On Music, Maths and Moggies

On A Successful Year

2011-12-31T18:02:00.001Z

So, we’ve now reached the end of 2011 (well, give or take an hour or so), and, in a rather unoriginal and clichéd way, I’m going to look back on the year just finishing (and possibly speculate on the year just starting).

For me, 2011 has been very different from the years that immediately preceded it. I spent much of 2009 and 2010 feeling very ill, struggling to cope in the world, and not really feeling comfortable in my own skin. As 2011 started, it still wasn’t clear how things would work out, and there have certainly been one or two hiccoughs along the way, but as the closing hours of the year approach, I can look back and see that things were, in fact, starting to work out, even at that early stage.

I don’t think the successes of this year have been entirely rooted in this year either. After a very shaky 2009, when it became apparent that my determination to control my own mental health (or, at that time, mental illness – bipolar disorder) wasn’t working, I made a sort of pact with myself – for 2010 I would relinquish control, take the drugs the medics prescribed, do whatever the psychiatrists and community psychiatric nurses told me to do, no matter how silly it seemed, and see whether THAT worked any better.

Of course they were right, and it did. I was still pretty ill at the end of 2010, but the actions I’d taken that year would reach into the future and enable me to start to build a better life. Instead of getting whatever job I could take, I gave up work completely, and, with the help of the community mental health team, applied for disability living allowance and employment support allowance. I accepted that I would be financially worse off, accepted whatever help I could get from friends and family, and cut my standard of living as far as I could without actually making it unbearable. The Wonderspouse and I completely gave up the idea of going on holiday, drastically cut the number of concerts and gigs we attended (in general, only going to the ones we’d already booked, and not booking anything new), discovered which “value” products were just as good as the regular ones, ignored the wealthy people on the internet who talked about Waitrose, and moved the cats from Whiskas to own-brand cat food (which probably saved more than anything else).

So, at the start of 2011, things were changing. I had the nearest thing to a “clean sheet” to start with that I could get while retaining parts of my life that I was keen to keep. I also knew that my 40th birthday was coming up, and that being 40 would be a good excuse to get my life in order. Life may not exactly “begin” at 40, but I figured that it might be a time when I was finally as “grown-up” as I was likely to get, and that it might be time to look at what I actually wanted out of life, rather than letting all the baggage from childhood and upbringing, my previous expectations and hopes of what life would be like, and the opinions of others who didn’t really know, or in some cases care, what would be best for me, affect my choices.

By the start of the year I was working with an “employment specialist” at the community mental health centre and starting to think about what kind of work I could do. It had been established that the dead-end administrative envelope-stuffing jobs that I had been doing were not only a waste of the talents I had, but didn’t actually help my mental health either. I don’t need to do EASY work, I just need to do work that suits me and that I can, to some extent, control. This fact was brought home to me sharply just before Easter – I accepted a full-time maths teaching job in a secondary school, which seemed like a good plan at the time (especially as the money situation was really beginning to bite at that stage). However, after just 6 days I was exhausted, tearful, and unable to continue. It felt like a disaster at the time, especially as I had come off my benefits, not been paid for the work I had done, and was completely without income for a month. Fortunately, my best friend kept us afloat and prevented total meltdown.

That was the final time I tried to conform to previous expectations. My new career would have to be, well, NEW, not a rehashed version of anything that had gone before. My employment specialist asked if I’d ever considered adult education – I hadn’t, but I started to think seriously about the possibilities that might offer me.

At around the same time, my relationship with the internet and my internet “friends” changed. I use the word “friends” advisedly, because, in early summer, around half a dozen or so of these “friends” decided they didn’t actually like me very much. I believe it all revolved around one particular person, who, for reasons that nobody was prepared to tell me, took against me, blocking me and unfriending me wherever he could, but since these people won’t actually tell me, I can only speculate. I had tried to be a good friend to this person, but my friendship was not, ultimately, reciprocated. He didn’t even have the manners to respond to e-mails I sent him, despite the fact that I just wanted to help him cope with various situations in which he found himself.

So, at that point I drew a line under it all. If those people didn’t care to be friends with me, then they could go. If the originator of the trouble is hell-bent on destroying himself, then there is precious little I can do about it – there is only so much of my life that I’m prepared to waste trying to help those who don’t want my help. If any of those people wish to be friends with me again, they’re very welcome – I don’t bear grudges, and will forgive those who apologise and wish to reconnect, but it’s all on my terms from now on. I am no longer a slave to the internet, partly because I now realise that living my life entirely online was actually rather detrimental to my mental health, and partly because I have lots of interesting and good things going on in the “real world”!

I also realised at that point that I had regained my self-esteem. During 2009, I’d felt hopelessly inadequate as I hung out on twitter with people who talked about books I’d never even heard of, spent hours talking about different types of computers (most of which I could never even think of affording), and I tried desperately to fit into their world, in the hope that I’d fit into any world at all. At that time I spent pounds and pounds on books that I suspect I shall never read. The Wonderspouse and I now have a good laugh about it – what WAS I thinking, spending a tenner on some tome on Indian history? Goodness only knows. But I’ve now realised that reading is, for me, about relaxation and enjoyment, and I’ve returned to what I enjoy. If others want the heavy stuff, then I’m pleased to leave them to it!

So, as my 40th birthday approached, I had started to be “me” again, and it felt good. I’d also started to swim outdoors at the local lido, and was beginning to lose some of the weight I’d put on through medication and silly eating in the previous years. As I pounded up and down the pool, I also sorted my head out, going through all the rubbish of the previous couple of years and gradually dealing with each piece, bit by bit. I also got fitter and stronger, and life began to feel easier and more manageable.

Then came one of the defining moments of the year – I finally got a pair of beautiful rats. I published a post on this blog yesterday about how I got into rats, and my relationship with them. I’d wanted rats for years, and being 40 gave me the perfect excuse finally to get some. Getting rats was something I did because I wanted to – in some ways, taking on more animals wasn’t “sensible”, but I’m now learning that if I wait until “the right time” for some things, then I’ll never do them. Furthermore, the decision I made has turned out to be a good one. Having my little rat men around has made me so very very happy!

Just after my birthday, the Wonderspouse and I celebrated 9 years of marriage. Our 8th anniversary had been overshadowed by the final illness of our beloved cat Athena, but the 9th was good. We decided around that time that we would have a party for our 10th anniversary in 2012, and started to plan it – the first time we’ve done any such thing together – it’s quite an adventure, and there’s still much to be done (planning ground to a halt in the autumn for 2 reasons I’ll mention shortly) but we’re determined it’ll be a fabulous occasion, done OUR way, and something we’ll enjoy working on together.

The other thing that my 40th birthday (and, to some extent, the 10th anniversary of the Wonderspouse and I getting together) has done, is finally enable me to put aside any thoughts of parenthood. Yes, there are all sorts of tales of people having children later in life, but since I have failed to conceive all through my 30s, it is now extremely unlikely that we shall ever be parents – so unlikely that I have now accepted that that won’t be our lot in life. Five years ago, this seemed like the end of the world, but now I’m used to the idea that we are the end of the family line. The Wonderspouse and I will be together “until death us do part” I’m certain, but we shall not have children (nor nieces or nephews) and will spend our life together doing other things and having other interests.

Along with assuming that I would work in a full-time job and achieve financial stability, I had also always assumed I would have children – but now another expectation that I held throughout my early life is gone, along with going to work in a suit, and living in a house that I owned. As well as this acceptance (and maybe also to do with the 40th birthday) the bitterness I felt for many years about my incomplete doctorate and my previous failed careers has evaporated. I’ve learnt, somehow, that academic qualifications, which seemed, for many years, to be the be-all and end-all, are actually just a tiny part of life, and that finding something enjoyable and fulfilling to do has much more to do with interacting with people and being able to offer them something they need, than it has with raw brain power.

By this stage, life was looking pretty rosy. The Wonderspouse had a new job that he was really enjoying, and was starting to bounce back after the workload of his old job and looking after an ill me for over 2 years. I was getting fitter, enjoying my rats and swimming, my benefits were all sorted out again, and I had a career plan lined up that was all starting to fall into place. I had also started practising my viola again seriously and played the Telemann concerto better than I’d done before at a concert in Wales, and my maths degree, which I’d abandoned a couple of years earlier, was back on track. I was also doing voluntary work – helping out one of the mental health charities that had helped me by playing the keyboard for their music workshops, and teaching adults who had no experience to use computers in a local library jobclub.

Then came one of the more difficult parts of the year. The Wonderspouse’s Mum had been to the doctor’s and there was talk of “a shadow” on one of her lungs. There were more tests, lots of worry, and she was eventually diagnosed with lung cancer and Hodgkin’s disease. Party planning went on hold as we spent more and more time driving down to visit my in-laws in order to try to help them through an autumn of chemo and radiotherapy that finished shortly before Christmas.

However, unlikely as it may seem, even this illness HAS had a positive side (not that I wouldn’t have preferred it not to have happened, of course). But we’ve become closer to the Wonderspouse’s parents than ever before, and have been exchanging regular letters and phone calls with them in order to keep up with how they are and to update them on what we’ve been doing. We have all valued each other much more – they’ve accepted our help, and we’ve been able to show them how much we care about them. It’s also meant that we’ve spent much more time with them and realised how much we all have in common – so much, in fact, that the Wonderspouse has said to me on many occasions “You’ve inherited that from my mother”!!! He has an interesting take on genetics!

The other big feature of the autumn was a completely positive one. My plans for a new career were put into action. I got a place on a CELTA (Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults) course at a local college just as my time with my “employment specialist” was coming to an end. The course was “part time”, although turned out to be very intensive. Luckily, it got off to a very good start owing to plenty of preparation (practice journeys into college and so on) and a spell of beautiful weather in the first few weeks of the course!

The course suited me very well, and, apart from a couple of short episodes of ordinary physical illness, I remained well throughout. I walked around half of the 3.5 mile trips from where I parked the car at my friend Scharwenka’s house, to college, which helped me to keep fit, and, more surprisingly, I started to use the local buses on my journeys. I haven’t travelled by bus for years, after a series of debilitating panic attacks on public transport, but, it seems that I’m once again well enough to use buses for short journeys! I also saw Scharwenka more often, which was good, and spent time in town, out in the world, rather than sitting on the sofa at home.

At the start of the course too, I finally took the Open University Maths exam that I’d delayed three times through illness in the past. Once again, my degree was moving forward – I didn’t cover myself in large amounts of glory with the result, but I passed comfortably, and was delighted to have finally got things underway again!

Fortunately, just as I was beginning to get tired, college stopped for a half-term break, and I had a chance to catch up. I acquired Laura, the hyperactive hamstress, during the break, and Robbie the Roborovski shortly afterwards. I also did something else that I’d been determined to do for my 40th birthday.

People seem either to love tattoos or to hate them. I love them. I’ve wanted to have one for years, and decided that it was time to get one. Those who argue against them seem to say “You’ll regret it when you’re older” rather a lot. At the age of 40 I decided that I was probably old enough to have made up my mind, so, after finding a good studio on the recommendation of a friend, I went to get inked! I now have a 4 inch long picture of my viola tattooed on my right upper arm. I love it. It IS real (I’m asked “Is it real” by quite a lot of people) and permanent. It’s exactly what I wanted, exactly where I wanted it, and is a beautiful piece of artwork by a very talented artist. It didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as I expected it to, and it healed well, in a relatively short period of time.

I don’t think it’ll be the last tattoo I get. Far from regretting it, I love it every time I see it!

After the half term break I returned to college, and spent the next few weeks working really really hard on my CELTA course. I discovered that I did actually have an aptitude for teaching after all, and when I could do it in an environment that didn’t mean arguing with teenagers about whether they wore ties or not, it was much more enjoyable. I’d always found enforcing such things as uniform regulations tricky as a school teacher, especially as I, personally, don’t care at all what kids are wear to school, just whether they work hard, learn stuff, and behave politely while they’re there.

My work at college was made much easier by the arrival of a new pair of specs. Being grown-up enough to take charge of my life has been accompanied by a change in my eyesight – 2011 will also go down in the annals as the year that I started wearing bifocals. And, as is my way, I was delighted to get them. Suddenly, copying from the whiteboard became a whole lot easier (particularly for the tops of my ears, which were getting worn out because I was taking my single vision glasses on and off so often), and at home I could now see my dinner in focus, and then look up and see the telly too! Genius!!!

As the end of my college course approached, life got even busier, as I started the first course of my Open University Languages degree. I had planned to wait until I’d finished my Maths BSc before starting my Languages BA, but I knew that changes in university fees structures that will start in 2012 meant that I would be unable to afford to study languages if I waited, so I started studying the two subjects alongside each other. Most of my language study will be in French and Spanish, but since the OU offer a course in beginners’ Welsh, I thought that would be a good place to start! So I did!

Shortly before Christmas, the CELTA course results came through. I was delighted to learn that I’d got an A, the highest grade available, achieved by around 5% of students. I also got 95% for my first Welsh assignment, so 2011 is ending on something of a high, workwise.

Christmas itself was peaceful and spent at home with the Wonderspouse. We saw my family shortly afterwards, and went to visit my in-laws on the Wonderspouse’s 40th birthday – he was delighted to be able to spend it with both parents, and also seemed not to mind having his wife around! And, just to put the icing on the cake of a year that has got better and better as it has progressed, George and Henry, a couple of adorable baby rats moved in yesterday.

So, for the first time in a while, I’m looking back on a year and liking most of what I see. I’ve met wonderful friends this year (including some I first knew online); learnt not to worry about those who have turned out not to be friends after all; moved much of my life back into the real world, talking face to face with real people (even when I’ve found it challenging, for ultimately, life cannot be lived fully in front of a computer); learnt what I can and cannot do career-wise; lost weight; got fitter, and a little bit slimmer (although there’s still a fair way to go, I’ve made a very good start); got bifocals and had high blood pressure (the body is showing a few signs of wear and tear); resumed my Maths degree, started my Languages degree, and done a CELTA course; had my first tattoo; enjoyed our 5 cats, and acquired 2 hamsters and 4 rats; started to plan a fabulous party; had my 40th birthday; and, as I’ve got well again, enjoyed being with the ever fabulous Wonderspouse, who helped me so very much through the more difficult years.

Now that I’ve finished writing this blog post, the rest of the evening will be spent working on my goals for 2012. I don’t do “resolutions”, as they can be broken, and are then over, but I do like to set goals for the things I’d like to achieve in the coming year. I have so many ideas and wishes and things I’d like to do, that sorting them all out into manageable chunks may take some time - I just hope that I can sit here on 31st December 2012 and look back on another successful year!

Happy New Year everyone!

On Living with Rodents

2011-12-30T18:10:00.001Z

It all began around 12 years ago. At that time, I was working on an Open University degree in psychology, which I started, initially, in an attempt to understand what had made my ex-boyfriend hit me.

I never did understand what my ex had done, and simply decided he was troubled and I was well out of the relationship. Neither did I complete my psychology degree – it all got too much when I ended up studying mental distress just as I was having a breakdown, and then child development just as I was discovering I was infertile. I moved my OU studies to geology, and then, finally to maths and languages, which I’m still working on now.

However, I did do a fascinating course called “Biology, Brain and Behaviour” and went on a fabulous summer school, where we did all sorts of practicals, and there were all sorts of lovely people who were all keen to work with me because I have some capability in maths and was therefore good at analysing the lab results!

One of the practicals we did involved training rats to press a lever to get food. I can’t remember the details of the experiment, although I think it’s one of those famous experiments that every psychology student does at some stage in their training. What I DO remember, however, is that I worked with two lab partners, and we trained 2 rats in different ways. I named the rats Norma and Sue, after my lab partners!

I also remember falling in love with Norma and Sue. They were beautiful, utterly gorgeous, and SO clever. I was astonished by the speed with which they learned what we were teaching them, and entranced by their little paws, their twitching noses and whiskers, and their lovely long tails.

After the course, the tutors told us we could take our rats home. However, at the time I knew that I couldn’t look after them. My landlord prohibited pets in my flat, I was doing a lot of travelling to conferences at the time, and I hadn’t the first clue how to look after a rat (I didn’t even know at that stage that they should be kept in pairs or groups).

But I never forgot them, and never will. Norma and Sue started something that continues to this day, and which has finally, in 2011, led to something wonderful that has become a very big part of my life.

A few years later, when I was married, and on holiday with the Wonderspouse, we wondered into a big pet shop called Pets at Home, which I’d never come across before – my only experience with pet shops had previously been a small shop in town where we got goldfish as children. We’d always had cats at home, but their food came from the supermarket and we’d never needed pet shops for them.

In this Pets at Home, they had a selection of small animals, including rats. The rats had a little sign above them saying “We like to live in groups”, which stuck in my head. I picked up a leaflet about them, and looked hopefully at the Wonderspouse. The Wonderspouse said that there was no way we could get them home (we were staying in a hotel at the time) and that we had cats in any case, so we really couldn’t get rats.

However, I STILL talked about rats, quoting “We like to live in groups” endlessly, and, around 3 years ago, the Wonderspouse (probably hoping to shut me up) eventually said “You can have them when you’re 40”! He was probably also hoping I’d forget, and that once I got to 40 I’d be into something else! It’s not that he doesn’t like rats, it’s just that we have quite a lot of cats and he didn’t want to end up with more animals than we could manage.

But, in 2011, I had my 40th birthday. This was to be the year I finally got rats. I put my rat calendar up on 1st January and posted a picture of the first rat on my photojournal, and I started to buy rat books and to read about rats, learning about them, learning about cages, bedding, and looking at endless pictures of them. I also discovered branches of Pets at Home near us, and went there often, looking at the rats and at all the things you could get for them.

And, finally, on the 8th June 2011, just over a month before my 40th birthday, I went into our nearest Pets at Home, intending to buy a cage and all the bits the rats would need so I could get it all set up and ready in time to get the rats themselves for my birthday! I asked the assistant how I went about getting rats – I didn’t know whether they always had them available or what I had to do to get one – I couldn’t QUITE believe that I would just buy them and walk out of the shop.

The assistant asked me if I’d be interested in rehoming a couple of older rats. I said I would. She asked me if I’d like to meet them. I said I would. She went to “the back” of the shop and came out with a cardboard box which she opened to reveal two of the most beautiful creatures I had ever seen. I know now that these two would probably be referred to as an agouti and a pink-eyed white (or even, perhaps fawn-hooded), but I just called them brown and white. I was told that they had been brought in by someone who had become allergic to them, that they were 18 months old, and that their names were Charlie and Moses.

I said instantly that I’d take them.

They came with their own cage, carry box, and a half-sack of bedding. I bought everything else I was advised to buy (food, spare bedding and so on), and loaded the cage into the car – with them in it!

I still have no idea how they got their names, or what their history was before they came to me. However, they were both in excellent physical condition and had clearly been well looked after, although they were quite shy at first, and I suspect they weren’t handled very much before they came to live with me. I kept the names because I had no reason not to, and, from that day, I started to learn about rats not from books, but from experience.

I discovered very quickly that I didn’t just LIKE rats, but absolutely LOVED them. For some reason, watching them going about their business in their cage, enticing them out to sit on my lap or shoulder, training them to come for treats, stroking them, and taking care of them made me very happy and relaxed. Even cleaning out the cage, which is definitely hard work, is a strange sort of a pleasure because it enables me to give back something to these marvellous little creatures who give me so much happiness.

Throughout the summer, as my life turned a corner in many other ways, my little rat men helped me along. When I was sitting at my desk working, they’d come out of the cage and talk to me. When the weather got very hot, I took them swimming in the bath, worried that they’d overheat. When Charlie sneezed persistently, I worried about him and tried to find out what was wrong – it turned out he was allergic to the bedding he was in, so I changed it, and he got better. Every morning when I came into my study, they’d be waiting for me, and every evening I’d go in after my bath and say goodnight to them. These weren’t mere pets, they were real friends and companions!

I started to get interested in the other small animals around. I had thought that Charlie and Moses were tiny (after all, I’m used to cats, who are much bigger), but then, mid-autumn, I decided to expand the rodent family with a hamster. I learnt about hamsters, and finally came home with Laura, a typical golden coloured Syrian hamstress, who was totally unlike the rats, and bit my fingers until they bled, even sinking her teeth into my thumbnail, which was exceedingly painful. I worked with her day after day after day, and she’s now a tame and delightful little pet (even though I have to surround her cage with wee-proof things because she doesn’t respect boundaries) who hasn’t bitten me for several months and likes to hurtle round inside my jumper!

Then I spotted a lone Roborovski hamster who’d been left by himself at the end of a litter in a branch of Pets at Home. When he was still there a week and a half later I could no longer resist his little tiny pleading face, and so he moved in too, by himself because he’d been alone too long to be part of a group any more. He’s utterly charming, and SO tiny and fast. He weighs only 25 grams, and I had to buy him a special mini hamster wheel because he couldn’t move the ordinary sized one. He loves his mini one though. He’s getting tamer all the time, and will now take small pieces of food from my fingers. He also loves to bathe in sand, making his fur all gorgeous and fluffy!

As the winter started, I started to worry not about keeping my little companions cool, but keeping them warm. Charlie and Moses have plastic hanging beds, known as sputniks, and I’d initially lined them with fabric for comfort, but they’d thrown the linings out. Then, following one cold night, I went into the study the next morning and found they’d dragged an old tea towel all the way to the top of the cage and lined one of their sputniks with it. I understood – it depends upon the season. Lined in winter, unlined in summer. They’re gradually teaching me what they like.

Then, first through someone I met on blipfoto, who introduced me to a rat page on facebook, and then through rat people in general, I heard of some kittens (confusingly for someone who also has cats, baby rats are also called kittens) available from a recent litter. The thought of baby rats was just too tempting to resist, and, just before Christmas, I heard that two were reserved for me (in fact from two different litters – one is from another breeder with whom the first has an arrangement). I have now gone, in less than a year, from wondering how on earth to get any sort of rat at all, and getting a “brown one” and a “white one”, to owning two rats whose parentage and even grandparentage I know. George, who is an Agouti, and Henry, who is a Russian Blue Berkshire, moved in today. They are only 6 weeks old, and absolutely minuscule compared to Charlie and Moses.

So my new challenge for 2012 is to learn about young rats and old rats. Charlie and Moses are now 2 years old and have certainly reached the “pipe and slippers” stage of life whereas George and Henry are really just still babies. I can’t imagine they will be the last rats I get either – I’m now planning cage conversions, and I have a study full of cages and various accessories to go in and with them. I have boxes of rodent food, piles of old tea towels, and a shower cubicle in our ensuite which is used as a storage cupboard for sacks of rat and hamster bedding (we’re both bath people)! Furthermore, a used toilet roll is now a valuable plaything to be chewed, and the daily routine of rinsing water bottles and spot cleaning cages is well-established. I have also learnt that the washing machine filter needs emptying more often when nibbled rat bedding is being washed!

And so I now live with rodents. I really regard myself as a “rat person” rodent wise and although I love my little hamsters too (even though I find their lack of tails very strange), it was the rats who first stole my heart. I get all sorts of negative comments when I talk about rats – mainly, I might add, from people who’ve never actually learnt anything about them or got to know one personally, but I’ve also met some lovely lovely people in the rat community, who share my passion. I’m perpetually fascinated by the way rats behave and the way they interact with both humans and each other, and they’re just so utterly cute that I find them irresistible. 2011 and my 40th birthday will always be associated with my lovely rodent companions and, subject only to constraints of space and resources (I’d never want to take on any animal I couldn’t look after properly for its whole life), I’m certain that Charlie, Moses, George and Henry will be the first of many to come .

Norma and Sue couldn’t possibly have imagined the eventual results of their training sessions and cute noses!

On Ten Years Ago

2011-09-11T17:40:00.001+01:00

There’s a lot of stuff going on today, remembering the events of September 11th 2001. For obvious reasons, nearly everyone over the age of about 16 can remember what they were doing that Tuesday and where they were when they heard about the terrorist attacks in America.

For me, that day ten years ago was the last day I tried to pretend that nothing was wrong. It was the day my “proper” career ended, the day before I had the breakdown which I now refer to as “The Big One”, about which I wrote a short blog post a couple of years ago.

That day I’d gone through my usual morning routine: get up, orange juice, half an hour’s crying in the bath, then eventually drag myself out to the car to go to school – I was head of music in a large comprehensive school in Haringey, North London.

It was a fairly normal school day. I taught a full day, worked a little on the slightly tricky relationship with my second in department (he’d been acting head of department before I joined the school, and I’d got the job he badly wanted), and managed, only just, to hold myself together for another day. I’d had a bit of a wobble when I played a chord wrong on the piano in front of a year 7 class and the tears started rolling down my cheeks, but I’d made it to the end of the day and headed off to the “departmental literacy coordinators’ meeting” after school.

At the end of the meeting, the school’s literacy person said she’d tried to make the meeting fairly short because we’d probably want to get home to see the news. I asked the person sitting next to me what had happened, and was told that there had been a plane crash in America. I was mildly interested, but not much more than that. I’d never been to America (I still haven’t) and I didn’t know anyone likely to be involved in an American plane crash, so I just drove home as usual, ready to collapse in a heap, as I did every evening at that time.

Once home, I put the television on to whatever the rolling news channel was in those days – ironically, I had digital tv back then (by subscription to ON digital) and had more channels than I’ve ever had since – now I’m much less well-off financially than I was and I live in a place where tv reception is very patchy.

Through my teary eyes (I cried almost all the time back then as I was so close to complete meltdown) I watched the coverage of planes crashing, fires burning, buildings collapsing and so on. To be honest, it didn’t really mean much to me – my senses were so skewed by my illness at that stage. I just about grasped that it was some sort of historic event and that I should try to take notice, but I soon lost focus on it all, as I drank more and more, and eventually slipped into unconsciousness until the following morning.

That was the last day I went into school. The next day, as I wrote in my earlier blog post, I couldn’t get out of the car to get to my classroom. I do remember sitting in the waiting room in the doctor’s surgery, listening to two old ladies chatting, hearing phrases such as “it was just like a film” and so on.

So, as the aftermath of the disaster occupied the rest of the world, I started seriously to battle the illness that has now been diagnosed as bipolar disorder. At that stage it was diagnosed as “depression”, and I’d previously been signed off for a few weeks with “anxiety”, but the day after those four planes were hijacked I took my first antidepressant pill, and began the long process of learning about my illness, changing my expectations of life, realizing that my career would not be defined by my brainpower, but by my health, and starting to adapt to my very changed circumstances.

As I hinted at in my previous blog post, things didn’t start to get better straight away, but continued to get worse for a while. The medication I’d been given didn’t work instantly, and, it later transpired, wasn’t really suitable for me anyway. I attempted suicide in the weeks that followed (by drinking a very large amount of alcohol and taking a random assortment of pills – only the fact that I fell asleep thanks to the alcohol prevented me from taking enough pills to do myself lasting harm). I don’t remember the date as my memories from that time are so poor.

But, every year, as the world commemorates the events of “9/11”, I remember that day as the last one of an old life for me. It was the last day I pretended to be “normal” and the last day I managed to earn sufficient money to support myself. As the remains of the twin towers smouldered in a foreign city, the world was thrown into turmoil, and people mourned the dead, I quite simply WANTED to be dead - as I believed I’d come to the end of what I could cope with.

However, ten years later, as I look back on the way the world has altered since the terrorist attacks that day, I’m glad I didn’t succeed in extinguishing my life. I suspect I have something in common with some of those who might have died that day but didn’t (perhaps they were late for work and were not in their offices when the planes hit, or maybe they’d missed their flights and what started as an annoyance turned out to be a blessing – I’ve heard so many such stories); I still count each day of the last ten years as a bonus, as time I might very easily not have had.

It always feels rather strange to me that the two events are so close in time. And also rather odd that even if there had been no terrorist attacks that day, if the twin towers were still standing now, and if the world had never known increased security on aircraft or war in Afghanistan, I would STILL remember exactly where I was that day and what I was doing.

And what is perhaps strangest of all, is that every year, at this time, while people mourn those who died that day and focus on what ended ten years ago, I feel more like celebrating the fact that I’m still here and still rebuilding my life.

So as people talk today of how much the world has changed in the last ten years, I marvel at the fact that I’m still alive and that the last ten years have, despite considerable difficulties, been well worth living.

I’ve heard people say today that they can hardly believe that ten years have passed since the events of September 2001.

Neither can I.

On An A-Z Of Smiles

2011-07-30T15:07:00.002+01:00

Turn on the TV, the radio, or even look at the interwebs, and you’ll see bad news – lots of it. You’ll see people complaining about their lot in life, people pointing out where things are going wrong, and, in some rather tasteless cases, people arguing about whether the death of a young talented musician is more or less tragic than the deaths of a group of young people shot by a gunman – these arguments usually fail to mention the deaths and dreadful conditions being suffered by an unimaginable number of people living on the horn of Africa.

There is also a whole world out there of “misery lit”, tales of awful childhoods, books complaining about how things are “going down the drain” these days, and articles in the newspapers about how society is falling apart and we’re all heading for some kind of apocalypse – be it environmental, economic, or educational!

However, I’m reading a little book on my kindle app at the moment that counteracts all this stuff. It’s called “It Is Just You, Everything’s Not Shit”, and is a rather charming collection of “things” that are just lovely and pleasurable, such as Advent Calendars, Bubble Wrap, and Cancelled Meetings (organized alphabetically, and I’m currently on “D”, hence the selection above)!

It’s true too, life has some grim stuff, granted, but it also has some lovely stuff – although people seem to prefer to focus on the grim – I once heard something on the TV saying that people complain about things they’re NOT happy with 9 times more than they tell someone about something they ARE happy with – it’s no wonder so many people think the world’s going down the drain – they often ignore the things in life that are good and run smoothly. How many times have you heard someone say, at the end of a journey, that they got held up at every red traffic light on their way? Do they also say how wonderful it was when they miss the red lights and go through green for their entire journey? Or, do they simply not notice the green ones as they speed through?

So, I was inspired by this little book to write a short blog post (which is already growing faster than I intended) outlining some of the pleasures of my life, things which make me smile – one for each letter of the alphabet. It’s been a nice exercise to do – sitting thinking of 26 nice things that make me smile. Maybe something others might like to do, just to focus on some of the good things in the world.

I’m not denying there are bad things too, just that it’s nice to focus on the good stuff from time to time – most of it doesn’t make the news, because bad news sells more papers, but there’s loads of good stuff out there if we just bother to notice it!

So, here’s the A-Z. It’s my own, yours will be different, but hope you enjoy it and I make at least one of you smile at least once – if I do, it’ll have been a worthwhile exercise! :-)

A is for Alto Clef – the clef of choice for viola players. It’s lovely having such a beautifully balanced clef, with middle C on the middle line and it also represents my viola, which nearly always makes me smile (except perhaps after practising studies!!!).

B is for Bubble Bath – what’s not to love? I adore a long soak in the bath, with a book, a cup of tea or a glass of wine, and the wonderful aroma of lovely bubbles around me. Not only do I get clean there, I mentally refocus, relax and refresh myself!

C is for Custard – oh how much I love custard. It’s a genetic thing – my brother loves it too. It’s yellow, and sweet, and milky, and comforting and reminds me of childhood and puddings and squabbling about who gets the skin. And it’s just plain ordinary delicious!

D is for Dyeing – I love making things change colour. One of the nice things about going grey is that I can dye my hair purple if I like, and it’s brilliant to buy a cheap pair of boring trousers, pop them into the machine, and see them emerge a bright vibrant colour.

E is for Electricity – how magical is electricity. So many brilliant things work with it – the TV, the MP3 player, the cooker, lights at night, and all those cool things we love. Now I even have a viola that uses it! And how exciting is it to watch lightning?

F is for Felines – bless them, especially Pebbles who is curled up next to me as I type this. They’re so soft, so cuddly, and so cute when they wash their faces. They’re also incredibly beautifully made creatures – their balance, poise and self-reliance is amazing.

G is for Group Theory – one of my favourite bits of pure mathematics. So far in my study it’s had a lot to do with symmetry and patterns and stuff, which is right up my street. Of course, there had to be something mathematical in my list – studying maths is great!

H is for Hammocks – I’ve recently acquired a hammock. It’s just so wonderful to lie there, swinging gently, and even better when the weather is good enough to take the hammock outside and lie in the warm sun with a book and a drink. Pure luxury!

I is for Instruments – it’s not just violas that make me smile. I love all sorts of music and musical instruments, in particular the large brass ones known as flumpophones (tubas, to normal people). Nothing quite like a nice piano or a sexy bass guitar either! Bliss!

J is for Junk – OK, I admit it, I ADORE junk. You know, all the rubbish that other people don’t want. I like to rescue it from its fate on a scrapheap, take it home, clean it and love it, and even renovate it and make it new again. If it can still be used, I’ll use it – one day!

K is for Kiddles – I was called Kiddle before I was married. Kiddle represents family and friends (even though most of them are not called Kiddle). They don’t ALWAYS make me smile, but in general, I’m lucky to have family and friends who can be wonderful.

L is for Lists – nothing more excellent than a neat and organized list, preferably organized into categories, priorities, and nicely bullet pointed! I like to be organized, put things into spreadsheets and so on – it’s very satisfying and pleasurable!

M is for Making Things – model aircraft, clothes, wooden bits and bobs, nice colours on blog sites. I also get huge satisfaction from fixing things that are broken (see J) and I like doing crafty stuff with my hands – knitting and so on. It’s also quite a useful thing to like!

N is for Nail Polish – I have over 100 pots of the stuff, in all colours of the rainbow. It gives me great pleasure to have colourfully painted finger and toe nails, especially when they’re bold or bright colours – somehow it makes life feel like it’s more fun!

O is for Octonauts – a gem of a kids TV programme, just 10 minutes per episode, but utterly delightful. It’s about a group of animal characters (the Octonauts) who live under the sea and help out. It’s also educational – last week they talked of hydrothermal vents!

P is for Pancakes – marvellous foodstuff, of which I never tire. I like them sweet, savoury, and at any time of day – we have them every weekend for breakfast!. They also represent other yummy simple foods I like – fishfingers make me smile too, as do cakes!

Q is for the Queen – I’m not really a “monarchist” but I think the Queen is fab. She’s so good at socialising with absolutely ANYBODY and still works hard well into her 80s! I’m always impressed by the way so many royals do a job they didn’t choose to do!

R is for Rats – anyone who has had ANYTHING to do with me in recent months will know that my two little fellas, Charlie and Moses, give me a huge amount of pleasure. Rats are sometimes misunderstood, but they’re clean, intelligent, and utterly FAB!

S is for Steak – actually, I could do a whole alphabet of food, but a really nice, well-cooked (i.e. blue) fillet steak is hard to beat. That wonderful “melt in the mouth” sensation is just miraculous! Fish steaks are good too, different, but also delicious!

T is for Tea – well, what else! This elixir of life is just brilliant. The Wonderspouse brings me a cup in bed EVERY morning (Earl Grey – my default tea). I like strong builders’ tea, Lapsang in the afternoon, even poncey stuff like Silver Needles! Yummy!

U is for Undressing – I make no secret of the fact I’m not into clothes and I wear as few as poss! I think we made a mistake losing our fur!!! Also, when I get undressed it is usually either for a swim, a bath, or to go to bed, all of which are great pleasures in life!

V is for Vulcan – Avro Vulcan XH558 to be precise! What a great achievement to get this wonderful plane back into the air. A group of dedicated, committed people at Vulcan To The Sky, along with their supporters made this masterpiece of engineering fly again!

W is for Wonderspouse – how could he not make me smile, from the tips of his wild curly hair, to the ends of his long unmanicured toenails, he’s fabulous! Of all the people in the world, I was lucky enough to find the very best one, AND he puts up with me!

X is for Ximenez – well, Pedro Ximenez, the unctuous wonderful sweetest sherry in the world. Actually, I love all sherry, and wine, and gin (with tonic), and beer (especially real ale), and a drop of scotch, or a mojito, and various other beverages! Many make me smile!

Y is for Yoots – which is the pet name we have for our car (derived from his numberplate – he’s a Y-reg). I love driving, and a particularly smooth gear change, or a great line through a corner, or just getting in and going where I want to go can feel SO good!

Z is for Zebra – the ultimate stripey animal. Tigers and tabby cats are also fantastic! I adore striped things – clothes, patterns, and rainbows! Spots and other geometric patterns are good too, but stripes are my favourite – every time I put on stripey socks I smile! :-)

On Forty Haven'ts & Haves

2011-06-28T08:59:00.001+01:00

In less than two weeks now, I shall have my 40th birthday! I have heard people worry about turning 40, as though it’s some kind of beginning of the end or something, but I’m actually rather excited about it!

This excitement partly comes from my obsession with even numbers, numbers with lots of factors, and particularly multiples of 10. I get to spend a whole year being a nice round number, which will please me greatly!

But it also comes from the fact that there are a couple of things that I’ve promised myself I shall do when I get to 40 (one of which I’ve already done), and from the fact that I now feel that I shall be officially “old enough to make up my own mind” about these things. It feels, to me, like the right age for fresh starts, for ceasing to worry about the stuff of youth, and for taking charge of my life!

I’m also in the rather fortunate position that my health is currently improving rather than declining. I’ve spent much of my 30s rather ill, and I feel that the last couple of years have shown me that if I want to combat this illness, I shall have to keep working hard at it – one of the effects of that hard work is that I’m getting physically fitter, slimmer, and happier and more contented with life than I’ve been for many years!

In the run up to this birthday there has, of course, been a certain amount of “reviewing” my first 40 years on this planet. I was sitting burbling to the Wonderspouse the other night, and it suddenly struck me that I’m going to be 40 and will never have smoked a cigarette (or cigar, pipe, joint etc) or even a single puff of a cigarette!

So I decided to make a list of 40 things I haven’t done! Just for a bit of fun!

And since I like my symmetry, I did one of 40 things I have done!

The lists are in randomish order (really just the order in which they occurred to me) apart from the bottom items on each list.

I have not, as yet, had a tattoo. However, at 40, I may now be old enough not to “regret it when I’m older”, so I plan to have a tattoo later on this year (as long as I’m brave enough – I’m not very good with needles)! I shan’t have it during the summer months though – it will have to wait until the outdoor swimming season is over! Watch this space (or my blipfoto journal) for news sometime in the autumn!

I have, now, owned pet rats. I’ve loved rats for around 15-20 years now, and have hankered after them for ages. In a glib comment a few years ago, the Wonderspouse said I could have them when I was 40! A few weeks ago I was browsing the pet store and came across two wonderful middle-aged-men who needed a new home! Charlie and Moses have been residing in my study since then. I love them so very very much, and I should imagine they’ll get a blog post of their own sometime. You can also see pictures of them on my blipfoto journal (blipfoto.com/violamaths).

So, here are the lists! Enjoy! I’d be interested to hear what surprises you the most about me!

40 THINGS I HAVEN’T DONE

1 Smoked a cigarette
2 Had a filling in a tooth
3 Taken a recreational drug
4 Been arrested
5 Had a driving endorsement
6 Been pregnant
7 Changed a nappy or ever used a disposable nappy
8 Read Lord of the Rings
9 Been divorced
10 Owned a home
11 Owned a dog
12 Owned a tumble drier
13 Been to America
14 Flown in a helicopter
15 Broken a limb
16 Had long fingernails
17 Found my Mother-in-Law difficult
18 Done a bunjee jump
19 Cooked a Christmas dinner
20 Shaved my armpits
21 Played golf
22 Been into a betting shop
23 Been to Bayreuth
24 Worked a year without sick leave
25 Learned to dance
26 Had a same-sex relationship
27 Been to the southern hemisphere
28 Taken a GCSE exam
29 Been a vegetarian
30 Bought a brand new car
31 Had satellite television
32 Had professional makeup done
33 Been able to walk in high-heeled shoes
34 Been on a beach holiday
35 Spent more than £80 on an item of clothing
36 Eaten a tomato
37 Paid off my student loans
38 Stopped studying
39 Taken part in a pub quiz
40 Had a tattoo

40 THINGS I HAVE DONE

1 Attempted suicide
2 Been married
3 Got a first-class honours degree
4 Seen several dead bodies
5 Watched a pet euthanized
6 Been a victim of domestic violence
7 Eaten at the Waterside Inn
8 Been to Russia
9 Kissed the Blarney Stone
10 Been round Christ Church Tom Quad on a motorbike
11 Got locked in a church
12 Met the Queen & Duke of Edinburgh
13 Slept in a 4-poster bed
14 Eaten a cat treat
15 Slept with someone older than my parents
16 Been on school report
17 Flown an aeroplane
18 Been in a plane doing aerobatics
19 Driven at well over 100mph
20 Played gamelan music
21 Played a concerto with an orchestra
22 Had a police escort
23 Been skinny dipping
24 Had a book published
25 Listened to the whole Ring Cycle in one day with scores
26 Been caving, waterskiing, canoeing, abseiling
27 Seen the Aurora Borealis
28 Obtained a theology diploma
29 Preached a sermon
30 Sung "Once in Royal" solo to start a carol service
31 Been stung by a weeverfish
32 Conducted an orchestra
33 Been chair of the trustees of a registered charity
34 Got totally undressed outside in December
35 Thrown my mandolin at my teacher
36 Been mugged and also had my handbag stolen
37 Eaten a poached egg covered in sugar
38 Read A Brief History Of Time
39 Won a tray of meat in a pub raffle
40 Owned pet rats

On Being A Nothing

2011-04-26T12:25:00.001+01:00

I should have started my new job today. Should have been working, properly, full-time, earning real money, and defining my place in the world. Instead, I’m at home. So far I have slept, spoken to my Mother on the phone and established that I am causing a lot of worry (and probably caused even more by being too outspoken), eaten the cut-price Easter egg I bought yesterday, and nearly fallen asleep a couple of times. I’ve also failed to get my accounts done yet, but will make a really big effort when I’ve finished this blog post.

The eventual answer to the question posed at the end of the last blog post about what I was going to about the school job is that I resigned – completely. After much discussion and consideration, it seemed to be the only sensible course of action – to get better properly and then to make a fresh start.

So, what is this “nothing” about?

Well, you know how, at the beginning of TV quiz shows, they go round all the contestants and each contestant says “Hello, my name is BlowBroth and I’m a SuchAndSuch from WhateverPlace”? Yes? Well, I’m struggling a bit with the “SuchAndSuch” part of that sentence.

This is not to say that I’m going to appear on a TV quiz show – I’m not, mainly because I’m terrible at quizzes and would surely lose on the first round – probably because I didn’t know something about football or films or literature or something. However, I am struggling with the concept of what I actually AM.

Maybe it would be best to start with what I’m NOT. I’m not, as I thought I would be, a maths teacher, since I was unable to take up the job owing to ill health, and even though I remain in possession of a PGCE and QTS (Qualified Teacher Status), I can hardly define myself as a teacher, since I’m not actually doing the job at the moment.

So, if I’m not working, am I a housewife? If you saw the state of our house then you’d definitely say not. Furthermore, I do not have my husband’s dinner on the table when he gets home from work – he’s much more competent in the kitchen than I am and it is he who cooks the dinner each night.

Owing to some accident of biology, neither am I (nor shall I ever be I suspect) a mother. Admittedly, I take some part in the care of our cats, but, like with the food, the Wonderspouse does the main share of the work there too.

So am I a “lady of leisure”? Well, again, not really. There isn’t any way in which I fulfill the requirements of “ladyship” and leisure doesn’t accurately reflect my life either – I’m always trying to do something or other, whether it’s washing cat pee off my travel bag, or doing the laundry, or doing my accounts or playing the viola or studying maths or going to numerous medical appointments or buying groceries or whatever. It’s not work, but a lot of it isn’t exactly “leisure” either.

Neither am I a “lady who lunches” on similar principles, and also on the principle that my life is often too chaotic to include lunch. I go round to my friend Scharwenka’s from time to time, but there isn’t anything ladyfish about it – we’re more likely to behave like a couple of small boys than anything else!

So, I play the viola, but I can’t really call myself a “viola player” as a career option, since I don’t get paid to play. I often wonder what would have happened if I’d been less academically inclined and hadn’t followed the academic music path, if I’d ONLY been able to play the viola. I suspect life would have been much much better and I still long to play really, but there are so many younger, better and more confident than me that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make a living doing it.

And I study maths, but the phrase “maths student” doesn’t adequately describe me either. Yes, I still have a Led Zeppelin poster affixed to the landlord’s magnolia wall with blu-tac, yes I still eat Ambrosia custard out of the tin and call it a “meal”, but I’m not really a “student” in the traditional sense – partly because my course is only part-time, and partly because I’m a bit long in the tooth for real studentism.

Perversely, the greatest amount of money I have so far earned this year has been the royalty payment from a book I co-authored last year, although I have never called myself a writer. And if I DO decide to call myself a writer then surely I’d better spend my days actually WRITING something?

So, we come to various phrases such as “self-employed” and “portfolio career”. The self-employed thing may be the way my future is headed, but, as yet, I’m NOT self-employed since I’m not earning anything from doing anything myself. And I can hardly say I have a portfolio career when my portfolio is empty!

And after considering all these options, I can only come to the conclusion that none of them applies.

I am reminded of a scene in one of those arty foreign subtitled films that the Wonderspouse likes. A terribly stylish Frenchwoman goes to rent a flat and is asked “what she does” by the estate agent. Her response is “nothing”! Just “nothing”, simple as that. When I watched it I thought it was deeply cool, and I’m still trying to practise saying it myself. However, she is a slim, cool, stylish Frenchwoman of independent means. I’m a stout, uncool Englishwoman who is scraping by on benefits at the moment and “nothing” sounds lazy rather than cool when I say it!

Maybe I need to work on my delivery or timing or something?

And, in the meantime, I’m grateful I’m not scheduled to appear on a quiz show, because I don’t actually know what I am. This situation has also driven me to think anew about the way that society pigeonholes people according to what they do for a living. For years I’ve been telling people I’m an admin clerk and watched them move on to talk to someone else, someone who may be a “viola player” or a “maths student” or something more interesting than any of those. I’ve grown accustomed to saying “Well, I stuff envelopes for money during the day but what I’m REALLY doing is…”.

And now, when I try to work out where I fit in to society I draw a complete blank. I know of some people who make up their jobs, who say they are something they are not in order to deal with this situation. I can’t bring myself to do that, so I’m stuck. I also believe that we SHOULDN’T be judged by the job we do, but we are – it’s one of the first things people we meet ask us.

So I’m now searching for something to do (or at least trying to get better enough to start searching again) and I realize that yes, I DO need the money rather badly, but I also need something in order to define myself and let those casual enquirers know where I fit in to society.

Of course, that’s probably the nub of the whole problem – I DON’T fit into society very well. So, I end up coming to the conclusion that, as far as society defines “I’m a SuchAndSuch” I’m not actually anything at all!

Hence: I’m a nothing! Not in that I don’t exist (I just pinched my arm and it hurt, which would suggest that I DO exist – in the colloquial way anyway, although I’m certain I could find a philosopher to argue the converse) but in that I am not an anything. Not at the moment anyway.

Again, I’m going to end a blog post with more questions than answers. My mind is misbehaving at the moment – it sometimes feels like it’s made of jumping beans that won’t keep still, and it sometimes feels as though somebody has opened up the top of my head, put in a big spoon, and stirred the whole lot up.

The result is confusion, and, it seems, a complete inability to define myself!

On Not Managing It

2011-04-10T19:57:00.001+01:00

Well, dear blog readers, I had gone. And now I’m back. Why? What has happened? And where do I go from here? And, furthermore, how long will it take me to write this blog post, since my brain is already refusing to play along and I’m only on the first paragraph?

So, why AM I back, and why have I reopened this blog, which I had closed down in preparation for my return to schoolteaching? What HAS happened?

As you may have guessed from the title of this post, things didn’t go exactly as planned with my return to work. And, as you may also have surmised from the reopening of this blog, I’m not currently in the world of the classroom.

Things started well enough. I’d done as much preparation as I could – spent days at home working as hard as possible, stretching myself, getting up early, giving up on the afternoon snooze that I knew I wouldn’t be able to have when I went back to work, trying to get the housework, the internet stuff, my maths degree, and so on up to date so I wouldn’t have to worry about them for the first week or so I was in school. I’d spent my last lot of benefits on buying respectable clothes to wear to work (the school has a fairly strict dress code) and had even been into school to try to get hold of the resources I would need when I started back to work properly.

However, as we have learnt before, preparation alone is often not enough. The Wonderspouse reminded me of the time we tried to do the Yorkshire 3-Peaks Challenge. We’d walked every weekend for months beforehand. We’d climbed really quite steep hills, we’d made sure our boots were comfortable, we’d gradually increased the distance we walked, and we felt like we’d done everything possible to ensure that we’d be able to do the walk. But, when the time came to do the walk, we failed. Despite all the training we’d done, we simply weren’t fit enough – we were much fitter than we had been, but nowhere near fit enough for the challenge. Furthermore, I’d had terrible anxiety problems for about a week beforehand and was stressed up to my ears by the time the day itself arrived. Added to this, the weather was TERRIBLE, and we were walking with some members of my family who were much fitter than us – as they strode off into the distance while we struggled, we felt more and more hopeless as we realized that the challenge was simply way beyond our capabilities, preparation or no preparation.

And something similar happened when I went back to work 3 weeks ago. Despite all the preparation I’d done, and despite being very very well compared to how I was throughout 2009 and 2010, when I then tried to work, full-time, alongside non-disabled people who were fit, young and strong, I couldn’t do it.

The Wonderspouse and I call this the “mobile to toilet” effect. Shortly after we were married he spent several days in hospital suffering with pleurisy. He was the only patient on his ward who was “mobile to toilet”, and therefore thought he was really rather well when they discharged him. Consequently, he got off his sofa at home and tried to walk normally to the kitchen to collect something – I had to pick him up from where he’d collapsed on the kitchen floor. How well one is depends rather strongly on who one compares oneself with.

So, as soon as I tried to integrate myself into the fully-able world, I realized that I was not as well as I thought I was. Yes, of course schoolteaching was going to be hard work – and the sort of schools that I have worked in (always inner-city, with deprived kids, and “challenges”) are particularly hard work. I expected to be sworn at, to have abuse, and to need to engage the kids and learn their names and so on before I could make real progress with them. I expected learning the new technologies that have entered teaching since I was last in the classroom to present further challenges to me and I expected to feel somewhat out of my depth for a while. I also expected to be tired and to be unable to do anything much out of school time for the first few weeks.

Ironically, although the school was rough in many ways, and there were things that I found tricky to deal with (the idea of playing “getting to know you” games with the students is rather grim for me – it’s simply not the way I work and I couldn’t hope to do it with anything like enough enthusiasm as I’m not THAT good an actress), I actually really enjoyed the work that I did manage to do (I even started to get my year 9 class on side and taught them a really good lesson) but what REALLY floored me was the exhaustion.

First, there was simple physical exhaustion. The school does not have teacher desks or chairs. Teachers are expected to work standing up and to circulate round the classroom, engaging with the pupils. Consequently, I was standing up nearly all day. When I got home on the first evening my legs, feet and back HURT. A LOT. By the time of the second evening I could hardly walk or stand up. The Wonderspouse and I had tickets to go and see Elbow, which we had to throw in the bin as I was simply too exhausted to go. Furthermore, just the distances I was walking around the school all day were bigger than anything I’d been doing on a long-term basis for several years. I simply wasn’t physically fit enough – even though, as with the 3-Peaks Challenge, I was much fitter than I had been previously.

Secondly I was away from home for hours at a time. In order to take my medication, have breakfast an hour later (as is necessary), then drive the distance to work and get there at a reasonable time, we had to set the alarm for 5.15 am. In order for me to get the amount of sleep on which my body functions best I would have had to go to bed before supper each work night! I thought I’d get used to living with less sleep and I tried to work through it, but by Wednesday morning I was already exhausted and in tears on the way to work in the car, already desperate for some sleep.

Thirdly, I didn’t have enough time on my own. In a Garbo-esque way “I vont to be alone”! In fact, I do need quite a lot of time on my own. One of the reasons the Wonderspouse and I work well as a couple is that we give each other a lot of space and don’t put great demands on each other. When I am with other people I am ALWAYS, to some extent, acting. I’m not a natural “people person” and the acting I have to do to fit into the social world is, for me, utterly exhausting. Not having the time to take off my “public persona” and just relax was more of a strain than I anticipated it would be.

However, I’m no quitter. I didn’t want to back out as soon as things got tough, and I’d undertaken to work for the last 3 weeks of term before the Easter holidays. So I negotiated a couple of days when I wouldn’t be in for the 2 weeks leading up to the holidays and finished the week that I’d already started. When I felt tired, I just used willpower to get me through. I went to work, ate supper, slept, got up, and went to work again.

Towards the end of the week, things started to unravel though. I realized that there was no way I was going to be able to do this job in the 24 hours that there are in the day. I was on a light timetable, without duties, and without a tutor group, yet I STILL couldn’t manage to write a lesson plan or do adequate preparation. It didn’t help that, for example, it took me 20 minutes to work out how to get the SMART board working, or that I was using a SIMS system for taking registers and consistently pressed the wrong buttons (the challenges of the new technologies) and that I was finding it difficult to concentrate on new systems while also having to cope with the pains in my legs caused by standing up all day. Furthermore, since I’d started earlier than originally scheduled, I didn’t even have a key to get into the classroom until 10 minutes before my first lesson. I didn’t have class lists until my computer was properly set up half way through the first afternoon, and I didn’t get a board pen until around the same time. Coping with all this while wearing uncomfortable clothes, dealing with unruly teenagers, and getting more and more tired as the week went on just became impossible. When I wasn’t actually teaching a lesson I sat in the empty classroom staring at the wall trying to get my head together – although, as was pointed out to me, we were not supposed to sit in classrooms during our non-contact time – we were supposed to be working out in the corridor and keeping an eye on kids who might not be where there should be.

Since I couldn’t do adequate preparation within the school day, my only option would be to do it at home. However, once home I was hardly even capable of eating I was so exhausted. My Mum wondered whether I could “drop everything else” to manage to do the job. I already had. I didn’t even eat properly, drink enough water, or wash any clothes, let alone do accounts, buy food, take exercise, or do anything like playing my viola or doing any of the other things that usually characterize my life.

And it was only going to get worse. Once I was fully installed with duty (which would take up breaks and lunchtimes) and had a tutor group and a full timetable, I’d need to do even more.

I survived the Saturday after my full week (possibly buoyed up by Oxford’s triumph in the Boat Race) then, on Sunday morning, I went into meltdown. The “recovered” me, that had been around for all of January and February this year had gone, and my head started to go wrong again. The Wonderspouse had to e-mail school to tell them I wouldn’t be in on the Monday morning.

And so it has been left. I am due to start on contract with the school just after Easter. They arranged for me to go in for a meeting last week, but I wasn’t well enough to go in. I don’t know what is going to happen. I received a “health questionnaire” through the post a couple of days ago – I suspect they’ll send me for some sort of medical once I return it (I seem to have to fill in something on almost every page) and possibly they’ll rescind the job offer on the basis of me failing the medical. This seems likely on the showing of the last few weeks. I COULD see whether I could negotiate with them to work part-time – I could probably manage one, or at most two, days per week. However, with maths it’s difficult – each group has 4 maths lessons per week, spread throughout the week – someone who can only appear from time to time isn’t that much use from a “consistency” point of view. And, in any case, being part of a team where everyone else is full-time and where doing the job really means doing the “whole job” may not actually work very well.

So, I now need to get well enough to sort all this chaos out, since I’m now back where I was around last November health-wise. I’m meeting with an advisor at the Mental Health Centre this coming week – since I’m a good girl I came off benefits the day before I started work. I still haven’t been paid for that work, and have therefore had no income for 3 weeks now. I don’t have a GP appointment to get any sort of Medical Certificate until the week after because there weren’t any appointments. It’s all rather a mess.

In the middle of all this I’m trying to get myself well again – really I need another 3 months of rest, home, exercise and so on. I’ve dug out my “relapse prevention plan” from my psychiatrist and CPN. It tells me that I should eat and drink properly, play music regularly, take exercise, get plenty of rest etc etc etc. These are all things I can’t do when I’m working – I simply don’t have that much energy. I’m JUST about beginning to be able to think about these things now (and, in fact, one reason I’m writing this blog post is to try to get my head straight about it all as well as trying to get everyone up to date about what has actually happened).

And I’m also faced with a dilemma. Do I TRY to get back to school somehow – part-time, graded return, workplace adjustments (the DDA says I can ask for them) and so on, or do I walk away and try to find something else to do? A bit of me wants to try to make a success of the school job, a job I could do relatively easily if it weren’t for my bonkersness (or mental health disability as the powers-that-be would say).

Or should I leave that job (on grounds of ill health), spend a few months trying to get my strength back, and try for another teaching job? It is, after all, the best paid work I could get, and I have HUGE debts that are causing stress from another direction. People have suggested that independent schools might be easier, although I’m not really suited to independent schools – the confidence the students has scares me a bit, I have an accent that marks me out as a state sector product, and when I’ve applied for independent sector jobs in the past I’ve never been successful.

Or should I give up on teaching and do something else completely. Maybe private tuition, or some other work. It’s not easy to know what – my medics have told me I shouldn’t go back to the “office junior envelope stuffing” jobs because doing such jobs for years has eroded my self-esteem so much. I had JUST about got myself to a position where I felt confident enough to go back to work when I returned to school – that confidence is now gone again and I need to rebuild it.

BUT, my redundancy money from my last job is run out, so I can’t spent the next 3 months recovering to the level I was at before I returned to work or get better enough and regain enough confidence to have another go. I HAVE to do something in the meantime. The situation is bad – my current income doesn’t even cover my debt repayments, let alone food, petrol, council tax, vet bills, or anything else. Fortunately the Wonderspouse’s salary pays the rent and has a bit left over, but there’s still a massive shortfall – when they calculate benefits entitlement they look at income, not expenditure – my massive debts are not part of the equation, even though many of them were generated when I was too ill to work in the past but unaware that I could claim benefits at the time.

The teaching job was meant to solve all these problems, but it turns out I am simply not capable of doing it and maintaining my health. Every time I think about what to do I end up going round in circles. The only way I’ve found so far of not going utterly stark-staring bonkers is simply to stop thinking about it and hope that “something will come up”! When it gets really bad I self-medicate with alcohol (bought from Waitrose, since my John Lewis card is the last remaining source of credit when everything else has run out – wonder whether I can persuade the council tax people to accept it?)!!!

So, dear readers (if there’s anyone still reading at this stage, which I rather doubt) this is how life goes at the moment. For the whole of my childhood it was assumed that I’d get on well in the world because I was bright and had a talent for passing exams. I told my liaison officer last week that I’d always been told that if I was bright (I was), kept my nose clean (I do, pretty much) and worked hard (I certainly do) then I’d be successful in life. Her response was “Yes, but that was before Bipolar Disorder was factored into the equation”.

There is no conclusion to this post at the moment – I’m just going to have to stop writing because it’s already much too long. I can, however, answer the last question I asked at the top of this post – it’s taken about 3 days to write – I started it on Friday morning and it’s now Sunday evening!

If you want a shorter version, then you could always check out the pome I’ve written on the subject – it may be more entertaining than this post too!

On Where To Find Me

2011-03-20T09:49:00.000Z

I’m so sorry this is up so much later than intended – an exploding boiler at home, consequent replacement of said boiler, and then associated cleaning of prodigious amounts of dust and muck in the house have rather taken over my life in the last few days. Just what I DIDN’T need the week I start a new full-time job, but then, as one of my favourite sayings goes:

“Sometimes you get what you want, sometimes you get what you need, and sometimes you get what you get.”

And, in any case, I feel mightily lucky at the moment. We started this year with me unemployed, the Wonderspouse about to lose his job owing to his contract being finished and not renewed, and all in the middle of a recession, and things COULD have been pretty scary. However, we BOTH have new jobs – mine is starting NOW, and his starts in a couple of weeks, and we now have hot water and heating again!

Furthermore, when we look at the news from Japan and see zillions of people caught up in earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear explosions, and then blizzards, or we see people all caught up in the middle of people shooting each other all over North Africa and nearby places, then we really do feel monstrously lucky.

So, having felt lucky, here’s to attend to the real business of this post. As I explained in the last post, this blog will be locked this evening, as will my twitter account. However, here’s what’s happening.

Facebook: changed my username to my maiden name. I am still extremely happily married though, and my real name remains as before. I have also set up a facebook account for Viola Maths (facebook.com/ViolaMaths) so internet friends can find me and friend me – feel free to send a request, although the site IS somewhat under construction. I’ll find you from there though!

Twitter: @ViolaMaths will be locked from tonight.

Blipfoto: name has been changed. Commentaries have been hidden for old entries, although they are still available in a locked blog. If you want the URL and password, then e-mail tinyfish11@gmail.com

Pomes: are still available at http://violamaths.posterous.com/ They’re a bit sporadic, but I like them – and they all rhyme!

Ears: will be left up at http://ayearwithmyears.blogspot.com/ although the project is now finished! If you’re into music, you may enjoy browsing it!

ALSO:

My VERY close friend, Jasmine Shaw (known as Jaz to her mates) has just joined the internet. She’s started tweeting as @JazMShaw and has a facebook account at facebook.com/jazmshaw – she hasn’t got many friends yet, since she’s pretty new, but she’s a great lass! She’s also planning a couple of blogs at http://jazmshaw.blogspot.com/ and http://jazmshaw.posterous.com/ which may interest my blog followers – she has a lot of the same ideas about stuff as I do, which is why we’re such good friends!!! Her accounts are all pretty blank at the moment, but I’m gently encouraging her to put finger to keyboard and blog about cool and interesting stuff – she’d be well-chuffed if you followed her!

Anyway, that’s IT from here! I’ll be checking comments and locking down in around 10 hours. I have to go now because breakfast is ready – writing blog posts is fun, but not AS fun as eating pancakes!

Fare well all of you! And thanks SO much for being fab! x

On Returning to Life

2011-03-14T17:05:00.002Z

OK, so maybe the title is SLIGHTLY misleading – I haven’t actually died and then been brought, Lazarus style, back into the world of the living!

However, the way things are going at the moment, it really does feel like I’ve been in some sort of suspended animation for the last couple of years and I’m actually starting to live again!

Those of you who have been regular readers of this blog since it started will know that I am just a bit bonkers, i.e. I have bipolar disorder, and sometimes this affects my life considerably for long periods of time. During 2009 I became very ill, first with depression, then with a manic episode towards the end of the year, and then, at the start of 2010, cycling back into depression.

There were several consequences from all these extreme mood swings. First, I finally sought proper professional help from a psychiatrist for the first time in several years. I took the medication prescribed, ignoring any side effects for the time being. I listened to my Community Psychiatric Nurse from the Community Mental Health team, and I generally did as I was told.

Secondly, I finally accepted that I would have to give up on things that I’d been fiercely hanging onto in a refusal to admit that I was as ill as I was. I withdrew from all the Open University maths courses I was studying. I stopped trying to read, trying to practice my viola, trying to write blogs and so on. And I gave up my job, finally accepting that my life would have to be funded by the benefits system for a spell, and that I would be unemployed.

Thirdly, I realized that if I was going to re-enter “normal” (for want of a better word) life again, I’d have to work at it. I’d have to exercise to get physically fit enough. I’d have to swallow my pride and allow others to do things for me, I’d have to do things I found terribly frightening and uncomfortable, and I’d have to regain my self-confidence, bit by bit.

And so it was that, after a year of hard hard work, a year in which I razed much of my life to the ground, that I began to emerge, over Christmas 2010, back into something approximating real life.

Exactly how I did it is not really what I’m intending to write about here. What I will say is that it was tough, very tough. I made myself eat properly. I used every ounce of willpower to get off the sofa and go for walks rather than reaching for the chocolate. I got in the car feeling very very sick in order to go to events that I really didn’t want to go to. I made myself keep appointments, even ones which frightened me. I made myself talk to people, look them in the eye. I practiced my viola as often as I could. I started reading again – at first, just “easy” things, and now stuff that’s a bit more challenging. I started to live slightly less on the internet and slightly more in the real world. I took my meds (although I firmly believe that medication is only about one quarter of the treatment of my condition, and facing up to it, listening to those around me, exercising when I can, and using CBT techniques on myself are also very very important parts of the treatment). I did every little exercise set by my therapist, even if it felt really stupid at the time, and I talked about it. Poor Wonderspouse was bored to death, stressed out of his mind etc, but I discovered that healing comes much more quickly if the feelings aren’t bottled up and left to fester. I’m lucky in that I have someone who is prepared to listen and sticks by me whatever happens – that is something very valuable, and has certainly helped no end with my recovery.

And so, in December 2010, while we were marooned in our house in the snow, things started to improve. I’d been to play in a concert in Yorkshire, and had to drive home in bad weather and abandon the car several miles from home owing to snow. Once home, we dug ourselves in for Christmas and the New Year.

As the clock ticked over to 2011 I decided that things WOULD be better this year. I would MAKE them better. I re-read John Bird’s “How to Change Your Life in 7 Steps” (look it up, get a copy, and read it – it’s only £1.99 on Amazon and will only take you one bathtime to read). I learnt that there was no point fretting about things I couldn’t do anything about, I stopped hoping for some magical cure, and I started to rebuild my life, bit by bit.

And so, when I went back to see my psychiatrist in January this year, she declared me well and “discharged” me from the clinic. I took up the offer of a support worker from a mental health charity designed to help people with mental health difficulties get back to work. I got out my CV, and started to think about what I could do.

Around mid-January I started to think about teaching, first of adults, then tutoring privately, then, eventually wondering whether I might go back to teaching classrooms full of teenagers, as I used to, 8 years ago before I opted for a “low-key” career in administration.

The Wonderspouse and I had lots of discussions and I did a lot of thinking. I’d left teaching for a couple of reasons. First, I’d decided it was too stressful and thought that if I got a different sort of job I’d no longer suffer from mental illness. This assumption has proved to be untrue – whatever job I’m doing at the time, it seems that if the mind is going to go wrong, it does. My lunacy is caused by something chemical in my brain, which is then fed by learned behaviours, and is not the result of any particular job or career. Secondly, I thought that I’d be more likely to conceive a child if I was less stressed and I wanted to avoid children because the whole issue of them was so painful at the time. As it turns out, we haven’t been able to have children anyway and that is just the way it is. We’ve grieved for our non-existent children, been to counselling and so on, and generally moved on from that phase of our life.

I did think about returning to teaching a few years ago. However, at that time we travelled a lot. And we travelled cheaply, on budget airlines, at antisocial hours on antisocial days. A teaching career certainly wasn’t compatible with that lifestyle!

But now things have changed again. We no longer travel, partly because the cheap fares offered now come with all sorts of “baggage charges” etc these days, and partly because we now have 5 cats, two of whom are on medication, and it really isn’t feasible to ask a neighbour to take on that sort of responsibility while we’re away.

So, towards the end of January, we came to the conclusion that I would return to the classroom. Not, as before, as a music teacher, but as a maths teacher, since I’ve been doing an Open University maths degree for the last few years.

I started off by buying a Times Educational Supplement, and applying for a Return To Teaching course. I also applied for a teaching job that was advertised in the Times Ed. In the end, after much hoo-ha, I was unsuccessful in my application for the Return To Teaching course (they wouldn’t take someone who was changing subject), but, after a full-day job interview (including teaching a 50 minute maths lesson to a year 9 group), the school offered me the job to start after the Easter holidays!

Since then, I’ve been into the school a couple of times and have been communicating with them by e-mail, and life has started to move even faster. It transpires that they could actually do with a maths teacher starting even earlier, and since I’m not working out notice at another job, have offered me three weeks supply teaching before the Easter holidays. I therefore return to work on Friday of this week (I’m going in for a day to prepare and settle in before taking over classes next Monday).

Of course, and this is really the purpose of my writing this blog post, this will all have quite a big impact on my life. Yes, there will be a big impact on our lives at home – earlier mornings, me driving the Wonderspouse into work, me having holidays limited to school holiday times, fewer gigs, fewer concerts, lots of preparation and marking out of school time, lots and lots of hard work, and so on. I’ve also had to go out and get new clothes, smart ones, suitable for the job I’m going to do, although I shall also be well-rewarded – a full-time teacher’s salary is considerably more than either a part-time admin clerk’s one or the benefits I’ve had for the last few months.

But, there are also implications for my online life. I am the sort of person who is open and “out there”. I’ve never felt a need to hide my mental health problems, neither have I felt any need to hide who I am, what I look like (no matter how stout I am, for example), or where I live, etc. etc. (beyond a reasonable sense of not giving out my address on a public forum then announcing I’m going away for a month – I have no desire to be burgled and try to reduce the risks if I can).

However, things are different now I’m going back to school. I have already changed many things in my online life. I am hiding commentaries from my blipfoto account – although these are available elsewhere online now (or will be soon) and if you get in touch with me via the usual channels, I’m happy to say where. I’ve changed my facebook account to my maiden name and opened a new account in my twitter name so that online friends can find me. I’ve changed my profile pictures and “unlinked” things in various places. And now it’s time to deal with my blog.

Given what information there IS on this blog, I’ve come to the conclusion that I have little choice other than to lock it down. This will therefore be the penultimate post, for the time being, on “On Music, Maths and Moggies”. I shall leave it open for as many people to read this as possible, until Sunday 20th March 2011, which is the day before I actually start teaching again.

I hate having to do this. It’s complete anathema to me to hide things away. I spent my teenage years trying to be something “they” wanted me to be, and eventually learned that life was much easier if I was “myself” and people could take me or leave me as I was – if you hate me because my teeth stick out (they did, rather seriously), or because I wear glasses (I do) or because I’m overweight (quite considerably) or my hair is wrong, or my clothes aren’t fashionable or you don’t like my voice, or I’m mentally ill, or whatever it is, then that is your problem, not mine! I only have one life on this planet, which is short enough, and as I get older, I realize it is WAY too short to spend it playing “let’s pretend”!

However, as a teacher I have responsibilities. I am responsible for keeping myself “fit to teach” – teaching is a hard job at the best of times and I’m going to be working in a “challenging” school. I cannot afford to let the kids have access to anything they can use to get to me if I am going to keep myself sane during the difficult times. I am responsible for the children – my mental health problems are not something they should have to cope with, and neither should their parents be able to find out this sort of thing about the person responsible for educating their children. I am also responsible to the school. The school in question have offered me the job even though they know about my history and even though I’m changing subjects. They have offered to mentor me throughout my early time with them, and will do everything they can to make my career a success – they don’t need to be fighting fallout from something I’ve written on the internet.

So, dear readers, it is with a heavy heart that I shall lock this blog down very soon. I thank you all so much for reading and for all your comments over the last couple of years. This is a “farewell” from this PARTICULAR blog site, for now. I shall leave it available for reopening, possibly in the future, if things should change again.

BUT:

I am not giving up blogging. Far from it in fact. Blipfoto continues to be posted every day (albeit under a new username these days – contact me if you need to know what – friend Viola Maths on facebook if you like – facebook.com/ViolaMaths, or follow @ViolaMaths on twitter (but you’ll have to do that before Sunday too, because I’m locking that account then so I can continue to post links to blipfoto and so on up there, can continue to play freely there if I wish, and because my real name used to be linked to that account and still appears in cached searches etc)).

However, I have also set up a completely new internet identity, separate from ViolaMaths, under a name of my choosing (a name which is not random at all and is very significant to me, but is not directly linked with my own name). I have set up a couple of blog sites under that username and will be blogging from there (assuming I have time!!!). I haven’t quite worked out the whole thing yet (this is a VERY busy time at the moment – the fact that I’m writing this on my laptop while in darkest Wales, just before I rehearse for a concert is testament to that), but I’ll disseminate the information via all the usual channels and will post one, last, short post here at the end of this week (probably Saturday, so it’ll be available for about 24 hours). Maybe I’ll even reblog some of the posts from this site under the new identity or on a password-protected blog so that they’re once again available, and I’ll certainly be sorting out my own blog reading activity and following blogs I follow from here too as well as following various ones I have bookmarked, or favourited on twitter and so on!

As usual, I’ve gone on far too long, and I’m afraid I have no time to edit at the moment (ironically, the busier I am, the longer the blog post – typing stuff out in a “stream of consciousness” style is far quicker than crafting elegantly edited text) so you’ll just have to cope!

Thank you and (almost) goodbye!

On Our Beautiful Bean

2011-02-01T10:06:00.002Z

I can’t actually remember what I was doing on 1st February 1994. If it was a weekend day I was probably getting up late, sitting with a cup of tea in my dressing gown, and then settling down to work on the manuscript of Hans Keller’s book on the Mendelssohn violin concerto, which I was editing at the time. If it was a weekday I probably took the train into London from my flat in Dulwich and spent the day in College – probably at a seminar, almost certainly playing my viola in some sort of workshop, maybe taking the tube up to the Academy for a viola lesson.

I was certainly oblivious to an event taking place in Chicago, USA, which was to have a significant impact on my life, for several years, over a decade later!

A tiny white kitten was born that day. I don’t know the exact circumstances of her birth, or how many were in the litter, or even what her parents were like, but I do know that she was separated from her mother very early and taken to the “animal pound” in Chicago. From there she was adopted by a young academic who was just starting out in a career studying Chinese manuscripts, a career which would take him all over the world. He named the kitten Athena.

Athena and the young academic became inseparable. She travelled all over the USA with him – in a soft “sports bag” type cat carrier in the cabin on internal flights, and she lived, as I believe many cats do in the States, entirely indoors. From Chicago the pair moved first to San Francisco, and then to Maine. I can’t really imagine what her life was like in these days, since I’ve never actually been to America and my entire perception of the place is based on television programmes!

When Athena was 11 years old, the young academic took up a three-year position as a research worker in the Oriental Studies department at Oxford University. Obviously, since she was so loved, Athena came to join him in Oxford. She travelled from the States on a Virgin Atlantic plane and, having had rabies jabs and so on, came into the country via the animal reception centre at Heathrow airport. She had a giant cage for the flight, known as “Sky Kennel”.

However, events then transpired to change her life forever. The young academic had married and his wife had recently given birth to their first child. This child, it turns out, was catastrophically allergic to Athena – just being in the same room as her brought the baby out in hives and caused it breathing difficulties. Having brought her over from the States, the young academic was now in a position where he could no longer keep his beloved cat, now over 11 years old, rather overweight from years of “soft love” and only just avoiding insulin injections as a result of type 2 diabetes.

So, as happens in many academic departments, he sent a circular e-mail round to the whole department. This one was entitled “New home required for old cat”.

At the time, the Wonderspouse and I had been married for just over 3 years, and were going through the agonies of infertility and realizing that we were unable to have children. We already had two cats, and the plan had been to add more humans to the family, but despite many hospital visits and much trying, it was becoming obvious that the human tally of our family was stubbornly stuck at two, so we started thinking that maybe if we couldn’t have a baby, we’d have a couple of kittens instead and lavish all the spare love we had going on them.

However, the circular e-mail that the Wonderspouse read at work one day put paid to the kittens idea. He arrived home from work one evening with a palm-top computer with a picture of a pure white, rather stout old cat, with, rather bewitchingly, one blue eye and one green eye. He explained her situation, and, of course, I said we must take her!

I set about cleaning out our utility room (the only room downstairs in our house with a door – it’s rather open plan here) to try to make it smell of our other two cats as little as possible and to turn it into Athena’s own personal home. Knowing that the young academic didn’t have a car, I offered to go and collect her from Oxford, but he was very keen to see where she would be living so decided to hire a car for the day and bring her to our house himself.

The day she arrived I tried very hard to hide my astonishment at the amount of paraphernalia she had with her. I can honestly say that I’ve NEVER known a cat with so much stuff. She had three carriers – her “normal” one, her soft “sports bag” type one and the giant “sky kennel”. She had bowls, tins of some sort of posh catfood, packets of crunchies, blankets, towels, a scarf, her own litterbox and scratch post, her own brush, and many many toys – including a “Virgin” mouse she’d been given on the flight over, and an old sock which had been turned into a mouse. This last was her favourite thing of all – we called him Mr Black Sock Mouse!

The young academic was absolutely delighted when he saw where she would be living and ever so pleased to see that she had her own room. This would be an essential part of the “introduction” process. Since we already had two cats and Athena had not met another cat since the day she was born we knew we’d have to take things very slowly as far as everybody meeting each other was concerned. Eventually, once she’d settled down in her new quarters, she was handed over to us and the human she’d been with all her life said goodbye to her and drove off, tears in his eyes.

Then began the “getting to know you” process! It wasn’t easy!

In those days the Wonderspouse used to leave his study door open, and, the moment we first opened the utility door to say hello to the new member of the family she made her escape and headed upstairs, straight under his desk. No amount of cajoling or bullying would make her come out – she wasn’t enticed by food, nor was she “persuaded” by a water pistol. She just sat there, swore and hissed at us, and went for us with her claws if we got too close. She then did a large poo under the Wonderspouse’s desk, and, once she emerged and we managed to get her back in the utility (via her catbox), he decided he’d keep his door shut in future.

She was clearly overweight and overfed, and in order to try to get her diabetes under control we embarked on a strict regime of diet and exercise. No more crunchies left for “a volonte” snacking, no more sitting around all day. She got her two regular meals each day, and she and I got into a routine where I’d carry her to the bottom of the stairs up to 20 times a day, then go and sit at the top (at first with the reward of a single cat crunchie, and, as we began to bond, just a cuddle and a lot of fuss). In this way, over many many months, with much hard work, her weight reduced from 6kg to around 4kg, which the vet declared was a healthy weight. We noticed a change in her behaviour – she was livelier and more active. Wonderful.

We did experiment with letting her outside. At first we took her round the garden in our arms, then on a harness, letting her explore. After a week or so we let her out on her own. It was at that point she went missing! And it was winter!!!

Following a sleepless night, we put up posters all round the village – she certainly became well-known. The Wonderspouse worried that he’d have to give up his job – how could he go into work, face her former human and admit that we’d lost her! The next evening we had fish for supper, and spread most of it on the front lawn in the hope of enticing her back.

Then we heard a knock on the door – she’d tried to go to our next-door neighbour’s house. We exchanged phone numbers just in case, so we wouldn’t have to open doors and distract her. Eventually we got the phone call we wanted “the cat is in the house”! I went round with Athena’s box, and there was a joyful homecoming, complete with big meal (she was hungry) and lots of cuddles and purrs! Phew!

And so it was, that the bad-tempered stout cat became a treasured member of the family. A few months later we rehomed another elderly cat, Pebbles, from my cousin, who was moving to New Zealand. They didn’t exactly become “friends”, but were a couple of old ladies together – they both lived indoors too. In fact, when Athena died, Pebbles (@EbblePeb) became very dejected and bereft until Smudge and Dexter arrived shortly afterwards.

Since I was at home when Athena arrived, she and I bonded very strongly. She became very much “my” cat (in as much as any cat “belongs” to any person). She was also my “baby substitute”, and with her white fur, constant “crying” (she was part-Siamese), regular production of furballs and need for attention, she did a pretty good job!

She was very VERY loud in her “calling for attention”, and talked constantly. We had to put up a barricade to stop her getting to our bedroom door because she woke us up at 4 in the morning on such a regular basis. We could hear her yowling from anywhere in the house, and I’m certain the neighbours must have thought we were committing murder, the screaming noises she made when she was picked up.

She was always very nervous about being picked up, no matter how many times we pointed out to her that we had 70 years of cat-holding experience between the two of us. She loved to sit with her front paws wrapped around our shoulders though, which was terribly terribly cute. She also dribbled a bit, even after I had her teeth descaled and sorted out!

She was also very very funny! She loved being brushed and would jump onto “her” chair in the kitchen the minute I picked up the brush. She and Felix used to chase each other up and down the sitting room – him outside on the terrace, her inside, running along by the windows. They could do lap after lap this way – and it was a great way for them both to get exercise.

She also continued to be naughty! One morning we came downstairs and were alarmed to see redness on her neck – closer inspection revealed that she wasn’t actually bleeding, but covered in tomato sauce from last night’s spaghetti bolognaise! Another day we couldn’t work out why her ears had suddenly turned very yellow – jaundice? liver disease? no, just the turmeric from last night’s curry! When you’re pure white you can’t get away with these things!!!

Her other seriously beautiful feature was her eyes. She was an “odd-eyed” white cat – one blue eye that glowed red in the dark, one yellow eye that glowed green in the dark. When we shone a light the length of the darkened sitting room it really was like looking at the side of a motorway! Many people asked if she was deaf, because many white cats are – I discovered that it is those with two blue eyes who are often deaf – Athena’s yellow eye ensured that she could hear!

Like all cats in our house, she acquired a nickname, one connected either to her name or one of her characteristics. She became “The Bean” very early on (from Athena-Beana), and the name stuck. Like all cats the world over she had some crazy habits – she’d “help” with almost anything given the chance, and if she wanted attention would paw at our legs until we took notice – on the occasions we were wearing loose trousers this could result in them being pulled down as she was so forceful. She also ate string, tinsel, ribbon and so on – we had to be careful not to leave any such things around – a lesson we learnt after the first Christmas when she ate the tinsel and then left sparkly furballs all over the house!

We knew she wasn’t young when we took her on, and she was never in great health, but we were very surprised by how she thrived when she came to live with us. Her fur was the softest you can possibly imagine, and the times I snuggled my face between her ears were many and wonderful. I remember saying, which she got to about 15, that I would really miss her when she went, and as she got older we treasured every moment we spent with her.

It became clear in July last year that she wasn’t well. My blipfoto pictures of 16 July, 30 July, 1 August, and, lastly, 5 August, tell the story of her final days, which I won’t retype here because thinking about those days still brings a tear to my eyes.

The day she died I changed my facebook and twitter profile pictures to a picture of her. I haven’t changed them back since. We had a “memorial meal” for her when her ashes arrived from the pet crematorium.

The reason I’m publishing this post today is that this is the first 1 February without her since we had her. A year ago we celebrated her 16th birthday and I blipped her peacefully asleep. She had tuna for her birthday celebrations, which she loved!

I tried to write this post shortly after she died, but couldn’t, as I was too emotional. I’m not sure it’s the most coherent piece of writing even now, but I wanted to remember her, 17 years after she was born. We remember her with great fondness, and keep her ashes by our bed. She had a long and happy life, and I’m so glad we shared so much of it with her!

Happy Birthday Bean – you may be gone, but you’ll never be forgotten.

1 February 1994 – 5 August 2010

On Eating Elephants

2011-01-08T13:21:00.001Z

You all know the old joke, yes? The one about how you eat an elephant? Yes, we know, ONE SPOONFUL AT A TIME!

I’m not sure whether it’s even a joke, or even particularly funny. I’ve certainly never, to my knowledge, tasted elephant meat – I imagine some parts of the elephant would be a tad on the chewy side and might need to be simmered for a week or so to make them edible, and while I have no particular ideological opposition to eating elephant meat, it’s not something I shall seek out when our butcher does such a delicious piece of lamb!

However, the general principle of “one spoonful at a time” is something I’m very much applying to my life at the moment.

Those of you who have followed this blog or are friends with me on facebook, look at my blipfoto posts, or follow me on twitter will be aware that the last couple of years have been rather tempestuous ones in my life. Although, come to think of it, it has been longer, even, than the past couple of years. Pre-marriage I was a nervous wreck sitting in a beautifully perfectly clean flat, on my own, feeling dreadful. Just post-marriage people started to die, and we seemed to spend all our time viewing dead bodies and going to funerals, then we went through the whole infertility thing as we discovered we couldn’t have children, we’ve skirted bankruptcy, dealt with redundancy, and finally settled into some sort of uneasy stability with a family of five cats!

The stability has been uneasy because, for so many years, we’ve been “papering over the cracks” rather than building a sustainable life pattern. I’ve gradually taken “easier” and “easier” jobs, rather than actually thinking about what I actually want to do with my life, and we’ve travelled all round Europe, or comfort-eaten or done whatever was simplest at the time just to get through it or hide away from our problems.

The last two years have brought things to a head though. In early 2009 I started to suffer with depression again quite badly and was unable to work, unable to study, unable to practice, or really do anything very much. I sought solace in the internet, spending hours on twitter and facebook, neglecting real life because it was “too difficult” and retreating into a world where I felt safe. By late 2009, my depression had cycled to mania – I was convinced I’d found the “best friend” I’d been looking for all my life, I became obsessed with him and he did with me, we met a couple of times, and life was rosy, very very rosy, or so I thought.

As it turned out, this was just another “papering over the cracks” exercise. While I spent all night up, chatting to my new best friend on the internet, the Wonderspouse begged me to come to bed. I swore I wasn’t tired (I wasn’t). I became convinced that this new friend was the answer to all my problems, and that, in turn, I could solve all his problems – looking back now, classic symptoms of mania!

Then, at the end of January 2010, my new “best friend” dropped me like a stone. He no longer wanted to meet, he was going to go off, make himself ill and then die. No matter what I offered him or what I tried to do for him, he rejected me. He never gave a reason. I plunged into deep depression, and by the start of February was suicidally depressed. I talked of putting my head in the oven and such things – the Wonderspouse pointed out that it was an electric oven and the only result would be that my hair would get singed!

At that point I knew that the way I was doing things wasn’t working, so I started to listen to others. I started to take a more positive attitude to the Community Mental Health Team, to which I had been referred. I agreed to take the medication prescribed by my psychiatrist, and I began, slowly, to return to “normal” (whatever “normal” means, for someone who has swung between extremes of mood for the last 15 years or so – and probably longer, if I’m honest).

So, to cut a long, and potentially boring, story, short, in 2010 I took my medication dutifully, did all the exercises I was set (no matter how silly they seemed), finally cut off my maths studies and stopped asking for extensions, left my job, and returned my mind, as well as my body, to the Wonderspouse.

So now I’m at the start of a new year. I have many many things to do if I am to rebuild the life that almost came to an end (again) last February. And this time, I am taking charge of things, thinking about what will be sustainable and realistic, and what will allow me to make the best of life from now on. I’m also continuing to work with those who really care about my welfare: my GP, my psychiatrist, my community psychiatric nurse, my trainer at the gym, the lady who is helping me with employment, and, of course, the Wonderspouse. I’m also learning that some of the friends I’ve made online ARE genuine and just like their online personas in real life, even if some are not, and that I have a choice which ones to be friends with, and to whom I should listen.

So, having razed a huge chunk of my life to the ground, I’m now on a rebuilding exercise. 2011 is as good a year to do it as any – this year I’ll be 40, so maybe, just maybe, for me life really will begin (again) at 40! When I look at the list of things I need to do, it’s distinctly daunting – I need to find a new job (and fairly quickly before the finances collapse again), I need to sort out the chaos that is our house, I’d really like to complete my maths degree course, I’m want to start serious practice on viola, piano and flumpophone again, I have a great pile of books I’d like to read, and I’d really really like to shed the 4 stone I put on in 2010 as well as losing 1 extra, which will take me to my desired weight of 11 stone!

There is, of course, more than this, but I don’t want to bore you. What I shall say, however, is that I reread John Bird’s How to Change Your Life in 7 Steps last night. It’s one of the best books ever written, and offers extremely practical advice that I am starting to implement. The first chapter is about doing things gradually, 3% at a time, the idea being that 3% of your goal is an achieveable target – if you try to do everything at once, you’ll fail because the whole is too big and intimidating. I’m trying to tie this in from what I remember about target-setting at school in my teaching days – targets had to be SMART – and I’m particularly thinking about setting attainable targets with time limits.

I’m also looking harder than I have for a long time at what I actually WANT to do with my life. The final realization that I am not going to achieve life satisfaction through motherhood (yes, yes, I know, never give up etc etc etc, but I can’t live my life on the basis of something that has such a small chance of happening just because somebody’s neighbour’s dog’s girlfriend’s owner’s cousin happened to have a kid when they were 45 or whatever), means that I have to decide what I AM going to do with however many years I have remaining on this planet. I’m not religious, and believe that once I’m dead that’s it, so it’s time to ask what I want from life and to make plans and set goals that will help me to succeed at executing those plans.

And so, I am faced, now, with a roomful of elephants! And, the joke/saying I started this post with is going to help me eat them. I have made a list of things I hope to be, to have achieved, to be able to do, etc etc. by the time of my 45th birthday! These are the elephants. I am now chopping the elephants up into smaller and smaller pieces – looking at what I’d like to achieve by the end of 2011, and by the end of January 2011, and by the end of this week. Of course, there’ll be bits, like the tusks, that prove to be inedible – there will be things still to do when I’m 45 since I don’t imagine I shall cease to have goals in my life, whatever age I am. There may well be new elephants that enter the room too, and need dealing with.

But, for now, I’m starting on the life rebuild. I’m trying to do what I need to to stay sane, to have a fulfilling life, and to make some sort of sensible contribution to the world. I don’t fully know what the result of it will be, or what all the goals along the way will be – I’m still working on all this, and my thoughts certainly aren’t crystallized enough to form a more specific blog post at this stage. I do know, however, that if I DON’T try, then I have almost no chance of succeeding. If I DO try, there’s a good chance I might well succeed in many of my objectives (something the Wonderspouse is very fond of telling me).

Whatever the eventual outcome is, I know that the way to make progress with my goals is to tackle them one spoonful at a time!

On The Top Ten of 2010

2010-12-31T14:00:00.000Z

Since it is now almost the end of 2010, I have been looking back on the year. This isn’t really surprising, since lots of people do it!

One of the ways I looked back was to make a list of the ten people on twitter who have been particularly amazing to me this year. They’ve all done something really special, and I’m particularly grateful to them. They’ve made a SIGNIFICANT difference to my life – either by giving me precious things, or by saying something that has been particularly helpful to me, or by helping me in some other special way. I’ve decided to post the list here too – as a way of keeping a record of it so that it doesn’t get lost in the twitter timeline, never to be found again!

Oh, and there is also a “bottom tweeps of the year” list, but since I’m in a good mood, looking forward to a fabulous New Year, and not that sort of person, it will remain in my head, never to be typed. Focusing on the GOOD things in the world and the wonderful generosity that characterizes so much of humanity is a much better plan I think!

So, here are the tweets, as I tweeted them:

Many many of you twitterlings have been utterly wonderful to me in 2010! There are too many to mention you all individually but many thanks!

However, I have selected ten people, who have been exceptionally generous, kind & wonderful and who have helped me so very very much!

These are my #TopTenOfTen, and although there are several more I could have included, these 10 have been amazing!

1 @linda1966 whose generosity has meant nearly a year of tweets on the move, and who is a lovely lovely lady in real life! #TopTenOfTen

2 @codyjames77 who cared for me and understood on the blackest day of the year, and whose book The Dead Beat was fabulous! #TopTenOfTen

3 @MarDixon who helped me to stop wasting my life, who collected my trombone, who is an amazing Mom and the epitome of COOL! #TopTenOfTen

4 @Orchid99 who showed me how life is what we make it, rekindled my love of listening to music & gave me permission to grow up! #TopTenOfTen

5 @5357311 who got me back into flumpophoning and cacti, who broadens my repertoire, and with whom I shall play music in 2011! #TopTenOfTen

6 @awoollyhat who entrusted her precious and beautiful Dexter to our care. We love you Hat and we love Dex with all our hearts! #TopTenOfTen

7 @novawildstar who UNDERSTANDS constantly. Who knows how things are, who I am determined to meet in 2011. *hug* #TopTenOfTen

8 @pbiggs who came to our rescue when we were stuck in the snow. Who made C'mas for us and who constantly helps with computers! #TopTenOfTen

9 @Scharwenka with whom I published a book in 2010! He stuck by me through the blackest of times & is the best best friend EVER #TopTenOfTen

10 @agnieszkasshoes Truly a WONDERspouse! The man is a marvel. How he is still here loving me & still standing I'll never know! #TopTenOfTen

On Facebook Tagging

2010-12-10T19:22:00.002Z

It happens from time to time, I get “tagged” in a “note” and invited to answer various questions and so on and then to “tag” my friends and ask them to answer the same questions. I don’t mind being “tagged” at all, but I’m always nervous about “tagging” anyone else in case I upset them.

So, since I’m me, and I sometimes do things a bit differently from usual, I thought I’d turn my answers from my three most recent “taggings” into a blog post. That way, if you’re interested you can read it, if not, then you needn’t. If you wish to play the facebook game, then you can always do the pasting and notes bit, but this way I don’t have to “tag” you, just in case you don’t want to be “tagged”!

1. What time did you get up this morning?
6.00 a.m.

2. How do you like your steak?
Mooing!

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
The first few minutes of a Harry Potter (about 6 years ago). We had to leave though because I had a panic attack. I’m not fond of the cinema.

4. What is your favorite TV show?
Too many to list – I love the TV and watch loads and loads. I adore science documentaries, anything with David Attenborough, anything about weather, entertainment shows like Dr Who & Strictly Come Dancing, The Mighty Boosh, Eastenders, Ice Road Truckers, televised Proms and so on and so on and so on…

5. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?
House in London suburbs, flat in central London, villa in Menton, riad in Marrakesh. These residences would be used at different times of the year depending upon weather!

6. What did you have for breakfast?
Cup of tea, caramel crunchy nut chewy cereal things, glass of smoothie, tin of Ambrosia custard!

7. What is your favourite cuisine?
Lots of them: the Wonderspouse’s cooking, French, Chinese takeaway, Curry etc. etc. etc.

8. What foods do you dislike?
Tomatoes. YUK!!!! Not really a fruit eater generally, wouldn’t get excited about celery.

9. Favourite Place to Eat?
Lots of them, including: The Waterside Inn, Restaurant at the Sofitel St James in London, room service at the Regent Esplanade hotel in Zagreb, Chef’s Cottage Chinese Takeaway, Pelmeni XL in Riga, my sofa at home!

10. Favorite dressing?
Olive oil & balsamic vinegar.

11. What kind of vehicle do you drive?
Suzuki Wagon R+

12. What are your favourite clothes?
Shorts, t-shirt, sandals. Swimming costume. Old fleeces for cold weather.

13. Where would you visit if you had the chance?
Almost anywhere – I’ve only been out of Europe twice & would like to see the rest of the world.

14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full?
Given to the Wonderspouse for a refill!

15. Where would you want to retire?
Retire? Hmmm? Wasn’t really planning on retirement because that means I need a pension and I haven’t got one!

16. Favorite time of day?
Evening time – in that space between not being exhausted in the afternoon and not falling asleep yet because it’s bedtime!

17. Where were you born?
Sacriston, County Durham

18. What is your favourite sport to watch?
F1, golf, swimming, athletics, gymnastics, diving, rowing, most winter Olympic sports.

19. Who do you think will not tag you back?
Can’t imagine anyone will tag me back. In fact, I’ll be surprised if anyone’s still reading by this stage!

20. Person you expect to tag you back first?
Nobody.

21. Who are you most curious about their responses to this?
Curious to see whether there is any response at all!

22. Bird watcher?
Absolutely – fascinating to watch how expertly our cats can tear them apart and get the tastiest bits to eat! Also great to see the weekend duck or Christmas goose crisping up in the oven!

23. Are you a morning person or a night person?
I am a lady of the night! ;-)

24. Pets?
Five cats!

25. Any new and exciting news that you'd like to share?
I want to have pet rats for my next birthday. Just trying to work out how we can fit them in with the cats!

26. What did you want to be when you were little?
An astronaut or a clarinetist!

27. What is your best childhood memory?
Holidays with my Granny.

28. Are you a cat or dog person?
Cat (but not averse to dogs either)

29. Are you married?
Very

30. Always wear your seat belt?
Yes, absolutely.

31. Been in a car accident?
Yes, several. Last one was when a deer ripped the side off the car. Cost a packet to fix & insurance went up. My plea: everybody eat more venison!

32. Any pet peeves?
Chewing gum, people eating with their mouths open. People who don’t THINK!

33. Favourite pizza topping?
Prawns, tuna, meat!

34. Favourite Flower?
Erm, not sure I have one. Passion flower maybe?

35. Favourite ice cream?
Something really creamy with caramel & white chocolate & maltesers & stuff in it!

36. Favourite fast food restaurant?
Lots of them: fish & chips, McDonalds, Subway etc. etc. etc.

37. How many times did you fail your driver's test?
Once – reversing round the corner! Passed second time!

38. From whom did you get your last email?
WHSmith – something about deals on greetings cards.

39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card?
Musical instrument shop, HMV, Blackwells, somewhere that sells Airfix model kits.

40. Do anything spontaneous lately?
Turned these questions into a blog post!

41. Like your job?
I don’t have one!

42. Broccoli? Cauliflower?
Both! And crinkly cabbage. The best veg look like trees!

43. What was your favourite vacation?
Lots of them. Marrakesh with the Wonderspouse. Iceland – blue lagoon & aurora. France – many times. Zagreb – several times.

44. Last person you went out to dinner with?
Lunch with Parents & Wonderspouse. Can’t remember dinner – was too long ago.

45. What are you listening to right now?
Satie – piano music – Gnossiennes, Gymnopedies etc.

46. What is your favorite colour?
Red, purple, blue.

47. How many tattoos do you have?
None – keep thinking about it though!

48. Favourite drink?
Tea, wine, beer, whisky.

49. How many children do you have?
None, sadly.

50. Last good book you read?
Lee Child – 61 Hours

***
So, that was the first thing I was “tagged” in. The second asked me to list 15 fictional characters who have influenced me, which I find rather more difficult – I don’t really read a lot of fiction, and what I do read doesn’t generally influence me much. Anyway, here goes!

Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne

Kinsey Millhone – Sue Grafton

Dirk Gently – Douglas Adams

Inspector Morse – Colin Dexter

Jack Reacher – Lee Child

Nicole des Jardins – Arthur C. Clarke

Gustav von Aschenbach – Benjamin Britten / Thomas Mann

Leonora – Ludwig Van Beethoven

Francis – from Felidae

Aleksandr Orlov – from A Simples Life

Jack Hall – from The Day After Tomorrow

Vince Noir – from The Mighty Boosh

I know that’s only twelve, but I really can’t think of any more! Pretty hopeless really! I keep thinking of influential people, but they all turn out to be real!

***

The third thing I’ve been “tagged” in is a music-related thing where, apparently, I’m supposed to go into “shuffle” mode on my MP3 player or computer and write down the first 15 songs that appear.

Since I hardly ever listen to music on my computer, use Spotify only very very occasionally to look up things, and my MP3s are sorted tidily into different genres on different sticks in different places, I wasn’t going to find it easy. I don’t think my MP3 player even HAS a “shuffle” mode, and I haven’t actually got round to putting much music onto my iPhone yet.

So the best I can do is to list the CDs that are currently on my desk, starting at the top of the pile and working down. Either that, or tip the CD shelves over and pick 15 at random, but since I don’t have time to pick them all up again I’m not going to do that!

1. Satie – Piano Works, Gymnopedies, Gnossiennes etc.

2. Dire Straits – Brothers in Arms

3. Handel – Zadok the Priest and various arias etc.

4. Bach – Musical Offering

5. The Velvet Underground – White Heat / White Light

6. Kasabian – Kasabian

7. Shostakovich – Viola & Violin Sonatas

8. Feldman – The Viola In My Life

9. Mendelssohn – Elijah

10. Schubert – Symphony No.9

11. Beethoven – Violin Concerto

12. The Beautiful South – Blue Is The Colour

13. Britten – Death In Venice

14. Beethoven – Complete Symphonies

15. Bach – Christmas Oratorio

So there you are! A random blog post if there ever was one!

On Loving Winter

2010-12-02T14:26:00.002Z

Those of you who know me well, and even those of you who know me just a little bit, will already be wondering which alien disease has entered my mind and altered my personality, since it’s pretty well-known throughout this universe that I am not a lover of winter. I like my days long, hot and sunny, I adore wearing t-shirts, shorts and sandals, I like letting outdoor air into the house and driving with windows down and the wind in my hair and I LOVE lying out in the sunshine with a good book and a cool beer!

However, these last two mornings I have discovered that there is SOMETHING I like about winter, so I set myself a little challenge (of which more in a moment). However, before I give you the results of this challenge, please permit me just a little rant – after all, my toes are cold, and I’m terribly bad-tempered when I have cold toes!

First off, there is the cold. I do not react well to cold. I have poor circulation, inherited from my mother, who also doesn’t like the cold, and my toes and fingers cool down very very quickly and take ages to warm up. Furthermore, my dry skin is extremely sensitive to chapping, and my legs quite simply start to fall to bits when it’s cold. So I have to bathe in oil and put lotion all over my legs several times a day, which means everything is greasy and never quite feels clean – the alternative is a horrid stinging pain.

Then there are the clothes – lots and lots of them, constraining movement, preventing air getting to my skin, which then sweats and stings even more. If I wear enough outdoors to keep warm then the minute I enter a shop I’m drenched with sweat and feel as though I might faint. It takes me ages to get dressed in the morning, trying to wash all the heavy clothes and get them dry again is a nightmare, and, when I’m all wrapped up I feel gigantic, clumsy and tense.

Along with the cold, it is also dark. I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, which means that the darkness causes depressive symptoms in me. This means that I have to spend money on lightboxes and sit still in front of them for up to 90 minutes a day just to get enough “sunlight” to feel OK. I’d love to go walking outside, but cannot always do so, partly because of the damage the cold does to my skin, and partly because of the awful weather.

So we come to snow! As those of a soppy romantic disposition think of winter wonderlands and say how pretty it all is, I dread it. Once we can no longer get the car out of the drive I am effectively housebound. One year I did manage to trudge the 2.5 miles into town to try to get some milk only to discover there was none available – after a 2.5 mile trudge home through 18 inches of snow I could barely walk for 2 days. I am simply not fit enough for that sort of exercise. I also miss my daily walks outdoors which are an essential part of staying fit and healthy for me, and as for my favourite exercise – swimming in the outdoor pool – it just isn’t possible because the pool is closed for winter.

The snow wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t have to go to work. Because we are very junior workers with dayjobs we are paid by the time we spend at work, not by the work we actually do. This means that when we are in the office we get paid, when we are not, we don’t. So, in addition to spending shedloads of money on heating oil to keep the house warm, we are also in danger of losing it if we run out of annual leave days because of the snow. We cannot walk to work – I cannot walk 50 miles in a day on the flat in fine weather – doing it on hilly terrain in the snow is impossible. We’d love to live in town, but the rents are prohibitive.

Don’t get me wrong about the fluffy white stuff in general, I enjoy snow perfectly well when I’m in Finland and the place is equipped for snowy weather – cars have studded tyres, pavements are all gritted, trains run fine down to -35 celsius, and life continues without a problem. I don’t even particularly mind driving in the snow – I drove in Bulgaria in very deep snow without special tyres even and quite enjoyed the challenge. What I really hate is the disruption – having to miss out on enjoyable events I’ve been planning and looking forward to, being uncertain about getting to appointments, concerts and so on, and being stuck in a stuffy house for days on end. Where we live is hilly – no matter of care can prevent one sliding down an ungritted hill.

And, of course, there’s Christmas, with all its associated schmaltz and palaver about children and babies. For those of us unable to have children it’s one of the most painful times of year. I simply don’t understand the mania of Christmas and the parcels thing and why it suddenly becomes essential to visit relatives who you don’t see the rest of the year just as the roads are terrible and driving conditions are at their worst. Furthermore, my mother always tries to be desperately “organized” about Christmas and starts ringing me up around mid-August asking what I’m buying for whom and so on – it’s all meaningless to me – I’m a typical “go to the offy and get everyone a bottle of wine on Christmas Eve” sort of person!

Then there’s the simple practical business of airing the house - with 5 cats all using litter trays we often can’t keep up with their doings. We go out and return to more litter to scoop, more furballs (which would be left harmlessly outside) to clean off the furniture. Furthermore, it’s too cold to open windows, so the only way to make the house smell halfway decent is to use chemical air fresheners. And just to add to the morning dressing routine, there’s also the “mopping up condensation” thing to do by the windows, which I have to tape up because they are so draughty.

***

So, there’s the rant! As you will now have gathered, there’s plenty to grouch about and I could go on all day about it, but now, as promised earlier, here are the results of the challenge I set myself this morning.

It happened as I was tucking into my porridge! Yes, porridge, that warm, tasty oaty delight that I never seem to eat in summer, but enjoy in considerable quantities during the winter months. I decided that it was the ONE reason I DID like winter, and then wondered whether, just maybe, I could think of TEN things I liked about this most frozzling of seasons! I managed it, just, after a bit of head-scratching, so here they are!

ONE – PORRIDGE

Well, it was a bowl of porridge that inspired this whole blog post! I love the milky creaminess of it (yes, I’m a soft Englishwoman, so I have it with milk and golden syrup). I love the way the syrup blends with it, making that sweet goopiness that literally melts in the mouth. I love the warming effect it has, and the way that I feel happy and satisfied by it for most of the morning. Delicious.

Related to porridge, I also enjoy a hot drink in bed at nighttimes during the winter – hot milk with a generous slug of whisky is utterly delicious when snuggled up under the duvet on a cold evening. A spoonful of Horlicks added to the mix is also wonderful.

TWO – CHOCOLATE

Although I can take or leave most of the Christmas junk that the shops tell us is essential for our “perfect” Christmas, I love it when the cut-price chocolate oranges and so on start appearing on the shelves. When the weather is freezing I abandon my attempts to get seriously healthy (as mentioned above, exercise is difficult enough that I don’t usually manage it anyway) and give in to the cravings – at the moment I’m enjoying a daily Pot Noodle, which is very warming!

I’m also quite keen on pandoros and pannetones and other seasonal delights. Saving the marzipan bit in the middle of the Stollen until last always gives me a slight tingle of pleasure, and the availability of dates, nuts and other tasty snacks is also enjoyed. Furthermore, the “chocolate advent calendar” is a regular fixture in my life – I was never allowed one as a kid, so indulge happily now, eating my daily chocolate whenever I like – even at breakfast time if I feel like it! It’s only a matter of time this year before I succumb to a large tub of chocolates and a whole load of cakes and things. Yummy!

THREE – GOOSE

The Wonderspouse and I have goose for Christmas. If we are on relative duty then we have it on the 26th or nearest available day. If, like this year, we are lucky enough to have the day itself at home, we have it that day. It comes from our wonderful local butcher, and “getting the goose” is a big deal in our household. The Wonderspouse also makes me fresh Eggs Benedict for Christmas breakfast, and I drink sherry, wine and whisky all day, which is very pleasurable.

Furthermore, there are other seasonal wonders around – giant pieces of Stilton, whole Salmons (we bought a fish kettle specially – nothing so wonderful as fresh cooked salmon), and, for me, sausagemeat and chestnut stuffing – the Wonderspouse doesn’t bother about it, but roasts chestnuts specially for me on Christmas morning! We never get each other parcels – I’d far rather he roasted chestnuts for me than bought me a pressie any day.

Linked to this is another meal that happens just before Christmas, with my friend Scharwenka. For around 15 years now we’ve been having pheasant dinner with trimmings and exchanged many (small and often silly) Christmas parcels a few days before Christmas. We also succumb to the silliness of the season for just a few hours and listen to Hely-Hutchinson’s Carol Symphony as well as some rather better music!

FOUR – CHRISTMAS ORATORIO

OK, so I admit it, there IS Christmas music that I like. The absolute top of all these pieces is Christmas Oratorio, which I first grew to love in my Upper Sixth form at school. My then boyfriend, a Welsh baritone, organist and impresario, got me into it. I listened to it on my (cassette) walkman on all the train journeys to my university interviews, and know it well. I’ve also sung in it with the Oxford Bach Choir, and played numerous excerpts in various Christmas concerts. I love it, and it will be coming to the desert island with me!

As I mentioned above, I also have occasional moments with other Christmas music. I watch the “Nine Lessons and Carols”, even though the Cambridge descants are not the ones I really know and love, and even though the religion is irrelevant to me these days, and I listen through my Christmas tapes a few times. The other “good” Christmas music I like is “L’adieu des bergers” from Berlioz’s “L’enfance du Christ”, Liszt’s “Weihnachtsbaum” and Schoenberg’s version of “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen” (Weinachtsmusik). I also enjoy a few of the carols I used to sing at school, although sometimes they do make me sad because I’m no longer part of that sort of life any more.

FIVE – FAIRY LIGHTS

Yes, and I do like fairy lights. I like the lit up trees I see when I’m driving around in winter. I like seeing gaudy illuminations, Menorahs and Hannuka candles, and I quite like a German market serving tasty Wurst and hot Gluhwein in a town square.

I’m actually quite keen on lighting in general – lamps, bulbs and so on are rather jolly – I love watching my lava lamp and plasma lamp doing their thing and I like getting the house as light as possible. I’m also not averse to a bit of candle pyromania – I’m that naughty person who sticks things into candles and likes to sculpt the wax round the edge with a pencil while the candle is still burning and the wax is still soft and warm.

SIX – HATS

These are the one item of clothing that I don’t mind wearing during winter! I like hats – jolly hats, crazy hats, warm and snuggly hats! It helps that I’m not the slightest bit fussy about my hair do – it does what it does – so the “hat hair” thing doesn’t really apply to me. I like the feel of warm fleece around my ears (and, come to that, around my neck – I’m not unfond of scarves either).

I own quite a selection of winter hats and I love the way they keep me warm without undue encumbrance. I’m also quite partial to socks for a similar reason – I like them warm and stripey and comforting. I’ve also recently (yesterday) invested in a pair of fluffy footwarmers which can be warmed in the microwave – I think they’re going to become one of the wonders of winter, as my “hot cow” and “warm Bagpuss” already are.

SEVEN – NO GARDENING

I’m not really an outdoor gardener, and during summer the lawn grows like crazy. If I was rich enough to employ any sort of domestic help then the one person I would hire would be a gardener. Mowing the lawn is one of those chores that neither the Wonderspouse nor I excel at! Furthermore, just as we’ve psyched ourselves up to deal with the mower (which broke half way through the last mow of last summer), then it rains, and the whole enterprise has to be restarted.

We’re no good with vegetables either. People always say that veg you’ve grown yourself tastes more delicious – I can tell you that this is not true. We grew some, picked them, and ate a forkful each. They were truly revolting, so we chucked them in the bin and went to Sainsbury’s instead – in our world vegetable growing is best left to the professionals!

At least in winter the lawn doesn’t grow, the weeds stop their onslaught, and it’s too cold to deal with whatever horrors are going on in the garage – tidying it and dealing with the mess can wait until the spring.

EIGHT – NEIGHBOURLINESS

One of the features of adversity is that, although it can cause problems, rifts and tensions, it can also mean that people cooperate more. Clearing the snow from a communal driveway can mean that we get to know our neighbours better. People help each other to achieve a common goal, and we often see a kind side to people who usually remain unknown and hidden in their houses.

Being outside clearing snow also brings us into contact with neighbours we wouldn’t otherwise see and gives us something to talk about with them. Furthermore, when the first person out in the morning returns from the bus stop or town or wherever, they bring back a report on road conditions, which helps with planning. One of our neighbours has kids at the local school and lets us know when it is closed, and we also support each other and back each other up when less-than-sympathetic employers insist that it is possible to travel when it isn’t.

On a larger scale, I enjoy the UK snow map on the interwebs, which is of real help, and gives good, real time information. It’s another example of people doing something that helps others, and is another of those little winter gems!

NINE – THE NEWS

OK, I admit it, I love it when the news is about weather! I derive pleasure from seeing what is going on at airports (which I’m interested in anyway, snow or no snow), and I’m fascinated by the differences in snowfall in different parts of the country.

It’s not even that I’m just “rubbernecking” snow disasters, I’m actually genuinely interested in weather, and am also interested in temperatures, statistics, hottest, coldest, windiest, weather and so on. The News often spends so much time discussing politics, showbiz, celebrities, sport, money, health, education and so on – it’s not that I’m not interested in these things to SOME extent, but I’m not fascinated by them in the way that I am about the weather. When the news presents me with information about concerts, music, scientific achievements and so on I’m interested because these are interests of mine anyway – the same applies to the weather. I also enjoy seeing people helping their neighbours, as I’ve already described above.

TEN – NEW YEAR

I like it when a new year starts. I like sitting down in the last days of December with the Wonderspouse while we make goals and objectives for the year ahead. I’ve nearly always been able to spend New Year itself alone or at home with the Wonderspouse, and the one time in recent years I’ve spent it with family it was truly magical – Mum took us to Iceland, where we bathed in the Blue Lagoon and watched a spectacular Aurora Borealis show on New Year’s day!

For me, it’s a great time to review projects in progress and to come up with exciting ideas for the future. I also like getting new calendars – all clean and shiny, with lovely pictures to look at – and carefully writing in birthdays, holidays, things we have booked and so on. It’s a time to make a new start. We don’t do “resolutions” as such, but set ourselves targets for the coming months.

I love the idea of leaving behind the bad things that have happened in the old year, and greeting the new year with hope and optimism. This will be particularly true for me this year after a couple of very turbulent years – 2011 is scheduled to be the year I start a new career and have a significant birthday! Hopefully it’ll be a good one!

And, of course, with the coming of the new year, there is also hope that the winter will end, the ice and snow will thaw, the trees will grow nice new green shiny leaves, and eventually, if I’m very lucky, it’ll get warm enough to sit in the garden with a book and a cold beer!

***

So, I managed it! And here’s my challenge for something for you lovely readers to do if you’re stranded by the snow and bored out of your minds – if you’re a winter hater like me, why not think of, say, 5 things you love about winter, and if you’re a winter lover, why not try to think of 5 things you hate about it! I’ve found it an interesting exercise. I’ll eagerly await comments to see what others love & hate about this chilly season!

Now I’m off to microwave my special socks in an attempt to thaw my toes!

On Not Writing

2010-11-01T11:19:00.006Z

The Wonderspouse is a writer. Although he doesn’t (yet) make enough money from writing to keep me in the style to which I’m sure I could become accustomed, and therefore also has a day job, he does call himself a writer.

As a result of his writing activities, I often find myself surrounded by writers, both in the flesh and on the internet. I am quite often asked what sort of thing I write, and I explain that I’m not a writer, I’m a musician and maths student, and, like the Wonderspouse, I make ends meet with a succession of random day jobs.

The Wonderspouse then points out that I’m the one with a commercially published book, that I’ve also been known to produce a pome from time to time, that I write daily on my blipfoto journal and that I have a blog (er, this one!). However, as I point out, I haven’t actually MADE UP any writing since I did my O-levels at the age of 15!

Even then, I was not expected to succeed with words. My mother promised me a reward for my O-levels if I got 6 A grades out of the 8 subjects I was taking – it was taken as read that I wouldn’t get top grades for either English Language or English Literature. I’m still convinced that the fact I did actually get A grades for those subjects was the result of a mix-up at the exam board!

Then I went into science and, ultimately, music. Of course, I did a lot of writing as part of my degree, but all of it factual, with zillions of references, and in the particular style that academic writing demands. I wrote essays about Mendelssohn, Scriabin and so on, and edited a 60,000 word monograph by Hans Keller for my special project, but I didn’t actually create anything new.

I’m not even a particularly well-read sort of person where literature is concerned. I read a lot of books and I frequently have around ten different ones on the go at the same time, but many of them are factual books – I love reading about history, science, warfare and so on. I also read a lot of biographies, and when I do stray into fiction it’s usually the sort of “throwaway” detective novel that most people would buy at an airport and leave in the hotel room at the end of the holiday.

In short, I am not a writer, I have almost no background in literature, and I haven’t made up a story for very very many years. So, you ask, what’s this blog post actually about then?

It’s about a thing called NaNoWriMo, which I saw on twitter hashtags quite a lot around this time last year and which has started appearing again. At first I assumed it was about something rather small, and for a long time I thought the “No” bit was short for November. It always seemed to be something that writers were interested in, and, since I’m not a writer, I always ignored it.

This year things have changed. I finally asked the Wonderspouse what on earth the whole business was about and he explained patiently to me what it was. It actually stands for National Novel Writing Month and the idea is that those taking part, er, write a novel in a month! Kind of obvious when you think about it!

Coincidentally, the start of this year’s NaNoWriMo coincides with the start of my own new beginning. I left my last random day job a few months ago and am currently “between jobs” while completing my recovery from my last major episode of depression. I’m not quite up to going back to work yet, but I’m no longer so ill that all I can do is lie on the sofa and sleep.

So it’s time I started doing some more constructive things again. Obviously, I am returning to daily viola practice as well as playing the piano and flumpophone on a regular basis. I’ve also registered for next year’s Open University maths courses and today I shall do my first serious session of study since I got ill. There are also jobs to be done round the house and I’m also going back to serious exercise and trying to eat less food too. If I can’t manage these things at home, there’s no way I’ll have the stamina to survive a day in the workplace when I find a new job.

But on top of returning to the old things, it’s rather nice to have something shiny and new. So I’m going to give this NaNoWriMo a go! I believe the goal is to produce a 50,000 word novel by the end of November – the concept of having to write MORE words feels rather alien to me since all the writing I’ve done in my adult life has been about saying what I want to say in FEWER words. Of course, we all know that to produce a 50,000 word book we should write three times that many and then keep every third word (or something like that)! If we took that instruction literally some very strange books could be created – unless the first draft was EXTREMELY clever!

Anyway, it’s time to start. I can’t imagine what I write will be any good whatsoever, but it gives me a challenge and maybe it’ll be a bit of fun along the way. All my ideas so far are extremely mundane or extremely crazy. I suspect the end result will be rather bizarre! However, the Wonderspouse tells me it doesn’t matter since it’s fiction it doesn’t have to be true and I don’t have to reference everything I write! Furthermore, since I’m not actually a writer, and am not really “writing”, just giving a new project a go, there shouldn’t be any pressure!

If you’re also attempting to write a novel this month, then do feel free to “buddy” me on the NaNoWriMo site – since I don’t have enough imagination to think of another username, I’m known as ViolaMaths on there too!

Off we go!

On Many Thanks

2010-05-09T22:03:00.001+01:00

Just when it seemed as if this blog had been abandoned completely, I’M BACK! I hope the shock of it isn’t too much for anybody!

I’ve just had a read through my blog posts from earlier this year, and the comments that have been made, and I’m struck by how much things have moved on since I wrote those posts. I thought I might fill you in, briefly, on the developments in my life since the beginning of the year.

After my failed attempt to return to work in March (see last post), it became obvious how ill I’d become. I am now under the care of my GP, a good Psychiatrist and Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN), and, recently, an exercise trainer at the local gym. Interestingly, when I opened the bag containing my gym kit last week, a quick look at receipts confirmed that I had not been to the gym since last March, which was about the time I started to get ill again.

At the beginning of February this year I was as low as I’ve been for around 8 years, almost suicidally low. In fact, in the last few weeks, the Wonderspouse and I have observed that I seem to have a major depressive episode about once every 4 years – the pattern is startlingly accurate!

This episode has, as has always happened previously, cost me my job. I simply cannot return to work within any reasonable time-frame, and the pressure of having to do so has been making me much worse. Therefore, I am to embark upon a new phase of life with regards to employment. I don’t yet know what I shall do – maybe I’ll blog about it as the process unfolds! In the meantime, if you know of anyone who would pay me a handsome wage to, say, taste chocolate, then do let me know! ;-)

However, I am, eventually, fighting back against the depression! I am determined that I will not let it beat me. I am once again on medication (Venlafaxine and Quetiapine, if you’re interested in that kind of thing), but have realised that the medication can only be part of the story. I’m also working with my CPN on strategies to prevent me getting ill again (and learning that fighting against what the medics tell me is detrimental to me, so, no matter how much I feel that the exercises I have to do are “silly” I should do them and take them seriously) and I’ve started gym sessions (referred at a cut-price by my GP).

I’m also starting to build my own REAL life again from the ground upwards. I am practicing my viola again – although it will take a while to get back to a reasonable standard, I’ll keep going. I’ve also recently bought a tuba (or flumpophone as I prefer to call him) and have started practicing that too, which is giving me great pleasure. I’ve had to defer the exam from last year’s maths course again, which means I shall take it in October this year, and I’ve also had to negotiate long long extensions to the first assignments of this year’s course. It’s still not clear whether I shall be able to meet those deadlines or whether I shall have to withdraw from the course this year and reregister again next year, but I’ll try to complete the work this year if I can.

Furthermore, I’m going to concerts again, managing to keep up with the housework a bit better, painting my fingernails again, and finally starting to work my way through jobs lists that have been sitting around for months. I’m also, slowly, getting back to reading books – I was completely unable to read when I was ill, and am gradually building up, a few pages at a time while my ability to concentrate increases and the “noise” in my head slowly subsides. This afternoon I’ve also opened my knitting bag and started to knit a few rows, and I’ve also sorted out all my model-making things and origami books in my study, so that I can start doing some creative enjoyable craft-type things too.

My online life has also changed. With the increase in viola practice, flumpophone practice, maths, exercise, housework and so on, has come a decrease in the amount of time available to sit chatting on twitter, commenting on every single blipfoto, or playing games on facebook. Last autumn, the internet world WAS my world, but I’ve had to alter that to protect my mental health – in particular, the fact that sitting on the internet for hours on end involves sitting still at a desk means that I cannot afford to do too much of it – exercise is so crucial in successful treatment of depression.

Exercise will also help me to combat the dopey feelings and headaches caused by the medication and to lose the 2 stone that I’ve put on in the last few months. I’ve had to buy bigger trousers again and I have lost quite a bit of fitness. In order to remedy those things I need to work hard – walking outside, doing yoga, going to the gym, hopefully going swimming again, and also stopping the snacks that have become a habitual part of life as well as simply eating smaller portions again.

So, that about brings you up to date. Rather surprisingly, I HAVE managed to keep posting a picture on blipfoto each day (my CPN told me she considers this a considerable achievement) and the Ears blog is up-to-date although a bit thin on the ground – sorting out my listening is still “in progress”, as is much of my life.

One of the other reasons I wanted to write this post is to say “Thank You”. Reading the comments on my previous posts will give you just a flavour of the support I’ve received. With just a very few exceptions, people here and on twitter, facebook and blipfoto have been fabulous and wonderfully supportive. Thank you, all of you.

I’ve also received many messages of support, and empathy from people. I’m so sorry I haven’t yet responded to these messages – I fully intend to do so, although it may take a little while. I have over 200 messages on my e-mails and in my facebook inbox that need attention – and these are 200 proper messages since I delete spam and file general messages as I go along. I’m afraid I’ve also neglected commenting on blogs shamefully, and not yet formally acknowledged 2 people who gave me “beautiful blogger” awards on their own blogs (you are not forgotten, I am very grateful, I shall get there).

So, thank you everyone for your support. I really do appreciate it. Also, to all of you who have written to me describing depressive symptoms of your own - thank you for trusting me with your personal stories. As soon as I have the strength I shall try to help you all in whatever way I can. One of the reasons I continue to blog about my illness is in the hope that it will help others to feel slightly less alone.

I’d also like to thank the Wonderspouse. He has continued to work full-time, to write, to organize gigs and readings, to care for the cats, and to keep the house functioning, all while looking after me – accompanying me to psychiatrist appointments and so on. He’s had to cope with tears, tantrums, endless loops of self-pity and self-hatred from me and the constant fear that he’d get home from work and find I’d simply given up. I’m surprised he’s still standing. The man is a marvel.

Anyway, I’ll stop here for now. The old “me” is returning gradually, and I hope, eventually, that I’ll be up to blogging about slightly more interesting things than my mental health as I build a new, and hopefully, exciting life. Maybe this blog will follow that journey! You’re invited along if you want to come!

And thank you again, everyone who has supported me.

On Willpower Failure

2010-03-23T18:23:00.003Z

The above picture was going to be used for today’s blipfoto post and was going to be given the title “Willpower Failure”, since I don’t use the “On…” format on blipfoto.

However, as usual, I took more than one possible blipfoto, and in today’s “battle to be the blip”, the coffee and muffin picture lost out to the one that I eventually posted here.

The coffee and muffin picture didn’t give up without a fight though, and nagged me to post it SOMEWHERE on the internet and to tell its little story to anyone who might care to read it. Furthermore, my completionist-type OCDishness won’t allow me to miss a month out of posting something on this blog because the archive would look all wrong!

So here’s a story of how my willpower (which I generally regard as fairly strong) crumbled into nothingness this morning. This picture was taken at 8 in the morning. What on EARTH was I doing drinking a latte and eating a triple chocolate muffin at 8 in the morning? How did I come to be in a Costa Coffee when I should have been at work?

It started to go wrong around 3.42 a.m. I think. Since I’ve been taking quetiapine I haven’t been very insomniac, but I did stir early this morning, a sure sign that things were not quite right. But, nevertheless, I got up at the normal time (with difficulty, but what’s new?), got dressed, and got in the car to go to work.

However, by the time I was a few miles down the road it was evident that today was going to be a struggle. By the time we reached the outskirts of town I was praying that the traffic jam would grind to a halt and we could just stay in the car for ever. I managed to get to the place where I usually drop the Wonderspouse off for work and parked up. It was obvious I wasn’t going to make it to the office – the sense of panic was just overwhelming.

So, I turned the other way at the end of the road and headed for home.

There was one thing nagging me, something I’d been planning to do? Oh yes, I had run out of cherry compote and had been intending to go home via Waitrose (the only known source of this delicacy) on the way home.

I thought I might as well go anyway, that way the petrol I’d spent driving to work and then not actually going wouldn’t be totally wasted.

Of course, when I got there, it wasn’t open yet – why would it be at that time of the morning?

It was too cold to walk – at this time of year I have to plan walks outside and put oil on my legs before I go otherwise my hopelessly cold-sensitive skin chaps and cracks and ends up terribly painful.

But Costa was open.

So, even though I’m supposed to be trying to lose the weight that I’m rapidly putting on, I went inside and bought my usual tipple of medium latte and triple chocolate muffin. At 8 o’clock in the morning.

I had failed to get to work. I had failed to stay off the chocolate cake (one of my particular weaknesses in life). Willpower had gone down the drain.

Then I went on a bizarre shopping spree in Waitrose. I got half way round and realised the basket was now too heavy, so then tried to go out of the “in” doors to get a trolley. They didn’t work. So then I abandoned my basket, went out of the “out” doors, collected a trolley, then transferred the stuff from the basket, which I’d just left in the shop on the floor.

I tweeted the Wonderspouse for a shopping list, not all of which I succeeded in finding. I bought a large bread thing because it looked fun. I sniffed lots of the smellies and bought yet another sort of deodorant that may or may not make me itch. I bought parsnips because they “looked nice”. I nearly bought dog food, then remembered we don’t have a dog. I must have been round the shop 20 times (the search for milk alone took some time – my friend Linda guiding me towards it by tweet) before I eventually managed to summon up the courage to queue at the checkout to pay.

Then I came home.

The rest of the day has been a write-off too. I have failed to be a friend by not even noticing something that I should have done about one of my friends, then sent a semi-hysterical e-mail in an unsuccessful attempt to compensate. I refreshed tweetie on the iPhone so much that it locked me out for using up my API or whatever it is. I feel edgy, stressed, and unable to concentrate.

I have failed to do any jobs on my list.

Willpower has run out.

On the plus side, I did a nice blip and I ate real food for lunch – I ripped the end off the large bread thing and dipped it in luxury houmous, then had dates and a cup of tea for pudding, so that’s not too bad.

The Wonderspouse has arrived home and started preparing parsnip soup with the parsnips, which he says will go very well with some more of the large bread thing.

He’s also said he still loves me even though I am rapidly gaining weight and heading towards bankruptcy if I can’t get myself back to work properly soon.

I’ve also, more by accident than design, written a blog post. Not one of the ones I had in mind, and I’ve still failed to deal with comments from the last one.

But at least the archive will look neat and tidy!

On Falling Apart

2010-02-14T13:54:00.003Z

This blog post has had many titles: On Hardening My Heart, On Refusing To Quit, On Defriending And Blocking, etc etc etc. Eventually, however, I have given it the above title, because that is how I feel at the moment.

First of all, please allow me to say a huge thank you to everyone who read my last blog post, and for all the lovely comments and messages I’ve received here, on facebook and on twitter. Thank you also to everyone who is continuing to support me throughout this rather peculiar phase in my internet life (I have become more guarded than usual, and taken actions that I thought I never would in the last few days). I can only say that my real life at the moment is also equally, if not more, peculiar, and I really hope that things get sorted out soon.

I have stayed away from twitter for much longer than I intended, and have not, as I said in my last post that I would, responded to the lady who made the initial tweet. Last Saturday night, I seriously considered giving up my internet life completely, and returning to spending more time staring at the TV instead.

I wrote the above two paragraphs several days ago. I am still struggling desperately with twitter, and with facebook, and particularly with blipfoto. I shall now try to explain why. Forgive me if I don’t do a very good job. I’m not really up to it at the moment, and this blog post will probably be unedited. I owe you all some sort of explanation though.

After I wrote the previous blog post I received a message on facebook from somebody, which, in essence, said the following: my expectations of the twitterverse as a safe place are unrealistic, I have problems, I have blamed her friend (the lady who sent the first tweet/DM) for all my problems, I have referred to myself as the aggrieved party in the incident with the lady who sent the tweet when in fact that lady is mortified, she says she has sympathy with that tweet in that she likes to follow people who make her laugh or are interesting, my “friends” are not doing their best for me by providing sympathy and should instead tell me that I’m being over-demanding and that the world does not revolve around me, real friends would tell me I’m being an idiot, I would provide support for other people too if I were any kind of a friend to anyone (with the implication that I don’t – sorry friends, I apologise for being so crap and useless), being around people who are miserable is no fun and I shouldn’t be surprised if people have run out of patience with me, my blipfoto post for 4th February was “horribly nihilistic” and blipfoto was not an appropriate place to share such things because it is a site about photography, have I ever heard of CBT (something which I find horribly patronizing, given previous blog posts), she suggests I share less on the internet because I wouldn’t expect group therapy in the real world and shouldn’t expect the internet to provide me with any such help, and finally tells me “I hope you get help” and that I shouldn’t blame other people for my distress.

I immediately unfriended and blocked this lady on facebook. I also had to unfriend the original lady – not because I didn’t want to forgive her and become friends again, but because I am afraid that the lady who sent me the above message will get to me through her. I also abandoned my twitter account, set up a new, locked, account to try to keep in touch with a few friends (I’m sorry if I haven’t yet managed to contact you – I’m trying, but so short of energy), and changed my name on blipfoto.

However, none of this has helped. Things are still getting worse. I also fear that in my search for solace from all this I have done irreparable damage to a very precious and treasured friendship with a real life friend who is also very ill and unable to cope with me at the moment.

I cannot answer all the points the lady made in her message to me – I simply don’t have the energy or enough tissues to mop up the tears that writing this post is generating. I would have linked to a blog post by someone else that was made in response to an incident that occurred last week and referred to the support that the internet can be when people are in mental distress, but the person who wrote that post has had to take it down because she has had an overwhelming response to it and simply doesn’t have the time to deal with what it has generated. I try very very hard, when I have the strength, to support anyone who needs it in any way that I can. Sometimes, however, I need people to cut me a bit of slack.

First, of COURSE I have heard of CBT. For goodness sake. I am an intelligent informed woman who has read dozens of books and articles on my condition. I point you towards “On Being Bonkers” from July 2009. It is only by employing CBT techniques that I am able to get out of bed most mornings, that I am able to force breakfast into me although I feel sick, that I am able to steer the car towards work rather than back home, that I am able to keep going at all on a lot of occasions. You wouldn’t suggest to someone with a broken leg that they might like to get it set in plaster – why assume that people with depressive illness are too stupid to have researched their condition? And, for information, CBT is not available on the NHS to me, and my psychiatrist considers that I am already well-enough versed in its techniques that it wouldn’t necessarily be helpful to have more. I can’t afford to pay for it in any case.

As to the real world. Would I go into a pub and have a meltdown? Well, yes, and I have done on many many occasions. I have ended up out in public many times in a terrible state. I have left numerous restaurants and sat on the pavement outside shaking because I struggle to eat out in public when I feel scared. I have broken down in the middle of a big party of several hundred people, halting a barn dance and causing my distressed father and best friend to have to pick me up and take me out and comfort me. I have sat on the floor in Sainsbury’s crying by the Frosties. I have collapsed on the floor of a train, been violently sick, and then screamed and pulled at the (fortunately electric, rather than the old fashioned handle type) doors to try to get off. I have been lost out on the street, unable to see because the lights are too strong and the noises are too loud. I have stood and sobbed in front of a class of 11 year olds because I played a chord wrong on the piano.

On every single one of these occasions, people have been helpful and sympathetic. Even people I didn’t know. The man on the train, who helped a vile and messy me to get off at Greenwich station and made sure I was OK before he continued his day, the woman in Sainsbury’s who wanted to know if I was alright, even the class of year 7s who coped with their Head of Music disintegrating before their eyes.

As to blipfoto. At the moment I cannot even look at the site, because it makes me feel sick. I tried, when I got home from a trip away on Friday night. I looked at one friend’s blip from the day, and the top comment was from the woman who sent me that message. I logged off straight away and closed the tab on the browser. I’m sorry blip. As for my “horribly nihilistic” post, I was going to say that I was terribly sorry to have spoilt this woman’s fun, to have disturbed her comfy life and ruined her internet experience, but I’m not. What I am sorry about is the two friends who read that post and were seriously worried about me to the extent that they both e-mailed me and left numerous text messages and missed calls on my phone because they were so worried about me. I’m sorry to have put you through that. I’m sorry for my father and stepmother who read the post through my facebook wall (they are both friends of mine on there) and were extremely worried, knowing that I have tried to take my own life in the past and fearing that I’d do it again. I’m also sorry for my poor husband, who was having to cope with all this in the middle of organizing his gig.

What I have finally realised this morning though, is why that message has done me so much damage. It is agreeing with everything the illness is telling me. I have a loud voice in my head telling me that I am a bad friend, a miserable person, an idiot, a plonker, a worthless and wretched apology for a human being. I think often how much better place the world would be if I had never been born. I know that I am a failure, that I am nearly 40 years old and unable to support myself financially, unable to produce any children, unable to hold down anything other than a part-time clerical job (and even that with difficulty, and only with the extreme patience of my colleagues). These views I have of myself are, of course, only partially true and are mainly caused by the illness that pervades my mind. Ironically, these are the very feelings that I have to use CBT techniques to fight against – the “Automatic Negative Thoughts” that follow me everywhere. This woman, who is so keen that I “seriously consider CBT” has reinforced those negative thoughts a hundredfold. I am now fighting them, and trying hard to think of all the lovely things my real friends and supporters have said to me, in order to try and re-establish some sense of self-worth.

So, I have shared even more on the internet. Partly because I owe everyone an explanation, but also because I want people to UNDERSTAND. I don’t crave sympathy, but understanding. I have defriended and blocked for the first time ever, to protect myself. I do refuse to quit in my quest to talk about mental illness and the issues it raises, even if it means exposing myself to criticism. I cannot harden my heart – it’s like a jam without enough pectin, or a custard that hasn’t been heated enough – it will never harden, it just isn’t that sort of heart.

For all the strife that this whole episode has caused me, I am particularly glad of one thing. I received a message on facebook from a person who said how much my Feb 4th blip had helped her, how comforting it was to know that there was someone else who knew what it felt like to feel like that. I was also very touched by a comment I received from someone who said that even though we just looked like little tiny pictures on twitter, behind each one was a person, and those people really care. These things have stuck in my head.

The other thing I’m amazingly grateful for is the Wonderspouse. The week that all this broke he was speaking at a conference on mental illness at the Royal College of Psychiatrists – alongside Alastair Campbell, who was saying how mental health issues should not be brushed under the carpet. He had a massive audit at work. He organized a book reading / gig in London. All this while working full-time, attending my psychiatrists appointments with me, keeping up his own writing and internet work, cooking all our meals, looking after the cats, and getting up in the middle of the night to make me tea and mop up my tears. I really don’t know how he’s still standing – the man is a marvel.

As to the woman who wrote the message, I don’t know whether she will ever read this post. If she does, then I would beg her NEVER to send a message like that to anyone again. If I was giving her the benefit of the doubt, then I might, just, be able to say that she was being “well-meaning”, although the tone of her message suggests otherwise. Yes, the patronizing tone made me angry, but whatever bitterness made her write it could have cost someone who didn’t have a Wonderspouse on hand a lot more than it cost me. I wondered why the lady who sent the original tweet/DM felt the need to say that my tweets were “getting on her tits” and didn’t just unfollow me quietly. I wonder even more why this second woman felt the need to harangue me as she did. She doesn’t have to look at my blips or read my blogs. If you really want to stick to “nice pictures” and “fun” on the internet, then so be it. I cannot, and will not, brush my true self under the carpet and put on an act to entertain people online – it would be untrue to myself and my beliefs.

Furthermore, I do believe that the internet is, like real life, a place full of lovely supportive people who are generous, loving and helpful. I don’t think it’s unrealistic of me to hope that people who I do regard as friends will bear with me through the rough patches. I gladly do the same for them, helping wherever I can.

I said in “On Being a bit Bonkers” last July that I didn’t wish to make this blog about mental health issues. I still don’t, but have had to write this post by way of explanation, and maybe to work through issues that are still outstanding from the whole incident. I’m also going to take some time off the internet. Feel free to comment on this blog post if you like, although the Wonderspouse is insisting on monitoring comments before I read them. He cannot take the risk that the work being done by my GP, psychologist, psychiatrist, and himself can be further undone by anything that might hurt me. I am simply too fragile at the moment. I shall probably take at least a week off twitter and facebook, although, by the time you read this I shall have left details of how I can be contacted in both places for people who do want to get in touch and don’t have any other means. The “Ears” blog is on hold for now, although I shall continue to keep a record of what I’m listening to (not very much at the moment – I’m having to sleep a lot, and am staring at the TV quite a bit too). I’m not even thinking about blipfoto for now. It’s simply too painful.

My mind feels rather like it needs renovating at the moment, a bit like this:

I’ll be back when it’s sorted and strong enough to cope with whatever gets thrown at me and when I’ve got the rest of my life together. I just need some time and I hope that you’ll understand, and forgive me this rather frank blog post. If I had any choice in the matter I most certainly wouldn’t elect to be miserable, to feel sorry for myself, or to have such a black day as inspired my February 4th blip. To choose such a life really would be madness!

On Not Tweeting

2010-02-06T12:27:00.004Z

I tried to go back to twitter last night. Tried to tweet to let everyone know I was OK, to thank them for their support, to say I’d be back soon. But I couldn’t. Simply couldn’t. My fingers just refused to type, like there’s some sort of block.

It all started with an incident on Wednesday night, where I read a tweet about me that was sent as an @reply rather than a DM by mistake. I won’t quote the tweet for you here, but let’s just say that it wasn’t flattering.

I @replied the lady concerned (I couldn’t send her a DM since she’d unfollowed me), saying that I was sorry she didn’t like my tweets, and goodbye, and the whole thing should really have ended there, except that it didn’t.

First of all, this lady was not just a “random tweep”. I’m also friends with her on facebook, I subscribe to her blipfoto journal, and I thought we were friends. Second, I suddenly became worried – were lots of other people sending unflattering DMs about me and this lady was simply unlucky in that she accidentally sent the message publicly and I just happened to be logged on and looking at the screen as it arrived?

My logical brain knows I’m extrapolating unfairly here, but at the time I felt very threatened. This was partly because I am struggling to overcome a fairly major depressive episode at the moment, trying to get settled onto suitable medication, trying to sort my life out, and trying to get back to work where my colleagues are currently having to cover for me. I’ve also been desperately worried recently about a real-life friend, who is struggling to cope with his own ill health and current circumstances, and I feel powerless to help. Furthermore, for some reason the whole thing triggered memories of being bullied at school and college, which brought back a whole lot of hurt and pain that I couldn’t handle.

The result was that within a few moments of reading that tweet I was sitting at my desk in floods of tears. I sent three tweets of frustration, and then logged straight off and closed down the computer very soon afterwards.

A tearful restless night was followed by one of the blackest days I have experienced in recent times. I posted a blipfoto and bared my soul even more than I usually do. I sent several bitter and horribly unfair e-mails to my real-life friend, only adding to his pressures, for which I am sorry. I remembered crying on the steps of a mobile classroom when I was 4, being thumped on my first day at a new school when I was 5, having my hat and scarf pulled off me and thrown in a puddle when I was 11, being held down at age 14 by a gang of girls at school who rubbed muddy paper towels all over my face and then took my bag with its precious books in and ran off to play football with it on the school field. Even into the sixth form and at college people whispered about me, and laughed at me because I preferred to go to the library rather than the college bar.

Of course, this was all a long time ago. I’m grown up now and I’ve largely got over most of it. I look back at my young self and realise that maybe, as a teenager in a northern comprehensive school, I should have learnt to act better. I should have pretended that my favourite music was Duran Duran and not Schubert.

However, that’s not me. I’m an open person who wears my heart on my sleeve. It’s just the way I’m made. My Dad is the same – he has eye problems and carries pictures of retinal scans around in his wallet – he’ll show them to anyone who’ll listen: in the pub, on the street. I’ve inherited his candour, and, some would say, we also share a certain naivety and general belief in the goodness of people.

So these were some of the things racing round my head on Thursday. To add to the general grimness of the day, we had run out of heating oil so had no heat or hot water. I spent much of the day hiding under a blanket on the sofa, getting what warmth I could from a small fan heater.

Sometime in the afternoon, 3 things happened. The first was that I decided I would blip. The link to that blip is on my twitterstream and facebook page if you haven’t already seen it. I’m not quite up to sorting links on here at the moment. The main reason I blipped was that I have “completion” issues. I knew I’d regret it terribly if I didn’t. The Wonderspouse had given me a programme for his Year Zero Writers gig and I browsed through it and found the quote by Daisy Anne Gree, which I blipped. It struck such a chord with me.

The second was that the man arrived with the oil delivery. Once I’d signed for it, looked at the bill and wondered where I was going to find that kind of money, I set about the task of getting the air bubbles from the system so we could get hot water and heat again. The practical work was actually a bit good for me.

The third was that I decided I must go to the Wonderspouse’s gig. This was his big “do”. He’d been planning it and working on it for months. He’s unswervingly devoted to me in every way he possibly can be. To let him down would be unthinkable. I had to go. So I put a coat and hat over my filthy slobby clothes, got in the car (I didn’t even turn the TV off, we discovered when we got home that night) and went.

I lasted most of the evening fairly well, although cracked at the end. Fortunately Daisy, the writer of the quote on my blip, was there, knew exactly how I was feeling, and looked after me splendidly. Thank you Daisy.

And so the climb back out of the dark hole had begun.

Most of yesterday was spent asleep. I did log on to facebook a couple of times and started on the mountain of messages that are there for me. I logged in to twitter and read the many supportive DMs and @replies I’ve received. I also e-mailed my real-life friend a bit more and tried to understand his difficulties rather than my own. I hope he’s forgiven me for the terrible behaviour over the last few days.

So what now?

I am tentatively making my way back onto the internet. I’m managing to go onto facebook from time to time. I’m still blipping. I’m still checking my e-mails. I need to update the “Ears” blog, which is a few days behind.

The lady who sent me the tweet that started all this has not unfriended me on facebook, as she said in her tweet that she would. She has sent me a long and apologetic message, to which I will reply as soon as I am able. It has been suggested that I unfollow her, block her, defriend her, etc. but that is not my way. Maybe she has good reason for saying what she did. Who knows. The Wondserspouse alerted me to the fact that she had changed her twitter avatar to a road sign – she knows I like road signs after a comment I made on blipfoto. She sent me a jolly picture of a road sign on facebook – I wasn’t up to coping with messages at the time and have not yet thanked her for that. I shall, but all this will take a little time.

A second lady, the lady to whom she sent the @reply, has been caught in the crossfire. I’m sorry about that. I have not unfollowed or defriended anybody as a result of all this. I have never blocked any real person on twitter, only bots with unseemly images.

And I shall return to tweeting as soon as I am able. I think one of the things that shocked me most was that I’ve always found the twitterverse to be a place full of fun, support and loveliness. Maybe I’ve been lucky. I’ve always regarded it as somewhere “safe” in the same way that my home is (last August I received some difficult work mail at home on a Saturday morning and the shock of having to deal with something for which I was unprepared led to a day of tears and torment). Perhaps I should be a little more guarded, but being so uses up so much energy that I then don’t have enough left to function or enjoy life.

My reasons for being on twitter are very simple – just to make friends and talk to people who share my interests. I am not famous, or especially interesting. I have nothing to sell or promote. I simply enjoy the opportunities to meet others who like music, maths, animals, books, cups of tea, the arts, science, and all the other interesting things that people do. I try to steer clear of religion and politics where I can, and I don’t swear on the internet (I do in real life, although not especially much, but I’m not the slightest bit offended by it) since I know there are people who don’t like it. I really just like the friendship that twitter offers.

I am deeply grateful for all the supportive messages that I’ve received. Thank you. I shall reply to you all in time. In general, I’ve found everyone I’ve met on twitter to be absolutely lovely. I’ve also started to meet people from twitter in real life and, without exception, they’ve all been fantastic. I’ve been stunned by the generosity of one person in particular, who I now count among my firm friends, and I’ve also got back into the music world through twitter and am looking forward to future playing opportunities that have arisen.

The Wonderspouse said to me when I started twitter that if he thought it was bad for me then he’d ban me from doing it. The fact that he hasn’t done so over the last few days shows that he recognizes the positive effects it has had on my life.

I never thought I’d ever write a blog post called “On Not Tweeting”. Extraordinary!

I’ll be back when I can. It’ll just take a day or so.

On Reviving My Blog

2010-01-31T19:53:00.001Z

Yesterday morning I sent someone on twitter a link to one of my previous posts on this blog. In order to obtain the link I looked at my poor neglected blog for the first time in many weeks and was rather shocked to discover that I hadn’t posted anything since early December last year.

So I thought it was about time to remedy that situation and to revive my poor ailing blog before it expires completely. I also thought it might be a good opportunity to apologize to you all for the lack of recent posts and to explain that lack.

Those of you who know me well will have noticed that posts have almost dried up since I wrote “On Holes and Ladders” back in October, and will, rightly, have guessed that my mental health has been unsteady again. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, it was discussed in two previous posts: “On The Big One” and “On Being A Bit Bonkers”.

So I’ve been trying to hold things together, trying very hard to get myself back to work (I was off for almost the whole of October and November) and trying to stay medication free.

I haven’t actually succeeded at either of these objectives. Although I went back to work in December, I am now signed off again, although hoping to return soon. I’ve also had to go back on medication, currently Venlafaxine, if you’re interested, although it looks like that may well change as the result of finally being formally diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I’ve written a little about this as part of my blipfoto journal – you can read the relevant posts here and here.

I have managed, so far, to maintain my “ViolaMaths” blipfoto journal and also my listening diary “A Year With My Ears” although my listening has been somewhat patchy recently, and posts are not updated as regularly as they used to be.

I’m hoping that this will change and my health will now start to improve again as I get appropriate medication sorted out. I’m also hoping that I’ll be able to start writing for this blog again – it’s something I enjoy and I’ve been delighted with the feedback I’ve received on previous posts.

There have been positive things going on in the last few months too. I’ve managed, just, to maintain an online life on facebook, although I’m conscious that I haven’t responded to some of the lovely messages people have sent me on there – I shall as soon as I am able. I’ve also made some lovely and very generous friends on Twitter (one of whom has been particularly generous to me recently and enhanced my life no end). In addition, I have a new “real world” friend whose company I enjoy very much, and, of course, the Wonderspouse continues to take care of his batty wife in his ever loving and patient way!

So this is the first post of 2010, even though we are now at the end of January. I hope there will be more posts to come and life will finally become less of a battle than it has been recently. Fingers crossed!

On Weekend Pancakes

2009-12-06T19:48:00.003Z

Yesterday morning we had pancakes for breakfast. They were delicious, warm, and drizzled with maple syrup.

This morning we also had pancakes for breakfast. Since I’m currently not in possession of any Bonne Maman Cherry Compote, I had good old-fashioned sugar and lemon on them.

Those of you who follow me on twitter will know that this weekend pancake ritual is a regular occurrence. I tweet regularly about the Wonderspouse cooking pancakes on weekend mornings, so I thought I’d explain how it all started and why we do it!

Before I do, I’ll tell you a little about weekday breakfasts. On weekdays we get up quite early – the alarm goes at 5.30, and once the Wonderspouse has lured me into the land of the living with a cup of tea (I don’t actually exist in the mornings until I’ve had tea), I get dressed, make the bed and head downstairs where I just about manage to consume a bowl of cereal or instant porridge washed down with a glass of smoothie. The Wonderspouse generally eats toast, often with cheese and Marmite, and sometimes has cereal too. Whatever the case, it’s a quick snatched meal, before we depart for the commute to work – no time to linger over a weekday breakfast, and never, sadly, time for a second cup of tea.

The weekends are entirely different though.

Since the Wonderspouse left the world of retail, neither of us has to work regularly at weekends, so unless there is anything special going on, there is no alarm clock. The morning cup of tea is sometimes followed by more dozing, then we have plenty of time for a relaxed breakfast. These days it’s almost always pancakes, followed by the much desired second cup of tea.

We worked out yesterday that this pancake tradition started in summer 2004, so it’s now over half a decade old. Maybe bizarrely it actually began with an excess of strawberries. The Wonderspouse used to work in a small carpet shop and, owing to a miscalculation of scale on the part of his boss (who was catering for a small drinks reception), he arrived home from work one Saturday with about 10 punnets of strawberries.

Obviously, we couldn’t manage to eat that many with cream, so we set about doing creative things with strawberries (don’t smirk, not THAT creative), and one of the things we did was chop them up into little bits, put them into pancake batter, and have the pancakes for breakfast. I was instantly reminded of how much I like pancakes (I really really like pancakes), and so we decided to repeat the experience the following weekend, having had multiple discussions along the lines of “Pancakes are too good to be restricted to Shrove Tuesday” and so on. And a tradition was born.

Initially, the pancake tradition was confined to Sundays. I had, for many years (since my college days in fact) become accustomed to cooking myself porridge or having an egg on toast for Saturday breakfasts and the porridge/egg debate continued for some time. However, as time went on, the occasional Saturday pancake breakfast turned into a regular feature, so now we have pancakes for breakfast on both Saturday and Sunday mornings.

We don’t actually have strawberry pancakes any more. I’ve developed a fondness for Bonne Maman Cherry Compote as a filling, although I don’t always get it because it’s rather hard to get hold of these days. Maple syrup and sugar and lemon are also popular options, and in the summer we quite often have a scoop of ice cream as well.

We’ve also introduced pancakes into our evening meal menu – my favourite filling is “burnt” mince and cheese, with a little Reggae Reggae Sauce and some extra cheese sprinkled on top. A very delicious supper indeed!!

People often ask if it’s less of a treat because we do it so regularly. Well, in over 5 years of weekend breakfast pancakes the “treat” factor has not subsided. Maybe the weekends are just far enough apart that we don’t become accustomed too strongly to the pancake breakfasts. Maybe the association with the relaxed getting up times, second cups of tea etc. means that it remains a treat. Maybe I’m just very very fond of pancakes!!!

A few pictures from this morning’s pancake making follow! Please excuse the terrible state of the cooker - the Wonderspouse is not a particularly clean and tidy cook! He does make great pancakes though!

On Where to Read

2009-11-02T19:09:00.002Z

I find myself sitting here with a pile of books I want to read. And I have a dilemma. Because I don’t yet want to have a bath!

So what’s the problem, I hear you all cry, just read somewhere that isn’t the bath.

And I now realise why I only ever read in the bath – because there IS nowhere else comfy enough in my house that allows me to rest a book at the appropriate angle and at the appropriate distance away from my face, other than the bath.

I’m currently in my study. I have 2 chairs in my study. Neither of them is comfortable enough to sit on to read, unless I read at my desk like we used to do at school, which isn’t actually very comfortable. I also have a futon, which looks like this – don’t think there’s room for me on there.

So that means that reading would have to be done somewhere else.

The only other place I ever sit is my sofa downstairs. It’s a great sofa for lying on to watch TV or fall asleep, but its design is such that it has no “arms” as such, nowhere to rest a book, and it isn’t wide enough to accommodate both me and book together. If I sit on it (as opposed to lying down) for more than about half an hour then it makes my back hurt. When I am sitting in any vaguely comfortable position my arms ache from holding the book at a suitable distance from my eyes.

So what about the bed? Well yes, I love to read in bed. Or rather I did. These days however, there just isn’t space. The bed is not a big one. Neither the Wonderspouse nor I is particularly diminutive. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to evict my husband from our bed or anything, but any attempt to introduce a papery third party into the marital bed usually ends with too many elbows, not enough pillow space and a generally grumpy sort of a situation. And, if I’m quite honest, by the time I get to bed, there is very little chance that I will manage more than a couple of paragraphs anyway before falling asleep.

So, short of sitting on the stairs, or curling up on the floor, I’m a bit stuck. What I really need is a nice armchair or something. But I don’t have a nice armchair. Even if I did have a nice armchair, there would be nowhere to put it – the house is so full of unsuitable sofas, random tables, heirloomish sideboards, pianos, and, ironically, bookcases, that there is simply nowhere to put an armchair.

Hmmmm!

I think if I want to do more reading I’m simply going to have to have more baths. Pass the soap someone!

On Holes and Ladders

2009-10-27T13:16:00.001Z

Even if you are VERY unobservant, you may have noticed that there hasn’t been much added to this blog in the last month – in fact, it’s almost exactly a month since I last posted.

There are all the usual reasons & excuses – been busy, been on holiday, been a bit tired etc. but I’m now facing up to the real reason – been a bit bonkers again! If you’re unaware of my bonkersness, you can check it out here!

I’ve been trying to fight this bonkersness for a while, but things have gradually come adrift at the seams – I’ve had to defer my OU maths exam for this year because I reached the point where seeing a maths book was making me feel physically ill with anxiety, I’ve taken the odd day off work here and there, I’ve maybe drunk more than I should, eaten too much cake, stared at the lightbox to help the SAD situation, tested the patience of the Wonderspouse somewhat, and got to the stage where I’m sleeping about 2 hours per night!

However, I’ve finally stopped trying to fight it and given up for the time being. After a very peculiar week in France (being on holiday while bonkers is quite strange), I’ve come home, not gone back to work, booked a doctor’s appointment, STILL failed to unpack (it just seems way too difficult), forced the Wonderspouse to wear trousers that don’t fit because he has no other clean ones, and, this morning, burst into tears at the sight of two Weetabix!!

I’ve also just posted a slightly odd status update on my facebook wall:

“Opposition to installation of ladder currently occurring. Might spoil the view apparently. Strengthening of arms for better grip on ropes is being suggested. Searching for maps so as to find alternative route not going near hole.”

so I thought I might explain it here. At least I’m actually writing something again, which is more than I’ve done for weeks (even before the posts dried up, they became progressively less numerous). Strangely enough, giving up on TRYING to write a blog post has actually produced one!

Some time ago, when I had a small wobble, I described my mental health as having fallen down a deep dark hole. I’ve come across this description before, and it felt appropriate at the time. The resulting conversation on my facebook wall included a friend “fetching ropes” and “pulling on ropes”, and so the analogy continued.

I’ve actually found it a rather helpful analogy. Again, this morning, ropes, climbing gear, pulling me out and so on have been mentioned, and I’ve now continued the analogy even further.

Installation of ladder means going back on antidepressant drugs (which I don’t take for the reasons cited in the post linked to above). Spoiling the view refers to the blocking of appreciation of music, art and so on – all those things I love so much. Strengthening of arms refers to being able to do it on my own (preferred choice if I can manage it). Finding an alternative route means looking (again) to see if there are changes I can make to my life to stop it happening again (or, at least, to lessen the effect or make it less frequent or something – I’m not being too optimistic here).

So that’s the current state of play. The way I felt when I woke up this morning I was almost ready to say “Who cares? Just give me pills!” However, as today has progressed, what I think I shall say to the doctor tomorrow morning has changed. Support from friends online (messages, comments, a poem, and so on) and a bit of reflection makes me wonder if I can carry on doing it on my own.

And, in many ways, life isn’t actually that bad at the moment. There are things going on that are particularly good in fact. Things that give me quite a lot of cause to be optimistic and hopeful about the future. Things that make me feel that the fog in my brain will eventually clear. Things that might just mean I can clamber out of the dark hole on my own and learn how not to fall in again.

Now it’s just a question of how far down the hole I’m actually going to fall this time. Have I admitted the situation to myself early enough not to end up at the very bottom where the sides are steepest? Can I find some way to get inside my rather chaotic head and get it all back to some sort of order? If there’s no other way out then I’ll get a ladder installed, but I’m going to try the climbing route first. I can feel many people pulling on ropes from above, sending flasks of tea & bars of chocolate down to help sustain me on the journey.

Hopefully I’ll see you at the top!

On Four Fabulous Felines

2009-09-28T15:31:00.002+01:00

Hello dear blog reader! I’m really sorry I haven’t managed to post anything for so long, and thought you might be getting a bit bored of waiting, so I thought I’d just put up a few pictures of the family for you to see!

I’ll be telling you all about how each of these furry friends came to live with us in future posts (when I have a few minutes to write those posts). I thought you might like to meet them first though.

Felix is our boy! He and the Wonderspouse were bachelor boys together before I even appeared on the scene. He’s big, strong, agile, and loves to headbut our legs so hard we nearly fall over. He also has the endearing habit of coming to the car door to meet me every day when I get home from work.

Tiggy is our little girl. She’s sort of MY cat (although there are no hard and fast rules here – it’s more a case of 4 cats with 2 slaves in actual fact). Her face is my picture on twitter. She’s a prolific and skilled hunter, but has an adorable temperament with all humans except vets.

Athena is the younger of the two old dears. She has an extremely loud voice, different coloured eyes, and very fine white fur that sheds absolutely everywhere. She can also be quite stroppy at times, and would eat herself to death if we let her. She loves being brushed though and can be calmed with enough fuss.

Pebbles is the quiet one, and the oldest (she’s around 17). She’s absolutely terrified of anything mechanical, especially the hoover, but she’s become increasingly friendly during the years we’ve had her. She’s very small and light, but still quite an agile old thing, and she loves climbing all over her humans!

So there you are – four fabulous felines, our little family. Of course, they can be quite troublesome, and we often call them the fearsome foursome. Anyone who’s ever been in our kitchen at suppertime will know what we mean – allegedly cats don’t hunt in packs, but it often feels like they might!

On Trying to Get Comfy

2009-09-17T13:47:00.001+01:00

This morning I’ve been trying to solve a number of semi-long-standing problems with the set up of my computer at home. By the set up, I don’t mean software, that’s all tootling along as well as can be expected, but the actual physical set up of my workstation.

The fact that I decided to do it this morning was triggered by pain in my wrists when I sat down to type. Inspection showed them to be red and rather sore. I decided that I needed a wrist rest, like I have at work. However, I have no such thing, and the fact that our local town centre is currently closed off for a funfair means that going to search for one would mean a 30 mile round trip, so I fetched a hand towel from the airing cupboard, rolled it up, and discovered that even if I did have a wrist rest, it wouldn’t fit on the desk in any case.

I decided it was time to install the small flatscreen monitor that a friend loaned me over a fortnight ago. The giant (really giant) old fashioned monitor that I’ve had for several years started off with a beautiful screen, but has now got to the stage where (a) it looks all white & milky, (b) all the windows have wiggly edges and (c) it has irritating diagonal stripes crossing the screen. It is also so big that even if I have it right up against the wall at the back of the desk, my nose is almost touching it when I sit at the desk, which is probably not very good for me.

In my office job I am trained as a DSE (display screen equipment) assessor, which means that I’ve been on courses that tell me how people SHOULD sit at a computer when they’re working, and tell me all sorts of horror stories about RSI (repetitive strain injury) or the even more catchy WRULD (work related upper limb disorder). Partly because I spend so much of my life stressed and tense, and partly because I’ve done a lot of jobs involving data entry, I do have various problems with my shoulders, arms, wrists and fingers. At work, where it comes from the health and safety budget, I have a special rollermouse device, a workstation properly set up, and a chair that does almost everything except stir my tea.

Home, however, is a different story. Buying a rollermouse is beyond my budget, so I have two mice, one each side of the keyboard. When my right hand starts to hurt, I use my left, when my left hurts, I use my right. When they both hurt I get a glass of whisky! The keyboard sometimes wobbles a bit, so I wedge it with a piece of tissue, and the chair (a cast off that was headed for a skip) provides no support, and doesn’t really fit under the desk (which isn’t a desk at all, but a table with drawers, also rescued from a skip, sanded down and repainted by me). Furthermore, the printer has to go on the floor, so I often rest my left foot on it and end up sitting lopsided too.

None of this was a problem until about 3 months ago when broadband entered our lives. Before then, internet time was just a couple of short sessions each evening, I didn’t blog, didn’t do very much on facebook or twitter (it was all just too slow and cost a fortune on the phone bill), and just typed up the occasional document or did a bit of household budget stuff on spreadsheets. I was never on the computer long enough for it to be a problem. Now, however, I’m online all the time, I read & write blogs, I footle around on facebook, try constantly to keep up with e-mails, watch digital TV stuff on the iPlayer, and as for twitter – well, let’s just say that I’m more than an occasional user!!

And my body knows it. So, I thought replacing the screen would be a good idea. Furthermore it would mean that I could tell the friend who loaned me the monitor that I’d set it up, so I wouldn’t look like an ungrateful so-and-so! Like everything, it turned out not to be that simple. Getting of torches, crawling under desks, locating wires and so on, was followed by a gargantuan effort to move the giant monitor out of the way (hampered by the chair getting stuck in the doorway – everything’s a bit tight round here – we have way too much stuff), then the discovery that I needed to reset the screen resolution because the new one wouldn’t work (more unplugging etc) then dropping the giant monitor on my toe (why do this job in slippers?) then needing to find polish to dust the desk properly, then setting the whole lot up properly.

At that point I tweeted “I want my mummy”, and the Wonderspouse tweeted back that my mother would actually be one of the least helpful people to have around since she is even more OCD than me and would be even more stressed. He then rang me up to tell me to keep calm. I would say that the battle between me and my workstation has now reached some kind of uneasy truce. The rolled up towel now fits on the desk and is an adequate enough wrist rest for now to stop my most paranoid fears about nerve damage preventing me from ever playing the viola again. The screen is almost at the right height (assisted by Donald Jay Grout’s “A History of Western Music”), although my desktop icons have all gone haywire and it’s so small that I can only see about 5 tweets to a screen. It isn’t stripey or faded or wiggly though. The chair & desk situation remains poor, but to sort that out would require serious removals, which will need much preparation (there is a bookcase on top of the desk for starters), and maybe financial outlay.

And all the time, the maths books sit on the other desk, where I should be working. Maybe I already knew that I wasn’t going to get enough assignment done to gain the marks I need to get a higher grade. Maybe all the computer moving activity was just a diversion to confirm the inevitable. I can almost hear my ambitions of a decent mark dropping to the ground like a giant monitor onto a toe. Maybe it’s time to listen to the wise Wonderspouse again, when he tells me that all I need to do is pass the course – I can worry about degree classifications later. I’d never think of chastising somebody for not getting high marks in every assignment, so why do I do it to myself?

So am I comfy? Well, not really. The knowledge that the computer set up is still not finished unsettles me. A few of the physical problems have been solved, but many remain. The unfinished maths assignment also unsettles me. But I have simply reached the end of my resources with it, having been under so much pressure for so many months. Most of this pressure, I hasten to add, self-inflicted. Perhaps it is time, as the Wonderspouse suggests, to draw a line under the maths coursework situation, to take a break, and then to revise gently for the forthcoming exam. Then, if I can manage that, I might try to indulge in an activity very foreign to me, which I’m told is called “relaxing”.

This wasn’t what I intended to blog about at all this week, but, like computer set-ups and maths assignments, things aren’t always exactly as we would wish them to be. I think it might have been good for me to write this, even if a little dull for you to read. If there is anybody out there still reading at this point, then I admire your perseverance – thank you!

On The Big One

2009-09-12T13:08:00.001+01:00

Eight years ago today I got in the car to go to work as usual (it was a Wednesday, not a Saturday as it is this year). I’d had a very usual sort of morning: drag myself out of bed, drink a glass of orange juice, sit in the bath and cry for half an hour, nibble a bowl of cereal, then get into the car. Rather different from my morning routine today, but that was how it used to be.

I left my flat, drove the 20 or so minute journey to work, and pulled into the car park of the large comprehensive school in the London borough of Haringey, where I was Head of Music. All seemed as usual until I tried to get out of the car.

My legs refused to budge. I couldn’t move. I called the school office from my mobile phone and told them I wasn’t feeling too well. I then drove straight to the doctor’s surgery. After a tearful appointment with a very unsympathetic doctor, I headed for home with a medical certificate and a stash of antidepressants.

I then went to bed. I didn’t get up again for two weeks.

In fact, the next date after that time that means anything to me is November 5th, when I was visited by an old friend, the same old friend who would eventually become my husband. He had to visit me at my flat because at that time I was still leaving the house only to go to my psychiatrist appointments.

The weeks between September 12th and November 5th are largely lost to me. I know that the world was full of turmoil, and I suspect I watched a lot of news (in those days I had digital TV and was in the habit of leaving the rolling news on 24 hours a day). I know that I still wasn’t driving again in November, and that I gave the car keys to a friend who had the car while I was too ill to use it. I know that I saw my psychiatrist, and I have vague memories of walking through Grovelands Park to visit the hospital from time to time. I remember huge pain in my head. I remember one night that nearly didn’t have a following morning (and am thankful to this day that the main effect a large amount of alcohol has on me is to induce sleep). I know that I must have checked my e-mail at some point, because I read a very significant e-mail that resulted in the meeting on November 5th.

Almost all other detail is lost, which is strange, because I usually have a reasonably good memory. I do remember the date though, every year, and not just because of the events unfolding in the world at the time. Eight years ago today was the breakdown that I now call “The Big One”, where I went from functioning human being to complete wreck in the space of a few hours.

I can hardly believe how much life has now changed, how much I have learnt about myself, and how my plans and ambitions have changed since that day. One thing never changes though – every year on 12th September I think about the years I nearly didn’t have as a result of what happened back in 2001, and every year the sun shines just a little bit brighter that day as I consider the wonderful things I would have missed out on if things had turned out differently.

On Being Obedient

2009-09-10T09:07:00.002+01:00

That looks really strange that title! Me? Obedient? Although I do what I can to fit into society and would, I hope, be unlikely to get an ASBO, I’m usually about as obedient as a cat – i.e. not very!

It was therefore quite a shock to most who attended my wedding to the Wonderspouse that I promised to OBEY him! Yes, I really did. Although we got married in a relatively modern United Reformed Church (yes, we did get married in church, however extraordinary that now seems), we had the “traditional” marriage words from 16somethingorother: having and holding, better for worse, richer for poorer (still waiting for the richer bit!), etc etc. and yes, we had the bit where I said I’d obey him.

Fortunately for me, he hasn’t held me to the obedience bit too much – he’s a wise enough man to know that if he tries too hard to control me then I’ll become very unhappy – we’re both creatures who need our own personal space, just like the cats need their own places to sleep. Quite a household of independent creatures here!

However, from time to time the obedience clause is invoked. Usually it happens when I’m still footling about hanging out washing or looking for a CD or some similar activity and am clearly exhausted and he’ll say “Come on, sit down, have a rest and drink your tea – you promised to obey me!” It’s not exactly heavy tactics, but it has reduced the number of cold cups of tea that end up down the sink because I’ve forgotten to drink them!

This week he’s been urging me to obey him again! I’ve been ill. Not seriously ill, not mentally ill (although my mood has dipped because my usual exercise regime has gone wrong), but just the sort of boring “sore throat, cold, cough, slightly queasy feeling” ill that everyone gets from time to time. I’m pretty useless at being ill, or, as he puts it “You’re a nightmare when you’re ill”, and I find it very hard to switch off and “relax”. I’m just not really a “putting my feet up” sort of a person.

However, this week has been worse than usual, partly because the house REALLY needs cleaning, but mainly because I’m in the middle of one of the busiest times of the year for my current OU maths course. I have one assignment now a week overdue (for which the revised deadline is tomorrow) and another due next Friday (which cannot be extended). There is also an exam looming in October.

Early this year, when I started the course, I had my usual high hopes for a top-grade pass for the course. My first TMA (tutor marked assignment) came back with a perfect 100, which seemed like a good start, and all other marks were 95 and above until the one I had to complete after a month off for a depressive episode in June/July, which weighed in at a lowly 85. Oh well, I thought, if I work extra hard I can make it up!

However, that hasn’t really worked. Time quite literally ran out for the next assignment – I was only able to submit 12 marks worth of work and came away with a mark of just 11. One really bad assignment is just about coverable, but I’m now so far behind that it’s now certain that there will be at least two bad assignments (if not 3). This means that the top-grade pass for this course will no longer be possible, even if I do really well in the exam (which is, of course, not a foregone conclusion). Me being me, I’m starting to stress about the whole business. I want to do it all perfectly. I don’t want to hand in rubbish work, I don’t want to get a low mark. I want to try to get a first for my degree overall. The dreaded perfectionism creeps in!

So I try to work harder. I make more effort to sit at my desk and study. And, guess what happens – the harder I push, the less I get done. And I am surprised. Goodness knows why I’m surprised, this exact thing happened in the final weeks of my doomed doctorate when I was trying desperately hard to complete a chapter at the beginning of my third year in order to convince my funding body and supervisor that my money should continue. I got up at 8 every morning (sounds like a lie-in now), sat at my desk at 9, and tried to write. And failed.

In the years since then I’ve learnt that this method does not work for me. My mind is no more likely to obey me than it is to obey anyone else. However, this “sit at your desk, shut up, and get on with your work” thing is so ingrained in me from years of school and helpful advice that I keep doing it. Apparently I’ve not actually learnt anything in the 15 or so years since my doctoral thesis dried up like a river that flows into the desert, never to reach the sea.

However, last night and this morning I’ve finally had to accept that I can’t do it all. I’ve spent the last 3 days sitting at my desk watching limits and functions swim before my eyes, coughing until I ache, sucking on an inhaler and swigging Benylin straight from the bottle, before eventually giving up, playing on twitter all day and giving myself RSI as well! It is time to stop. Now I must attend to the practicalities of contacting my tutor (will I never get over feeling as though I’m telling her the cat ate my homework?), and working out what the best strategy is to get the best pass I can for the course (even though it will not be a top grade and, in all likelihood, will not end up counting towards my final degree result anyway). Damage limitation!

Furthermore, the Wonderspouse is telling me to obey him again. This time his orders are “Stop worrying about everything!” and “Don’t beat yourself up!”

I’m going to try very hard to be an obedient wife. I did promise.

On Childhood Cats

2009-09-07T09:36:00.003+01:00

I realise that, thus far, this blog’s main title may have been a bit misleading. While there have been several posts that are, at least loosely, linked to music, I still haven’t written much about maths (partly because I’m doing so much at the moment in order to prepare for a forthcoming exam that I don’t feel very inclined to blog about it), and I’ve hardly even mentioned the moggies.

So here is a little post about some of the cats I grew up with!

Cats seem to have featured in my life ever since I was born. In fact, when my grandparents came to visit me just after I was born, they had the rather sad task of telling my mum that the old family cat from her childhood had just died. All thoughts of new baby (me) vanished, and mum went straight into mourning for the cat!

When I was about 5 my parents decided that it was time to introduce a cat to our family. We’d just moved into the house that was to be my home until I left to go to college when I was 18, so it seemed like a good time. We adopted a little kitten, who was named Leonora (and subsequently Leonora the First). However, this is a sad story – little Leonora was already fatally ill when she arrived and we had her for just 3 days. My only memories of her are of a small kitten being sick into a saucer.

Leonora the Second was her replacement. She was a fine and social cat, who loved the car (particularly curling up to sleep on the back parcel shelf where the sun came in through the window). She was very friendly with a white tom cat called Toby who lived over the road. Unfortunately, her life was also cut tragically short – she was hit by a car on the way back from visiting Toby one night. I remember my parents telling us the next morning. Another grave in the back garden, and a white tom cat sitting on the doorstep for ages afterwards howling and looking for his Leonora.

At that point my parents decided to stop getting cats. However, circumstances overtook them. My father was a science teacher, and took one of his classes out on some sort of nature walk one day. Two boys discovered a tiny kitten under a bush, and the body of a grown cat was subsequently discovered on the road outside the school. The kitten lived in a box in the prep room for a day or so until it was established that no home could be found. My father called my mother, preparations were made – the kitten was unweaned so we fed her Cow&Gate milk from a teat pipette, and my mother named her Smokey (Leonora was now deemed bad luck).

Smokes, as she was generally called, became my childhood companion. She was antisocial to all except our family and one or two select friends who visited the house a lot, but she was gorgeous to us. She was often terribly nervous, and we could never have had another cat with her (even though I nearly brought one of my uncle’s kittens home – he had 12 cats at the time), but she even trusted me enough to let me tie my school tie around her neck, and then sat still for long enough for me to take a picture!

Fortunately, she also enjoyed a much longer life than either of the Leonoras. It wasn’t until I was away at college in London that she finally succumbed to some kind of growth in her mouth. We’d had her when I was 7, she died, age 14, when I was 21. Her timing was interesting – my parents had just sold the house we had grown up in – I’m certain she would have been deeply unhappy if she’d had to move. I still keep a picture of her in my purse today. It’s terribly battered and faded, but I love it anyway.

Again, there was a decision not to have any more cats. We children had flown the nest and my parents were making a new start. However, when my mum heard about 2 kittens, living on the farm next door to my stepgrandparents’ house that were due to be drowned, I and my stepsister were dispatched in the car to collect them.

Ebony and Ivory (as they were eventually called - some of the ruder alternatives having been vetoed by my mum) were joined a couple of years later by their little half-brother Felix (named after Mendelssohn since I was working on my D.Phil. on Mendelssohn’s String Quartets at the time). Felix had been found foraging on a compost heap by my stepgrandfather and rescued from almost certain drowning.

I must have been absolutely besotted with little Ivory – I’d never have let anyone else walk on my viola!!

Sadly Ebony died about 18 months ago. Here’s one of my favourite pictures of him, when he was in his prime.

Ivory (who is now rather elderly and not in great health) and Felix (who remains in good shape) still live with my mother. She says she’ll never have another cat when they go, but I’m not 100% convinced! Kittens under bushes and on compost heaps will always need rescuing.

In the meantime, I’ve both inherited my mother’s soft spot for the furry felines and married someone who has a similar soft spot. It is about time for you to be introduced to our feline family. I had originally thought that I’d introduce them all at once, in a single blog post, but, on reflection, that might make for a rather lengthy post, so I hope to give them each their little moment of glory over the next few weeks. Watch this space!

On My 5000th Tweet

2009-08-29T20:55:00.001+01:00

This week I reached a bit of a milestone in my online life. I tweeted for the 5000th time!

As I’m a bit of a fan of nice round numbers, I wanted to mark the occasion with something special, rather than just going on about what I’m having for supper, or complaining about the weather or exclaiming LOL, which seems to be what I usually do on twitter! Those of you who were here at the beginning may recall that I used my 2000th tweet to announce the arrival of this blog! Then again, you may have better things to use your brains for!!

So, here, in all its glory, is my 5000th tweet:

TWEET 5000 fivethousand cinqmille funftausend cincomil cinquemila pěttisíc pięćtysięcy pettisuća piecitūkstoši ötezren viisituhatta beşbin

I thought I might just say a few words here about the languages I chose to express my 5000ness, and why I chose them.

Cinq mille is French. I love France very much, and, although I’m not exactly fluent in the language, I can generally get by reasonably well. The Wonderspouse and I spent our honeymoon in France; we had a week in Bordeaux and another in Perpignan. In fact, not a year has passed since we were married that we have not been to France, even very briefly.

Funftausend is German. German was the second language (after French) that I learnt at school. I also had to use it quite a lot when I worked on my (sadly, unfinished, after finance cut out) D.Phil. on Mendelssohn’s String Quartets. These days, however, I’m less likely to be reading the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung from the 1800s and more likely to be asking for Wurst!

Cinco mil is Spanish. My Spanish is pretty atrocious really, but I adore Spain. I first went there when a college friend of mine married a Spanish girl in Segovia – their wedding was absolutely stunning. The Wonderspouse generally reckons Spain is his favourite country, particularly the area around Granada. We’ve had several memorable trips there.

Cinquemila is Italian. Italy is so lovely. I first went there with a boyfriend many years ago, and was utterly charmed. I took my Mother to Venice a few years ago, and was charmed again. The Wonderspouse and I have also visited both mainland Italy, and Sicily, where we fell in love with Taormina and were fascinated by Etna!

Pět tisíc is Czech. Czech is another language that I have, in fact, been able to have extremely basic conversations in. I set about learning Czech about 10 years ago, partly because I was interested in Janáček’s music, but mainly because my boyfriend at the time promised to take me to Prague if I did!

Pięć tysięcy is Polish. We first went to Poland simply because the flights were cheap. However, we quite fell in love with the place. I still have ambitions to learn more Polish. We spent some time in Warsaw, some in Katowice, and a magical winter weekend in Gdansk, where we toured the shipyards in freezing conditions – magical and very moving. We’ve also developed a taste for bigos (a kind of stew), and are delighted by the number of Polski skleps now around in Britain.

Pet tisuća is Croatian. Croatia is the location of one of our absolute favourite hotels, the Regent Esplanade in Zagreb. We have been there a couple of times, once for New Year. The hotel is magnificent, the city is delightful – just beware if you are out in the centre of town at midday because they fire a canon each day and the first few times you hear it you jump right out of your skin!

Pieci tūkstoši is Latvian. Latvia to us means Pelmeni, fabulous little dumplings that can be bought in Riga for almost nothing. It also means Rīgas Melnais balzams, one of the most fabulously unctious drinks known to humankind. We spent an increasingly merry evening in the bar of our hotel drinking the delicious blackness, which I swear could cure any cold that ever dared come near!

Ötezren is Hungarian. Our Hungarian adventures got off to a precarious start – the Budapest police tried to fine us a large number of Euros for driving a Czech hire car on the wrong bit of the road! However, we then went to Szeged, which is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. I kid you not. It’s lovely: beautiful fountains, strolling around, sitting on the banks of the Tisza. The language is fiendish difficult though – we never managed more than a few words.

Viisituhatta is Finnish. Believe it or not, I have actually written a letter in Finnish! My cousin married a Finnish girl, and I responded to the wedding invitation in Finnish. Her family were really impressed, but at the same time highly amused, since I had got the cases muddled up and said that my cousin was married to my husband or some such error! Fantastic wedding though, and we enjoyed Finland so much in the summer that we went back in the winter – it was pretty chilly!

Beş bin is Turkish. Turkish makes me think of Istanbul, and an amazing weekend we spent there. Easyjet took us to an airport in the middle of nowhere, and our first challenge was actually to get to our hotel – an amazing journey, which finished by sailing across the Bosphorus. The whole place was magical – we were awakened by the call to prayer each morning and the hotel gave us Lokum (or Turkish Delight) for breakfast. How fabulous!

So that is what my 5000th tweet meant to me. Those are just a handful of the images that those languages conjure up for me. I adore languages, and I adore travel. I certainly hope to write more about my love of both one day.

On Why I Am Lucky

2009-08-22T23:28:00.001+01:00

Two things have prompted this post. First, the Wonderspouse has recently blogged about luck with regard to “making it” as a writer and nearly caused a fight. Secondly, I’ve been reading 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman, who is well worth following on twitter if you don’t already!

I have long had plans to do “a proper blog post” on luck. I get intensely annoyed by people who say “you make your own luck”, because, as far as I define “luck” it is the one thing you cannot make. Usually, when I get annoyed by these people I think of all the bad luck that life has thrown at me or my loved ones. The fact that I am unable to have children is not my fault – it’s bad luck. The fact that my best friend from school got cancer and died when she was 33 was even worse luck for her – she didn’t smoke, eat badly, drink excessively or have relatives who died prematurely, she was simply VERY unlucky. Those who say “you make your own luck” are clearly defining the word very differently from how I define it.

However, since I am not really in argumentative mood at the moment, and am generally feeling reasonably good, I decided that what I’d like to do is list some of the ways in which I feel I’ve been really lucky in life. Richard Wiseman’s book suggests that this might make me feel happier, and I am also acutely aware that although I have, at times, felt terribly unlucky about many things (I do not currently have a career, I have never owned a house, I have no children, and so on), I am in fact very lucky in very many ways. Here are half a dozen of them:

1. To start at the beginning. I was born to parents who, although they had not planned to have me when they did, loved me very much and took great care of me throughout my childhood. I was always warm, clothed, well-cared-for, educated, and loved. My family have also, generally, accepted the choices I have made in my life and taken some interest in them.

2. I was also born into a society where I am relatively free to live as I choose. Many people constantly moan about governments, jobs, houses, and lives. However, I feel very lucky that I live in a place where I am free to study, to work, to vote without fear of bombs, to practice any religion I choose (or, in my case, none at all) and to dress pretty much as I wish.

3. I am incredibly lucky that I have never in my life gone really hungry. Yes, I get a bit peckish if I haven’t had enough breakfast, but I have never known real hunger or real poverty. I have also never been without SOMEWHERE to live even though I have never owned property, and throughout my life I’ve had access to clean safe water, basic medical care, and many other such creature comforts.

4. Life has certainly thrown a few trials at me: mental illness, infertility, financial difficulties, and, at one time, an abusive boyfriend, to name a few of them. However, I’ve always been lucky enough to have family and good friends around me to pick up the pieces, by offering either practical help or emotional support.

5. I also count myself lucky in that I can derive huge pleasure from music, intellectual work, reading, art, food, and other such pursuits. I feel lucky both that most of the time I have the mental capacity to enjoy those things (I know what it is like to be without them when I am severely depressed), fully functioning senses with which to enjoy them, and that I live in a world where they are freely available to me.

6. I am very lucky to have a husband who adores me and puts me at the centre of his world. Many people never find such a person, and not for want of trying. As a couple we are also lucky that our parents were all happy about our choices of partner, and that we have not had to cope with either cultural or religious issues within our marriage. Furthermore, when we do encounter difficulties in life, we seem to manage to cope much better as a couple than either of us did before we were together.

So, those are just some of the reasons why I am lucky. All of those pieces of luck were happy accidents, things that I did not “make” for myself. I just got lucky. I’m not saying that life is all about sitting and waiting for happy accidents to happen – I certainly do believe that putting some effort into life can often reap very great rewards and that being able to take advantage of opportunities when they arise is fabulous. However, as I define the word, “luck” is the one thing that cannot be made. To me, luck is the hand that is dealt by life. The bit that can be “made” is the way that hand is played!

On Simplifying Goals

2009-08-20T11:30:00.005+01:00

I love lists. I love making lists; I love organizing lists; I love making lists of lists. In fact, I can spend so much time making lists and setting goals that I actually run out of time to DO anything. Although sometimes my goal-setting and list-making is really useful and productive, sometimes it turns into the most massive procrastination exercise ever!

Most months I make a list of goals I hope to achieve, and a little chart with boxes to colour in when I have achieved those goals (yes, I like colouring in little boxes in felt-tipped pen, so that’s what I do – I am still motivated by stickers and colouring books even though I left primary school decades ago).

However, the goal-setting has recently reached a point where it is totally unmanageable. I cannot walk daily, go to the gym, swim, do yoga, mend all the ailing clothes, figure out what a possible future career could be, read all the books on my list, do every question on my maths course, learn French, Polish, Finnish (and a whole host of other languages), learn bass guitar, improve my piano playing, practice my viola regularly, organize the house, read all the blogs I want to read, file the zillions of e-mails that seem to appear, write my own blog posts, set up databases for all my correspondence, etc. etc. etc. while still going to work, maintaining my (slightly dodgy at the moment) mental health and doing all the normal things that a human being has to do in the course of daily life.

Furthermore, I have reached the point where I’m spending more time colouring in little squares on my progress chart than I am doing the things I’m charting!

So, this week, I simplified my list. I filed all the complicated charts away neatly in a nice stripey ringbinder and have stuck my new, streamlined, list on the wall above my desk. It reads:

Maths

Viola

Yoga

Admin

That’s it! Just four little words, rather than a whole page of text referring to hours spent, lengths swum, words learnt, e-mails sorted and so on. So, for the next couple of months I shall try, each day, to concentrate on these four things only.

Maths will probably be quite easy, since I have an exam to work for in approximately 2 months time. Instead of my usual “panic as the assignment becomes due” way of working, I shall try to work daily on my two remaining assignments and exam revision. I shall also keep reminding myself that it is more important to do some work than to do all work perfectly. A maths degree with a 2:1 result is much better than a maths degree I have abandoned because I’m not 100% confident I shall get a First!

Viola will also, I suspect, not be too difficult. I am currently working on several new pieces and also revising some old favourites, so I feel quite motivated in the viola direction at the moment. Fortunately, I also play the viola well enough that I can get satisfaction from playing it quite quickly – unlike the piano, which constantly frustrates me because I am such a poor pianist.

Yoga will, I suspect, be the most difficult, but probably the most “good for me”. I used to practice regularly and liked very much being able to stand on my head and touch my toes (neither of which I can currently do). I never reached the “putting my left leg behind my right ear while chanting ‘om’” stage, and don’t anticipate being able ever to do so, but it would be quite nice to be a bit bendier again!

Admin will probably be the easiest of all, since I have a reasonably good system set up. I shall focus on the day-to-day admin tasks rather than getting sidetracked into building elaborate databases and spreadsheets – that sort of thing can wait until after the maths exam!

So there we are. Simplified goals with a simplified colouring-in chart to match. Just three boxes per day: maths, viola and yoga (admin is its own box). The colouring in will be quicker, I shall (maybe) be less distracted by other things if I focus on these four, and I might actually make some significant progress towards my long-term goals over the next couple of months!

Of course, if I fail, then I will have failed at only four things, unlike the twenty or so on the previous lists! That, in itself, will surely be a success!

I think the glass must be half-full this morning!

On Getting A Bit Muddy

2009-08-14T20:39:00.002+01:00

In a recent article, the Wonderspouse described how, as a result of reading a second-hand newspaper, we became fans of The Boxer Rebellion, a rather fabulous indie band and their amazing music. Most of the time, being a Boxer Rebellion fan is not especially difficult: downloading albums and listening to them involves spending a small amount of money and a large amount of time; and travelling to gigs, buying merchandise, chatting to the band, and having an AWESOME and BRILLIANT time involves a slightly larger financial outlay and a little bit of driving. However, just over a week ago, being Boxer Rebellion fans led the Wonderspouse and me into an entirely new, and much muddier, world.

Like every good fan, I like to follow the band on twitter and facebook and check out their website from time to time in order to see what they’re up to at the moment. A while ago I noticed that they were playing at a festival in Derbyshire called Y-Not, and, since we were getting Boxer Rebellion withdrawal symptoms, having had a whole month pass without seeing them live, I booked us a couple of day tickets for the Saturday. Day tickets are wonderful things for those of us who are not into camping!

When Saturday morning dawned, we became even more certain we weren’t into camping. We headed up the M1 into torrential rain, which, admittedly, eased as we arrived at the site. However, it was replaced by a soupy mist, almost concealing the entire festival. The car park didn’t look very inviting either, but, when we said we weren’t staying overnight, we were directed to a small bit of road by a hedge, which was a relief.

And then the mud began. Because of an absence of wellies in our lives (did I mention that we’re really NOT outdoor people?), we were wearing very old shoes, which instantly became saturated with mud. We slithered into the main festival site, where we collected programmes and t-shirts, before peering through the mist to see what might be going on.

By this point I was experiencing quite severe culture shock and wasn’t terribly sure what to do with myself. So, for an hour or so we wandered between the main stage and the acoustic tent (partly dependent upon which band was playing and partly upon the intensity of the rain). On the stage we heard SOS, Zambula (whose African sound and cheer were in stark contrast to the surroundings), and The Moutown Project, and in the tent we listened to Rugosa Nevada (who we really enjoyed and are delighted to have discovered), Cara Roxanne (charming, with beautiful guitars) and This Town Needs Guns. Rather charmingly, a man in a kilt came on between sets, provided friendly banter and encouraged us all to take care of each other since it was a bit slippy outside!!

At some point we took a short break to eat jacket potato (me) and burger with chips (him). I bought a warm hat and the Wonderspouse bought a couple of shirts from one of the stalls, and it was at this point that we ended up in the tent described in my previous blog post. We also had our photo taken, and the girl with the guillotine made it into a keyring for us. Then we did a trial run of our walk back to the car (in preparation for making the same trip in the dark later) leaving our t-shirts in the boot, and called my Mum (at whose house we were staying that night) to warn her that we were a little bit muddy and she should leave us a towel on the doormat!

We were back in front of the main stage in order to see first Max Raptor (who were really cool), Tellison and then Esser. I’d already become interested in Esser after checking out the myspace site, but was totally unprepared for the impromptu entertainments during the set.

First, there was the fancy dress. The festival had a nautical fancy dress theme, so there were many people dressed as boats, sailors, jellyfish and the like. There was also a lovely couple who had come as “Port” and “Starboard”: she was wearing a dress with a bottle of Taylor’s on it, and he had a cork noticeboard with sparkly stars on it hanging round his neck!

Then there was the mud. There had already been a lot of mudsliding going on, but by the time of Esser’s set it had turned into full-scale mud wrestling. (Ben) Esser, who had stepped off his tour bus about 15 minutes prior to appearing on stage went through a brief period of the same sort of culture shock that I had experienced earlier in the day before incorporating the whole thing into his set, commentating on the man trying to have his wicked way with a giant, mud covered, inflatable whale, and urging a group of gents dressed in immaculate white sailor uniforms (how DID they stay so white for so long?) to wrestle with a completely mud-covered man wearing the remains of a cocktail dress!

In addition to the commentary, Esser gave us a brilliant set, which I very much enjoyed. The next set, by the Bombay Bicycle Club, was also fabulous – I would have danced joyously to both sets if I hadn’t been standing up to my ankles in mud!

The period between those two sets took on a slightly surreal air. The night was cooling, and many had, by this time, lost their clothes. An extremely drunken young man ambled aimlessly around, shivering a little and wearing only boxer shorts and a plastic bag, before staggering off to meet his comrades. Another was going round trying to hug anyone and everyone while his (much more sober) mate ran after him shouting “Josh, Josh, don’t do it! He’s a stranger and he might not want to get muddy!” At this point we decided a little supper was in order so went off to discover some sausage and chips (both of us). I was quite impressed with the standard of the ketchup!!

Then, as darkness fell, the star attraction (with apologies to Noah & The Whale) arrived on stage. Just before the set began we bumped into a man who also unzipped his coat to reveal a Boxer Rebellion t-shirt!! The fans were there! Like us, he’d been at Scala, and his female companion had come over from Germany for the festival. We suddenly felt very at home.

As “Flashing Red Light Means Go” started up, I forgot the mud, the cold, the state of my feet and knew that it had all been well worth it. By the time Todd started the fabulous guitar part of “Semi-Automatic” I was totally lost to the world of mud and instead tuned my ears into the 3-bar structure of the riff. The familiar sounds, the magic combination of the four of them, just BRILLIANT!

After the set, which, for us, WAS the headline, we chatted again with our fellow fans before they headed off to find a tractor to tow them out of the car park. We moved away from the stage up the hill and stayed just long enough to hear the opening of Noah & The Whale’s set – I might have stayed longer, but we were ready to get going by that time. The set was clearly audible as we walked back to the car to start the journey back to my Mum’s house (where the hall was lined with newspapers in anticipation of the mud we would bring, and a bubble bath had already been run for us – thanks Mum!!).

So, that was how we got a bit muddy! We’ve now lived the festival mud experience and survived to tell the tale!! Furthermore, Y-Not turned out to be a great festival overall: really friendly with some fabulous bands. We’ve booked to see The Boxer Rebellion again – but I’ve researched the venues thoroughly and I don’t think either of them is likely to be muddy! Only two more things remain to be said. One is that the Wonderspouse has written up his own account of the day – shorter and more amusing than this one – you can find it here! The other is that although while we slept that night the washing fairy sorted out our muddy clothes, it took 3 days and a lot of scraping to remove the last remnants of Derbyshire field from under my toenails, and both pairs of shoes were declared beyond help, having met a noble end in the name of excellent music!!!

On A Bizarre Situation

2009-08-10T18:43:00.000+01:00

I gratefully squelched into the largish tent. Absolutely everything was damp and steamy, and the atmosphere smelled strongly of straw. As I leaned against the metal bar in front of me, I took in my surroundings.

To my left, a man dressed as a giant banana was dancing enthusiastically to an African drumbeat performed by a group in colourful clothing. To my right, an assorted group of very muddy people were taking part in a “circus skills” workshop, hula-hooping, juggling and doing things with sticks. Straight ahead, a girl was tapping away at a laptop and using her sweater to wipe mud and condensation off a guillotine.

To be quite honest, if I had read those words two weeks ago I would have imagined they were describing a dream caused by a severe overdose of Cheddar, Stilton and Brie. However, no amount of pinching would have woken me up – this was real!

So, how did I find myself in this somewhat bizarre situation?

All will be revealed in the next blog post! Watch this space!

On Bedspreads and Whizzers

2009-08-06T10:39:00.003+01:00

As those of you who read the last post will know, this week it has been our seventh Wedding Anniversary, so I thought you might bear just a little more blogging on the subject of marriage (it is in the subtitle after all). This year my Mum gave us the most marvellous present – a bedspread she had handmade for us, using fabric left over from making my wedding dress and the dresses of my six bridesmaids – so, seven colours in all. Here is the bedspread, installed and looking very splendid!

However, as most of you reading this won’t actually have been at the wedding since I didn’t even know many of you back then, I thought I’d fill in just a little background for you. What follows is an edited extract from an article I wrote for our wedding brochure.

*******

“Oh, how marvellous, a rainbow wedding!” exclaimed one of the guests when I told her what my wedding colour scheme was going to be. Indeed, the colours you see before you are the colours of the rainbow (as close as I could get them in readily available fabrics and ribbons), but my reasons for choosing these colours go beyond simply wishing to create a joyful and flamboyant effect with lots of bridesmaids!

First, red is not the traditional colour for a wedding dress. However, I have never even considered getting married wearing white (or ivory or cream or magnolia etc). Those of you who know me well know that I have always loved red, that I feel comfortable wearing red, and that red is the typical ‘Me’ colour. Furthermore, a red dress is infinitely more practical than a white one – it will cope with beer, red wine and general grubbiness much better and, once the train and sleeves are removed, will be a super concert dress and ball gown for many years to come.

Red is also the colour of the ruby in my engagement ring. Just as I was always going to have a red wedding dress, so I was also going to have a ruby engagement ring (the ruby in this case is flanked by two diamonds). Ruby is also my birthstone.

Furthermore, I have always loved the different colours of the spectrum (the rainbow) and spent many hours as a child colouring in rainbow patterns and making ‘whizzers’. Whizzers were discs of card, divided up like a pie, with each slice coloured in a different colour of the rainbow. When they were spun very fast on a piece of string, they looked (almost) white. Amazing!!!

The mystery of how whizzers worked was solved when I did O-level physics. I learnt how a glass prism splits white light into its constituent colours (in just the same way as rain splits up sunlight to make a rainbow). The different colours that make up white light are refracted (bent) to different extents as they pass from air to glass (or air to water). Incidentally, if you ever need to know which end of the spectrum is refracted most on passing from one medium to another, remember: ‘red refracts rubbish’ and ‘blue bends best’!

So my second reason for the colour scheme comes from my interest in the colours of the spectrum. Although my dress is red, my bridesmaids are wearing the other colours of the rainbow. If we could be made into a ‘whizzer’ we would indeed create traditional wedding white!

*******

And here we all are, not being whizzed round (thank goodness) but posing for a photograph!

On Potted Meat

2009-08-03T14:23:00.004+01:00

Yesterday there was a lovely aroma penetrating our house all afternoon. It was the deliciously tasty aroma of meat cooking. Not only were we roasting a joint of lamb for supper (well, when I say “we” I mean the Wonderspouse – I don’t really cook), but the Anniversary Potted Meat was simmering away on the stove.

Today is our seventh Wedding Anniversary! Seven years ago about now, I was watching my newly-married Husband and my Mother throwing bits of salmon across the marquee so that the ever-social Ivory, who joined in happily with our wedding celebrations, could have a snack. I, meanwhile, kept sneaking off, borrowing my viola player’s instrument and joining in with the general chamber music going on in the corner. It was definitely a day to remember – and one day I’ll get round to writing a full blog post about it! For the time being, here is a picture of us with Ivory:

So, why do we have Anniversary Potted Meat? And more to the point, why do we always eat Potted Meat for BREAKFAST on our Wedding Anniversary?

Well, this most unusual tradition really started with a very usual tradition – the one that says that it’s bad luck for the groom and bride to meet on the morning of their wedding (or something like that). Our wedding was a sort of semi-traditional one and this was one of the traditions to which we stuck.

However, since neither of us had any beliefs that precluded it, and since we were way too broke to pay two lots of rent simultaneously, we had been living together for several months before our wedding since the leases on our previous flats had expired. And we rather liked it. In fact, we so liked waking up and having morning tea & coffee together that we really weren’t looking forward to the wedding morning terribly much. He would be in a budget hotel on the outskirts of Doncaster on his own and I would be dealing with hordes of relatives & bridesmaids, having spent the night on the sofabed in my Dad’s study.

So we decided to do something about it. If we couldn’t have breakfast together, we would at least have the same breakfast at the same time, and imagine we were together. After a fairly short discussion, we decided upon Potted Meat, partly because it’s absolutely delicious, but mainly because it was portable, kept well for a while out of the fridge, and was something a little bit different and special.

The Wonderspouse-to-be made one batch of Potted Meat, divided it into two, and we had a jar each. We also bought a few bread rolls and divided them into two batches, then set off for Doncaster (my hometown, where we got married). We then parted, having set a time for breakfast the next morning.

And the next morning, at the appointed hour, in the midst of bridesmaids, relatives and goodness-knows-what-else going on, I sat down with a slightly squashed bread roll and a jar of potted meat and proceeded to eat my last breakfast as a single girl. Delicious it was too, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Granted, two out of my six bridesmaids were vegetarian and couldn’t quite believe what I was up to. My Mum worried that eating such a breakfast on the morning of my wedding would “make me poorly”. But, oblivious to all of this, I sat, probably the calmest person in the room, eating my Potted Meat, knowing that the nearly-Wonderspouse would be doing the same.

Needless to say, it didn’t make me ill, and I was, in fact, grateful to have had a substantial breakfast, especially as we later had to stand and smile for photographs so had limited opportunity to get our hands on the nibbles our guests were enjoying.

So, every year, on our Wedding Anniversary, we have Potted Meat. He makes it, to the same, now traditional, recipe, and we eat it for breakfast. That is how we celebrate our Anniversary - no cards, no flowers, but, for us, the most romantic breakfast we could possibly imagine! Here is the recipe, in the Wonderspouse’s own words, followed by some pictures of this year’s batch in its various stages of preparation and eating!

In a saucepan, fry smoked bacon in duck fat until crispy, then add diced beef, crushed juniper berries and a bay leaf. Put the lid on the saucepan and leave for about two and a half hours, after which time the juices from the meat will have reabsorbed. At this stage, take out the bay leaves and crush the meat with a wooden spoon until the fibres pull apart. Add a small amount of high quality homemade stock every half hour for the next hour and a half, then leave for a final half hour until the filaments of meat are moist but not swimming in liquid. At this stage, transfer the contents to a jar and leave to cool.

Happy Anniversary Wonderspouse, and thank you for all the Potted Meat!!

On Bunfighting and Netiquette

2009-07-29T18:56:00.004+01:00

In On Being A Bit Too Busy, I explained that I would be short of time for blogging this week. However, I'm lucky enough to have a fabulous husband, The Wonderspouse (also known as @agnieszkasshoes), who has written a blog post for me and is therefore the first guest blogger I've had on my site. I've read his post several times, and, being a girl of relatively simple mind, am still not 100% sure what it's all about. Maybe my unwillingness to throw buns renders me a little confused about the whole business? However, I am extremely grateful to him for writing it, and I hope you will enjoy it!

*******

I would very much like to express my sincerest thanks to ViolaMaths for allowing me a little guest blogging. But as I’ve been given a strict 750 word limit, I’m afraid I don’t have the space. Nor will I abuse netiquette by plugging either my new book, my writers’ collective, the article I’ve had published in a music journal today, or my Indie download festival.

I’m regularly to be heard in the less salubrious salons of the interweb shouting “bunfight” over the general melee. Those who look up from their beer, downloads, or porn either come along to watch or ask “What on earth’s a bunfight?” Well, this seems like a perfect place to explain. So, without further ado, an insight into a rather odd English custom, and a couple of associated musings on netiquette and trolls.

I was at one of the less progressive Higher Education Institutions in the UK, where I met ViolaMaths. The very same LPHEI, in fact, where a certain bespectacled wizard gets his five a day. Whilst dinners weren’t accompanied by a nearly headless ghost, they were accompanied by bread rolls. Along with an injunction not to begin eating said bread rolls before Latin grace (which always seemed to be late). On pain of death by lamprey or something.

There were three strategies for dealing with the bread roll conundrum. The first was the surreptitious nibble. Then there was the butter-sculpting, warming the little foil packs of butter until it squirted out from the folds at either end and landed on your seat. Far and away the most fun, though, was the Bunfight (I guess “rollfight” just doesn’t sound right). A Bunfight isn’t the Bugsy Malone of a full-on foodfight. It’s more subtle, more gentle, less damaging to the dry-cleaning bill. It involves surreptitious lobbing from a hand position below the edge of the table at trajectories designed to bamboozle any attempt to hunt down the offender, and scarcely results in injuries more severe than a case of crumbs on the collar that could be mistaken for a bad case of dandruff.

All of which sounds rather Jennings and Darbishire, but actually makes sense of my Interwebby clarion call.

I love a good online debate. No, I’m like Pete Doherty in a poppyfield at the thought of a bit of contentious banter. So when I read a tweet about a blog post on the future of publishing, or the state of the modern novel, or the morality of chaptelising Sauternes pudding wine, I’m over at the speed of a click (which isn’t actually very quick on our connection, but you get the point).

As I said, I love a good debate. A bunfight that’s full of skill and bamboozlement, with a whiff of the anti-establishment and a clearly defined sense of rules. Something you come away from, laughing with your opposition and sporting only a few crumbs on your clothes.

Unfortunately there are those out there who mistake a bunfight for the full pie and mash up. Who are out to prove their point and belittle their opposition, to besmear them with gravy and ketchup and send them packing to their parents to explain. It’s a fine line to draw between a bunfight and a foodfight, and the Internet is a very hard place to draw it. Forum and blog discussions have a rhythm, a (to mix musical metaphors) sense of crescendo. They get us worked up. We’re not satisfied with throwing a bun; we want to throw the butter; and fling a bit of soup, and before we know it the house port is winging its way across the dining room like a beer glass in a moshpit.

This never happened with real-life bunfights. Before anything escalated someone would eventually get up and say grace, the tension would lift, the flour would settle to the floor, and we’d get on with the important business of eating. Which I think is such a perfect metaphor I don’t need to spell it out.

I come across a lot of people during bunfights. We exchange opinions that vary from forthright to downright gobby. But all of the people I’ve crossed swords with have gone on to become at the least nodding acquaintances in the land of the literary blog, and in some cases good friends who allow me to guest blog.

There endeth the parable for today. A bunfight is a wonderful thing, and an arena for the making of excellent friends, but it should never be allowed to become a foodfight, which is a very bad thing; and a terrible waste of food.

On Being A Bit Too Busy

2009-07-27T08:08:00.004+01:00

When I started this blog it was my intention to post once a week. However, I seem to have fallen into a twice weekly pattern, posting a "main blog" midweek (usually Wednesday or Thursday) and a shorter post sometime around the weekend. Maybe some of you have become accustomed to these "slightly more frequent than originally intended" posts, so here I am.

However, I'm really rather busy at the moment. Having been out of circulation being "a bit bonkers" recently (check out the blog post "On Being a Bit Bonkers" if you're a new blog reader - all will be explained), I'm now in a race to catch up on everything I should have been doing during the last couple of months.

Last week I got over the "going back to work after a month off" hurdle, and I'm now frantically trying to submit as much of my long-overdue maths assignment as I can. Furthermore, the co-author of the textbook on which I'm working elected not to ask for an extension from the publishers, so, in between going back to work and doing a week's worth of OU work each day, I'm also trying to read and correct the (almost finished) manuscript before it goes in the post at the end of the week. Hmmm!

I'm also dreaming of viola practice (Morton Feldman's "The Viola in My Life" is calling to me), piano practice (and calling the piano tuner) and bass practice (my fingers will never toughen up if I don't practice), not to mention the fact that the car has to go in for its MOT this week, which is likely to hit both my schedule and my wallet much too hard. Ow!

So, blogging is going to have to take a back seat in my life temporarily (and I'm not going to think about the contents of the last two paragraphs - it's simply too frightening). However, there will be a midweek post this week. It'll probably go up on Thursday. I don't yet know what it will be about, so watch this space!!

In the meantime, I realise that Music and Maths have featured in this blog, but the Moggies haven't really stuck their exceptionally curious noses in for a sniff yet. So, as a gentle introduction to our little feline family, here's a picture of them at their quietest and most well-behaved:

Right, back to work now! Maybe one day life will return to normal, whatever normal may be! Do let me know if you find out!

On Delta-Winged Beauty

2009-07-23T10:18:00.009+01:00

During the late 1970s, my Dad used to take me and my little brother to RAF Finningley to see the Air Display. We lived within fairly comfortable walking distance of the airbase, so it was an easy day out. I don’t remember a huge amount about the planes we saw, or what really went on – I was quite young at the time. However, I do have two very vivid memories from that time. One was owning a polystyrene Boeing 747 which didn’t fly very well, and the other was hearing a very particular noise coming from a very large triangular-shaped aeroplane. That plane was, of course, the Avro Vulcan and I loved it!

By 1982 I was a bit more aware of the world around me and was starting to take an interest in news and current affairs. I was also still interested in aeroplanes. I distinctly remember the morning that my Mum came into my bedroom, woke me up and told me that we were now at war. The Falklands conflict had been building for weeks and I was just old enough to be fascinated by what was going on. The notion of “war” was also something rather new to me – all I had previously known was that it mostly involved powdered egg, Anderson shelters, and blowing up German dams.

So I followed this new war to see what would happen. The eggs remained resolutely normal, but there was a lot of talk on the news of other exotic sounding things. Brian Hanrahan counted Harrier Jump Jets, Mrs Thatcher made a lot of fuss about sinking The General Belgrano, and I discovered there was an island in the middle of the Atlantic which had an airport called Wideawake (which I thought was a rather nice name). I also remember that they bombed the airport at Port Stanley – and the plane they used was the amazing delta-winged Vulcan that I loved seeing so much at the airshows! I was impressed!

A few years later I became a teenager, stopped going to airshows with my Dad, and didn’t take so much notice of aeroplanes.

I started to get seriously interested in them again when I first went in one. When I was in the sixth form my parents agreed to let me go on a school trip to Russia if I saved up half the money from my Saturday job. So it was that at age 17 I boarded an Aeroflot jet bound for Leningrad and flew for the very first time. AND IT WAS MAGICAL! I had always loved looking up at clouds, and now they were below me. WOW!

Fast forward a few more years, and I made a new friend. He too was passionate about aeroplanes and we started to go to the Royal International Air Tattoo together, which took me right back to my youth. However, by this time, there were no Vulcans. Admittedly, the B1Bs and the BBMF Lancaster were pretty cool (it’s always the bombers I love the most), but sadly the Vulcans were no longer around, having done their last displays in the early 1990s.

One year my friend bought me a trial flying lesson for my birthday – one of the best birthday presents I’ve ever had. He even got me the deluxe version, which included aerobatics – barrel rolls, aileron rolls, inside loops, and several others. I became even more keen on planes!

He also bought me an Airfix kit so I could build a model Vulcan. Inevitably I chose a bomber, and of all the bombers available I selected the wonderful plane from my youth. I bought all the paints and bits needed to complete the model, but, as these things do, it sat in my wardrobe and gathered dust for several years.

I did eventually start building though. About half-way through construction something else happened; Rowland White’s book Vulcan 607 was published. It was, of course, a must-read for me, and I dropped everything and read it avidly. There’s no doubt that it’s a great story, and greater because it’s true. However, given that I half-remembered some bits of it from my youth, was already a big fan of the Vulcan, and was in the middle of building a model Vulcan it resonated even more strongly. The characters in the book, all real people, instantly became heroes of mine, especially the captain of XM607: Flt Lt Martin Withers. Who could fail to be mesmerized by someone who had flown a Vulcan through the Grand Canyon on his way to Red Flag?

After reading the book, I hastily went to the model shop to buy dark sea grey paint in order to camouflage my model for stormy South Atlantic skies. Here is my finished model, and a view of the grey underside:

But while I was building a 1:72 model, some much more dedicated and much more skilled people were working on restoring the real thing. I had previously seen their stands at RIAT, bought their merchandise, and given small amounts of money to the cause. Here is the “nose” which appeared at Cottesmore in 2001:

I can’t remember when I started seriously believing that they would do it and that a Vulcan would fly again. I started to follow progress avidly from around 2005, first on the news and then on the internet. The whole story is much too long and much too full of twists and turns to describe here, but if you want to find out more, a short history can be found by clicking here!

My personal part of the story continues on 18th October 2007, when the restored Vulcan XH558 made her first flight. I watched, spellbound, on the television, and hoped that she would be at Fairford for RIAT 2008. However, RIAT 2008 was not to be. Torrential rain in the days leading up to the show forced the cancellation of the whole show (scroll to the bottom of the link). My friend and I consulted our diaries and looked at the flying schedule for the Vulcan. We couldn’t make anything fit. Work commitments, family commitments, pre-booked holidays. Sadness & disappointment ensued and I tried very hard NOT to think about Vulcans.

Maybe 2009 would be better? By February it didn’t appear so. The Vulcan to the Sky website posted grim news, and my hopes of ever seeing a Vulcan fly again plummeted. Nevertheless, RIAT 2009 remained on the calendar – the airshow would still be fun without a Vulcan wouldn’t it?

After spending a week nervously watching the weather, I got up at 5.15 on Saturday morning and set off to collect my friend and head to Fairford. The sun was out, the sky was cloudy, but not excessively so, the queues were not too severe that early in the morning.

I had also been following @XH558 on Twitter all week so knew she had arrived at Fairford. She was the first plane we saw as we drove in to the car park. Looking GOOD! Vulcan village was in full swing, so I bought a bag full of Vulcan merchandise. We then went over to admire XH558 in all her beauty:

Having parked ourselves at the “right hand” end of the runway, nearest to XH558, we settled down to enjoy the flying displays. Then, mid-afternoon, we heard a familiar engine noise just behind us. Abandoning our stuff we headed over to watch. Lights were on, chocks were being removed. Then she started to taxi. The crowd broke into spontaneous applause, and we hurried back to our spot by the runway. Here she is, firing up for take-off:

Already trembling with excitement as she left the ground, I was thrilled to hear that Martin Withers was at the controls. How much more exciting could this get? I tried VERY hard to concentrate on whatever else was flying while XH558 headed for Cosford to do a fly past, before returning to display for us. And what a display it was. Throttling up to full power so we could hear the might of the engines, opening bomb doors, banking and turning, and looking SO beautiful, silhouetted against the grey clouds:

Then she came in to land. A majestic sight, airbrakes deployed. Just stunning! More applause from the crowd.

As she taxied back to her own special “parking spot”, all eyes continued to focus on her, even though another display had just started. She is such a beautiful and mesmerizing aeroplane.

Before we started heading for home we went over to take one last look at XH558, now fully parked up again. As we approached, I saw that the crew were there, and were signing autographs. And there was Martin Withers!! Somewhat starstruck, I approached him, told him he was my hero, and he signed my programme! Perfect end to a perfect day. WOW!

All that remains to say is thank you so much for reading another lengthy blog post. If you can bear just one more Vulcan picture, here is one that one of my wonderful tweeps @pbiggs sent to me of XH558 leading a B52 down Fairford’s runway on the Sunday:

And, from me, a BIG thank you to everyone at Vulcan To The Sky. Your hard work and dedication through difficulties and terrible funding problems is so very much appreciated. The Vulcan may initially have been created as an instrument of war, but it now represents, to me, a supreme human achievement. It is also an exceptionally beautiful aeroplane.

On Being A Bit Too Tired

2009-07-19T16:18:00.003+01:00

Today I am a bit too tired to write a proper blog post. My face is also somewhat sunburnt! Those of you who follow me on twitter will know why.

However, I thought I should put something up today, as the blog was crying to me and telling me that it was hungry.

So here are a few multifarious miscellanies for you:

1. My Guitars

2. My Best Shoes

3. Sherry Barrels in Jerez

4. Nicely Ordered Bubbles in the Sink

5. A Glass of Beer on a Window Frame

If I get enough sleep in the meantime, then the next blog post will elaborate on the reasons for my tired & sunburnt state!

On The Maths Bit

2009-07-15T12:09:00.003+01:00

Why does the title of this blog contain the word “Maths”? And why am I known as “ViolaMaths”? The start of my long and friendly association with the viola was discussed in a previous blog post. Now it is time to explain the maths bit.

At the end of my last blog post I was snuggling up with a “substantial prospectus” in the hope that I might find something interesting to do with my time. That prospectus was the Open University’s undergraduate prospectus. I had decided, in typically ambitious fashion, that rather than spending a few evenings learning how to make pots I would do another degree – it would be easier because I’d be able to study at home! Yes, it would be more expensive than making pots, but we could always ditch our annual holiday & spend the money on coursebooks instead!!

When I ordered the prospectus I had no idea what degree that would be. I had studied with the Open University before, but never actually managed to complete a qualification. I started a psychology degree in an attempt to find out what made humans behave as they did (following a particularly nasty break-up with a boyfriend who hit me). However, I eventually ended up doing a course on mental health difficulties while I was having a breakdown, and then one on child development while discovering I was infertile! This was all a bit too painful & close to home.

Short courses in planetary science and oceanography followed. Then I did a couple of courses in geology, one of which I had to abandon because of illness. I couldn’t quite see where to go next, so my OU study ceased.

So, I sat with the prospectus and contemplated my brand new start. I would forget about all my previous courses, read through all the degree descriptions, and simply pick the one that I felt most drawn to, that sounded the most interesting, and that I felt most excited about.

Going entirely with my instincts, I decided to do a Maths degree!!!

Was this an obvious choice for me? In some ways it wasn’t – my previous degrees were both in music and I spent my years at college labelled as an “arts” student. On the other hand, before I became a musician I had spent a year as an undergraduate chemistry student, having taken A-levels in maths, further maths, physics and chemistry.

Despite the A-levels, my school maths career was somewhat patchy – I spent far too much time playing music to take anything else very seriously. The point at which I started to enjoy school maths came when I moved maths sets prior to taking my O-levels. Just try to imagine, for a moment, a typical maths teacher.Got it? Now imagine the opposite. That’s more like it!

Ms Barker was the first person I had ever met who called herself “Ms”. Typical teaching attire for her included high-heeled pink fluffy shoes and a leather skirt that was not excessively lengthy. She drove a car with extra headlamps, which made it look flashier than other cars. But, more importantly for me, she was also a musician. She’d done a joint degree in maths and music, and played the piano really rather nicely.

Having discovered that you could be a musician AND do maths I became a lot more keen on the subject, which was what eventually led into maths A-levels. However, when I abandoned the chemistry degree after 1 year in order to study music, that was it as far as maths was concerned. For 20 years I used the maths I had learnt only to keep track of my overdraft accurately and to analyse the results of our experiments on psychology summer school.

And then I started my degree. So far, I have LOVED it, and it has been a very fine choice indeed. I’ll describe exactly what I’ve been up to and talk about maths itself in a future post. I’ve discovered that the bits I like best (so far) are the pure maths bits, that simply require lots and lots of thinking, (unlike psychology, maths doesn’t get personal with me!). I’m now nearly one-third of the way through my degree (since I’m studying part-time it will take a total of 6 years to complete my BSc, so it’s a long-term project). I’ve also, finally, obtained an Open University qualification – at the end of last year I got my Cert Maths (Open). Yippeee!!!

On Not Making Pots

2009-07-12T18:14:00.003+01:00

At school we had one term in art that I really enjoyed. I wasn’t very good at art (as those of you who saw my somewhat basic felt-pen creation in a recent post have probably surmised), and most art lessons at school left me somewhat underwhelmed, but I really liked working with clay!

I’m particularly fascinated by the potter’s wheel, and one day I hope that I might have a go on one and make fabulous pots, bowls, and even, maybe a mug - I have a bit of a thing about mugs! Here’s a picture of my newest mug:

One evening, a year or so ago, I got home and picked up the usual pile of junk mail from the doormat. In among the offers of double glazing, bargain hearing aid brochures for the over-50s, and invitations to apply for credit cards with outrageous interest rates there was a prospectus for the local adult education service, which listed all the evening classes available within driving distance of my home.

Glancing through the prospectus I toyed with the idea of going to beginners Arabic classes, thought it might be jolly to learn how to ballroom dance properly, decided that I probably didn’t need the introduction to computing lessons, observed that I was too young to attend yoga for senior citizens, and eventually decided that it would be really cool to go to pottery classes and learn how to make pots.

At the time I was feeling quite lively and up for a new challenge. My part-time job was not taking up all my time, I had come to a bit of a dead end with music practice and my quest to play regularly, and I was watching way too much television, so an evening class seemed like a really good idea.

However, on reflection, the pottery classes started to present problems. When the prospectus arrived it was summer – how would I feel about driving 25 miles to go to a 1 hour class on a dark November evening? Hmm! Also, I thought about the other people who would be likely to do pottery classes in my part of the world. The Wonderspouse and I guessed they might well be ladies of a certain age, who might spend a lot of time in between the pot-making talking of their children & grandchildren and discussing the finer points of cake making. These, and other similar topics, are not ones that I can run with, being childless and of a slightly blokey disposition in the cake-making department (the way I get a cake made is to ask my Mum or my spouse).

So it was decided that it would be a bad idea for me to enroll on the pottery course. I decided that the time to learn to make pots would come when I was a wealthy old lady in a stately home and I could buy my own wheel and kiln and employ a beautifully constructed young man to teach me to make the finest pots. If I was lucky he’d also be good in the garden and could do the lawns while he was around!!!

But that still left me with a problem. I still needed to LEARN something. I still needed something to get my teeth into, something that would take my mind off simply being a humble admin clerk, something that would excite me, something that would enrich my life, something that would be more satisfying than spending my life watching interminable pun-filled daytime TV about antiques & house renovations.

So I went up to my study, logged onto the internet and ordered a different sort of prospectus, much more substantial than the local adult education one. I then read the prospectus from cover to cover and decided what I was going to do next.

All thoughts of making pots were forgotten as I started something rather different. So far, it has not involved clay!!

On Being a Bit Bonkers

2009-07-08T11:57:00.003+01:00

Those of you who like to read the small print will have noticed the word “Madness” at the beginning of this blog’s subtitle. There’s a reason for this, which is that I am in fact mad (or, if you prefer: nutty, fruit-loop, or maybe a bit bonkers)!

Of course, in these politically correct days I am not called “mad” (even though there have been times in my life when I would not have been out of place in I Puritani). I am labelled as a person with “mental health problems”. In fact, I suffer from Bipolar Disorder (also called Manic Depression), and, technically speaking, I actually have Bipolar II as well as a side order of Anxiety.

So why, at this relatively early stage of my blog, have I chosen to discuss my illness? I think partly because I am currently emerging from yet another depressive episode, and this is some sort of therapy for me, but mainly because my mental health (or lack of it) plays such a big part in my life. It influences almost every aspect of what I do, from how much exercise I take to what I eat and drink. It governs the sort of work I can do and for how many hours I can do it. It interferes with my finances, my living conditions and my relationships with others. And on one occasion (thankfully only one) it nearly cost me my life.

Before you stop reading, I should like say, however, that my life is not about mental illness. I prefer to define myself as a musician, a mathematician, or something else positive. Although posts may mention it from time to time, I have no wish to make my blog into a “mental illness” blog. However, I find concealing the state of my mind requires much greater effort than “going public” about it. Furthermore, I believe it is important that people, like me, who are willing and able, bring these issues into the open and gradually erode the stigmas associated with mental illness. I should also say that I am eternally grateful to both Stephen Fry and Alastair Campbell for their openness about their own conditions – both have helped me greatly!

So, the other thing that has been broken in my life recently has been me. Every so often I get stressed, sometimes for no apparent reason. And sometimes, as happened when the treadmill broke recently (it was really just the last straw), I go over the edge. I cry uncontrollably, I am unable to focus on anything and incapable of making even simple decisions. Work becomes impossible. I feel terribly guilty. Eating normally becomes impossible. My senses go haywire. I shake uncontrollably. My legs HURT. And the world becomes a very frightening place, full of bright lights and loud noises, where even little old ladies with sticks seem to move at the speed of light. It is worse in the mornings. And, as I am now discovering, rather hard to write down in a way that makes any sense.

Maybe it would help to imagine the following: a close relative has just died; you have just run a marathon; you feel horrid drunk and disorientated; you are unable to sleep; you have eaten something that disagrees with you very badly; you have committed a crime; you are wearing a hearing aid with the volume turned up high.

Add all these together and you get something close to how I feel when I’m in the middle of a depressive episode.

Of course, the upside of being bipolar is that I also get manic episodes. These can be enormously exhilarating and fun, and since, technically, my manics are only hypomanics, they’re not usually very damaging. When I am manic I can work extremely hard, see things extremely clearly, and make tremendous plans for a wild, extravagant and fantastic future. I’m not even officially diagnosed as bipolar (although to anyone who knows me, it’s obvious that I am), because it would never occur to me to go to a doctor and say that I’m feeling exceptionally well and productive. Only full-blown dangerous manic episodes generally get as far as a doctor’s surgery, particularly if, like me, you hate “being ill”!

One problem I have with manic episodes is that sometimes other people drive me mad because they go so SLOWLY. Why do they not keep up? Why are they so stupid? (They’re not slow and stupid, of course, I’m just overhyped!). The other, bigger, problem is that I spend money. Money I don’t have. I went through a phase of booking holidays (we visited nearly every country in Europe in about 18 months). I thought nothing of taking a day trip to Geneva just to eat a fondue. I booked us 12 days in Bulgaria on a whim. I tried to learn the language of every country we visited. The list of our travels was huge. The problem – I owed double my annual salary to the credit card companies! Oops!

Then, after a manic, comes the crash. The bills pile up, the euphoria ends, and we’re back to depression again.

So, nearly15 years after I first became ill, how do I manage to hold life together?

Well, first there’s work. I have had two promising careers destroyed by simply being too ill to do them. First, my doctoral research into Mendelssohn’s string quartets, which was tipped to lead into a research fellowship and then an academic career, was brought to a halt by what I now recognize were severe anxiety attacks. Then, several years later a very successful schoolteaching career was chopped off shortly after I became Head of Music in a London comprehensive school as I suffered what is now known as “the big breakdown”. I was incapable of work for nearly a year after that and lived on sick pay, then half pay, then no pay at all. At that point I almost dropped out of life completely. I didn’t wash or dress for weeks and was incapable of leaving my flat. I believe I only survived at that time because of the efforts of family and friends, and because of an excellent psychiatrist and supportive CBT programme.

So now I work part-time in a low-demand office job for which I am embarrassingly overqualified. Luckily my boss and colleagues are brilliant and supportive, the hours are flexible, and so far, I have managed to repair my sickness record and keep the job for nearly 3 years. It was a struggle to get the job – I had about 4 interviews a week for 4 months before I was successful – people do not queue up to employ a mentally disabled person. I was once offered a full-time post, but occupational health wouldn’t clear me to take it up. Furthermore, I am excluded from activities such as Jury Service. In fact, when I was called for service and did some research I found a statistic stating that only 50% of those who had been off work for 6 months or more with mental illness EVER returned to work. I felt quite proud of myself at that point!!

Then there’s money. This is still a problem. When I am manic I spend too much; when I am depressed I am unable to work enough to pay for it! Catch-22! These days I have the Wonderspouse who keeps a close eye on what I am spending and is under instruction to remove credit cards and so on if I start to go mad. However, this is complicated because he does not have credit cards himself – a breakdown before we were married that left him unable to open any post for 6 months destroyed his credit rating and ensures that he uses only cash these days. In fact, he has become something of an expert on the issues surrounding debt and mental health and has become an advisor on the subject; he recently spoke to a committee in the Houses of Parliament about the Final Demand project.

So do I take medication? Not if I can help it. I have taken industrial-strength antidepressants (SSRIs) in the past to help me through depressive episodes. However, these have side effects. Some of the side effects I can live with – I feel sick all the time and I gain 3 stone in weight. Not great, but I can deal with that. What I really hate is the way the drugs make everything go GREY. No black, but no white either. When I am on drugs I listen to Beethoven’s “Harp” Quartet and it means nothing to me. When I am on drugs and a close friend dies, I think “So what?” Those sort of side effects I cannot live with. That, to me, is existence, not life.

Instead I take exercise – lots of it. I walk daily, I swim, I go to the gym. I also take fish oils – I’m not sure whether they really do any good, but they’re not expensive and they probably don’t do any harm. I draw on my CBT experience constantly. I use a lightbox in winter to combat SAD. I make myself rest when I don’t necessarily feel like it. I try to limit any stressful commitments I take on (although I’m not always successful). When I am low I try to keep away from things that upset me as much as possible (children is an obvious one; we spent much of our early marriage in and out of fertility clinics struggling, and failing, to have any children). I am careful about my alcohol intake. I remove things from my to-do lists. I study (very successfully) with the Open University, which improves my self-esteem. These days I can even go to concerts again and, when I’m feeling very good, use public transport – both of which would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Most of all, however, I have a fabulous husband who looks after me in the middle of the night, making me endless cups of tea and keeping me from any harm I might do to myself with alcohol and pills.

So there you have it. I have blogged on being bonkers! I’m afraid I’ve also broken the 750 word limit for this one. I could have stretched it over 2 posts, but, honestly, it’s not the sort of stuff I like to dwell on too much. I’m now recovering from my current depressive episode, getting out into the world as much as possible in order to rebuild my strength (and trying very hard not to feel guilty about doing so), hoping to get back to work soon, hoping to get my head back into all my various projects, and hoping to be back on an even keel for as long as possible. If you’ve read to the end of this post, award yourself a deep breath and a large cup of tea – you deserve it!

On Broken Things

2009-07-04T22:16:00.005+01:00

I feel that a lot of things in my life have been broken recently.

It started with the bath tap. The bit that converted tap to shower had been dodgy for a while, but eventually it gave up all together. Running a bath was impossible without holding the shower head in the bath, and having a shower was impossible without getting our feet splashed with water. Furthermore, the temperature control went completely mad, so the water was either boiling hot or stone cold. It took a month to go through the us-agency-landlord-agency-tradesman-us cycle before we were eventually rewarded with a shiny new bathtap and all was well with the world.

Then, a couple of weeks ago the DVD player in our bedroom packed up, refusing to relinquish a disc containing the Mercury and Venus programmes from a box set of documentaries about Planets. Much angst ensued, and I eventually took the machine to a friend of mine who fiddles about with electronics. It is still in pieces in his workshop and the DVD player that usually lives by the treadmill has been “temporarily” installed in the bedroom.

Then a pot got broken. This is not an unusual event, since we live with 4 boisterous cats. However, as other things have recently been broken too, I thought I would mention it. I glued the pot back together with the Humbrol cement I usually use for making Airfix models of aeroplanes.

Then the bathroom light broke. Clean, relaxed, ready for bed, and feeling moderately calm, I pulled the cord and the whole house was plunged into darkness. This is not particularly unusual – whenever a bulb blows it usually trips the switch. So, clothed only in my “birthday suit” I stumbled down the stairs in the dark to try to restore power. No power came. Back to the bathroom, I pulled the cord again, and then tried again with the trip switch. Yes, power!! Put in new bulb, pull the cord, back into darkness. The result was a sleepless night worrying that our landlord would try to repair the light himself and get electrocuted. In the event, the letting agents called an electrician, who confirmed that the light fitting was broken and put in a new one, leaving only a pile of rubble on the bathroom floor for me to clean up.

Then the treadmill broke. The next blog post will describe what effect this had on me. Unfortunately, it is 6 months out of warranty, and the manufacturers and treadmill-service people inform me that it will cost £250 minimum to get it fixed. As I don’t happen to have £250 lying around, the treadmill remains broken. Maybe my electronic-fiddling friend can fix it? Maybe we will have to abandon it and eventually haul it out to the garage to join all the other junk that has accumulated in there. I am refusing to think about it for now.

Then my watch battery ran out. This may not seem very serious, but I struggle badly without my watch. I had my last watch for 25 years, and getting a new one was a big step for me. I would sooner leave the house without my trousers than without my watch, and I have absolutely no sense of time without it. The house is full of clocks, and without them I feel disorientated and rather lost. On opening the back of my watch, my friend and I discovered it was rather complicated inside. After much internet searching we eventually discovered how to get the batteries out, and have replaced them with some that will do temporarily while we wait for the proper ones (ordered online) to arrive.

So why am I boring you with tales of broken things? Well, already I have broken the planned pattern for this blog. Having done a couple of posts on music, I had intended to move on to a little light mathematical blogging, but life events have recently overtaken me somewhat. So the next post will be on a different subject. I am also breaking the word cloud habit at this point. Partly because I don’t really feel like producing a word cloud for the next post, but mainly because I haven’t actually completed the post yet. I hope I shall be able to write it before Wednesday, which has become my traditional blog posting day – if not, there will be something else broken!

On Discovering Indie Music

2009-07-01T13:51:00.003+01:00

It all started with a couple of heads buried in sand and a little chanty song about soup! I became obsessed with this song, which I heard on a television advert so cryptic that I didn’t even know what it was for - probably something on BBC3 anyway (we don’t join the digital revolution until 2011; currently we have just three and a half terrestrial channels). As it’s not possible to link to the advert, here’s an “artist’s impression” (OK, no artist, just me with felt pens):

Some time later, a man with cheese and a man wearing a shiny suit appeared, and another song exhorted me to “Watch the Mighty Boosh”! The Wonderspouse’s response was “Aren’t they your soup men?” so I went off to investigate.

A visit to HMV furnished me with a box set of this “Mighty Boosh” and I set about watching, in order, specifically, to locate the bit about the soup! YES, there it was: middle of series 2, longer, more majestic and even soupier than on the advert. My life was now complete.

I had also fallen head-over-heels in love with the Mighty Boosh, which meant watching all the DVD extras, including an interview with some people called Kasabian. Soup man 1, now positively identified as Noel Fielding, told Kasabian that he’d listened to their album 24 times in a row. Wow, I thought, wonder what it’s like then? So it was back to HMV for a bit more research!

I should now point out that, until that moment, I had completely ignored all of HMV except the “Classical Music” section. Although I wasn’t completely ignorant of all other music (I do watch television, and I once dated a cellist who liked Rock), the “Rock and Pop” section was a pretty alien place to me, and I’d spent most of my teenage years listening to Schubert!

With some trepidation, I put the Kasabian CD into the player, opened my ears and waited for the world to end!

And end it did. The world where “Pop Music” was something “other people did” ended that day. I started buying a magazine, NME, which was initially completely incomprehensible. I ventured out of my Radio 3 comfort zone to explore a new world of listening possibilities. CDs that didn’t have little yellow “Deutsche Grammophon” logos started trickling into the house.

That might have been it, but the Mighty Boosh struck again: they had a Festival! I knew I didn’t do festivals. They were loud places where you got everything stolen, took drugs, got very ill, and had to live in a tent. I hate tents. But this was THE MIGHTY BOOSH, so how could I not go? Further investigation revealed it was a one-day no-tent festival, so we decided to brave it.

It was one of the best days of my life. The first day I ever heard live rock music! We bought t-shirts, ate yummy food, got slightly sunburnt, and danced into the night. Here’s what to:

Since the festival had been so good, we decided to follow it up by going to some gigs. Gigs, like festivals, were dangerous places (we reckoned), but we couldn’t be proper Indie/Rock/Dance fans without going to gigs, even though we thought we were a bit old for it, and we’d stick out like sore thumbs in a mosh pit full of incredibly hip youngsters. We couldn’t have been more wrong.

So it was that we emerged, buzzing, from the Astoria after seeing The Charlatans; we waited until 10.38 on a Sunday evening for The Kills to do a fabulous set in Coventry; we drove through dense fog to spend a night revelling in Pendulum’s marvelous soundworld; we discovered the fabulous Boxer Rebellion and have been stalking them and some of their support acts (Moscow Drive, Inlight, Pure Reason Revolution, and Red Drapes) ever since; and, finally, on the 13th June 2009, we saw KASABIAN, right in the middle of the moshiest mosh pit ever, singing our hearts out and having the time of our lives.

So, classical girl to indie chick in 12 months! In the process I’ve also lost 18 inches off my hair, acquired an electric guitar and bass and become a fan of skinny jeans. We’ll be going to at least 5 gigs/festivals in the next few months, and I now understand (almost) all of the NME! I still love classical music, but these days Mendelssohn has to share his shelf with Muse!

On Expanding Horizons

2009-06-28T11:31:00.005+01:00

I’m back on the word clouds again. Here is the cloud for this post:

Ever since I was born, I’ve been learning new music. Most of the time I’ve gently absorbed whatever was around me, not especially seeking out lots and lots of new sounds, just gradually and organically growing a CD collection and generally sticking to types of music that I already knew.

However, there have been two distinct times in my life when I have quite consciously and deliberately expanded my musical horizons and ventured into sound worlds that were, initially, quite unfamiliar to me.

The first of these occurred when I was at college. Until I went to college to study music, I hardly ever listened to anything written after 1900. However, it soon became clear to me that there was no way I could get a decent mark for my degree if I didn’t embrace the musical developments of the twentieth century. So, I began to learn.

My most intense and concentrated experience involved Britten’s opera, Death In Venice. I learned that I was to study this work as part of my analysis portfolio for finals, and I was determined to make the very best of the experience.

Initially I didn’t even go near the music. First I read Thomas Mann’s novella, upon which the libretto is based. Then I read the libretto (several times). Then I got hold of the score and browsed it a bit. Then, finally, one day I sat with headphones and listened to the entire work at one sitting. It was quite an experience, not only because the music is SO splendid, but also because, by that time, my mind was almost completely transported to Venice!

And then, as I sometimes do, I went a bit mad. I studied Britten’s Third String Quartet as well. I read everything about Britten I could get my hands on, and I even went as far as reading Nietsche’s Birth of Tragedy and Plato’s Phaedrus. At the time I was living in Finsbury Park and commuting via Piccadilly line into central London each day. I read 4 pages of Plato on each journey, usually with my head jammed into the corner of a tube carriage and my viola balancing precariously on my shoulder.

The result of all this work and study was a passion for the work so deep and enduring that it has never since left my list of “music to be taken to the desert island”. When I was awarded the finals prize at the end of my degree, I spent the money not on new shoes (despite the fact that mine had holes in), but on the full score of Death In Venice and I can still lay my hands instantly on most of my Death In Venice stuff:

The second time in my life when I consciously and deliberately expanded my musical horizons was a very different experience and will be discussed in my next blog post. Here is the word cloud for that post:

On Why I Play The Viola

2009-06-24T12:34:00.000+01:00

Whenever I tell anyone I’m a musician, the first question they usually ask me is “What instrument do you play?” When I give the answer “Viola” I get a mixed bunch of reactions. Many people just look puzzled when I don’t instantly say “Piano” or “Guitar”; some, showing their immense knowledge of orchestral instruments, say “Ah, is that the small violin thing?” and I gently correct them; non-viola-playing musicians often tell their favourite viola joke; amateur conductors ask for my telephone number; and viola players usually greet me as though I am their long-lost friend!

So why do I play the viola? What circumstances led me to become a first-study violist and consequently sit pretty much in the middle of the orchestra, become an honorary tenor from time to time, develop strong muscles on one side of my neck, shamelessly steal transcribed repertoire from other instruments, read alto clef fluently, hear endless viola jokes, and generally confuse all the non-musical people who can’t quite comprehend the differences between a viola and a violin?

At this point I’d like to tell you a beautiful and romantic story, about how I, as a small child, heard somebody playing viola and instantly fell in love with its wonderful and entrancing sound. I’d like to say that I begged my parents to let me play the viola until they were so impressed by my passion and commitment that they eventually relented and I was able to fulfill my dream.

But it wasn’t really like that - it was less a “love at first sight” scenario, and more of a “marriage of convenience”.

At the age of nine I had two ambitions. One was to be an astronaut and the other was to be a professional clarinet player. I was a VERY good clarinet player – I had the highest music grade of anybody in my school, which was excellent because the Headmistress made me stand up in assembly and the whole school clapped and they gave me a sweet.

However, by the time I reached age twelve, clarinet dreams had faded. I had braces on my teeth, my lips bled when I played, I couldn’t get into an orchestra and I hated my teacher. I knew now that I wanted to play the violin. My brother played the violin and got into orchestras. Furthermore he was taught by a cool boy in the fifth-form who I found just the tiniest bit attractive. So I started to pester my parents to let me give up the clarinet and play the violin instead.

Eventually they approached the attractive boy’s mother, who was the local violin and viola teacher. She said I was quite big, and really a bit old to start the violin but I could always learn the viola. Could the attractive boy still teach me? Apparently he could.

That settled the deal. A beaten up old viola was located somewhere at the back of a cupboard in the music centre and I started lessons, which were really cool. I painted my fingernails black every week to impress the attractive boy and I even got into an orchestra. On the day I joined I passed my viola to the teacher for tuning and she became so excited at having a viola in her orchestra she nearly fell over. I was the oldest in the orchestra by several years and I sat towering above tens of seven year-olds violinists and a couple of eight-year old cellists.

The honeymoon period ended with grade 4 scales. I hadn’t signed up for tedious minutes of scale practice – I wanted orchestras and the attractive boy. So I decided to give up. However, my parents had already paid for the exam, so I wasn’t allowed. Instead my Dad wrote out all the names of my scales on little bits of card and sat in my bedroom for 30 minutes every day, making me pick out cards and practice scales until they were perfect. In that way I worked through “C major, slurred”, “G minor, separate bows” and the rest of them until I eventually passed grade 4 with flying colours.

At that point all thoughts of giving up evaporated. After 8 months learning the viola I had gained grade 4 and I got moved up an orchestra. I was now “A Viola Player” and what had started as a “marriage of convenience” was rapidly becoming a full-blown love affair!

And that is why I play the viola!

On Word Clouds and Blog Posts

2009-06-22T09:49:00.008+01:00

From the moment I first saw a “Word Cloud” I thought they were fabulous, mainly because I’m particularly fond of the use of pictures, diagrams and graphs to represent information. I view word clouds much as I would graphs, and enjoy getting information out of them. However, they also please me aesthetically. This latter property is harder to explain, but maybe you, dear reader, will understand what I mean?

One of my fabulous twitter friends, @_FK_ (whose classical music blog An everyman for himself is well worth reading) recently sent me a link to a word cloud he had made using Wordle. I was instantly tempted to explore further, and pasted in several random blocks of text I just happened to have lying around to see what happened. Great fun was what happened!

After I had posted my first blog, I couldn’t resist making a word cloud from it, and it did indeed turn out rather nicely. I thought you might like to see it, so it’s pasted here for your entertainment and delectation (if you’re into that sort of thing):However, seeing a word cloud for a chunk of text that you’ve already read might not be the very most exciting thing you’ve ever done, so then I wondered whether I should make a word cloud of my NEXT blog post. That way, you might get a little taster of what is in store in the next post, and have a little fun trying to imagine what it’s about. The downside of this is that you might take one look at the cloud, see the principal words, decide that the blog doesn’t look very interesting and decide not to read it. But I thought I might just take that risk!

The advantage of posting the cloud a few days before the blog post is that it ensures that I have actually written something to post. As I seem to have set a precedent for posting on a Wednesday, right in the middle of the working week, maybe writing the post the previous weekend is a very good idea. I also speculated to the Wonderspouse that I might challenge readers to write the blog themselves, just starting with the word cloud – anyone who came up with the exact blog by Tuesday evening could then win, say, a chocolate biscuit!

Maybe by this stage I was getting a little fanciful, but then this is all still very new to me, and I’m still having enormous fun with it. So much fun, in fact, that here is the cloud for THIS post:

After I wrote most of the above, I tried pasting my original word clouds into the blogger and the smaller words were so minuscule that they were illegible. However, I was determined to publish SOMETHING about word clouds since I love them so much. So after a restless night’s sleep and a lot of head scratching I came up with the idea of a minimalist word cloud – just 25 words in each cloud. Maybe this will still give you a tantalizing foretaste of the blog post that is to come, but I suspect that the chocolate biscuit challenge has just become considerably more difficult!

And finally, as promised, the word cloud for the post that is shortly to be published – hope you like it!

On Starting My Blog

2009-06-17T13:04:00.000+01:00

So here it is - at long last, my first blog springs to life! After months of pondering, deliberation and boring the Wonderspouse silly with “When I start my blog I’ll . . .” conversations, I’ve finally done it! Hooray!

I’m setting off into the blogosphere with a certain amount of trepidation. Various books and websites have instructed me that my blog should be different, entertaining, interesting and short. It should also contain humour and lots of links as well as being jargon-free and giving an unusual viewpoint on the world. Furthermore, there are apparently trolls on the internet who will take any opportunity to criticise my blog just for some kind of sport, leaving me a quivering wreck on the floor under my desk. Oh crumbs, what have I let myself in for?

My only previous experience of “blogging” in any shape or form has involved posting rather a lot of updates on Twitter. When I joined Twitter I complained to the Wonderspouse that I didn’t have anything to tweet about. However, 2000 updates later, I seem to be managing fine, so I’m kind of hoping the same will happen with this blog.

The Wonderspouse, who is an author with his own blog, The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes, has asked me on several occasions what I’m going to blog about. My rather simple answer has been “I don’t know”, and, guess what, I still don’t! I have so many and varied interests, that I’m not sure I could ever stick to a single-subject blog. Really I’m a “Jack of all trades and Master of none”, although the Wonderspouse rather flatteringly tells me that I simply have Too Many Aptitudes!

Maybe the best place to start would be with my blog’s title? It was inspired by a throw-away comment I made when I was asked why I had started a maths degree, having previously gained a music degree. I responded by saying that I was specializing in degrees beginning with the letter “M” (oh, and in case you’re interested, next on the list is modern languages, not moggies!). As it turns out, I do seem to be rather interested in things beginning with M, so a blog title was born.

Music is an obvious blog topic for me. I can state, quite categorically, that I could not imagine life without music. I have been obsessed with sounds, instruments, and compositions for as long as I can remember. My father taught me to read both music and words when I was 3 years old, so I really have no memory of life before music. I was brought up in “the classical tradition”, and eventually studied music at degree & postgraduate level. These days I have also branched out and discovered the exciting and vibrant world of Indie and Rock music! I continue to play the viola reasonably well and the piano fairly badly, and I’ve recently discovered the joy of electric guitars and fallen in love with the bass.

I’m less sure how I’m going to blog about maths! However, I am setting myself the challenge of saying something interesting about a subject that fascinates me so much that I spend vast swathes of my spare time studying it in the hope that I will eventually complete enough course units to gain a BSc. I can become engrossed in solving maths problems to such an extent that I forget about life’s difficulties and I find working on those problems deeply satisfying. I’m particularly fond of pure mathematics, as I love the way that it makes me think very clearly about abstract ideas in such a logical way.

I could write pages and pages about moggies, so you’ll be relieved to hear that I intend to restrict each blog post to 750 words or fewer. The Wonderspouse and I live with four fabulous felines - although “fabulous” is sometimes replaced by another, more robust, word beginning with “f” when we see the damage they do to the house! As they are so integrated into my domestic life, I don’t see how they can possibly stay out of my blog.

As for all the other “M”s listed above, we’ll all have to wait and see how they work themselves into blog format. I feel like I’m setting off on an intrepid adventure of blogosphere exploration! Maybe some of you will come along for the ride? Oh, and thank you so much for reading to the end!