It's an 'end of the rainbow' sort of deal

I went for a walk this afternoon. It was supposed to be a quick dive out to the shops. But I stepped out of the flat and the air smelt warm and close and cool and sharp all at once. And I knew I wanted to be in nature.

I walked down to the river and as I did the scent on the air grew heavier and the mist sat more clearly on the air. There was a layer of mist, as though the river was gently simmering and giving off a cloud of steam, sitting over the water, and the surface was shimmering under the uneven light.

I turned and walked along the greener path of the two. As I crossed the road and moved between trees and river, sound was muted and I found my feet moving quicker, urged on into the deadened but familiar landscape. I rounded a corner and realised I was walking towards an impossibly beautiful, oddly unreal rainbow. It barely arced. More like an arrow of colour, thrown from the sky and implanted in the ground, behind a silhouetted line of black, bare branched trees. I found I was trying not to blink. So exceptional, so singular, was the world in that moment.

People around me were stopping to take photos, moving carefully to the side of the path. Pausing. Snapping. Walking on. Like me, all with their gaze firmly fixed on this impossibly perfect, hazy rainbow emerging out of the muted fog blanketed landscape.

And then I noticed someone facing me, taking a photo. I sniggered internally, at the absurdity of photographing the day in the wrong direction, and turned to see what would be in her frame.

She had seen what I had my back to: the last gasp of the sun, setting the clouds on fire in orange and pink. Sitting high above the fog, but somehow merging into it, like a slow fade from glorious colour to soft thick nothingness on the ground.

I walked on

I rushed. It felt like this was slipping away and also that it was a moment, a walk, completely out of time and place.

I turned round at the bridge, and walked back close to the river's edge. Another heavy few days rain and the river will burst its banks and this path will be impassable. Another 20 mins later leaving my flat today and the impossible sky would have moved on to the growing gloom I walked back in.

The river, though, still reflected the last of the colour. It rippled pink in patches, catching parts of the sky I simply couldn't find. The trees which have almost finished shedding their leaves looked suddenly a dusky pink, when last week they were red. Moorhens called out of the gloom. Blackbirds alarmed in the trees. My crows flocked up to their trees, arranged on the branches in their inscrutable hierarchy. 

The mist sat heavier. It's just a field. Just a bit of grass by the river, but it held this layer of mist, like I've only ever seen on the Wolds, and it grew taller with each passing minute. A few feet high when I walked out, now skimming over the heads of people walking ahead of me. Drowning the landscape as the sky darkened.











I have spent today with that voice in my head telling me to disappear. To walk out the door and not come back. To fade out of the world. 

It seems incredible that it is when I walked out of the door, into a landscape which would gladly envelop me, which would make me invisible the moment I walked across the meadow after the bridge, which would lead me out and disguise my route home across the marsh, that this was the point I felt I could be in the world, for a little longer at least.

One of my new[ish] Southampton friends invited me to go on a road trip with her to Glastonbury yesterday to walk up the Tor and generally have a day out. It was a very long journey thanks to the always-over-capacity A303 and then a 3-car pile up on the way home which brought us to a standstill for an hour (punctuated only by a bomb squad van coming down with blue lights on and parting the stationary traffic).

We had a good day. She's very easy to talk to, very good at something I am terrible at (asking for more information on topics she doesn't understand or know about if I raise them, and then listening carefully to my explanations), and very nice to be around. I am glad of being friends with her.

The Tor was sort of underwhelming. It's a lovely view from the top but I would have liked it much more if it had been deserted. The numbers of people - I suspect quite few in the grand scheme of things - just milling around made it feel like a place you couldn't just stand and take in. We kept moving.

After we walked into the town we got lunch and then went into the Abbey grounds (wildly overpriced) which were lovely. Again, more people than I really would have liked but in many ways I enjoyed it more there than I did up on the Tor. The afternoon light was beautiful and it was warm and pleasant in the very particular way sunny September days are.

I am looking forward to owning a car again so I can be the architect of such days, rather than co-pilot.

My annual leave week seemed to flash past, although it was filled with wonderful things, places and people. 

I managed 4 swims - one in the lido on Monday; one in the sea, along the coast in Bournemouth, on Wednesday; and two in the Severn when visiting Teddy this [long] weekend. 

The lido swim was the best, because it allows proper swimming and a good steady thump thump thump pace that seems to hammer my brain out flat again. Because the lido had only been filled (from the natural spring it is built atop) 3 days earlier, the water was not fully warmed by the sun and hovering around 18 degrees with the air temp around the same. This meant that while it was a comfortable temperature to swim it wasn't particularly easy to feel your muscles well enough to identify strain. Given it's been more than 4 months since I've been in a pool, I was really conscious of the need to be careful and stop after 30 mins regardless of how I felt so I only got to 1km, instead of my usual 2km+ I'd normally do. Came away with no injuries but could feel it the next day in my legs so I was right to stop when I did, much as I wanted to stay in the pool for the next year.

The sea and river swims were wonderful in an entirely different way, less thump thump thump to peace, and more a surrender to the elements. Just being able to let my body go, crash through waves, sink into the cool stillness, unfurl every single bit of muscle, to feel the cold creep up your body as you wade in, to note the way the distinction between hot and cold changes when you are fully submerged and the water becomes the baseline temperature.

Swimming is the time I feel absolutely at one with my body. I know where every part of me is, I know how to move, it comes naturally in a way little else does.  Everything is awake, everything is switched on, everything works.


Summer feels like a season of excess sensation - everything is turned up. Cold water and swimming, hot sun on skin, rich scents after rain, the smell that drifts in bedroom windows as the air cools in the evening at the end of a hot day.  

On Sunday before I climbed in the car to drive the 2 hour 45 minutes (I am being precise instead of rounding up because it sounds much less far for being "2 hours something" instead of "3 hours") home, Teddy and I went for a walk along the river. The path was lined with blackberry bushes, all in full fruit. I always appreciate my nearly 6 foot of height at times like this - I can reach to the higher branches, not yet stripped by passing pedestrians unable to resist that shiny, plump fruit, and pull down perfectly ripe berrries. But in the face of such abundance, I could hardly manage to select a single fruit to pluck from the bush. While I hesitated over a hundred options, selecting just a couple, Teddy had picked a handful. We walked along, sharing that little pile of fruit from their hand. Long after the first burst of freshness was gone, the sweetness remained on my lips, intensified by the warmth of the sun, and the contentment of my week which was carried along in each bit of my body.

I know it's not a week since the last entry, but I was behind with that one and I already know I'll be behind this week unless I do it while I think of it.

I had a difficult ish morning and struggled to settle to work. After doing some adminy stuff that at least gave the impression of me working to anyone looking in my virtual direction, I decided to go for a walk. Grabbed my camera (just a little Canon compact) and headed off to the nature reserve at about 3pm

I should have taken a bottle of water and put on suncream as I've definitely caught the sun after a 7 mile loop.

Got some very ok shots. More sure than ever that I am going to invest in a mirrorless camera in coming month[s] so I have control over what it focuses on etc.

Click to embiggen



( 4 more below cut )

It strikes me it has been some time since I've posted a 'proper' entry.  Perhaps it is time to remedy that.

I have been in my new job for a month now and whilst it does not fulfil me it is a relatively low stress environment and my manager - the school bursar - seems to think I'm a good egg and has made many efforts to stress she wants to help me develop my career in school administration which, whilst it is obviously not my career of choice, is certainly positive - in this financial climate, a manager who has a long term professional development plan for their newest employee after 4 weeks is a rare thing.  In short, my response to  the dilemma I expressed in my previous post, is to try and wait it out. My timescale for a review of where I am is set at the beginning of January, after that? We'll see.

The usual idiosyncrasies of a new work place have begun to reveal themselves to me; half the office hate the manager because she expects them to do work during the day. Instead they sit about, bitching about staff, parents and kids and gossiping with anyone who stops by.  The other half of the office work part time and do three times the work of the full time bitches.  Such is life.  I am, unless you haven't guessed, firmly in the second camp, except I have to be there full time.

And I do mean bitches.  I've never worked anywhere where the majority of the people full on don't like me, or just plain ignore me.  And that really is what happens.  As usual I find I'm getting on better with men in the school than the women and were it not for the guys in premises who pop in from time to time and always have a smile and always enjoy a brief chat and a giggle with me, I think I'd be tearing my hair out.  It has to be said that after a particularly frustrating day today were a couple of my contributions to an office wide conversation were not just ignored, but overruled/immediately restated by someone else, I came home and cried. Le sigh.

I'm finding living back at my parents house not nearly as bad as I anticipated.  In particular, I feel relieved to be back in the countryside.  In the mornings, as I am smoking my cigarette, I watch a family of squirrels play in the same tree.  Yesterday one snuck up on another and pounced....oh his tail.  Then they chased back and forth, tumbling and grabbing each others tails.  It reminded me of this scene in the Sword in the Stone.  

The other day I clambered down the river bank next to my house, as I have so many times before, and watched a vole and, later, a water rat, scramble about on the bank.  Every day my parents garden is filled with birds - just as it has always been, but you forget how much you enjoy seeing these things until all you see for 3 years is seagulls and pigeons.  We have pigeons here too, of course, but they are the beautifully purple wood pigeon.  And those guys mate for life, unlike the promiscuous city birds.  

The last two lunchtimes - partly out of frustration at the office situation, partly because the weather was so enticingly mild - I have left work and done a speedy circuit of the village on my bike in my lunch half-hour.  It's been nice.

It's not all good though. I'm aware - acutely aware - for the first time just how oppressive queer invisibility is.  There is a teacher at the school who I knew was a dyke the first time I met her.  This week a PGCE student started in her department and she is also, clearly, a dyke.  The urge to just seek them out one lunch time and exclaim "gay! you guys are gay! so am I! Can we talk about gay please?! do you know any gay bars? Can you take me to some?!"

...Which is absurd of course, and unimaginably embarrassing were I wrong (although I'm sure I'm not) and I'd be pissed as hell if someone said that to me BUT. I miss teh gays!  I miss a gay on every corner, as provided by Brighton, and I miss people asking after your "partner" instead of your "boyfriend" before they know for sure.  And I miss people not doing that surprised face/quick hide it look when you casually correct their "did your boyfriend" in your answer (e.g. "no, she.....") And I miss wearing whatever clothes I want, instead opting for clothes that won't get me heckled in on the streets of Grantham.

How I hate Grantham.

All that said? I guess I'm comfortable. Actually, I might go as far as happier. But not content.  More factors need to be present in my life before I can claim content.  And less bursting into tears because everyone at work is mean.

So, odd day. Started off, as every other Tuesday does, with therapy.

Suddenly realised something about me, and how I manage - or don't manage - my moods.

My Mum's most common refrain, if I, or my brothers, is playing a certain kind of music - such as Radiohead, the Manics (GATS, THB, JFPL only) etc etc is "why are you listening to that suicide music?" She even said it once when I was listening to Josh Ritter's Hello Starling (my response? "it's not suicide music, it's about the return of hope" her response "pff!")

It's an infuriating little quirk and no amount of explanation of what a song is about, or what a certain genre of music is doing will change her. However, it reveals a little about how my Mum deals with extreme feelings: WE DO NOT TALK ABOUT THEM.

I've always been rather British about this and concluded that not speaking about dramatic emotions is good and right. But over the years, and through the diagnoses that attitude has begun to change. I am thinking about how this attitude affects me because if I do move back in September, I'm going to be living under the same roof as it again

My main fear is that if things do go a bit pear shaped emotionally/mentally for me again I am going to be under enormous strain trying to keep it hidden - as I did as a teenager - which, of course, compounds the problem. I've spent the last 7/8 years expressing most of what I feel as it happens to my friends and partners, and being allowed the space to simply express it, with no repercussions, no being told not to think/feel those things, no being told to push it away, ignore it, no being told it's "not as bad as you think" or "you always take on so, don't" or simply "you'll feel better tomorrow".

The thing is, all of these bits of 'advice' from my Mum come with the best possible intentions. Deep, deep down she truly believes that if she doesn't acknowledge any of the things I say are happening to me/I'm feeling then they won't be feeling. My two eldest brothers had complete mental breakdowns - full on break with reality - and she very nearly managed to pretend that things weren't as bad as they were/happening for the reasons they were. In short, my Mum makes denial a world class sport.

The effect of all of this is that somewhere in my head is the hard-wired idea that both expressing and experiencing extreme emotions of any kind is wrong. It's reductive and not a little absurd to suggest that all my problems come from this deny/suppress environment, but I think it's fair to say it doesn't help.

Interestingly, my Dad has a very practical approach to all this, he's brilliant at coaching and counselling my brothers and has the gift of being able to provide practical perspectives and solutions to emotional hardship. However, I'm his only daughter, and I'm the youngest.  I feel like being number 4 of 4 kids with some sort of mental health failings means that I am the failure, I am the disappointment and if I told him I'd either disappoint or worry him - most likely both.  I don't want to do that.  

Of course, social factors aside, most of the things that mentally shit me over are probably genetic.  Genetic like the ligaments and joints that comprise my knees.

After I finished with therapy and had lunch I headed along to the Doctor's Surgery to talk about my knee pain.  My burning, flaming knee pain that happens whether I stand up for 8 hours at work or not and I was told that.....I have arthritis!

Joy.  Bought glucosamine, despite my massive scepticism of alternative remedies and went away with instructions to keep my knees straight when sitting - i.e. not sitting with my legs splayed apart with the knee joint turned outwards and to never cross my legs.  Or do the breast stroke when swimming - although I used to swim competitively and was taught to swim racing breast stroke which has a much straighter extend rather than kicking to the side so I might ignore that one.  Finally I was told to work on building up my quads - continue cycling to work and do some weird toe curling exercise when sitting.  Le sigh.

My seagulls remain in ruddy health and are growing like weeds.  Managed to capture two not-very-good occasions of them feeding, in each case I got my camera to the window after the main feeding was over.  Turns out nature is difficult to film, who knew!

The NaBloPoMo prompt isn't up for today yet and I want to blog now, so I've decided to just go for a simple one and post my most recent painting. I based it on a Matisse sketch and started off with a Hopper colour palette but of course things developed and it ended up looking more like a piece by Alexej von Jawlensky that I have on my wardrobe (click if you want to see what my wardrobe looks like, art-erific! I buy one postcard per gallery visit.). As a result - because it took such a journey from conception to completion - I don't really like it. However, this isn't a popular opinion, Bex, my flatmate and my Dad all like it - and my flatmate rarely likes my paintings. So I'm posting it in a speculative way. Unless my output explodes between now and the ArtFor Pride exhibition it will probably be for sale then, so one way or another, I'm going to have to get behind it.



Oh, and this afternoon I got squawked at by a seagull when I looked out of my bedroom window - nothing unusual in that, they nest on the flat roof over my attic conversion every spring/summer. However, later when I looked out the window I realised why I was squawked at so emphatically - one of their babies had fallen out of the nest;


I checked several times over the next few hours and he was still there all on his own but I just checked again and he's gone so the parents must have put him back in the nest, thank fuck. I teared up the other day when I saw a dead starling chick on the pavement. ETA; seriously though, he was SO CUTE. All fluffy and spotty and kept stretching out his disproportionately long legs and feet and fluffing himself up with a little flutter of his tiny wings, and then stalking about on the flat roof, he so completely had the attitude of a fully grown seagull.  I was a little bit in love with him and half imagining having to hand rear him if his parents didn't return.