The Saddest Thing

When the theme for this blog was decided many weeks ago there was no way any of us could have imagined the weird times we’re currently experiencing, and unfortunately, the theme is turning out to be rather apt. 

As I write, my family is safe, and the lockdown isn’t having too much of a detrimental effect on my sense of well being. I miss the friends and family members I can’t see, of course, and I’m desperate to cuddle my grandchildren, but in the grand scale of things I’m OK. However, needless to say, there is a lot of sadness within this unprecedented situation for many families. I know of three friends who have lost parents and been unable to gain comfort from their loved ones in the natural way, by gathering together, talking, crying, laughing, hugging. This must cause dreadful sadness, and I imagine will have repercussions in the coming weeks and months, if not years. I’ve never known a time when we’ve all felt so helpless and unable to predict what might come next. My 91 year old mum, who lived through the blitz as a child and young teen, tells me that the effects of this pandemic are on a different scale. 

I’m nearer to seventy than sixty now and consider myself to have had an extremely happy life. My 1950s childhood was free and exciting, my 1960s teens came at a time when the whole world was changing and becoming more liberal, and my adulthood has continued to be blessed by the best family and friends anyone could ask for.  However, constant happiness would be impossible for anyone to maintain for any length of time, and as if the powers that be saw me enjoying myself a little too much I was delivered the biggest dollop of depression which continues to this day, albeit now controlled by medication. Anybody who has suffered from a depressive illness knows that the feelings that accompany it are nothing like normal sadness, which is why I’m not dwelling on mental health problems, but instead thinking about the normal sadnesses that affect us in our lives. 

I’m such an emotional person that I cry at the drop of a hat. I realise that this isn’t always due to sadness, sometimes it’s empathy with another person, or reacting to something that’s particularly poignant.  Naturally, the saddest event in most people’s lives is the death of a loved one, and I’m no exception. Apart from grandparents there have been two deaths in my life that affected me greatly. One was a good friend who died far too young. I carried a sadness after his death which caused me to question a lot, and to grieve, not only for him, but for his family, with whom we’d shared years of friendship. 

Eighteen months ago my dad died. He was 92 but had been well. His death was caused by a burst aneurism and was very sudden.  Sadness overwhelmed me, not just for myself but for my mum, who was now on her own. Grief takes its own time. It can’t be hurried, it will come at you just when you think you’re doing ok, and leave you sobbing, weak and sad beyond compare.  One day, about a year after my dad’s death, I was driving to meet a friend. I was happy and excited about my plans for the day when a hearse drew out in front of me. I started to think about my dad’s funeral. I thought about his coffin, and his two sons and four grandsons carrying it into the crematorium. I thought how proud dad would have been to see them standing, straight backed, in their suits, squeezing each other’s shoulders in support, before resting him gently on the plinth at the front. Before I knew it tears were streaming down my cheeks and I could hardly see to drive. I recovered in time to meet my friend, but had to admit that I could react like that at any time with little or no warning. 

Years ago, there was an incident that probably sounds trivial in comparison.  When our daughter was about six or seven she was a really fast runner, and always did well on school Sports Day. Every year the teachers were each allocated one child to watch as the race finished.  This particular year, Laurey sprinted to the end and burst through the ribbon ahead of anybody else.  It was obvious she had won and we cheered along with other parents.  I'm not sure how it happened but I'm guessing she somehow slipped through the net and wasn't marked as either first, second or third.  If so many people hadn't come up to us to ask what had happened I would have thought we'd imagined it. All I remember is Laurey's little face, full of confusion and disappointment as the winners were announced and appeared on the podium. A huge sadness swept over me. It was nothing to do with whether Laurey had won, or come second or third, it was her first lesson in life not always being fair, and in what disappointment felt like, and that was so hard to witness.  I'm sure Laurey would laugh at me remembering this and feeling sad for her, but it's an indication of the depth of my feelings that it still upsets me now.  We got home and her dad gave her one of his football medals, which wasn't quite the same, but was some consolation in the half-hour before it was lost down the toilet.

These Things, Yes, All These Things  by Jill Reidy

It’s not always just the big things

That overwhelm us 

The illnesses and deaths

The family rifts

The emptiness

When children fly the nest

Those losses

They cause that heavy cloak  

Of sadness to descend

And yet, and yet.....

The snippet of a long forgotten tune

Carried on the breeze

The scent of woodsmoke 

That recalls an earlier time

The scrap of velvet

From the dress your mother made

A tiny faded photo

Your children, babies, 

A parma violet that dissolves 

upon your tongue

These things, yes, all these things, will tear your heart in two.

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Loneliness - A very British affliction

Hundreds of thousands of elderly people are lonely and cut off from society in this country, especially those over the age of 75. 

According to age UK, more than 2 million people in England over the age of 75 live alone and more than a million older people say that they can go for over a month without speaking to a friend, neighbour or family member.

People can become socially isolated for a variety of reasons, such as getting older and weaker, no longer being the hub of their family, leaving the workplace, the death of spouses and friends or though disability or illness.

I am the youngest of four children and the only one who lived within easy reach of my parents as they aged. My siblings all relocated through work and when my father died, it was left to me to fill his shoes and ensure that mum didn't become socially isolated. She had never learnt to drive and although she still had a few friends locally, she didn't fell confident at first to go out alone.

It wasn't until her eyesight failed in her late nineties, a problem which when combined with her deafness left her unable to see the television screen or make sense of the programmes, that mum began to express her loneliness. The TV had kept her company through the hours of darkness for twenty years. Now she sat alone - in silence.

Yesterday I was watching The Daily Politics show: They were discussing government plans to withdraw free TV licences for the over 75s.Apparently, former Chancellor George Osborne snuck that money saving plan under the radar. It is a ludicrous idea. Surely it would be better to means test households and allow the poorest and most isolated in our populace to have a free licence. Surely a free licence is far more cost effective that treatment for depression or admission to a nursing home.

How strange that the same government that wants to strip the elderly of company and entertainment has recently appointed a Minister for Loneliness.  I wonder whether the role of such an office is to work out how to rid society of the lonely rather than to solve the problem of loneliness. I dread to think. For many older people, the characters in soap operas are their friends - programmes like Strictly come Dancing are their Saturday night treats - the news programmes are their only contact with the outside world. It would simply be wrong to deny the elderly such important social contact.

Loneliness

I never thought it could be so hard, 

I never thought it could would hurt so much, 

I never thought I could cry inside.

I never thought I would your miss your smile

or the tenderness in your eyes, 

I never thought you would leave me, 

I thought you were mine. 

I miss our weekly shopping trips, 

I miss the things we shared, 

I miss our meals together, 

I miss brushing your hair. 

I miss the sound of your laughter,

I miss the touch of your hand, 

I miss all the love that you gave me, 

You would always understand.

I never thought I could feel so lonely, 

I never thought it could be so hard, 

I never thought you would leave me,

I never thought you would die.

Thanks for reading. Adele  

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One Big Fat Decade of Happiness

Somebody asked me recently whether I liked 80s music.  It took me a few moments' contemplation before I realised I wouldn't recognise 80s music if it blasted out at me from one of next door's noisy barbecues.  "New Romantics?" I asked, tentatively, "Adam Ant?"  He nodded.  I changed the subject, feeling slightly vindicated.  It took me a minute, too, to realise why 80s music was - well, not music to my ears.  Anybody who has recently had a baby knows that music, like reading, conversation - and pretty much everything else - becomes irrelevant.  Never mind, 'All You Need is Love.'  Actually, all you need is sleep.  And lots of it. 

With not just a new baby, but also a toddler and a three year old, I spent the beginning of the eighties knee deep in nipple shields, pureed parsnips, endless terry nappies, cereal box monsters, Calpol, Paracetemol, wellies, tissues, wet flannels (pre proper wet-wipe era), swings, roundabouts, toddler groups, play school, nursery, school and desperate phone calls to my mum in London.  Oh, and anti-depressants.  This was far from my best decade.  It was the decade of tears where everything fell apart, when I should have been happy in my new role of motherhood, but somehow, everything that happened during that decade was tinged with worry, despair and the big black dog that would not let me go.  Music was well down on my list of priorities.  Keeping alive and relatively sane was at the top.  

If you're reading this, you'll see that I at least achieved the former.  

When I was invited back recently, after a couple of years' absence, to write a guest blog, I thought this would be one of the easier titles.  My first thought was the sixties, my teenage years, the Beatles, hot pants, mini skirts, thick black eyeliner, false lashes, off to Art College, the excitement.  Yes, that would be my best decade.  But, hang on, what about the awful teenage angst?  The boyfriends (or lack of them)?  The spots, the boredom at school, the waiting by the phone at night, the tears? How could that really be the best decade?

OK, so the best decade must have been the seventies, more Art College, meeting the future husband, more Beatles, marriage, a baby and another on the way.  But.....I'm forgetting the way reality often suffocated dreams: living together, arguments, mice in the basement flat, money, the stresses of finding jobs and keeping them, they all conspired to cause friction and anxiety.  Dickens was right, 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times'.

I've got sixty six years to look back on.  That's a fair few decades.  I realised, after some reflection, that it's difficult, if not impossible to choose the 'best decade'.  There are good parts and bad parts to each one. My eight years of the fifties are mainly filled with rose coloured images: playing out, endless hot summer days, the park, the freezing cold outdoor Lido on a Sunday morning with dad, seaside holidays with our cousins, my baby brother being born, and skirts and dresses appearing magically at the end of my bed after  mum had sat up into the early hours finishing a hem or threading elastic through a waist.  But there is also the smell of baked beans and meat pie as I enter school in the mornings, my stomach churning at the thought of another anguished lunchtime, there is the untimely death of a classmate, knocked down by a car, and the shock and confusion that follows, there is some bullying by the girls I thought were my friends.

I realise I haven't got a 'best decade'.  I haven't even got a best year, a best month, a best week or a best day.  What I have got is an awful lot of best moments: those moments that come at you, unbidden, with a wave of pride or happiness: my dad walking me down the aisle, the children's births,  driving over the Yorkshire Dales as the sun set in the distance, my eldest son's passing out from the RAF as the planes swooped in formation overhead, my daughter's from the Police, hats flying up in the air, my youngest son's graduation, finishing the Coast to Coast bike ride, learning new skills, numerous family celebrations - and the funerals, that, although inevitably sad, nevertheless gave us the opportunity to get together and celebrate a life.  

I'd love to have a best decade.  Maybe that is yet to come. Meanwhile, do you think I could have patchwork of all the best bits in my life up to now? 

All cobbled together in one big fat lump of happiness.  Now that really would be the best decade. 

How to make The Best Decade

Take one New Year's Eve kiss
And place it carefully in a bowl
Cover and leave overnight
Add a litre of laughter
And stir well
Sprinkle on the best love you can find 
Let it soak in
Whip up events of choice
Happy ones if available
And add to mixture
Whisk in a couple of adventures
And a challenge (any size)
Some Christmases and birthdays 
Add a large bundle of hugs 
More kisses (various types)
And a drop of tears 
Stir for about six months 
Leave the mixture to rise
This is the beginning of your decade
Check every two years
And adjust quantities if necessary
At the end of the decade
Check once more
The bowl should be empty

Repeat once every ten years on New Year's Eve 


Thanks for reading..... Jill 

  

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Selfies - body image.

I understand self-image.  I was a dancer.  The art of looking great was instilled in me from an early age.  My father was a 'dresser'. He was a 'dapper little chap' to the extent that in a recent conversation with a lady who used to come to our village pub, remarked to my Mum, that Fred was always immaculately dressed and went on to compare the uber casual, lack of grooming style of the current incumbent.  Times change I suppose but taking a healthy interest in your own appearance is really important.  Unless it becomes an obsession.

There was time when the only people with an image portfolio were actors, dancers, models and musicians.  Now it seems that everybody has one and the idea that we all have to self-promote continually is a phenomenon that I find very alarming. I worry about the effect that posting frequent 'selfies' has on the body image of young girls and boys. It seems to me that many mental health problems begin with the need to compete in the body image race.

I hope that you youngsters don't think that eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia are anything new.  As a dancer who began to pile on the pounds during a lull in my career, I can tell you that pleasing family by appearing to eat and then throwing up as a way of not getting fat, is nothing new. I suspect that for many girls and some young men, in the public eye, self-starvation has been around for a very long time. Unfortunately the need to be slim, look good from every angle and continually show the entire world that you do, is a pressure that has extended through social networking, to everyone.

Who wants to show off a photo of a spare tyre, a double chin or at my age, an increasing crop of wrinkles. This constant exposure and the need to look good at all times must be such a chore. I remember once as a teenager, I had been getting ready for a date but had fallen asleep on the couch with rollers in my hair. When my date arrived to pick me up, my Dad brought him through from the bar.  I remember being so embarrassed that this guy was seeing me in a state other than perfection.  Fortunately he was a hairdresser and we ended up having a laugh about it.  Of course, I am older and wiser now and far more relaxed about bad hair days and no make up. I still take a good two hours to preen and coif before I go out on a big night out - I doubt that I will ever use 'face time' to communicate.

My daughter despairs that my mobile phone is an ancient brick and that she can't send me constant updates. I am just over the need to share my image with all people at all times. I use Facebook sparingly, use the bathroom for relaxation and often have bedhead-hair until well after lunch. Vanity is not an attractive trait. Feeling ugly, because the beautiful people continually promote themselves, can lead to depression and isolation. If you are in the habit of posting pictures of yourself at every opportunity perhaps you should take a look at some old family photos.  Check out the older generation's fashion blunders. It is always good for a laugh.

My friends and I don't really make fashion blunders now. We have each developed a style, acquired over time, through looking back at photos that can be ripped up and never shared. We wear what suits us. Our body shapes dictate what we wear and how good we look, we don't follow fashion. We are boho or chic/smart or curvy but all true to ourselves as empowered women. We are all happy in our own skin, growing older with confidence in ourselves and life is fun.

Occasionally, one of my lovely photographer friends will send me an image that I post on social media but just like everyone else, catch me at the wrong angle, I would curl up and die.  This week's poem is by the Scottish bard, Robert Burns. It was written after he noticed a louse on the hat of a fashionable, well-to-do lady in church.  There is little vocabulary at the end to help you get the gist.

To a Louse

Ha! whare ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie?
Your impudence protects you sairly;
I canna say but ye strunt rarely
Owre gauze and lace,
Tho faith! I fear ye dine but sparely
On sic a place.

Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn'd by saunt an sinner,
How daur ye set your fit upon her -
Sae fine a lady!
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner
On some poor body.

Swith! in some beggars hauffet squattle:
There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle,
Wi ither kindred, jumping cattle;
In shoals and nations;
Whare horn nor bane ne'er daur unsettle
Your thick plantations.

Now haud you there! ye're out o sight,
Below the fatt'rils, snug an tight,
Na, faith ye yet! ye'll no be right,
Till ye've got on it -
The vera tapmost, tow'rin height
O Miss's bonnet.

My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out,
As plump an grey as onie grozet:
O for some rank, mercurial rozet,
Or fell, red smeddum,
I'd gie you sic a hearty dose o't,

Wad dress your droddum!
I wad na been surpris'd to spy
You on an auld wife's flainen toy;
Or aiblins some bit duddie boy,
On's wyliecoat:
But Miss's fine Lunardi! fye!
How daur ye do't?

O Jeany, dinna toss your head.
An set your beauties a' abread!
Ye little ken what cursed speed
The blastie's makin!
Thae winks an finger-ends, I dread,
Are notice takin!

O wad some Power the gift tae gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An foolish notion:
What airs in dress an gait wad lea'e us,
An ev'n devotion!

Meaning of unusual words:
crowlin ferlie=crawling marvel
strunt=strut
fit=foot
Swith!=Off!
hauflet squattle=temples squat
sprattle=scramble
fatt'rils=falderols
grozet=gooseberry
ozet=resin
fell=deadly
smeddum=powder
droddum=backside
flainen toy=flannelcap
aiblins=perhaps
duddie=small
wyliecoat=ragged vest
Lunardi=balloon bonnet

And finally... the last verse translates as.

And would some Power give us the gift
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion:
What airs in dress and gait would leave us,
And even devotion!

 

Have a great week. Thanks for reading.  Adele

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The Crack-Up

I'm picking up on and extending a topic that Louise blogged about a few weeks ago...

I count myself extremely fortunate to have only ever cracked up with laughter in my life. I like to think of myself as well-balanced, (maybe I'm just shallow), and I've never been subject to those depths of depression, self-doubt or mental illness that can be so utterly debilitating.

A friend from my school days, the most handsome and gregarious of us all, committed himself to a mental institution in his twenties and harboured there for some time until one day he walked out and threw himself under a train. My paternal uncle has suffered several 'break-downs' in his life and has bounced back. My aunt was not the bouncing kind.

It has pained me to watch the impact on friends and relatives who have suffered in some way with depression or a degree of mental breakdown. For my part, I can only try and empathise. I don't know what their respective hells were really like and I hope never to experience such trauma at first hand. That is where great art (and for me, literature in particular) is so invaluable in extending our emotional understanding of psyches and states beyond our immediate apprehension.

I've just re-read F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Crack-Up', an autobiographical story he wrote in his late thirties (he died young at 44), in which he likens himself to "a cracked plate, the kind that one wonders whether it is worth preserving." It's a brilliant piece of writing; frank, self-deprecating and witty but deeply humane. I first read it when I was in my teens and harbouring pretensions to be the next F. Scott Fitzgerald (like so many others) and have returned to it several times down the decades. Sadly, my aspiration to write a Penguin Twentieth-Century Classic failed to meet the deadline - but maybe that was for the best.

Today's poem (which I have performed at a couple of open mic nights recently) is in memory of Jane Rowland (1929-1979). The title is deliberately ambiguous. Jane's "crack-up" (as it was referred to at the time) was never actually spoken of in any detail nor ever explained, so the inferences are mine alone. Nowadays, or course, one cannot open the doors while the train is in motion...

In Reading Between The Lines
Nondescript Jane leaves her routine job
at the end of a typical day
and rides in the crush of the rush-hour tube
to catch the express from Paddington,
just one of thousands of nondescripts
at the start of her homeward way.

Tired, she reclines in a carriage seat,
glad of the rest for her weary feet
and flicks through a paper she's bought.
Awaiting departure patiently,
she looks, perhaps, a little fraught
but nondescriptly neat.

Once underway, on the six-eighteen,
she reviews (again) her dull routine;
at the end of the line, a loveless home
with the husband she'd hoped would compensate
for the emptiness she's grown to hate;
(but illusions reveal themselves too late).
At the carriage window, opaque with fog,
she communes in silent dialogue
with her bland, reflected self.
Pain makes her pale. (There's little else.)

Then, with a subtle, mirrored assent
she moves in a dream of nerved intent,
no longer thinking of wrong or right,
she's suffered too long to repent.
So she walks unnoticed towards the door,
for no-one interprets the nondescript signs
when she grips the handle, shuts her eyes tight;
and her scream, as keen as shining steel,
curves away on the night.


Thanks for reading. Have a good week, Steve ;-)

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The Apple Core of Mind

Apple Core

Watching - a dark grey vapour of flies infect

the apple core of mind.  Left lifeless

as the maggots of self-doubt collect.

Watching a dark grey vapour of flies infect

and steal. As cells choke I sit, reflect:

the missing image of the soulless.

Watching a dark grey vapour of flies infect.

The apple core of mind left lifeless. 

Thank you for reading,

Lara

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Who turned the light off?

I’m a little overwhelmed at the moment by the amount of work that I need to do for my MA... And the perfectionist in me isn’t making it any easier.

Anyway, I sat down last night with no idea about what I was going to write for this week’s theme. I started four posts and abandoned them all – and then, surprisingly, I started to write the beginning of (what I think might be) a short story. I don’t know if I’ll ever get round to finishing it – but I’ll share what I have so far...

Who turned the light off?

Light is what they tell you to believe in. They tell you that things will get lighter, brighter, that it won’t last forever. They say that someone has just switched the light off, and that someone will be around shortly to switch it back on. They try to convince us that there is hope, that we each have futures, but we don’t believe them.

We sit in our own private darkness every day. Some sit in the dayroom, chain smoking in front of a flickering TV, others pace up and down the corridors counting the number of stains on the carpet and a few don’t even manage to rise from their dormitory beds. But the new girl is different; for a start, she’s younger than the rest of us. Sixteen, I think they said.

You can tell she’s met the darkness. She has that same look that we all have – like you’re balancing massive invisible crates on your back, or like you’re about to fracture into a thousand pieces.

It’s not long before the whispers start – people guess: pills? blade? rope?

When we get our first proper look at her, we all glance, firstly, at her neck – clear – and then her wrists – also clear. Firefly, whose real name is Amber (but only they us it), is the first to talk to the new girl.

“So was it pills, like, paracetamol?” she says

The new girl is sat cross-legged in a corner – writing something in a small grey-covered notebook. She doesn’t react to Firefly’s question, she just continues writing. These are the second and third things that make her different to the rest of us: she writes, sometimes for hours, and she never talks. We decide to nickname her Shush.

Thank you for reading,

Lara 

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