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. 

January Blathering

 A truly wondrous thing happened yesterday…brace yourselves…we opened the attic hatch!

I know. Extremely brave of us. And I say ‘us’ loosely because it was just N up the ladder. I don’t do ladders. 

Anyway, when we brought the house back in 2019, we’d been completely stymied about how to open the hatch (don’t laugh). Then my neighbour had given dire warnings about the depth of the insulation and how he’d had to have it boarded over before he could use it. So we pretended it didn’t exist until this year when I had a small, totally reasonable, meltdown about how much I hated tripping over the boxes of Christmas decorations in July and other assorted detritus of life that were better placed in an attic out of sight and reach of toes. 

This then prompted an overdue January clear out of things upstairs. So many things that a black bin back was required for the first time in about a year (I really do try to keep our general rubbish levels down). Do you do a Big January Clearout? It's incredibly cathartic, almost a meditative act if you don't go at it like a bull in a china shop, which only results in more, broken, stuff being thrown away. 

Tiny Wee Mabel giving the world her best side-eye as she's

cross about the cold turn the weather has taken

I'm no Marie Kondo (gods forbid) but I do like the process of opening a corner/cupboard/drawer/box and working through the contents one by one. Looking at them and recognising that, if they've been in there 5 years and never looked at, it's time for them to go. In my case yesterday, that was scraps of fabric, a box of rusty pins, varying lengths and tangles of embroidery threads, remnants of wool not long enough to make anything with, wrapping paper that was too creased and crumped and sellotape-marked to reuse, broken buttons and knitting needles, and other random items that I'd once thought would have a purpose but turned out not to have. 

Where once there was an overspill of chaos and failed projects, there is now a contained order in labelled boxes on neat and clean shelves. It won't last but while it does, I go and stand in front of them every now and then just to appreciate the scene. 

It's representative of the more ordered me I like to tap into every now and then. She doesn't make an appearance very often. 

Just a happy Boo in his box. 

Also on the agenda at the weekend was a visit to the wedding venue. After a false start with a place that looked enchantingly like an Ewok village but had no wheelchair access or facilities beyond some basic toilets, we finally hit upon a place that has enough of a Wild Place look about it for us to be happy. 

As you can be sure there will be a lot more of that in the months to come, I'll leave it for the time being. Once we've got the Great Guest List Row out of the way. 

Last night I started crocheting myself a hat. I've been at a bit of a loose crafty end since finishing the last Attic 24 CAL in time for my Mum's birthday back in December. I've taken the time to do some repairs (pockets in jeans, buttons on shirts etc) but my next crochet project (which I can't mention here in case they read about it) won't start for another couple of weeks. I'm not doing the CAL this year as I feel I need to use up the wool I already have rather than buy another big bag of more. 

Glowering skies over the allotment

Plus my ears were really really cold when we were doing root cuttings at college last week. A fascinating process and I'm really hoping the phlox I used actually take. The soft-wood cuttings we did a few weeks back did very well until they did too well and I didn't pot them on in time, so they died. The leaf cuttings are just sitting there as if to say "What?", practically shrugging at me. I love the process of taking cuttings but I'm not convinced the plants are so keen. 

Anyway, my ears were cold and I don't have a hat, so I'm making myself one out of fetching dark red wool that's quite fluffy and has a wee bit of sparkle in it. I was given the wool years ago, so it's nice to finally have a purpose for it. 

In other news, I'm unofficially doing Dry January, alcohol being one of those inflammatory things that I'm trying to avoid, as well as Buy Nothing January, which is not something being marketed far and wide as A Thing, but the result of noticing that, really, I have everything I need, so why buy more? Honestly, I'm feeling very virtuous and smug about it all. Veering dangerously onto the path of Puritanism? Nah. Too many rules. Just an attempt to live more lightly on the planet. 

Took a walk in the park and successfully identified a 

Prunus serrula (Tibetan Cherry) by it's bark. 

I signed up for the George Saunders newsletter. Heard of him? He wrote one of my favourite books, Lincoln in the Bardo, a few years back and I've got his latest, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, on order at the library. He releases an e-newsletter every week or so (if you're on the free list, which I am) and he set an intriguing writing exercise yesterday, involving a word and time limit. I may try it later this week. 

On the subject of books, I read John le Carre's Call for the Dead yesterday, which was slim but excellent. It's interesting that as uninterested in the Cold War as I am, he can still draw me in and I'm a little in love with the shambling Smiley. And I'm also ploughing through Pandora's Jar, despite not being particularly interested in Greek mythology. But Natalie Haynes is a chatty writer and entertaining to boot, so it doesn't feel like a slog. 

And here I shall leave you to return to some proper work. As much as I enjoy letting free a long stream of blather, there are things to attend to. As we plunge into the dark and rainy second week of January, I wish you all a good one. Hope it's full of warming meals, warming fires and warm toes. I'm off to throw a jacket potato in the oven. 

Ditto this Cornus alba 'Sibirica'. 

So, What Now?

At some point, in the blissful Before time, when we were locked down but hopeful that 2021 would be the best year EVER, I’d decided to upend my career to see if I could develop one where I ran my own little nursery and basically got to spend every day with plants. 

So I duly jacked in my secure salary, my employer’s pension contribution. Waved goodbye to colleagues I loved working with. Set up freelance to free up (ha!) time to train. Joined the WRAGS scheme. Signed up for an RHS Level 2 course. Spent lots of time at the allotment, practising. Asked my doctor if anyone was actually going to do anything about my arthritis. 

Well, no. No they weren’t. Because it didn't exist, see? Oh, well if I was going to insist - and I was - they’d book a scan but they wouldn’t find…ah. 

They did find. They found extensive arthritis in both feet. Extra bone is growing where extra bone is not necessary. It rubs against the tendons, aggravating them like a persistent toddler, making walking HARD. Making yoga impossible. Making the idea of being on my feet all day laughable, then cry-able.

When I was working in a museum, on my feet for great parts of the day, I could lie on the sofa at night and watch the nerves in my feet jump with such severity, my feet twitch and leap of their own accord. Whilst that's a good trick, it is more than a little freaky. Freaky feet! It's every girl's dream. Most shoes are unwearable (and a plague on those designers). I will never run a marathon. 

To be fair, that last was never going to happen regardless, but now I have a cast-iron reason why it's not. Win!

All throughout 2020 and 2021, I watched as appointments were pushed back and back and further back. I need is a steroid injection but for that I need an MRI scan and there we hit the sticking place. When the poor receptionist called early December to tell me that it was being cancelled again (third time) with no new date in sight, I actually cried and tried to plead my case. Nothing doing. Orders from management. 

Notice how it’s never management who make those cancellation calls. 

Now, this is not the NHS’s fault (although I shake my fist in the general direction of  “management”). It just is what it is in a time of pandemics, sneaky dismantling of the NHS and the chronic underfunding and undermining of what’s left of it. Fault aside, this kind of thing does tend to bring about a reckoning. 

I am living now with two chronic conditions: my under-active thyroid (I like to think of it as the only lazy part of me) - which is an auto-immune condition - and the arthritis (likewise). Which will only spread and worsen with age I, literally, can’t run from this. It needs facing and adapting to. 

So I am. I no longer do yoga (all those downward dogs and planks are Too Much) but I do Pilates and my teacher is aces at helping me adapt postures. I don’t walk too much but I do go to the gym and do core strengthening work: the aim is for seven thousand steps a day because then I’m not in too much pain the next day. I go to the allotment but only for an hour at a time. I am as physical as I can be with the resources I have to hand. 

Obviously, if I feel like hiking up a bloody big hill, then I'll do it anyway and deal with the consequences the next day. I am stubborn like that. And I like being on the top of hills. Or deep in mossy woods where the very air is green and light.  

There's been a lot of research and consultation, which has led to me kicking wheat, sugar and dairy into the long grass. Which is ironic because it will feel like I’m eating nothing but long grass as I up and up my vegetable intake. Right now, my craving for sugar is so bad, I've been staring at a pot of honey for 30 minutes before eating 3 humbugs left over from Christmas. 

Who has humbugs at Christmas? Before you ask, yes I do also quite enjoy a Werther's Original. I know. 

Sadly, that idealised dream of running my own nursery, where I wore sensible but flattering no-nonsense dungarees, I rocked some adorable plaits and my face was permanently shining with good health and cheer, has had to come to an end. I need to be, as N so very often pleads with me to be, sensible. You can’t be on your feet all day when your feet don't work properly. My brother in law is a gardener and he regularly clocks 30,000 steps a day. That would finish me off. I’d need a week to recover. In fact, I did do over 30,000 steps in London and exactly that happened. 

Employers take dim views of such things. So what can I do? 

I'm trying not to post a gloomy, woe-is-me piece. A public breast-beating at the unfairness of life. Life is unfair and I’ve done all that in my own private time - I’m done with it now. Come on Collett*: refocus, recentre. 

Also, I do like a new beginning. It gives me the excuse to buy notebooks and pens that come with the promise of Potential. I can clear my desk and rearrange it, creating the optimal space (there is no such thing, I know). I can sit in my lovely soft-pink office chair (a complete indulgence and tres not practical)

So, what can I do? My little consultancy is still running, because if there's one thing I'm good at, it's sitting down and telling people what to do. This year, I'm developing some training courses and resources, which is both fun and exciting. What else can I do? Well, I can do this. I can write. 

And boy, do I write. Here, there and anywhere that stands still long enough for me to put ink on it. My WhatsApp messages are veritable essays. If I'm asked to create a plan for a room or a garden, I write one. Sitting down with a blank page and hours to fill it makes me giddy. Give me a moment to think and then I'm away, 4 fingers (I'm no touch typist) galloping across the keyboard like wild horses. Thank god for spell checks because they sometimes have the accuracy of wild horses, i.e. none. 

As I type, the 90% complete first draft of a potential first book is sitting next to, waiting for the finish and the first of many, many edits. Want to see a sample? I'm just going to put this PDF first page here and then run away and hide through the sheer embarrassment of admitting publicly that I've written something. 

I like the little thrill of a new adventure, wondering what I’ll be like at the end of it. This one is still unfolding, still developing and I don’t know what will come of it at the end. Perhaps nothing, perhaps something. 

Whatever does, I should be able to do a respectable amount of sit ups at the very least. 

*A family phrase, usually employed when one of us needs to pull our socks up and just flipping well Get On With It, despite various hurdles and things to overcome. Can also be shortened to CoC, which has the added benefit of looking (and sounding) almost rude. Hey, you take your giggles where you can.