Of the Before and the After

The Potting Shed by Lore Pemberton. 

On my Christmas wish list, Click on the image to get to her website.

I had planned to pop on here and say something cheerful about winter being nearly here, but it feels like we have crossed that invisible marker here in the Midlands. Winter is already here. The past week has been full of huge downpours, torrents of raindrops that hurled themselves at the windows and roof, drumming percussive music through the week. Whole days have been blackened by rain clouds, battered by winds. Taking the train to Gloucester, I could see the silver glint of flooded fields by Bredon Hill, the hill itself looking dark and already folded into hibernation. Occasionally, a wild sunbeam would break through the cloud, sending down a fierce bright light that made me blink. 

On Monday, my friend came over with her little boy. 10 months old and already staggering around like a wee drunk man, bow legged and hands raised up for the sheer joy of motion and speed and independence. He is a joyful whirlwind, a tiny tyke, a terror of all cats and bearer of childhood nursery germs that I had long lost all immunity to. 24 hours later, whilst hoovering up what I hoped was the last of the rice particles he had liberally blessed the carpet with, I felt an ominous itch in the back of my throat. 

This has been a proper, old fashioned cold, the like of which I haven't experienced since the Kid left primary school. Stuffy of head and nose, full of catarrh, throat like sandpaper, eyes like heavy hot marbles and sleep punctuated by a cough that would scatter the crows. Bravely I have soldiered on through it, meeting grant application deadlines, project end deadlines and meetings that could not, would not be shifted. But now I'm ready to lean into it, give in to it. Lie on the sofa with a cool flannel on my forehead, a soothing drink to hand and someone else to cook. To give credit where due, N has been dying to do this for days, it's only now that I have the capacity to lay down tools and let him. 

Own. Worst. Enemy. 

But I am ready for winter now. For fresh air walks in the morning that leave your cheeks pink and tingling from the nip of a frost. For gentle yoga meditation in a candlelit evening, emerging blissed out into a house that smells of rich stews and baking bread. To take up a craft again, pick up the knitting needles or crochet hook and not care if the end result is any good. For the time to make bread and stews and soups. For woodsmoke, and citrus, and spices. 

Not that I can smell anything right now, and I was about to write "stupid cold".  Which is reflective of how I treat most of my conditions. They are stupid because they get in the way, they stop me from doing the job I loved, they cause me pain. 

But it occurs to me that this is the wrong approach to these things. It lacks grace and understanding. It tries to set the bar to how things used to be when, truth is, it can never be that again. As a friend said last week "it's okay to be angry about them but don't let that anger become all you feel". So, it is time to reach an accommodation, an acceptance of where I am now. To develop an intuitive understanding of what my body is trying to tell me, instead of rushing over it because there are things to be done. To consider a new approach to my body instead of feeling like a failure because it doesn't work like it used to. 

Chronic pain is the worst bedfellow, it sucks as a walking companion, and I've raged bitter war against it, but maybe, this Winter, I can take the time to recognise it for the signpost it is. The one that guides the way to a better, more sustainable life, overriding the itching temptation to eat all the chocolate oranges under the tree and carry on as before. 

'Before' is a closed box; 'After' is a wide, open landscape to explore. Let's see what I can find there. 

October, where did you go?

I mean, who decided that time could speed itself up? I would have liked to savour this month, my favourite, but it wasn't to be. It moved at it's own sweet merry pace and I clung onto the sides.

A lot of it has disappeared into the hecticness of work. There have been more than a few working-late evenings and early-start days. Given that I mainly work from home, this is hardly down-the-coalmine stuff. The busiest contract is coming to an end in December and while I shall miss the people and the income, I'm looking forward to having the time to develop ideas I've had for a while. Courses and resources I want to develop may actually see the light of day. 

Speaking of courses, the RHS Level 2 that I started is...okay. The other students are great and I've learned how to take a softwood cutting, and mark out a square with perfectly straight edges and right-angled corners. The module the lecturers selected for us is "Vegetable Growing" and that feels a bit redundant as I already do that. I think I was hoping for something more challenging than an assessment on how well I double dig. But I will probably still learn new things as well, so I'm trying not to be bad-tempered about it. 

 Aware of my general lack of exercise and movement since working from home (I used to easily clock up 20k steps or more when I ran a museum), I brought myself a cheap pedometer and am pleased to report that every day this week, I've broken my target with room to spare. 

This morning, I woke to the sound of rain drumming its beat against the roof. It's quite a comforting sound on a Saturday when I have no plans, limitless tea and a warm Mabel leaning against my leg. I have a couple of candles lit, which I've been doing most mornings this month - sometimes, I sit and stare at the flickering, thinking of nothing. It's the nearest I come to meditation. 

 This week, I had to be in Birmingham for a meeting and it was fab. I do love that city, for all it's faults. We met at the extraordinary Library, ate lunch at the beautiful Ikon gallery after wandering up and over the canal. Shopped at Muji for my favourite pens (0.78 navy blue, thank you) and read on the train home. 

I have been reading Barbara Comyns' Our Spoons Came From Woolworths, but the desire to reach into the pages and soundly smack her selfish, self-serving husband is too great for my peace of mind. A friend came to the rescue with a copy of Luckenbooth, so that's my Halloween reading sorted. 

 I said goodbye to my lovely nutritionist at the start of the month. My excema, while under control, is still here despite blood tests, a veritable alphabet of supplements and nearly a year of restrictive eating. When she suggested yet another limitation, my brain snapped and went "Nope, can't do this any more." So I refused the next blood test, put my 2 remaining appointments on ice till next year and watched my bank balance breathe a sigh of relief. 

Not sure what to do about the excema now. It's still here like a flaky, aggravating pal who doesn't know the party is over. N suggested seeing a doctor. I probably should but can't yet face dealing with the receptionist that guards the appointments. 

 

Still working verrrry slowly on the Attic 24 Meadow blanket. The rest of the world finished theirs in February, it seems. It always takes me a year to finish one, what with one thing and another.

I managed to get the majority of the shallots into the ground at the allotment, and the last of the brassicas in. Now will come afternoons of pruning, weeding, planning and generally tidying up, especially inside the shed. I haven't created the little nest in there that I'd hoped, but maybe winter will be the time to do it. 

In N news, we got engaged. I should have led with that, shouldn't I?? The ring is just about the shiniest piece of kit I've ever worn and I've been married once before, in another lifetime. I do not have a photogenic enough hand for this ring. Plus, I can hear generations of Northern ancestors telling me to Know My Place. But lookit, pretty.

Waiting until it arrived to tell people was the hardest thing: I wanted to run through the streets with a cow bell yelling "Engaged! Engaged!"

The wedding will be next September, hopefully. I am too old for long engagements - they have a habit of drifting on for years with no resolution and I am of the age where 50 is hovering just on the edge of the horizon. I want to feel present. Anchored in a way I haven’t felt since Dad died. 

Plus, I want to gather everyone I know and love and vaguely tolerate together in a field, with wellies under the dress if necessary, and say thank you for being here despite everything, now raise a glass to my Dad, who would have given a better speech.

Back to School

This week, in yet another step to a new normality, I went to an actual library, rather than ordered another bunch of books. The day before, I'd been merrily dropping titles into my Bookshop.org basket and failed to notice that the total was nearly 3 figures until I came to check out. At which point I needed a brief lie down and a talking to from myself. 

Yes, the gardening books are important, but not that important. Not when there is another, free, option...

 

We have an excellent library in the city, run as a partnership with the university. Their hours are long, the collection wide and there's a cafe that does a decent cheap Americano and a gluten-free pecan brownie you'd step over your own child for. Both of which came to £4.50. As I'd paid £4 for a coffee alone not too long ago, I am now considering making this my temporary office base for those days when I just can't face staring at my own 4 walls again. 

The library also wins because borrowing books will always have a lower carbon footprint than buying them, so I get to be all smug about it. Even smug-er after a visit to the plastic free shop for hand soap, deodorant and cashews. 

 Of course, all this green work is then undone by the arrival of my lovely new office chair. A thoroughly impractical pale pink, the chair looks like it might develop a personality above my station but I don't care. As long as it holds me up and stops the left side of my body from feeling like it's slowly grinding to a painful halt, that's all I need. 

I would never have been able to have a pink chair in any of my previous offices, I know that. I also know that it looks good against the dark blue of the one wall, and will clash splendidly with the peach that will cover the other walls. It cheers me up every time I open the door, which I think is more than enough reason to have it. 

This week, I actually left the house for something other than an appointment, and went on a splendidly eccentric tour of the Bishop's Palace with a couple of friends. This was led by an elderly man who spoke as though denouncing SINNERS from a pulpit, even when he was merely telling us that the CUPBOARD hides a good EXAMPLE of Medieval WALL ART. 

As his voice ENNUNCIATED seemingly random words, he fell up STEPS while telling us to watch OUT for them and forgot his PLACE in his notes, I took the photos you can see here. It's a wonderful building - I especially liked that they'd based one of the interior grotesques on Wallace & Gromit* - and it reminded me why I'd fallen in love with heritage in the first place...the buildings just can't be beat. 

 Then we went for lunch. Which was also splendid and not in the least bit eccentric. Although our turning down of the speakers (right next to where we were sitting) probably was. But we don't care. We are ladies d'une age certain and we have earned the right to talk to each other without shouting over jazz-funk fusion beat combos.

Up at the allotment, I have been harvesting wineberries and blackberries, both of which have gone into the freezer until I have enough and a moment to turn them into a flavoured gin for everyone to get at Christmas. Yes, I am thinking about Christmas already, as much as I hate to be the one to mention it first. And as much as I can't really even begin to consider the shape of this year's Christmas, not with such a key person gone from the family. 

 Dad has been much on my mind this last week or so as I completed registering for the RHS Level 2 study course at our local horticultural college. What would he have made of my mid-40s environmental crisis? He'd have shaken his head at my refusal to use weed killer, even on the knotweed and would probably have reminded me of how much of a fair-weather gardener I've been until recently. 

But I am committed now. And excited to be so. 

 On 16th September, I will be doning my steel toe cap boots, clicking the lid of my new pens and bracing myself to be the oldest person in the room. Perhaps if I become the young people's college-mum, they'll deal with the big greenhouse spiders for me?

I hope all the readers who pass by here have a lovely weekend. Eat the good things - you deserve it. 

*NB: this is by way of a joke based on the fact that the grotesque on the left of the painting has that Wide Mouth thing you see in Aardman Animations films. As good as AA are, I really don't think they were around when these were made...