Tag: personal

Stir up!

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Apple tree, with a few leaves still on the branches, silhouetted against a cloudy sky. One single apple is caught between a branch and the top of the trellis

Not long after I started taking Advent Sunday as my personal new year, somebody asked me whether I was going to push my end-of-year wrap-ups and preparations forward into November. No, I said, the idea was to take the whole of December (and the first week of January, come to that) to do it at a leisurely pace, and to give me something to do other than getting fruitlessly annoyed by all the commercial-Christmas tat.

Which still holds true. My husband bought me a packet of lebkuchen, which are already in the shops: I love them, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to touch them. Not in November. And yet this year I’ve noticed myself looking forward eagerly to Stir Up Sunday – today – the last Sunday of the Church year, Christ the King in new money – and the making of the pudding. Preparing for the preparation. And I’ve been getting out the recipe books and flicking through things that look tasty, things that look fun, things I’d never normally cook or eat but which might be approached in a spirit of “It’s Christmas”.

I do like a nice recipe book. And I have been reasonably adventurous this year. (Quince, ginger and raisin suet pudding, the other weekend, from Modern Pressure Cooking. Very good.) But I’m not usually this diverted by Christmas food.

It’s partly knowing that I’ll get much less church than in the pre-baby days, and other elements of the festival seem more promising (not that I will have any more opportunity to cook, of course).

It’s partly that this year I know I can eat it without causing myself significant abdominal discomfort. (Last year I had my gallbladder removed on 30 December; from the previous Christmas up until that point, eating anything fatty put me at risk of vomiting and hideous pain.)

It’s partly having stayed, last weekend, at a Premier Inn attached to a Beefeater which was exuberantly and prematurely Christmassy.

It’s partly having led an Advent study day yesterday, based on the O Antiphons (usually encountered 17-23 December), and having been preparing for that for several weeks. (We followed it with Evensong, and used the readings for the Eve of Christ the King. They worked very well.)

It might partly be wanting this year to be over and done with. It’s been intense, and often painful, and it’s gone very fast. So why not wrap it up now?

It might partly be wanting an answer to the question So what do we do about the Christmas pudding, in the absence of our mother, who was always in charge of it? How do we stir it, when none of us is near any of the others?

And this year the answer looked like this: I made the Christmas pudding, out of the recipe book that she always used. Except she always used walnuts where the recipe says almonds, and I didn’t have quite enough walnuts, so I made up the difference with pecans. And I found the last-but-one-apple from our trees. And I sent my brothers a Zoom invitation so that they could observe the stirring.

And now the pudding is steaming away quietly on the hob. It wasn’t remotely the same, of course. But it will do. I might even open the lebkuchen.

Fifteen years

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The legs of a person wearing a black skirt and tights and red shoes with double ankle straps, standing on a grassy lawn in front of a low wall and a blue car
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.

But I don’t need to. Because she did.

As well as these things can go

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A family of swan and cygnets on a small spit in a river in an urban environment
Meanwhile, across the water from the memorial gathering…

“I hope the funeral goes well,” several people said to me, and many of them added, “or as well as these things can go.”

I very much appreciated the sentiment behind that wish. And I knew exactly what they meant.

And yet. And yet it didn’t quite sit right with me, as if there was somehow an implication that because a funeral is necessarily a sad event, there would be things that would not go well. That things would go wrong, even. That because it wasn’t a joyous occasion it must necessarily be somehow slipshod, drab. That difficult and sloppy sit near each other on the same axis.

I don’t believe for a moment that anyone who used that phrase to me meant to imply any of that, of course I don’t. But this kept worrying away at me until I prodded it back.

I’ve been involved in planning all sorts of events – in my professional life, in my voluntary roles, and in my personal life. Courses, parties, retreats, church services, training days, conferences, seminars, weddings.

And yes, funerals.

I can make an event go really well. My mother’s funeral? You bet I was going to do everything I could to make that one go as well as it possibly could.

It went really well – yes, as well as it could. But better than that. Both parts – the “she didn’t want a fuss” church service and crematorium committal, and the “but more people want to pay their respects than will fit in the church” arts centre gathering the next day.

And it was really, really hard. I was very glad, in retrospect, that I didn’t put myself forward to do any reading or give any tribute at the church service, because that gave me space to fall apart completely. I’d done the work of remembering which hymn my mother wanted (yes, I found myself saying to several people afterwards, she specifically wanted the verse about the worms) and guessing which other one she might have liked, of suggesting the readings, of burrowing in the boxes of CDs in the garage to find the Bruckner Te Deum, of liasing with my brothers and the minister and my aunt, of typesetting the order of service and getting it printed. I’d done all that, and now all I had to do was to turn up. The minister carried it, and the liturgy, and my brilliant family who will absolutely sing in four-part harmony if you give them the sheet music.

The next day I was the one at the front of the room, explaining what was going to happen, introducing the musicians, finding a graceful way to bring in someone who’d arrived late but still wanted to say something. Holding the space. I remember thinking at one point that I had my work head on, because that’s what I do.

And that was hard, too. I will probably never be able to listen to Here comes the sun again, maybe never sing Auld Lang Syne.

Some things went wrong, of course. I’d have liked to have got to the church earlier and had some time on my own (as opposed to having a flaming row over a sandwich and having to spend far longer than necessary putting my make-up on and calming down). I’d have liked to have the Brahms run all the way to the end of the track. And I think the funeral directors had some trouble with the hearse and the very tight little lane, but that wasn’t my responsibility. It wasn’t perfect. But on the whole, it went very well indeed.

But it was hard because it went well. It was hard because it did what it needed to do. It was hard because there’s no way that catharsis is going to be easy. It was hard because it said what it needed to say: This person is gone, and we loved her. We loved her, and this is the last thing we can do for her.

And because it was the last thing we could do for her, we did it as well as we could.

Thank you, friends. It did indeed go as well as these things can go.

Margaret Jowitt, 1955-2025

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Black and white photo of a woman and toddler seated in the back of a parked van

My mother died at the end of April. It was a shock and not a surprise: we knew she hadn’t been well, but we weren’t expecting this. (This, it turns out, was a pulmonary embolism, the sort of thing you can’t expect, and not the thing we were actually worrying about. I think it makes it easier, but it’s quite hard enough.)

There’s a great gap now, in the world of childbirth rights and maternity services reform, and in our lives.

A kindness to one’s survivors

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A shallow flood blocks a path that's blocked again by a five bar gate

This week I’ve been transferring photos from my phone onto an external drive. I’ve had this phone for nearly five years, and there are a lot of photos on there. Fewer than there were on Monday, though.

As luck would have it, I hit January 2022 just as some online friends were discussing preferences for funeral music. My father died on 8 January 2022, and the pictures from that month are a jumble of memories and plans – beloved objects, photos of photos, and important documents – some taken by me, some shared by family members and friends.

Among those important documents was a two page note in my aunt’s handwriting, a summary of a conversation she and Pa had had during a COVID lockdown. On the first page were the details of the solicitors and the insurance. On the second, a very detailed list of funeral preferences. What. Where. Who should speak. Which hymns, including specific tune in one case and hymn number in another. Music for entrance. Music for exit.

It was immensely helpful. I ended up drafting most of the service, and this document gave me a starting point and an authority; it curtailed, if it didn’t quite avoid, a lot of disagreements; it provided some interesting challenges. We didn’t follow it exactly; we also found a previous version (another photo to pop up in the January 2022 folder) and added some bits from that. But we definitely followed it in spirit.

I have made one of these myself, but it was a good decade ago and I think it’s got lost, anyway. So I’m planning to do a new version this year. I’m not planning on dying any time soon, but you never know.

Morbid? Perhaps. Self-centred? Undoubtedly, but far more helpful than being self-effacing. Even if one doesn’t want a big fuss, one’s executors aren’t necessarily going to know what “not a big fuss” looks like, and, while good funeral directors, and, I’m sure, celebrants from all traditions, will have helpful suggestions, they’re going to be at least somewhat generic, at which point you’ve just moved the question on from “what would they have wanted?” to “would they really have wanted that?” And that’s not an easy question when you’re grieving. A plain statement of preferences in black and white can be one last, immensely helpful and comforting, gift. I’d recommend everybody does one, if they can face it, and saves their family and friends a lot of grief, in the informal sense – and perhaps in the formal sense, too.

Winter requirements satisfied

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Cathedral silhouette against a pale blue sky, framed by a telegraph pole and wire

Saturday was ridiculously beautiful, and also ridiculously busy. It concentrated almost all the busyness for the month of January into one day. I went to a Cursillo training day in the morning (I’m not on the staff this time; I was just showing up to show support) and a party in the afternoon, and in between I practised two duets and made a chilli.

It was also really quite cold. This beautiful hazy morning sharpened and brightened, and the grass was hard and lumpy underfoot, and while we were singing and playing and dancing the fog rolled in and when we left we couldn’t see further than about twenty feet.

And it turns out that what I really needed in order to feel satisfied that winter has happened properly was a) a cold snap; and b) an exuberant party. Which this was. I sang Rossini (sure, it was the Cats’ Duet, but it’s not easy) and danced a Horse’s Brawl. It was great. I went back to work today (from the dining table) and it felt entirely appropriate. The festive season is concluded in style and I am now happy to get on with the rest of the year.

Return of the writing brain

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Sky, winter sunlight, and bare branches are reflected in a puddle on a tarmac path

My writing brain started up good and proper yesterday. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s having managed to post here every day for a month and more. Maybe it was having a day in which I’d promised myself I’d do no work and only minimal Cursillo admin. Maybe it’s because it’s almost eighteen months since the baby was born and that’s just how long it takes for a brain to get going again. Maybe it’s because I did some actual proper singing and it unblocked some metaphorical tubes. Or maybe I’d just knitted some arbitrary length of combined sock. Who knows.

Anyway, in the morning I found myself rereading some things I’d written. I fixed an plot hole in one of them. And I found myself thinking more and more about the project I was working on up until, well, a little more than eighteen months ago. Actually, it’s been bouncing around in my head for the last few days, but yesterday it started demanding my attention. And now it’s telling me I need to read the book on the Dance Band Era, and get hold of a wind-up gramophone and play the 78s, and rescue all the rest of the dance band 78s, and read I don’t know, who survived the First World War and wrote about it? Siegfried Sassoon, read Siegfried Sassoon, and oh yes, definitely David Blaize, and probably pick up that First World War history that I got about as far as 1915 in, and find out about twilight sleep and would an upper middle class woman be expected to breastfeed in 1924, and work out a better name for my hero (he is called Julian at the moment, which is a bit misleading)… And probably reread Romeo and Juliet just for the hell of it except that’s probably not the best use of my limited time, or rewatch it, except goodness knows I never get three straight hours free these days. And I would say read Surprised by Joy if I hadn’t just read it and concluded that, while I’m very pleased for C. S. Lewis that he got out an environment that was making him miserable, it would have been useful for me if he’d stayed on and could have written about what it was like being at school and watching form by form carted off to war, knowing your time was coming. (And good grief I don’t think his Professor Kirkpatrick as written would have let him get away with the logical fallacies in Mere Christianity, but that’s not remotely relevant.)

I started getting lines writing themselves again. I found myself wanting to reread what’s already there to make sure I hadn’t written them already, or written something that they would contradict. The cogs were turning, turning, getting up to speed. The writing brain was well and truly running. It kept me up mapping what fandom (such as there is) calls the Montacrew onto early twentieth century public school dynamics (let the reader understand). And then the toddler woke up and insisted on a really, really long feed.

You recall that I am meant to be resting and recovering. So yes, today was a washout (although I did some more singing practice and am feeling a lot better about my impending performance – and finished reading Touch Not The Cat, which is very slightly relevant.) So no, I haven’t actually added any new words to this project yet. But I’m so very glad to see it again.

Twelfth Day

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A Christmas tree from which the red and green fairy lights are being removed

We awoke to find a crust of snow outside; it decayed rapidly over the course of the morning and now it’s disconcertingly mild outside, and raining.

And well, that’s one to the pathetic fallacy, because this Christmas season does feel like a bit of a washout. I’ve spent too much of it feeling ill, worried about making myself ill, preparing for my operation, or feeling wiped out or (damn it) almost as sick as I used to, to have managed festivity for more than about an hour at a time. I missed most of the food, and (which I was looking forward to more) the midnight service. This morning I couldn’t keep my breakfast down and didn’t even feel well enough to watch the livestreamed service for Epiphany; so now I’ve missed that too.

Except, of course, Epiphany is also a season, and it has only just begun. Except, of course, my reflections on recent weeks tell you more about my mood at this moment than about what really happened. Except this morning was better than yesterday and so far my timid attempts at lunch and supper have been successful. Except I have celebrations to look forward to this coming weekend, and in a couple of days I’ll probably feel well enough to get excited about them. Except there were plenty of joyful moments in there, and I just have to trust that I’ll remember them, when I’m feeling a little better. Soon.

A meeting of the Lac Scene Coven

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A relief map of Switzerland

I’m feeling quite a lot better today. Well enough, in fact, to face with equanimity the prospect of not being entirely well for quite a long time yet. I suppose it makes sense: the first few days, you couldn’t do much more than flop on the sofa even if you wanted to; after that, you have to put significant effort into not doing very much.

To be clear, my operation went well, my wounds seem to be healing, and I’m no longer blown up like a balloon. Everything is as it should be. I am coming to terms with the surgeon’s advice not to do any heavy lifting (i.e. more than 5kg – about a third of the weight of a toddler) for the next four to six months, which came as something of a shock, not having been mentioned before the day of the operation. I am coming to understand that in a few more days I will be feeling fine and having to put significant effort into remembering not to lift anything heavier than 5kg.

In the meantime, I’m playing with the idea of convalescence.

And the last few years have shown us that society does not place any value on recovery time, and so I will need to be aware of external and internal pressure to get better, now, and resist it.

Not for the first time, either. When I caught Covid for the first time in 2022, it took me ages to get better. I didn’t get long Covid, but it was several months before I could go for a walk without needing a lie-down afterwards. It was some time in that spring that I plugged convalescence into an anagram generator, and got back, among other delightful possibilities, lac coven scene. (This is yet another technique I have borrowed from the ever-excellent Havi, who has in fact just been writing about it.)

Back then, it sounded vaguely Arthurian to me, and I decided that I rather liked the idea of going to sleep under a hill until the country needed me. Now, having read the whole Chalet School series one and a half times through in the last eighteen months, it is clearly an exhortation to take a rest cure in a female-dominated environment in Switzerland, to prioritise my health, and to take the time I need to get better.

Lest anyone was in any doubt, I cannot literally go to Switzerland at this moment. It would take a lot of money that I have earmarked for other things and effort that I could better use on recovery. This does not matter. Never going to Switzerland did not stop Elinor M. Brent-Dyer from setting well over half the books there. She travelled via Baedeker instead.

I also don’t have the option of doing nothing any more. I have a toddler. This is where the coven comes in. My mother has been staying this week and has helped me work out a number of strategies (purchase of a little set of plastic steps to facilitate access to highchair; getting down on the floor with the child as an alternative to picking her up… ) More generally, I am just going to have to get used to the idea of getting people to do things for me. It takes a village. Or at least a coven.

I began my virtual stay in Switzerland yesterday, before I’d even remembered about my lac coven scene, by watching Alpine Train at Christmas. Most of my friends who have seen this programme report an immediate desire to take the Bernina Express, but I am too tired to plan train adventures, and just enjoyed watching the snowy mountains go by (and got depressed about the receding glaciers).

What else might I do, in pursuit of not-doing? I could get Switzerland’s Amazing Railways down from the shelf and become very interested in spiral tunnels. I could re-read or re-watch On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (nothing like watching James Bond be energetic when you’re not feeling particularly so yourself). I have got stuck on A Chalet Girl from Kenya but, now I can eat fatty foods again, rather fancy something involving ‘featherbeds of whipped cream’, and, indeed, most of the Chalet School diet. But I do find myself moved to revisit whichever Sadlers Wells book it is where Ella has a term at finishing school. I could find more slow travel videos – mountain railways, or steamers on the Alpine lakes (we saw the New Year in watching the P. S. Waverley sailing up the Clyde). Either way, a retreat to the sofa seems indicated. I shall rejoin the coven at the lac scene. See you all later.

December Reflections 31: my word for 2025

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A roughly drawn compass rose on lined paper has MYSTERY at north, JUBILATION at south west, and INSPIRATION at the centre. The rest is blank.

Still working on this year’s compass, but I have enough to be going on with. Mystery for Christmas, Jubilation for Lammas and my birthday, and Inspiration for the whole year.

When I was thinking about this, I thought something like this: “I want something about space. Breathing space. Exactly that. That moment when you take a breath between verses. Oh. Yes. Of course. That’s what inspiration literally means.”

So I’m thinking of INSPIRATION as something active, something in which I can make a conscious effort to participate, not just something that happens to me. I have to say that it all feels a bit daunting at the moment, and perhaps I should put in something like RECOVERY or RETREAT at north east, but there’s still time to think about that, and in the meantime I’ll concentrate on the “breathing space” aspect of INSPIRATION.