice and suggestive finger running up your forearm. Oof. 

They are a TREAT and I'm spinning out the series for as long as possible. One episode a week least I binge and wake one morning to find myself miraculously conceiving a small child with serious glasses, crisply pressed shirts and a knack with a negroni. 

If you haven't seen them yet, do. But have something delicious to eat at the ready because you will get hungry. 

Always late to a party, I finally got round to reading Normal People at the weekend, having avoided it for a long time on the grounds it was about Young People being young and sexy and I couldn't muster the energy for it, let alone feel like it had anything to offer me. 

Except that it did, of course. Rooney lingers with exquisite precision over the tiniest of details, the cup being placed back on its saucer, the strand of hair, the muted clap of a laptop shutting. Everything is understated but positioned Just So, each word placed carefully. But that's not to say it isn't compelling or that the pace is too slow. She moves it forward, keeps us moving and growing with Marianne and Connell and leaves them at just the right moment. Not perfect, but as near dammit as I've read this year.

Brace yourself for my hot take on a different bestseller from 6 years ago next time.  

And surprisingly nice? A 'virgin' pina colada at a fancy-pants night out for 

International Women's Day last week. It was like a pudding in a glass.  

The wedding invitations are finally complete and at the printers as I type. There has been the usual faff around timings and what to put on the insert and who, of the extensive guest list, we can actually fit into the registry office. I have come down hard against inviting random old friends of N's parents who he hasn't seen for over a decade just because they were at his brother's wedding. And he has come down hard against my nonsense about time and need to be everywhere FIVE minutes before the start. 

Mum is fighting against children being invited (I think she had a bad experience at her own wedding), but we have so many friends with kids, that it seems a shame to ban them and aren't weddings all about family anyway? Besides, parents I know with kids will be overjoyed to have a legitimate reason for a night off and will be unlikely to bring the little treasures along with them. Mum and I are taking a trip to Brum Rag Market in April to buy the fabric for the dress, which will be a relaxed experience in no way ending in a row. 

It will totally end in a row. 

N and I have both come down hard on the subject of presents. A plus of marrying at this advanced age is that we have enough of everything. We have no need for matching etched wine glasses, plates, bed linen or matching dressing gowns. We have enough cutlery, mugs and cushions to see us through to the next world. Anyone buying us a "Live Laugh Love" sign will be banished to the cold outer edges of our circle and then get it gifted back to them at Christmas. So we've opted for donations instead, splitting it between the MS Society and Medecins Sans Frontiere. 

As I type, the utterly, breathtakingly, wonderful news that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is at Tehran's airport, allowed to fly back to Britain, has come up on the news. After so many years, this is an incredible piece of good news and a true ray of light on a very dull and rainy day. 

Which is a good note to end this post on. May your Wednesdays have rays of light too. 

And a nice surprise at a client meeting. 

Of Breads and Beds

 The Kid went back up to Sunderland last Friday, leaving me feeling somewhat bereft - there have been too many goodbyes this year. At least I sent him home fully stocked with casseroles, train snacks, carrot cake and my flask with coffee in it. I can't fix his relationship or make the government properly fund his work or change the housing market so there's the slightest possibility he won't be at the mercy of shitty landlords all his life, but I can make sure he's nourished while he copes with it all. 

 

 

While he was here, we played at tourists in our own city for a day. We took a long walk along the canal, all the way to where it opens out into the river, pausing to watch a barge navigate a lock, which I like watching but which also gives me the weirdies. 

From there, we wandered up to the cathedral to look at Arthur's tomb, the tiny carved fantastical creatures on the misericords and incredible ceilings. Then to lunch where I had the nicest lightest gluten free focaccia I have ever had. Bit of a treat and makes me wonder why so much gluten-free bread is so bloody awful. I once ordered some from a company that claimed they had been developing their recipe for their own gluten-free needs. 

 

 

All I can say is that their needs must have been of the battering-thine-enemy-with-baked-goods kind. Not a heavier bread have I ever lifted or attempted to chew my way through. Never mind avoiding swimming after eating, I was avoiding puddles. 

Today is the day I phone the vet for the Great Boo's test results. A week before we went down south, he went missing. Having owned many cats over my lifetime, I didn't think we'd ever see him again but N was more determined and through the concerted use of Facebook Lost & Found pet pages and the Next Door app (no, me neither), he was found 3 miles away, about 100 yards from the M5. 

 

 

THREE miles away? This is a cat we had to cut a hole in the fence for because he couldn't manage to jump over it and we were tired of our neighbours ringing the front door bell to tell us he was sat outside the gate waiting to be let in. He did not travel 3 miles under his own steam.

Regardless of means (and I have dark suspicions), he was found safe and well after an hour of scouring the streets yelling "Boo! Come on Boo!" like idiots (thanks to Dylan and Emily for joining in the shouting with gusto and providing a cat box at short notice). A little thinner, he generally seemed fine. 

 

 

But he is not fine. Patches of bald skin are appearing in his fur, his pupils are dilated 80% of the time (the time he's awake anyway) and he's clearly on high alert all the time. The vet thinks stress ("Hello! I'm here to diagnose the bleeding obvious and then take £90 from you!") but ordered some tests anyway. Results are overdue. 

Also overdue is a response from a company I'm now referring to as The Worst Bed Company in the World. Their name begins with B and ends with S, which is ironic as that's the same as the word I've been shouting every time their crappy, over-hard, completely unyielding mattress has woken me with cramp, pins and needles and general discomfort so great that at 4am, all hope of sleep is lost. I've pretty much given up sleeping on it and moved into the spare room. 

If anyone likes mattresses that feel like it's punishing you for a misdemeanour in a past life, let me know. It's yours for £600 and an incantation of evil directed at B_____S

'At sunrise, hope; at dusk, peace" - unless your mattress

comes from B_____S, in which case, no.

 

Holding Myself to Account

Way back in June, following a series of killings of unarmed Black Americans and the Black Lives Matter protests that took place all around the world, I made a pledge that once a month I would buy and read a book by a Black and/or Asian author in order to educate myself and hopefully make a positive change in the way I knew best. 

How did I do? Well, in June I started reading David Olusoga's Black and British: A Forgotten History. A confession: I am still reading it. It's so well written that it's the one book I feel guilty for not finishing but as well as being very erudite, it's also a dense and chewy read. I can't whip through at my usual speed, I need to give it the time it deserves, so I am, a few pages at a time, alternately grieving and furious over the stories told, regularly picking my jaw up as I go.

July was Lemn Sissay's My Name is Why, which I talked about in my July reading round up. I'm still taken aback by the grace and forgiveness Sissay demonstrates at every turn of his fate. 

This month, I have read Atul Gawande's Being Mortal (oh my, that book!) and have treated myself to Samin Nosrat's Salt Fat Acid Heat. I also have Bernadine Evaristo's Girl Woman Other, which I'm hugely looking forward to.

After that, I have a list of authors I want to read: Children of Blood and Bone, Negroland, The Wife's Tale for starters. 

How do I think I'm doing? Probably not well enough but it is a start. I am still reading Toni Morrison's Mouth Full of Blood, which like the Olusoga, is a dense read. She was so fiercely intelligent that I feel almost humbled to read her and again, I feel it needs more than my usual cracking pace. A few pages at a time and the pause for reflection. 

Pausing for reflection is always good. Certainly better than screaming into the void. 

 And practically? Plans are afoot to incorporate diverse stories into new museum displays, not just women but examining trade routes and the roads our foods travelled to reach us. And we're working with Don't Settle, an initiative that brings young people of colour into museums to challenge rhetoric and create sustainable change. I'm hugely excited about both these activities. I can't bring people back to life or change historical events, but I can damn well make changes for a better future. 

All it takes is a willingness to be vulnerable. To allow others to rise.

Things I have learned recently

I started (and abandoned due to lack of time) a post last week after recovering from a bit of minor surgery that was to remove some pre-cancerous cells from my cervix. As the letter from the doctors said, "this is not cancer, but has the potential, if left, to turn into cancer." 

That was a less reassuring statement than I think they meant it to be.

 The boyfriend strimming away with an expression of fierce concentration, 

seconds before the strimmer wire ran out and we admitted defeat.   

 Must say that, damn, they worked fast. Not only in the treatment but in keeping the gaps between letters and treatment short. The speed they work at reassures me: within 4 weeks, I'm back in the coloscopy room. Within 30 minutes, I'm back in the car, pre-cancerous cell-less, asking the boyfriend if he wants pasta for tea.

For all the moaning that this city's hospital gets, I've never had anything but positive (if they can be called that) experiences with them. Although management not letting the nurses park on site (we were gossiping during procedures) is frankly outrageous, and I hope each and every one of the management who are allowed to, stub their toes on the way to their cars.  

 

The bramble mountain. There are wallflowers there too. 

One day I'll explain my wallflower intolerance. 

Spent some time on the allotment this week. One of the beds that we'd covered in membrane had finally given up and was living-weed-free, so we cleared the dead stuff, strimmed the paths and wilder areas, tacked down membrane that had worked it's way loose and hacked back at the brambles that resembled triffids (after I'd raided them for blackberries, obviously). Found what looks to be asparagus gone wild, albeit asparagus with it's own beetles. 

Little wee red and black beetles copulating freely with nary a care in the world for my

 asparagus. Little buggers.  

 

Those blackberries may be the only crop we get from the allotment this year: the ground underneath the dead weeds is so hard and compacted that it broke the fork. And then the spade. Hopefully the deluge of rain that's promised for tomorrow may actually soften the ground enough for us to do something with it. 

Met the allotment neighbour - an earnest young man with a small baby and 2 allotments. He's clearly going down the self-sufficiency route, which I once considered, having fancied myself as something of a Barbara Goode. Truth (and experience) is, I'm more of a Margot Leadbetter. And I cannot warm to hens.

 

Said bent fork. Useful for picking up brambles that you've cut down. Sod all use for anything else. 

 

So the message to take away from this post is:

a) never skimp on your garden tools - a bent fork is use to neither man nor beast
b) always have your smear test
c) always know your own body and have the courage to say when something ain't right
d) don't let your boyfriend see the "What Symptoms To Watch Out For Post-Surgery" letter because he'll then use it as a running gag for the next few weeks
e) spend a really uncomfortable night sleeping on a deflated airbed the weekend before so that, honestly, the procedure was a doddle compared to waking up at 5am after a heavy night and trying to stand up in a 2 man tent. 

I am not, and never will be, a happy camper. Although the marshmallows toasted on the open fire were almost worth it. The first sip of coffee in the morning after? Definitely worth it. 

You can't see them, but there are people there too. Taken before the great marshmallow rush.

But here are a few things that have made me happy this week:

• sea eagles are making a return to the Isle of Wight 
• the wild tiger population is finally rising
• the amazing pink seesaws
• this twitter campaign
• the museum I work for finally getting it's National Lottery Heritage Fund grant after 2 years of work, research, bid writing and trying to find match-funding
• finally starting to learn Spanish thanks to the Language Zen app. Been meaning to for years, can't see any reason for delaying it
• late, so late, to the Community party but loving it
• Medieval marginalia, a small obsession of mine, on Instagram. No, that's not me. This is me.
• My epic Saturday night Scrabble win

 Yeah, that's me on the left. I lost the next night, so we're all good.