Category: February

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Boring, Boring, Boring

Yesterday I experienced something I haven’t been aware of in a long time: boredom. I finished bringing my financial spreadsheet up to date, but didn’t feel as satisfied as I expected. The afternoon plays on Radio 4 and 4 Extra respectively were: the first episode of a three-part adaptation of ‘Tess of the Durbervilles’ (well done, but hard to avoid the sense of impending doom) and a thirty-year-old drama about a divorced sixty-something woman with breast cancer who is reunited with an old admirer, has a mastectomy and moves to Australia (either breast cancer treatment has improved a lot since the early 1990s, or the writer didn’t have much idea of what he was writing about – no chemo or radiotherapy, just straight to the knife).

Ironically, I also listened to a programme on boredom, but I didn’t take much of it in.

I’m getting bored with the jumper I’ve been knitting, the one I pulled down because it didn’t fit, and I haven’t quite caught up to where it was before. I’m not looking forward to doing the sleeves, which are going to be fiddly, but I want to get it done so I can wear it at least once before the weather gets too warm. If current trends continue, it may be even smaller by next winter (think about it).

Which reminds me, on this morning’s weather forecast they said that it will get a lot warmer, maybe as high as 17o  this week, which would be white and green within a week!

I saw a picture on a Facebook crochet group last week of a blanket with an amazing spiral pattern. There was no pattern attached, and I couldn’t work out from the photo how it was done, so I Googled it, and found a simple technique for making a four-colour spiral – not quite the same, but still interesting. I made a start with four colours of cotton yarn leftover from last year’s weather blanket (I have changed to using a different, lighter yarn this year), and it’s given me the spark of an idea.

I also saw a cartoon on Facebook yesterday titled something like: ‘The Mind/Body problem’, showing a man sitting on a sofa, with a thought bubble coming from his head saying ‘Get up!’ and one from his body saying ‘Nope!’ or words to that effect – exactly summing up my mood, but I can’t remember where it came from.

But for this morning I have some editing – which will be interesting and, being a commission for someone else, takes priority over housework, decluttering, study-tidying or any of those other multitudes of Jobs That Needs Doing.

I keep thinking of things I could do, hobbies that I could take up or restart, projects that I would enjoy getting stuck into, most of which I already have the materials and equipment for, or could easily get hold of online. Books to read, jigsaws to do, projects to complete, all at my fingertips, but can I be bothered?

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Routines

My routines seem to be falling apart. For example, I have only written once in the last three days. Last night I went to bed as usual at 11:30, then lay in bed awake for over an hour and a half, woke after five, stayed in bed awake thinking that I’d get up when the heating came on at 6:30, but by 6:40 I still couldn’t hear the boiler. Then I remembered that it was Saturday and the heating runs on a different programme at the weekends and doesn’t come on till seven. I looked at the clock and saw it was only ten minutes away so decided I might as well wait, then dozed off again and woke properly to find it was 7:45. I finally dragged myself out of bed at 8:30, and decided to miss out my exercise routine and first coffee, skipped straight to breakfast, ate my porridge and then made waffles afterwards (this is a good thing – for my mental health, if not my body). I decided to write my blog after all, but on the laptop downstairs rather than venturing upstairs to the PC.

The study is pretty cold. The whole house seems to be cold. Yesterday I thought about turning up the thermostat, then I realised that the radiators were already on, so they weren’t even reaching the thermostat setting as it was. In the hall, I noticed there’s a draft coming through the side door, which is at the end of the hall directly opposite the front door and opens onto the gap between the extension at the back of my house and the one next door. I realised then that the two doors line up directly east-west, so the ‘beast from the east’ type of wind is channelled between the two houses then goes straight through from back to front.

I have started doing some (paid) editing work, which is gratifying and quite fun, and at least gives me the incentive to do something. Because I’m doing it for someone else, it takes priority. Things which are solely for my own benefit, like exercising, tidying away the card-making stuff from the kitchen table (only a month to my daughter’s birthday, when I’ll need it all again) or blogging get shoved to one side in favour of… knitting and sudoku. I’ve impressed myself with how well I’m doing at writing my ‘to do’ lists in my diary every day, but I’m not making much headway with the big stuff.

Just noticed that the coffee cup I’m drinking from is a dirty one from yesterday, which I must have picked up rather than taking a clean one from the rack. ‘Run dishwasher’ is one of the items on today’s list – it really is that banal.

But, I am writing, and will soon have finished with the requisite 500 words, despite my general lethargy. Then, while the laptop is still on top of my lap, I may bring my accounts up to date.

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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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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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Calendar Puzzles

Imbolc, Candlemas, Ground Hog Day… my hatred of January used to extend to February too, but now I’m more relaxed about them both. February is the month when I: moved into my first flat (2009); ran away to Europe (2012); came back from Prague (2014); started chemo (2017)… I could go back further into previous lives and remember: broke off my engagement (1975); had a miscarriage (1985); lost my Dad (1999)… 1996 wasn’t that great either, for reasons I won’t go into, and no doubt I could dig out other disasters if I thought some more, but at least for this century 2009 and 2012 were positive, and 2017 was too, if not particularly pleasant at the time (actually 1975 was positive too, but the mistake was that I didn’t stick with that decision).

February… well we all know it’s the shortest month and the only one that has different numbers of days depending on the year (but still stays the shortest). Why, when the calendar was being designed, wasn’t it given a couple of extra days, taken from, say August and December, to make seven 30-day months and only five 31-days, or six of each in Leap Year? Even better, why not alternate them by making February, April, June, August, October and December 30 days , with the Leap Day added at the end of December? Aha, that rings a bell now, isn’t it the case that March used to be the first month, which would make February the last month, which would at least make sense of Leap Day being then?

The Celtic quarter days are at the beginnings of February, May, August and November, which are not exactly mid-way between the equinoxes and solstices, but do correspond to the beginnings of calendar months – isn’t this something to do with the adjustments that had to be made to the calendar to deal with the fact that somewhere in the middle of the last millennium it was noticed that the seasons had moved since Julius Caesar’s time because the solar year isn’t exactly 365-and-a-quarter days long, and hence we don’t need a Leap Year exactly every four years, but more like 97 years out of 400? Every time I start asking these calendar questions I know I could just look them up on Wikipedia, but I’m not Wikipedia and I like to raise the questions and make everybody else as confused as I am.

I’m also puzzled by the fact that according to some sources Imbolc/Candlemas is on the first of February, while others say it’s the second. Why worry about things which have their roots back in times when few people were literate anyway, and they were probably decided – quite arbitrarily –  by various factions of various religions, and not in some boring, rational unified way?

But why is Groundhog Day now so closely linked with time repeating itself? Is it just down to the Bill Murray film, and why did the writers decide to do that?