Milestone

Why does fifty feel so momentous? So milestone-ish, compared to the other big birthdays that end with a zero? I can’t remember ten, at twenty I was at university, thirty in a settled job and living with my boyfriend, forty, dealing with very young children. The ‘dealing with young kids’ thing is significant because I was far more focused on their milestones, than on my own. Now they are a bit older, what’s my excuse for not having (gulp) achieved more? 

My younger child asked me why I didn’t work full time and when I explained to her that that would mean her going to after school clubs she did a quick volte face and specified that she wasn’t saying that she wanted me to work full time, just that she was asking why I didn’t! When I was forty and my children were very young, I was happy to work two days a week - keeping one toe in the adult world, while still spending a big chunk of time with them. Now, obviously they don’t need me as much but the younger one is still not quite of an age where she can walk home alone and come back to an empty house. It’s a bit of a limbo time. I am quite happy to have left the world of soft play centres, nappy bags and pushchairs behind, but am not sure how full time working would fit with family life. (nd, if I’m honest, I’m not sure how much working full time would cramp my own style) I find trying to work from home, when the kids are around, quite trying. Whilst we are lucky to have a roof over our heads, our house is as small and untidy as the garbage compactor from Star Wars. 

My living room

As the walls squeeze in on you a little voice chimes up, asking if they can have a snack, or if they can put something on TV, or if you can take them and their friends to the bubble tea place. To say that they are like wasps at a picnic would be very mean. Maybe sheep blocking the road would be a kinder analogy - picturesque and charming, but mildly annoying when you are trying to get somewhere. I find working from home kind of irksome. I haven’t got that foot firmly in the world of adulthood and have to leave my laptop, at 3, to go and stand at the school gates, feeling irritable and exposed. Lockdown has had a deleterious effect on my ability to socialise, especially with the other mums. They all have their little tribes, I am a pariah, on the outside. I ought not let it bother me, but it does.

Racing towards a sense of achievement

While I’m on this point, where is this ‘couldn’t give a shit what other people think of me’ attitude, which is supposed to come with age? Why am I getting the downsides, like a wrinkly neck and aching knees, without the supposed benefits? I remember a dear friend, who was significantly older than me, telling me that when you got older you cared less about the opinion of other people and did your own thing. Not that I’ve actually stopped doing anything for fear of the disapproval of others, but I feel that I’m missing the devil-may-care’, ‘when I am older I shall wear purple’ state of mind? Why do I sometimes think, despite being a feminist who has embraced the body positivity movement, hmmm would it really be sooooo bad to get some botox? And start researching how expensive a mysterious ‘neck refresh’ would be? All this is merely focused on superficial things, what about the ‘achievements’?

Aaargh! Well, I never wanted to be in banking or senior management anywhere. I think, did I even say it? That I just wanted to be happy/ content. But yes, there are things that I’ve wanted to achieve that haven’t materialised yet. I’ve looked up celebrities born the same year as me and discovered that I’m the same age as Neve Campbell, James Marsden, the guy who plays Sheldon in ‘The Big Bang Theory’, Nas and Sean Paul, Noel Fielding and Peter Andre, among others. And I’m thinking - why haven’t I co-written ‘The Mighty Boosh’, rapped on MTV or had kids with Katie Price….?  

The famous women in my age bracket look fabulous because it’s their job to look fabulous and are under a considerable amount of pressure to still look the same as they did thirty years ago.  I don’t want or expect to look like them. For a good few years I felt that the greatest goal and sign that you were #livingyourbestlife was self fulfilment.  I still think this but now the spectre of fifty is standing in my tracks, waving two of those racing car flags with the words ‘what have you achieved?’ emblazoned across them. Despite knowing how fortunate I am to have a loving family and the aforementioned roof over my head there is the nagging doubt/professional disappointment. Can you relate? Or do you think I’m a whining, entitled twit? Having just watched the rather weird and wonderful The Change on Channel 4 I’m wondering whether I should buy myself a motorbike and go and live in a caravan on the edge of a forest…Failing that I could retrain as something - chocolatier, zoo-keeper, arborist…

The sensible part of me knows that landmark ages are arbitrary markers that we impose on our lives but if the spectre of that milestone gives me the necessary kick up the bum to finish something/make some changes/move house, then it won't necessarily be a bad thing.

In Search of Balance

I ventured into the inky night to do Tai Chi,

In the bid to get a better me.

Unfortunately it reminded me of P.E,

As the movements are quite difficult to follow.

Hello there! How are you, my friend?  I’m not too bad, thank you for asking. 

I wrote the poem above last November, when the nights were long and inky (instead of being short, bright and insufferably hot!). Eight months on I still find the movements difficult to follow but I’m persevering with Tai Chi. According to Harvard Health publishing, the benefits of Tai Chi are as follows:

Tai chi is often described as "meditation in motion," but it might well be called "medication in motion." There is growing evidence that this mind-body practice, which originated in China as a martial art, has value in treating or preventing many health problems. And you can get started even if you aren't in top shape or the best of health.

I enjoy it despite my woeful lack of coordination and I'm still optimistic that the ‘form’ will eventually come more easily to me, and insert itself into that mythical creature - muscle memory.  Surely Tai Chi is meant to be easy? It’s something that the elderly do. In fact my daughter, who mistakenly thought that I was doing some kind of combat sport, and bid me goodbye with the words ‘Have fun throwing people about!’ Amended her words to ‘Have fun throwing old people around’, when I tried to explain that it was a more gentle form of exercise. The instructor is a lovely man and the class is a safe, friendly space to be in. A mixture of ages, athletic ability and body shapes. 

I’ve tried yoga over the years and I like it but am trying to find a class which is suitable for true beginners, with a gentle, undemanding instructor. When I say undemanding, I don't mean someone who doesn't push you, physically, I merely want someone who doesn't bark at you when you get it 'wrong'. I’ve had two terrifying yoga instructors. One who, years ago, asked me why I stood with a squint! (Those who read my last blog would know why I found this so unsettling). Another one, more recently, who was just generally a bit fierce and scary. Her class was hard and I came away with a pain in the hip. I’m still on the quest to find a gentle class with a calm, non-threatening teacher. Someone who closes their eyes a lot, says Namaste and tells you how to breathe. Do you know anyone?

This post is about a quest for physical balance. I feel like Mrs. Doyle in Father Ted, when she makes an awkward descent from the bay window.  

The warm up in Tai Chi involves a fair bit of standing on one leg and kicking or rotating the opposite leg. I often falter. The instructor tells me that balance is very much affected by the tension we carry in our shoulders. So obviously I need to work on this tension. Short of CBD oil, I am not sure how to work on this.

I don’t know if I mentioned it but I’m turning 50 at the end of this year. As detailed in this article, sent to me by a much younger friend, one of the most important things to focus on as we age is balance. 

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/apr/07/life-changing-daily-moves-that-will-keep-your-body-happy

They reckon you should stand on one leg as you brush your teeth. They also advocate sitting on the floor more and other not particularly alarming, but still somewhat annoying habits. Can you get up from the floor without supporting yourself with your hands/arms? Oh you can, good for you!

So anyway, the next time you see me I'll be looking wonderfully calm, smiling as if someone has just told me that they've filled my freezer with pistachio Magnums, standing on one leg as I delicately sip at my lemon verbena tea.

Namaste

Skin Deep

Dear Reader

It’s been a while hasn’t it? And, as one says in a tiresome amount of emails, I hope this finds you well. 

I know I said that I was retiring the Blog but I’ve decided to start posting again - lucky you!

 At the end of this year I’ll be turning fifty. Yes, I’m sorry to disillusion you, as you thought that I was thirty seven, but it’s all too true. 50 - a big round number. And, like many landmark ages, it’s making me take stock. I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough about something recently and I thought I’d share the love.

It seems appropriate to talk about this because at the age of fifty, many women are going to be preoccupied with their appearance. This might seem like an irrelevant detour, as it’s not about ageing or wrinkles, but it’s something that it’s taken me a whole lifetime to come to terms with.

I’ve found this enormously difficult to talk about and I didn’t think I’d ever write about it but actually, like ripping off a plaster, it’s probably best to get it out into the air. When you find out what it is, you’ll probably think - eh - is that all?

I was born with a squint, otherwise known as a lazy eye. It was operated on when I was a baby, I’m not sure exactly how old I was. The operation hadn’t completely fixed things and I used to have to go to a clinic with a kind lady with short grey hair, who made me do slightly odd things like ‘put the lion in the cage’, while looking into a machine. I also had to read pages of terribly boring text, with a patch over one eye. Even if I hadn’t attended this clinic, I would have known that I still had the squint as the kind children at school were more than happy to alert me to it. One of the things I’d been told was that there were no baby pictures of me, because of the squint. The person saying this had good intentions but the message I received (and remember that all communication is about decoding and applying our own meaning to things) was that I was ugly and deeply flawed. I grew to dread seeing pictures of myself.

Now, in the great scheme of things, this isn’t a big deal. I wasn’t beaten, starved or locked in a basement, and I didn’t have a disability. But in terms of my psyche, it had a great effect.  I would fantasise about losing weight and somehow, I didn’t know how, having the squint fixed. I was very taken with the Ugly Duckling/Return to Eden fantasy, where all the woman had to do was get mauled by a crocodile, after her husband had tried to kill her, then have transformative plastic surgery and reinvent herself as a model. Seemed reasonable enough.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085079/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Often, when I went for an eye test, the optician would point out the squint, as if they’d made a rare discovery and I hadn’t noticed it myself! It wasn’t until I had kids that I realised that there might be something I could do about it. A midwife who visited after I had my second child, mentioned that they used Botox nowadays, to correct squints. She brought this up because I told her that I was paranoid about passing the affliction on to my children. Long story short, the doctor referred me to the eye unit at the hospital. They did try the botox thing (very unpleasant) but it wasn't effective, so they decided to operate instead. At the age of forty I had the operation to correct the squint. The surgeon said he was very happy with how it had went but that the ‘brain was very stubborn’, which I took to mean that my stubborn, ornery brain would decide to sabotage me and the squint would return. (between the lazy eye and the stubborn brain I was on a bit of a losing streak) I also lost a lot of weight. So my childhood fantasy had come true - was I happy? Kind of but I also started to focus on the lines on my forehead.

A kind of happy ending, right? Well, last year I went to the doctor about some digestive problems I was suffering from. A G.P I’d never seen before said to me; “I know this is nothing to do with it (the digestive issues) but is that a new squint? Because if it is, that can be a sign of a brain tumour.” 

I was shocked and dismayed. All sorts of thoughts shot around - just how bad did the squint look? I could tell myself, from photos and the mirror, that my stubborn brain had chosen to reinstate it but didn't think it was wildly pronounced. But also, although I knew that it wasn’t a new squint, of course I knew that, what if I did have a fucking brain tumour!

I told the optician at my most recent eye test about this interaction with the G.P. She tutted and said that there would be other signs of a brain tumour, before the squint became a signifier. She referred me back to the hospital.

I waited several months for the appointment and recently spent a few hours at the Royal Eye Unit, at my local hospital. I saw two lovely women - one of whom took extensive measurements and gave me a test to see whether I could see things in 3D. The second person I saw was the consultant. They both told me that the squint didn’t measure that badly and certainly not enough to justify further surgery - which might make the situation worse. Because I don’t have double vision and can (sort of, sometimes) see things in 3D, it’s not really a problem. The consultant then conducted a few strange tests, including pushing against her hand with my shoulder and said; “There are no signs of a brain tumour.” 

I could have kissed her.

I came away from the hospital feeling massively alleviated. I was worried about wasting precious NHS resources but they didn’t treat me like a time waster. 

The thing is, my eyes will never look perfect (and I’ll probably feel happier talking to people when I’m wearing sunglasses) and the squint will never be totally fixed but that’s O.K. As someone who has tried to embrace body positivity I should have come to this conclusion a lot sooner but it was deeply ingrained. It’s O.K not to look perfect. My eyes are not perfectly aligned, my feet are slightly different sizes and one of my breasts is bigger than the other! So it goes. 

Thanks for reading, Babe! x

Dealing with Anxiety

Dear friend, 

I don't know about you but I'm feeling considerably anxious at the moment and it has compelled me to come out of blogging retirement to try and process this. Global events and upcoming personal changes are hammering away at us and it's a lot to deal with.  I attended a talk on building resilience in children and have been talking to other people about this, as well as doing a bit of research and this is a condensed version of my findings.

1. Feel your feelings - sit with them, acknowledge them, suppression is unhealthy. Yes, there are other people who are worse off - that's a given, and if you are an empathetic creature you will be hyper aware of this, but that still doesn't mean that you are barred from feeling. You are still allowed to feel sadness, depression, fear, whatever, without the twin kick of guilt. Suppression is unhealthy.Do doctors who set someone's broken limb remind the patient that there are paraplegics out there? Why do people find it easier to deal with physical than emotional pain? To the extent that their instinct is to smother it? Is it the abstract nature of emotions or the fear that emotional pain is contagious? Anyway, I think it's healthy to give yourself permission to feel. If it's painful then wrap your arms around your torso, as if giving yourself a big hug. It might sound a bit wanky but what do you have to lose?
2. Do something active - campaign, volunteer, help out. 
3.  Donate, if you can afford it - money, time or resources. (https://www.dec.org.uk/) 
4. Switch off! When it all gets too much, turn away from constant news reports and social media. 
5. Exercise. I've recently started doing Aquafit again. Because you have to book and pay in advance, am less likely to ditch it.

1. Calming music, podcasts, apps. Headspace, Get Sleepy https://getsleepy.com/.
2. Reach out to someone. I realised a while ago that if I sat around waiting for people to invite me to things I'd be very lonely so I try to put my fear of rejection on the back burner and organise things. The pandemic got us out of the habit of meeting people but we are social creatures. 
3. Be kind to yourself, challenge the negative voice. 
4. Make something. A cake, Plasticine snail, painting, cuddly toy.
5. Routine. Make time for celebrations, marking momentous occasions.
6. Buy yourself flowers. Buy flowers for a friend or loved one, buy everyone flowers, if you can afford it.         
   
   
   
7. Things I don't do but am told are good for the mind - gardening, running, pottery, sculpture.

Every Mind Matters website https://www.nhs.uk/every-mind-matters/.

Books: for helping children deal with anxiety - a friend recommended The Unworry Book. It's coming today. 

I hope this helps. I hope you are feeling OK. It might feel a bit self indulgent or self obsessed but what use are we to anyone else if we are tightly wound ball of wire wool? As they repeated in the 'Building resilience in children' talk, 

'you can't pour from an empty cup'.

Message in a Bottle

Dear reader

I hope this finds you well.

Do you find yourself writing those words on every single email, text and WhatsApp message you send to someone you don’t know very well? Anyway, if you are reading this I hope that you are well and you feel at peace. I hope that you don’t judge yourself too harshly and set impossible standards for yourself. I hope that you don’t measure yourself up against a legion of others and find yourself constantly lacking. I hope that your life isn’t blighted by anger* or resentment. *Although anger can be useful if channeled in the right direction.

Sometimes I see very well meaning tweets telling someone that they are loved and valued. If I was in a bad place I’d think - ‘what do you know?’ I hope you do feel loved and valued, for your own sake and also because, if you feel that, you are less likely to cause harm to anyone else. Perhaps you don’t realise how loved and appreciated you are?

Enough of that, it’s all starting to sound a bit wanky.

I haven’t written in a while and don’t plan to regularly update this blog for the time being. This is partly due to the fact that I don’t think anyone other than Russian spybots reads it regularly. It’s also because I’ve just done a writing course and am working on a novel, which always sounds more impressive than it is but there! I am working on a novel for adults. Now I’ve committed to it and I can’t back out.

At it’s best this blog was a wonderful tool for connection, at its worst it wasn’t even that bad, a benign way to let off steam and perhaps overshare...So it’s been lovely but now it’s time to move on and try and channel all my creative energy into the *novel*. 

I’m just gonna leave you with some hard hitting musings:

Crush of the month:

Bertie Carvel as Dalgliesh in the Channel 5, yes Chanel flipping 5, series of the same name. Based on the crime series by P.D.James. He’s quiet, he’s dignified, he tells his dickhead sidekick off. I heart him.

Best TV

Dalgliesh - obviously, watch it on Channel 5 - Five star I think it’s called - I wonder if the ‘eighties band have thought of suing them.

The Outlaws - Comedy drama by Stephen Merchant and Elgin James. Genuinely funny and proper bloody tense at times! I’ve come to love the characters. Catch it on BBC iPlayer.

Impeachment: American Crime Story - Real events are played out, real people are humanised and Clive Owen plays Bill Clinton! Yes, he dons a prosthetic nose and a very convincing Arkansas accent and presents a very credible performance.

Advent

Chocolate advent calendars used to make me feel sad. It’s not that I don’t like chocolate but I miss the old fashioned calendars (which I used to make when I was a kid) - the excitement of seeing which picture would appear. But this year my Mum has bought us all a posh Lindt calendar. There’s something truly thrilling about being a middle aged woman and having someone still buying you an advent calendar. I appreciate the form of it forcing you to be moderate and only have one a day. 

The title of this piece is misleading, the blog used to be a message in a bottle, form of connection, means of expression but now it's more like an expunged ‘Dear Diary’ or a motto in a fortune cookie. I once wrote in outrage about feminine deodorant https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/978691151524409415/1529823579158032984 then saw an advert for 'ball trimmer and ball deodorant' the other day. Two wrongs don't make a right! I feel like my granny calling The Beatles long haired louts, appalled at these developments. I feel that Naked Attraction is everything that is wrong with society. I have no wish to see a pasty, flaccid penis or shaved vulva. I'm as prurient as the next person but there's something deeply soulless and unsexy about that programme. You probably disagree and that’s OK, there are worse things to disagree on.

Politics

I can't write about the political situation, I'm outraged and I'm tired and I'm stunned that people keep voting for this shower. If the P.M defecated on a puppy on live T.V people would still vote for him and his bunch of sociopaths. I have nothing more to say on this, not here anyway.

I don't want to depart on that note so I'll just put a picture of a cute animal.

So this is where I leave you. Thanks for reading, you’ve been amazing! (Unless you’re a Russian spybot) Stay sane, stay healthy, keep the creative spark going. All the very best.

Hard Work

They tell me that blogs are becoming obsolete so what’s the point in continuing to write one?  It's not as if this one ever set the world on fire anyway.  I write because the compulsion to communicate overrides my inherent self consciousness. Plus I spend a lot of time on my own and find that the urge to shout into the void becomes too great to ignore at times.

There are certain things in life which should feel like a minor episode but actually take up far too much head space. Routine tasks which are actually far too emotionally loaded. The last two weeks have contained two such things - shopping for a swimsuit and sending something back to a shop.

I took something back to the shop and it felt like a monumental task. (I don’t know about you but everything feels like a Herculean feat at the moment) 

My constant quest for the perfect swimsuit prevails - something practical yet aesthetically pleasing. Something which offers enough industrial strength support so I feel comfortable and contained but not so much of that ‘support’ that it’s difficult to breathe and I feel like I’m going to vomit an internal organ. I can't have meaningful congress with bandeau styles, halter necks or 'handkerchief' tops. 

I thought I’d found the perfect costume - a tankini which resembled a dress. It looked lovely on the model and it promised to make my figure ‘even more perfect’ OK, folks, if you think that’s even possible….

When the swimming costume came it was truly awful, I might just as well have tried to make myself a garment from a canvas tote bag. Things were spilling out everywhere and do you know what? It didn't make my figure look 'even more spectacular'! I had to bite the bullet and send it back!

This task involved going to the local shop to dispatch the offending item back to the evil, multinational conglomerate. The conglomerate promised me it would be easy. ‘Simply take this QR code to the nearest drop off point and they will scan the code and print the label for you’. They promised. No they won’t, evil conglomerate, they will resentfully wave you vaguely in the direction of the self service scanning/printing machine, leaving you to stew in your own incompetence! Whereupon you will uselessly waggle your phone at the machine, while the people behind the counter offer no support at all and you begin to wonder whether this procedure is emblematic of your whole life.  I don't know what I've done to offend the man in the shop - perhaps I look like the person who rear ended him in 1998, or the doctor who scraped his cornea while conducting a routine examination, but his distaste for me seems to know no bounds. 

Whenever people are unhelpful and/or unfriendly in shops it puts me in mind of the swimming pool receptionist from The Day Today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk2uTv_jacg

I’ve ordered a couple of swimsuits from a website that I use a lot - specifically from their ‘Curve’ section. What I like about this site is that reviewers post plenty of photos of themselves wearing the gear so you get to see what it looks like on someone with a similar shape to yourself, not just modelled by a six foot tall alien. Sometimes the reviewer’s refreshing frankness makes me laugh ‘perfect if you’ve got big tits’, or ‘usually seeing myself in swimwear makes me want to kill myself but this is actually super cute’. I think that 'super cute' might be a bit of a stretch for me, I'd settle for acceptable. 

So yeah, fingers crossed and all that......

 

It's Been Emotional

I don’t know about you but I am all over the place at the moment;

Anxious and depressed one minute - weeping at memes and assailed by sudden whiplashes of loneliness and grief,  then on a more even keel the next.  blithely shaking cinnamon into a saucepan, laughing at things the kids say, getting excited about *Tom Hiddleston being cast in the adaptation The Essex Serpent.

*Ever since The Night Manager I’ve had a bit of a mild ‘thing’ for Tom Hiddleston. My husband berated me about it - how could I - a ‘born again Trotsky-ist’ (his words) have a thing for this product of the public school system? What can I say? Isn’t it as bad not to like somebody because they are not working class than to like somebody because they are?? Anyway, I loved the book The Essex Serpent and am fairly comfortable with the casting of Claire Danes in the lead role and positively delighted at the aforementioned Tom Hiddleston playing another part.

Claire and Tom

What is the cause of this turmoil? The after effect of a year of restrictions and uncertainty, fear about the future, boredom and loneliness - a feeling of stagnation. Recovering from the horror of homeschooling - I legit thought I was going to lose my mind! (Why would people voluntarily do this?) Anxiety about a return to normality?

It’s been a year

It’s been a year since the start of the first lockdown.

If we were two people in a film who were escaping from something unexpected and terrifying - a monster, a sudden storm or a psychopathic maniac. We would slam the door against the howling wind, look at each other and say something like:

“Wow, that was intense!”

Or

“What was that?”

A man on the telly was saying that just because we are all going through it, doesn’t mean we should diminish or underestimate the impact it’s having on all of us. He’s written a self help book but rather unhelpfully, I can’t remember what it’s called. I’ll tell you what has helped me slightly in recent weeks:

• Grayson Perry’s Art Club - a joy!
• Headspace meditations - on Netflix but they have an App.
• Erm…. Just Dance - always - feels good to move.
• Getting creative/doing artsy things.

Art

Let me give you a laugh, I did a 'Creative Wellbeing' course in January and have found painting to be enormously therapeutic, with one exception, when I try to capture myself. Below is my latest self portrait. 

Last seen fleeing the crime scene

I enjoyed painting it, initially, felt that I was really getting somewhere but then it went awry - it looks a bit like me but (I hope) not too much! A friend of mine asked me to send it to her and said - ‘don’t put it down, I like it’. At which I thought - shit! Does this mean that this is what I really look like!

This is the photo I tried to copy.

Roots

Mojo

Right so in the last few months I lost my writing mojo and it was horrible. I don’t think it was the pandemic, although maybe that played its part, but I felt totally flattened and without hope. Every time I saw a competition being advertised I’d snort and think - what’s the point? More depressingly, I didn’t want to write and writing is what I do, it’s how I make sense of the world and how I express myself and sometimes how I escape, but I just didn’t have the will to do it. What happened was that last year there were two competitions where I’d got through to the final stages - and one of them had made very encouraging noises all the way along, only to be told in a bald, impersonal way that they weren’t taking it any further, at the end. I realise that rejection is very much part of the process but I suppose I had built up this fantasy where everything else was shit but at least I had this. I was already planning the post lockdown celebration party. Hubris.

But anyway, I’m writing! I’m supposed to be working on a script but got distracted into writing this - shame on you! I’m 15% hopeful, which is better than 0% and it’s all good practice and also, one thing that the 'Creative Wellbeing' course did for me was made me realise that I don’t just write with a vain hope of publication, I write because that’s what I do!

Anyway, friends, Spring is in the air, people are being vaccinated and Chocolate Orange Easter Eggs are a thing (hint, hint). 

Other brands are available

Stay well, stay safe and stay sane.

xxxxxx