Tag: personal

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.

December Reflections 29: my hope(s) for 2025

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A white framed lantern appears to contain glowing yellow stars

The original prompt is singular, but I get dreadfully stressed when I have to pick just one thing I want, so let’s remove the limit and see how far I get.

1. Health for myself and my loved ones, with (where needed) the persistence to shake the system until a useful result falls out;
2. Peace for the world, and respect for human life and dignity;
3. A joyous celebration of this (ceremonial, probable) mid point in my lifespan;
4. The time and headspace to read;
5. The time and headspace to write;
6. The continued expansion of my comfort zone;
7. To get out on my road bike;
8. To tie up loose ends, receive the important decisions (I *think* I know how the big one’s going, but I could be wrong) and be at peace with them, and move gracefully through the year and into the next one.

December Reflections 28: rest

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A tabby cat in a blue fabric cat bed

‘Prehabilitation’ is an expression with which I have recently become familiar. Part of me is rolling my eyes; another part finds it a useful way of saying something quickly: in this case, that making sure that one is as well as possible before the operation means that one will recover from it more quickly.

I’m over my cold, so that’s a good start. And I’ve spent considerably more than the suggested twenty minutes ‘walking outside as you are able’ today. And I’m going to bed very soon, honestly. Because yes, rest is important and I’d like to be doing more of it.

But in actual fact I’ve mostly been preparing by turning the heel of the latest sock so I have some easy knitting to do while I wait for my gallbladder removal (laparoscopic cholecystectomy, if you want to be fancy about it). Call it a displacement activity. I am a bit nervous.

In the meantime, yes, rest. I can only aspire to feline levels of rest, but it’s a noble aspiration.

December Reflections 23: hearts

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Two Lebkuchen hearts and one star on a saucer, with a string of red-painted wooden hearts

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.

December Reflections 13: biggest lesson of 2024

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A full cup of coffee. A toddler's plastic beaker is visible in the background.

Capacity. There are only so many hours in a day, even when it’s not a scarce-seven-hours St Lucy’s day.

There is only so much work that I can fit into three days, only so much voluntary admin that I can fit into a toddler’s nap. And then I have to switch off, put the laptop away. No more pressing on until the task is finished. I can’t get away with that any more. I can’t afford the egotistical luxury of being the go-to person any more: I have to direct inquiries elsewhere, ask for help, leave things undone.

I still have a lot to learn about this.

December Reflections 11: 2024 in one photo

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Windpump, main structure of dark wood planks, white sails, against a blue sky

Windpump at Wicken Fen. I am not just trying to indicate that 2024 was the year we got National Trust membership, though this is true.

At one point I got very interested in windmills (this is not one) and fell down several Wikipedia rabbit-holes learning about Dutch windmill code and so on (this appears to be broadcasting something between ‘good news’ and ‘not open for business’).

But the real reason for choosing this photo is the sense of space I encountered at Wicken Fen, which feels emblematic of this year’s emotional shift. Big skies and quietness. This year I’ve begun to make more sense of the world in which I live, I’ve been deliberate in spending more time outside, and (most of the time) there’s been more space and it’s easier to breathe.

December Reflections 7: here I am

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Wooden railway track and cars noodle around a map of the pre-Beeching Isle of Wight railway network

This is where I am, although not when I am.  Only a fraction of this railway network remains; today I joined some family members in riding the part that’s preserved as a steam heritage line.

I am not from the Isle of Wight. We moved there when I was fourteen; before that I knew it as a tourist; I’ve never lived there as an adult for more than a couple of months while I worked out what else I was meant to be doing. Many things would have to change to make it make sense for me to move back. And yet, I realised this year, Ventnor is the closest thing I have to a hometown. There’s a part of me that would love to hang out permanently in the Exchange, writing novels. Or walking along whichever bits of the coast haven’t fallen into the sea yet. Or both.

Every time I go back, something’s changed, something in the natural landscape or the human one, or both. And every time I go back it still manages to feel like home.

December Reflections 3: remembering

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A framed watercolour painting of a building on an island in a mirror, a framed prayer by Robert Louis Stevenson illustrated with a photo of an angel carved in stone, and a brass rubbing (only partly visible) hang next a door

In the introduction to my copy of Virginia Woolf’s The Years, Jeri Johnson draws attention to the way that certain pieces of furniture reappear in different settings through the book – the sort of thing it’s easy to do in film, but which requires considerable skill to pull off in a novel. I’ve been thinking of this a lot as I try to assimilate objects and artworks from my late father’s house into my own. Sometimes it’s been a bit of a challenge – twenty-first century walls are not, on the whole, tall enough to give nineteenth century portraits the breathing room they deserve – but this little prayer fits beautifully next our front door.

In Pa’s house (smaller than this one, and certainly fuller) it was clamped onto the end of a bookcase. It hung in the bathroom at the house before. And at the house before that, I’m pretty sure. I don’t know about the one before that; I was only four. Reading it over and over, it’s sunk into my head. I know it by heart, without ever having deliberately set out to learn it.

In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever read this prayer aloud. I would find it difficult to do the play the man bit seriously; when I pray it in my head, which I quite often do when I need a prayer in the morning and can’t remember how the Collect for Grace begins, I can add a mental footnote (‘you know what I mean’). I remember Pa telling me how when he was a child he thought ‘play the man’ referred to a stage role, and ‘perform them’ followed on from that. That’s got me thinking about how nobody (hardly anybody) really gets what ‘performative’ means (me included), but that’s not really the point here.

In my memory I also see it quoted in the visitors’ book – ‘… laughter and kind faces; let cheerfulness abound with industry…’ in the spiky handwriting of a dear departed friend. I don’t remember a huge amount of industry happening in my childhood home (my mother, I am sure, would beg to differ) but it most definitely had its cheerful moments, many of them associated with that very friend.

The angel – you can’t quite see in the photograph of a photograph – is from Southwell. We visited Southwell this summer, but I didn’t think to look for the angel. Nor did we look at the famous Southwell Leaves, which were in a part of the minster that looked a bit daunting to attempt with a pushchair. We did, however, find a memorial to the victims of the Katyn massacre – something we would most definitely have sought out had we known about it, as my husband’s great-grandfather was among those murdered. It brought us up short; we’d only diverted to Southwell to tick another cathedral off the list and find lunch. A surprise – a stop-and-think-for-a-moment – a remembering – keep it alive – keep them alive.

Remembering is an inexact art. Was that prayer really in the bathroom? My memory tried to put it in the bathroom at my father’s last house, too, but I know I unscrewed it from the bookcase myself. I’m getting confused with prayers for washing of hands. Already the family stories blur and swirl. My brother (happy birthday!) went to look for the house where those portraits must have hung, and now it’s a chip shop. Except that was twelve years ago, assuming he went when I assume he did. We write down what we can remember, and then wonder how long the writing survives. Digital decays fast: I shouldn’t be surprised if that framed prayer outlives this blog. As for the memory that goes with it, that’s another question. In the long view, it doesn’t really matter. If the prayer survives, it will be because somebody likes it, for the sake of its associations (my father, me, Southwell, who knows) or for its own. In the meantime, I see it as I put my shoes and coat on and prepare to leave the house:

Give us to go blithely on our business all this day, and bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonoured, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep.