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. 

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.

As the Day Flies

 Whitby Abbey - strong Goth game that day

Blimey, didn't September go fast? Likewise, as we're in the 3rd week of it, October is going much the same way. I used to think my parents were lying when they said that time moved faster when you were a grown up. As I watched summer days and wet Sundays crawl past at the speed of a snail on weed, I could only assume they were mad or lying. How could time go faster when every minute of the torturous game of Monopoly I was playing with my younger sister, because there was nothing else to do, was lasting an hour?

Mind you, Monopoly will do that to a person.

 

All the stone colours and a suspicious gathering of The Birds

But now I know what they mean. Whole weekends wink by, weeks barely have chance to nod in my direction and months wave as they scoot past, scurrying towards the end of the year. This is particularly frustrating this month as October is my favourite month of the year: the leaves are turning and falling, conkers shine from the undergrowth, pumpkins and squash are plentiful, and the air fills with woodsmoke, damp and general bosk. It's always a race for time for me to get out for a decent, long walk in this month but I suspect I'm not going to make it this year.  

  In past years, the Dog and I would be walking autumn every day, early in the morning when crows were still sleepy with their caws, the mist hung around the ground like an embarrassed teenager and the dew soaked our feet. Since he died and I couldn't face the pain of replacing him, it has required thought and planning to take myself out. This year, I have the allotment to force me.

 

My quest for weird graves and memorials 

continues - this couple had 12 - TWELVE - 

children and died on the same day as each other.   

  

We'd planted some baby plants, cabbages and the like, a few weeks ago and went back, after a particularly wet week, to find that slugs had done their work. Bastard things. Until I can find a tame hedgehog, or we build a wildlife pond and transport some frogspawn, then train the resulting frogs to eat all the slugs, we are cursed with the wretched things. The slow worms we found hiding out under the membrane don't seem to be doing much to help - have they started hibernation yet? Regardless, an actual encounter with slow worms is a rare treat: they are beautifully marked and a sign that we're managing to maintain a balance on the site, despite one plot holder's advice to "jes' put down loads o' weeeed killerrrr". No.

Anyway, a return visit today showed that the slugs hadn't eaten every single leaf, so I've left them, more in hope than experience, to fend for themselves and instead busied myself weeding, planting out onion bulbs and looking around.

The giant elder that borders our plot and the one next door has shed its leaves, revealing a silvery, crumply trunk and the faintest hints (if you squint) of mistletoe on the top branches. The brambles have also shed their leaves, although a few blackberries cling on - not even the mice want them at this time of year. The trees and undergrowth that line the canalside of the allotment are still in dense with foliage: it will be interesting to see what winter reveals when it really bites and we finally get to see the bones of the site.

The squash and the sweet potatoes have lost the will to live and mouldered away. Only the chard seems to be thriving. Thank god for the chard. Our neighbours on the left and left again have been served "non-cultivation" notices on their plots and, if it weren't for that, I suspect we would have been too.


Although 3 beds have now been uncovered and worked over, it's slow business taking over a site that had been effectively abandoned for 2 years: the sheer amount of work in clearing a space to grow anything in is overwhelming at times, not to mention our own ignorance of how to work it. But I paid close attention to advice received at the beginning of our tenancy: work a small bit at a time, don't try to do it all at one. Our left-hand neighbour didn't, rotavated the entire plot at the beginning of summer and then hasn't been near it since, except to stare in horror at the weeds that had multiplied in his month's absence.

On the left of him, they'd spent an industrious weekend clearing and burning scrub before disappearing off to Glastonbury for the weekend, returning to much the same scene of weed-takeover and despair. Allotments are hard work and it's easy to feel overwhelmed when you try to tackle the whole plot at once. So I don't: little and as often as I can fit in. Hopefully I'll be up there again before my op on Monday afternoon.

But it was good to be up there today: the air smelt of earth, rotting leaves and woodsmoke, the sounds of the city move further away and you become aware of a settling of the soul. The ache in your arms from hoeing is more real than any looming work problem and perspective on life is gained. If only vegetables were as well. But the chard is good, especially when cooked like this:

• Shred finely and stir fry till beginning to crisp in sesame oil
• Add sesame seeds, a little garlic/ginger/chilli/whatever you fancy
• Squeeze in some lime juice and a small drop of fish sauce
• Add cooked egg noodles and continue to stir fry until chard is crisp and your mouth is watering
• Serve with soy or chilli sauce, coriander and, if feeling particularly greedy/in need of a cultural mash-up, some toasted sourdough. 

 

Gruff Rhys and Boy Azooga making our Saturday worth a train trip for: there was applause. 

There was dancing. There were monumental hangovers the next day...

 

Life hasn't been all work and delayed allotmentearing though: we managed to fit in a quick break to North Yorkshire where I finally got to fulfill a long-held dream and visit Whitby. We climbed the steps like Mina and Lucy (minus the nightgowns, it was far too chilly for that malarkey), sat on the bench overlooking the town and explored the abbey, swooping around with imaginary cloaks of darkness. Well, I did, especially when the starlings swirled in mini-murmurations overhead. 

There have been catchings-up with friends, some of whom are moving on to career pastures new; gigs in areas of Birmingham I've never explored before, nights of scrabble, games of pool and family gatherings. My walks to work along the canal have taken a misty-foggy turn where the leaves hang damp and sullen, and the sky is low around the ears.

There has also been the arrival of 2 cats into our lives, Thor and Loki, from the local rescue centre. They are big beautiful boys and, after 4 weeks, have the Boyfriend wrapped around their (rather large - Loki's in particular) paws. It's rather endearing. This is the place to come if you ever want to see a grown man spend an inordinate amount of money on a "cat tower with crawl spaces and specially designed scratching posts". Which they are absolutely going to ignore in favour of the sofa/antique trunk/carpet. Because, cats.