Heatwave

The humidity and heat - 28 degrees and rising - bring with them a fretful quiet, a slowing of activity. Of necessity. Impossible to think clearly and quickly, to move at a pace beyond minimal. My office is up four flights of stairs, on the top floor of a converted 18th century townhouse. No airconditioning. The south facing sash window is jammed wide open in the vain hope of capturing a breeze, the sunblinds drawn. As an emergency measure we set up an electric fan on a folding chair between our two desks, taking care as we come and go not to trip over the cable. In spite of natural inclinations the work rate slows and I put off anything beyond the basics, the simple. My margins are very thin in high temperatures. The fan's turbulent air blows papers off the desk and dries the eyes.

My office colleague is American, born in the desert lands of the South-West. She loves this weather, flourishes in the heat, goes to the sauna regularly in winter for physical and emotional health. We manage our thermostatic differences and make allowances for each other - I dress in layers for flexible temperature control, she brings extra woollens. I sweat occasionally for her, she shivers from time to time to keep me happy.

****

A first appointment with a local shiatsu practitioner this afternoon in the ongoing quest for spasm-free muscles. Shiatsu worked miracles for my lower back in 1993. The first session was a Wednesday evening and I had to take the rest of the week off work, nose and eyes were running so much afterwards. A continuous stream. Not a cold, or flu. Detox.

Later in the year, in the October, a major life change occurred for which I am thankful to this day. I still believe an apparently unrelated series of events including the fact that I am alive now - a tad melodramatic but possibly true - were in some way triggered in a treatment room in a basement flat in North London that evening in May sixteen years ago.

In my book, everything is connected and in ways we can't begin to imagine.

Survivors

The back is less stiff and there is a greater range of movement in the neck and right arm but there is still work to be done, and I still need to limit computer time. Working on muscle trigger points - as many as I can locate. Still having physio. Going forward I've been advised build up some supportive muscle, so I wander over to the local authority gym. At 5.30pm it is packed. People pounding the running machines. Serious. No smiles. Hmm.

****

I work in the old part of the city. Walking distance from the cathedral and its green. Walking distance from pretty much everything: the bookshop, the library, M&S, the bank, Boots, the chiropractor and the gym.




A local architectural salvage firm had a temporary display in the tourist office just beyond the cathedral green. A favourite lunchtime haunt of mine for the duration, situated as it was en route to the Best Sandwich Shop in Town. A mishmash of rescued objects: statuery; horse brasses; coloured pharmacy bottles, dark green and brown, thick, uneven glass; small carved cows; steam engine plates; even a green man or two. I yearned after some of them. The cherub, or is it a satyr? - check out that unnervingly louche expression - with his shield and whatever it is he is holding in his left hand. The LNER plate. The antique tiles.

Part of the pleasure lay in the incongruity. A motley bunch. All survivors of small cataclysms of refurb and rebuild.

***


The rust-speckled white angel and his close companion were particular favourites. Better if you enlarge the photo and I couldn't get rid of the reflection from the street. But still, there's something about that face, blank and watchful, the protective curve of the arms. Those wings. Kitsch perhaps, sentimental possibly, but that's too harsh. I find it lovely.

Maybe an angel should only be seen half hidden among the reflections of the physical world. So you are never quite sure if he is actually present or simply a trick of the light.

Three score

My birthday today. A big one. This last week I've been like a child awaiting Christmas.

Sixty. Three score years. Ten more to go before my time's up if tradition is anything to go by. The family genes hint that I may be around a bit longer than that but the reality that individual existence is finite and that it will vanish, dissolve into something with a different shape and form or without shape and form, ideally lends a heightened awareness and a freedom to each day. A lightening up. Which is as it should be. Throw what's left of one's allotted span into the air and see what shape it takes when it hits the ground.

Inventory:

• The blessed liberation from the hormonal merry go round, and a consequent level of calm and equilibrium (some of the time) .
• I can finally stop trying to get it right. If I haven't by now I never will and it doesn't matter. It being life.
  
• There are still yearnings: to belong, love in the widest sense and an end to loneliness. But you start where you are with what you have.
• Good health and fitness - the right rotator cuff excepted - are real, unexpected gifts. My body and I are finally on amicable terms. Weight has normalised. Clothes fit. I had huge food issues once so this is a big deal.
• Family: my sister, my cousin. Meeting up with the former in a few hours time.
  
• Friendships continue and a couple of new ones are forged. Others fall apart or fade away.
• Nearly bankrupt we may be but as of today the state throws a small monthly pension in my direction. Not enough to live on by itself, I'll need to work for a good while yet, but I'm thankful to have it. Plus free prescriptions for any medicine I might require and - best of all - free bus travel all over England. The downside: the identity photo on the bus pass is truly depressing.
  
• And there's more. As an OAP I can sign up for U3A, show up for the £3 afternoon Silver Screenings at the local cinema, get ten per cent off paintbrushes and spanners on Wednesdays at B&Q ...
• Engaged and humorous colleagues who do a great job in the community. And who threw a surprise lunchtime birthday bash on Friday.
  
• The cat. Of course. He's the feline equivalent of 86.
  

There are skills to develop. Plants to discover. A blog to write. Books to read. Seasons to greet. Footpaths to walk.

****

The sky pale blue, translucent after weeks of rain. The warmest day of the year so far according to the BBC. When I let the cat out just now the air was clear and heady, like a fine cool wine. Earth and grass damp. Breathe deeply.

Prana. Life force. The one constant

None of it matters.
All of it matters, every second and atom.

I wouldn't be twenty again for the world.

Bedtime

Prompted by Dale's recent post:


I think of my father particularly at this time of the year. He died in April over a decade ago, during the bluebell season.

****

I was eleven years old and heading towards a difficult adolescence, my sister, L, around one year. At her bedtime and because she insisted, my father - in his late forties by now - would carry her around the living room, moving from picture to picture, object to object, stopping briefly at each.

Goodnight ships (in front of a picture) ... goodnight other ships ... goodnight table ... goodnight trees ... goodnight window.

During the ritual my sister clutched her favourite stuffed toy, a koala bear. The pronounciation defeated her. The rest of the family followed her lead and called it Kayola.

****

He was at his best with babies and very small children: something tense and taut unwound and his defences lowered a fraction to display a quiet tenderness. He would have doted on grandchildren almost certainly, but neither L nor I were cut from a conventional nor a maternal cloth.


****

Our relationship feels easier at this distance. I struggled. So did he. The difficulties - there were a lot - matter less, his integrity and humour matter more.

Green corn

On this misty, rainy morning we climbed a hill ...

and walked through the bluebell woods ...



... and along a leyline and passed a church and two dogs and their owners and marvelled at the bluebells and the cornflowers and the pink campions and the rape (ugh, hate that word but the fields are shockingly, wonderfully yellow) and the red soil. And against the red soil the green, young green wheat, green woodlands. In the field, larks rose around us, singing.





A verse from the John Masefield hymn came to mind

Lo, all my heart's field red and torn
and thou wilt bring the young green corn
the young green corn divinely springing
the young green corn for ever singing.






Echoes of long ago school assemblies. Horrible, I hated my schooldays but on this particular morning the angst has faded and I'm not going to quibble about the religious theme. Masefield, the avid reader, seafarer and eventual Poet Laureate, was a local lad: he knew about red soil. And it is a beautiful poem ....

... the laughter of holy white birds flying after

On this hill, the parliamentarian armies laid siege to our royalist city in the valley below over four centuries ago. The men were so hungry they ate the cider apples in the orchards and the potatoes and robbed the farmhouses of bread and towards the end in extremis resorted to eating acorns. Difficult to imagine today in all this greenery and lushness. Indeed, the land is almost too perfectly cared for, too well manicured: wild flowers flourish along the lanes, no pesticides on these verges, no litter that I could see. A mystery solved when the landowner's name is spotted on a notice. Enough to convert one into a present-day royalist.



The hardest part of the walk was the last part, climbing the hill for the second time. A steep, hard pull. Near the summit we rested on a log on the edge of the wood in silence for five minutes or so. The field in front of us rose steeply, the line of the horizon curved like a giant's back recumbent against the sky. Raindrops on leaves. The moist smell of earth. The harsh call of a pheasant. The distant murmur of traffic, faint but just discernible. I hadn't wanted to come out this morning, had something on my mind, hadn't wanted to see anyone. Yet growing older, I have learned from experience that I don't always know what's good for me and consequently can be persuaded. By people I trust, by an uncertain yet stubborn faith in the apparently random flow of life.




"Shall we go?" my companion asks. We head for the car. Next stop, the house and a late lunch.

...

The shoulder still stiffens when I spend too long here at the computer. I overdid it on Friday and it took thirty six hours for the pain to subside. Thank god that nothing is obligatory in the blogosphere. Short posts, long posts. Whatever works. Right now, photographic posts seem to fit the bill. I love taking photographs and it's easier on the body than writing.

Grow

There were moments during the seminar when the heart began to pound and the eyes welled. Just being present, sensing the rusty cogs in the brain creak and groan with effort, was moving and exciting. Blame the euphoria on our lecturer - a grey haired, affable man, dauntingly intelligent. He wove ideas and concepts into a magical whole and yet at the same time, as they say, he spoke my language. I came away without catchphrases or coherent soundbites, just three pages of scribbled notes - can't afford to forget this, must record it - some photocopies and a changed perspective.

I had wondered whether or not to go, whether I would be out of my depth. Now and again I was but it didn't matter. There's all the time in the world to reflect and ponder. Mostly I was carried along. My colleague, C, had the same reaction. A bonus to have her with me on the long journey home.

I hadn't realised how thirsty I have been for study and to be stretched by a subject that fascinates, in the company of like minded others. There's this sudden craving for learning, an urge to explore and to grow and take a few risks.

Even at nearly sixty. Especially at nearly sixty.

Time to check out some prospectuses, perhaps?

****

Oh, and Relatively Retiring may recognise the photograph .....

Stretching

The shoulder and neck are better, though not cured. Too much time on the computer, using the mouse and the dull throbbing starts. Moderation, that most elusive of qualities, is my holy grail.

The immediate goal to work on the cow face pose, which with my hypermobile joints I used to find so easy in yoga class. One arm reaching backwards over the shoulder, the other behind the back reaching up. The hands clasp. Once I was proud of my prowess, glowed when the teacher praised my flexibility. Yes, I know, self-congratulation is at variance with the non-competitive spirit of yoga, but that didn't stop me. The karmic comeuppance is that these days I can just about manage the pose on one side only. Impossible to move the right arm upwards behind my back.

The difference between a year ago and now is still dispiriting. A lesson is humility. Also in self-forgiveness: nobody made me sit at the laptop for hours at a time without taking a break

I'm supposed to do exercises three times a day. Some days it's only twice but Sheila the physio is pleased with progress and the gap between our appointments has lengthened from weekly to fortnightly to monthly. At my request - she knows I do massage and is supportive - we name the muscles, bones and joints beneath her fingers as she works, massaging and stretching contracted muscles, neck then arm then shoulder, me on the couch, her standing alongside. A litany, a recitative: Pecs minor, scalenes, subscapularis, levator scapulae, coracoid process, C4 and C5 ....

When we tire of A&P we talk about cats, hers and mine. Or gardening.

I turn onto my back. She places both hands, one over the other, on the injured shoulder, leans her weight forward onto her arms. Clavicle and sternum are pushed towards the spine and my lung capacity is reduced by what feels like 90%. She's a large woman in her early forties, as tall as I am and a former shot putter, solid and muscular. The effect is not dissimilar (I imagine) to being run over. I close my eyes, wonder if my skeleton can take it, imagine the pistol-shot crack of fracturing bone.

At the end of the session the muscles in the right shoulder and arm feel blessedly looser. Silent prayers of thanks for the NHS. And for Sheila. We've almost, in a way, become friends. Not quite, the professional relationship takes precedence, as it should.

But I like her, and I'm grateful.

****

A visit to a National Trust garden last week. I couldn't tear myself away from the spiralling, unfurling ferns. Uncurling. Releasing. Stretching out of themselves.