The Holly and the Ivy and the Echinacea

It’s dark and cold and we middle-aged women are run ragged by gift-buying, gift-wrapping, card-sending, and the purchase and preparation of food – while feeling guilty that we are not enjoying Christmas more.

Opportunist viruses patrol, eager to invade. 

As a teacher I can take my pick of virulent illnesses.  They are handed to me on exercise books, they await me on doorhandles.  Sometimes, they are sneezed right in my face.

So my favourite seasonal plant is not the holly, not the ivy, not the Christmas rose nor poinsettia.  It is a plant which blooms not in December, but in summer - echinacea.

It is extract of echinacea which boosts my immune system and wards off the seasonal colds.

Pascoe informs me this is stuff and nonsense.

But I am clinging to my beliefs.

Especially as Christmas is here and I don’t have a cold yet this year.

Obviously it meant that at Evensong at the Cathedral, I was unable to participate fully in “the annual festival of coughing”.

It also means that the impressive stocks of lemsip and cough sweets that I laid down are redundant.

Worst of all, it means I have to find a new excuse for the shortcomings of Christmas dinner.

But, otherwise, it’s a great improvement. 

So next year I shall be sending Christmas cards with an echinacea motif, weaving an echinacea door wreath and decking an echinacea Christmas tree.

Happy Christmas.

Advent – awe and wonder

This is the season of “spend! spend! spend!”, of ear-worm Christmas songs, of glitter and parties.  How can it also be Advent, a time of spiritual preparation, of meditation and fasting?

Personally, I have always suspected the early Christian fathers (NB Fathers, not Mothers) of making a planning error.

In midwinter we desperately need a festival of family and feasting.  In the short, dark days, we crave sparkle.

But the Christian forefathers scheduled our celebration of the birth of Christ in the same time slot as the ancient Roman mid-winter knees-up of Saturnalia, inheriting a tradition of excess.

Perhaps the holy day to contemplate the incarnation of the living God would have been better on a separate occasion.  After all, the few indications we have are that the birth of Christ did not take place in mid-winter – the shepherds would not have been out in the fields with their flocks then.

Each year I strive to provide ideal gifts and a delicious Christmas meal and to reassert our network of kinship and friendship by sending cards.  Each year it knocks my spiritual life sideways, just when it should be peaking.

However, this is the year when I had foot surgery and could not get out and about as I longed to.  So instead, I prepared a little Christmas gift for myself.  In the summer, secretively so as not to seem deranged, I began to make cards and accumulate gifts.

And now, just for once, I can see the stillness of Advent gleaming in the midst of the Christmas glitter storm.

“doing” family

Pascoe left for his PhD in Edinburgh four years ago.  Perran and Carenza moved out to rent together in London ten months ago.
We are having to figure out how we “do” family now, and it is getting complicated. 

We all work, so weekends are the available time slot.  But that is also when the social life happens (the kids’, not ours).  Weekends is also when we travel great distances to see our ageing parents at the farthest extremes of the country.

Plus there are church commitments (ours, not the kids’).

Nigel and I never wanted to be the kind of parents who issue a three-line whip and demand the attendance of our children at frequent events.

But last weekend, it was Nigel’s birthday and we asked Perran and Carenza to spend it with us.  
We did not invite Pascoe.

We had a great time, taking a barge trip from Little Venice to Camden and going to a comedy club there. 

We thought about Pascoe, but decided not to Skype him.

Why didn’t we include Pascoe?

Because some things are even more important that a parent’s birthday.  The deadline for handing in his PhD thesis was roaring towards him like an express train.  We did not want to interrupt.

And then yesterday we got the message that he had met the deadline with several hours to spare.

Hooray!

When at last we all get together for family Christmas, it will make it all the sweeter.

The thesis-writing hat Pascoe's  friends made for him.

Pascoe hands in his thesis BEFORE the deadline.

The Emoji Mystery

Emojis give me an insight into how it feels to be autistic.

I don’t usually have trouble reading people’s expressions. But confronted with a bank of emojis I can never find one that reflects the way I’m feeling.

In fact, I cannot at all fathom the emotions they are supposed to represent.

I feel like an autistic child asked to identify the expressions of faces in photos.

I’m mystified.

Thinking this disability marked me out as abnormal, I never mentioned it.  I played safe with a colon, dash and bracket   :-  )

Then Ann admitted she didn’t get it either.

Worse – she revealed that emojis have secondary meanings which we poor middle-aged folks will never ever be able to stay abreast of.

When she was at the cinema with her daughter, during an advert, an emoji of an aubergine was shown.  People giggled. Ann’s daughter explained that an aubergine refers to an excited man.

Ann was horrified – she had been using it to signify grocery shopping at Waitrose.

A mutual friend whatsapped a smiley face to her kids.  They mocked her mercilessly.  Apparently she had sent them “the paedophile face”.

I have no idea which one “the paedophile face” is, and am now terrified of using it by accident.

So inevitably it seems that I am doomed forever to hand-craft my smileys from elements of punctuation ; - )

The Very Helpful Spider

The Daddy Long Legs Spider ( Pholcus phalangioides) is a thin, wispy creature, but do not underestimate it: it forms a lasso from its silk and traps large, scary house spiders by the leg. Then it eats them.

It is for this reason that I have been allowing Daddy Long Legs Spiders to remain in our house as non-paying lodgers.

However, recently I have hired some help with the cleaning and my little eight-legged pals have been decimated.

And now it is the autumn and the annual parade of large male house spiders is under way. They are strutting their (very long and hairy) legs in search of females.

This year they are so big I can hear them before I see them, scuttling across the floor. And there are a lot of them.

As I say I like to think there is an increase in numbers because of the diligence of my cleaning lady in killing their predators.

But this is because I don't want to contemplate the alternative - Are the males in fact being drawn to our house for a specific reason. Is there perhaps, under a sofa or behind a wardrobe, an incredibly attractive, very large female spider...Just waiting for the right guy to turn up so she can lay hundreds of eggs, which in turn will become hundreds of house spiders?

Leaving Home

Since our children have left home, there have just been the two of us in the house.  It’s been quiet.  Then we hit on the idea of keeping doves. (See previous posts 1 & 2.)

So that the doves would recognise our dovecote at home, we took them through a process known (appropriately) as “homing”.  We used a net to keep them cooped up for six weeks in the dovecote.

The moment for their freedom had arrived at last. Perran, Carenza and Will joined us for the occasion and our neighbours came across. 

Uncertainly, our six snowy doves teetered on the perches of the dovecote not sure what was expected of them. At last, one or two at a time, they fluttered up to the roof where the golden afternoon light caught them, then on into the wild blue yonder, flapping like learners, unaccustomed to the air.

We knew that they should be “homed” by now and come back to roost at nightfall. But as they departed I found myself wondering “What if they don't?”

I realised that I had recreated for myself a reenactment of the traumatic moment when the children flew the nest.  Old emotions rushed back to the surface.

With the pigeons vanished into the sky, Perran, Carenza and Will left for their homes.

At nightfall I was able to text them “Four have come back.”

We were both relieved that some had come back and disappointed of course that not all had returned . 

The following day, only three returned.

Nigel and I kept going out anxiously, but however many times we counted, it only amounted to three doves in the cote.

Finally, on the third evening, a magnificent total of five arrived home, and it has been five ever since.

Possibly our local sparrowhawk got number six, but I’m not complaining. 

They came back.

Getting off Crutches

The specialist said, “Your foot has fused properly now. You’ll need to use the crutches just for a little bit longer.” 

“How much longer?”

“Days.”

I had my op back in July.  I was prepared for a long haul.  I adapted my house, figured out ways of doing things.

I also learned to take it easy and say Yes to help.

My friends Caroline, Christine and Kathryn supported me by giving me lifts when I started back to work. 

Nigel did the washing and many other household tasks.

Guests brought food when they joined us for a meal.

Strangers opened doors for me and gave up their seats on the tube, shop assistants offered to carry my purchases.

Of course, I missed my independence, but frankly, there was an up-side. Not that I appreciated it properly until now.

The first time I went shopping without crutches, I was irritated when people did not open the door for me, move courteously out of my way and allow me to jump the pay-queue. 

I could scarcely believe my own mind-set – I am going to find it hard to relinquish the privileges of being temporarily disabled.

However, just for the moment, that problem is academic, since I quickly overdid it and am now using the crutches again to allow my painful, puffy foot to recover.

Chestnuts not Pumpkins

I haven’t been able to take country walks for a few months now, owing to my faulty foot. 

It has made me feel disorientated. 

Every year I monitor the seasons closely, marking the time of year by what is coming into bloom, what going to seed.

I am delighted when a sunny weekend summons a cloud of butterflies from their pupae, or when a wistful breeze in late summer has the swallows congregating on the telegraph lines. 

I’m even happy when oncoming Autumn means all the blades of grass are hung with spiders’ silk hammocks.

But this year, deprived of the usual signs of the turning seasons, I feel stranded back in the early summer.

“Wait, it can’t be Autumn yet – I haven’t had my summer.”

Thanks to the buses, I have been better at getting to the town centre than to the country.

But in the shops, the seasons are weirdly distorted.

In the shops, seasons start and end long before the weather and daylength mark the actual season.

In the shops, a season only exists AT ALL if it presents a merchandising opportunity.

Now, for several weeks, it has been orange pumpkins and tinsel - Halloween with Christmas trimmings. No mention of Autumn.

I was desperate to find some reality and begged Nigel, Carenza and Will to take me gathering chestnuts in the woods, something I do most years. 

We had missed most of the sleek brown nuts in their prickly cases, but gathered just enough to put by for the chestnut stuffing to serve with Christmas dinner in a couple of months’ time.

More than that, it was a relief to see sun shining through the yellow and bronze leaves of the wood and to encounter Autumn in her considerable beauty.

This Cornish hairdresser was celebrating Halloween,
but I'm not sure it would make me want to get my hair cut there.

People’s Vote

I had plans for Saturday.  Perran and Carenza were joining us and we had tickets for the Space Shifters exhibition at the Hayward Gallery.

But there was something else going on that day – something that hadn’t been part of the plan, but that we all really cared about.

The train up to London was bulging with people dressed in blue, trimmed with yellow stars.  One small boy was carrying a blue banner saying “I missed football for this.”

It was the march for a people’s vote on the final deal for BREXIT – a chance to vote when we really knew what we were voting for.

“But we couldn’t march anyway, Clare, because you’re still on crutches,” said Nigel.

The Space Shifters exhibition was excellent, playing with our senses, the sculptures making us feel unbalanced, as if we might float away or trip over into an abyss.

Thing is, since the votes for BREXIT and Trump, I have felt like that anyway, disorientated and stumbling on shifting ground.

As we came out into the sunshine, I said “We could still get to Parliament Square in time for the rally.”

So we did – I clunked along the South Bank and Westminster Bridge and found a sunny wall to lean on outside the Houses of Parliament as the marchers surged in.

I spotted at least three people in wheelchairs, one breathing through a tube. Made crutches seem a pretty minor problem.

Carenza kept winding me up that we were going to get “kettled” but there was no sign of that and the fact that in the UK we can still demonstrate peacefully against government policy began to help me feel I was standing on solid ground again.

Votes for Women – Triumphant Banner

A thread running through my year has been Annabel O’ Docherty making a suffragist banner to hang in our old college, Girton.  It is a replica of the hundred-year-old original, carried in marches for women’s votes and shared by Girton and Newnham, the Cambridge women’s colleges. 

Newnham has the original, but thanks to Annabel, Girton now has a stunning and extremely accurate replica. 

In April Annabel took me on the initial trip to Newnham to measure the banner (click through for story).  She also had me along in July to the Women's Library at the LSE, where Gillian Murphy showed us some similar banners. I was never quite sure why she was kind enough to include me but thought that perhaps it was because I was good at research.

But best of all, even though I was on crutches, and a complete liability, she included me as her “plus one” when invited to the Founders’ and Benefactors’ dinner at Girton. 

We were excited to discover that we were seated at the High Table and a little overwhelmed by the extraordinary women who surrounded us, their CVs glittering with public honours and with “first”s (e.g. Baroness Higgins, first female president of the International Court of Justice).

After scary ladder work,
Annabel with Jeff from Mantenance

But to my delight, I was opposite my long-ago tutor, Marilyn Strathern, whose tremendous career I had watched from afar.  It was great to catch up.

The banner looked stunning and both The Mistress, Susan Black, and Baroness Hale made speeches in front of it.

It is also a concrete representation of our college friendship group which has lasted thirty-five years and many of whom contributed to the cost of making the banner, and a commemoration of the three of our friends who died young – Malcolm, Steve and Hugh.

So why, when so many were involved, did Annabel take me along? Was it, as I had supposed, for my prowess in research?

In fact she revealed the true reason in an email to our friends afterwards:

“Clare was my emotional support person (like those tortoises, peacocks and Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs that some people have started taking on board aeroplanes).”

Vietnamese pot-bellied pig?!?

Journey into Technicolor

Ten weeks after my foot surgery, it was my birthday, and Nigel and I made a trip to meet Perran and Carenza at the Turner Prize Exhibition at the Tate Britain.

Life on crutches has been limiting, but on the journey, I felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, when the world changes to Technicolor.

In the tunnels of the London underground, I spotted a young woman carrying in front of her a homemade birthday cake topped with glistening white icing and silver balls.  She obviously lacked suitable tupperware as the cake was uncovered. Her face was shining, and I wanted very much to see the end of her journey when her friend received the cake, hopefully unharmed.

But the press of people carried her on.

Then on the platform were two young men.  One was showing the other a gift that he had wrapped for their friend.  Inside the parcel was a large piece of art.  I couldn’t see the picture, of course.  However, I could admire the way he had carefully cut and folded several different sheets of colourful paper to make an ingenious pattern.

When we met Perran and Carenza, I told them about these Birthday-themed sightings.

And after the Turner prize exhibition, there was one more.  I thought I had left it too late and missed Anthea Hamilton’s mischievous Squash, creating havoc in the main hallway.  

But there it was, a performer dressed as a gourd, loitering and lounging among the older Tate exhibits. 

Carenza said that when she saw the Squash before, it had been much more lively.  We wondered whether it was perhaps a hung-over Squash today. 

Maybe it had had a birthday too.

Passive aggressive bluebells

I am still on crutches, but this weekend managed to clump as far as a lovely bluebell wood within the new forest of Heartwood.

Increased numbers of visitors have meant that the magical narrow tracks which once wound through the hornbeams are now flattened muddy runways. 

The Woodland Trust has clearly decided that gentle nudging is the way to prevent further damage.  Lining the path was a series of wooden posts.  On each was a rhyme:

“Help us beat the bluebell blues,

a problem caused by boots and shoes.

Keep to the path, enjoy the view

and let the new green leaves push through.”

or

“As leaves unfurl and buds hang free,

they hint at beauty we’ll soon see;

but if dogs or walkers go off track,

we may never get that beauty back.”

Having seen young families running amok in the woods, I’m not convinced they will be sensitive enough to respond to this.

I have emailed the Woodland Trust to suggest they stop shilly-shallying and protect the bluebells with electrified barbed wire.

I think the rhymes on the posts could also do with being just a tad more direct:

“When you’re in the woods,

spare the bluebells’ life;

Or we’ll cut your ears off

with a rusty knife.”

(There was a second verse about posting the severed ears to their mother, but I couldn’t make it scan.)

However, in spite of all this, it was lovely to be out again, back in the woods, and I took special care not to whack the bluebell bulbs with my crutches.

photo by Rosie

The ice cream scoop of victory

Back in early August when I was feeling blue following my foot surgery, Philippa, Kathryn and Anne came round to share a takeaway. Anne kindly brought ice cream…. and her own ice cream scoop.

Proudly she demonstrated its ergonomic design. She showed us how it thrust through ice cream like a snow plough through…well, snow. No other scoop worked as efficiently.

After they had all left the scoop was still here.

"Probably she’ll pop back for it."

But she didn't.

"Perhaps you could take it round to her, Nigel "

But Nigel was busy covering my household tasks as well as his own. 

Over the following weeks the ice cream scoop shifted from one part of the kitchen to another until finally its role became clear. 

It was to be SYMBOLIC.

When I could walk well enough to take the scoop back to Anne's I would be a good way down the road to recovery.

At last, on Sunday the moment had arrived. I tucked the scoop in my coat pocket and clumped off on my crutches. Anne was certainly going to be overjoyed to see her long lost scoop again.

At the door she was glad to see me and invited me in politely.

Although it was hardly the exuberant reunion of scoop and owner that I had been anticipating.

“Aren't you pleased to get it back?”

“To be honest, Clare, I thought I must have accidentally thrown it in the bin.  So I went out and bought a new one.”

So we are both winners – I am beginning to walk again, and Anne is now the owner of a double-scoop household.

Not for Weddings

Having decided to get doves (see last post), Nigel became proactive. He ordered a dovecote. We were surprised at how expensive dovecotes are, and how large.

When ours arrived we peered inside to see if there were en suite bathrooms with power showers and anti-mist electric mirrors.

Nigel and a helpful neighbour got it pinned to the wall.

Now all we had to do was source the doves. 

We had to be quick as doves need to be cooped up for six weeks in order to bond with their new home.  We had six weeks right now, following my foot surgery, but as soon as I was better, we would need to go away for the weekend visiting our parents once more.

But even with Google at our fingertips we were drawing a blank.

A site called “Preloved” was offering doves.  I was not sure I want “preloved” doves. It sounded a little weird.

But we joined the site anyway, only to find them gone.

Another breeder insisted on answering our queries only in single word answers and after a while, we gave up the struggle. Yes.

Time was going on.

Finally Nigel found a supplier who said, “Not sold for release at weddings” – the hallmark of quality.

Only snag was they were in Great Yarmouth, nearly three hours from us.

We asked the questions we were supposed to:

“Are they bonded pairs?”

“Sorry, no – too young.”

“Well, have you been able to sex them then?”

“Very difficult with doves.”

“And have you wormed them?”

“Don't usually bother I'm afraid.”

Hmm.

But time was ticking away.

“We’ll take them!”

And that was how we came to drive all the way to Great Yarmouth with a large cardboard box, and bring it back again full of snowy white doves.