Infrastructure

It's about very slowly claiming back bite-sized chunks of former independence. On the forays into the outside world, asking the taxi driver to stop at the ATM machine, getting out and withdrawing the cash myself rather than begging someone else to do it. Ditto letters at the letter box.

And also:

Changing the sheets
Hanging out the washing
Dusting
Rearranging pictures
Upping the distance of the daily walks

Progress. Exhilarating and frightening at the same time. Hope feels dangerous.

But there are helpers, of course there are. A cleaning lady every two weeks, and a gardener/handyman for whenever the lawn runs rampant. In both cases compatability has been key. Can't be doing with someone I'm uncomfortable with; isolation and pain have upped the sensitivity. These two are friendly and non-pushy. The cleaning lady's husband is also my plumber. He charges reasonable rates and (oh so important) is willing to turn out at short notice.

The gardener and his brother-in-law, the roofer, were here this past weekend. Guttering and loose tiles fixed. Apparently there were two holes in the roof - a result probably of the harsh conditions of last winter. Truly glad I didn't know this. In addition my neighbour has replaced the dilapidated fence that separated our two properties. Strong south-west winds are common and I would guess the fence only remained upright thanks to some wonderfully tenacious ivy.

I'm praying, crossing my fingers, that feng shui practitioners have got it right, that mending and adjusting the space where we live does affect the person who lives there. That as the roof is fixed and the gutters are cleared, as the floor is mopped and the garden weeded, as boundaries are strengthened, so healing on some level or another is happening. And I do - kind of - believe it.

Back

After such a period of silence, after so much pain, a glimmering of light. The understanding that not yet but sometime I will inch my way back into the world. The extraordinary world of people and independence and buying your own groceries and posting your own letters. The world of walking. The world that isn't limited by four walls.

Still feeling unformed, semi-transparent, I've almost forgotten how to write. So I piece together word after word. Impossible to explain what has happened and no real need. Just now and again, when I can, I want to leave a mark here.

Therapy

Just about a year ago, as Saturn approached the ascendant, the ligaments of my lower back and sacro-iliac joints gave up the ghost. The centre, literally, could no longer hold. Displacement, severe muscle spasm and weakness and flare ups of acute inflamation and pain. Since then a repeat prescription for cocodamol, a round of alternative and conventional medical treatments and far too much TV.

It's dawning on me that the job is to rebuild the centre - and what is more central than the pelvis and lower back, and what they represent? Or rather to give it space to do the rebuilding. I imagined my centre could look after itself while I led a busy life but apparently this was not the case. Maybe this was the only way to get my attention. After much inner resistance I am revisiting relaxation and meditation techniques.

Six weeks ago I ventured outside again. Ten yards and back home, fifteen the following day, then twenty. Today I reached the next street up from mine. The first goal is to reach the river. At a guess, I'm just just under halfway there. The strangest feeling, learning to walk again. Each time I go out, a mixture of pleasure mixed with terror lest there is a setback. Learning to trust this body that, seemingly, has turned against me for a season.

For the first time for a long while I hanker after the scent of essential oils. Lavender scented body lotion, orange and ginger shower gel. The physical as a source of peace and pleasure.

A desire as well to get creative. Photographs. Blogging.

About the same time as the back went, the computer hard drive died, and with it my stock of photographs. Right now I'm using a friend's PC, loaned on approval. No photography programmes so no new photos.

But thank god for Flickr. I'll be reviewing my on line stockpile and posting some of them here from time to time - at least for as long as the back stability lasts.

Therapy, you might call it.

Seven

The brain has shrivelled. I'm finding it difficult to string together a coherent sentence, never mind a post, so am resorting to the old standby, a list. The equivalent of a musical scale, an arpeggio. It may have limited interest but it is the doing of it rather than the end result that counts.

1. Less blogging, more reading. I am re- reading Molly Fox's Birthday. It was, yes, a birthday present and turned out to be such a page-turner that I galloped through and only realised at the end that I had skipped much that was good, that deserved time and care. You could be tricked into thinking of this book as superior Irish chick-lit. It isn't. A subtle, compassionate writer, Deirdre Madden. (The Indie liked it too.)

2. Prompted by the news headlines I took down Reading Lolita in Tehran from the bookshelf where it had been gathering dust since I brought it. You probably need to have read more Nabokov and Henry James than I have to appreciate it properly, but the book shines a chilling light on the realities of living in a theocracy. At around the same time I caught Iran and Britain on BBC 4. Very, very good. Unfortunately it is no longer on Iplayer on the Beeb's website, but if it ever comes your way, watch it.

3. I dreamed the other night that I was temping in a grey steel and concrete office that I shared with a man and woman that I didn't know. I had been careless and made a mistake. I knew it, tried my hardest to concentrate but to was unable to. Nightmare.

4. My boss has gone down with swine flu. Am checking whether or not I have a sore throat.

5. The cat's fur is a totally different colour in sunlight. Bright ginger. On grey days he is sandy, mottled. A lion's pelt.

6. An afternoon of summer sun, warm strong wind, pink rhodendendrons, the first fuschia. Ten bumble bees on the lavender bush at last count. The silver birch outside the window sways in the breeze, slender and loose-limbed branches in perpetual motion.

7. Feeling the way forward step by step after a trying time. Tentatively. The landscape has changed. Certainties are no longer as certain. (Astrological note: Saturn transiting 12th house. Still).

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.