Friday, 9 October 2015
Still
Still here, though quiet. Words are difficult, or have been. I've started a drawing class to see if marks come easier. A wonderful walk today in glorious October sunshine with L whose birthday is on Sunday, and this some of the celebration. Many changes unfolding and I am sure there will be words again.
Saturday, 15 August 2015
Harvest
I have distinctly felt the first touch of autumn these last two days. Heavy rain chased away the warmer air, and now the sun is back, but we're into another phase.
A vase of flowers from the garden - the first sweet peas (at last), one white, one dark red, frothy alchemilla, a lovely mallow with darker purple veins on its pale lilac petals, penstemon, veronica, spikey petalled astrantia, and something with small dark red flowers I think is a godetia. They are all together in an old milk bottle marked Hornby & Clarke, which L dug up in our London garden years ago.
Still eating gooseberries, dark as plums, tender broad beans, sweet tasting 'early' potatoes whose skins insist on floating off as they cook, nutty flavoured bristly courgettes, strawberries, raspberries, lettuce and mizuna. The runner beans are flowering scarlet on the allotment as they scramble up their hazel wigwam. And we have seedlings of rocket and chard growing on in the cold frame for later crops.
A vase of flowers from the garden - the first sweet peas (at last), one white, one dark red, frothy alchemilla, a lovely mallow with darker purple veins on its pale lilac petals, penstemon, veronica, spikey petalled astrantia, and something with small dark red flowers I think is a godetia. They are all together in an old milk bottle marked Hornby & Clarke, which L dug up in our London garden years ago.
Still eating gooseberries, dark as plums, tender broad beans, sweet tasting 'early' potatoes whose skins insist on floating off as they cook, nutty flavoured bristly courgettes, strawberries, raspberries, lettuce and mizuna. The runner beans are flowering scarlet on the allotment as they scramble up their hazel wigwam. And we have seedlings of rocket and chard growing on in the cold frame for later crops.
Tuesday, 4 August 2015
Summer
This summer is rather hard to love. A blanket of cloud of varying colour and density keeps the sun from warming and brightening our days almost every day. Just occasionally, the cloud disperses, the sun shines and the air begins to warm, we sit ourselves outside, apply sun cream, remember what we thought summer was originally intended to mean. These occasions last sometimes more than half a day...
My mother used to struggle with the way weather affected her mood, and be vociferously indignant when it was ghastly! Lowering (pronounced louring) was a word she often used to describe just such skies as we have seen rather too much of this summer. Definitions include dark and threatening, and I think it was some kind of threat that my mother used to sense, or you might say project into these heavy dull skies. And I have become more like her as I have grown older, even as I have deepened my understanding of the early roots of the feeling that is triggered. For me the departure of brightness, the absence of the sun and its warmth, create a perfect sensory metaphor for abandonment, loss, separation, ending. The mood that can seize me - a depressive one, if you will - is one in which all goodness has departed, the best is past, and now only bleakness and doom remain. I try to think of it as theatre lighting, to consider the skill used by its technicians to create mood and meaning by adjustments to the angle, brightness, colour or tint of the onstage lighting. I try to find the place inside me where I feel well, supported and know that I have not been abandoned. Hard work.
Today I have taken garden waste, cardboard and empty cartons to the tip, been to Lidl to buy amongst other things 70% dark chocolate with small caramel chips in it, goats cheese, nectarines and a little basket of single clove garlic. I learned that they do not sell fresh ginger. So I bought some from The Bear, a rather fine wholefood shop nearby, as well as some ground ginger, some fine wholewheat flour and some blackcurrant and apple concentrate. Sliced fresh ginger infused in boiling water is my favourite afternoon beverage and very good for the digestion. Good news to report, since we're on the subject - my gut doing very much better and I think I've put on a pound or so! Certainly eating a whole lot more these last few weeks, and able to enjoy the raspberries, strawberries, blackcurrants and gooseberries we have been growing in abundance in garden and allotment. We made ten jars of gooseberry jam at the weekend!
So, yes, summer is still performing some of its expected miracles!
My mother used to struggle with the way weather affected her mood, and be vociferously indignant when it was ghastly! Lowering (pronounced louring) was a word she often used to describe just such skies as we have seen rather too much of this summer. Definitions include dark and threatening, and I think it was some kind of threat that my mother used to sense, or you might say project into these heavy dull skies. And I have become more like her as I have grown older, even as I have deepened my understanding of the early roots of the feeling that is triggered. For me the departure of brightness, the absence of the sun and its warmth, create a perfect sensory metaphor for abandonment, loss, separation, ending. The mood that can seize me - a depressive one, if you will - is one in which all goodness has departed, the best is past, and now only bleakness and doom remain. I try to think of it as theatre lighting, to consider the skill used by its technicians to create mood and meaning by adjustments to the angle, brightness, colour or tint of the onstage lighting. I try to find the place inside me where I feel well, supported and know that I have not been abandoned. Hard work.
Today I have taken garden waste, cardboard and empty cartons to the tip, been to Lidl to buy amongst other things 70% dark chocolate with small caramel chips in it, goats cheese, nectarines and a little basket of single clove garlic. I learned that they do not sell fresh ginger. So I bought some from The Bear, a rather fine wholefood shop nearby, as well as some ground ginger, some fine wholewheat flour and some blackcurrant and apple concentrate. Sliced fresh ginger infused in boiling water is my favourite afternoon beverage and very good for the digestion. Good news to report, since we're on the subject - my gut doing very much better and I think I've put on a pound or so! Certainly eating a whole lot more these last few weeks, and able to enjoy the raspberries, strawberries, blackcurrants and gooseberries we have been growing in abundance in garden and allotment. We made ten jars of gooseberry jam at the weekend!
So, yes, summer is still performing some of its expected miracles!
Friday, 17 July 2015
Rough With The Smooth
So, I started work, and all is well, though on the first day I inadvertantly boarded the wrong train, had to hop off at the next station and catch a later one, and was therefore ten minutes late. What a surprise and a joy to find my manager had made me a cup of tea, knowing that I had a session booked and would not have time to get a drink. He has won me over altogether.... Client sessions went well, and I can see I will in time get the hang of the monstrous web-based database wherein all data must be stored. I am happy to be at work again, though there is much adjustment to accomplish.
The only real drawback has been taking zopiclone in order to ensure sleep for the first two days (a week apart, you remember I'm only working one day a week). It works like a charm at disabling the anxiety-producing part of my brain, and allowing sleep to ensue. Sadly for two days after taking it I suffer some kind of brain chemistry perturbation that makes for a mixture of depression and stress when there are no external stressors, and the poor gut is not so happy either. Ah, me, I am not a good subject for allopathic medicine. Pragmatically I am glad of the assistance it afforded, but am more or less resolved to do without next week, feeling much less anxious about the whole business.
The only real drawback has been taking zopiclone in order to ensure sleep for the first two days (a week apart, you remember I'm only working one day a week). It works like a charm at disabling the anxiety-producing part of my brain, and allowing sleep to ensue. Sadly for two days after taking it I suffer some kind of brain chemistry perturbation that makes for a mixture of depression and stress when there are no external stressors, and the poor gut is not so happy either. Ah, me, I am not a good subject for allopathic medicine. Pragmatically I am glad of the assistance it afforded, but am more or less resolved to do without next week, feeling much less anxious about the whole business.
Friday, 26 June 2015
Well
At last the new job is confirmed. Been a bit of a saga for one reason and another, but let's draw a veil over that and just be glad that I start the week after next, one day a week, for eight weeks initially. I'll let you know how I get on.
Notebooks arrived. 7pm yesterday...
Notebooks arrived. 7pm yesterday...
Wednesday, 24 June 2015
Old Notebook
The old notebook, begun in May last year, is full, and I have ordered more (10 x A4 exercise books, plain, blue covers) which apparently someone tried to deliver today. Total mystery since I was here and had gone upstairs for maybe one minute, came down to find an email alerting me to a failed delivery attempt. What a strange world we live in. The door was open as it was (finally) a warm day, so was it not obvious I was here? A second attempt will be made tomorrow.
Meanwhile this from last September
I try to gather here the pieces
that can be assembled
into one of those moments of clarity,
of a certain rightness - a poem.
Like the starlings assembling
in the elder bush, ten or fifteen at a time,
noisy, greedy, reaching for dark berries
with their hard beaks, swaying
as their own weight
bends the supple branches,
beginning to open the oily fans of their wings
for balance, then suddenly,
at the approach of a car,
all lifting messily off and flying away,
returning seconds later
to continue the difficult feast.
Perhaps it's called Difficult Feast, what do you think?
Meanwhile this from last September
I try to gather here the pieces
that can be assembled
into one of those moments of clarity,
of a certain rightness - a poem.
Like the starlings assembling
in the elder bush, ten or fifteen at a time,
noisy, greedy, reaching for dark berries
with their hard beaks, swaying
as their own weight
bends the supple branches,
beginning to open the oily fans of their wings
for balance, then suddenly,
at the approach of a car,
all lifting messily off and flying away,
returning seconds later
to continue the difficult feast.
Perhaps it's called Difficult Feast, what do you think?
Thursday, 4 June 2015
Knock Knock
A work opportunity appears to be knocking. The chance to start gently with a day or so a week, and see how it goes. Working with children again. Amazed. Grateful. Blessed. The day the weather changed...
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