Merry Christmas...I think

 Review of the Year…..

I mean, really…. If I was to do this in the style of one of those round robin, Christmas letters that American people write, referring to themselves in the third person, I might say something like:

Shyama put on quite a lot of weight this year, meaning that every time she saw a photo of herself she was drenched in self loathing

Or

All our energies, as a family, were concentrated in trying to remain sane and not kill each other.

All very negative though, in’t it? It is very hard to remain positive at the moment and 2020 has been an absolute bastard of a year.  But there have still been high points and I do realise how lucky I am. 

You know those memes that go around saying - ‘even though you feel like shit, get up and put lipstick on’ and that sort of thing? 

Very much not me with red lipstick on

I don’t wear lipstick but it was in that kind of spirit that I bleached the hair on my upper lip this morning. My daughter came into the bathroom as I was doing it so she could do a poo (of course she did!) and said to me:

“If that white stuff’s to get rid of the hair on your face, why don’t you put it on your chin?”

“I don’t have hair on my chin, you cheeky mare!” I said, in the style of a 1950s cockney, while thinking - I don’t, do I? Have hair on my chin?

She said;

“You don’t have hair on your upper lip either.” 

So perhaps she was trying to make some kind of profound comment on the nature of the standards we inflict on ourselves in the endeavour of fitting into societally imposed beauty ideals, I’m not sure.

By the way, I really like lipstick and appreciate the vampish red lips of other women but sadly it doesn’t seem to suit me. I watched a couple of episodes of 'Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries' and promptly bought a bright red lipstick and a cheap kimono from a well known, online retailer. The lipstick felt as alien to my face as some people report the wearing of contact lenses to be. I’d love to swish around, flicking my scarf over my shoulder and pouting vampishly but it was not to be. 

The reality

That’s quite enough about me, how about you? You need to give yourself a massive pat on the back for withstanding the pressures that have been thrown at you this year! You really do. And if you’ve binged, cried, shouted, indulged in a lot more ‘me’ time, got welded to your sofa, that’s all perfectly understandable. 

A psychologist on the radio said that when we do video calls the brain doesn’t differentiate between seeing somebody irl and seeing somebody on the screen so it is actually a good thing to do if you’re feeling lonely. In all honesty I can sometimes find big group video calls a little tiring and sometimes stressful. But I’ve realised that on screen, as in real life, I prefer smaller gatherings - there’s more space to talk, less chance of inadvertently interrupting someone just as they are about to tell a killer anecdote and it just feels more friendly and intimate. I am an introvert though so you might prefer your zoom call to look like the opening scene of The Muppet Show, it’s up to you.

Zoom call

I’d been toying with the idea of sponsoring a child for quite a while, had the tab open on my computer for months but it was reading about the work that Marcus Rashford had done this year, to try and make sure that school kids didn’t have to skip meals during the holidays, that finally pushed me to do something and set up the sponsor. I know this might sound sanctimonious and self congratulatory but, at this point, I don’t really care. I think that witnessing compassion has a positive effect and can inspire you to be a bit kinder in your own life. Not that my direct debit and letter to my sponsored child is on the same level of Marcus Rashford’s work, but they do say that any act of kindness, however small, is never wasted. 

I hope you manage to have a good Christmas, whatever you do and that, even though calendar years are a completely arbitrary measurement of time passing, 2021 holds some hope and warmth for us all. 

Music Maps

Music was my first love….

Actually I don’t think that’s true, I think my first love was books, or probably food, but just bear with me here while I take you on an odyssey of sound and sensations…. (you’ll have to provide your own sensations).

 

Ain’t no doubt it’s all so fucking depressing at the moment - incompetent, blundering and dangerous leadership, a terrifying global pandemic and dickheads panic buying toilet roll as soon as there’s a sniff of a second lockdown. Yep, it’s all very grim and added to that you’ve watched everything Netflix, iPlayer and all the others have to offer, twice! So let’s all join metaphorical, non germ carrying hands, sit around an imaginary fire and listen to some soothing tunes.

There used to be a T.V programme called ‘Comedy Connections’ which I loved, it would plot the genesis of a particular funny programme - what the writers and actors/performers had worked on before, what brought them together to produce this and where they progressed from there. If we’re going to pretend that music was my first love, let’s just continue the fantasy that comedy was my second. Music docs and ‘rock-umentaries’ might do the same thing in plotting the genesis of songs, bands and albums but sometimes in a leaden and heavy handed way. We could do with a similar thing, to the Comedy Connections programme, for songs.

Quincy Jones Wikimedia Commons

For instance, I only learned recently that two songs I really liked had sampled Summer in the City by Quincy Jones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q7IJOYxAMo

If you don’t know the song it has a wonderful catchy, gently thrilling sort of refrain at the beginning and throughout. The two songs that I’d been enjoying, without knowing that they were leaning on Quincy Jones, were:

Passin' Me By by The Pharcyde (1992)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-mAK3uB2_0

And

Les Nuits by Nightmares on Wax (1999)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q7IJOYxAMo

By the way, if you want to pass some time in an entertaining manner, look up Quincy Jones’ comments and insights on other musicians, he's brutally honest and hilarious. Here is just one quote from an interview in Vulture, link below.

“It’s Trump and uneducated rednecks. Trump is just telling them what they want to hear. I used to hang out with him. He’s a crazy motherfucker. Limited mentally — a megalomaniac, narcissistic. I can’t stand him. I used to date Ivanka, you know.”

https://www.vulture.com/2018/02/quincy-jones-in-conversation.html

Massive Attack ft Tricky

Another connection. I’d heard Black Steel by Tricky for years without knowing who it was by or what it was called, only that I loved it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZJTM03UByU

It was only when they had withdrawn some music cassettes from the public library I worked at and we were invited to help ourselves to the stash that I snagged Maxinquaye and loved it, especially Black Steel, that song gave me the feels. A few years later I learned that it was a cover of a song by Public Enemy, originally called Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM5_6js19eM

I still prefer the Tricky version...

Green from Scritti Politi
Stock image

So many bands and artists have covered Beatles songs but some of the, arguably, more obscure ones can pass you by. It wasn’t that long ago that I found out that She’s a Woman had been done by the Fab Four years before Scritti Politi had covered it (or before Scritti Politi with Shabba Ranks had covered it!). I always liked Scritti Politi there was something unsettling sexual about the way the lead singer’s androgonous tones breathed out the lyrics, or perhaps that was just me….

Urgh, this is dreadful, I can’t find a Scritti version without Shabba Ranks - does it exist or did I imagine it?

Now this one isn’t a connection, just someone I’ve come across lately. Arlo Parks and her beautiful, mellifluous voice - perfect for these uncertain times and with a song called Black Dog, in which she says in the first line that she wants to lick the grief away from your lips, or somesuch! (I'm paraphrasing here) I started off alluding to the depressing state of the world but if you are in need of some comfort you could do a lot worse than listen to Arlo Parks. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM5_6js19eM

I get a bit evangelical about music and want other people to listen to stuff I'm enjoying (until too many people do it and ruin it for me…) In all honesty I never click on music videos that people share on social media which is why I rarely post them myself, but in the spirit of our campfire sing along let's all have a collective listen and try and take a break from reality for a bit.

As Arlo Parks sings in Hurt: 

“Just know that it won’t hurt so, won’t hurt so much forever.

Won’t hurt so much forever.”

Breeding Season

I was going to call this post  - ‘When Covid comes to call’ but thought that would be misleading as I'm pretty sure we don't have it. I also worried that calling it that might drive away any potential readers - as if saying the word or reading some words about it would instantly transmit the virus. 

I’m not trying to make light of a life threatening condition but I do feel that if I so much as sniff these days, I’m a modern day leper who should be ringing a bell and calling ‘unclean’!

You see, me and the kids have had a cold this week, the first one of the year. Because I mentioned the word ‘cough’ when I rang the school to report their absence on Monday, I was instantly informed that they would have to be tested for Covid-19 and found to be clear before they were allowed to return to school. As it’s been reported in the news it has proved impossible to obtain a Covid test so we’ve been trapped in the house with two hyperactive kids. They are now almost fine, I feel better - unless *self pity is one of the recognised symptoms of the virus…

*Yes, I realise there are healthcare professionals, teachers and other key workers who are currently unable to go to work because they can’t get tested - I know there are people worse off than me, thanks!

I understand the school's stance - they have to be extra vigilent. But we are still trapped in limbo. Can they go back to school when they couldn't be tested but have passed the quarantine period? Is this situation going to keep recurring throughout the term? What if it's not just a cold?

It made me eat my breakfast very mindfully the other day. I interrogated my taste buds - could I taste my banana, yogurt, honey and granola combo? I could and it was delicious! The roasted almond in Tesco Finest** granola is one of the nicest things in the world, so nice that I added it to the gratitude journal the other day when I was scrabbling around for things to be grateful for.

**Other brands of granola are available.

A friend has recommended vitamin drops for the kids to protect them against the inevitable barrage of coughs and colds that will assail them at school from now until next April. It was no different when I was at school. My Mum used to break a Karvol capsule onto a tissue for me and I’d dab my red, chafed nose against it at various points during the day.  We went into school with coughs and colds just to keep up the merry proliferation of that virus, obviously nowhere near as dangerous, in its many strains, as Covid-19. The Guardian helpfully reproduced this NHS chart: 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/18/coronavirus-symptoms-common-cold-covid-19-flu-nhs-guide

Onto cheerier things, ever since I read of Agatha Christie's writing routine I've been longing to go to the same hotel on Dartmoor and write! And take solitary walks on the moor after lunch and act out my dialogue! This is what I need to do! I mean, I’m not saying that it is my constant fantasy to run away at the moment or that any harsh word that gets thrown at me this week is making me want to weep but….you know. 

We stopped off at Dartmoor on our way to Cornwall in August and tramped across the misty Moors. It was a wonderful feeling to traverse the expanse with only the sheep and cows for company. 

One day I will go to a hotel there and be comfortable in my own company and take solitary lunches and write, one day...

Camping Revisited

View from the bottom of our pitch

Nobody wants to be ‘that’ guy, do they? That fussy, prissy, joyless idiot. Too neurotic to enjoy the simple things in life, squawking theatrically when they see an insect. Shuddering at the slightest inconvenience. The worst character in a film or a sitcom; uptight and unable to let go. 

However, this, unfortunately, seems to be the character I seem to adopt when I go camping. This character is always there - in a less amplified state, worrying about where she is sitting in a pub or a restaurant, but she becomes a bit of a monster when tents are involved.
I’ve written about my feelings about festivals before and my feelings about camping are very much wrapped up in that. https://msmuddles.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-disparity-between-real-and-ideal.html

Glamping seemed to offer a whole different outlook - the tents, yurts or teepees are already put up for you, the campsites aren’t as crowded and you bathe under a wondrous waterfall of mountain spring water, warmed by the tropical, British sun. (I may have made that last bit up). The toilets and waterfall have mute men servants, ready to dispense Egyptian cotton towels, wrapped in sprigs of lavender. After your shower they pummel the city tension from your shoulders on a massage table…

Our bell tent

O.K, so I might have had unrealistic expectations of glamping, a genuine one was that our campsite would be comprised of four other families and we’d all be spaced at least two miles apart so we never saw or heard each other. I was also expecting our tent to be perched atop a hill, overlooking a beautiful valley... Although I saw those valleys on the drive there, Reader, I really did, the reality wasn’t quite like that. 

I had to reckon with glamping within lockdown which meant that they’d closed the regular showers and you were only permitted to use bucket showers. Imagine what a bucket shower is, that’s what it is. It involves filling buckets, which in turn involves good upper body strength. I never used one, preferring instead to resort to the festival wash method of baby wipes in the tent. I took dry shampoo as well, another festival staple, but to be honest I barely looked in a mirror the whole weekend so that didn’t get used. 
My husband* had not one but two bucket showers over the course of the weekend, and was keen to highlight how great they were but it felt like he was trying to prank me into having one. 

*Note - if I’m the joyless, neurotic idiot, he’s the gung ho, Bear Grylls-esque, hero. He threw himself into wood chopping, fire lighting, even dish washing with enthusiastic gusto. His boyish ebullience rubbed off on the kids and they enjoyed burning things just as much as he did. They weren’t so keen on the composting toilets.

Oh, the composting toilets - sawdust, minimal lighting and the smell! The indescribable smell. My husband said that, after this weekend, we’d never get rid of the smell of wood fire from our nose, I’d say that the composting toilets provided a strong contender for this role. Still, to be fair to the campsite, they were always clean, they always had toilet roll and the sink outside, at which you washed your hands, was always stocked with hand soap and hand sanitiser. You were instructed to tip a cup of sawdust into the chamber of horrors if you’d done a poo and this made for an experience which was marginally nicer than a festival portaloo. You had to spray the seat with antibacterial spray after each use and while this made paying a visit more labour intensive than normal, it probably meant that the toilets were generally cleaner than your average public convenience. It’s just the smell, the sweet smell that nearly made me boke on my very last visit. My main problem with camping is not having a toilet nearby. That first night, kept awake by the sound of revelry and the demands of my bladder, I eventually made the journey to the toilets, on my own, in the pitch black, with a head torch lighting my way. It felt like a hero’s journey. 

Camping usually makes me want to cry and this trip was no different, however I have to give credit where it’s due and list the plus points of glamping versus regular camping.

1. Although we weren’t at the top of a hill, overlooking a lush, verdant valley, we did have a lot of space around us. You couldn’t really see anyone else and they couldn’t really see you. Thus we were able to caper around with unselfconscious vim. (You could hear other people - the forest resounded with the sound of strident, confident, middle class voices calling their children or the music coming from the large crowd of yoofs in the corner field but you couldn’t often see them.)
2. The tent is already put up, which cuts down on rows. You could stand up in our one, a bonus for when giving oneself a baby wipe shower.
3. The fires - the fire pit and the little stove we made tea on. I’m not as enthusiastic as Bear G the second about this but it was pleasant to sit around one of these with a glass of wine or cup of tea. No T.V, no P.C, no phone coverage, just the fire. 
   
4. Family Time. OK so this largely consisted of bonding over our shared disgust at the smell of the composting toilet BUT it was also time spent assembling halloumi kebabs and showing them the correct way to cut a pepper. On holiday they revelled in assisting us, fetching things and carrying logs, saying ‘Can I help’ or ‘I'll get it’. At home this ceased abruptly, it was nice while it lasted though….

Lovingly prepared kebabs

Am I now a convert to the whole camping thing? Not quite.

Swimming and the Body

One of the things that I love about swimming, particularly swimming in the sea, is that it is an activity which is not so much ‘how do I look doing this?’ as ‘Oh, I love this!’  If you’re someone who carries around a yoke of (probably mildly irrational) self consciousness with you, this is a very big deal. Not always imagining that constant, critical audience; ready to jeer at your every move. When swimming somewhere that’s not too crowded, looking out at the horizon, I cease worrying about how I look and merely focus on how I feel.

I’ve tried to evangelise about this down the pub; about not worrying how something makes you look - how sweaty you become or what it does to your hair, I’m sure I’ve sounded tiresomely bogus but I’m just trying to spread the good news. Swimming makes me feel marvellous; at one with the world and more at peace with myself, it could do the same for you! 

Marazion Beach

From a young age I waged war against my body; I cruelly seized bits of it between my fingers and wished it away, I pinched it and hurt it. I starved and berated it, ignored it and tried to pretend it wasn’t there and still it served me as all of our bodies do. My body served me well - carrying me around, healing wounds and nurturing the human beings who grew within it. Why are we taught to hate our bodies so much? To try and mould them into some kind of impossible faux Platonic ideal, when the goalposts keep moving anyway? When I was young the ‘fashionable’ body shape for women was a flat chested, half starved ‘waif’, at this moment it seems to be a cartoon, Jessica Rabbit, hourglass figure.
I read somewhere that wanting to lose weight was very rarely about wanting to be thinner, it was about being acceptable to other people. And that is probably true of anything we want to change about our appearance - the wish to be acceptable to others - that invisible audience again.  At the heart of this is wanting to be lovable. 

I recently entered a micro story competition, the challenge was to write a 100 word story based on a picture. The picture was of a lighthouse, with the sun setting on the sea. It was a peaceful image filled with soothing colours. The sea was calm and still. I tried to banish the prosaic reality of the function of a lighthouse being to warn sailors away from the rocky shore and write about swimming instead! The image reminded me of an evening swim I’d had at Marazion Beach in Cornwall, near St. Michael’s Mount. The water had been wonderfully cool and silky - not bracingly cold and I’d managed to get to that happy state of Zen-like contentment. We were all sticky from our visit to a tropical garden that day and a swim was a perfect way to end the day. 

Light on the Water

Nowhere to park in the whole of Southport. Trapped like wasps in our hot car. We get to the rocky beach at five and unpeel ourselves from sticky clothes. I wrestle with the shame of my bulging outline. 

Picking over the painful pebbles we run into the sea. I plough through the oily shallows; gentle waves tugging playfully.  The kids splash behind me and I pretend we're a family of seals. 

Cool water. I send a silent prayer to my body - I’ve been so busy absorbing the disapproval of others that I’ve forgotten to appreciate the pleasure it can bring.

I didn’t win the competition - maybe mine’s not a story at all and more of a poem or a vignette but I enjoyed writing it and I’m grateful to it for reminding me of how much I love swimming!

First attempt at capturing the scene in pencils

Solstice-mas

Good morning to you. Who’d have thought we’d still be living like this, three months on. I hope you’re keeping well.

I’ve started writing this week and it feels brilliant to be writing.  The writing has been only moderately painful, as opposed to feeling like every word was being dragged out of me with a rusty, steel rope. If you are somebody who writes you will probably know what I mean, if you are not then I don’t really know what to compare it to - the performance of a task which feels difficult, troubling, arduous, but at the same time immensely satisfying. Maybe it’s like running uphill, then coming to the summit and looking out at a stunning view. Not that I’m saying that anything I’m producing is stunning, just that maybe things feel more gratifying when we have to work at them.

What else? Yesterday we had a Summer Solstice picnic.  Sadly this didn’t involve running around naked and jumping into a lake but we did have a lovely, socially distanced picnic with some friends. The kids ran off and made a den in the trees. I’d got the five kids (our children and their pals) a little present to unwrap, to give the whole thing a sense of occasion. This gift was a hot chocolate kit, consisting of a large chocolate ‘spoon’ with a packet of marshmallows, and some novelty sticky notes. The children seemed pleased and promptly ate the chocolate spoons and marshmallows - the kit never made it to the hot drink stage.
For years we’ve been talking about having some kind of solstice celebration, not because we are particularly spiritual or close to nature but because all our birthdays are in Autumn/Winter so the celebrations are always indoor affairs. I used to gaze wistfully at the families having parties in the park, with cake and balloons and think 'that looks like fun'. The lockdown situation has forced our hands - let's really do it this year, we said, let's mark Midsummer's Eve in some way.

We didn’t have cake or balloons. (The Old Man had made a cake but it wasn’t ready in time). But we did have Prosecco and Pimms and strawberries and posh crisps and samosas and some homemade fish cakes, the recipe having been passed down along the generations in my family. The fish cakes are even spherical so, at a stretch, could be said to be representative of the sun. 

Rustic cooking

It was one set of friends’ wedding anniversary that weekend so it felt like a double celebration. Our bladders held out admirably (the public toilets being closed), a good time was had by all and a bunny rabbit scampered away in the distance! 


When we got home we exchanged our main presents - something we had decided would be a part of our personal Solstice celebration. The kids were very pleased with their Harry Potter Lego and the Old Man was happy with his new bread knife and I was over the moon with my bound set of Jane Austen novels!

But Solstice isn’t just about the presents - the best thing about it was being able to meet up with friends and have a chat and share our food and relax a bit. Of course we talked about the situation but we also talked about many other things. And for once the kids didn’t moan about being dragged out for a walk because their friends were at the end of it!

Oh - we didn't watch the sunset because you can't really see it from our flat but we are going to be fine tuning this celebration so we'll definitely make a point of watching it next year.

Captain's log 5:1

I am a great admirer of people who ‘get things done’. Those folk who transform their living spaces into something that looks like it has come from the pages of a lifestyle magazine, almost as soon as they’ve unpacked their boxes. These people don’t put off unpacking their boxes in the first place, they get straight down to it. People who don’t feel defeated before they’ve even begun, people who totally have their shit together. Needless to say I am not one of those people.
I like to think that the reason I don’t make much physical, tangible progress is because I’m more of an internal person, living in my own head. Mine is a subterranean landscape, just as sparkling, colourful and well maintained as your living room, just not visible to the naked eye.

So, what have I done since lockdown began?

• Completed a third round of edits for my WIP (Work in progress).
• Written a short story based on the prompt from the Curtis Brown Creative - Weekly Writing Workout course. https://www.curtisbrowncreative.co.uk/the-weekly-writing-workout/
• I realise that you probably don’t care about the two things listed above, but writing felt like an agonising, almost insurmountable chore at one point, so anything that frees up the process is good.
• Read a bit of Wintering by Katherine May.  https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Katherine-May/Wintering--How-I-learned-to-flourish-when-life-became-frozen/24330069 The blurb on the cover is right - it is a beautiful book and one which makes you feel, fleetingly, closer to the natural world, which brings me to my next point:
• Got a lot of pleasure from observing the flora and fauna on our daily walk, particularly the mighty Mistle Thrush. 

  

  Mistle Thrush (we think) 

   I’ve mentioned it before but I’m really appreciating seeing the small changes around us, as the season turns, and it’s a real joy to see this bird on our walk, it’s status is 'Population decreasing' so I feel privileged to be able to spot it.
• Fed the fishes - the huge carp are like something out of a cartoon. You can imagine them having a full on war with the duck who keeps bullying the poor, pretty Mandarin ducks, chasing them away when you try to feed them. The duck pecked at the fish as they tussled for food but the fish are so big I can imagine them all getting together and fighting back. 

  

  BELEAGUERED MANDARINS

• 
  

• 

  CARP ARMY

  
  
• Put in quite a few hours at work. Work is a welcome diversion - who knew?
• Done quite a bit of Just Dance. I’ve finally found an exercise that makes you sweat, that I actually enjoy!
• Watched Deutschland 83 on All 4. Just when you think you'v exhausted all the box sets! I keep banging on to everyone I know about this series but it is sooooo good! I now only want to watch stylish thrillers that are set in the past! It is pacey, compelling and wry. https://www.channel4.com/programmes/deutschland-83      

  

  Martin/Morris in Deutschland 83

• Have learned how to do planks, thanks to Joe Wicks. (I’m still fat btw, don’t think all of this exercise has narrowed my silhouette, it hasn’t, maybe that has something to do with all the wine...or the Kit Kats….or the ersatz Frazzles)
• Done a visual diary - even if I can’t draw. My goodness you are in for a treat. If you thought Space Dorg was bad, etc, etc, but again, it’s often easier to express things in pictures rather than words, so (insert shrug emoji - my most overused emoji, here.

Hope you are well. See you on the other side! xx

Sometimes it's not great

This won’t be a jaunty, upbeat post because I wasn’t really in a jaunty, upbeat place when I wrote it, more of a reflective one. I haven’t had a terrible week but there have been terrible moments within it. I’ve had moments where I feel like an utter failure - as a mother, as a worker and as a human being…. then my period arrived and the angst and self loathing shrank to a manageable size. 

The grief from losing my father, just after Christmas, is still very much there. This is understandable, I guess, but maybe I’ve been trying to tidy it away for the lockdown period, to make coping with the restrictions that have been placed on us more bearable, but it usually grabs me just as I’m going to bed. I still can’t see photos of my Dad without crying and I feel guilty for not thinking about him more. This very unusual situation of collective crisis has created a general forum where people can share what they’re going through - the strictures, the frustrations and perhaps the unexpected benefits. Grief on the other hand, can be a very solitary experience. I can try and channel my sorrow into anger at people (joggers) selfishly veering towards me on the path and my family when we are having our daily walk or I could try to confront the real source of the feelings.

Traditionally I’ve always tried to deal with feelings by outrunning them. Not literally, otherwise I’d be more svelte, but figuratively, by being on the move all the time. The reason I feared that lockdown would feel like being buried alive was because ‘STAY AT HOME’ was the antithesis of what I felt like doing. Home was a place where thoughts became most intrusive, hectic and unhelpful - there was nowhere to hide. I wanted to be constantly on the move - I wanted to be at the pub, or a pub quiz, or the theatre, cinema, park, public gardens, swimming pool, even work - anywhere but home. It wasn’t that I wanted to be away from my family, I was happy to have them with me, wherever I went, I just didn’t want to be at home. And all the places that are shut off from us now, were all the places where I chose to hide. Of course, I’ve found a way of replicating the sensation of movement - the exercise, the dance, the daily walk (yes, actual movement, I know) and I’ve found an effective way of blocking things out and hiding in a bubble at home, thus creating the illusion of space around me, via some super expensive, noise cancelling headphones. Anti-social, maybe and not dealing with the underlying cause of the angst, the hyper-sensitivity to noise, but absolutely necessary, right now. Just as I couldn’t face up to the implications of the Coronavirus, when news of it was first broadcast, I can’t deal with any heavy soul searching as I deal with the enforced lockdown now.
As I’ve said before, one way or another, all of my energy is focused toward staying sane.

Are you looking for some light relief?
I've been reading and enjoying The Flat Share by Beth O'Leary.

I've been enjoying the plays broadcast on YouTube by the National Theatre.
I've made some green slodge aka watercress soup. 

Tasty!

I very much enjoyed Quiz - the TV program based on the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? coughing scandal. https://www.itv.com/hub/quiz/2a7854
I'd seen the play a couple of years ago when a friend won tickets - very appropriately as a prize for winning a quiz, and the play was fantastic! We got to vote on 'ask the audience' voting keypads, at the beginning and end of the play as to whether we thought the Ingrams were guilty or not. The audience were swayed by the play's argument and voted very differently at the end. I was worried that the TV program wouldn't measure up but it was very enjoyable and of course, Michael Sheen did his usual chameleon act when he morphed into Chris Tarrant.

Sian Clifford, Matthew Macfadyen and Michael Sheen as Diana and Charles Ingram and Chris Tarrant

So, light and shade, yeah, light and shade. 
I also attended a talk on the concept of ‘Wintering’ by the author Katherine May, who has written a book with the same name. The book describes Wintering as: 
 "a fallow period in life when you're cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider."

The talk was quite helpful and comforting. I’ve ordered the book from Hive books - a site where they support the local bookshops and source the stock from there. https://www.hive.co.uk/?gclid=Cj0KEQiA-NqyBRC905irsrLr-LUBEiQAWJFYTs6sUijqVCt_gmRe2G6e87qBDqXpPuBMdsfoRjd7eS8aApLQ8P8HAQ 
I’ll let you know how I get on.

Take care. xx

I still haven't learned a new language

Dear Reader

How are you feeling? Worried, stressed, sad, tearful, angry, resigned, horny, outraged, tired, productive - are you feeling productive? Have you done something with seed beds in your lovely big back garden?  Have you learned how to say - 'A sparkling mineral water for me, if it's not too much trouble, please?' in Mandarin? Have you cleared out your whole wardrobe and colour coded everything that remains?

I haven't done any of those things, I haven't even managed to clean the bathroom yet, although I've been talking about it for days. To be honest, all my energy has gone into staying sane - something which is very important in these surreal and unsettling times, I feel.

Things that are keeping me sane

COOKING

Yeah, still cooking, I'm afraid, it's the only thing that is giving me a sense of accomplishment these days. I was so proud of my tortilla, I really didn't want to make it, had already made a paella and was starting to lose interest, as I'm wont to do but no, I made the frigging tortilla and it came out of the pan, nearly whole:

OK, so it ain't pretty, it looks like some kind of igneous rock (whatever the Hell that might be) but I was ludicrously proud of it. I thought it was delicious, my younger daughter seemed offended that it didn't taste like the (ready made) one we'd had on holiday - when we were in Cornwall.... She liked the paella but hated the tortilla, her sister liked the tortilla but hated the paella (I think she said it had baked bean sauce in it which was outrageous as I'd made that dish from scratch!) Anyway, I'd still cooked something, using the ingredients we had to hand and...and I liked the paella and the tortilla.

'JUST DANCE'

Oh. My. God. I love it! I wake up with the songs in my head. Today, a Saturday, a Joe Wicks-less day, I said to him indoors - 'Lets' dance to Illusion and then to that weird jumping song.' Today I danced for about an hour and a half and racked up the old digits on my Fitbit. Now, will I be brave enough to share a picture of me with the 'Just Dance' controller. Even though it was a heavily staged picture and I'd rejected many, many others that I'd got my daughter to take, where I was actually dancing but looked like a de-shelled mollusc, I'm still not happy with this one, but are we ever? I mean, you might be, reader - happy with your picture, but then you're gorgeous. ;)

I am the eggman, I am the walrus...

Thing is, as the Body Positivity community are always keen to stress, and I know I'm repeating myself here, it's not about how you look it's about how you feel! 

I woke up feeling tired and irritable and with a cough that worried me but after an hour and a half of 'Just Dance' followed by a shower, I felt much, much better, and as if being a de-shelled mollusc might not even be such a bad thing.

REWATCHING and REREADING

F off, spellcheck, Rewatching is a word - if rereading can be a word then why not rewatching?

Rereading comfort read books where there are no nasty surprises, rewatching favourite shows where you came to love the characters but there are still enough clever details in there to give you a (pleasant) surprise. 

APPRECIATION OF NATURE

We don't have a proper garden, we have a tiny bit of wooden decking, about the size of a Persian rug. And yes, I do realise that we're lucky to even have that, thank you very much. We are also very lucky to live near a big park and try to get there every day. We've worked out an off-the-path way of trying to avoid people and tend to walk a very similar route every time we go. Instead of resenting this I've realised that we can try and use this to notice the natural changes that happen over the course of time. So the big tree that had little, spiky dark bobbles on it's branches, is now resplendent with lush green leaves. (humour me with the pretentious language, OK.)

Is it even the same tree?

I'll be honest with you, Reader, when they first announced the lockdown, I legit thought that it would feel like being buried alive, but you get into a bit of a routine, don't you?

I'm sorry if you don't have any of the resources I've detailed available to you (although I believe that 'Just Dance' is available on Youtube). Give me a shout if you need to talk. Oh, sorry, your face just froze for a minute there - bloody Skype/Zoom/WhatsApp/Houseparty etc!

Oh, and I realise that you probably won't read this because you're too busy having fun in your massive garden! :P 

The Ugly Side of Exercise

I don't know about you, Reader, but I've been feeling a bit ragey this week. Moody, furious, tearful, depressed and very, very angry. Lockdown is taking its toll, as is the clock change - always a bit jet-lag-inducing at the best of times and this is not the best of times!
We all know that exercise is good for us, especially when it comes to counteracting rage, but is it really so good? When you think about exercise, do you think about a svelte, serene woman doing tree pose (Vrikshasana)? 

Me and my bestie, doing Yoga in simpler times...

Or some hench guy doing speedy press ups as effortlessly as a cat, batting a plastic ball on a string?

What about the rest of us sweaty proletarians, lumbering around in an ungainly manner? Not so shiny and pretty now, is it?

I won’t lie to you, friends, my sports bra heralds from leaner, sportier times. Times when I used to go running and do aerobics classes and, gasp, belonged to a gym! Circumferences have changed over the years, I haven’t seen fit to get measured for a new sports bra, because, until recently, the most athletic thing I've done these days is walk up some stairs at work. However, now I've started to leap around in the mornings to Joe Wicks, I find that I have to wear that ancient piece of restrictive lingerie (the sports bra) and it leaves an ugly red ridge around my torso. It cuts in something chronic but I can’t not wear one - wearing a normal bra means that the aerodynamics are all wrong. I won’t go into details other than it proved too distracting for the other poor members of my family, so the next day I turned up in full gear - running shorts, singlet and armour plated, ugliest-garment-in-the-history-of-garments, sports bra. 

But it’s not about what I looked like, right, it’s about how the exercise made me feel. And how did it make me feel? On the first day, brilliant. Subsequent days, quite good but perhaps not so good and also quite ashamed - ashamed of being terrible at squats and push-ups and planks, but also entertaining the rather optimistic hope of coming out the end of it as a master of all these things - the plank queen! All hail The Queen of Planks!!

Green Eyed monster

We need to talk about ‘Just Dance’, ‘Let’s Dance’, ‘Time to dance’ or whatever the bland, forgettable name of this game (on the PS 4 and many other platforms) is. It should be the most fun thing ever and it sort of is. Sort of.  But it also isn’t and, for me, this is because of the competitive element of it. Dearest reader, something strange has happened - my husband, who I’m sure he won’t mind me saying, is not an amazing dancer*, is really good at ‘Just Dance’ and keeps beating me at it. It’s not that I mind being beaten (much) it’s more that I just want to enjoy the music and move without being judged on how well I’m completing the moves. Just let me dance, Just Dance, just let me dance!
* Update - he does mind me saying!

It’s not just that though, that’s not my only niggle. As I sat there the other night, watching a play on my laptop, like the true intellectual I am, my husband wiggled his neat, compact little bottom to a Shania Twain song, right in front of me. 

Husband - getting his groove on!

Oh no, I thought, he’s going to emerge at the end of this period of isolation, social distancing, whatever, looking all buff and hot and hench and I am going to look like the librarian from the Blade film franchise!

Day 91 of self-isolation

He’s leaving me behind! This just will not do. This is the true ugly side of exercise, the unattractive, insecure, competitive side of it! 

Try it at your peril.