Dave says all kinds of things that brighten my day. Take what he said this morning as I was eating my breakfast: 'What's happened to Vim? It used to be a demi-god of kitchen cleansers. Has it fallen from its pedestal?'
He has, however, a recurrent question, and it gets on my nerves: 'What are you going to do now?'
Under pandemic circs we spend nearly all of every day together, or at least we're at home at the same time, unless one of us is out on our bike. We get on very well, and I feel lucky to be sharing living space in lockdown with Dave.
Even so, there are times I yearn to be left alone and to not have to account for my every minute to someone else. This irritation obviously shows, because yesterday when Dave popped the question I sighed, and he responded 'Sometimes I feel as though I am something you're trying to get off your shoe.'
Hepworths have always said first thing after breakfast 'What's the shape of the day?' It's a given. And this question was originally framed and employed by Dave. He is a very organised person, and also, it has to be said, his aspergers makes him dislike surprises and sudden changes of plan.
I like spontaneity. (Yes, Dave - as long as it suits me.) These days when I set off on my bike ride Dave wants to know where I am going so he knows where to send the search party when I don't return, as death lurks round every corner.
( Me: "When I go out for a walk and I'm longer than you expect me to be, you're always anxious."
Dave: "Only because I've been worrying how far I'm going to have to carry the cadaver back.")
So I tell him my route, and then when I get to the end of our lane I get a yen to go somewhere else, and I dither - should I go back and tell him I have changed my route? should I just stick to what I told him? or do I think Oh sucks, I'm not going further than a ten mile radius so what's the fuss about?
In lockdown, when most days are the same, the anodyne question 'What are you going to do now?' has become particularly irksome. What are the options? - cycling, walking, painting, reading, gardening, cooking, facetiming a friend, writing the blog, ringing the bank - apart from the first two they are all home based.
But they are how I am spending my life right now, with the occasional delightful blip such as when friends or family call to sit in the garden with us, to chat, drink coffee and shiver.
Here's an Annie Dillard quote I thought apposite for this post:
"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern."
We may be largely housebound but we have beautiful views.
Here is the view from the east bedroom window on Easter morning:
And here are two from the front door:
We're lucky. And I don't take it for granted.
Progress on my dungarees painting is slow because the sun has been shining which means no loitering inside. So far my favourite part is the frayed threads on the top of the bib:
The credit for the above cartoon is dinosaur on Twitter:
I went on the Trail yesterday at 8.30 a.m., before the tourists arrived, and I had to stop for a rest on the up journey and on the down one too. I spent the rest of the day recovering. Admittedly the day had started rather early - at 4.30 a.m. - when we heard that scratching in the bedroom ceiling again. There is a creature that wants to live between the plasterboard and the attic flooring and Dave's attempts to catch it have so far failed.
We have all kinds of measures already in place (both humane and otherwise* - *cue complaints from the family member who declines to be named). All have proved ineffective, but this morning Dave told me that humane pest deterrers online recommend cayenne pepper, so that's one new thing to try. I'll keep you posted.
I saw a clothes advert online this morning and thought - Hmm, I could do with some new pants, and wondered if M&S had got their act together in that department since I ditched them for Victoria Secret eleven years ago and Zoë suggested I become a transatlantic knicker mule.
My searches of M&S turned up nothing and then I saw a line that said 'Pink and Black Female Empowerment High Legs 5 pack.'
Would female empowerment pants sort out the pants problem AND the low morale?
Like Cece, 'I love you Sue.'
Here are my Autumn crocuses to wish you a happy Easter xxx
I think she was quoting from Days Are Where We Live:
Cece sitting on the downstairs loo down the corridor shouting out, a propos of nothing: "I love you, Sue!"
In my Thursday conversation with my friend I'd said that if children feel loved and safe it would make them resilient for their uncertain futures ahead.
Do you think that's true?
I felt loved and safe, and I feel loved and safe, and I'm still vaguely sane, even if frayed.
Sending love to all of you with all my best wishes for good times ahead.
And I also hope that you're not fraying more than me.
How are you? I hope you're not struggling. I hope you're doing OK and enjoying the sunshine.
One week I'm fine, the next week I'm not.
I know one thing, though: this past year has aged me. I am forgetful and absent-minded and clumsier than usual. Yesterday I left the car in the drive with both windows open all night; I have just pressed delete in error on a blog comment from Jenetta and had to paste it in myself; I have taken to wandering round the house looking for my reading glasses when they are on the top of my head; and yesterday I fell off the basket chair and flat on my back on the kitchen floor when I was lifting down the two jam pans from the top of the dresser. Thankfully they fell away from me, otherwise I could have suffered a serious head injury. Just my bum and my pride were bruised.
Generally speaking I've been feeling less than robust, but even so I've been painting, gardening and enjoying the spring.
 |
| A bridleway near our village |
I have also been reading. I've always shied away from non-fiction as a reading choice, but in this last year I've read four memoirs, three of which were about the experience of being a woman at home during the second world war. The latest was Where Stands a Winged Sentry by Margaret Kennedy. What a terrible title, what a gripping book.
My brother is bamboozled as to why I want to read all these WW2 memoirs from the homefront. Why would I want to immerse myself in such a miserable time? (And that's another aging problem - finding the right word: I couldn't retrieve the word 'immerse' from inside my head, and typed 'submerge,' and only now, reading this through, immerse has come to me.)
I've been reading them to see what they could teach me about living through a difficult period in world history. I thought they might help. It was a terrible time, and they didn't know when it would end, and yet we know they got through. And after the war things improved for a while. I've found the books fortifying.
Dave, meanwhile, has been reading Michael Rosen's Many Different Kinds of Love, a memoir about having Covid, spending six weeks in an induced coma, and after lengthy rehabilitative treatment, coming home physically damaged but recognisably still Michael Rosen. I'm just about to start reading it.
Dave has now moved onto Failures of State, written by two Sunday Times investigative journalists. The jacket inside cover says: '...the insider's account of how the government sleepwalked into disaster and then tried to cover up its role in the tragedy - and it exposes one of the most scandalous failures of political leadership in British history.'
Yes, we know already, but this gives all the shocking details and shows how the truth is even worse than we already thought.
This is heavy going for a sunny Wednesday when the world - at least here in the UK - appears to be opening up again.
My good news this week is that my first sowing of sweet peas is coming on nicely in the shed, and my second sowing looks like a row of tiny green submarines on the windowsill:
Next, I'll be sowing cosmos.
Oh my! I've just been outside to take the header photo and it's seriously warm out there! Enough of this...I'm going outside...
Seven years ago another writer asked me which one of the four books I'd written was my favourite, and I refused to pick one.
One year ago, my sixth book was published, and this is the roll call:
But I Told You Last Year That I Loved You
and if someone asked me now, I would pick two favourites...
But I Told You Last Year That I Loved You
February 7, 2015
My dearest friend and confidante is gravely ill and
my concern for her is having a weird effect: it’s making me sensitive to all
kinds of exaggerated anxieties and sadnesses which are focussed on my family.
I’m not usually like that.
I expect it will pass.
And there’s a helpful quote from Rohinton Mistry
which I found in that book I recently read twice in one week, Kate
Gross’s Late Fragments. It especially speaks to my condition:
“There’s only one way to defeat the sorrow and sadness
of life – with laughter and rejoicing. Bring out the good dishes, put on your
good clothes, no sense hoarding them.”
-Rohinton Mistry from Family
Matters
To that end, I am having pancakes for breakfast.
And I’m enjoying looking at photographs of the girls
in Colorado.
And Dave is going out for the day
which means I can get on with the rewrite of episode one of the screenplay
undisturbed. Yay!
February 11, 2015
This morning, feeling sad, I googled “Poems to read
to the dying” and in a couple of links arrived at Anthony Wilson’s
wonderful Lifesaving Poems Blog. I have been sitting in bed reading
the poems on his list. Now, I’m ordering the anthology which is to be published
in June by Bloodaxe.
In all my waking moments when I am not actually doing
something,
I am working my way through the poems on Anthony Wilson’s blog. It seems like
an appropriate response in the face of death.
February 14, 2015
Sometime in the last century I saw an advert in the
paper: someone was making a TV programme about best friends, and they wanted
volunteers to be on it. Being a bit of a show-off, I suggested to Mary that we
should offer, and she, being a shy, private person was horrified.
Mary died yesterday at home, surrounded by her
beloved family.
If she thought about it beforehand she might guess I
was going to say something about her on here.
Mary could be infuriating, embarrassing, and – for
the first twenty years of our friendship – invariably late. But outside of my
large family (and yes, Dave, as you define family differently from me, I am
including you in my family) Mary was the person in my life I have loved the
most.
In so many ways we were opposites. I am driven. She
was whatever the word is to define minus drive. I could be writing at 6 a.m. She would
be eating her porridge at noon. It would have driven me insane to share living
space with her. But our values overlapped completely, and as a friend she was
unsurpassable. She was a huge emotional support through long tough times in my
life. She was caring, compassionate, tactful, loyal, discreet, non-judgmental,
and considerate. (Ten years ago, she stopped being late.)
Another dear friend sent me a sweet email yesterday
saying she knew I’d be devastated by Mary’s death. That about sums it up.
And here’s a Dinah Craik quote which sums up Mary…
“But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom
one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as
one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely.
Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of
feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure
words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain
together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is
worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.”
February 17, 2015
Some of my family don’t understand why I write
personal stuff on here: but they love me anyway. The thing is - I am a
writer, and writing is what writers do. And I like the Ted Hughes quote: “What’s writing really about? It’s about trying to take
fuller possession of the reality of your life.” And the Cecil Day-Lewis one:
“We write not to be understood, we write to understand.”
Every morning and at periods throughout the day,
Dave, concerned, asks me how I am. So far it’s been the same answer: “I’m sad.
And I feel raw. As if I’ve been skinned.”
A few weeks after my mother died, I wrote this on the
blog:
EXPOSED
Being bereaved is like being a walking wound. Every
part of you is tender. You can't settle to anything because nothing feels
comfortable. Sometimes you forget you're a wound and you become absorbed by
something outside yourself - like cutting back the autumn garden, sweeping up
the leaves, watching three hundred crows wheeling over the field at the back of
the house.
Sometimes you go to a familiar place and chat to a
friend and forget you're a wound, and you laugh out loud at a shared joke and
you think to yourself "I can do this. I can live without my mother and
still be happy." And then you leave your friend and walk down the street
and you're a wound again. I will know I am healed, I suppose, when all the
happy interludes join up and there are no aching times in between. And it is
getting better every day.
This morning, sitting in bed, I turned sideways and
saw the burst of colour on my bedside table, and I loved it: the freesias and
genista I bought for myself the day Mary died. Then I spent five happy minutes
trying to get the best possible photo of it.
The sky is clear and bright today, and my grandsons
are coming over. It’s Pancake Day, so we’ll have pancakes, and later, I’ll
tempt them to walk down the Trail with the lure of ice cream at Hassop
Station.
I know that when they’ve gone home I’ll feel like a
walking wound again, but in the meantime I’m going to seize any colour the day
has to offer.
December 18, 2018
When people see all the beautiful
things Dave has made - furniture, stained glass, carvings, Christmas
decorations - they envy me. They also envy me because he is so good at
FIXING things. I am a lucky woman. I know this. However...there is a dark side
to all this talent: his eagerness to create things from bits and bobs when one
would much rather go out and BUY said object.
Take yesterday. I came home from
Bakewell market and complained to Dave about the heavy shopping, and how I was
wondering about buying a shopping trolley - a trendy one (if 'trendy
shopping-trolley' is not an oxymoron.)
He said “Oh, you mean one of those
tartan ones.”
“No! No! Something modern!”
“You don't need to buy one,” he
said. “I'll make you one. Something robust and capacious.”
My heart sank.
“What you need is one like window
cleaners used to have,” he said. “I could use old bike wheels. I've got two in
the shed.”
“I have no idea what you're talking
about, but NO.”
“Yes, yes,' he said. 'Google an
image of a traditional window cleaner's trolley.”
I did. It had large wooden cart
wheels with a platform on top.
“That's it,' he said. 'But there
should be a big box on top.”
“And just how am I expected to get
that in the back of the car to bring it home from Bakewell?”
“I'll make you a ramp!”
You may laugh, dear reader. I
would if I didn’t live with this man.
Anyway, this conversation reminded
me of a piece I once had in the Times which I don't think I've shared
with you before:
Make do and mend spend!
Do you ever look with dissatisfaction at your
furniture and wish you could start again? You don’t want to submit to the
horrors of trial by makeover, but you would like to junk that ugly lumpen
armchair your mother-in-law gave you, or that trendy-in-the-seventies standard
lamp reminiscent of a salon hairdryer? After we lost all our things in a fire,
and the emotional ashes began to settle, we had that chance to start again. But
even with a lump sum and an empty house the task was arduous for a couple with
no experience of buying new furniture.
We married as impoverished students, and as the years
passed most of what furnished our house before the fire was not so much chosen
and bought, but inherited, or just somehow acquired. Objectively speaking we had
some good stuff, such as the three handsome grandfather clocks my husband Dave
had inherited. But I could have counted on the fingers of one hand the items of
furniture which we actually went out and bought in a shop. This was a result
partly of lack of funds at the appropriate time, but also of an abhorrence of
waste, a make-do-and-mend philosophy, a drive to recycle and reclaim wherever
possible, and the inability to look a gift horse in the mouth.
In our young and untroubled student days when we were
able to afford a Land Rover but not new furniture (why was that?) we had been
asked by some newly married friends if we would take to the tip a “hideous
three piece suite” which a parent was foisting upon them to be helpful. Well,
the suite turned out to be beautiful - art deco, upholstered in blue velvet,
with walnut veneer arms – so we took it home. It became one of my favourites,
much coveted by the more discerning of my friends, but much reviled by my
modernist husband. It was followed by similar items, which friends wanted
to get rid of and which I wanted to give a good home to. At one time in the
sitting room of our first small flat we actually had three sofas.
It’s hard to buy new things when recycling is in your
genes. I remember going off to camp for the first time with a home made
rucksack my mother had recycled from an old gaberdine mac, with zips reclaimed
from long dead trousers, and a cord from a pair of tattered pyjamas. She would
make us bedside tables and dolls houses out of orange boxes, and even long
after she had anyone needing dolls furniture, she found it excruciating to
throw away those tiny plastic catering tubs when emptied of jam or UHT milk -
they made such wonderful wash-basins. Her one thousand and one ways with a pair
of old tights is so well documented that we can’t see a pair adrift in a
hedgerow without my husband saying “your mother must have been here again.” Her
favourite use was as twine for tying up my father’s raspberry canes in the
autumn.
And my grandmother was the same. She made a superior
picnic blanket out of an old tweed coat, and dusters out of old
knickers (“every gusset a memory” – Victoria Wood.) Her better underwear
was not suitable for dusters, being made from an old silk parachute. The
tights-recycling gene manifested itself in her case in the knitting of them
into peg bags.
As for Dave, his recycling tendencies verge on the
pathological. Once, to get rid of unwanted junk, we hired a skip with the
couple next door. The two men would each wheel a barrow full of old rammel
through their respective gates to meet at the skip with mutual cries of “Don’t
you want that? Can I have it?” followed by the swapping of treasures and the
wheeling of full barrows back up the two garden paths.
So you can see that the fire did us one or two
favours: I am delighted to be rid of the hundreds of beads from a
dismantled car bead seat, the spherical light shade made out of Sainsburys High
Juice plastic bottle caps, and a mound of worn bicycle tyres.
Make-do-and-mend is a trap. In one of my Dave’s
joyful austerity periods he mended my daughter’s glasses with string and then
sprayed it gold to match the glasses: she has never forgiven him. He also
resoled his shoes with an old car tyre. Even now, when anyone needs anything at
all, from a bird feeder to a roof rack, our long flown children will say with
ghoulish delight “Don’t worry - Dave will knock you one up out of an old bike
tyre!” Don’t get me wrong: I love the huge set of wind chimes made from
wardrobe rail which now adorn our hall; and the aerobic ankle weights he
fashioned from a piece of old lead piping are great.
But recycling requires raw materials, and even Dave
was flummoxed by an empty house. On receiving the insurance cheque it was
extremely difficult to break away from frugal ways and actually spend money on
large items of furniture, particularly when we viewed them as once only
purchases which had to last us the rest of our lifetimes.
And even though we had been married for 25 years, the
profound clash in our tastes only became apparent when we were choosing new
things. It was a case of traditionalist with a penchant for period style meets
radical minimalist who thinks that form should always follow function. What
possible middle ground in clothes storage is there between someone who wants an
Edwardian chest of drawers in satinwood, and someone who prefers a stack of
wipe clean plastic boxes? Or between someone who yearns for a kingsize cast
iron bedstead, and someone who hankers after hammocks?
Yet another problem was Dave’s aversion to shopping.
I thought I’d found the solution by using mail order. But catalogue sofas with
apparently perfect proportions, when transposed to our sitting room looked like
sofas on steroids. We returned them, and for 18 months we sat on the floor.
We have now managed to buy most of the furniture we
need, but it has been a novel and a gruelling process. And after having a
lot of detritus forcibly taken from us, we are definitely more discerning in
our recycling. But what’s that lurking behind the new sofa? A carrier bag full
of old tights?
It's the anniversary today of the beginning of the first UK Covid lockdown, and many people are looking back and thinking about who they have lost, and what they have lost.
I am so thankful that all of my family are still here. (And as I have already fielded two enquiries about my Boulder family this morning after news of the shooting there, I'll tell you that they're safe.)
I've not been thinking about what I've lost this morning, but what I've learned. Here are just a few things:
1/ Physical affection was big in my family when I was a child, and hugs are vital to my well-being. Seeing my local family and not being able to hug them has been deeply upsetting. My missing hugs is what led to my designing my card last year that I sold in aid of the charity Help Refugees (now named Choose Love.)
2/ I like my own home-made fresh coffee better than coffee that I find in most cafes, even when it's out of a vacuum flask on a walk or a bike ride.
3/ It is possible to make a great margarita at home if you have the right recipe, and said margaritas have the same magical properties when consumed on Facetime with a friend as when drunk in a bar.
4/ There are many more local footpaths surrounding our village than I ever knew about, and we've lived here for 26 years.
5/ Vegetable gardening - that I tried last year - is not for me. Flowers, and especially sweet peas, is what I care about.
6/ I miss the visitors who came to our refugee hospitality days in Bakewell, days we have had to cancel. Most of our visitors were young women and children, survivors of human trafficking, all with horrible and sometimes traumatic histories. I've learned that I miss the warm social contact we had with them. Being with people with different backgrounds and experiences and cultures is enriching and meaningful, and in our case, often fun. What we offered them was small in the grand scheme of things, but they appreciated it so much.
7/ Even the smallest kindness can mean something big to the recipient.
6/ Although there are difficulties of living with an Aspie, and there are things I have to do without because of him, including travel and sitting down to eat together (see my blog post, The Wife's Tale) I feel so lucky to be married to Dave.
I have known this on and off for years, of course, despite his dubious clothes taste; despite the fact that he recently dismantled the bay window to look for the leak while insisting he didn't need a dustsheet;
despite my agreeing with Lady Longford who when asked if she'd ever thought of divorcing her husband said "Divorce, never. Murder, often."
I have been up and down and all over the place during the last year, which you will know if you've been following the blog. Throughout this time, Dave has been even tempered, patient, kind, supplied hugs on demand even though it's not his thing, and encouraged me with my painting to the extent of saying "When's that going to be finished? I want it up on the wall!"
He has also designed a patent, instant picture frame and so far made seven of them...
'Our current boot is great,' Dave said. 'If our car was seeking marriage, it would be flaunting its boot.'
I wrote a blog post on Wednesday and didn't post it, and I wrote a different one yesterday and didn't post that. They weren't fit to post.
It has been that kind of a week - full of halts and hesitations, a troubled mind and an untidy desk. The only escape I get from the stuff going round in my head is when I am painting, and I've not been able to get started on that.
I wanted a painting of my dungarees and considered this photo:
But when I sat down to begin, I sighed, because it's not me that I am interested in, it's the dungarees, with their rips and patches and random splashes of paint.
I have been trying, and failing, to arrange the dungarees in a pose (on their own) which looked natural, included all my favourite bits, and that would fit on my canvas while showing sufficient detail.
This is what I have painted in the meantime:
I've been fascinated by the patterns of barbed wire for a while, but it's an apt image for a week in which I've felt creatively blocked, and a week in which the UK government has been moving our country into a harsher, darker era.
It is the politics of now which has been swirling uncomfortably in my head and spoiling the view. Everything this government is pursuing is anathema to me...
I have written to my MP again this week about the Home Office's harsh and cruel policies regarding asylum seekers, (for example this) and I am signing an average of 5 petitions a week about this and that. What else can I do?
I leave you with this quote from Andrew Boyd:
You are faced with a stark choice: do you dedicate yourself to an impossible cause? or do you look after your own, making do as best you can?
The choice is clear: You must dedicate yourself to an impossible cause. Why? Because we are all incurable. Because solidarity is a form of tenderness. Because the simple act of caring for the world is itself a victory. Take a stand – not because it will lead to anything, but because it is the right thing to do. We never know what can or can’t be done; only what must be done. Let us do it.
and this, from Sharon Owens:
I've been having a series of guest posts from regular readers of the blog, readers who live a long way from here, the Derbyshire Peak District. They've been telling us about their experience of this last pandemic year. It's been really interesting.
Today I'm delighted to welcome Di McDougal who has been reading the blog for years, and who comments under the name of Marmee. Di lives in a suburb of Cape Town, about 17 minutes drive from Cape Point. Di and I have never met, but we do correspond. She's a good friend.
Take it away, Di...
Last year I can remember hearing about a corona virus. I took no notice, I thought it would be like with SARS, something somewhere but not here on the tip of Africa. I only started paying attention when things were going badly somewhere in Italy. Italy? I thought…in Europe?? Then we had our first 4 cases and it exploded as this virus does. Our first lockdown was announced and I stood on my balcony and looked out over my bit of the world and I was afraid. Our health system is almost non existent compared to Europe, I felt very sure that I would see bodies in the street before we were done.
That did not happen thankfully! We had alcohol bans and curfews and travel bans and you can't leave your house, no, not even to exercise. People were ill, people died but during that first lockdown it felt like I was in an alternate reality. Here, in my house with my books, in my garden against the mountainside, all was peaceful, well. I felt so secure, so cut off from the world. Almost - virus, what virus?
Then lockdown ended and I was suddenly in the real world. And I was terrified. I was angry. Here I was seventy years old, I had made a good life, the life I wanted, I had learnt so many hard lessons. I was beginning to be the person I wanted to be! And here was a virus and I was afraid of dying, afraid of how the dying might be. I was locked in the fear, stifled by it. I stayed in there, in the dark far too long. A day came when I could see I was doing it to myself and I decided to stop. First thing every morning I went outside to look at my world with awareness and gratitude for another day, a new day. Morning by morning I got my self, my happiness back.
When we were finally allowed to go back
to the beaches after our second lockdown I started swimming in a lovely
deep little bay. This is the path that takes one there. I love the light on
the water, the swells that rise and fall, the penguins, the seagulls calling
from a nearby clump of kelp. It is where I find it easy to just be, no
thinking. I am hardly human there, just part of the movement and the beauty.
Looking back now most of us regret that first
hard lockdown. It damaged our fragile economy so much. So many jobs were lost.
Maybe just the elderly and those at risk should have isolated. For us as for
most of the world the pandemic did not so much expose as remind us of the
fracture lines in our country and here in South Africa, and indeed on the
continent, it emphasised the chasm between those with deep pockets and those
like us who could not buy up vaccines before those vaccines had even been made.
There is so much in my beloved country that is broken and maybe that is why the good shines so brightly. We were so proud of the field hospitals that were prepared at such speed. We are so proud of the African NGO Gift of the Givers that helped create Covid wards in existing hospitals and supplied vital equipment. We were thankful and more than a little surprised that for the most part the healthcare system held up. And I for one liked it that the president would announce that we were to have a “family meeting” when it was time for an update on lockdowns. We were proud that our Professor Salim Abdool Karim (epidemiologist) shared the John Maddox 2020 prize with Dr Anthony Fauci.
What is the happiest thing just now? That my grandson can see friends and they can run and play and shout and have at least that much that is normal!
'You're the only person I know who goes hiking in velvet trousers,' Liz said on our last walk together.
'They're not velvet, they're needlecord.' (I expect she couldn't tell from two metres away.) 'From Sainsbury's,' I said. 'Men's. And I wear them because they're warm.'
She pointed to her own muddy trousers and said she didn't know how I managed to keep so clean on walks.
'Because I'm a fancy lady,' I said. 'That's what the sibs used to call me when we were young.'
I've bought only four items of clothing since lockdown last March and those needlecords are one of them. Don't you think I've been abstemious when I like clothes so much?
They were a good buy, and so were the hiking boots, and the merino wool and silk long johns, which keep me warm under my dungarees when I'm sitting painting.
This is me a year ago, kitted out for painting:
I am sitting in bed writing this, which I have not done in ages.
There is something delicious about an unashamedly, uncompromisingly rainy day that was forecast as such and then delivered. It takes away my choices and means I feel able to stay in bed reading for longer in the morning, and I can start painting as soon as I'm showered and dressed. You have no idea of the complexities of living with a stranglehold superego urging me to 'get things done' and 'not waste time' and 'make sure you get outside for some fresh air and exercise.'
I find this so, even in the context of a pandemic, even in the context of this interminable winter, where the hellebores and snowdrops are still reigning in my garden, and only 15 of the 150 daffodils are out.
Anyway...I'm losing track of the walks and the weeks, but here are some photographs of a recent walk with Liz on Froggatt Edge that I haven't shown you because my lovely guests have been giving me a rest from writing the blog.
On our last walk we ended up in Bakewell where a great little family run deli/takeaway has just re-opened, and Liz treated me to a bacon sarnie.
It was the first thing I'd eaten in months that had been cooked by someone else. I love bacon sandwiches, but rarely cook them at home because the smell offends Dave's aspergery-sensitive sense of smell. Oh! Just remembered! The last thing I ate before this, that someone else cooked, was a bacon sandwich cooked by Dave as a Christmas breakfast treat.
Anyway, here I am sitting on a wall by the water meadows:
It is such a trial having chunky legs. I am not fat, but my legs are so muscly/thick that I have to wear men's jeans, and if I try on those ubiquitous trousers (variously described as cropped or ankle skimming, depending on how posh the catalogue is) I look like a barrel with feet.
Ooh! Just remembered! I found a new series on Netflix last night that is ace. It's called The Bold Type. As Mary's daughter said the other day 'We can't talk about Covid or politics, they're too depressing, and nothing ever happens, so all we can talk about is television.'
You can see the break from the blog hasn't reduced the trivia quotient in my posts, but I'm still trucking.
