As the year ends, and we look back at the joys, achievements and disappointments of the past twelve months, it’s worth taking some time to recognise what our efforts have demanded of us and where our resources have been depleted.
Whether you have spent 2015 bringing some long-cherished project to fruition or simply trying to keep your head above water, it’s likely that this has come at some cost to you.
I feel slightly diffident writing to my own prompt. I’m also amused, both by my own foresight in knowing that I’d be feeling like a wrung-out dishcloth by this point in the winter, and by Kat’s timing in putting it up today, when I am feeling much like a wrung-out dishcloth that I was sent home sick from work, and have spent most of the afternoon asleep.
What have I spent 2015 doing? Editing Speak Its Name and preparing it for publication. (I’d rather hoped that it would be out in the world at this point; it’s getting there, but slowly, slowly… I’ll take stock at the end of December, and hope to be able to give a publication date then.) Planning and executing what one of my colleagues calls a ‘birthday parade’ – a succession of activities and celebrations to mark my 30th birthday. In my case, it was a four-day walk from Reading to Winchester, which I am intending to write up on this blog before too long, a birthday party with a ceilidh and a ride on a 1935 Renault TN4F and a 1959 Leyland Tiger Cub (both buses, if you were wondering!), and seeing Joan Baez at Cambridge Folk Festival. Replaying an old work pattern, where I get bored in a quiet period and then over-commit myself for a busy one. Working through some fairly mind-blowing mental revelations.
Yes; it makes sense that I am feeling a little run-down! And I’m still in this over-committed pattern: coming down with this bug today has meant that I’ve missed two social activities already, and am likely to miss at least some of the four planned for the long weekend. The first day I have that’s completely free, where I have nothing planned and no obligations to anyone, is 22nd December. I’m not going to let that happen next year; I’m going to fight for my free weekends.
This year I’ve also come to notice just how much of an introvert I am. The week where I had two conferences, a leaving do, a 60th birthday party and a huge family lunch was a bit of an eye-opener; I ended up hiding downstairs crying on that last day. I am reluctantly realising that I just can’t cope with that many people for that sustained a length of time. I need to build much more solitude into my life.
So how to replenish my resources? I wrote yesterday about a two-weeks-on, two-weeks-off cycle. I would like, without burdening myself with yet more obligations during this over-committed Advent, to start thinking about things I can do during my recovery weeks to refresh myself. More: I would like to start doing those things now. I would like to find blissful gaps in all this bustle and charivari. Why not? I need replenishing now.
Take long, warm, baths. Shut my study door. Read poetry. Wander around parks and museums in my lunch break. Read old, familiar books. Read new, exciting books. Lie on my sofa and listen to grand opera. Go for long walks. Notice things.
What do I need most of all at this moment? To go to bed. Good night, all.
This morning, wheeling my bike out to the road, I looked up, above the houses opposite. A pink-and-blue morning sky, and a crisp, clear-edged half moon, with just a few hours to go, I suppose, before it became a perfect semi-circle. ‘Moon!’ I said, but I was tired and grumpy, and didn’t wait for a reply before cycling off.
Of late, I’ve been paying more attention to the moon than I used to. I’ve been noticing where in the cycle we are. I’ve been looking at the little circles in my diary and at the app on my phone, so that even if I can’t see the moon, I know what’s going on. I can tell whether it’s waxing or waning by looking which way the curve faces.
I’ve also been noticing my own rhythms. Not those rhythms – I’ve never had a regular menstrual cycle, and, if I’m honest, really don’t give a toss – but the less obvious rhythms, the ones that only become obvious when I pay very careful attention. This year, I noticed that every time I participated in a month-long writing activity, I ran out of steam after the first two weeks. I noticed that engaging in social activities on adjacent weekends leaves me feeling exhausted and anti-social. I read Slow Time. And I started wondering.
This year’s experiment is going to involve the moon. I’m going to see how a two weeks on/two weeks off cycle works for me. I’ll begin work on my projects at the new moon, working as intensely as I feel moved during the following two weeks, and then take stock at the full moon. After that I’ll wind down; I’ll tie up loose ends, but I won’t expect my productivity to be nearly so high. I’ll pay particular attention to rest and recuperation. I will make sure to leave every other weekend clear.
My day job will continue as normal. There are some things over which I have no control! But even there I’ll pay attention to the peaks and troughs, and where work eats one weekend I’ll make sure I get the next one to myself.
I have, of course, a whole chorus of objections in my head:
“What The Hell Is This WooWoo Hippie Shit”
“You Know You Don’t Believe A Word Of This”
“You Realise Your Coffee Cup Exerts More Of A Gravitational Pull On You Than The Moon Does”
(These three are slightly mollified by my assuring them that I’m treating the moon more as a clock.)
“You Are A Disgrace To The Sisterhood”
(This one thinks that actually I should be attempting to align my menstrual cycle with the moon, to which I say, blow that for a lark)
and
“What Is Wrong With You Why Can’t You Just Push On Through”
(To which I point out that this approach has been working so well of late, hasn’t it?)
So perhaps that’s what the moon’s got to say to me today. Two weeks of waxing, two weeks of waning, is enough for anybody. I’ll let you know how it goes.
I spent a lot of time people-watching. Or bike-watching, I suppose; the people just happened to be riding the bikes. Comparing the fashions in velocipedes between the Netherlands and the UK’s nearest equivalent, Cambridge.
I’ve been away in the Netherlands for a few days – the first trip abroad with my husband since our honeymoon six years ago. We were staying in Leiden, which is a university city made distinctive by its many water courses and bicycles. We live in Cambridge, so really it felt very much like home. On the other hand, Cambridge is not so well supplied with windmills or pancakes.
Anyway, I’d intended not to do too much, and in between late mornings and early nights I had a lovely time wandering around several Dutch cities and taking a couple of hundred photographs. I took Speak Its Name with me and got a bit of editing done on the ferry, but other than that it was a work-free weekend.
One of the things that happened while I was away was the launch party for Purple Prose. To quote the explanation on that page,
Purple Prose: Bisexuality in Britain is a book about all the different aspects of life as a bisexual person. We talk about definitions, stereotypes, coming out and dating. We talk about being bisexual and disabled, being a bisexual of colour, being non-monogamous, and being bisexual in different religions. We talk about other minority sexualities such as pansexuality and asexuality. We talk about being trans and genderqueer. We look at bisexuality in the workplace and in fiction. We talk about what to do next.
In terms of my own personal investment in the project, one of my poems rounds off the chapter on bisexuality and faith.
I spent the morning proof-reading it to the best of my current ability (I have a stinking cold, and so will not have been nearly as thorough as I usually am) and thinking how useful it would have been to me had it existed ten years ago, when I’d barely heard the term ‘bisexual’ and didn’t imagine that I was allowed to use it of myself.
However! I am pleased to have been able to contribute to its existing now, or, rather, some months from now. Thorntree Press is currently crowd-funding publication via Indiegogo. If this is something you’re interested in, do have a look at the page and, if you’re able to, chuck a couple of quid in its direction.
(Or two handbags. One in black; one in brown or blue. You could be the same design in different colours, or you could be different designs, both of which match my specifications.)
You have a decent square or oblong base, and you are sufficiently bottom-heavy that you don’t tip over when I put you down.
You will fit into my bicycle basket without having to be put on end or tilted.
You have two handles, long enough for you to be carried comfortably over my shoulder, but not so long that you drag on the ground when I carry you in the hand.
You can be closed completely, but you are deep enough that stuff doesn’t fall out of you if you aren’t.
You can carry a large paperback book and my Filofax simultaneously, or a pair of size seven ballerina flats. You have a pocket for my purse, phone and keys, and another one for my work pass and travelcard.
You don’t have tassels. You don’t have writing on. You don’t have an ostentatious logo.
Any metal trim is silver coloured, not gilt, and there isn’t much of it.
I buy you in a shop. I don’t buy you online, and nobody else buys you for me.
In the latest round of the never-ending quest to sort my head out, I have been going through old diaries, and I found this, from about eighteen months ago:
Cambridge is cold and windy, and beautiful in the winter light, and a little bit aloof.
That was when I was living in Guildford and going up to Cambridge once or twice a month to see Tony, and wondering whether I would ever actually be able to live there. I found the city terribly intimidating: it’s so old, and so full of terrifyingly clever people. In all fairness, I was intimidated by Guildford when I first moved there: so full of terrifyingly rich people.
I’ve been in Cambridge a year now, and we are beginning to become acquainted. There are some parts – my cycle ride to and from the station; the section of the Cam from the Green Dragon in Chesterton up to Baits Bite Lock – that I pass through daily or weekly. I can find my way around the city centre without a map now. I’ve been doing lots of walking – I always explore a new place on foot, if I can. But there’s still an awful lot that I haven’t discovered. There’s probably a lot that I’ll never discover.
One of the loveliest things has been discovering Cambridge with other people. One of them has known Cambridge longer than I’ve been alive, and dragged me off to Fitzbillies for the best Chelsea bun in the world. One grew up in Cambridge – and gave me a long list of pleasant places to eat and wander in. One had never visited before – and we downloaded a walk from the internet and found all the colleges. My father came to stay and went for a drink in the Mitre – where, he casually mentioned, his grandfather had almost certainly drunk before him. That made it better.
I like Cambridge. I like the cherry blossom and the pale yellow stone and the rowers. I like the way that everybody cycles and how ridiculously easy it is to get to London. I like the college arms that line the staircase in Boots. I like the Te Deum windows in Great St Mary’s. I like the Renoirs in the Fitzwilliam and the Chelsea buns in Fitzbillies. I like the charity shops on Burleigh Street.
There are probably all sorts of other things I like, but I haven’t got round to them yet. No matter. There’s plenty of time.
I’ve been living in Cambridge for just on a year now. Here are some things I’ve discovered:
1. The wind. People do tell you about the wind, to be fair; it’s just that one can’t comprehend the sheer sideways chilling force of it until one’s been there. ‘Cambridge winds are lazy,’ says my friend Helen. ‘They can’t be bothered going around you. They just go through you.’ I understand that this has been a relatively mild winter; nonetheless, I got caught out last week and had to wait half an hour on the platform at Cambridge station without gloves. Following liberal daily applications of hand cream, my skin is just about returning to normal.
2. You start caring about the Boat Race. This was not a good year to start caring about the Boat Race. Thank goodness for University Challenge, that’s all I can say.
3. You forget all about hills. Hills? What are they again?
4. You get very good at dodging bicycles, tourists with selfie sticks, and people trying to sell you punt trips.
5. You begin to believe that every conceivable object can be transported on a bicycle. Not just the obvious things like kegs of beer or small children. I myself have brought home on the back or the front of my bike a) an orchid in a pot; b) a daylight lamp; c) a herb planter. And I know someone who used to carry a folding bike on his cargo bike, so that he could meet his partner at the station and they could cycle back together. Now that’s love.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the idea of expanding one’s comfort zone from within, as opposed to stepping out of it (useful posts here from Havi Brooks and Jem Bloomfield), in the context of singing – purely because I spend a lot of my spare time doing it.
I estimated a couple of months ago that I’ve averaged two hours of choral singing a week over the past decade. There have, of course, been lighter patches (2007, of which I spent a third in Spain and Germany not singing much at all, and my second and third years at university, when I decided that the need of the serving team was greater than the need of the chapel choir), but they are balanced out by the five years I spent in the choir at Holy Trinity, Guildford. During term time we did two services every Sunday, with a half hour or forty-five minute rehearsal before each one, and an hour’s practice every Thursday. As a result I know a lot of the standard church music repertoire inside out and back to front: if we assume that each piece was sung twice a year, once during a morning service and once at an evensong, then I’ve performed most of them ten times.
I was not at all confident when I joined. All my life I’ve been close to people who have more singing experience than I do and, while they have been nothing but supportive, I’ve always been able to see that their sightreading was better than mine, that they were more confident than I was, that they could hold a line against all comers and I couldn’t. Fortunately, when I joined Holy Trinity, there were plenty of other altos to follow.
I’ve joined two new choirs over the past year, and I’m still singing less than I was at Holy Trinity. They have both proved the expansion of my comfort zone, in very different ways.
The first one was one of the several choirs that run out of my parish church. The workload is considerably less: we sing one, maybe two, services every month, with an hour’s rehearsal beforehand, and a rehearsal on the preceding Friday. This is very much flying by the seat of the pants: a lot of sightreading, and no guarantee that there’ll be anyone else on your part to prop you up.
And that doesn’t scare me any more. Once upon a time I would have been too terrified even to consider joining this choir, but my comfort zone has expanded to encompass this method too.
Granted, some of this is stuff I already know from Holy Trinity. On Easter Sunday I was the only alto at evensong. That was fine: we did Blessed be the God and Father, which I have sung every Easter since 2008. On the other hand, I was the only alto at the previous evensong, and I was sightreading an anthem… I can’t remember what it was, only that I’d never seen it before in my life, and that the alto line contained several top Gs. The very first piece that I did with the new choir was Herbert Howells’ Requiem; that, thank goodness, had rather more rehearsal time dedicated to it.
The other choir is pretty much the complete opposite. In this choir, ten weeks to learn three pieces is presented as a frighteningly tight timescale. This is the workplace choir, set up by the social club and the excellent Workplace Choir Company. Its basic assumption is that nobody has sung anything since they were at school, when they were probably told by a teacher that they couldn’t. This seemed to be about right at my workplace. There was a question early on: who was in a choir already? I was one of perhaps three people who raised their hands. Three out of sixty, and the only one in the first altos.
There was the solo. (But I’ve done solos before, in front of people who would know exactly where I’d gone wrong.) There was the fact that I was doing the solo with a microphone. (That was new territory.) There was the responsibility. At one point the Director of the Executive Office told me, ‘You’re our leader’. I’m not even sure that she was joking. (I have never before in my life been the most experienced member of a large choir.) There was the assuring of everybody that everything was going to be fine.
And somehow I was able to meet it all with a general attitude of ‘Bring it on!’ Solo? Bring it on! Microphone? Bring it on! Teaching a tricky snippet to the rest of my section without reference to a piano? Bring it on! It’s being filmed? Wait, what? Er, bring it on! Thank you, comfort zone, expanding yourself while I wasn’t even looking.
I managed to appear calm through the performance, although it wasn’t until last week, when the high-quality video was made available, that I was able to see whether or not I’d cocked it up. I never know how a solo has gone after the event. I’d like to think that’s because I’m so absorbed in the music that I’ve no space left in my head to remember it, but it’s happened before when I’ve lost a bar in the middle of it.
Anyway, it turns out it wasn’t too bad, all things considered. Here’s the result. I’m the tallest soloist, in the green shirt, singing the alto part in the second verse. Me and my expanded comfort zone.
I’ve been doing a lot of walking these last few days. This is partly because my bike has been in for a service (now reclaimed, complete with a new front mech shifter that actually works!), and partly because I’m planning to walk St James’ Way from Reading to Winchester in July, and I need to get some practice in.
I’ve walked from home to the station; I’ve walked from the station to home. I’ve walked as far round Regent’s Park as I could get in my lunch hour. I’ve walked from town to the station after I’d dropped my bike off, and from home to town to pick it up again.
I’ve been walking. I’ve been cycling. I spent twenty-five agonising minutes on a bus that was progressing down Station Road five metres at a time. I would almost swear that I could feel my blood pressure rising the longer I sat there. Stepping onto that bus, I’d relinquished control and surrendered to the rush hour. Cars are meant to give you control, but of course they don’t. There were plenty of cars stuck in that queue along with me.
I wanted my bike back. That was the reason I’d got on that bus in the first place: I had twenty minutes to get to the repair shop before it closed. I knew that I couldn’t make it on foot. I thought there was just a chance on the bus…
No. Twenty-five minutes of jerking, teeth-grinding, stop-starting creepy-crawling down Station Road and Hills Road. I ran from the bus station, but I didn’t have a hope of making it before the shop shut, and I knew it.
On the bright side, I had an excellent excuse to buy an ice cream and walk home, and it was a glorious evening in which to walk alongside the Cam, over Jesus Green and Midsummer Common, with the college rowing teams hauling themselves down the river and the trees very green with their new leaves.
I love walking. I love the freedom, the chance to turn aside and look properly at things that catch my eye, to go another way entirely. I love the gentle ache in my legs, reminding me that I’ve been out and seen things. I’m less keen on the blister; that’s from wearing the wrong shoes.
I’m so glad I don’t have to sit in that queue every day. I’m so glad I don’t drive. I’m so glad I don’t need to drive. I’m grateful that I’m well enough to walk long distances. I’m thankful for my own pig-headedness and determination that allowed me to relearn how to cycle in my late twenties. I’m glad that I’ve lived in towns and cities with good public transport links.
(And I do like a bus ride. But not in rush hour. Never again in rush hour. Not when I’ve got somewhere to be.)
I used to be terribly cynical about Romeo and Juliet, and adaptations thereof. “But you only met yesterday!” I’d cry. “What did you expect to happen?” I would wonder whether anybody really thought that the state of affairs in Verona would be materially improved. I would side-eye people who held up R. and J. as Most Romantic Couple, etc.
It occurred to me, yesterday, watching West Side Story, that I’d missed the point. Of course people are always falling in love in a wildly inappropriate fashion. Of course it rarely ends well. However, in a well-regulated society, not ending well does not involve people getting killed. Romeo and Juliet (or Tony and Maria, or whoever) are young and hopelessly over-optimistic, yes, but if they weren’t also in the middle of a war zone it would be a farce, not a tragedy.
There were two points to this post:
1. I seem to be getting less cynical as I get older; 2. I had forgotten about this song:
I used to see the irony in it. Now I hear the hope. It’s an interesting contrast to the equivalent speech in Romeo and Juliet, in which Romeo also knows there’s something coming, but is as gloomy as all get-out about it. I prefer Tony’s take on it, going out to meet it head-on, in joyful expectation. I’m not convinced he isn’t right, either. What’s coming to him doesn’t work in the world in which he lives, but it doesn’t stop it being good.
It resonates, too, with the wild feeling of possibility and hope that I associate with Advent. It is probably significant that I was reading back through godblog‘s Destuckification Novena yesterday, before we went out to the theatre, and that I’m feeling increasingly that it is time and more to move on… I don’t know what’s coming. Nor could I stop it, if I did. All I can do is go out and meet it. It’s an attitude I’ve been trying to practice for a year or so, now, and it works so much better for me than hiding and observing.
Come on, something, come on in, don’t be shy, meet a guy, pull up a chair…
