Adjusting to summer

The absolute blowsy nonsense of peonies. 

Rewatching a favourite film in the oldest cinema in the UK. 

What happens when no mow may gets out of hand (the camera is 2 feet off the ground)

First strawberry joy.

Tiny wee Mabel seeking cool spots. 

Trying to overcome my distaste for summer (so sweaty, so much flesh on display, enforced outdoor activities) and recover some time for blogging. 

I hope you're all well. Does this year feel like a mad rush for you too? So many of us feeling like Alice's White Rabbit. 

But there are peonies and peas growing sturdily and long evenings with wine and birthdays coming up. 

 

Missing in Action

Easter snuck up on me this year. While I was tapping away drafting a new otter 'adoption' pack, a colleague asked, "What are you doing over the bank holiday?" Bank holiday? I lifted my muzzle - sorry, head (I was deep in otter speak) - the puzzlement spread all over my face like a drunkenly smeared lipstick. 

They shook their head at my expression. "It's Easter this weekend."

Damn. So it is. And only 5 minutes ago, it was early March and this was happening:

A wild and woolly walk through snow flurries and slush as we went on a trip to one of the nature reserves the trust manages. It was beautiful and broke my new wellies in nicely.

Before that, it was the beginning of February, which is a dark, hard month, even for a seasoned Winter lover like me. Several times during that month, I opened up this blog intending to write something, only for the crush of words to overwhelm, and I would close it again. What was there to say? I was too busy, too sad, too dealing with the mess in my own head to write something down. And when I feel like that, there's only 1 thing to do. 

Wait. 

The olderer and wiserer I gets (apparently), the more I know this is not a permanent state of mind, merely a wave. Let it wash over me. Pick up sustenance when needed. Ask for help. Listen to the body. Rest where possible. I barely picked up a book that month, managing an exception for the Morville Hours in towards the end of it. 

If you know me, you know how much I love that book. I have reread it at least once a year since I brought it 15 years ago. My copy is dog eared, crumpled from bath-drops, stained from tea and buttery fingers. It is a balm, a tonic, a delight. Something has always held me back from visiting the actual garden though, back when it was open. What if the reality didn't match what I'd been seeing in my head? That was too big a risk. 

By coincidence, I finished the book the evening before I had a meeting in Bridgnorth, which is just a handful of miles from Morville, so I diverted my way home. The garden is shut, the owner and author ill (according to the people in that meeting who actually know her), so I didn't see it but the church is a delight, every corner containing a new wonder, the churchyard full of snowdrops and gravestones with the names of people mentioned in there. 

Finishing that book seemed to open the floodgates and a reading glut following: The Hours, Middlemarch, In Defense of Food, Mantel Pieces, The Rising Tide, Smiley's People, Notes on an Exhibition, Fried Green Tomatoes, A Life of My Own. I've been avoiding  buying new books (new anything really), so my trips to the library are more frequent, but its a nice walk through streets lined with trees and ivy and victorian terraced houses; past the park, the racecourse, the theatre. Once in, I browse at random, sometimes fiction, sometimes not. Maybe I'll look up a book from the list of ones I want to read on my phone. If I really want to read it, I'll pay the 80p to reserve it. 

 The no-plastic shop has moved to larger premises, so I no longer have to awkwardly squeeze past the beige-linened woman weighing out gluten free pasta with an expression that registers nothing but irritation at my existence, or repeat 'excuse me' increasingly loudly at the bearded young man who is expounding at length to his starry-eyed girlfriend (she'll learn) about how the toothpaste tablets are, like, really good for festivals, whilst blocking the one way system. 

Now there is room for us all to exist, to move, to fill our refillable containers without causing a blockage or bringing curses down on our heads. This does not make it any less of a discombobulating experience. 

I am always saying or doing the wrong thing. Wanting the rice when the rice container has run out. Trying to use the castille soap dispenser when it is near the end and issues noises like a dying rhino. Asking for peanut butter when the peanut butter machine is broken. Refusing a loaf of 4 day old bread on the grounds that I have no need of a weapon just yet, not even one with 10% off. 

At the end of a trip, I creep out, trying to make myself physically small, smiling to hurt my face while the owner scowls and moves scornfully onto the next customer, who hasn't been the idiot I have. It really doesn't matter how often I shop there, how much I spend, how nice I try to be. As far as I can see, there are 2 options: go in as mean as she does or stop going at all. 

But I like their peanut butter, and that my pasta is in nice glass jars, and the bread when it is fresh and chewy and delicious. I have been practising my entitled face so that I may swoop in next time, acting imperious and giving scorn back at her. However, N tells me it looks like I'm trying not to fart in her general direction. Le sigh. 

Speaking of faces, Mum and the Kid came over for Mothers Day. I cooked lamb from the organic farm and made a crumble. N is not a pudding man, but he does like a crumble. A traditional crumble. No fancy tack like oats or almonds in the topping. Imagine then, when he discovered this was a peach crumble. It was like someone had taken a favourite toy away from a small boy. 

Still, he suffered it down.  

 

Rochdale was a surprisingly stress free trip at the end of March. From what Mum had said, from what the papers say, I was half expecting some lawless, Wild West of a town, which it obviously wasn't. It has problems, yes, but the people were lovely and my hotel clean. I admired the Victorian buildings, the incredible mosaic in this church, the efficient transport system (they have trams!) that would get you the hell out of there and into Manchester within minutes. I trained some volunteers in the art of giving good guided tour. I think they enjoyed it, although I'm never asking what their irrational phobia is as a warm up question again (mine is zombies, in case you were wondering) - it caused unexpected retellings of trauma and, in one case, a strange prejudice. 

I nearly detoured on the way there: Rochdale is not so far from Middleton, where Mum is originally from. I could, perhaps, have looked up her Grandad's grave, the street her Mum grew up in: the 2-up, 2-down terraced house where Nan shared a room with her spinster Aunty Alice, and left school at 14 to go and work in her Dad's bakery. But she's never gone back there and I don't know the places, the names. I'd have been wandering around a wet, Northern town, looking for ghosts in the dark empty streets. So I didn't.

At the allotment, we've had a flurry of action, ready for the rotavator man next weekend. Clearing the ground, strimming, digging out some stubborn root structures. N has been more involved recently, after I admitted that possibly, if I couldn't get on top of it, I'd have to give it up later this year, which would mean I would have more time to get involved with what he's doing in the garden at home. 

As a threat, it worked better than anything else I could have come up with. No amount of begging or weeping would have produced quite the same spring into action that the promise that I would be interfering in the garden at home. 

Later this month, I'm taking the Kid to Wales for a few days. He needs some time away, I need some time away, we haven't had a holiday together for a couple of years. I've picked an off-grid place, so we can read, eat bread and cheese, sleep. We'll visit our favourite fossil beach and book town (not the same place), walk about a bit. Admire the light-pollution free night sky (who's laying bets on cloud?) and stars. Take some time off screens and away from office chairs that are never quite supportive enough.

And some time off emails too. Do you have the same feeling of overwhelm with emails recently? Back in January, I definitely did: work emails, life admin emails, special offer emails and, biggest culprit, newsletter emails. 

I blame Substack. Lured in by the promise of a "new blog form", I signed up to several. But instead of picking and choosing when I read blogs, I found a steady flow of emails informing me of a new post on someone's Substack. The virtual equivalent of a child hopping up and down, yelling "look at ME!" And, because I hate emails building up, I would, clearing them all, only to log in a couple of hours later to find more demands for attention. 

In February, I tried an experiment, putting them all in a folder marked "Unread", with the plan to go through and read them once a week. Except that, by the end of the month, I hadn't. Mostly, I deleted them. 

My own curiosity is also to blame. I'm like the nosy neighbour peering through the virtual lace curtains to find out whats going on, only to find that not very much was going on and I really didn't need another carbonara recipe. 

So I've deleted all but 4. Now i open my emails and think "oh good, Helen's back, must be Friday" and I settle down with a tea to enjoy it. The inbox feels manageable now, a little corner of life brought under control.

Oh, and I cut my hair off. Rather, my hairdresser did. It had been long for a long time. Long enough for me to plait it over my head like some pastiche of the dinky little Swedish girl I am not. But it was heavy, gave me a headache if pinned up all day and took hours to dry. It also felt weighted with everything: pandemic, worry, sadness. It was grief hair. Time for it to go. 

Now its just below my ear lobes, a weightless easy to manage bob that looks better on the 2nd day.  The relief, as we move into the light, is considerable. 

Winter's Tail

Well, we made it. Imbolc has passed with its promise of fluffy lambs, fluffy mimosa, fluffy pancakes on everyone's horizon. The change in light and temperature has been noticable, even if the latter is only temporary. Like the Big Gloom that I am, every time someone says, "it feels like Spring!" as they cast off vests with gay abandon and start polishing their summer shoes, I reply with "yes, but it is still Winter. Isn't that wonderful?"

And it is. We have a whole 25 more days to while away with darker mornings, hibernation and soup. This is being typed by the person who didn't wake until a full 2 hours later than her summer waking hour and who has no intention of being hauled out of that drowsy nest or her big socks any earlier than necessary, thank you very much. 

Work continues a little bit crazy and has seen me whipping between home office, office-office, Gloucester, Birmingham and Ellesmere Port (for work) where I stayed in a lovely hotel with decadent food (pluses) and the hardest bed in Christendom (big ole minus). I am not kidding about the bed. Upon arrival, I dumped bags and jumped on, only to ricochet back off again as it refused to yield an inch. This was Victorian prison bed hard. 

So, I picked myself back up off the floor and headed down to the bar (no more work that evening). 

Happily, in February, the furthest afield I go is Birmingham, which is absolutely fine with me. Let us not yet dwell upon Rochdale in March and Manchester in April. There are weeks till then. Months.

This month we are moving The Kid into his new flat in Banbury. Since taking a job in Oxford, his current living arrangements deep in the darkest part of the shire have not been ideal, especially with train strikes (solidarity to the strikers and a big old pox on the bosses that have spun this out for their own ends), so a move was on the cards. 

Closer to work with an alternative bus system, but without the crazy crazy Oxford prices. Even without those, he's paying the same for a 1 bed flat as I did 4 years ago for a 2 bed house with a garden. Which merits at least one 'crazy'. The sooner the revolution occurs and morally bankrupt private landlords are banished to the moon, the better. 

But the important thing is that his commute time (and cost) will be halved and he will have his own space in which to stretch and grow. Virginia was right, a room of one's own is vital. 

Last month I read Burntcoat by Sarah Hall. I'd absolutely loved her previous Wolf Border, and like the way she changes topic and perspective with every book. They are all distinct whilst remaining completely identifiable as a Hall. This one is short and thought provoking, at points a little distressing. Too soon after the pandemic, after Dad, after everything? And I think I'd been expecting more about the house; it was what the book was named for, after all. 

After finishing and staring into space while I let the feelings it brought up recede, I had to agree with myself: a short, slightly misleading, wee bit distressing Hall is worth a million exquisitely detailed Ian McEwan's, so I still highly recommend it. 

I haven't watched any tv of note, resisting all calls to Happy Valley or The Last of Us on the grounds that I cannot be doing with that level of stress on a Sunday evening right now, and at no point, ever ever, no way Jose, will I ever watch anything containing creatures remotely resembling zombies. I don't care how well you write it, I like to sleep at night. Instead, we've indulged in radio comedies, specifically Cabin Pressure, which I absolutely adore, along with the belly laughs it provokes. If you've never heard it, promise yourself a treat and get stuck in.

Something rather special has been happening this month: my desk at the wildlife charity overlooks a field, hedges and a reed bordered stream. Every day I'm there, I raise the blind and settle down to work, keeping a quarter of an eye open. Every day, unannounced and barely noticeable (unless you had that quarter eye peeled), a gloriously chestnut coloured vixen trots across the field. Her coat shining in the low winter light, she weaves across, stopping to sniff the ground, the air, the black tips of her ears twitching. Sometimes she sits and looks directly at the window. 

At those moments, I hold my breath as long as the gaze between us lasts, not daring to move. Seconds before she hears something that sets her jogging slowly on her independent, self-sufficient way. She is beautiful and elusive and, I feel, a good omen. Maybe this might be, just might, a good place in a good year.

Reading Autumn

When October rolled around, I dug out my battered copy of Dracula for its annual reading and settled down for a few days of feeling slightly jumpy and the right side of being scared (you know that side: a rush of goosebumps when the cat knocks over a plant pot outside - even though the Count would never be that clumsy - or a mild jump when your partner leaves his dressing gown hanging somewhere different and you spot it in the half light of an early dusk). That feeling should only last the duration of the book and a couple of days after before vanishing, never to return...until you read it again the following year. 

This year, after putting it down, I gazed across the shelves to decide on my next book. This takes a while as I have about 1000 books, not including N's. He keeps suggesting a 1-in-1-out policy, I keep finding new ways of stacking them so I can pretend I haven't heard that. 

This Autumn, it seems I am in the mood for dense, chewy Victoriana, with a side helping of mild Gothic horror. I want a weighted tangled storyline with complex family feuds and backstories that take entire chapters to retell. I want to hear a metaphorical wind howling outside the window, trees thrashing in protest, as a backdrop to the dark matter in my hand. I want to feel the damp chill of a creeping winter dawn. 

After Dracula, I settled down to get myself lost in the moors and wilds of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Jane Eyre, settling myself into a warm reading nook while N watched foot-the-ball, and letting the descriptions of wide Yorkshire landscapes take me away from all that. The power balances shifted on the page to the backdrop of feet thunking against wet turf. 

Isn't it wonderful how they were able to make the landscape feel so expansive, whilst depicting lives in miniature? And I always find something new when I return to them. Wuthering Heights, for example (read in August). On that reread, I lingered over old Joseph's proselytising, pulpit-raising, style which made me laugh out loud on more than one occasion. 

Wildfell and Jane also both contain a supporting cast whose speeches and asides cut through the tension, providing a small moment of comic relief, the brief capering of a jester at times of high tension. I'm more appreciative of those nowadays, and it seems to be a skill we've lost. Now our epic tomes are relentlessly grim and Loaded With Meaning from start to end. You need that lightness to throw the rest of the plot into contrasting shadow. 

On honeymoon, I took Lady Audley's Secret, having spotted it on the bookshelves, unread for a few years, and remembering that it included Belgium, which it described as "flat, featureless", a statement I can reveal is partly true. It took up a large part of the suitcase but was forgiven as I, once more, found myself rooting for the Lady Audley as she pivoted and twisted against the confines Victorian society imposed on women, ceaselessly seeking a way out until all routes were closed off. 

Back at home, after a couple of misty morning starts, the kind where the air soaks your hair and distant hills appear to be wearing blankets, I reached for Bleak House. It's really the only Dickens I can stand to read without choking on his performative sentimentality and is absolutely perfect for this time of year with its depictions of fog and ceaseless rain, the blackened sooty streets of London. The extraordinary description of the foul Mr. Krook's spontaneous combustion. The icy chill of Lady Deadlock's disdain. Poor confused and persecuted Jo of Tom-all-alone's. 

The complete loss of internet at home was a blessing as it allowed me the rare treat of hours of evening time I could give over to reading. But now it's finished, and Esther is happily married, I find myself restlessly scouring the shelves again. It seems that any post-1900 fiction just isn't satisfying right now; thin, sterile things they seem as the weather hurls itself against the windows of the house. A candle is guttering in a draught that reaches me a few seconds later, causing me to wrap the blanket more tightly around my knees. A mug of tea is steaming next to me and there is hot buttered toast for breakfast. It's no good, I can't stop the hand reaching out, fingers extending, grasping until...there!

The Moonstone it is. 

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

We are halfway through October, my favourite month of the year, and it still feels like our feet haven't touched the ground. Thank-you cards have arrived but remain unwritten. I will tackle them tomorrow and hope we're forgiven a little tardiness. 

A lot of the whirlwind has been around work as mine continues busy and N started university the Monday after the wedding. At the start of the month, I went to see a performance of Much Ado About Nothing at the Birmingham Rep which was beautifully handled, with signing (some of the actors were deaf) and a sensitive treatment of multiple needs. Hero was actually given some autonomy in this performance, instead of remaining a cipher, a pretty mute thing who has no voice but merely accepts the fates dealt by the terrible men around her. It was rather refreshing. 

The last time I'd seen this play, it was a Bollywood version in Stratford, which was a visual feast. I've always loved the sparring between Beatrice and Benedick. 

Last Saturday we went to see Mark Steel, the comedian, at Tenbury Wells Regal, a treat of a little art deco theatre, loving restored and working again. I'm a big fan of his 'In Town' series on Radio 4 and he didn't disappoint. Every joke about a place is said with genuine fondness for its strange customs and quirks, there is no malice. Unless he was talking about the present government, but then he could be forgiven that. Especially as the audience felt much the same. 

We have met up with some of the RHS course crew a few times since it came to an end in May, most recently yesterday. Generally at each other's houses or in a garden centre. Mostly, the talk is not about gardens or gardening careers, but about families and plans and life in general. Children and pets run around. We eat. We chat. We swap cuttings and bulbs. 

Lured in by how much I'd enjoyed the films, we started watching Rings of Power and got 3 episodes in before I declared I did not care for any of the characters, and I did not care for a stroppy Galadriel, and I did not care for meaningful looks where a simple "this is a terrible idea and we shouldn't do it" statement would do. But Ghosts has restarted which makes me joyous, as does the new puppy on Gardener's World, all wriggly legs and ears. Bake Off continues to reach new heights of silliness and I don't care in a good way; it is the icing on the bun on the bake that is unnecessarily complicated but still, somehow, delicious. I think I might be in awe of Noel Fielding's eyeliner. 

The Cheltenham Literary Festival is on. I haven't been to an event there since I saw Audrey Niffenegger speak in 2010. Back then, I was living a different life, writing a different blog. Now I'm living this one and looking forward to seeing Ian Hislop talk about his Desert Island Books tomorrow with N. I've long admired Hislop's intelligence and wit, so this should be interesting. And yes, I do have a list of desert island books of my own, and have already decided that, should I ever be on the Desert Island Discs, I will reject the copy of the bible for the collected novels of the Brontes. 

Speaking of which, I will not be watching the new film, Emily. I'm sure it's a very good film but I feel that all biopics take liberties with the truth and Emily Bronte has suffered enough at the hands of people taking liberties with her truth. 

But I have reread the book recently, and Jane Eyre, and Dracula. This month always calls for Victorian novels, I feel, and I've got a copy of Lady Audley's Secret to hand, a blanket to curl up under and Nordic socks to wear to keep my feet warm. These socks are simply amazing. Warm enough to keep my toes from feeling froze, even without slippers or within wellies, whilst not keeping them so warm I end up with unpleasantly sweaty feet. Consider this a wholehearted recommendation. 

Some mornings, I've got myself out of the house for a walk along the canal just as the sun breaches the trees. The air has that autumn smell of woodsmoke, fog, damp bark and earth that is so wonderful. The colours make my smile wider and my step springier. I'm enjoying Mabel's fluffier coat, the return of soup to our lives, the shine of conkers against the paths, the moon rising a little higher and brighter against the darker skies. 

Once we return from Bruges, a proper hunkering down will begin. Fewer excursions, a retreat to warmth and light behind our doors. I love the whole process of Wintering, when my overstimulated brain is allowed to rest, when I naturally wake later and don't feel that surge of 'must do' that comes from the lighter half of the year. I am a natural hibernator. 

Autumn, I've been waiting for you. 

Midsummer Changes

The end of June already! When I was naught but a wee sapling of a lass, sighing my way through long summer days, victim to the kind of ennui that left me draped and sighing over kitchen counters, repeatedly telling the uncaring world that I was bored, as only young people can do, I used to think that my parents were mocking me when they spiritedly replied that the days weren't long, time moved swiftly and I needed to catch it. 

"Time speeds up as you get older," they'd say. 

To which I would give the kind of scorning snort that, again, only young people can do, and remove myself, with all the appearance of carrying the weight of the world, to drape and sigh over the sofa, dreaming of the day when I would escape the small town/village (whatever it was we were living in at the time) and LIFE would be slow but interesting and full and I would squeeze every last drop from it. 

Frankly, how my parents refrained from smacking some sense into me or, at the very least, sending me up some chimneys to earn a living and count my blessings, I do not know. 

Of course, we all know how this story ends. The drooping youngster grows up, leaves home and discovers that her days are a little too full and what she wouldn't give for some draping and sighing right now (she'd give even more to be that size 10 again, but that's a story for another day, or another therapist). 

This is the long winded way of saying that I've been busy once again this month. Not so many trips here-there-and-back-again, but with deadlines and meetings and training courses to run and funding bids to write. But it seemed less interesting to just write "gosh, hasn't time flown!" when we all know that it has. To any teenagers reading this, dally your way through these days my friends, savour them. 

N was officially redundanted (no spellcheck, I will not correct that - I like the sound of it) and is now spending his days pottering around the garden, planting plants, taking cuttings, potting up more plants, staking beans and generally enjoying his time. Sometimes he takes a pad of graph paper and pencils and practises his landscape drawing in preparation for his MA in September. Every night he cooks. I could get used to this house-husband business. 

The Kid has been over several times, staying with us between shifts and for birthday celebrations. He is restful company. Calmer after the trauma of last year recedes and its teeth are less sharp in his memory. He also wants to go back to uni, but not until next year, to study anthropology. It's fair to say the care sector has knocked the stuffing out of him and where once he really wanted to change the system, make it better, he now can't wait to be out for his own sanity. Job searches are ongoing. 

I celebrated Midsummer and the New Moon quietly. The Moon has moved into Cancer so we are officially in my birthday month. I'm taking my foot off the pedal just a little so I have time to savour this one as I move closer to 50 than 40 and wonder what, if anything, this ageing business means. 

I suspect we are being made to feel as though it should mean a bigger deal than it actually does. Yes, the hair greys, the skin creases like velvet and new bits ache where they didn't ache before, but those aren't the important bits. The important bits are the wisdom that we pick up, polish and store about our person, small gold coins of experience and knowledge that we use to pay our way forward. They don't make us infallible, but they help us find a centre in this world. 

There are plans to meet with friends this weekend and the other week, I caught up with an old colleague and friend to catch up, show off the garden and allotment, and generally have a gossip so long and joyous, my jaw fairly ached by the end of it. The joy of good friends is something to savour too. 

A couple of times I've taken myself off to the library to work: there is something soothing about the sound of tea spoons against coffee cups and the low murmur of voices that don't require an answer from me. On my first visit, a disgruntled foursome were milling around a table. 

"All she said was the room was taken."
"We can't go downstairs, there are children. They will make a noise."
"I'll ask this nice man."

There is a pause and much sotto voce grumbling from the remaining 3, who cling to the backs of their chairs as though they fear a fight to keep them. I'm aware without looking up that the occasional dark glance is aimed in my direction.

"But will she complain?"
"Hush Geoffrey."
"It's alright everyone. This nice young man [I can feel the heat of his blush from over at my table] has said we can!"

There is a chorus of "splendid!" and "oh well done!" and as the first sounds start coming from their antiquated laptop, I realise that what they fear I'll complain about is their conducting a very loud German lesson 2 tables away from me. So I shot them a dark look in the best British passive-aggressive fashion and put my ear phones in.  

Obviously, while I was there, I grabbed a couple of books to read once I got home. The superlative Mrs Death Misses Death and the utterly moving 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in this Strange World. I picked them up and read them from cover to cover, moving from bed to sofa to bath to sofa to bed without pause, eating one handed and putting a post-it note on my head that read "can't talk, reading." Both books have stayed with me for a long time afterwards, the threads of the stories running through my days like a child's streamer, bright and commanding attention. Of course, I've now got my own copies so I can return to them again and again. These are books to return to. 

Tomorrow, I am in Birmingham for a meeting, fitting in a visit to the Ikon gallery before coming back for another meeting. In the evening, I shall take a long New Moon bath and let my slide towards the weekend commence. 

How was your June?

Inhale Deeply

Hello! Well, it has been so long since I last blogged that, coming back to it this morning, I couldn’t remember what I’d last written and consequently lost myself for an hour this morning, rereading, following back, plunging into that memory pool, occasionally asking myself if I’d really meant to write that. 

Generally yes. What I mean to write, I write. 

April and the 1st week in May were…bonkers. So much so that I’ve reached 7th May and fallen at its feet, kissing the ground with gratitude. I think I will lie here for a little bit and recover. 

treated myself to some freesias because why not?

Truth is, I did something I’d promised myself not to do since going freelance, and I’d over committed. In order to fit it all in, I worked over the bank holidays and weekends, push-push-pushing words into those coherent sentences that funders like.  

So. Many. Damn. Zoom. Meetings. Daily, twice daily, thrice daily. Finally, at the suggestion “we catch up via a quick Zoom”, I snapped and demanded an old fashioned phone call instead, unable to face another disjointed conversation full of “oh you’re frozen again” or “hang on while I share my screen.”

And I physically zoomed too: one 7 day stretch saw me dash between Birmingham (again), London and Gloucester. I have seen more train interiors this month than I have in the past 2 years. I have driven to Ely. 

But. Now May is here and the deadlines have been met. I have felt the weight of them fall from my shoulders like a heavy overcoat. 

sweet peas planted out in April

N is cantering through his last month of work. In September he starts a Masters in landscape architecture. No one chooses to be made redundant but there is no denying the freedom, once the period of adjustment and mourning has been got through, to go in a completely different direction that it gives you. 

Speaking of which, never have I ever heard so many tone-deaf comments as I did when the news was first announced. Redundancy is up there in the list of the Big Life Stressors (bereavement, moving, illness, divorce, redundancy, etc) and yet his shoulder rang with the metaphorical thumps of people saying “think of all that free time!”, “wish I could be made redundant!” and “it happened to me and I was over the moon!” 

The problem with comments like that, as well meant as they may be, is they diminish how the person actually feels. That period of mourning and adjustment as you realise the future you thought was secure has just been snatched away, that the small work ‘family’ you’d been part of will soon all be moving on without you, is necessary. Trying to cheer someone out of it just makes them feel worse. 

And now he's through that - jubilant to be leaving a work environment that had steadily grown more toxic over the past 2 years, coming out of meetings with deep sighs, shakes of the head and a wondering "I don't have to worry about that any more". There are plans for the future, university in September and then the wedding at the end of the month. We’re in a good place. 

Shelves at the Coffin Works. One of the helter-skelter visits I did. 

My poor allotment. I managed 1 trip up there, nearly 2 weeks ago. To be fair, the ground was so dry, it needed a mattock to break it up (it's a clay soil so when it's dry, it's solid). It needed the recent drenching. Tomorrow, recently nadgered ankle withstanding*, I'm planning a few hours up there, taking my sandwiches and my time over the jobs to do. There are seedlings ready to go in, another brick path to be built and, no doubt, strimming to be done. I love No Mow May but if I went with that at my plot, I'd never recover the ground. 

I have alpines to plant on the tricky dry bed, cornus cuttings that have rooted and need a place to be, a couple of achillea that 'fell' into my basket and a honeyberry (lonicera caerulea) which I also failed to resist. 

May is full of green and so beautiful that, now I have the time, I'm standing to stare. Trips to garden centres that are bursting with lushness. Going to see friends one evening, the lanes were so soft with new growth, bluebells shyly scattering the grass, that I had to stop the car to stare properly. I'm going to do that more, not just now, but this year in general. 

Things I have read and seen:

• Earthed by Rebecca Schiller, Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym, Unreliable Memoirs by Clive James and South Riding by Winifred Holtby, which stayed with me for days afterwards and I'm recommending all over the shop. 
• Dinosaurs: the Final Day with David Attenborough. Just mind-blowing. Astonishing finds and research pinpointing the moment of asteroid impact that did for the dinosaurs. And continuing the asteroid theme, Don't Look Up. Funny and poignant, Meryl Streep acting it up a storm. An allegory for our environmentally-stricken times that can also make you laugh. 

There are 3 more weeks of May left before we tilt into the birthday pell-mell of June and July (our families seem to cluster around here and November-December for birthdays) and I can allow myself the luxury of Days Off. Things I will do in May:

• Eat asparagus in a variety of ways. 
• Ditto new potatoes
• Make elderflower cordial
• Inhale deeply when I'm around flowers
• Admire the wisteria at the allotments
• Watch butterflies
• Quit Twitter because, ugh**
• Yoga
• Write

What does May hold for you?

*the arthritis means that when I've been too much on my feet, I get unsteady, leading to Undignified Trips and, in this case, Falls. I've been resting this thing since Wednesday. Lots of ice etc. 

** Done!

PS If I've missed any of your posts and/or comments, I'm sorry. Slowly getting myself back into order. 

Hither and Thither

I have been caught up in a maelstrom of hither and thither recently. So much so that a day out to Nottingham had to be cancelled. "Sincerest regrets, deadlines, busyness etc, enjoy without me!", virtually waving off the friends I had been planning to spend the day with. Instead I took myself off to the library and worked in the little cafe there (lattes £1, if you please), letting the change of scene work wonders on my bid writing skills. 

Which it did. This recent commission has a tight deadline so gallivanting was out of the question really, and I'd already lost a day in Brum the previous week. 

A friend most generously donated her time so we could spend the traipsing the Rag Market and assorted nearby fabric shops to find THE right fabric for the wedding dress. Which is not a wedding dress in the traditional sense of the word. Having been on this particular merry-go-round before, I have no interest in wearing white (or cream or champagne or ecru or whatever fancy name the designers give it). I wanted something vibrant and dramatic, and found it in a beautiful Dupion silk in emerald green. Of course, the making may be trickier now Mum has had a meltdown and refused to do it ("Silk? I thought you were getting jersey! I can't work with silk!") but someone with the requisite sewing skills will turn up. 

After, we hauled our aching feet to a greasy spoon to refresh ourselves with chips and builders tea before making our way to the Library where we combined work (we're evaluating a project there together) and pleasure (there was another exhibition which was splendid), and then rounded off the whole successful day with wine and, in my case, a bag of Percy Pigs. 

The plot moves on as slowly as I do, and that's okay. At the weekend, with the Kid over for a couple of days, I put him in charge of the incinerator to burn away all the non-compostable woody bits while I strimmed the grass and weeded some more of the wineberry bed. He had fun, I got jobs done, we both got back smelling of bonfires and spent the evening watching Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with N (who was in mourning over an Arsenal loss) as we continue his education in films from the 80s. 

We've been busy socially than I've been used to in recent years: tapas in the Cotswolds (get us being all fancy although tapas is not food, in my opinion - £9 for 5 pieces of calamari!! - it is naught but shenanigans. Expensive shenanigans.), birthday night out for a friend, another's 50th celebrations of a kind that was exactly right for her, and a gallery opening show of Japanese prints (so beautiful) that touted the worst red wine I have ever heard talked about in glowing terms ("we were so excited about having wine, we brought loads of a really nice one!" Did you? Did you really?). 

I have been reading Thin Places which was breath taking. If you know nothing - or only a little - of what it was like to live as a child in Derry during the 80s, this is the book you need to pick up. The collective trauma of that generation is so easily dismissed and yet it damaged them all. It is horrendous and yet she writes with a lightness, an uplift, as she tries to work that damage out of her system.

I also read a book about Edward I's daughters - as you do - which was fascinating, Clive James's Unreliable Memoir, Carol Shields's The Stone Diaries and I've just started Winifred Holtby's South Riding which I'd tried to read 10 years or more ago but couldn't get on with it. This time, I'm enjoying the characterisations more, so I'll carry on despite it's considerable heft means I'm risking a broken nose if I fall asleep whilst reading and it donks me. 

I've been listening to: Jill Scott, Laura Marling, Nina Simone. An antidote to the Beatles' White Album that N would have on repeat if I let him. While My Guitar Gently Weeps is making my ears gently bleed after the 100th listening. 

This weekend, I'm planning to work a little every day (that deadline loomeths) but mostly potter on the plot, read, cook and relax before the whirlwind of next week hits as I juggle dog-sitting for my Mum, a trip to London for a meeting but also fitting in the British Museum Stonehenge exhibition (London at Easter! What was I thinking?) and a trip to Gloucester to meet up with a client. I may try to fit in a visit to the Cathedral afterwards because it's a beautiful building. 

By the way, whilst I write, I'm listening to The Reunion on BBC Radio 4 - always a treat of a programme. Did you know a young Keir Starmer, at the very start of his career, gave the McLibel 2 free legal advice a number of times when they were preparing to fight McD's? That man is thoroughly decent. Where are the barricades we need to man to get him into the prime minister role?

And that's as far into politics as I'll go here because... Well. We have a criminal as a prime minister, who is paying the Rwandan government millions to take refugees. Good grief. Send help. 

Happy Easter/Ostara/Spring bank holiday!

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. 

Before the coffee gets cold

 It's been a while since I did a book post. Specifically, apart from a Christmas book special, I haven't really written a dedicated book post since October, when I rather grandly announced my intention to stop recording what I read. 

Not keeping a record has been quite freeing in many ways but this book, which I finished on Monday, resonated in ways that no book has for some time. So it gets a post of its own. 

Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Cafe by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. 

The premise of the book is the most beautiful simplicity. You visit the cafe, sit in a particular chair, order a coffee and travel back or forward in time. And yet, it is also the most beautiful complication. 

This is no deep lengthy delve into magical realism. In fact, it is so sparely written, I'm not sure the word 'magical' could be successfully applied to it. If it were, the word might shuffle off, embarrassed at being in so obviously the wrong place. 

Each character is described in so sparse a way, it's as if he's drawn them. Calm, serious Kazu. Mischievous Miki. Exasperated, worried Nagare. With as few brushstrokes as it takes to form a Japanese character, he has them there, on the page, waiting for you to read on and make them move. 

Welcome to the cafe. Wait for the woman to leave the chair. Order a coffee and have the rules explained. Take a sip and travel back. Do not leave the seat. Do not let the coffee get cold. Who is it that you really want to talk to? What would you say?

I suppose this book resonated because of the time of year. The anniversary of Dad's death is coming up in a couple of weeks. It has been a year and it has been a lifetime and it has been yesterday. 

It was this piece that made me pause in my reading: 

"'But if you try to find happiness after this, then this child will have put those seventy days towards making you happy. In that case, its life has meaning. You are the one who is able to create meaning for why that child was granted life. Therefore you absolutely must try to be happy. The one person who would want that for you the most is that child.'"

Beautifully simple and complicated. 

When a person dies suddenly, you are left with questions that burn your mind in the middle of the night. There are so many questions I have for him, about his childhood, his family, his youth, marriage and old age. But, I think, if sat in that cafe, with a coffee cooling on the table between us, I would simply tell him how proud I was of him. That he had meaning. That, when grief uncurled enough to let me breathe, I would be happy.

All Aboard

I had to be in the lovely little town of Ledbury this morning for a work thing. As I'm trying to keep our car use minimal, I set out via train, which is no hardship. Sit back in the warm, no worrying about turns, road works or mad other drivers, just let someone else trundle you through the countryside. 

And what a countryside it is. That stretch along the rugged spine of the Malverns all the way to Ledbury never fails to please. It is a quietly dramatic journey, as the hills rise up beside the tracks, looking dark and inhospitable, with abandoned quarries, dark woods, hill forts and tree-less top. At the same time, you can see into the back gardens of houses nearby, catching the briefest glimpse of someone hanging washing out with more hope than expectation, or a person spooning breakfast into their mechanically working mouth, sleep still hanging over them like a fog. 

Is there anything more guaranteed to raise a smile and feeling of contentment than the side of a tree-lined stream, meandering through a meadow, completely undisturbed by housing or roads? No. And you can only see them from the train. It's like being let into a big lovely secret. 

There is also that exciting moment when the train whooshes under the hills and into a long tunnel. I never fail to be awed by the feat of engineering that this kind of endeavour is. It's not merely a case of blasting through the hill: the resulting space has to be chiselled smooth, propped up, tracks laid, the safety of the whole darned thing has to be guaranteed every single day. 

But I am going to stop there because I am not, and never will be, an engineering nerd. Nor do I collect train numbers. I am content to remain impressed as I whizz along. I do not need to know the minutiae of how it was achieved. 

Even on a dark gloomy day, like today, train journeys are incredibly soothing. I'd got coffee, crochet and a book to occupy me, but mostly I stared out of the window and let my thoughts drift by with the view. I should do this every week. 

Ledbury itself is as picturesque as it ever was. I used to come here a lot in a former life (and a former marriage) as we had friends living here. There are some cracking shops selling things that are placed Just So, where I walked carefully, holding my breath so I didn't know anything over, or pollute it with my me-ness. The restaurant where I first ate a crab linguine (unfortunately the same night I developed tonsillitis and was seriously ill the next day), is still there, as is the wonderful Maps and Books shop. Fewer maps than there used to be, but still a great book selection. That place has been there so long, it's practically an institution. 

There are some seriously quaint buildings too, all along the Homend (the main street) and into the winding, cobbled Church Street, including the place I was going to visit. Crooked frames, sloping roofs, big timbers and low wooden doorways you have to duck to get through. If someone was going to design a model village, this would be the kind of place they imagined. 

I absolutely and completely want to live in this house, behind the big trees. 

I shall creep out o' night my dearies, and scare pub stragglers by cackling 

from behind the wall. Hey, we all need a retirement plan. 

That said, it must be deathly dull here for teenagers. No amount of poetry festival (Elizabeth Barratt Browning lived nearby with her weird father) or fictional links (John Masefield likewise, although without the father issue) or tasteful deli is going to make up for the fact there is, as is often the problem with small towns, Nothing To Do. 

A fact borne in on me when I saw a pop up sign for an holistic spa where the picture of a smiling, relaxed, utterly middle-class person had had a speech bubble added by marker pen and the words "What A Dump" drawn on. 

Which made me laugh. I remember all too well that weighty, bone-deep boredom of being 15 in a place where there was nothing to do and you were welcome nowhere. I almost wanted to add "don't worry, you'll be out of here soon". 

But I didn't because I'd already graffitied a copy of the Metro on the train (see below). Instead, I broke my No-Shopping-January by venturing into a couple of charity shops and coming out again with 2 books and 3 tops. Charity shop shopping doesn't really count as shopping, does it? It's really more of a donation. My good deed for the day. 

Later today, I shall be going to look at ART at the evening preview of a new exhibition at the local art gallery. Yes, I am going to be that kind of fancy. I asked the friend I'm meeting how long we'd be there and was informed that it would be for "as long as you want to consume free wine for." As I'm in No-Booze-January, I fully expect to be back home after 5 minutes. 

Have a super weekend, whatever it finds you doing. I'm planning to write, visit friends for a scrabble night, allotment and eat delicious things what are good for me. With the occasional thing that is not because, you know, life. 

"Stay tuned for our article next week on how young mothers are 

irresponsible, morally suspect and only in it for a council house!"

I'm eye rolling so hard, I may have dislocated a retina.