Category: lockdown

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Palpitations

A few weeks ago, on a Thursday evening, I started having heart palpitations. It only lasted a few minutes, but it felt so weird, and when it happened again I got quite worried. I spent a couple of days hoping it would just go away, and trying to decide what to do. The following Monday morning, I went on to my GP practice’s website to see if I could book an appointment – the new appointments come up on Monday morning, and you have to be quick to get one. I got a phone appointment for 9:40 this morning, and now I am wondering what I’m going to say when the doctor calls.

The palpitations are still happening, probably three or four times a day, for a few minutes each time, but I’ve got used to them. I’ve got a history of suddenly developing weird symptoms which then lead to investigations (sometimes quite nasty, invasive ones, like gastroscopy and colonoscopy) that don’t come up with any answers – except referrals for counselling and once, a prescription for amitriptyline, which made me feel like a zombie and was followed by two months of double vision which meant I could only see by closing one eye (no proof that there was a causal relationship, but it was enough to make me stop taking them after three weeks and swear never to touch them again).

The background to the palpitations is that in late 2019 I had a senior patient health check (or some words to that effect) at my GP surgery, which among other things tested my cholesterol and found it was quite high. So I was prescribed statins and went back after about six weeks – last January – for a check-up. I’d been noticing palpitations after I started the pills, and mentioned it, but all the tests were good, I had an ECG which was normal, and my cholesterol was down. The doctor wasn’t concerned about the palpitations but reduced the dose of the statins just in case and told me to come back for another check-up in three months.

Well, that didn’t happen of course. I kept taking the pills, the palpitations went away, the prescription was renewed every month. I tried to cut down my cholesterol intake (not going out for breakfast two or three times a week probably helped). But I didn’t have any way of checking any of this.

And then the palpitations came back. I couldn’t find any suggestion online that they might relate to Covid, but I’d had a recurring cough for a few weeks after Christmas, so I got a home test kit (which came back negative) and made this doctor’s appointment. I know she probably won’t be able to say much over the phone without repeating the tests I had last year. She’ll probably tell me – as my daughter did – that palpitations are often caused by stress and worry. At least I’ll be waving a flag and saying: ‘I’m still here, don’t forget about me!’

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Happy Days

I called my brother yesterday morning. We have this thing of checking in with each other on the first Sunday of the month, which sometimes we forget, but mostly at least one of us remembers and is available. He and his wife, who both turned seventy last year, have had their first vaccinations, and so has their eldest daughter, who has been shielding because of a history of autoimmune problems. I should be in the next cohort, but haven’t heard anything yet.

We talked about the calm of hunkering down in lockdown, and I heard myself saying the words: ‘I’m happy…’, knowing in that moment it was true, and wondering what he would make of it. Looking back, I can see that at any moment of the conversation, with a carelessly chosen phrase he might have completely shattered that sense of wellbeing, but it didn’t happen. He said: ‘…it feels as though this is what retirement should be like…’, which this time last year (when he was planning to leave for Antarctica within the week) would have sounded bizarre, coming from a man who ‘officially’ retired in his fifties, and has spent the years since recreating the bustle and stress of his business life in numerous ways. I reminded him of the plaque our Dad put on the wall when he retired: ‘How good it feels to do nothing and then… rest afterwards’ and we shared a chuckle.

I know this is not a sustainable situation. Every morning I have to get up and do battle with my demons, dragons, bogies, black dogs, gremlins, negative vibes… whatever you want to call them. During the day, as long as I can escape interacting with others, avoid the news (and most of social media), don’t give too much attention to the ambient chaos, focus on doing the things I enjoy and give myself time and space to do the things that make me stressed (including being prepared to abandon them mid-stream and try again tomorrow), life feels okay.

Five minutes ago, while I was pondering that sentence I noticed a single white speck floating past my window. Now they are coming in ones and twos every few seconds. If this is going to be snow, it’s the first I’ve seen in three years. The sky does have that look to it, but we shall see.

I know this situation – the sense of peace, not the possibility of snow – is not sustainable. At some point, the world will start to intrude again.  The madwoman in the attic can only be ignored for so long. But happiness is about les petits bonheurs (and I wish I’d thought to say that to my brother yesterday, a missed opportunity to show that I’m also capable of being pretentious and intellectual), the pleasurable moments. Looking out of a window, whether of a train passing through the Dinaric Alps or counting the snow specks falling on passing cars, knowing I have nowhere to go, except downstairs for breakfast.

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Not a Competition

In a chat on Zoom, I mentioned that I suspect I’m going to be facing my second consecutive birthday in lockdown, and got this response from one participant:

‘We all are!’

‘That depends on when your birthday is’ I stuttered, not having expected this somewhat aggressive response.

‘Well, none of us were allowed parties!’ she shot back.

There I go again, showing my self-pity. I should know by now to keep my mouth shut. But the only reason I’d been thinking about it was that next week it will be my sister’s first birthday in lockdown – last year she and her husband went for a holiday in Devon, and for my birthday I was looking forward to a canal holiday on a narrow-boat with my son and daughter in law. When it had to be cancelled, I thought: ‘oh well, not the end of the world, it’s just another day, I’m used to being on my own at home after all’ etc etc, but on the day itself it hit me harder than I’d expected. It was near the beginning of the first lockdown, and over the last few weeks I’ve been wondering whether this current situation will still be in place by then. But, first-world-problems, what do birthdays matter when people are facing much worse problems: illness and death, losing loved ones, losing jobs?  Maybe this lady had problems I wasn’t aware of, and my remark about my birthday was insensitive?

‘It’s not a competition’ my therapist said when I told her about it. ‘Whatever’s going on in her life, that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to feel sad! And instead of self-pity, why not think of it as “self-care”?’

Still, I think I should keep my mouth shut. It’s safer. Which is ironic, because as a child, and even later when I was a young woman, I was always being told to speak up for myself (except when I said things the other parties didn’t want to hear, as in this case, and how was I supposed to anticipate when that might happen?) Better to keep my thoughts and feelings to myself, when to share them might invoke other people’s anger, and hence my shame, or even laughter, and my humiliation – or sometimes both shame and humiliation at the same time.

Yet I come on here and talk about my feelings every day. Why is that? I’ve been through this before – because I can, with a near certainty that no one is going to respond.

I have a friend who occasionally contacts me on What’s App, who has severe physical disabilities and is in a far worse position than me. Sometimes she amazes me with her positivity and resilience, but this week she was very low. I tried to tell her how I felt for her, I didn’t belittle her suffering, I told a funny story against myself, I said I’m here if she ever wants to share. What else could I do? It’s not a competition.

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Throwaway Writing

Sun shining this morning. I have been to Tesco, my least favourite of the three supermarkets within five minutes walk, but it has the right kind of cat food (unlike Sainsbury’s) and self-checkouts (unlike Co-op), reducing the need for social interaction. In general, I find the Co-op has the best stock for my needs, but some mornings that risk of social interaction is enough to drive me in the other direction.

I raised that question about controlling my thoughts a couple of weeks ago, but here is a related one which was bugging me when I woke up this morning: do thoughts control emotions, or emotions control thoughts? Which is the chicken in this arrangement, and which the egg? But this question is just as impossible to answer as the original, given all the feedbacks between the two states.

If I’ve learnt anything about this topic, I would say that trying to control emotions by thinking alone – in other words, wishing them away – is a waste of effort. The fake-it-till-you-make-it idea of slapping on a happy face and banishing all that negativity has always failed and frustrated me, but I’ve discovered from experience that there are activities that improve my mood. Finding the ones that work and can be done with the resources you already have is a great gift.

Writing can be one of those things – although sometimes the mood improvement doesn’t come until after it’s done, rather than in the process. When it’s going well, it’s the best feeling in the world, but when it’s a slog, it’s hellish. There isn’t really a basic process to follow that can make it happen if it doesn’t come spontaneously, except this sort of stream-of-consciousness brain-dumping that I do every morning, and which has yet to cohere into anything tangible. What I’m thinking of here is that I can at any moment pick up a hook and a ball of yarn and start to make something, or continue with what’s already started, and that doesn’t really require any thought. It might go wrong, and that might seem enough to induce frustration and disappointment, but somehow it doesn’t – I just unravel it and do it again differently, or put it away and do something else till I feel ready to get back to it. There’s always something I can do, and if it doesn’t work out, it’s no big deal, I can leave it and do something else.

But isn’t that what I’m doing every morning? Maybe this is my way of applying that approach to writing. Now, that’s something that I’ve just thought of in this process, that wasn’t in my head when I sat down to write, or even when I started that last paragraph. This is my throwaway writing, it doesn’t matter whether it means anything to me or anyone else – but it’s not really ‘thrown away’, I just shove the words to the back of a digital ‘folder’, it doesn’t take up any space, not even ink and paper.

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Groundhog Day All Over Again

Two days late to talk about Groundhog Day, but that’s just par for the course for me.

Groundhog Day is one of those weird North American customs – like Thanksgiving and the Superbowl – which only enter the consciousness of most of us because of the all-pervading presence of the USA in popular culture. It was first explained to me forty years ago by a young woman I worked with (I was young then too, but she was a couple of years younger still), whose father worked in the diplomatic service, so she’d lived a lot of her life hitherto abroad, including part of her childhood and adolescence in Canada. According to her, groundhogs come out of their hibernation burrows on the 2nd February, and if they see their shadows, they run back underground and hide for another six weeks (or some period like that), but if not, they stay above ground and that is the signal for spring to start. In other words, if it’s sunny on Groundhog Day, paradoxically, spring will be late.

The film of the same name was made in 1993 and starred Bill Murray as a reporter who goes to a small town to report on the behaviour of the local ground hogs, and finds himself waking up the next morning in the local hotel and living the same day over again. He finds that whatever he does that day, by the next time he wakes up, it’s all been forgotten by everyone but himself. At first he’s desperate to get away, but over time he uses this weird condition to his advantage by changing his behaviour, avoiding mistakes, learns to play the piano, woos a girl… It’s a clever gimmick, and a funny film, though ironically, it doesn’t bear watching too many times before it gets very irritating.

It’s that endless repetition that sticks in my head, and that I associate now with Groundhog Day, rather than the arrival of spring (though it was gloomy here on Tuesday, which is supposedly a good sign).

Over the last year, like many people I’ve felt stuck in some endless loop, where every day I get up and do mostly the same things, with occasional variations. The character in the film starts off cynical and bitter, but gradually uses his repeated day to learn new skills, become a better person, fall in love, pursue happiness, and in the end he gets the girl and his life moves on. But what have I learnt, how have I developed?

Well, I’m learning lots of new crochet and knitting skills. On Monday evening I started unravelling the fair isle jumper that I made too small, and yesterday I finished getting it back to the point before I separated it for the sleeves (which was a lot more complicated than you might think) and was able to start knitting it again. I guess you could say I’ve learnt patience, acceptance and perseverance, but only in that very specific context.

Still, today’s another day.

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January Morning

January Morning (poem)

There, I’ve written a poem. Will that do for today?

I seem to have run out of steam, at any rate.

Yesterday, talking to my therapist in our weekly Skype session, I told her about the bookshelves, and moved the laptop round a bit so she could see them. She was impressed, more impressed than I thought was necessary. It’s that thing I always have: I did it, not very well, and it took me a long time, but if I did it, it can’t be that hard, anybody could do it, and probably make a better job of it, in less time.

I told her how I’d been worrying about what books and knick-knacks to put on them, what impression would they give of me, how would people judge me, and drew attention to the fact that two of the shelves were already full of chaotic clutter.

‘What people?’ she asked.

‘Well, you I suppose’ given that no one else will be coming round any time soon.

‘What does it matter? They’re your shelves; you choose what you want to put on them.’

Put like that, it does sound a bit ridiculous that I’ve been worrying about this all week. As soon as I put something on there, I worry about what it says about me – that I have no aesthetic sense, that I can’t see what should go where, like the cross stitch and needlepoint pictures and weavings that I’ve made but never put on display, or the clothes I’ve knitted or crocheted and never wear in public.

‘And yet you write about your feelings and put them out there where anyone can read them.’

‘Well’ I said defensively, ‘I’m pretty safe in knowing that hardly anybody does’.

It’s the paradox of my life. I hide away from people because I’m afraid of being judged and laughed at or despised, and yet I put my feelings in words like this, and share them where they can (theoretically) be read by anyone. And I’m just as uncomfortable with being judged by others more positively than I judge myself as I am with those who find me wanting.

I want others to see me as I see myself – and yet still love me, when I can’t.

But in all this chaos I can still open my door – and my heart – to a new morning and think: ‘something good may happen today’ and write a little poem about it – and share that with the world.

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Home to Roost

In my study, but once again, Microsoft decided it needed to reconfigure my version of Office, so I had to wait. I spent the time picking some more books to go downstairs on the new shelves, and looking for more yarn to match the cardigan (or maybe it will be a blanket) I started crocheting two days ago, when I realised the fair isle jumper was going to be too tight, so I gave up on it till I decide whether I’m going to pull it back to the armpits and do it again, or leave it unfinished like so many other things I’ve started in my life.


Then I felt the urge to listen to Joni Mitchell’s ‘Judgement of the Moon and Stars’, which I’ve been listening to on cassette in the kitchen, and I thought I must have uploaded onto the PC when I was doing that a few months ago. I couldn’t find it, but I did find the files for her album ‘Hejira’, and played ‘Amelia’, which got me into a sad and thoughtful mood, which wasn’t necessarily where I wanted to go.


By that time, Office was reconfigured and Word was open. I suspect it’s now reconfiguring every time I restart the PC (which should be every day, but I must admit sometimes I forget to switch it off properly and it stays in hibernation till the next morning). I don’t use the PC much in the daytime after I’ve finished blogging, now that I’ve got the laptop downstairs, where the wifi’s better and it’s warmer – I don’t have the radiator switched on in here because it’s under the window, behind the desk and printer. Ironic to think that I bought the laptop at the end of 2019 so I could take it out and sit in cafes to write – one of many small ironies of the last twelve months.


Maybe what I’m doing here is reconfiguring my mind every morning. It’s a thought.


In telling the story of the Madwoman in the Attic, I flitted around quite a bit chronologically, and I think I may have missed out completely the time in Prague. I started going through the blogs from that time about three years ago, after I finished the first draft of ‘The Long Way Back’, but I gave up on it quite quickly. Maybe that should be a task for this year – or would be, if I was setting myself tasks, which I’m not.


The gist, I suppose, of the Madwoman idea, was that through those limbo years until I moved into this house in October 2016, the Stuff was always hanging around in the dusty corners of my mind, along with the knowledge that at some time the house would be sold, and it would come home to roost, but also I would be in a position to buy a permanent home for it (and me). And yet, although I’m here, and it is too, the chaos remains unresolved.

Amelia, Joni Mitchell

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On Purpose

Am I, as was recently suggested, ‘looking for a purpose’?

First, let me freely acknowledge that I don’t feel I have ‘…a purpose…’ in any profound sense. But how much does that matter?  

This is a time of year when there can be a lot of pressure to set goals, make resolutions, plan new habits and behaviours, and generally beat yourself up and set yourself up for failure and disappointment. Well, that’s how I’ve always found it. I don’t want to detract from anyone else’s desire to do those things, but for me – hey, I’m retired, I live alone, and the joy of both those states is the peace not to feel obliged to follow anyone’s expectations but your own.

That said… my purpose last week was to complete and submit my tax return, which I did on Saturday. Now it’s to bring my accounts up to date, which I haven’t touched for the last two months, even though it’s a task I quite enjoy. Moving data between spreadsheets, checking totals and hunting for errors when things don’t tally – to me, it’s fun, it’s satisfying, there’s always a ‘right’ answer, and if it doesn’t work out, there’s always a reason which can be found – it’s like a puzzle, a more complicated version of killer su doku, but one which has a ‘purpose’ beyond just filling the time. Sometimes I think: I could have been happier as a book-keeper rather than as a failed book-writer, and maybe that’s a path I should have chosen years ago, but too late now, I don’t have the right qualifications – (and no, I have no intention of studying for the qualifications now – given my experiences of retraining in new skills during my fifties – creative writing, web design, graphic design, TEFL etc – and knowing where that got me).

Another potential ‘purpose’ would be to put together the book case which I bought from Argos in the Black Friday sales and which has now spent almost two months in two large cardboard boxes in my narrow hall. At one time I considered making it a post-Christmas project, but I decided to start knitting myself a jumper instead (which is coming along nicely, by the way). I’ve been walking past the boxes for long enough now, I don’t notice them any more, and a further disincentive from putting together the bookcase is that I might then feel obliged to put something on it, which might lead me to think about sorting out the stuff in the study, which could very well precipitate a complete emotional breakdown, so probably best not to go there.

So my plan for the day after I’ve posted this is: brush teeth; dry hair; get dressed; eat breakfast; mess around with my spreadsheets for a couple of hours (depending how much time is left after I’ve finished the aforementioned); spend the afternoon in my chair knitting and listening to the radio; get dinner; do bins (mustn’t forget); watch telly. ‘Purpose’ settled – job done.

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Worlds Within Worlds

Just been for my first trip to the shops this year. The last time was New Year’s Eve, when I arrived outside Sainsbury’s at ten past eight to find that they weren’t opening till nine, so I went to the Co-op instead. Not sure why they had different opening hours for New Year’s Eve – New Year’s Day is a holiday, but not the day before. Anyway, the Co-op was open as normal.

And today, I went to Sainsbury’s. Ten days – no, eleven – I must have stocked up really well – not just on Christmas stuff, but milk too, because that, as usual, was the indicator that sent me out this morning.

We all live in our own worlds, that’s what I was thinking earlier, before I went to Sainsbury’s. ‘We have just one world/But we live in different ones’, to quote Mark Knopfler (Brothers in Arms). Each of us has our own personal world inside our head, which evolves over time, partly from genetics, partly from the environment we live in, partly from our experiences of interaction with all the other worlds surrounding us, the physical, social, economic and cultural worlds (all of which can be considered as constituting the ‘environment’ to our personal world). Each of us has a world of incredible complexity inside our heads, whether we consciously realise it or not, even before we factor in the ways in which our internal world interacts with all those other internal worlds of all those other beings with whom we interact.

I was going to say ‘people’, but I said ‘beings’ because – well, even my little cat has her own world in her head, which leads her to predictable actions but is largely impenetrable to me – such as the way she was in the living room when I got home from the shop, but while I unpacked the shopping and made coffee, she came upstairs and was sitting on the landing outside the study door, waiting for me to come up and switch on the computer. She can predict my behaviour almost better than I can predict hers – sometimes we surprise each other, but given that our relationship is based on observation rather than verbal communication, it’s surprisingly mutual and very close – even more so since last year and my periods of lock-down.

I don’t know why I’m writing about this this morning (although in a way it is the basis of my PhD thesis). How do we understand all those other worlds that we crash into and bounce away from like billiard balls? The default position, I would suggest, is that we start from an assumption that our own world is ‘true’, and that other people’s experiences of and relationships with the world are broadly similar to ours – at least those with whom we are in close contact. In fact, we have to start from that assumption, that our own perceptions are based in some kind of shared reality, otherwise how can any kind of communication be possible?

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Not Thinking of an Elephant

If I start typing, what will come out of my fingers? What have I been thinking about in the two hours since I woke up? I don’t want to remember, and you don’t want to know. I tried to fix the motion-sensitive, darkness sensitive light on my landing by replacing the batteries and it still doesn’t work. Last time this happened, I took it down and left it on my dressing table for a couple of years, then picked it up one day and changed the batteries again, and it miraculously came on, and has been working ever since until yesterday. I don’t know if I can be bothered to leave it on my dressing table again for another couple of years.

I once tried a blog thing (I think it was a group set up by someone else) where you wrote fifty words about something positive and uplifting. I did it a few times, then gave up, and I think everyone else in the group did pretty much the same. If I have to think happy thoughts before I write, I can’t write anything at all. Don’t have that sort of imagination. It’s like the inverse of that thing the pop-psychologists say about ‘…try not to think of an elephant…’ I have heard that so many times that these days, it doesn’t immediately conjure up an image of a pachyderm so much as an infuriatingly chirpy self-help guru whose face needs a good slapping.

Wow, look at that, 250 words, half way already.

The days when I wake up without this dark cloud of gloom over my head are vanishingly rare – I think there might have been one I wrote about a couple of months ago when I’d been reading in bed and actually felt good by the time I started writing? Not sure, it was probably more recently than it feels. I do, admittedly, often feel better by the time I’ve finished writing. I really noticed this in the summer, when most days I could take my breakfast out into the garden and eat in the sunshine. Won’t be doing that today, however.

Bin day today, which means I will get as far as the front gate this evening. I actually can’t remember the last time I left the house (and garden and forecourt) – I think I had a couple of visits to the shops between Christmas and New Year, but don’t think there have been any since. All this is my choice, of course, there isn’t really anything to stop me walking to the sea front except apathy and general can’t-be-arsedness.

Yesterday I had a go at trying on my jumper, and concluded that I had separated the sleeves from the body too soon, as I suspected, so I undid all the work I’d done on it the previous day. I’m happy with that decision.

Just read a tweet which says: ‘Freedom is nothing but only a chance to be better.’ Better in what way? I wonder.