Melancholy

He said I was ‘snippy’. I was taken aback, but he was right, of course. He knows me better than I know myself. I thought about it. I was feeling down in the dumps and I knew I was being moody, irritable and impatient. Things were getting me down. I was easily upset and filled with a sadness that I couldn’t shake off. I wanted things that I couldn’t have; my nanna, my mum, my sense of smell so I could remind myself of her Estee Lauder fragrance; and normal eyesight. My vision is very frustrating sometimes – most of the time. The melancholy has eased off for now, but it will be back. I can rely on my husband to tell me I’m ‘snippy’ if I’m not aware.

It is the statins. I blame everything on the statins from my mood to my physical aches and pains and fatigue. Before I was prescribed, I blamed everything on the menopause. I’m a bit senior to carry that off convincingly, so the statins are the culprit.

Recently, when window-shopping round various jewellers in town looking for something special for my sister, I saw a pre-loved ring exactly like the one I was stupid enough to lose in 1971, an inexpensive dress ring of sentimental value, given to me by an aunt. I’d forgotten all about it for most of the last fifty-odd years, but seeing it brought back memories and made me feel sad to have been so careless in my teens. I know exactly where I lost it and at the time I’d retraced my steps over and over again and searched as thoroughly as I could. I concluded that someone must have found it. This can’t possibly be the same ring, but it filled me with nostalgia, so much that I might buy it as a replacement.

I was listening to ‘A Question of Balance’ – The Moody Blues, this morning, and in particular Mike Pinder’s ‘Melancholy Man’. It’s a great song. Help yourself on YouTube.

I looked to my beloved Brontes for a ‘melancholy’ poem and decided that any poem by any one of them would be suitable and I found that quite sad. The lives they had in the parsonage overlooking the church and the graveyard, the loss of their mother and older siblings, then the loss of each other is reflected in their poems. The troubled Branwell the most melancholy, fighting his demons.

I chose a poem I wrote in memory of our nephew, David. Today marks fourteen years since he was murdered.

Rondeau In memory of David

Think happy thoughts and always smile.
This might not be the hardest mile
To walk on our journey of life,
But just another time of strife;
So stop and rest here for a while.

Remember days of carefree style
Before the death, before the trial;
Before the bastard with the knife…
Think happy thoughts,

And not of the murder so vile
And let nothing spoil or defile
The joyful mem’ries of his life,
His little girl, bewildered wife.
Hold still and wait here for a while,
Think happy thoughts.

PMW 2009

Robert Peston will lift my spirits. I'm reading one of his books, 'Whistleblower'.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Expectation - Uncertain Times

 

It is not quite Epiphany but the Christmas tree, cards and all the trimmings have been taken down and packed away. There was an element of sadness. I didn’t feel ready to remove everything. I was being practical and fitting in other plans. Also, I was missing my little helpers who had made the task a joyful one last year and the year before. Just the other day my eldest grandson asked if he could help to put the tree away. I told him he could if he was here when the time came, but he was at school yesterday when I was unwinding the strings of beads, trying to prevent them getting tangled. I felt a bit guilty. I’d given him the expectation of being involved. Now, if the subject arises, I’ll be using ‘lockdown’ as an excuse. He’ll already be gutted at his beloved school taken from him again.

I began last year, 2020, with lots of expectations and, same as everyone, not a clue of what was coming to take it all away from me. There would be our regular visits to Dumfries and Galloway with trips to family in Troon. We looked forward to going to the Channel Islands for our 30^th wedding anniversary. I was retiring from work. There would be more travelling and lots of time to spend with our four grandchildren. Covid 19 changed all our lives and continues to do so.

I feel safe at home and it’s where I like to be. One thing I enjoy is watching all Blackpool F.C. matches on the big TV on the back room wall, from the comfort of the squashy sofa. It’s great to settle down with a hot coffee and the anticipation and expectation of a thrilling match ending in a great result. When that happens I hope our neighbours don’t mind the cheering and applause. I miss the atmosphere of the football ground, I miss the company of the fans who sit around us, the chats and catch-ups. They will be like us, watching from home. And, sitting in comfort in the warmth, I wonder how on earth I’d cope in the stadium on a freezing match day. I’ve gone soft. I have no expectation of getting back into the ground this season, but if we can, I’ll be there.

This year I have no New Year resolutions, except to write more of my own poetry but I haven't set off on that yet. Expectation is to receive the Covid vaccine when my turn comes up and retire from work at some point. If I keep my expectations realistic, there will be less disappointment.

Here's a Thomas Hardy poem,

Expectation and Experience

“I had a holiday once,” said the woman –
Her name I did not know –
“And I thought that where I’d like to go,
Of all the places for being jolly,
And getting rid of melancholy,
Would be a good, big fair:
And I went. And it rained in torrents, drenching
Every horse, and sheep, and yeoman,
And my shoulders, face and hair;
And I found that I was the single woman
In the field – and looked quite odd there!
Everything was spirit-quenching:
I crept and stood in the lew of a wall
To think, and could not tell at all
What on earth made me plod there!”

Thomas Hardy  (1840 – 1928)

 Pam

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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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A Brief Encounter with Sadie Trotter

Whenever I hear the words, ‘Brief Encounter,’ my mind leaps (like many others’ I’m sure) to the film of the same name.  A railway station cafe, a meeting of soulmates, the impossibility of a relationship, the parting of ways.  A bittersweet and poignant tale.  

My own brief encounters have been nowhere near as romantic or tear jerking as the original.  However, there have been several of these encounters over the years, some more newsworthy than others. 

Three or four years ago I was about to cross the prom near my house when I noticed an elderly lady, standing on the edge of the kerb, her head turning rapidly back and forth as she waited for a gap in the traffic. I approached her and asked if she’d like help crossing the road. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, ‘but I’ll help you.’  I laughed and we linked arms and crossed the road. For an old lady she was pretty nippy, and we only slowed down when we reached my house.  ‘This is me,’ I said, turning to go. However, I hadn’t reckoned on this lady’s ability to chat. I don’t think I’d ever met anybody who could match me.  

I’m ‘Sadie,’ she said, then, like 007, added, ‘Sadie Trotter.’ 

‘Jill,’ I replied. 

She started to tell me how she’d lived in the house next door when she’d first moved to Blackpool with her husband and children.  After a few months, her husband had died of a brain tumour and she’d been forced to move back in with her mother.  It seemed to me that this lady was suffering from some form of dementia as she talked very lucidly about the past, but struggled to remember where she lived now.  I listened for a while longer, the whole time time watching her with my photographer’s eye. I’d been out taking pictures of the sea, and my camera was slung round my neck. I could feel my fingers twitching to press the shutter and capture Sadie’s animated face. She was talking so quickly now, that her false teeth kept dropping down from her upper gums. Periodically she sucked the teeth back up, and hardly pausing for breath, would continue with her memories.  Her son had also died, many years later, another brain tumour.  She had looked after her mother when she became senile, whilst holding down a job at a local bank.  She was eighty nine and all she had left now was a daughter, who lived in Manchester and rarely visited.  This was one sad tale but Sadie didn’t tell it that way.  Looking back seemed to make her happy.

She laughed when I asked if I could take her picture.  ‘You don’t want a picture of me,’ she said, looking coy, and I could see a glimpse of her younger self.  She adjusted her hat and her teeth and gave me a smile.  I took a few quick shots, and told her I’d print one out and post it through her letterbox - once we’d established where she lived.  She seemed to know which direction to take so I offered to walk her home, we linked arms again and she set off at a brisk pace.

I printed out the picture, put it in a frame and called round a few days later.  With hindsight, I suppose Sadie was pretty trusting to let me into her home just like that.  She made me weak tea, produced a plate with neat slices of Battenberg, and continued to tell me her life story.  Her husband had been a vicar, and Sadie was obviously still very religious.  As I got up to go, she grabbed my hands, motioned for me to sit down again, closed her eyes and began to pray.  To an atheist this was a somewhat surreal experience.  

I called every few weeks after that.  Each time would follow a similar pattern:  Sadie would answer the door, comment on my purple hair, make me tea, offer me cake, and continue (or recap) on her life story.  Sadie sat before me, frail and weak, toothless and almost hairless.  The teeth apparently only appeared on special occasions, and although she enjoyed my visits, these obviously didn’t quite cut it.  The photographs on every shelf and filling every bit of wall space told their own story:  A plump, coiffed Sadie hanging onto her very own vicar’s arm and smiling shyly at their wedding nearly seventy years before; a motherly Sadie with two young children on the beach;  Grandma Sadie standing proudly next to a grandson in cap and gown.  And of course, a tiny, smiling Sadie, hanging onto her hat and her teeth in the wind outside my house.  Over the next eighteen months I continued to visit, sometimes taking the grandchildren, who had to be bribed with the promise of chocolate biscuits and very strong cordial.  Sadie loved to see the children and always went out of her way to play with them, but as time went by I realised her health was failing, both physically and mentally.  The children became harder to persuade to come with me, so I went back to visiting alone.

One day there was no answer when I rang the bell.  The neighbour informed me that Sadie was in hospital, and promised to phone me when she was home.  Or if she didn’t return…..  

I felt incredibly sad.  I never saw Sadie Trotter again, despite calling several times, and I never heard from the neighbours.  A couple of months ago I spotted a ‘For Sale’ sign in Sadie’s front garden. 

Our ‘brief encounter’ hadn’t had a lot of romance but it did end up a bit of a tear jerker.  

RIP Sadie Trotter, you were a lovely friend for a short time.

A Life by Jill Reidy

Cluttered room, a tray of tea

Cake arranged in tiny squares

Heating and hopes high

A lifetime on walls and shelves

Births, marriages and deaths 

And everything in between

Sadie talks

I sip weak tea, take a bite of cake and listen

It's a long tale

Ninety years of ups and downs

Joy and sadness

Disappointment and despair

Rheumy eyes plead with me to stay

A visitor 

A listener

A friend

Sadie suddenly looks solemn

Takes my hands, lowers eyelids

Says a prayer

I focus on her wedding ring

And ponder the unfairness of life

Thanks for reading…….. Jill 

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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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