Month: December 2020

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Husband or Cat?

We moved into the house with the attic in 1999 – our last home as a family, though I wasn’t exactly the first one to leave it – that honour goes to our son, who left in 2004 to go to university, though he was back in the holidays for a few years, and also for the ‘industry’ section of his third year, in 2007.

I announced that the smaller attic room would be the birthplace of ‘…the first great novel of the twenty-first century!’ With a legacy from my parents (who had both passed away early in 1999) I bought a new computer (the first time I’d had one that was all my own, instead of sharing a family one), a leather-topped desk and captain’s chair (which I still have) and a suite of flatpack office furniture (which I assembled by myself, but which has suffered after multiple house moves since and has mostly gone). I filled the shelves with books and filled my time with housework, job applications and managing the activities and transport needs of two youngsters who were rapidly morphing into teenagers. I was living in a Grade 2 listed Georgian house and garden, beautiful beyond any realistic expectation I might have had, and I told myself every day how lucky I was.

Six years later, in the middle of an autumn night, I went up into my attic room, switched on my computer, Googled ‘free blogs’, found a site called ‘blog.co.uk’, created my first blog (which I titled: ‘Husband or Cat?’) and wrote the following:

Here’s my scenario…

I have had a cat for nine years. Before we got the cat, my husband always swore he didn’t want one, but since we have had it he has always got on very well with it and has never shown any animosity towards it.
I recently decided to get another kitten. My husband’s reaction went something like this:
Hubby: If we get another cat, we have to get rid of the old one.
Me: We’re not getting rid of the old one.
Hubby: In that case, I’ll go.
Me: OK, you go then.
In spite of this conversation, I went ahead and got the kitten on the assumption that my husband was not serious, and that he would learn to love the new cat just as he had with the old one.
However, he refuses to be in the same room as the kitten, to the extent that he will not eat a meal with myself and our daughter if the kitten is present. When he is not at work, he has taken to spending all his time in a room in the attic.
When I asked him how long he intended to keep this up, he announced that he did not wish to be in the same house as the kitten and would find somewhere and move out.
I offered to get rid of the kitten, but he replied that it was too late and he was going anyway.
This after 23 years of marriage, 28 years together, and never any hint in the past that he was dissatisfied with our relationship in any way.
No one would make this up. This is my life.
What happens next?

husbandorcat, blog.co.uk, 16 October 2005
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Madwoman Out of the Attic

Writing is easy – just listen to the words in your head and transcribe them. That’s the way I do it, anyway. Never a time when there aren’t any words in my head, though admittedly most of them aren’t worth preserving. Which begs the question… but I’m not going down that road again, because I’ve asked it too many times and never found an answer. It’s just a habit – something I do every morning (or almost every morning) like tai chi, or feeding the cat, or listening to ‘Thought for the Day’, or defecating. (actually, the only one of those I absolutely can’t avoid doing is feeding the cat, as long as I’m here, though if I’m not here, someone else comes in to do it.)

Now my mind is wandering and I’m not actually typing. Oh, I fixed the mouse, by the way, it was just a new battery that it needed. I remembered them and even got as far as bringing them up (I wasn’t sure if it needed AA or AAA so brought both), when I remembered that I needed to bring up the loo cleaner – which I also brought up. Wonder how long it will take me to remember to take the spare batteries downstairs again? Or to clean the loo? (Only kidding, I put the loo cleaner in as soon as I got upstairs).

I told you most of the words in my head aren’t worth preserving. They’re either stuff like that, or things I’ve already said before.

Why do I tag myself as the ‘Madwoman in the Attic’? Especially as the house where I live now doesn’t even have an attic? It’s partly, of course, a literary  reference to Jane Eyre, in which Mr Rochester keeps his first wife locked up in the attic (which probably was a kinder option than sending her to one of the notorious ‘madhouses ‘ of the time). Ironically, I’ve just realised that in the ‘Husband or Cat?’ incident of 2005, it was my ex-husband who voluntarily moved himself into the attic –I’ve never noticed the irony before, but that’s a story for another time. Anyway, our attic had two rooms, and he confined himself to the larger one, which wasn’t my study, and had a telly and VHS in addition to a computer.

The whole attic thing went back much further than that, however, to a time when I thought it was romantic for writers to starve in attics (or ‘garrets’ – I’m not sure what the difference is between the two). I’d long dreamt of having an attic to write (though not necessarily starve) in. As soon as we saw that house, I knew it was going to be my room – the ‘Room of One’s Own’ as recommended by Virginia Woolf for any woman who wanted to write (literary references coming thick and fast today).

When I left, it also became the repository for all the junk I left behind… but this is the start of a much longer story…

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Rotting From the Roots

Sat down at the PC to start writing and remembered a) the mouse isn’t working and b) the top tool bar on word keeps appearing and disappearing and I can’t work out how to fix it. Weell… actually, after a few more minutes of trying the View tab and other things, I Googled it and found out that if I right click on the home tab it gives me a drop-down including ‘Minimize the ribbon’ which was ticked, so I unticked it and that worked. The first suggestion: press Ctrl F1, was stymied by the fact that I can’t see ‘F1’ on my keyboard. Don’t know how it got ticked in the first place, but I suspect it happened when I was thrashing around trying to get the mouse to work.

I suspect the mouse just needs a new battery, but spare batteries are downstairs and the mouse is upstairs, and by the time I got downstairs I’d forgotten I needed to get them. If I remember, I could take the mouse down when I go and do it then, but that would rely on me remembering to take it, remembering what I’d taken it for, then remembering to bring it back up again. For now, I’m getting more practised at using the touch pad.

Today, I feel the way this poinsettia looks. I used to buy a poinsettia every year, and this is how they always ended up looking. I think it’s down to over-watering – but you only have to do it once and there’s no getting back from the slippery slope. I’m always a bit erratic with my watering regime, I guess it’s to do with short term memory and lack of awareness. Some things die from lack of water, which is recoverable-from if you notice in time, but there’s no way back from over-watering.

I can tell you exactly how long I’ve had this one, because I bought it the day we went into Tier 3, the Thursday before Christmas. I know, because it was the day I took my cards to the post office and checked the local shops for a small turkey joint, then bought a little Christmas tree and this poinsettia on the way home. Then my family persuaded me to go to them for Christmas anyway, by promising to come and get me and bring me back, then two days later we went in Tier 4 and the plan changed again (but you already know that story).

In other words, this poor plant has been in my care for less than a fortnight, and this is what I’ve done to it.

However, that’s not why I’m feeling droopy, as though I’m rotting from my roots. It’s just that I woke up that way, as often happens. Maybe it’s because I’m always rotting from my roots, and I’m not sure whether there’s any way back from that. Well, nothing permanent, as far as I can tell, but at least I’m not actually dead yet.

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Monday Mouse Mayhem

‘This is the way the world turns…’

There was a line to go after that, it came into my head while I was making coffee, and went on for a little way, and I thought: this could be going somewhere, let’s follow it for a bit… But by the time I was sitting at the keyboard, I’d forgotten what I’d done with that second line, and so it’s gone, another aborted poem, and my head throws me a line: ‘…every song in my heart dies a bornin’.., not one of mine but from a song I knew fifty-odd years ago, and I have to sing it in my head till I get to the refrain and remember it’s ‘The Last Thing on my Mind’, by Tom somebody (not Lehrer) a sad little heart-brakey song which I always thought fitted will with Dylan’s ‘Don’t Think Twice, it’s Alright’, and if I was a singer I would sing them both at tonce, one after the other, two siodes of the same coin, but I never did because I’m not a singer.

Now something has happened to the mouse, it’s not working and it’s so long since I used the touch pad on this keyboard (even though I use the one on the laptop every time and don’t even know where the laptop mouse is), I just can’t seem to get it, and so everything since ‘…every…’ is now in italics and I can’t work out how to change it back.

Also did I mention that the top toolbar keeps disappearing, unless I move the cursor up there, which given what I just said about the mouse and not knowing how to use the touchpad, is tricky. But at least you can see that I’ve now rectified the italics, and also went back and corrected a lot of the typoes, but left just a few in to keep you on your toes, and also as a general illustration of my dyspraxia-fuelled nonsense, which I usually manage to cover up quite easily.

What an odd, yet oddly typical, start to the day. Also when I started the computer, my desktop was showing the image I was talking about a few weeks ago, the one of a harbour that I couldn’t place, but thought was either Italy or the south of France, and then couldn’t find and spent ages scrolling through the folder. This time I did identify it, checked the properties and found out it was taken on 10 March 2012, which I thought meant San Sebastian or Barcelona. Then I started looking for drafts of Single to Sirkeci  and couldn’t find where the files were, which is worrying. I found a very early version on the external hard drive, which I couldn’t open because it’s a different version of In Design, then I found a pdf of that draft, but that didn’t have the dates on each section, which I did in the later drafts…

Just realised I’ve written way over 500 words. Stopping now.

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Creative Endeavours

Last evening my cat and I huddled together listening to the storm, which shares its name with my eldest great-niece. This morning all is calm, and the sky, though pale, is mostly clear with patches of cloud, rather than the other way round. Whether Bella has spent her wrath on us, or is rampaging further up the country, I couldn’t say.

Worryingly, when I switched my computer on this morning, it didn’t show the Windows log on screen. I thought I was going to have to go downstairs and type this on my laptop, but after a few rounds of switching off and on again, it slowly and reluctantly opened up, though is still running more slowly than usual, so there’s a delay between my typing and its appearance on the screen.

Two days before Christmas, I finished off a crochet cardi which I’d started before my daughter’s Christmas jumper, and which had been hanging around waiting to be finished. It didn’t work out quite as well as I hoped, and I knew I was going to need a new project over Christmas, so have been thinking about it and planning, and started knitting on Christmas Eve, with a couple of false starts and re-starts since. It’s another one that I’m making up as I go along, a jumper using the same top-down techniques and mainly the same yarn as the Christmas one (I bought way too much) but I’m changing the neck and obviously won’t be doing any Christmas motifs, but a sort of fair-isle pattern, which I’m working out on squared paper, and for which I will use partly white yarn and partly a variegated yarn that I bought during the first lockdown. We’ll see how it goes. If I do finish it, I probably won’t wear it, because I don’t like jumpers, I prefer cardigans that are easy to take off and put on, but that’s not really the point anyway – the point is the process of making.

As a way of channelling creativity, it’s maybe not as highbrow as writing a novel or artistic as painting and drawing, but equally it’s not as challenging or stressful. There is of course a whole debate about the boundaries between craft and art, and the downgrading of skills which are stereotypically seen as ‘women’s work’, which I’m too weary to engage with at the moment. My discovery last week of abandoned sketch books containing my abortive and depressing attempts to produce visual art has led me once again back to wondering if I should make more efforts in that direction. I have drawers full of materials (mostly dried up and useless) and shelves full of books leftover from past attempts, and I wonder if I should try again, but I think I’ll stick to knitting.

Here’s one of the poems I found in the sketchbooks, written in coloured pencils, different colours for the different stanzas:

I draw flowers.
These are all I know.
They are not real, just sketches of shapes.

And on the back, I find
the beginnings of a painting,
house roofs, sky,
the empty outlines of a tree,
I scrape the brown pencil
over the ridges of the paper,
colouring in.

This is nonsense.
I channel words,
that’s all I can do.

I cannot draw, I cannot paint,
I cannot love, I cannot write,
I cannot tell you how I feel.

Linda Rushby, date unknown, probably 2015?
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Boxing Day

Definitely not the worst Christmas ever, in fact I’m not sure I’d even add it to the list of ‘bad’ Christmases. Yes it was sad not having the family all together, but the Skyping worked well (after some initial glitches – and for some reason I couldn’t connect the laptop to the telly as I’ve been doing for months for tai chi), opened presents in the morning with my son and daughter-in-law, then later we had dinner ‘together’ (a bit later than I would have liked, as they were late putting their turkey in the oven), and we even watched a film on Netflix ‘together’ after dinner (which I fell asleep in the middle of, even more typical). It was fun cooking my own Christmas dinner, and being in my own home with my little cat – which reminds me that the last time I did that – ten years ago, with a different cat – I went for a walk in the sunshine with snow in the park by the river in Bedford – which I wouldn’t have been doing yesterday, given the reports of flooding. I could have gone for a walk by the seafront, but didn’t have time, what with all the Skyping.

Ten years – I can’t quite believe it. Life goes through its cycles – lying in bed this morning, I was thinking about the bad times – years, not specifically Christmases – and how they seem to come at intervals of three years: I’d started by remembering 2014, then 2011, and 2008… all of them particularly challenging for different reasons. And going forward, what happened in 2017? Oh yes, cancer treatment. So that I guess puts this year on the same trajectory. All of them led, in the early part of the next year, to major turning points: 2009 splitting with my husband, 2012 going travelling and 2015 moving to the south coast – (although 2017 was the exception, because 2018 was also difficult – though that was the year when I started with my current therapist, and was diagnosed with dypraxia, so maybe that was a good turning point too).

Whatever, a new year is a new year, a turning point of sorts, and currently we’re between the astronomical new year (lengthening daylight) and the calendrical one. Usually I wouldn’t be here for the latter either, but life is as it is.

I used to find Boxing Day a massive disappointment – all that anticipation, and suddenly the excitement was over. Today I think I will just take it easy – not that I ever do anything but that these days, but you know what I mean.

I’m not thinking too much about the new year – whatever it brings will come anyway. I’m not sure whether I’ll carry on with blogging – I can’t seem to raise much enthusiasm for it at the moment, that might be a temporary thing, in fact it probably is, given past experience. I guess you could say I’ve lost my sense of agency (and urgency) – but then, it is Boxing Day.

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Christmas at Home

Well here it is…

First time I’ve had Christmas in my own home for ten years. Not the first time I’ve blogged on Christmas Day but I can’t really think of what to say. Earlier I could, but now I’m not so sure. I think I’ll just go and get breakfast.

I feel I should write something to explain how I feel, except that… I don’t think I can express it very well. I can say I’m fine, and really I think I am, and the more I say on that theme, probably the less convincing it will seem, so maybe it’s best to say nothing.

I’m expecting Skype calls with both families today, and I got a turkey crown yesterday in the Co-op – not the same Co-op that had the sign saying none of their stores were selling turkeys, but my usual one. So I bought it though it will serve six, and the steak is consigned to the freezer!

I decided I needed some lights for my tiny little tree (which is about as long as between my elbow and hand), so on Tuesday I had a look for the box with all the Christmas stuff in the cupboard under the stairs – it wasn’t there, but I did find a large plastic folder with some of my artistic efforts from a few years back, lino prints and drink-and-draw sessions and some feeble attempts at watercolour from years earlier. I found a couple of poems scribbled on pages in sketchbooks too, neither of which I think had ever been typed up or turned into anything. I was going to blog one of them with the awful picture it came with, but didn’t get round to it.

As I couldn’t find the box, on Wednesday I ventured up into the loft. Getting the ladder down is enough of a challenge, but I did that and got my head into the loft, where I could see the box I wanted without going through the hatch, so pulled it towards me, then had to turn it end on to get it through, then tried to go down the steps, but couldn’t hold the box, thought I was going to trap my arm, then that I would trap my fingers, then let the box fall, then lost my balance and fell myself (from about halfway up the ladder). Plastic box shattered with a mighty crash, shards of red plastic (and glitter) everywhere, but miraculously, a set of four glass tumblers in a cardboard carton were intact, as were two boxes of glass baubles from Prague. The only casualty seemed (at first sight) to be a tree topper star which lost one of its arms, and was no great loss, but later I discovered that one of the banister posts had broken in the middle, which I guess must have been caused by my body rolling into it – I don’t remember that happening, but nothing else heavy enough got that close.

But my tree has lights.

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Dinner Plans

I’m not reading in the mornings at the moment – I’m between books. Maybe this is why the dark morning clouds have settled in again – takes a lot of effort to fight through them. I’ve also been late getting to sleep the last couple of nights – going to bed at the usual time, but I just don’t settle.

On Monday I wrapped up my daughter’s Christmas jumper in a parcel and took it to the Post Office. I paid for Special Delivery for it to get there the next day, and yesterday I waited for a text from her saying it had arrived and thanking me. In the evening I texted and asked if her ‘parcel’ had arrived without saying what it was. She said two of the cards I posted last Thursday came yesterday. I checked the tracking app, which told me it had been received in Southampton – presumably a regional depot – at 1:19pm yesterday. Just checked again and it was received at Bedford (again, presumably the sorting office) earlier this morning (it is now 8:24) and should be delivered today. Hooray! In the circumstances, 48 hours rather than ‘next day’ is still pretty good.

After sorting out (sort of) the business over the new router yesterday I went to Tesco, then on the way back moved my car from the side street where it’s been parked (since I went to the hospital a fortnight ago, I think that’s the last time I used it) to a spot across the road where I can see it through the window as I type. Once I’d got it started, I thought I’d go and try a couple of shops which are outside my usual (in this weather) walking area. I couldn’t park near the butcher’s, but I tried another local Tesco, and then a slightly larger Co-op, where I managed to find a piece of steak – nothing special, but I don’t often have steak. I was thinking I’d do it with roasties and Yorkshire pudding (which reminds me I need to get eggs), and I’ve got parsnips and carrots, so although I’ll obviously cook the steak on the griddle, the trimmings will be more like a roast dinner (which I also don’t have very often). And I’ve got Christmas pudding, assorted nibbles and party food for tomorrow evening (and I’ll make pate today), enough boxes of biscuits to sink a battleship, and a couple of bottles of bubbly. I’ve also got smoked salmon, so thought I’d have scrambled eggs and salmon on toasted wholewheat for breakfast on the day, maybe with buck’s fizz (again, mustn’t forget to buy eggs).

So that’s sorted – or at least, in my head it is. Would stuffing balls and chipolatas wrapped in bacon (NOT to be confused with ‘pigs in blankets’, which should be sausages wrapped in pancakes) be too weird with steak? Maybe I should have got a chicken instead – but I prefer steak.

And this year, I’ll do exactly what I want – with what’s available.

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First World Frustration

Two things I have to do today: call Virgin Media to try and sort out my broadband issues; and try to find something for dinner on Christmas day. Neither of these is an exciting prospect, and both I’ve already spent too much time on yesterday.

Of the local shops, I’ve already tried the Co-op, the Romanian butcher and Sainsbury’s. I may head for Tesco shortly, but without much hope. On Sunday I saw a boneless turkey crown joint for six people in the Co-op. I didn’t buy it, because it was clearly way too big, but I did have regrets afterwards. I’ve got some pre-made pastry, because I was planning on having salmon en croute for New Year’s Day, but now thinking that I can get a steak and have steak en croute – or just steak. But I can’t find any decent steak either. First world problems. I can always get something out of the freezer, curry or casserole or something. Still got a couple of days to sort it out, but I don’t want to go to any of the big supermarkets and battle with the queues, or to walk twenty minutes through the rain to the butchers.

I may go and ring Virgin now. I got more worthwhile interaction from them in the morning yesterday – in other words, I got to speak to a human being. I didn’t when I tried again in the afternoon – because the guy had said ‘try this and if it doesn’t show any improvement in a couple of hours, call back’. Yeah, right. I tried calling back again around four, and got lost in that awful endless loop of listening to options and pressing buttons, then snagged on the request to enter characters from a password that presumably I was told five and a half years ago but have no recollection of now.

…

I abandoned writing, and went to call again. When it asked for the password, I sat and held the phone until it gave up waiting and transferred me to a young woman whose job presumably was to be shouted and sworn at by angry old women (or was this morning, at any rate). She said she’d send me an email with a link to change my password, and handed me over to a young Scottish man who asked for my password. I told him I was waiting for the password reset email, which he told me could take up to five days. I told him I didn’t have five days because if I wanted to cancel the new contract I’d have to do it this week. Then he asked me some security questions, looked at the new contract, compared it to my current usage, asked if I really wanted the features I’d never used, and managed to reduce it by £20, which made it less than my previous contract. He also said that I can get boosters online, but they are introducing new ones in January.

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Tiers Before Bedtime

I started by saying: it’ll be fine. Whatever happens, I’ll be okay. Either way.

Then we went into Tier 3. And I thought: okay, that’s the way it’s going to be. I’ll manage, it’ll be fine, in a way it’s a relief. The decision is made. Just a shame I can’t find anything nice to cook for Christmas dinner. But hey, it’ll be okay.

Then my family had different ideas, and they made a plan, so I could still go, still be with them, still see them all. And I thought: aww, they really care, they really love me, they don’t want me to be alone and miss out. Bless them. That’s the way it’s going to be.

Then we went into Tier 4 and the goalposts moved. And I thought, okay, so this is the way it is after all. I’ll deal with it.

Can I get round the rules by having a ‘support bubble’ that I have to travel 140 miles to be with? Or even 50 miles, if they’re in Tier 2? Can I travel out of the area? Do I want to be the person who goes from Tier 4 into Tier 2, even if I’m going there and back in a day? Can I justify that? Is a ‘support bubble’ equivalent to a household, when it’s not just around the corner? Do I break the rules on the basis that ‘they can’t check every house…’ as someone (no names) suggested to me? Wouldn’t that make me part of the problem? And if I stayed away, and needed the catsitter to come in, where would they stand? Even if they weren’t strictly breaking the rules, they’d know I was, and what would their position be?

Enough. I don’t want to break any rules, or take any risks, or put anyone else at risk.

I think perhaps, because I’ve had so many times in my life when I’ve been unhappy and not been able to share it with anybody, and had to carry on and appear ‘fine, okay’ when I deeply wasn’t, even my nearest and dearest don’t realise how used I am to having to deal with a degree of sadness and disappointment that makes Christmas on my own seem trivial by comparison. I’m not saying I wouldn’t enjoy being with my family on Christmas Day, but it won’t destroy me. I’m not saying I won’t have to shed a few tears, just as I did on my birthday – as I have done already several times in the last twenty four hours. But it will come and it will go, and it won’t be the worst thing that could happen, and even if – as I said the other day – it turns out to be my last Christmas, well, it won’t be greatest regret.

If you pin your hopes on one thing – a particular day, a particular person, a particular wish – you’re setting yourself up for a lifetime of disappointment. Take it from someone who knows.