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. 

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?

Seasons Eatings

Every family has them. Those odd side dishes or food rituals that only appear on 25th December and incomers (sons and daughters in law mainly), look on with undisguised horror and incomprehension. But to your family, they are non-negotiable. If these foods do not appear, it isn't Christmas and boy, will you make sure everyone knows about it. 

There are the things you buy in - Quality Street, Cadbury's selection boxes, Cadbury's chocolate fingers, Terry's chocolate orange (you see where I'm going here, right?) - and things you make, bringing them to the table with a sense of propriety and pride, smiling like a beneficent god as the rest of the family choke down something they don't really like but wouldn't dream of hurting your feelings by saying so. 

For years, until Mum mastered the art of pastry, it was mince pies. My sister and I aren't sure, all these years later, what happened as this usually exceptional cook took the raw ingredients of flour, fat and liquid and turned them into something you could build a house with. Her pastry throughout the rest of the year was spectacular: light, fluffy, crisp, flaky...whatever it needed to be, it was. There was just something about the time of year that changed the way the pastry fell together. Now, years after those days, I suspect an egg was missing from the mix. 

These days, her mince pies are delicious, but somehow, I still hanker occasionally after one from my childhood years. Whenever I’m short of a weapon. Or some grouting. 

Dad didn't cook, wouldn't have wanted to cook, but would earn unending brownie points with us kids simply by deigning to share a Smartie or two from his Christmas stash.  If we were very lucky and very good, maybe even a square or - heaven! - a line of 4 squares of Fruit and Nut chocolate. Despite this being the total sum of his culinary contribution, his tastes shaped our Christmas lunches. 

I remember describing it to a friend once and she looked at me with horror; "Mushy peas? Mushy peas have No Place on a Christmas table!" They did in our house. He was not a fan of most green veg, my Pa, but put a bowl of mushy peas in front of him and he was as happy as a pig in a pea field. 

Likewise, he was not a fan of the claggy fruit-laden Christmas pudding. Yes, he'd set it on fire for us to ooh and ahh at, but that was it. Once it was safely blown out, he'd help himself to a wodge of syrup sponge pudding, adding extra syrup from that green Tate and Lyle tin that brings back such a sugar-rush of memories now, and then complain if the custard wasn't thick enough to stand a spoon up in. 

If there was not enough left for a second helping the following day, he'd sulk and refuse to share any more Smarties. 

Pity my poor Mum, influenced by Delia and Keith, desperate to bring a bit of class to our table with spiced red cabbage, goose fat roasted potatoes, a delicate cream for the puddings, only to be thwarted by his distinctly down to earth tastes. "Fancy tack!" he'd say and carve himself another slice of custard. 

This year, I tentatively suggested that we opt for rib of beef or goose (I like both more than turkey) when Mum voiced concerns about a possible avian-flu-related turkey shortage, only to be shouted down with "we always have turkey!". Like I said, some things are non-negotiable.

There will still be mushy peas this year but there won’t be a syrup sponge pudding. I’m not sure any of us could eat it without crying, and god knows, this year has rendered us soggy enough as it is. 

Instead, I’ve offered to make a festive pavlova. 2 layers of chocolate meringue, sandwiched together with a chocolate liqueur spiked cream, some pomegranate seeds and more sugary stuff that I need to buy in as I’ve sworn off it till then so we’ve nothing sweet in the house. I WILL make us a pudding to ooh and ahh at and fight over the second helpings or, so help me, take us all down with diabetes in the attempt. 

Of course, it has to survive the 40 minute car journey from here to there, so we may well be eating an Eton Mess by the time it reaches table. 

***Image above from Food Stories - click on photo for link to recipe - rest easy, mine is NOT going to look like that***