Category: places

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Trying

I haven’t written for the last couple of days because I’ve been out. On Friday I went to Chichester, to an art exhibition which I’d been meaning to go to and when I finally got round to checking the gallery website on Wednesday I found out it finished today, so I booked a ticket for Friday. It was quite a grey and drizzly day, and apart from the exhibition I spent most of it sitting in a café, but at least I went, and had a damp walk round the Bishop’s Palace Gardens and took some photos.

Yesterday I did something I’ve been thinking about doing for ages, and psyching myself up for most of last week. A new book shop has opened since the summer, round the corner from the café where I used to go for breakfast on Sundays before the writers group meetings. The ‘psyching myself up’ part was to take my books and ask if they would stock them. I’ve been putting it off, so I thought I’d bribe myself by going out for breakfast first. On Wednesday I decided I would definitely go on Thursday, but when I woke up it was raining, and carrying a bag full of paperback books through the rain didn’t seem like such a good idea, and was enough of an excuse to back out of it.

But yesterday morning when I got up it was dry and bright, so despite the news about the lockdown, which was a perfectly good excuse, I steeled myself to do it. Passing the shop on the way to the café, I saw that they opened at ten. I got to the café about ten past nine, but although there were plenty of tables at that point, they were fully booked from 9:30 so couldn’t offer me a table. I walked around to find another café for breakfast, the first one I had in mind had a queue outside, so I kept going to an area where there are lots of cafes, and found a new one I hadn’t tried before. The service was a bit slow, but the food was good, I was quite happy till I looked out the window and realised it was pouring with rain. I checked the bus app to see if I could get a bus back to the book shop – there was one which would take me part of the way – or I could just get the normal one, going the other way, and go home. But it had become a mission, so I waited at the bus stop for about ten minutes, while two passed going the other way, then I gave up and walked through the rain back to the shop.

The lady in the shop was very nice, and we chatted for ages, but she didn’t want my books, especially with the news about the lockdown. Maybe some time in the future, whenever that might be. But at least I tried.

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Order and Chaos

In the last week I have: walked to the beach twice; had breakfast out twice; had a cream tea out once; had a flu jab; walked to the garage to drop off the van keys (for MOT); been to a real live tai chi lesson at the community centre (just restarted after the teacher’s quarantine); resolved the initial issues and produced a reasonable stab at a first attempt on the website, to show to client; ditto the Christmas jumper (except the ‘client’ can’t see it because it’s going to be a surprise); phoned my sister; as well as writing every day (last Thursday’s effort handwritten in a notebook on the beach) and did at least some of my exercise and meditation routine every day (which reminded me to go and look in the spare room and check that I’d blown the candle out, which I had).

Also I notice that I haven’t been moaning about not being ‘motivated’, although I must admit the house is even more chaotic than usual. Earlier I filled the plastic water jug for the coffee pot while I was trying to tidy up around the sink, then moments later knocked it over and half the water went over the counter. I managed to mop that up and make sure it wasn’t too close to any of the electrical stuff, then turned round and knocked it again, with the rest of the water going over the floor. However, this is not to say that that’s in any way unusual, just that my feet and my dressing gown got wet.

Years ago, I remember a friend telling me that her cat disapproved of her standards of house-keeping, and kept giving her disapproving looks. I laughed at the time, and thought ‘crazy cat lady!’, but now understand exactly what she means. I feel so guilty sometimes watching my cat trying to pick her way around piles of junk on the floor – often knitting yarn, or books (or clothes – mostly in the bedroom) but also random other things which have fallen or been dropped or knocked off the furniture and not picked up, whereas I just step over it without even noticing it’s there. Also she is terrified of sudden movements and loud noises, which must make living with me a nightmare, as I blunder my way around the place.

All thoughts of trying to impose any kind of order on my life and my living space seem to have gone out of the (smeary, blurry, fly-specked) window. Having ‘projects’ to do somehow gives me licence to ignore that stuff – and go to the beach, or eat scones in a quiet café.

And yet… in the mornings, I feed my cat, do my exercises and meditation, write my blog. Every day (mostly) – and have done consistently for months. Yet making ‘to do’ lists and sticking with them is beyond me – I keep trying, but it all falls apart.

Sun shining this morning. Skype therapy at 2.00. That’s today.  

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Plus Ҫa Change

New day, new week. Almost a new month. Sunny but chilly.

Found out over the weekend that my local swimming pool won’t be reopening. When I moved to Southsea it was on my doorstep, and I started going in the mornings, then having a bacon butty and pot of tea afterwards at the local seafront café. When I first moved from the flat into this house, I stopped because it seemed too far to walk and I didn’t want to drive there. Then in spring 2018, after I’d finished my cancer treatment, I started going again, walking (it was only 20minutes away) first thing in the morning, only once or twice a week. The café had changed hands, but everything else stayed the same, and I would come out of the pool and stop for a few moments on the prom watching the sea and filling myself with love for this place. Then my writers’ group started meeting at the library on Monday mornings, so I would walk from the seafront into the town centre, and in the process found another café for breakfast. During that time, first John Lewis and then Debenham’s closed down, and our Sunday meetings moved from Debenham’s café to the library as well as the Monday ones.

I’ve lived in Southsea for well over five years now – in this house for four years next month. To me, it doesn’t feel very long, but in that time, so many of the things that I felt made the place special have gone or changed – of course, this year has accelerated that, but many went before that – in fact, of the things listed in the previous paragraph that have now changed or gone, only the pool and the second breakfast café (the one in the town centre) have closed as a direct result of the lockdown – and both were already in financial difficulty – this has just been the final blow.

Places change – that’s how it is. The sea is still there, and the park, I can walk there whenever I wish. Most of the people I’ve met over five years are probably still here, even if I’ve lost touch with them.

I came here intending to start a new life, and I’ve done that in many ways, and I guess I can do it again, even if so many things and places I treasured/took for granted have now slipped into memory (like riding my bike over the Common in that first summer and having coffee overlooking the harbour, watching the Isle of Wight ferries and other boats coming in and out – and when the weather got colder I started going swimming instead). I’d come out of a period when there was very little stability in my life, and the future had always seemed fluid and unknowable. Well, I guess that’s always true, but the human heart likes to kid itself that it isn’t.

I didn’t know when I sat down that this is what I would write today.

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Voluntary Self-Isolation

I’m not required to self-isolate, because Cyprus, having an extremely low infection rate, is one of the countries exempt from travel precautions as far as the UK government is concerned. (The attitude of the Cypriot government to people from the UK entering their country is somewhat different, hence the need for negative tests on the way in). But I’ve decided to do so voluntarily, because – well, basically because it’s a good excuse not to have to go out and interact with other people. And I have been mixing with a lot of people –not just on the plane, in the hotel and at the wedding, but also at Heathrow and on the trains and buses to and from it, so it’s a relief to spend a few days – even a couple of weeks – home alone with Miko again.

I was pretty much exhausted for the first three days – not sure why, because my sleep was no worse than it normally is, although there is a two hour time difference. On Wednesday I wrote something, but it was such a moany mess that I gave up and decided not to share it, while yesterday I didn’t even try. So here’s my effort for today.

On Sunday evening Laura was trying to persuade me to go up and stay with them for a few days, but it was really the last thing I felt like doing. I know that she wants me to see their new house -I want to see it too. And she kept saying: ‘we don’t know how long it will be before it’s possible again.’ I thought she meant because she’ll be back at work full-time from next week, but I’ve been thinking about it since. It’s true, we really don’t even know if Christmas together will be an option.

It feels as though the wedding and holiday has been a kind of watershed- for most of the year it seemed so uncertain that it wasn’t even worth thinking about, then when they came to visit at the end of July and I realised that she was still making plans (buying bridesmaids’ dresses etc) it felt more real, and then began the period of will it/won’t it? It’s caused so much uncertainty and stress that now it’s over, it’s both a relief, but also highlights how uncertain everything still is – and it’s brought back into focus the ways I spend (or waste) my time, the commitments I’ve made (or perhaps should be making) to myself and others, and my lack of motivation to do anything at all, the lack of purpose and satisfaction in my life.

Well, I’ve made a start – on the least threatening and stressful thing – bringing my finances up to date, checking my statements, filling in my spreadsheets. That’s the thing I always resort to when I want to feel as though I’m doing something useful. There’s always a ‘right’ answer, which I can find by checking and double checking, and it exercises my brain.

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Back Home, Reading and (Not) Writing

I was wrong about the equinox being yesterday, it’s today. I didn’t check. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel any more equable.

Yesterday I was tired all day – not surprising as I always feel that way the day after a long journey. So I didn’t push myself to do much, not even unpacking. Today I still feel tired, and I have a headache. That may be down to dehydration – on holiday I was careful to keep drinking plenty of water, but yesterday I didn’t bother. I feel slightly queasy as well, which may be because I didn’t eat much on Sunday. Yesterday I ate more like my normal amount of food – not as much as on holiday, more than when travelling. Actually, come to think of it, feeling queasy first thing is not that unusual.

Guess I’ll be tired again today though – largely due to reading from about half past three, when I first woke, to nearly six, finishing off the last book I’d been reading on holiday. Because that’s what I do on holiday: in the airport; on the plane; on the hotel balcony; on the sunbed; drying out in the sun after swimming; in the shade; flat on my belly with the sun on my back; in bed at night. There’s nothing really to stop me reading all the time when I’m at home – but for some reason I don’t.

Now I’ve finished my holiday reading, I’ve gone back to ‘Out of Sheer Rage’ which I mentioned a while back. It’s a very dippable book; quotable too. I picked it up again on the flight out. It’s as much fun as a novel, but not quite so obsessive in the sense of having to get to the end to find out what happens. Because nothing much does happen, there’s no plot as such, it’s just about trying and failing to write a serious book and in the process writing this rambly, chaotic, engrossing book – which may be why I like it so much. This morning, on the loo (forgot to mention that in my list of holiday reading places, though it’s my main one when at home), I read two things which really struck home, one about coming home after living abroad (which I highlighted and must try and share), and another about not being able to write when you have seven days a week to do nothing but, and thinking that maybe having a part time job would make one value one’s free time more and hence improve productivity.

Anyway, I was going to write more about reading and writing, and reading and not writing, but I’m running out of words. That sense you get when on holiday that you could really sit down and do it and write something worthwhile when you get home, and that that’s what you’re going to do, really put your back into it at last. Which is great, until you actually get home and realise there’s not a hope in hell.

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Equinox – Back Home

Equinox. Equanimity, equability, equilibrium? Time to restore all those things? (though I’m not sure if the second is a real word, and if so, how it differs from the first. To be ‘equable’ is to have ‘equanimity’. But the rule of three prevails.)

Miko has made it plain she wants me to come on the computer. So here I am/we are, she on the desk, currently looking out of the window, with her tail caught up between the last two fingers on my left hand

Arrived home at nine-thirty last evening, after a fairly stressful – because not very well planned – journey back from Heathrow (bus to Woking; another bus to Guildford; train to Fratton; then taxi home). By asking for advice from real people, not trying to find it online, I avoided the rail-replacement bus most of the way and the connections worked like a dream.

And as for the holiday and wedding, booked over a year ago, almost cancelled the first time when Thomas Cook went out of business, but reorganised through the efforts of the bride (my daughter) negotiating directly with the wedding planner and the hotel and rebooking the flights (which were changed again as recently as a couple of weeks ago, from Gatwick to Heathrow). Then this strange spring and summer, of not thinking about it – at first because it seemed so far in the future, too far to worry and plan on it ever happening, not knowing what the situation would be by the middle of September, whether there would be relative freedom of travel or we’d be back into the second wave by then (never seriously thinking it would ‘all be over’ in time). Then Cyprus opened to British tourists from 1st August, on condition of getting a negative covid test within 72 hours of flying, and it started to seem like it might happen after all – so then all the stress and panic of having to prepare for maybe going or maybe not going, and that awful last week of having to organise the tests and not knowing until the day before we left that I was actually going.

After all that – it could have been a massive anti-climax. It wasn’t. Wonderful hotel in a fabulous location, lazy days of relaxing and swimming, playing with the grandchildren, watching them play, eating too much, drinking too much, walking on the seafront and reading in the shade. And a beautiful ceremony on Thursday, overlooking the sea; the bridesmaids (all seven of them, in ages from four to not quite ten times that) in blue, the bride in an elegantly simple cream dress, my little girl, so happy, after all her herculean efforts to keep this dream going. Feeling like minor celebrities in the massively under-occupied hotel, as total strangers among the fellow guests smile and say hello afterwards.

And now, back home, with unpacking and washing and Miko reminding me of my morning writing ritual, wondering what happens next, and where life goes from here.

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Camping in the Forest

It’s a year since I camped out in my van – for obvious reasons. Although the campsites have been open in theory since the beginning of July, I haven’t felt like going, or even hassling the garage guys to sort out the battery, till the last few weeks. As with everything, I have to psych myself up – or bully myself – into doing anything about it.

The last time I slept out was in Holland’s Wood campsite, near Brockenhurst, this week last year, the first week after the end of the school holidays, when the New Forest Tour Bus was still running. The first time I went to Holland’s Wood was the same week five years ago, when I took the bus for the first time. I don’t know if they’ve been running it this year, but if so this will be the last week.

What struck me then was not just the beauty of the landscape, but also the way the Forest has the feeling of an island, so that distances become distorted, and place names which are on ‘the far side of the forest’ suddenly appear on signposts as being 8 miles away. It feels like a quaint and mystical land, and yet the M27/A31 and the mainline from Waterloo to the West Country run straight through its most northerly, wildest part.

And it’s on my doorstep. On any given day, I could get in my car, drive down the motorway, and within an hour I could be enjoying a cream tea at the Buttery in Brockenhurst, or buying local produce at Setley vineyard, or drive a little further to watch the boats in Lymington Habour. Taking the train down to Dorset – which I did for a few years even before I moved here – I’ve always felt a buzz of excitement after we leave Southampton, and start looking out for the first ponies grazing near the tracks.

Hollands Wood is my favourite of the (admittedly not very many) campsites that I’ve stayed in – though I’ve never stayed longer than a couple of nights – there’s no electricity, although the reception will charge your phone up for you for a pound. But you can camp under the trees, and wake in the morning to see the ponies appearing out of the mist lifting over the ‘lawn’. Or catch the bus into Lyndhurst, from where the Forest is your oyster.

Having lived most of my life in Bedfordshire, where the Home Counties meets the Midlands and East Anglia between the M1 and the A1, the New Forest is for me a reminder of how surprising England can be. Not that there aren’t interesting places and pretty countryside there too, but you can draw a circle 50 miles in radius around Bedford and not find anything quite so special.

Ah well. Maybe, in the coming autumn and winter, I’ll take the van out regularly and have picnics, as I always plan to – or maybe I’ll just hunker down like I do every year.

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Not Writing About the New Forest

I said yesterday that today I’d write about going to the New Forest, but when I try to start there are so many other things I’m thinking about, like I got up at 6.00 because that’s what I decided I should do, although that’s still not ‘first thing’ because I’ve been awake since 4.00, reading and listening to the radio. And at 6.00 it’s still dark, so that’s how it’s going to be from now, probably till March or maybe April, I’m not sure.  

I thought I’d come straight to the computer and start writing, but I fed the cat and let her out, then wondered whether to make coffee, because usually I do my exercise first, and then should I use my espresso pot or the Tassimo, which is quicker but only makes a small cup? And thinking about how I should start, where I should start, about moving here and what it is about the south coast for me, and when did I first go to the New Forest, what is the attraction? And issues around the van, because it’s brought me so much stress and expense down the years, but I have to not think about that, and that’s a split infinitive, but apart from the fact that it’s quite passé to care about split infinitives, it’s important because what I was trying to say there is subtly different from how else it could be said: ‘can’t think’ or ‘mustn’t think’ is different from a choice to ‘not think’ about something, so arguably that two word phrase is a verb in itself, and ‘to not think’ is the infinitive form of that compound verb.

Speaking about ‘choice’, the choice about coffee is a decision in itself, with the factors of speed, flavour and quantity of coffee all having to be taken into account and balanced, and the outcome of that decision (to prioritise speed and use the Tassimo) is that the coffee has already gone and I haven’t finished writing.

Which reminded me of a conversation I had yesterday with the garage man about keeping UHT milk in the van (his suggestion), but once it’s been opened, it only keeps as well as normal milk, so I might as well just take a small bottle of fresh milk with me each time, which is what I do.

This is how my mind works all the time – bouncing from one apparently trivial and meaningless thought to another. I used to assume that it was the same for everybody, but that other people were better than me at cutting through the crap and dealing with it. Now I’m beginning to understand that it goes deeper than that. That’s why the idea of ‘thinking visually’ blew my mind, though I’m now coming to think that that’s probably not as prevalent as I’ve been led to believe – I honestly don’t see how it could be. Thinking is thinking and it’s made up of words and depends on words, and that’s that.

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Another Morning

Been thinking that maybe I should reorganise my morning routine. If I did the writing before the exercise, that would be more in keeping with Dorothea Brande’s original instructions. I could get up an hour earlier and write, instead of lying in bed trying/hoping to get back to sleep. I resolve to do it, and then, when the time comes… I could move the ‘gentle alarm’ on the Sleep Cycle app forward from 7-7.30 to 6.30-7.00 – the half hour is because it’s supposed to detect whereabouts your sleep is, and go off when you’re in the most appropriate sleep phase for waking (until it comes to the end of the period, when it goes off anyway). It’s fairly immaterial, given that I almost never hear it because I’ve already stopped the app before then – except for the extremely rare occasions when I HAVE managed to get back to sleep.

Whatever, it’s only going to get harder as we move inexorably from the light half of the year into the dark.

Had a day out yesterday, with my camper van, which only got back on the road after lockdown last week. Another new battery, another stern warning from the garage that I need to use it regularly. The new (refurbished) battery they fitted last year was so tightly connected that I couldn’t disconnect it over winter, so when I tried it in March they said they would come and recharge it, but it wasn’t a priority either for them or for me in the following months, so although they’ve had the keys all that time, I hadn’t been chasing them about it.

Well, it’s going now, and last week I took it out for a picnic in the Queen Elizabeth Country Park, off the A3 heading for London, and my favourite go-to place for a significant non-overnight jaunt. Yesterday I went in the other direction, to the New Forest, which I’ve never done as a day out before, always camped, even though it’s only an hour’s drive. I had a vision of a memory from the last time I was there, this time last year, of the empty moors covered with purple flowering heather, seen from the open-top tour bus. I had another memory too, from a few years earlier, when I drove my old Micra back from Dorset to Bedford over two days with an overnight stop in Salisbury, of walking on the same moors in early summer.

I should write more about this. Why am I reluctant to write about happy things? Perhaps because I’m afraid I can’t do them justice? Or because, when you try to describe something like that, you – I – never feel I can capture the essence of what made it special? Like trying to take photographs and then being disappointed with all of them. Writing words and being disappointed with all of them. I got lost, I found somewhere to stop, sat on a tree stump and looked at the view.

Maybe I’ll try tomorrow.

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Morning Walk

I went looking for the sunrise today, but I missed it by ten minutes – only I didn’t realise it at first because it was so cloudy.

I got to the beach at 5:50 and sat on the bench outside the Beach Café, staring at the thin strip above the sea and below the clouds at the horizon, expecting the sun to appear at any moment, till I checked the app on my phone and discovered it was due at 5:39, at which time I was walking towards the sea through the streets, where it’s almost impossible to see the sunrise because of all the houses in the way. I had noticed the clouds, but had told myself that clouds often make for interesting colours, and there probably was a brief flash of brilliance when the sun came up above the sea before it disappeared again behind the clouds, but I wasn’t there to see it.

So I sat and drank coffee from my thermos and watched the hi-vis litter pickers and the odd wild swimmer or dog walker or jogger, and tried to find something – anything – worth photographing. Even the waves were pretty subdued, and the gulls didn’t show up against the clouds.

I finished my coffee and put the flask back in my bag. The first café to open would be the Coffee Cup, fifteen minutes’ walk away down the beach. I could go there and get another coffee and a sausage roll, or maple and pecan plait, or toasted tea cake.

In retrospect (because I didn’t think of this at the time), I could have gone the other way, to the Co-op, which probably also opens at 7, and maybe I could have got a sandwich and even a coffee there and eaten it on the beach – except that I’d forgotten to take a mask or scarf.

I started walking along the beach, but then when I got near to the steps up to the prom, opposite the Rose Garden, I thought I’d go up and just walk home from there. I couldn’t cut through because the gates were still locked, so I turned left and walked past the model village and what I think of as the Mondrian beach huts (flat roofed and square and painted in bright colours, not pastels like the conventional pointy-roofed ones opposite the Coffee Cup). I sat on the wall and checked on my phone for the opening times of the nearest cafes. As I thought, the Coffee Cup would be open at 7, but the Beach Café, Tenth Hole and Tea and Thistle (which only reopened on Tuesday) wouldn’t be until 9. By this time it was 6.45, and a ten minute walk, so I wandered back to the beach and carried on.

I ordered coffee and a toasted teacake and sat outside. I felt some spots of water as I was finishing, so I didn’t hang about. Looking out of my window now, I can see it’s properly raining.