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.