Expedition of the Springiest Kind

It is hard to resist spring, for all it's wild and woolly weather, waking up to snow flurries, winds to take your ears off and glowering skies, only to have it completely change within the hour. That first glimmering of weak sunshine appears to apologise for it's lateness before getting onto the serious business of warming your bones.

Easter Monday, I and 4 friends set off for a walk in the Malverns, a little known area of it, judging by the few people we saw. I had expected hoardes of them, maddened by incessecant insiding, squabbling and puffing their way along the ridge, but my friends are wiser than me, and in charge of the route, so we made our way downhill from the northern side of the town, through a farmyard where the tractor appreciators among us (me and 2 others - I'm not the only weirdo) were in seventh heaven. Plus there were lambs and gambolling to witness. Is there anything more cheering to the eye than lambs, wobbly on their legs, leaping at each other?

This was, by a long shot, the longest walk I have undertaken for at least 2 years, but determination and cabin fever will carry you a long way. We set off in snow that was whipped into tiny frenzies by a wind that clearly had a grduge against something. The copse was a welcome relief from it, even if it did rattle the tree branches furiously: they sounded like bones outside a witch doctor's, clacking together in a gale.

There were loved-up trees that had twisted together in unbreakable embrace, snakey roots to trip the unwary. No bluebells (too early) but wood anenomes and violets in carpets, and the smell of wild garlic hanging around like an open air deli. We didn't pick any. Instagram feeds are full enough of wild garlic pesto - they don't need me adding my 2 penn'orth.

I liked the tiny mossy bolt hole under this tree and instantly wished I could live in it. Or at least write about the tiny person living in it. She would be called Minnow Brown and have wrens for friends. This is a story that first cropped up when my son was small and I wanted to tell him stories. Given that he's now 22 and I've still not written a word, I think Minnow Brown may have to remain in our imaginations. Which is probably for the best.

By the time we reached the quarry, the skies had completely cleared and the sun was making up for lost time. The wind stayed and when we stopped for shelter and lunch (and to look for fossils), it rattled the bones-branches even more furiously.

Apparently, this quarry has been rigoursly plundered for fossils over the years. The Earth Heritage Trust maintain it now. I loved the layers of the rocks in the quarry walls above the lake (sadly small - there has not been enough rain, even if it feels like there has), each delicately resting above the next, subtly shaded differently. This is, according to geologists, stratification, but I think it looks like the layers of a piece of delicate French patisserie. 

I may have been ready for my sandwiches at this point.

Not so ready that I couldn't join in with turning over rocks to see what there was in them. To be honest, I don't need to be in a fossil quarry to do that, I can lose hours looking over gravel or at the stones I turn up at the allotment. Geology and fossils are fascinating, so this was like being in a candy shop. We found mostly traces of tiny sea creatures, or rhynchonellida brachiopod, if you're feeling fancy. I brought just 2 home and they are now with the rest of my small collection. One day I shall catalogue them and then I shall really have gone over to the dark side.

Everywhere were signs of green and new growth. Tiny leaves on trees, distant hills wearing a gauzy cloak of green over their brown winter pelt, blossom petals drifting down. It is most cheering after this winter. As was the glow of satisfaction at having made it so far without legs buckling. It is good to be active again.

That said, the above was taken when we lost the path, my feet were complaining and I really really needed a wee but don't like wild weeing. It's amazing how grumpy a previously sunny tempered, entirely amenable person can get in that situation. Imagine how bad I was then. 

Heading back to the cars, we passed fancy drains, fancy landscaping and fancy outside art.

I have never stumbled more gratefully into a Waitrose loo than I did that day. 

Of course, across the land, things reopened yesterday but we failed to jump into action at the calls to spend spend spend to save the economy. I did go to a garden centre at the weekend, and that will do me. Despite being half vaccinated - people can talk to my left side only - I'm reluctant to throw myself into crowded situations, but that's me on a normal day, let alone Right Now. My natural reluctance to be jostled in stores has stood me in good stead so far, I see no reason to change it for the moment. 

That said, I miss bookshops and charity shops, so I may only last till my invoice is paid and then I'll be poppin' off to the shops. 

This week is all about preparing as there is a big weekend coming up. Oh yes, this coming weekend is Shed Arrival Weekend and I am already excited. So many plans for what will go in there that my brain can't contain them all and I keep coming across scraps of paper where I've scribbled "wallpaper?", "where potting table?", "make seed store", "canes too big - storage!". 

I will, of course, document the whole installation in tedious detail. You have been warned...

Getting Back To It

It was with some relief that I returned to work this week. As I'm working from home and it involves sitting at a laptop, this is something I can do without worrying about being asked to lift anything heavy. The heaviest thing I lift is the kettle (filled to the minimum required for a coffee boost). I may still be banned from doing any yoga, digging or anything interesting, but I can still use my brain. 

And my brain is glad that I can because it was getting impatient. I could almost feel it itching with ideas and plans, which is always a good sign I'm recovering. That said, one podcast recording, one meeting and an afternoon of emails completely wiped me out, leaving me yawning and barely able to hold a crochet hook by 7pm. 

I'm so much better that I was even allowed out for a walk all by myself last week. True, I did try leaving the house in my slippers (got 3 paces out of the door and realised what I'd done), the pace is slow and the distance not far, but the joy of being able to get out into the air is not to be underestimated. 

 

And then it snowed! And got very icy! A fear of slipping kept me from going outside again for 3 days - I really do not need to fall over right now. Although, I managed to almost take a tumble in my own home by getting my foot tangled with a phone charger cable, so maybe I just shouldn't be allowed to stand up on my own. Or at least move from my seat without supervision. Sadly N wasn't taken with the idea of being my personal watchdog - "mind out for the wool! There's a pile of books to your left!" - on the grounds that he has a proper job what pays the mortgage. 

He has promised that we'll take a trip up to the allotment at the weekend though, so I can't complain about him. 

So far in lockdown we've had surprisingly few rows. The most recent involved him playing The Idles very loudly while he hoovered and I dealt with laundry upstairs. I loathe that band. I mean, really hate them. They make me want to tear off my ears and beat the lead singer into silence with them. I don't know why, I just do. So I did the only reasonable thing and sat upstairs, seething, until the album ended and I could go back downstairs and tell him to put his damn earphones in.

 

It could be said that he was reasonable in asking why I hadn't mentioned it at the start, instead of waiting until the end, by which time I was in the right frame of mind to throw things (I didn't, credit me with some dignity, if not rationality). But I was not in a mood to be reasonable. At least, not until several hours and a bottle of wine later. 

This morning saw a lovely doorstep visit from my son and his boyfriend. They delivered and received belated Christmas presents, and he received a pile of post he hasn't thought to have redirected. That is something he's going to have to deal with soon as they are moving up to Sunderland at the end of Feb. I am trying to gather the tatters of my rationality around me about this - he's not moving to Australia, the house they're getting has a spare room for visits, he's healthy and happy - but it's a close thing. 

Not helped by my recent afternoon organising all my photos into neat digital files. I tumbled right down memory lane to the time when it was just him and me, and the places we visited, the hills we climbed and the books we shared. Lockdown or no, I will be giving him a hug goodbye before he goes. 

 

In other breaking lockdown news, I took a pair of scissors to my fringe in between meetings on Tuesday and instantly regretted it. Usually I trim mere millimeters off so it rests just below my eyebrows, hiding my massive forehead and enabling me to see, but I'd got fed up with seeing all that hair, so grabbed the blunt kitchen scissors and hacked off a centimetre, without factoring in the spring-back effect. 

Oh dear. Released from the weight of itself, the rest of the fringe has sprung up even further, leaving me looking perpetually surprised and slightly lopsided. I find myself tilting my head to one side in Zoom meetings, trying to disguise it. It'll settle down and grow back again, I know but my eyebrows are seriously traumatised by the sudden exposure and my neck is developing a crick in it. 

Really, it's just a symptom of wanting something to change and I'm craving a bigger chop to my hair all over. I'm thinking to the ears, nothing too drastic (I shaved my head once in the mistaken belief I would look like Winona Ryder with her pixie crop - I very much did not), but enough to rid me of all this hair. I keep picking up scissors and putting them down...N may have to hide them before the week is out. 

My attempts at sourdough have all failed miserably. The starters I started refused to develop, lying sulky under a sour brown liquid and giving off a smell that no mother could love. I do not have much luck with bread making under normal circumstances. My loaves always resemble dwarf bread (see Terry Pratchett for that running gag) and could potentially be classed as weapons if dropped from any height over 2 foot. So I called it a day on that Earth Mother dream and ordered some instead. I will feed back (pun fully intended) if it's any good. 

I did once think I'd be an Earth Mother sort of person: keeping chickens, baking bread, hoard of angelic children being homeschooled around me. Then I discovered that chickens smell (and are quite deranged), I can't bake a bread worth eating and children really get in the way of your reading time. And I don't think clogs are acceptable footwear. Besides, I'm not a one for labels - they always seem too much to live up to. 

All photos from a handful of the museums, galleries, hills and beaches I've visited with the Kid. Yes, I am milking this.

Just Waiting

This is the first morning I've woken up feeling even vaguely human and not covered in a thin film of sweat that made me want to scrape my own skin off. 

Yes, last Tuesday the universe looked at how my recovery was going and decided to throw an infection in to see how I reacted. That morning I'd woken up and thought "well, that's a bit odd" as I scrabbled from under suddenly oppressive covers and felt the room ever so slightly tilt on it's axis. Being me, I shrugged this off with a couple of paracetamol and got on with my big plans for the day, i.e. moved from the bed to the sofa, via the kettle. 

By mid afternoon my temperature was spiking around 37.7 (that's Celsius for all you non-metric fans) and I was shivering under 2 blankets on said sofa (a piece of furniture I'm really growing to detest as I spend so much time on it and it begins to feel more like a prison). Wednesday, I caved and phoned the doctors, who promptly sent me to hospital for tests and, 4 hours later, confirmed that it was indeed an infection, go home and take these mega anti-biotics. 

Since then I've done little apart from lying upon the detestable sofa, watching reruns of Poirot and Miss Marple, feeling my brain atrophy between hot flushes. I tell a lie, I did spend an hour one morning weeping gently because I couldn't find the new jar of peanut butter. When I finally did, hidden behind a jar of jam, I spent another 10 minutes weeping gently in relief. That is the level my brain is at right now. 

Reading is right out. I've managed The Dark is Rising, The Living Mountain and The Box of Delights, but anything else is beyond me. A friend dropped round some books and I'd ordered myself Ring the Hill, but I can only manage a page or two at most before going back to doom scrolling or sleeping. 

N's refrain this winter has been "you are ILL, will you please behave like you're ill". This is the first time in years when I've been afforded that luxury and it's been a massive relearning. That there is someone else in the house who can do the hoovering, cooking, emptying of bins, get the shopping in, rather than a minor whom I'm supposed to be looking after...well, it's taken some adjusting to. 

The plus side, apart from arms made colourful by various attempts to draw blood from my stone-like veins, is that the world feels very distant and news isn't sending me into a tailspin. I wonder if this is how alien life (if it exists) feels, looking down on us? "Would you look at what those stupid people are up now? Good grief, it's chaos down there!" "Yes yes Xerbaital5, humans are crazy like goital fish, now, put down those knurd-glasses and come to the table, your frimpt is getting rubbery."

All that being said, the situation over those preposterous and pathetic “free” school lunches which amounts to nothing short of a scandal. If you’re as angry as me about it, you can donate to Fareshare (https://fareshare.org.uk/) an organisation most definitely not lining its own pockets. 

I am quite proud that, despite all of this, I have manage to stick to my pledge of no-gluten. Well, mostly. But honestly, if you're going to leave a tube of Pringles out right near where I could stumble and, reaching out to save myself from a fall, find my hand wedged into the tube and coming out clutching several that then, due to the motion of the stumble, find their way into my mouth, what do you expect?

And yes, Pringles are covered, covered I tell you, in wheat flour. Which seems especially cruel of the makers. A surprising amount of stuff is. 

And through all this, I'd love to tell you that Mabel has been a constant, purring presence by my side, keeping me company and generally being a lap cat. But this is Mabel and lap cat she is not. I get 5 minutes purring, nudging attention in bed in the morning, and then she's off out exploring. Or chasing off the persistent tabby that comes into the garden. Or launching ambushes on Big Old Thor. Or sitting on the fence, like a furry watchful guardian, monitoring the comings and goings of our neighbours. She's even taken to leaping up the fence when she hears R next door coming along his garden path, so she can meow down at him. 

I'm not sure R likes this as he never says hello to her. Thor certainly doesn't and will rush out when he sees her up there, uttering his strange hoarse croak that's supposed to be a meow, telling her off for her daring. 

As you can tell by the length of this nothing-in-particular post, I am now feeling much better. After a few days of feeling really ill, a few more of being at the Laurie Lee level of melodramatically-ill,  I now feel human again. Lee was a master of sickroom melodrama, well into his old age and there's an hilarious passage in Cider with Rosie where he imagines the celebrations in the street at his recovery. 

I've managed a short walk outside this week. The clouds were a bobbly blanket across the sky and reflected in the water, the air felt sharp and damp, and it was just good to be outside. N was distinctly uninspired by the murky canal, lowering grey skies, bare branches and sloppy paths. "It just all looks dead." It's not dead at all, of course - as I pedantically told him. It's all just waiting for the right moment to start the business of life again.

There's a metaphor in there somewhere, if only I could scramble the brain cells together to find it. 

This is quite my favourite bridge over the canal - I love the brickwork for some
reason - and the end point of yesterday's walk. 

Slowing it Down

 Today is the start of my very favourite month and with it, I can feel the very bones of me start to relax and my brain take a sigh of relief. October brings cooler nights, my cloud-like duvet, the click and whir of the heating in the mornings, stews and soups, nesting and resettling. I find summer quite unsettling with its exposed flesh, eyes squinting against the sun, chafing and sweating. Hurrah for October where the sun still shines but the temperature is cool. I adore it. 

This week has been a week off for me and N, although he did have to work on Tuesday morning (endless Zoom!), so I grabbed the chance to catch up with a friend I haven't seen for over a year. We headed to this arboretum, which has the national collection of acers and Japanese maples, both trees I love, and we caught up on all the changes.

The last time we had seen each other, N & I were separated (long story), I still rented in the House of Inconvenience and the Kid lived with me. On her side, her daughter was about to get married and her long-term partner was seriously ill. Laurie was a wonderful, gentle, charming man, full of old-school manners, a passion for theatre and horse racing, and I adored him.

 He was full of stories of a life lived to its very corners. Always open to new experiences and ways of thinking. You could sit down and have a long chat about the new Hockney works of art and end up discussing who would win in the 3.15 at Cheltenham, via diversions into who played the best Hamlet (David Tennant - which we'd actually all seen together - and Andrew Scott, in case you're wondering), the best type of soil to plant brassicas in and his experience as an evacuee. 

He was the least judgemental person I have ever met. 

So we walked and talked about everything under the sun, but especially about Laurie and how the lockdown has given my friend a chance to mourn him fully, without distractions and with a tenderness I hope I evoke when I die. We parted with full hearts, bellies (thank you marmalade and poppy seed cake) and, in my case, a Japanese hornbeam for the garden. Purchased at the garden centre, not just dug up and lifted off site. I haven't yet reached my Nan's level of pinching off cuttings in gardens and carrying them home in a box of wet kitchen paper, but I fear it won't be long. And even she drew the line at digging entire plants up. 

That one expedition aside, we've done very little this week and gratefully so. N cleared out the horror-show that was the shed and rearranged it so I can now get to my bike without having to step over 5 bags of different compost, shift rakes and spades to one side and then disentangle it from the hose. Pots are neatly stacked in size order and the tools form an orderly row at the end. I went in and spun round for the sheer novelty of being able to do that without being impaled on a garden cane. 

Today we were supposed to be heading to Ikea but have made the decision not to. Crowds still make me panic at the moment, add into that masks and the standard Ikea-chaos, and it was just asking for trouble. So we're going to order what we want instead and spend the rest of the day pottering around the house. 

Pottering is very much the word of the week: I've painted a wall in my retreat room a dark blue which I shall sprinkle with hand-painted constellations; my sister, her daughter and my mum all came over for coffee and cake one afternoon, we took in an exhibition of drawings and etchings at the local gallery, we've visited the allotment, I made apple muffins which are absolutely perfect for this time of year and had my first CBT therapy session, which interesting. 

We're watching Us, the Simpsons, Bake Off, Ghosts and football (well, N is, I'm reading on the sofa and making the right noises). I'm reading again and sink into a book every morning with a sigh of pleasure. We're eating foods that bring pleasure and drinking a red wine that demands respect. We're shifting furniture around and making cosy for the coming months. 

The kitten, Mabel, is now nearly 4 months old and a long, lean kitten she is now. My morning ritual goes something like this: get up, make tea, feed her, feed Big-Cat-Thor and let him out just before she pounces him, trying to get him to play, take her back upstairs with me, into the retreat. There, once she's settled down after checking my toes are still not something she can eat, gnawing on my book/phone to see if they are edible, sniffing the plants to check they haven't become tasty overnight and knocking any pens or hairclips off the dressing table onto the floor, she settles around my neck, purring like a tiny earthquake, for a snooze while I read. As she's still housebound for another 6 weeks at least, her fur is incredibly soft: it's like wearing a silken thermal scarf. 

The only dark spot on her otherwise light and playful presence, is her behaviour with B-C-T. To be fair, he is a grumpy old so and so: although he's only 5, he seems to have embraced a middle-age more suited to a Dad in a 1950s sitcom. If he could smoke a pipe, wear slippers and read the Telegraph, I'm pretty sure he would. However, Mabel is more of a freewheeling, playful, hippy spirit, what's yours is mine, hooray for today, kind of personality, coupled with a wilfulness that all toddlers exhibit. Her favourite thing is to sit on the arm of a chair until he passes underneath, whereupon she leaps, all 4 legs spreadeagled, onto his back, causing him to race around, growling and spitting, with her clinging on like a rodeo girl. Once he manages to shake her, there are a few minutes of feverish fighting before he manages to break free and make an escape. 

We're hoping time and neutering will calm her down with him, but if you have any tips, let me know. Heaven knows, I can't be supervising their behaviours all the time. 

This evening, I'm off to a friend's house for dinner. We scored a perfect Bunty hit in a charity shop a few weeks ago, spotting 10, original, 1960-70s Bunty's in damn good condition for £3, so tonight we'll sort through them, eat roast chicken, drink some wine and indulge in a good old gossip. We are both full of plans for things we'd like to start up, including a local group for peri, full and post menopausal women in the area. She is just post and I, with my hysterectomy planned for next year, will be thrown full on into it before too long. Until the question of the hysterectomy came up, I hadn't given my fertility another thought: I'd had the Kid and was happy at that. Once it did though, I found myself questioning absolutely everything about myself, the very fundamental core of myself and feeling almost bereaved. It was very odd. 

Anyway, a leaflet entitled "So, You're Past It" or "What is the Point of You Now?" handed out by doctors doesn't really cut it in the information/support stakes, so we're thinking of setting up our own. And a podcast where she demonstrates her considerable knowledge of history and I play the one who says "ooooh, really?" a lot. And and and. 

So many plans, so little time. Or rather, given that a growing time obsession was one of my "I think I'm going mad" triggers, enough time. If you really want to do something and its the right fit for you, it'll happen. Breathe, look at the trees, take it slow. 

My Week In...Smells

You see? I didn’t find a better word than smell after my first My Week In post, so I’ve decided to embrace it. Smells are marvellous after all: our smell memory is so much stronger than anything else, and the merest whiff of something can send us spinning down through the years to our grandmother’s house or back to last year and that holiday beach or even just to the beginning of this year. I love smells, so the word stays. 

Anyway, this was my week in 7 smells: 

Strawberries from the farm shop, so ripe that I could smell them from the boot of the car as I drove home  

The acidic tang of pickling vegetables: courgettes, cucumber, beetroot, runner beans. We have been pickling everything the allotment has to offer and it was this smell that sent me cascading down through the years to my Nan’s house. 

Clean bedding, fresh from the washing line in the brief gap between rain storms. 

Rain! That beautiful, earthy, fresh smell of petrichor that the ground releases when rain hits heat-burden grass, bricks and stones. 

The oat, honey and lavender bath milk I’ve created for myself in an effort to create a sustainable bathing product that doesn’t aggravate my eczema prone skin.

Fresh bread, toasted and topped with a very nice sheep’s cheese. 

That curve between my boyfriend’s shoulder and neck.  

July Reading

I genuinely didn't expect to get much reading done in July. There was too much to do outside, too much work to do and my brain was skittering around like Mabel on our tiled kitchen floor. 

Actually, Mabel is responsible for the fact I did read so much. On my 2nd week of being signed off, she joined the family and, being so small, spent quite a lot of time sleeping in the crook of my elbow whilst I tried not to fret on the sofa. It would have been cruel to move her, so what else could I do but pick up a book from the top of the teetering To Read pile and, well, read. 

And slowly, as she settled in, warm and soft and purring, my brain slowed its skittering. At the start, I read but couldn't tell you what the pages contained, the words just washed over me. 2 books jolted me out of that: My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay and The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson. They were astonishing. Sissay's for his unsparing account of a childhood spent without love and understanding; Nelson's for her exploration of gender, sexuality and family. Sissay's made me cry, Nelson's made me smile. 

To complement the Sissay, I thoroughly recommend the Imagine documentary on the BBC. Normally Yentob gets right on my pip but this was sensitively handled with enough space left for Sissay to fill with his own words. 

Angelou I've talked about before, my love of Vargas and Christie continues (and not just for the hokey covers, but seriously, have you seen a more hilarious Christie cover than this one?).

I approached The Attenbury Emeralds with an open mind but it was not good. The tone was off, the dialogue hit duff notes, the plot far too complicated and rushed and, oh, it just wasn't satisfactory. As a long time Sayers' fan, I should have known better. It was a bit like Sophie Hannah's attempts at Poirot stories: well intentioned but just not right. 

But I'm going to end on a high note: my pal, Liz Hyder, won the Waterstones Young Adult Book of the Year last week and I'm pleased as a pleased thing that's just had some pleasing news! Bearmouth was one of my books of the year last year - it's an incredible piece of writing with a unique story and an unforgettable voice in Newt. An absolute must-read for any young adult in your life.

July books: 

Seeking Whom He May Devour - Fred Vargas

An Uncertain Place - Vargas

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

My Name is Why - Lemn Sissay

The Attenbury Emeralds - Jill Paton Walsh

The Cornish Coast Murder - John Bude

Lolly Willowes - Sylvia Townsend Warner

Uncommon Reader - Alan Bennett

The Argonauts - Maggie Nelson

Cat Among the Pigeons - Agatha Christie

The 4.50 from Paddington - Christie

Hound of Death and Other Stories - Christie

Weird things that I am missing

For the most part, my boyfriend and I are missing relatively few things and focus on the positives. he doesn't have his 50 minute commute to and from work any more, and I get to cycle to the museum on relatively traffic free streets 3 days a week, which feels a little like freedom. 

But last week, I had the oddest craving for something that really can't happen now, won't happen for a long time and I was never really into in the first place. 

I craved, to the point where it was an itch in my brain, a spa day. 

I wanted to be wrapped in fluffy white bathrobes, handed cool glasses of sparkling Prosecco, have someone deep tissue massage my shoulders, have my fingernails painted, my faced oiled and smoothed, dip in and out of a turquoise mosaic-ed pool. Eat delicious tiny things that someone else had made. Read magazines Tatler and Vogue while poolside. Drink more Prosecco. 

I don't even like Prosecco. And I'd rather eat a hearty stew than faffy little bits of melon arranged in a pretty pattern. 

I never paint my fingernails. 

What the heck brought that on? Possibly a desire to be looked after arising from weeks of feeling a little out of control? Possibly a deep wish to be far away from the current panic and somewhere cushioned from all that? 

Anyway, I did it. I googled a few. Maybe next year. Then I painted my own fingernails as compensation. I quite like the way they wink at me as I type, even on my short, stubby fingers. 

What's been your weird lockdown craving?