It snowed overnight! We don’t get much of it round here; in fact, it’s been almost exactly a year. So either the perpetrator of this mild act of vandalism is keeping the full twelve days of Christmas, or else someone’s driven in quite a long way without clearing their back windscreen.
Anyway, this time last year we had a pathetic little dusting of snow, and I was in bed, in a good deal of pain and unable to keep any food down, as the leftover gas from my gallbladder removal surgery fought its way around my abdomen. (What sorted it out, for anyone in similar straits, was a little pill called Wind-eze. The packet wasn’t very clear on how it works, but it does.) Today, by contrast, I was able to walk across town in my Wellington boots, stopping at the cathedral to walk the labyrinth (still in wellies – that’s a first!) and eat the last cherry cream choux bun in Caffè Nero. So, contrary to my gloomy posts of the last month, I can and do get better.
Here’s a picture from 2010. I loved these shoes. But that’s another story.
Earlier today I was on a video call with a new colleague. He asked how long I’d been with our employer. I joined in 2010, I said, started in a regional office, moved to HQ in 2013…
At this point another colleague joined and said, yes, new colleague had been remarking how people either seemed to have joined yesterday or have been around for fifteen years.
Yes, I said, and I’m still wondering when I flipped from the one category into the other, apparently overnight.
Inside, though, I was going, Fifteen years? Really? But yes: the arithmetic is simple, it’s the getting my head around it that’s proving challenging. The anniversary slid past without my noticing a couple of months ago. Somewhere between 2013 and here, I became an old-timer.
Compare the starting point with where I am now, and it’s obvious. I live in a different town, county, region. I look very different – my hair’s gone almost completely white. Come to think of it, I started 2010 with barely any eyebrows, having pulled them out in a bad mental health patch.
I started 2010 as a depressed temp, the confidence knocked out of me by failing to get a job I’d been doing for several months, equally scared of giving myself time to breathe and of finishing any piece of work lest there be nothing more for me to do. It took me a long time to find my feet in the union world. In some ways it seemed like the job I’d been born to do, if only I’d known it existed before, working to change the world for the better every day. In others, I felt like a fraud: too shy, too introverted, too posh, too cynical, too everything, or possibly not everything enough. These days I know what I’m good at, I can see how it serves the movement, and I mostly get to do that.
Things change gradually. Even the big changes – office, job title, team, grade – took a while for me to grow into them. There are a few days that stand out in my memory as having moved me forwards significantly, but so much of it was just turning up, and doing the job, and doing the job, and doing the job day after day, and eventually realising that actually I was pretty good at it.
Outside work, too, things changed gradually. Three books, with a couple of pages written per day, and not every day at that; gradually working up the nerve to put them out into the world myself. Getting confident cycling, first on a trike and then on a bike. Buying a house; having a baby; losing both parents: big changes, those, but again, you get used to them gradually, day by day, living in the new world until you’re at home there. Second chances (there were plenty of jobs I didn’t get); another dance with vocation, parting on better terms this time round. It’s quite a lot, really; when I stop and think about it I’m not so surprised that it’s taken fifteen years to get here.
If I could go back to 2010, if I thought 2010-me would believe me, I’d tell her… Hang in there. It works out better than you could possibly imagine.
If I were a character in a video game I’d probably be on about three hearts at the moment. Not at death’s door by any means, but having to be a little bit careful. It’s not the time for swishing around with a sword; it’s time to take things easy, recharge a bit.
In human terms, I’m just at the depressing stage of a cold where I’m despairing of ever feeling better again. Of course, this not being my first cold, I know perfectly well that this is itself a symptom and I’ll probably be fine by Christmas. In the meantime, I need to do as little as I can bear to.
Which is a little frustrating, two days before Christmas. It’s not as frustrating as it might have been, because we decided long ago that trying to do trad Christmas with a dodgy gallbladder and a seventeen month old was a mug’s game, so it’s all coming out of boxes this year. But – breaking news! – my gallbladder is coming out this year! So technically I could cook something nice for New Year.
And I do like the idea – but I don’t seem to have the energy or the enthusiasm to do anything more than flip listlessly through Delia Smith’s Happy Christmas. Maybe I’ll recover some motivation between now and then. Maybe I won’t. In the meantime, Lebkuchen come ready made. One of these days I’d like to try making them myself. Not this year, though.
This is an almost offensively photogenic bowlful, but don’t be fooled. I never used to be much of a one for yoghurt, but I’m still breastfeeding so I need the calcium. And I’m trying to keep my gallbladder from tying itself in a knot, so it’s zero fat. The fruit (Tesco ‘perfectly imperfect’, would be nicer without strawberries, which don’t freeze well and probably weren’t all that in the first place, but it’s perfectly adequate) is there to make it bearable. Greek style is, I have discovered, nicer than the normal sort, but neither is as good as proper full fat yoghurt. Occasionally I lick the spoon after doling out the toddler’s portion, just to make sure.
This has been a year of minor but inconvenient health problems, of which the gallstones have been the most serious. They first made their presence felt after last year’s Christmas dinner, got increasingly uppish through the next month, and put me in hospital with an infection and weird liver markers at the end of January. Since then I’ve been on the waiting list for removal of the gallbladder, and not eating sausages. The trick has been not to cut out fat altogether – still breastfeeding, after all – but to spread it (ha) out through the day. Most of the time I get it right. When I don’t it’s excruciatingly painful. Apparently this is a known thing among people who have recently had babies. Now you know.
I’ve also had mastitis twice, tripped over a park bench and bruised my sternum, and picked up a couple of coughs and colds from the nursery germ pool. As I say, nothing serious – in fact, in terms of overall fitness I’m probably better than I have been since 2021 – some of it a bit silly, in fact – just tedious, really. The list of things I’m looking forward to being able to eat again continues to grow.
Kathleen Jowitt 