A little change here, a big change there...

To everyone who has been within conversational reach of me recently, and there’s not been that many thanks to lockdown, the following will not come as a surprise. 

I stopped liking my job last year.

And in that, I'm not alone. The pandemic has affected people's attitudes to their work worldwide: the pressure of working, often the only person left as everyone else was furloughed, balancing the needs of the museum with the safety of the volunteers and team just became overwhelming and triggered a minor breakdown. 

When that happened, it also triggered a small epiphany: the only thing that gave me any sense of satisfaction was working outside with plants and nature. The allotment became everything and, rather than fading as life attempted a return to normal, that remained constant. 

I tried changing my hours, throwing myself into new projects, delegating more, but nothing worked. It wasn't satisfying and I was frustrated by the lack of flexibility that came with being tied to one building, 4 days a week, 9 till 5. I knew I wanted a career change, I knew I wanted to work outside and I knew I wanted fulfilment. 

In short, I wanted to work with plants and the only thing that held me back was my lack of knowledge. That and my lack of time. 

So I've reached a turning point in my path. A crossroads, if you must. I could continue with my salaried job and a gnawing sense of time wasted, or I could forge my own way, accept instability and welcome the flexibility to learn something completely new. 

 

It might not surprise you to know that I've chosen the latter. As from April, I will be a freelance museum consultant, entirely dependent on my own ability to charm people into giving me work but also entirely free to start training and getting some experience in the plant world. 

And, heavens help me, am I terrified! I've never done this before. Never freelanced, never charmed outside of an interview, never faced a new venture without knowing where my income is coming from. This is scary stuff but I'm ready for it. 

 I think. 

It does mean that my grand plans for the allotment are on hold. This year it will be more about ticking over, planting and digging rather than constructing elaborate fruit cages, buying trees or even getting my shed. Oh my shed! I stand on the plot and dream of it, painted blue with yellow door (not looking at all like an IKEA, no matter what my friend says), a shelf for potting, hooks for hanging tools and a wheelbarrow (also currently existing only in my head) resting neatly on the side. 

I've promised myself that for every job I get, I'll put 10% aside for shed, shed-related purchases and general pursuing of dream plant-based job. 

All that's left to do now is hustle some work my way. 

If you are feeling particularly generous or flush, and you'd like to see the shed manifest itself, there's now a Ko-fi link at the top of the blog page where you can click through and donate. But no pressure, no expectation, just undying gratitude to anyone who wanders that way..

Wish me luck!

There's a whole world of shed love on Pinterest - most of them compeltely unrealistic

I almost wanted to change my search terms to "normal sheds" or "working sheds"

Still, how nice would they be on the plot?

Sigh

Middle Way or the High Way?

This year, after 8 years of living on my own, I made the headlong plunge into living with someone again. 8 years since my ex-husband moved out, 9 years since our relationship hit the rails so hard, I wasn't sure any of us would come out alive. 

It has been a strange 8 years by any stretch and come with the proviso that the Kid has lived with me 99% of that time. There is a big difference, however, between living with your lover and living with your child. The first and foremost being that you can, to a certain extent, dictate the rules to your kid, but it's not really on to try it with someone who's supposed to be your peer. 

And I should say right here and now that the Kid is now 21 and living at home while they save for a house. It's like having a flatmate but one who looks uncannily like you and who knows where all the emotional blackmail buttons are hidden...

So there I've been, mindlessly minding my own business and getting on with the job of living in a way I want to. Leaving clothes where they fell, changing the bedding as often as I wanted (once a week, whaddaya think I am?), sitting up in bed reading till midday, making only toast for meals. I have wandered where I want and with whom I want. 

I have filled the shelves with my own books and found things; the freezer with the foods I love; my days with the things I want to do. Slept in the middle of the bed. Had a bath as often as I damn well pleased. Smoked, not smoked, smoked again. Realised that living in a village surrounded by mud and oomska for 8 months of the year when I hate mud and oomksa (both of which are very different to gardening dust and soil) is no good thing for any sanity. Realised that living in a village where the light is gone by 4pm in November and the nights are so slow-black sloe-black that you could scream Milky-Woody-rhyming-couplets at the top of your lungs and no one would hear.

Left the country for the town, left the town for the city. Changed jobs, changed houses, hung the pictures on the walls I wanted. 

Dealt with grief and joy in equal measure. Sat with the feelings, absorbed and examined them, kept some for my mental backpack, lost others along the way. Turned vegan, turned back, went halfway there again. Took up meditation, fell asleep, took down meditation. Dealt with health issues, new births, old deaths. Ditched the TV. Read over 100 books in 12 months just because I could. Took up yoga and surprised myself. Surprised my family. 

Listened to Radio 4 and eddikated myself. Listened to 6 Music and discovered new bands. Went to gigs for the first time in decades. Saw films I would never have seen, discovered a love of the hokey horror and stilted speech of the old Hammer Horrors, Godzillas and King Kongs

Wore the clothes I wanted with no one around to ask "does my bum look big in this" or to put their head on one side and say "are you going out in that?" Lost 4 stone. YES you read that right - 4 stone: the slow drip of pounds coming off and back on and permanently back off again has punctuated the days of these 8 years. 

I have pupated. Shed the chrysalis of my old self. My wings are battered but they carried me and the Kid through the world with a strength no one knew I had till it was tested. I am me with a carapace, with balls on, with an armoury of self-resilience. I can deal with my own spiders (with much squealing, eyes shut and a need for a hefty drink afterwards) and empty my own bins. 

So pity the poor man, especially one who had imagined himself living blissfully, serenely, peacefully alone for the rest of his days, coming head to head with me over where plants should be planted or pictures hung. Do we build the chest of drawers now or next week or when the heatwave/my temper breaks? How many times has that dishwasher been on today? Have you used fabric conditioner in the laundry? Why do you have the bath water so hot? Does this meal have meat in it? Why do you do everything so quickly? Why are those pictures crooked? Do you really need to keep that? How many copies of The Crow Road do you have? How many pairs of trainers do you need? Are you really only using half of the wardrobe space?

I work fast, in order to get things done and out of the way, thereby giving myself more all-important lying-down-and-reading time. He does things carefully, with meticulous planning and measuring, and with exquisitely painful slowness. As he takes measurements, I hop from one foot to the other, whining about how it's fine, hurry up, yes of course it's straight. 

As I fling paint, plants and pictures around with merry abandon, I feel him wince. Heard him say with more dismay than admiration, "god you're quick" as I rollered a triple length of wall within the same space of time he'd taken to do one. "Did you mean to get that much paint on you? Can you actually see out of your glasses now?"*

Surely, he suggests, as he gazes ruefully at the positioning of a plant he'd had his eye on for the back garden, now firmly set in the front, surely there is some middle ground. 

Middle ground. The OED defines this as "an intermediate position or area of compromise or possible agreement between two opposing views or groups." When I look up compromise (purely for the hell of it and because I'm stalling for time because really, really really, I know he's right but I'm not willing to let this go quite so easily), I read that "the secret of a happy marriage is compromise" but also that compromise means"the expedient acceptance of standards that are lower than is desirable."

Aha! I cry. Accepting standards that are lower than is desirable! And then I realise that he's not listening, he's looking at the crooked pictures again. 

Bugger.

*not really, was the answer. It was like looking through a yellow mist. Yes, our living room walls are yellow - it's like living in a bowl of custard and I love it.

There has to be a beginning

In this case, a slightly delayed one as the post I tried posting twice over the weekend did most emphatically not want to and it was too hot to make it behave like a blog and not a recalitrant teenager.

So here we are. This is not my first time blogging. I ran one for years that closed simply because the weight of the situation I was living in felt like it was too much to allow me to write freely. We will see if this new situation does.

But I am tired, oh so tired, of how social media is so damn polarised. Micro-blogging isn't satisfying and Twitter threads are annoying. Also, it's getting harder and harder to find the good news in anything or the reasoned voice or the nuanced debate. It's all shouting and no platforming and seeing how controversial you can be just for the sheer "likes" of it. 

I don't likes it. If I want ranting and irrational screaming into the void, I'll stop taking my hormones and wait for the fact no one ever puts a glass in the fucking dishwasher to become overwhelming. As my boyfriend would say, hold my pint. 

So this blog is very firmly about the good and real and positive in the world, because I am in a place where good and positive things are happening (glasses/dishwashers aside), so I want to share it. My mental and physical health are better than they've ever been, just in time for the menopause, and I have the best walk into work ever.

 

  
We goes along the canal which is mostly calm and peaceful. The houseboats are starting to line the bank: collie dogs and terriers jump off as they moor and start chasing each other, there is a smell of bacon frying and the gentle sounds of a couple rowing over who did the most work at the locks..."If you can't cope now Sandra, how will you manage when we get to Birmingham?"

In the picture above, behind the row of trees, is my allotment. Waited 2 years for that to become available and then started the moving house process pretty much as soon as the paperwork was signed. Safe to say, not much has been done there yet bar sticking some membrane over the beds and strimming the wild patch.

But it is my long-awaited allotment on which I will grow raspberries and small fruit trees and flowers and you know, stuff. Plus, it's a 5 minute walk from the new house and is right next to the nature reserve as well as the canal. The reserve is rather splendid with orchids, foxes and badgers, slow worms and butterflies. There was a homeless man camping there for a little while but he seems to have gone now. I hope he has a house of his own too.


Then we go past the bus depot wall which has a pleasingly rusty, weather-worn surface. Eaten away by time and oxidisation (now isn't that a good word to say?), it's exactly the sort of wall that the Smiths would have posed in front of for an album cover before Morrissey became too, well, Morrissey.

So now, for the final stretch, I have This Charming Man playing in my head, looping the chorus over and over like a stuck piece of vinyl. Until I look up. 

The duck has something important to tell you: "Pause the shouting, settle on down and let the good stuff roll over you." 

At least, I'm sure that's what he would have told you if duck bills were engineered to say things like that. As it was I didn't ask, merely nodded and moved on after the shot, promising that this will be a blog free of nasty things. Let him contemplate all he surveyed while I crossed the bridge and made my way past Asda. Which is unphotogenic and nasty, so I didn't photograph that.


What I am reading this week: Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. There is a new Jackson Brodie book due out soon, so I'm rereading. The woman is juggling so many plots, it's making my head spin (in a good way) and there's nary a wobble in any of them.

What I'm watching: the Women's World Cup. Turns out I don't hate football after all. 

What I'm listening to: The System Only Dreams in Darkness by The National. Earworm courtesy of the Boyfriend. Also watched the Stormzy set at Glastonbury. That was something else. 

What I have been doing: yoga. Specifically a return to a proper class. It kicked my butt, oh me of "I've only got 15 mins, that'll do" home practise.