Day 165
I have finally finished knitting and sewing together my cardigan, and am feeling terribly pleased with myself for being so 'green' as to recycle an old jumper, by unravelling it and knitting up a new one with the wool. Now all I have to do is the decorative band for around the hem and the bottom of the sleeves.
Have I mentioned that I don't know how to knit? Well, I know how to knit one, purl one, obviously, but everything else - casting on, decreasing, casting off - I have had to look up in a book. I've never looked at a knitting pattern before in my life, but, I figure, how hard can it be? Surely logic, intelligence and a book with some instructions should be enough.
I pick up the pattern;
Cast on 8 stitches - oh I can do that now, easy peasy, don't even have to look it up in the book anymore.
1st row. k2 - right, that means knit two, this is a doddle, don't know what I was so afraid of.
* - asterisk? What does that mean? I look all over the page for a clue and find nothing. Decide to ignore it and carry on.
yrn - yearn? Yearn for what? No, yarn - silly me. Yarn what, what am I supposed to do with it? Perhaps I have to swap it over to the other side of the needle like you do when you swap from plain to purl stitches. I try that.
P2tog - aha see, I was right, you do purl next c'os that's purl two together, which is easy to work out.
(k1, p1, k1) - why the brackets? dunno. Never mind, knit one, purl one knit one, done - now what?
all into the next stitch - shit, didn't read that part. I undo the last three stitches and try them again. Hang on - if I'm knitting them into the same stitch, do I cross the wool over like I normally would? It didn't say 'yrn' so I decide not to. Looks an unholy mess at this point.
rep from * to end - oh that's what the asterisk means, ok. I cross the wool over, purl two together and knit three into the next stitch, but it doesn't look good.
2nd row. (k3,yrn,p2tog) twice,k2 - know what I'm doing now so crack on with it. There seem to be some odd stitches on the needle that don't look like proper stitches and it's all very tight and difficult. Never mind, I persevere anyway and find I have four stitches left on the needle when I am done. WHAT?!?
I unpick it all and start again.
Cast on 8 stitches you moron - yeah, yeah, yeah, done that.
1st row. k2,*yrn,p2tog - this bit is going fine.
(k1,p1,k1) - ok right, if I cross the wool over the needle properly it looks better so I try that, even though it didn't say so - honestly, it's just laziness, why can't they write these things properly? I finish the row with a measure of confidence.
2nd row.(k3 - ok, done.
yrn,p2tog)twice - yep, got that. This is so much easier without those funny stitches from before. Got the hang of this now.
k2 - can't, sorry - no more stitches left. Gone wrong somewhere. Starting to feel a bit more humble now.
I unpick it all and start again.
Right. Third time lucky. I cast on like a seasoned veteran, then take a closer look at row one. Perhaps 'yrn' means something else. Look all through the book and, wait a minute, what's this? A glossary of knitting abbreviations. I didn't know that was there (it's a really big book, ok?).
Apparently 'yrn' means you wrap the wool around the needle in a certain way to form an extra stitch. Aha, now it all makes sense, that's why I was two stitches down. I carefully do row one, following the diagrams in the book as if my life depends on it. Rows 2 and 3(k2,(yrn,p2tog, k3)twice) seem simple now, and I'm on a roll.
4th row. Bind off two stitches - bind off ? Is that the same as cast off? I look in my newly sainted glossary and can't find 'bind off' anywhere. Sod it. I knit two stitches and slip one off over the other and hope this is correct.
knitwise - oh for God's sake speak English. What the hell is knitwise? The state of mind you get in if you're doing this properly (hey folks, I'm truly knitwise today...)? I conclude that it means I knit rather than purl those two stitches, which I did anyway so I pat myself on the back.
(so 1st remains on the RHN) - The RUH is the name of our local hospital, but I've never heard of the RHN. Right Honorable Nancy? Really Horrible Noises? Oh hang on, Right Hand Needle, got it, that makes sense. Phew. I've obviously been doing this too long. Have a twinge of concern as it's the second stitch that is still on the needle as I slipped the first one over it - I ignore this and carry on.
yrn,p2tog - I can do that.
cast off next two stitches knitwise - getting quite good at this now. I knit two stitches and pass the first one over the second,slipping it off the needle with a flourish.
(so 4 stitches are on the RHN) - hey, watch me go, man, this is whizzing along.
yrn,p2tog,k2 - all done. Fantastic. Now I just repeat those four rows until it is long enough. Simples. Back to row one.
k2,*yrn.p2tog,(k1,p1,k1)repeat - oh shit, shit, shit, what have I done now - I've got two extra stitches at the end of the row? If I carry on like this I will end up with something resembling a sling not a band. I'm starting to swear quite a lot at this point. Gone way past humble into really stupid now.
I unpick it all and start again.
By the time I figure out that I need to knit three so I can cast off two stitches each time, it has been twenty-five minutes, and my knitting is eight stitches wide and four rows long - approximately one centimetre by two and a half. This could take my whole life.
Never mind - I am now knitting it correctly, I have learnt some new skills, I have deciphered the bloody pattern and am now master of all I survey. Half an hour later I have a band that measures about six inches long and is starting to look really pretty.
I get complacent and lose my place in the pattern.
I go horribly wrong and knit two lines the same, or miss one out, I'm not sure which.
I find I cannot unpick just the last few rows with all the cast off stitches and wool winding etc.
A Scott-of-the-Antarctic "I may be some time" sort of feeling comes over me.
I unpick it all and start again........
Saturday 27 February 2010
Thursday 25 February 2010
I am NOT, repeat, NOT Hibakusha
Day 163
Steve has been hogging the computer again and I have been feeling like shit. I shan't go into details - suffice to say that you know things are crap when you get undressed at night, and are not the least bit surprised to realise that all day you have been wearing a bra stained with guinea-pig pee. (that was Tuesday).
Last night was book group, and we had read Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie, which covered pretty much all the tragedies of the last century, from the bombing of Nagasaki to the twin towers on 9/11. Heavy stuff, (but good, good book).
Found myself in the position of telling everybody about how my sister was killed, with the emphasis on how I felt about the people who did it. It seemed very relevant, somehow, though thankfully we didn't dwell on it - that would have ruined the evening and taken away the point of our meeting.
I know some people find it very difficult to hear about these things, unless it is distant, removed, impersonal - an item on the ten o,clock news or in the newspaper. They can discuss murders, rapes, kidnappings, tortures, paedophiles, and terrorist attacks with compassion, intelligence, and a will to make the world a better place.
But when it is close to home, has happened to somebody they know, they go quiet, look away, fumble their words and avoid the subject. Not so my book group. Lovely, kind, intelligent women, all of them so I felt able to say what came up for me, in a safe and empowering environment.
My experience with others has often been that they see me as wrong for telling the truth about it, for bringing it up even if directly asked. I have felt pressured to keep it private, to varnish over the facts or perhaps go so far as to almost deny them, as if somehow, I should be ashamed that this happened to me and my family. I don't understand this at all.
Then there are those at the other end of the spectrum who feel I should wear the tragedy like a badge that defines me, marks me out, describes who I have become. I remember one man, a friend I thought, getting terribly upset that I wasn't distraught and crying when I talked about it, as if "the woman whose sister was murdered" is all the identity I had.
Of course I cried - for years in fact - but not every time I thought about my sister. There was a lot more to her, to her life, to my memories of her, than just that one moment of her death. Her life is what counted ultimately, her life, nothing else.
I feel sorrow and compassion for people who get stuck in a place of trauma and grief, who find themselves unable to move out of that in their own good time, and become again more than just the victim of the circumstance. Those people who carry themselves through life as 'the rape victim' or 'cancer survivor' or the one 'recovering from abuse'.
It's not who they are, it's what was done to them, which will have affected who they are, of course, but doesn't extinguish the rest of their humanity. In the book, Burnt Shadows, the woman from Nagasaki flees to Delhi, unable to bear being someone whose personality has been reduced to a label -'Hibakusha', an explosion-affected person.
For a time other people's clear discomfort made me hold back from talking about it - I have no wish to deliberately cause pain - but eventually my need to be congruent with who I am, to tell my story simply and accurately, to hide nothing that was of importance to me, especially my sister and all that came with that, overtook my hesitancy. I don't know precisely when it happened but it did.
I'm happy with who I have become through all the ups and downs of my life, the big tragedies and the bigger joys. I see no need to hide any of it anymore. I continue to learn every day, becoming more real to myself, more in integrity with my heart. I choose not to apologise if others think I should do it another way, they are entitled to their opinion, it just isn't for me.
For me, today, I just want to keep moving forward, building My New Life. I don't want the labels of 'person with CFS' or anything else restricting what I envision as my future. So what if it doesn't happen over night, that I still have really shitty weeks where I get nothing done in the day and can't sleep at night? It doesn't matter. Right now I have one friend who wants to teach a self-esteem course with me and another who wants to write a book with me, so I must be doing something right.
Steve has been hogging the computer again and I have been feeling like shit. I shan't go into details - suffice to say that you know things are crap when you get undressed at night, and are not the least bit surprised to realise that all day you have been wearing a bra stained with guinea-pig pee. (that was Tuesday).
Last night was book group, and we had read Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie, which covered pretty much all the tragedies of the last century, from the bombing of Nagasaki to the twin towers on 9/11. Heavy stuff, (but good, good book).
Found myself in the position of telling everybody about how my sister was killed, with the emphasis on how I felt about the people who did it. It seemed very relevant, somehow, though thankfully we didn't dwell on it - that would have ruined the evening and taken away the point of our meeting.
I know some people find it very difficult to hear about these things, unless it is distant, removed, impersonal - an item on the ten o,clock news or in the newspaper. They can discuss murders, rapes, kidnappings, tortures, paedophiles, and terrorist attacks with compassion, intelligence, and a will to make the world a better place.
But when it is close to home, has happened to somebody they know, they go quiet, look away, fumble their words and avoid the subject. Not so my book group. Lovely, kind, intelligent women, all of them so I felt able to say what came up for me, in a safe and empowering environment.
My experience with others has often been that they see me as wrong for telling the truth about it, for bringing it up even if directly asked. I have felt pressured to keep it private, to varnish over the facts or perhaps go so far as to almost deny them, as if somehow, I should be ashamed that this happened to me and my family. I don't understand this at all.
Then there are those at the other end of the spectrum who feel I should wear the tragedy like a badge that defines me, marks me out, describes who I have become. I remember one man, a friend I thought, getting terribly upset that I wasn't distraught and crying when I talked about it, as if "the woman whose sister was murdered" is all the identity I had.
Of course I cried - for years in fact - but not every time I thought about my sister. There was a lot more to her, to her life, to my memories of her, than just that one moment of her death. Her life is what counted ultimately, her life, nothing else.
I feel sorrow and compassion for people who get stuck in a place of trauma and grief, who find themselves unable to move out of that in their own good time, and become again more than just the victim of the circumstance. Those people who carry themselves through life as 'the rape victim' or 'cancer survivor' or the one 'recovering from abuse'.
It's not who they are, it's what was done to them, which will have affected who they are, of course, but doesn't extinguish the rest of their humanity. In the book, Burnt Shadows, the woman from Nagasaki flees to Delhi, unable to bear being someone whose personality has been reduced to a label -'Hibakusha', an explosion-affected person.
For a time other people's clear discomfort made me hold back from talking about it - I have no wish to deliberately cause pain - but eventually my need to be congruent with who I am, to tell my story simply and accurately, to hide nothing that was of importance to me, especially my sister and all that came with that, overtook my hesitancy. I don't know precisely when it happened but it did.
I'm happy with who I have become through all the ups and downs of my life, the big tragedies and the bigger joys. I see no need to hide any of it anymore. I continue to learn every day, becoming more real to myself, more in integrity with my heart. I choose not to apologise if others think I should do it another way, they are entitled to their opinion, it just isn't for me.
For me, today, I just want to keep moving forward, building My New Life. I don't want the labels of 'person with CFS' or anything else restricting what I envision as my future. So what if it doesn't happen over night, that I still have really shitty weeks where I get nothing done in the day and can't sleep at night? It doesn't matter. Right now I have one friend who wants to teach a self-esteem course with me and another who wants to write a book with me, so I must be doing something right.
Friday 19 February 2010
Raindrops on kittens and whiskers on roses...
Day 157
I am struggling a little with the difference between how things are and how I would wish them to be. In truth, isn't that all we ever really struggle with - life either endowing us or restricting us in ways we don't like? My current bogeymen are insomnia and exhaustion, and an increasingly sneaky little devil called guilt. I have trouble with the reality of it being day 157, and I am no nearer my goals than when I started.
But -
I prefer not to dwell or wallow, even when I am as hormonal and off my stride as this week - negative thinking simply begets more. So, instead, I shall compile a positive things list, my 'raindrops on roses', if you will.
1. I love COLOUR. Love it. Favourites at the moment are duck-egg blue, and rich, coral pink. I love scarlet teemed with ice-blue the way they did in 50's diners. I like yellow but only if it comes as a rose or a baby chicken, not otherwise, but turquoise always makes me happy, and aubergine is wonderful.
Rosie has a teal velvet sofa - I swear it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. When I saw Mary Poppins as a five year old kid, I came away with a dazzled memory of Glynis Johns wearing lavender with buttercup frills. Wedgewood blue has coloured many of my dreams. When I read 'The thorn birds' I was captivated by the sound of Meggie's dress, the colour described as 'ashes of roses' - there is pure enchantment in a name like that.
I painted my last kitchen red with an olive green dining room leading into it. The inspiration was a funky seventies glass vase in olive that I found in a charity shop. The kitchen had black and white chequer board tiles which were wonderful with the deep red - it was all screamingly kitsch and fabulous. Made me smile every time I went in.
2. I love books. What else can you buy for under a tenner that has all the wisdom, knowledge and skill of a whole life? The great classics of literature are a feast for the soul. I love to be taken on a journey, far away from myself, to inhabit a different life or country or time, and then to come home again, enriched, moved, maybe even changed. No holiday does all that (at least mine don't).
3. I love the scent of newly bathed babies. People who believe in such things say you can tell when an angel has passed by from the lingering aroma of lilacs - I think babies smell like newness and wonder and softness and miracles. I love the clinging, unconscious grasp of their tiny hands, and the dough-ripe squish of their tummies.
I love watching toddlers having tantrums, fists balled up in fury, every ounce of them concentrating on having you HEAR THEM - NOW!!!!! They are so unafraid, so unaware of the odds stacked against them sizewise, not caring one jot for appropriateness of behaviour or niceness or any of that rubbish. They know their own worth, their indisputable place at the very centre of the universe. They will never be so free or brave or extraordinary again.
4. I love good food. I like having insatiable passions for things that I overindulge in for a while, then discover the next glorious thing. At the moment I could eat blueberries till I look like Verruca Salt. When I was pregnant with Joe all I wanted was brown bread and butter and radishes, and I still consider this a bit of a treat. There was also a time when my perfect lunch was cream crackers with philly cheese, a thin slice of pear and a mint leaf on top. Just great. I can chart my past with meals I have loved.
I like cooking with no set plan in mind, finding new ways to use up half a carrot, one onion, two mushrooms and a dollop of pesto. I like Mediterranean style food best, and am a sucker for anything fresh and juicy. I adore strawberries, mangoes, melons, cherries, and pineapple, as much for the smell as the taste.
Salads are my forte. I like a meal where everyone gathers and grazes, tearing off chunks of Pain Parisienne, and passing round bowls of gleaming olives, silk thin cured meats, jewel like cherry tomatoes, rich chutneys, and plenty of cheeses. Add a homemade quiche, a roasted pepper pasta salad, and a dipping bowl of glistening olive oil and ebony balsamic vinegar, and I'm in Heaven. (oooh making myself hungry now, time to move on).
5. Laughter. Best thing ever. Love doing it, love listening to it. Absolutely can't resist the SMA ad with the giggling babies on it. I get told off for laughing (very) out loud in shops when I'm choosing a greetings card and I've just got to the funny ones. I take no notice.
When we lived in a semi in Dorchester a few years ago, our lovely neighbour Mike told Steve that he really liked hearing my laugh through the wall - it was almost the only thing that penetated. At my birthday I was given a much treasured (but not attractive) picture of me laughing so hard coming back from bar in Berlin, that I was on my hands and knees on the pavement. Good times, baby, good times.
That will do for now - I am much cheered, and seeing my glass through it's proper perspective again. I feel maybe as Yeat did when he wrote with longing .....
I will arise and go now, and go to Innesfree
And a small cabin build there of clay and wattles made.
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone inthe bee-loud glade.
It is the small things that make our lives wonderful, that thread through our individual stories and tie us back to happiness. The very best things are free and juicy and fresh and loud and pink.
I am struggling a little with the difference between how things are and how I would wish them to be. In truth, isn't that all we ever really struggle with - life either endowing us or restricting us in ways we don't like? My current bogeymen are insomnia and exhaustion, and an increasingly sneaky little devil called guilt. I have trouble with the reality of it being day 157, and I am no nearer my goals than when I started.
But -
I prefer not to dwell or wallow, even when I am as hormonal and off my stride as this week - negative thinking simply begets more. So, instead, I shall compile a positive things list, my 'raindrops on roses', if you will.
1. I love COLOUR. Love it. Favourites at the moment are duck-egg blue, and rich, coral pink. I love scarlet teemed with ice-blue the way they did in 50's diners. I like yellow but only if it comes as a rose or a baby chicken, not otherwise, but turquoise always makes me happy, and aubergine is wonderful.
Rosie has a teal velvet sofa - I swear it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. When I saw Mary Poppins as a five year old kid, I came away with a dazzled memory of Glynis Johns wearing lavender with buttercup frills. Wedgewood blue has coloured many of my dreams. When I read 'The thorn birds' I was captivated by the sound of Meggie's dress, the colour described as 'ashes of roses' - there is pure enchantment in a name like that.
I painted my last kitchen red with an olive green dining room leading into it. The inspiration was a funky seventies glass vase in olive that I found in a charity shop. The kitchen had black and white chequer board tiles which were wonderful with the deep red - it was all screamingly kitsch and fabulous. Made me smile every time I went in.
2. I love books. What else can you buy for under a tenner that has all the wisdom, knowledge and skill of a whole life? The great classics of literature are a feast for the soul. I love to be taken on a journey, far away from myself, to inhabit a different life or country or time, and then to come home again, enriched, moved, maybe even changed. No holiday does all that (at least mine don't).
3. I love the scent of newly bathed babies. People who believe in such things say you can tell when an angel has passed by from the lingering aroma of lilacs - I think babies smell like newness and wonder and softness and miracles. I love the clinging, unconscious grasp of their tiny hands, and the dough-ripe squish of their tummies.
I love watching toddlers having tantrums, fists balled up in fury, every ounce of them concentrating on having you HEAR THEM - NOW!!!!! They are so unafraid, so unaware of the odds stacked against them sizewise, not caring one jot for appropriateness of behaviour or niceness or any of that rubbish. They know their own worth, their indisputable place at the very centre of the universe. They will never be so free or brave or extraordinary again.
4. I love good food. I like having insatiable passions for things that I overindulge in for a while, then discover the next glorious thing. At the moment I could eat blueberries till I look like Verruca Salt. When I was pregnant with Joe all I wanted was brown bread and butter and radishes, and I still consider this a bit of a treat. There was also a time when my perfect lunch was cream crackers with philly cheese, a thin slice of pear and a mint leaf on top. Just great. I can chart my past with meals I have loved.
I like cooking with no set plan in mind, finding new ways to use up half a carrot, one onion, two mushrooms and a dollop of pesto. I like Mediterranean style food best, and am a sucker for anything fresh and juicy. I adore strawberries, mangoes, melons, cherries, and pineapple, as much for the smell as the taste.
Salads are my forte. I like a meal where everyone gathers and grazes, tearing off chunks of Pain Parisienne, and passing round bowls of gleaming olives, silk thin cured meats, jewel like cherry tomatoes, rich chutneys, and plenty of cheeses. Add a homemade quiche, a roasted pepper pasta salad, and a dipping bowl of glistening olive oil and ebony balsamic vinegar, and I'm in Heaven. (oooh making myself hungry now, time to move on).
5. Laughter. Best thing ever. Love doing it, love listening to it. Absolutely can't resist the SMA ad with the giggling babies on it. I get told off for laughing (very) out loud in shops when I'm choosing a greetings card and I've just got to the funny ones. I take no notice.
When we lived in a semi in Dorchester a few years ago, our lovely neighbour Mike told Steve that he really liked hearing my laugh through the wall - it was almost the only thing that penetated. At my birthday I was given a much treasured (but not attractive) picture of me laughing so hard coming back from bar in Berlin, that I was on my hands and knees on the pavement. Good times, baby, good times.
That will do for now - I am much cheered, and seeing my glass through it's proper perspective again. I feel maybe as Yeat did when he wrote with longing .....
I will arise and go now, and go to Innesfree
And a small cabin build there of clay and wattles made.
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone inthe bee-loud glade.
It is the small things that make our lives wonderful, that thread through our individual stories and tie us back to happiness. The very best things are free and juicy and fresh and loud and pink.
Monday 15 February 2010
"Every day, in every way, I get better and better..."
Day 153
Well gosh almighty but things seem to be improving. I have started the new diet and within two days the horrendous food cravings have almost completely disappeared. Instead, I feel a sense of calm and congruence, and my moods seem to have leveled out some. I also gave myself two nights on the sleeping tablets so that I could catch up a bit, and that has definitely helped.
The diet has reduced my constant snuffles already, (I have appeared to be nursing a streaming cold for the last three months, which I knew was actually a reaction to some food stuff that I was eating, just didn't know what). Despite cutting out all gluten, I am still bloated like a beachball though, and my wedding band is cutting off my circulation, but it's early days yet.
What surprises me is how content I am this diet, restrictive though it is. I don't feel like I'm missing out in any way, the signals from my body that tell me when I am full are working again (hallelujah!), and I don't seem to desire anything much other than what I am allowed.
We went to see 'Avatar' last night and Steve sat there munching his pic-an-mix while I had 12 cashew nuts in my pocket. Not only did I have no interest in the sweets, but I couldn't be bothered with the nuts either (so had 'em for breakfast). Everything feels safer and in control and it is so, so long since I felt free like this. I've had nineteen years of hormonal roller-coaster, during which time the one constant has been the presence of food cravings.
If I can get my body in a more balanced and less internally stressed state by adhering to this diet, then I can start to work on my weight which, in turn, may lesson the pain in my feet. I have just discovered this is called 'Peripheral mononeuropathy', which is essentially pain from a malfunctioning nerve system affecting, in my case, the feet.
Apparently, getting the right vitamin supplements may help this. When I was on the 'anti-candida' diet, I had a long list of minerals and vitamins to take, specifically prescribed by a nutritionist to help combat my symptoms. I know I felt better when I was taking them, but they cost over £130 a month, and we just can't afford that on the dole.
The good news is that Steve's old company is putting a bid in for some contract work and - if they get the deal - they will be giving him a job, on good pay, for a nice long time. I will then be able to afford the supplements again, yippee! And Steve will be without all the worries and difficulties he's had for the last 8 months, trying (and succeeding brilliantly) to keep us afloat.
So everything is looking up and moving along and all those other wonderful cliches. Maybe next time I write there will be more definite progress to report. Then I can get back to writing my books and painting my pictures and building My New Life, without this constant, dragging inertia, and mental fog. The good days are coming, and the winter chill will be left behind. It's all good, as they say.
Well gosh almighty but things seem to be improving. I have started the new diet and within two days the horrendous food cravings have almost completely disappeared. Instead, I feel a sense of calm and congruence, and my moods seem to have leveled out some. I also gave myself two nights on the sleeping tablets so that I could catch up a bit, and that has definitely helped.
The diet has reduced my constant snuffles already, (I have appeared to be nursing a streaming cold for the last three months, which I knew was actually a reaction to some food stuff that I was eating, just didn't know what). Despite cutting out all gluten, I am still bloated like a beachball though, and my wedding band is cutting off my circulation, but it's early days yet.
What surprises me is how content I am this diet, restrictive though it is. I don't feel like I'm missing out in any way, the signals from my body that tell me when I am full are working again (hallelujah!), and I don't seem to desire anything much other than what I am allowed.
We went to see 'Avatar' last night and Steve sat there munching his pic-an-mix while I had 12 cashew nuts in my pocket. Not only did I have no interest in the sweets, but I couldn't be bothered with the nuts either (so had 'em for breakfast). Everything feels safer and in control and it is so, so long since I felt free like this. I've had nineteen years of hormonal roller-coaster, during which time the one constant has been the presence of food cravings.
If I can get my body in a more balanced and less internally stressed state by adhering to this diet, then I can start to work on my weight which, in turn, may lesson the pain in my feet. I have just discovered this is called 'Peripheral mononeuropathy', which is essentially pain from a malfunctioning nerve system affecting, in my case, the feet.
Apparently, getting the right vitamin supplements may help this. When I was on the 'anti-candida' diet, I had a long list of minerals and vitamins to take, specifically prescribed by a nutritionist to help combat my symptoms. I know I felt better when I was taking them, but they cost over £130 a month, and we just can't afford that on the dole.
The good news is that Steve's old company is putting a bid in for some contract work and - if they get the deal - they will be giving him a job, on good pay, for a nice long time. I will then be able to afford the supplements again, yippee! And Steve will be without all the worries and difficulties he's had for the last 8 months, trying (and succeeding brilliantly) to keep us afloat.
So everything is looking up and moving along and all those other wonderful cliches. Maybe next time I write there will be more definite progress to report. Then I can get back to writing my books and painting my pictures and building My New Life, without this constant, dragging inertia, and mental fog. The good days are coming, and the winter chill will be left behind. It's all good, as they say.
Saturday 13 February 2010
Sleep, sweet sleep, will you be my valentine?
Day 151
There is a muse of sleep, and she and I have gone beyond our usual separation and are now discussing divorce. I am the injured party in this instance - it is she who has left me, the cow. No amount of wooing seems capable of bringing her back. I have tried everything the books and my friends suggest but to no avail. In desperation I cheated on her last night with a young pretender called Tamazepam. Please God this is not the start of a long affair, that is the last thing I want.
When I was young (ie. before I had kids and my body went doolally) she and I had the most marvellous and intimate relationship, laying in bed for ten hours at a stretch, completely entwined, hardly moving, getting up each morning refreshed and enriched by the encounter. Such love. The thought never entered my head that one day our time together would be difficult, fleeting, restless, shallow, constantly interrupted, or altogether destroyed.
I have been walking around for weeks now, in that broken-down daze. I crawl to the sofa where I have not the concentration to do anything but watch TV, eat what is to hand, and sometimes knit. To add insult to injury I keep chancing across programmes full of new year zeal, about fat people who only sit on the sofa, watch TV and eat. Last night I watched Rosalind Russell storming through 'Gypsy' and singing about how she didn't ever want to be someone who sat at home and knitted. I feel I have been deserted and am now under attack.
My hormone cream usually helps me get to sleep by making me drowsy and lethargic, which is why I only apply it at night. Steve bought a new brand this month in an effort to save money - it had the same ingredients in the same quantities so we thought that it would be OK. Not so. I had the most horrendous reaction to it - something I've never experienced before. Because I was using it in conjunction with other things, Valerian for example, it took a while to identify it as the culprit.
What I experienced was a strange sort of discomfort in my limbs, but mostly my legs. I believe it's called Restless Leg Syndrome. The emotional feeling that accompanies it is of someone scratching their nails down a blackboard inside your head - constantly. All the time you want to move your legs in order to find a position where they are comfortable enough to allow you to sleep, and this is hard to do. They sort of ache everywhere you put them and the tension can be quite unbearable.
The other night I was completely exhausted but unable to sleep, and had run out of Valerian, so I put on a double dose of the cream. The leg thing was so bad it took me about three hours to get to sleep and when I did, I carried on dreaming that it was happening and increasing in intensity, spreading to my arms and hands as well. I woke up sobbing and hysterical, having to hit my arms and hands over and over to desensitise them enough to calm the feeling down. Steve bathed them with cold flannels for me, which helped a little, but I swore I'd never put that cream on again, having realised that it was the problem.
I was shattered the next day, and then that night I didn't sleep until five in the morning. Not good. So last night I took a sleeping pill and am now dozey and foggy ( I can't tell you how many spelling mistakes I've had to correct today, but it's into treble figures), and fairly useless. I am emphatically not a pill popper, and refuse to spend my life on drugs to get me to sleep each night. My body is out of balance enough for that to be a good idea.
So what to do - how to broker a reconciliation with the muse?
If you find out before me - let me know, ok?
There is a muse of sleep, and she and I have gone beyond our usual separation and are now discussing divorce. I am the injured party in this instance - it is she who has left me, the cow. No amount of wooing seems capable of bringing her back. I have tried everything the books and my friends suggest but to no avail. In desperation I cheated on her last night with a young pretender called Tamazepam. Please God this is not the start of a long affair, that is the last thing I want.
When I was young (ie. before I had kids and my body went doolally) she and I had the most marvellous and intimate relationship, laying in bed for ten hours at a stretch, completely entwined, hardly moving, getting up each morning refreshed and enriched by the encounter. Such love. The thought never entered my head that one day our time together would be difficult, fleeting, restless, shallow, constantly interrupted, or altogether destroyed.
I have been walking around for weeks now, in that broken-down daze. I crawl to the sofa where I have not the concentration to do anything but watch TV, eat what is to hand, and sometimes knit. To add insult to injury I keep chancing across programmes full of new year zeal, about fat people who only sit on the sofa, watch TV and eat. Last night I watched Rosalind Russell storming through 'Gypsy' and singing about how she didn't ever want to be someone who sat at home and knitted. I feel I have been deserted and am now under attack.
My hormone cream usually helps me get to sleep by making me drowsy and lethargic, which is why I only apply it at night. Steve bought a new brand this month in an effort to save money - it had the same ingredients in the same quantities so we thought that it would be OK. Not so. I had the most horrendous reaction to it - something I've never experienced before. Because I was using it in conjunction with other things, Valerian for example, it took a while to identify it as the culprit.
What I experienced was a strange sort of discomfort in my limbs, but mostly my legs. I believe it's called Restless Leg Syndrome. The emotional feeling that accompanies it is of someone scratching their nails down a blackboard inside your head - constantly. All the time you want to move your legs in order to find a position where they are comfortable enough to allow you to sleep, and this is hard to do. They sort of ache everywhere you put them and the tension can be quite unbearable.
The other night I was completely exhausted but unable to sleep, and had run out of Valerian, so I put on a double dose of the cream. The leg thing was so bad it took me about three hours to get to sleep and when I did, I carried on dreaming that it was happening and increasing in intensity, spreading to my arms and hands as well. I woke up sobbing and hysterical, having to hit my arms and hands over and over to desensitise them enough to calm the feeling down. Steve bathed them with cold flannels for me, which helped a little, but I swore I'd never put that cream on again, having realised that it was the problem.
I was shattered the next day, and then that night I didn't sleep until five in the morning. Not good. So last night I took a sleeping pill and am now dozey and foggy ( I can't tell you how many spelling mistakes I've had to correct today, but it's into treble figures), and fairly useless. I am emphatically not a pill popper, and refuse to spend my life on drugs to get me to sleep each night. My body is out of balance enough for that to be a good idea.
So what to do - how to broker a reconciliation with the muse?
If you find out before me - let me know, ok?
Wednesday 10 February 2010
Food, glorious food, (not)
Day 148
I put out a call into the universe, a query, a request, a challenge to the Gods, and would you Adam and Eve it, I got a reply, pronto. I was led to a book that I got from the library two weeks ago but had forgotten about - suddenly, I felt a desperate urge to take myself off to bed early with this book, and study it.
Just to back-track, a few years ago I was working part-time in the photo processing at Safeway, but was sometimes on the checkout, which was a lot of fun. If you, like me, are always having a nosey at what other people have in their baskets whilst queueing, then you'll understand how much better it is to be able to deliberately look at it, c'os it's your job.
One chap, I remember, had 40 cans of lager and an apple. I told him to go and get a bag of carrots because that one, lone apple wasn't going to counteract all that booze. I used to comment on everybody's shopping and had some great conversations, it was a fun time.
That's how I met 'candida girl'. She had the healthiest shopping I had ever seen - organic veg, rice cakes, fresh salmon, herb teas, wholemeal tampons, the lot - and I told her so. She said she used to have CFS but had been put on this diet and it had completely turned her life around. I made the queue wait while she wrote out the website address I needed to visit and her contact number.
I've always been of the opinion that what you put into your body affects your health - it's how I was brought up. After my sister was born and the medical profession had given up trying to 'cure' my mum of what was most likely post-natal depression, she and my dad spent years investigating alternative medicines and healthy diets.
It was the sixties, and they were definitely not hippes (mores the pity), but I remember a large, brown case of tissue salts, Bach flower remedies, natural homemade yoghourt (out in the garden - but in a thermos flask?), goat's milk, wholemeal-stone-ground-rock-hard bread, and spending weekends collecting chickweed for poultices, dandelion roots for coffee, or rosehips for syrup.
My mum's 'Keble Martin', as it was always called - 'The concise British flora in colour' being it's real title - has pages and pages of diligently researched, hand written notes at the back. Clematis is good for headaches, stings, eyes and sore feet, apparently, Rosemary (with salt) is for wounds, Meadowsweet helps feverish colds, and Burdock is good for chilblains as long as you're not pregnant. At the time I honestly thought my mother was a witch.
When in my turn the medical profession washed it's hands of me, my natural instinct was to go down the holistic therapy/alternative medicine route. I tried as many things as the budget of a family with only one working parent could allow, all with some limited success, and was left knowing that the one thing I could do at home, was monitor what I put in my body.
So when I found out about the anti-Candida diet, I was quite excited - this was the first time that all the symptoms I had were attributed to one cause, including many that I hadn't even considered as symptoms, but had been living with all the same.
The diet was hard - I had to cut out all sugars including those from fruit, all caffeine drinks and alcohol, anything fungal or fermented - vinegar, marmite, cheese, mushrooms, yeast and bread etc. - and lots more besides. At first I went through a horrible detox, then slowly I started to improve. I never broke the diet once. I cooked for the family without tasting their food, ever, so I'm not sure how great their diet was either. I had birthdays, weddings and Christmas - all on this diet.
Then a horrible thing happened - I started to get worse again. I worked really hard at it, but I continued to deteriorate. Going back to the Nutritionist who had outlined the diet for me, I was given tests from urine, spit, etc., and it was found that my liver was getting backed up like a clogged drain.
It was suggested that the illness had caused 'leaky gut syndrome' where particles of food sneak back into ones bloodstream and are treated as aliens by the immune system, the resulting detritus being more than the liver can handle. This in turn causes a sensitivity to those foods, the most common suspects being dairy, gluten products and all of the nightshade family, so I cut those out as well.
I was now on the most restricted diet imaginable, and another Christmas was coming up. I felt no better, but I had stopped getting worse. I decided to take Christmas off and start again after, as it had been eighteen months and I just couldn't bear it anymore. Trouble was, after Christmas, I couldn't seem to get back on it again - I didn't have the will-power and I felt too shitty.
I've tried many, many times since, all with no lasting success - my body just doesn't want that level of deprivation and hard work any more, with no actual results guaranteed. Had I felt great on it, it would have felt worth all the effort, but I didn't, I felt rotten, and I couldn't even have a glass of wine or some lemon sorbet to take my mind off it.
Roll forward a few years. Here I am again, stuck needing to change what I do to improve my health, feeling fitter and more emotionally able after the joy of college for the last two years, but knowing my body isn't happy with what I put in it - I am having too many headaches for that to be true.
So I send out a call and am drawn to a book - about a diet - that is even more restricted than the first! This one is about the natural chemicals that are present in all foods, but which can cause problems in 'sensitive' people, CFS being a common complaint.
It would be churlish in the extreme to ask God for an answer and then whine because it isn't what one wants, and consequently ignore it. So I will give it a go. It may have much less variety than the other diet but I can have more treats on it, mangoes, for instance. The sweetest thing I was allowed on the other diet was a sunflower seed and, call me picky, but I just can't overdose on them.
I need to wait until the next lot of housekeeping money comes in from the dole office, and then do some careful shopping, and a lot of planning and pre-cooking, but my intention is to give myself a few weeks on this in order to detox and have a good old clear out. (Hoping the pre-menstrual food-cravings don't sabotage it too much.)
If I feel a little better - great! If I don't, then I haven't lost anything by doing it and it's back to the drawing board. If I feel really bad when I revert to my normal, fairly healthy eating, then It looks like I'm stuck on another long term diet - Oh whoopee (not). Either way, wish me luck, and don't expect 'happy Bev' while I'm detoxing!
I put out a call into the universe, a query, a request, a challenge to the Gods, and would you Adam and Eve it, I got a reply, pronto. I was led to a book that I got from the library two weeks ago but had forgotten about - suddenly, I felt a desperate urge to take myself off to bed early with this book, and study it.
Just to back-track, a few years ago I was working part-time in the photo processing at Safeway, but was sometimes on the checkout, which was a lot of fun. If you, like me, are always having a nosey at what other people have in their baskets whilst queueing, then you'll understand how much better it is to be able to deliberately look at it, c'os it's your job.
One chap, I remember, had 40 cans of lager and an apple. I told him to go and get a bag of carrots because that one, lone apple wasn't going to counteract all that booze. I used to comment on everybody's shopping and had some great conversations, it was a fun time.
That's how I met 'candida girl'. She had the healthiest shopping I had ever seen - organic veg, rice cakes, fresh salmon, herb teas, wholemeal tampons, the lot - and I told her so. She said she used to have CFS but had been put on this diet and it had completely turned her life around. I made the queue wait while she wrote out the website address I needed to visit and her contact number.
I've always been of the opinion that what you put into your body affects your health - it's how I was brought up. After my sister was born and the medical profession had given up trying to 'cure' my mum of what was most likely post-natal depression, she and my dad spent years investigating alternative medicines and healthy diets.
It was the sixties, and they were definitely not hippes (mores the pity), but I remember a large, brown case of tissue salts, Bach flower remedies, natural homemade yoghourt (out in the garden - but in a thermos flask?), goat's milk, wholemeal-stone-ground-rock-hard bread, and spending weekends collecting chickweed for poultices, dandelion roots for coffee, or rosehips for syrup.
My mum's 'Keble Martin', as it was always called - 'The concise British flora in colour' being it's real title - has pages and pages of diligently researched, hand written notes at the back. Clematis is good for headaches, stings, eyes and sore feet, apparently, Rosemary (with salt) is for wounds, Meadowsweet helps feverish colds, and Burdock is good for chilblains as long as you're not pregnant. At the time I honestly thought my mother was a witch.
When in my turn the medical profession washed it's hands of me, my natural instinct was to go down the holistic therapy/alternative medicine route. I tried as many things as the budget of a family with only one working parent could allow, all with some limited success, and was left knowing that the one thing I could do at home, was monitor what I put in my body.
So when I found out about the anti-Candida diet, I was quite excited - this was the first time that all the symptoms I had were attributed to one cause, including many that I hadn't even considered as symptoms, but had been living with all the same.
The diet was hard - I had to cut out all sugars including those from fruit, all caffeine drinks and alcohol, anything fungal or fermented - vinegar, marmite, cheese, mushrooms, yeast and bread etc. - and lots more besides. At first I went through a horrible detox, then slowly I started to improve. I never broke the diet once. I cooked for the family without tasting their food, ever, so I'm not sure how great their diet was either. I had birthdays, weddings and Christmas - all on this diet.
Then a horrible thing happened - I started to get worse again. I worked really hard at it, but I continued to deteriorate. Going back to the Nutritionist who had outlined the diet for me, I was given tests from urine, spit, etc., and it was found that my liver was getting backed up like a clogged drain.
It was suggested that the illness had caused 'leaky gut syndrome' where particles of food sneak back into ones bloodstream and are treated as aliens by the immune system, the resulting detritus being more than the liver can handle. This in turn causes a sensitivity to those foods, the most common suspects being dairy, gluten products and all of the nightshade family, so I cut those out as well.
I was now on the most restricted diet imaginable, and another Christmas was coming up. I felt no better, but I had stopped getting worse. I decided to take Christmas off and start again after, as it had been eighteen months and I just couldn't bear it anymore. Trouble was, after Christmas, I couldn't seem to get back on it again - I didn't have the will-power and I felt too shitty.
I've tried many, many times since, all with no lasting success - my body just doesn't want that level of deprivation and hard work any more, with no actual results guaranteed. Had I felt great on it, it would have felt worth all the effort, but I didn't, I felt rotten, and I couldn't even have a glass of wine or some lemon sorbet to take my mind off it.
Roll forward a few years. Here I am again, stuck needing to change what I do to improve my health, feeling fitter and more emotionally able after the joy of college for the last two years, but knowing my body isn't happy with what I put in it - I am having too many headaches for that to be true.
So I send out a call and am drawn to a book - about a diet - that is even more restricted than the first! This one is about the natural chemicals that are present in all foods, but which can cause problems in 'sensitive' people, CFS being a common complaint.
It would be churlish in the extreme to ask God for an answer and then whine because it isn't what one wants, and consequently ignore it. So I will give it a go. It may have much less variety than the other diet but I can have more treats on it, mangoes, for instance. The sweetest thing I was allowed on the other diet was a sunflower seed and, call me picky, but I just can't overdose on them.
I need to wait until the next lot of housekeeping money comes in from the dole office, and then do some careful shopping, and a lot of planning and pre-cooking, but my intention is to give myself a few weeks on this in order to detox and have a good old clear out. (Hoping the pre-menstrual food-cravings don't sabotage it too much.)
If I feel a little better - great! If I don't, then I haven't lost anything by doing it and it's back to the drawing board. If I feel really bad when I revert to my normal, fairly healthy eating, then It looks like I'm stuck on another long term diet - Oh whoopee (not). Either way, wish me luck, and don't expect 'happy Bev' while I'm detoxing!
Monday 8 February 2010
Bev to big G - are you receiving?
Day 146
I have a Rune stone that says "trust your own process and watch for signs of Spring", and although the signs are outwardly there - snowdrops peeping sharp and white in the garden, green tips of daffodils waiting to explode with sunshine - my own spring seems just out of reach.
The insomnia carries on apace, a permanent blocked nose and bloated body impede my progress, my head is always either spacey and dizzy or thumping with pain, and the exhaustion is boring my brain silly. Well, enough is enough.
I will be brave, nail my colours to the mast here, and put out a call to the 'man' upstairs, the Universe, God, the Divine, Gaia, my guardian Angel, the Great Spirit, the ether, All That Is, whoever is in charge out there, I don't mind what you're called, I just need some help and some answers.
Here are the questions, God, - what is it about my physical situation and the emotional ties I have to it, that I have yet to learn? What do I need to let go of, and what must I embrace if I want this situation to change? What have I forgotten that it would serve me to remember and what do I need to do?
I am open, I am listening, I am by the phone, as it were, waiting for your call.
Will the answers come as a blinding epiphany, a chance encounter that leads to new knowledge, or a slow sense of waking up, of quiet realisations and inspirations, as if the jigsaw pieces are starting to fit? Who knows. Any or all of the above, and a few more besides I expect.
Recently, I have spent my time getting by, waiting for something to ease up and give me a bit of a breathing space. My concentration is on distractions and time-fillers, my spiritual life temporarily parked while I wait for the energy or inspiration to 'get back on track'. Well, too much, too long, I need to be pro-active now.
The best way I know to do this is by 'Being' not by 'Doing', and so I will practice gratitude, emptiness, peace, calm and love. I will align myself to the frequency of spiritual communication as best I can, by keeping down the negative thoughts, and creating a quiet space within me, in order to hear more clearly my own, true voice.
I know somewhere deep down inside, where my soul connects to the Divine, I have all the answers, all the signposts to the path that would lead to health. It is hearing that voice that is the trick. Trust my own process - I will hold fast to that, and then when I hear it, when the spring comes, I will surely blossom too.
I have a Rune stone that says "trust your own process and watch for signs of Spring", and although the signs are outwardly there - snowdrops peeping sharp and white in the garden, green tips of daffodils waiting to explode with sunshine - my own spring seems just out of reach.
The insomnia carries on apace, a permanent blocked nose and bloated body impede my progress, my head is always either spacey and dizzy or thumping with pain, and the exhaustion is boring my brain silly. Well, enough is enough.
I will be brave, nail my colours to the mast here, and put out a call to the 'man' upstairs, the Universe, God, the Divine, Gaia, my guardian Angel, the Great Spirit, the ether, All That Is, whoever is in charge out there, I don't mind what you're called, I just need some help and some answers.
Here are the questions, God, - what is it about my physical situation and the emotional ties I have to it, that I have yet to learn? What do I need to let go of, and what must I embrace if I want this situation to change? What have I forgotten that it would serve me to remember and what do I need to do?
I am open, I am listening, I am by the phone, as it were, waiting for your call.
Will the answers come as a blinding epiphany, a chance encounter that leads to new knowledge, or a slow sense of waking up, of quiet realisations and inspirations, as if the jigsaw pieces are starting to fit? Who knows. Any or all of the above, and a few more besides I expect.
Recently, I have spent my time getting by, waiting for something to ease up and give me a bit of a breathing space. My concentration is on distractions and time-fillers, my spiritual life temporarily parked while I wait for the energy or inspiration to 'get back on track'. Well, too much, too long, I need to be pro-active now.
The best way I know to do this is by 'Being' not by 'Doing', and so I will practice gratitude, emptiness, peace, calm and love. I will align myself to the frequency of spiritual communication as best I can, by keeping down the negative thoughts, and creating a quiet space within me, in order to hear more clearly my own, true voice.
I know somewhere deep down inside, where my soul connects to the Divine, I have all the answers, all the signposts to the path that would lead to health. It is hearing that voice that is the trick. Trust my own process - I will hold fast to that, and then when I hear it, when the spring comes, I will surely blossom too.
Saturday 6 February 2010
Houses, homes, and hearts
Day 144
I'm back!
I've been away staying with my lovely friend Tylea in Poole. When I first got to know her she was living with a man who didn't see her, he just walked around an image he had of her that didn't take into account her needs or her true self. Wanting to love and be loved, as all of us do, she let him. Then she got breast cancer.
This shook things up, making her really visible, with definite needs, and so the man saw her through what he could of it and then he left. My mate Ty is nothing if not a fighter, and so, although her heart was broken into pieces, her sense of herself as an attractive and desirable woman all shot to hell, and her financial position now very precarious, she got up and got going, tough little cookie that she is.
Two house moves and three men later, she has beaten the cancer, lost six stone in weight, sorted her finances, found her true self, and forged a new life, unafraid, and extremely unapologetic. And now there is a new man in her life - a gentle soul called Paul, who I got to meet for the first time on Thursday.
He is 73 and she is 65, and they are not hanging around because they are, as Paul says, in the departure lounge now. He knows that he is only really happy when he is with her, that he misses her dreadfully when apart, that sleeping alone has lost all of it's comfort, that things are worth so much more when shared with her.
She feels the same. She talks about him all the time, filling the hours that they are apart with his presence by proxy. And as for their sex-life, well, "too much information Tylea", is all I'm gonna say, (apart from "I'm jealous").
They both own bungalows and love animals, especially chickens, (well, somebody has to). The question this week is who moves in with who? His bungalow is darker and smaller but has a paddock for the animals. Hers is lighter and brighter and, they both agree, more homely, but only has a small garden, so where will Molly the goat live?
And as for taste differences - well! She wears mini-skirts and he has a natty collection of Val Doonican jumpers, so it could be intersting to see what they do.
He lives in the house he shared with his wife for twenty odd years and it is full to the brim (and I mean the brim) with antiques and knick-knacks that represent their life together. There is not one inch of wall that does not have an armoire, sideboard, display cabinet or occasional table against it, tenderly displaying all their collections, beautifully polished and cared for, and reflecting the shine of the horse brasses and plates that decorate the walls.
Her house is minimal and modernish, with pastel walls, a few African figurine sculptures, and leather sofas. She has given permission for three chairs (two of them child-sized) to enter her house from his, but I doubt much else will get through.
When I met Steve, I lived exclusively with furniture that was handed down or found on the street or in skips, and I liked it that way. My stuff was interesting to me, unique, faded and patched and not too precious, pre-loved, as it is now termed. It had history and character. It was also junk, which is what Steve saw when he looked at it.
He took me shopping at MFI. I was actually embarrassed and hoped nobody I knew would see me going inside. Instinctively I felt that I wouldn't see any thing I liked and I was right. Twenty-two years later, and we have got the art of compromise down pretty well pat. I now shop at Ikea and other perfectly normal shops besides those with a charity emblazoned above the door. Steve trawls around car-boot sales with me, happily stumping up the money for loads of knick-knacks that he sees no point in at all, but which make a house a home for me.
Neither of us has the home we would create if left to our own devices, but we have the home that we have built together, and in many ways, that is much more important. I still sometimes get cravings for things with peeling paint, and he is still drawn to 'clean lines' and chrome fittings, but we meet somewhere slightly to the left of the middle (the left being my taste), so every body is happy most of the time.
After all, a home is not the paint colours and carpets, it's the comfortable silences and the back rubs, the post Sunday lunch snoozes and the pets that greet you at the door, the little signs that those you love come here because there's nowhere else they'd rather be.
You make your bed and then you lie in it - it doesn't matter what the bed-linen is like, only who you lie there with. I look forward to seeing how Tylea and Paul negotiate their new living arrangements in the future. I'm fairly certain they will meet somewhere to the left of centre (the left being Tylea's taste) and they will be very, very happy.
I'm going now to make my bed (which I haven't done yet), and to stroke the cat, and know that all is well with the world. Cheerio!
I'm back!
I've been away staying with my lovely friend Tylea in Poole. When I first got to know her she was living with a man who didn't see her, he just walked around an image he had of her that didn't take into account her needs or her true self. Wanting to love and be loved, as all of us do, she let him. Then she got breast cancer.
This shook things up, making her really visible, with definite needs, and so the man saw her through what he could of it and then he left. My mate Ty is nothing if not a fighter, and so, although her heart was broken into pieces, her sense of herself as an attractive and desirable woman all shot to hell, and her financial position now very precarious, she got up and got going, tough little cookie that she is.
Two house moves and three men later, she has beaten the cancer, lost six stone in weight, sorted her finances, found her true self, and forged a new life, unafraid, and extremely unapologetic. And now there is a new man in her life - a gentle soul called Paul, who I got to meet for the first time on Thursday.
He is 73 and she is 65, and they are not hanging around because they are, as Paul says, in the departure lounge now. He knows that he is only really happy when he is with her, that he misses her dreadfully when apart, that sleeping alone has lost all of it's comfort, that things are worth so much more when shared with her.
She feels the same. She talks about him all the time, filling the hours that they are apart with his presence by proxy. And as for their sex-life, well, "too much information Tylea", is all I'm gonna say, (apart from "I'm jealous").
They both own bungalows and love animals, especially chickens, (well, somebody has to). The question this week is who moves in with who? His bungalow is darker and smaller but has a paddock for the animals. Hers is lighter and brighter and, they both agree, more homely, but only has a small garden, so where will Molly the goat live?
And as for taste differences - well! She wears mini-skirts and he has a natty collection of Val Doonican jumpers, so it could be intersting to see what they do.
He lives in the house he shared with his wife for twenty odd years and it is full to the brim (and I mean the brim) with antiques and knick-knacks that represent their life together. There is not one inch of wall that does not have an armoire, sideboard, display cabinet or occasional table against it, tenderly displaying all their collections, beautifully polished and cared for, and reflecting the shine of the horse brasses and plates that decorate the walls.
Her house is minimal and modernish, with pastel walls, a few African figurine sculptures, and leather sofas. She has given permission for three chairs (two of them child-sized) to enter her house from his, but I doubt much else will get through.
When I met Steve, I lived exclusively with furniture that was handed down or found on the street or in skips, and I liked it that way. My stuff was interesting to me, unique, faded and patched and not too precious, pre-loved, as it is now termed. It had history and character. It was also junk, which is what Steve saw when he looked at it.
He took me shopping at MFI. I was actually embarrassed and hoped nobody I knew would see me going inside. Instinctively I felt that I wouldn't see any thing I liked and I was right. Twenty-two years later, and we have got the art of compromise down pretty well pat. I now shop at Ikea and other perfectly normal shops besides those with a charity emblazoned above the door. Steve trawls around car-boot sales with me, happily stumping up the money for loads of knick-knacks that he sees no point in at all, but which make a house a home for me.
Neither of us has the home we would create if left to our own devices, but we have the home that we have built together, and in many ways, that is much more important. I still sometimes get cravings for things with peeling paint, and he is still drawn to 'clean lines' and chrome fittings, but we meet somewhere slightly to the left of the middle (the left being my taste), so every body is happy most of the time.
After all, a home is not the paint colours and carpets, it's the comfortable silences and the back rubs, the post Sunday lunch snoozes and the pets that greet you at the door, the little signs that those you love come here because there's nowhere else they'd rather be.
You make your bed and then you lie in it - it doesn't matter what the bed-linen is like, only who you lie there with. I look forward to seeing how Tylea and Paul negotiate their new living arrangements in the future. I'm fairly certain they will meet somewhere to the left of centre (the left being Tylea's taste) and they will be very, very happy.
I'm going now to make my bed (which I haven't done yet), and to stroke the cat, and know that all is well with the world. Cheerio!
Monday 1 February 2010
Let them eat cake
Day 139
I went to a wonderful tea-party yesterday. A proper tea-party, the way they should be, all full of life and dogs and kids and grannies, not like the subdued and stilted affairs one gets in 'nice' hotels on sunny afternoons. No, this one emphasised the word 'party' just as much as the word 'tea'.
My lovely friend Beth, who I was at art college with last year, is leaving to work with children in India this week, and this was her farewell do. The huge table was spread with linen and piled high with sandwiches and handmade cakes and biscuits. There were four different tea sets to choose from - was I in a mood for old roses on paper thin china, so translucent one felt dainty just looking at it, or the more robust, willow-pattern blue, with bold, Indian daisies on?
And did I prefer mum's oat cookies or Beth's chocolate and ginger mini bics? There was a statuesque carrot cake queening it over the table, a gluten-free choclate torte and a clementine cake for the lady with allergies to choose between, as well as Grannie's (we used to get rationed, you know) sponge cake. Guests kept arriving, bringing chocolate cornflake crunchies, brownies, flapjacks, and a heavenly tray of chocolate eclairs that weren't so big you felt an absolute pig if you had more than one, but were way more than bite-sized.
It was carbohydrate heaven.
The guests were family and friends, cousins, Aunts, Uncles, pretty neices and charmingly precocious nephews, old friends, new friends, grannies and great grannies, and one happily getting over-fed but still hopeful, beautiful dog. As a stranger to everyone but Beth, I was welcomed, fussed over, looked after, entertained, sugared practically to the point of diabetes, photographed, and included in a way that moves me even now. What an absolutely lovely family. And how lucky was I to get to go.
Can't wait until she comes home again and they throw a 'welcome back' party for her.
I went to a wonderful tea-party yesterday. A proper tea-party, the way they should be, all full of life and dogs and kids and grannies, not like the subdued and stilted affairs one gets in 'nice' hotels on sunny afternoons. No, this one emphasised the word 'party' just as much as the word 'tea'.
My lovely friend Beth, who I was at art college with last year, is leaving to work with children in India this week, and this was her farewell do. The huge table was spread with linen and piled high with sandwiches and handmade cakes and biscuits. There were four different tea sets to choose from - was I in a mood for old roses on paper thin china, so translucent one felt dainty just looking at it, or the more robust, willow-pattern blue, with bold, Indian daisies on?
And did I prefer mum's oat cookies or Beth's chocolate and ginger mini bics? There was a statuesque carrot cake queening it over the table, a gluten-free choclate torte and a clementine cake for the lady with allergies to choose between, as well as Grannie's (we used to get rationed, you know) sponge cake. Guests kept arriving, bringing chocolate cornflake crunchies, brownies, flapjacks, and a heavenly tray of chocolate eclairs that weren't so big you felt an absolute pig if you had more than one, but were way more than bite-sized.
It was carbohydrate heaven.
The guests were family and friends, cousins, Aunts, Uncles, pretty neices and charmingly precocious nephews, old friends, new friends, grannies and great grannies, and one happily getting over-fed but still hopeful, beautiful dog. As a stranger to everyone but Beth, I was welcomed, fussed over, looked after, entertained, sugared practically to the point of diabetes, photographed, and included in a way that moves me even now. What an absolutely lovely family. And how lucky was I to get to go.
Can't wait until she comes home again and they throw a 'welcome back' party for her.
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