Jackie Jillings

The Birds

I remember watching the Hitchcock film, The Birds, when I was a child and – whilst I am not generally too susceptible to horror films – finding it truly frightening.

I have never been keen on birds indoors, although not particularly bothered about them outside. My aunt has always kept a budgerigar or cockatiel (the current cockatiel being nearly 30 years old) and the odd occasion when we arrived whilst the bird was out of its cage would fill me with unease.

I was attacked by a crow on my walk to work a few years ago. It swooped down at me and pecked my head before flying back up again. I couldn’t quite believe what had happened and thought that maybe I was ‘having a moment’ – it was, after all, still very early in the morning for me (7.30am-ish) and I had been in my own little world with the radio on my headphones whilst walking beside the river from Waterloo to Tower Bridge. I asked another passer-by if they had seen what happened – and they confirmed it but neither of us could quite work out what I had done to deserve it.

It was near to the Globe theatre, and I later realised that there must have been a nest in one of the trees nearby to have provoked the crow to dive-bomb possible predators. I googled it to see if others had experienced the same thing. In fact there was another report from further upriver in Battersea Park, and there are numerous examples online of crows attacking people or other animals whilst protecting their young.

So, I am a bit wary now, even outside. And even more so since earlier this week I was sitting at my desk which overlooks my garden when I heard a persistent screeching, which was clearly some sort of birdy warning sound. As I glanced out of the window, I saw my cat racing towards the house, with a crow in hot pursuit, swooping down low but then rearing up as it approached the house and disappearing from view. I heard the cat-flap burst open, and then my cat calling to see where I am. He does this a lot now, to make sure we are home so he can come and socialise. I went to investigate, and sadly he had brought me a small – and this time lifeless – present. It didn’t look big enough to be a crow-baby, but who knows. (I made him take it outside and then eat it all up – whilst I hate the fact that domestic cats such as mine are depleting the bird population, if they’re going to kill the bird, it is even worse not to at least use it for the ‘natural’ purpose of feeding. And note to self – we thought this animal too old and useless to hunt, but he clearly needs a warning bell round his neck again.)

For the last three weeks, I have been singing in a vicarage garden on Monday mornings with the folksinging group. We have survived on Zoom for 14 months, and were very keen to meet again in person. Singing outdoors can be difficult and certainly lacks the finer acoustics to be found in a church or church hall or concert venue. Many of our seasonal songs for this time of year involve ‘small birds’, and we have been excited to note the birdsong of such British garden native species such as the robin and blackbird, punctuating our harmonious reunion. Nevertheless, last week the persistent screeching of parakeets became more than a little annoying. There’s no pleasing people sometimes!

This week, I think I’ll take a hat. Not only do several of us have to sit beneath the tree, risking deposits from above (to the amusement of others out in the open), but I am now sure that I am a marked person for the local crows. Mr Google tells me they are able to recognise faces. Perhaps behatted and gurning appropriately while singing, they will fail to notice it’s me.

Hopes and headaches

I have had a little rush of optimism about my headaches. This may be misplaced. The jury is still out.

Having endured chronic migraine all of my adult life, with more and less intense episodes at different times, I have had a few attempts at dealing with it more successfully. In recent years, the availability of Sumatriptan has helped me a great deal, but this is a drug which does not prevent the headaches, it simply gets rid of them once they have arrived. I have found that usually, if I catch the headache early enough, this is completely successful and I weaned myself off the highest dosage a few years ago. But, I was still taking one almost every day, as I usually wake up with a headache.

In November and December 2020, I was genuinely excited that my headache-free days each month were slightly greater in number than my headache days. This appeared to be a major improvement and I hoped that it heralded a significant reduction for my middle and later years. This is supposedly a ‘thing’ for women when they reach this otherwise frequently problematical time of life. Sadly, most of 2021 has been a complete pain in the head and I finally got round to making a GP appointment.

I quite like the fact that currently my GP practice is using telephone appointments instead of face-to-face, and these have been useful. I am experimenting with a pain-killing drug which I have tried before but this time I’m hoping to give it a better chance. So far, it has not been a success, but we keep increasing the dose in the hope that it will suddenly settle and become effective.

In the middle of this experiment, a neurological referral magically appeared and I had a longer telephone conversation with a headache specialist. This guy seemed to understand where I was coming from, but began to talk about me being ‘medication dependent’ and explained that I needed to come off the sumatriptan. My heart sank, and I was ready to discount everything he was saying to me – but he was very persuasive and by the end I was enthusiastically agreeing I would follow his suggested regime.

The regime involves going out for my walk in the morning, immediately after breakfast. This is a huge issue – due to my general lack of energy in the mornings and the added doziness brought about by the pain drug. I have so far managed this once (out of three days) with an ‘almost successful’ yesterday when I dragged myself out around 10.30am. Today I did a short walk to the bottom of the garden, and then did the housework instead. I reckon that’s just as energetic and maybe counts because we have lots of windows open in this lovely weather.

Where I have so far failed is on giving up taking the sumatriptan when I feel a headache coming on. I have promised myself that when I genuinely have nothing else important to do, I will try to go without, but so far there have been two days in a row where other important things have got in the way. Hmm – must try harder.

A strange extra tip the consultant gave me: take 3 soluble aspirin (apparently these days known as ‘dispersible’ aspirin – who knew?) dissolved in Coca Cola. I don’t like Coca Cola, but I can drink it if needed, so I have already tried this as a remedy to my headache yesterday. (Took the edge off, but didn’t completely work.)

I realised as I was writing up my diary last night that anyone reading it would be perplexed at my sudden change of personality – “took some aspirin and some coke”. I always was one to invent a more exotic lifestyle for my staid little self.

Sniff!

Life as we knew it…

Places have reopened. Restaurants, and cinemas, and theatres. Just as well, given that the weather has been unrelentingly cold and wet for weeks now. Not quite what we expect from May after last year’s compensatory lockdown nice weather.

Just before we were allowed back inside, a group of old friends decided to risk the London evening outdoors and book two tables of six (separately, of course). In the end, ten of us turned up, which is pretty good considering the distances that some have to travel. These are people who first met about forty years ago at university and have stayed in touch ever since. As we started to become empty-nesters, we got our act together a bit better to see each other on a more regular basis over the past few years.

Most of us had not seen each other since the beginning of the 2020 lockdowns. From the first glimpse and frenzied wave, we all knew this was going to be a wonderful evening. All the old mischief of friends who have known each other since the age when misbehaving was normal. Yes, there was some serious news-catching up to do, but also some serious (in a deeply unserious way) reminiscing, some self-congratulatory exchanges of how wonderful we all are – and how lucky, given that one of our number is no longer with us at all.

The restaurant were very tolerant. We behaved ourselves sufficiently well by sitting at our separate tables and only swapping over a little half way through. I don’t think they cared, but one should always be respectful! We were sitting outside, of course, but it was perfectly warm and dry. I’m not sure we would have noticed otherwise though.

What a fantastic feeling to be reunited. I’m not sure any of us quite expected to feel so exhilarated. Or realised that we needed to revert to our youth somehow like this to recapture some lightness of heart. I, for one, have enjoyed some good comedy on TV or podcast during the past year, and it’s certainly not been all sombre at home, but I don’t think I’ve laughed quite so much as I did this evening for a very long time.

The old times came back, particularly when three of us decided to walk back from Farringdon to Waterloo – the other two determined that I was wrong about there being only one train still running and that we should hurry. Silly childish running at crossings (this is a grown man, behaving like a five year old girl), stupid banter, devil-may-care “oh there are plenty of trains” even when it became obvious that there was, indeed, only one train still running. We ran onto the platform – the other two with their deliberately silly running and me almost unable to move for laughing.

I suppose we were lucky as well – a charmed evening – that the train took one of us to his usual station, one of us to a station from which there are usually taxis for a short ride to my home – and the third to a station which was at least in the right county and apparently only a one-hour walk from home.

It was just so good to let go for an evening. Not an epic ‘session’ of an evening, just a glorious reminder of what it is to have old friends and a bit of freedom to unwind.

Yes, lockdown was life, Jim, but not as we used to know it. Hurrah that the old life can still spark up after all.

It’s (Cissie) Davina!

I’m half-way through the audiobook of Davina McCall’s ‘Lessons I’ve Learned’ which is so far proving a bit of a compulsive listen. So, it was mainly for that reason that I thought I would watch her TV programme about the menopause this week. And nothing to do with my age…

It was an odd mixture of a programme but, as is often the case with ‘celebrity’ documentaries, there were nuggets of interesting material amongst the more showy presentation items – serious interviews with a variety of experts interspersed with a series of statements on an advertising lorry on Brighton seafront. Davina’s great for those ‘this is embarrassing, but I’m going to say it’ moments, with vaguely Les Dawson-esque (Cissie Braithwaite) references to ‘down there’ etc. The great British embarrassment factor!

I was fortunate enough to be watching with only my cat for company, and he seemed unmoved by it all and oblivious to my blushes (and flushes).

I was briefly concerned for myself – all those missing hormones, the fragility, the mental decline – oh lord, the atrophy! If I had Cissie-breasts I’d have hoiked one of them in alarm!

But… I consoled myself with the convincing argument that occasional carrying of heavy shopping from a distant supermarket would definitely count as weight-bearing exercise to prevent loss of bone density and the very fact that I walk more than five miles each day means I can class myself as incredibly ‘active’ and thus protecting myself from the onslaught of any midlife awfulness.

As for that atrophy business – well, a brief dalliance with ‘locally delivered’ hormones at least provided excellent applicators which usefully doubled up as a cat-pill-administering device . Shoots it right to the back of the mouth! So satisfying.

Always a silver lining.

Smalls obsessions

There are multifarious ways of getting through this here pandemic.

Chocolate – obviously.

Box-sets – predictably.

And fleeting obsessions.

These obsessions have sometimes crossed over with the box-set theme (Fleabag last year, Call my Agent cette année, par exemple, currently Rose Matafeo’s Starstruck), or taken the form of replacement therapy, such as streaming National Theatre plays (ongoing, but definitely had a ‘moment’ a couple of months ago where I was on several per week) because I can’t currently indulge my theatrical habit in person.

Worryingly, though, these obsessions veer into the peculiar sometimes: particular foodstuff fads (currently Holland & Barrett banana chips – almost certainly 99% sugar); repetitive walking of the same route all week; and sudden periods of compulsive reading.

But I am suddenly concerned that I have deliberately worn white knickers for seven days in a row ( a clean pair each day, not the same pair for the whole week – how very dare you?!) rather than the usual random selection made each day at a time when I am barely able to see, let alone make informed choices. A conscious, if not quite logical, decision to exhaust my monochromatic stock, before allowing myself to indulge in a mauve, or a pattern.

All seven white undies are now freshly laundered and hanging neatly on the drying rack, which has given me immense satisfaction today.

I think it is high time those theatres and restaurants reopened – I need another focus!

Sunsets and filmstars

Today has been something of a write-off. I have been on a different planet entirely, in a fog of migraine and its attendant medications.

I didn’t even seem to have the energy to be properly miserable. And, unusually, my Zoom singing session failed to rouse me to any sort of cheerfulness.

Still – there was a small late-afternoon curry-cooking achievement, followed by a pleasant shower and then a tiny burst of online booking excitement when I committed to rail tickets for my May trip to Cornwall (heart skipping beats already) and bizarrely ordered two bags of peat-free compost from the milkman! Who knew?

More uplifting still – a gorgeous pink and blue striated sky at sunset, reminding me not only of the beauty around us, but also of many a plane journey watching the sun going up or down and marvelling at the planet. Before I got too carried away with this, I also congratulated myself on the fact that we were prescient enough to put large picture windows in our loft extension years ago which are still yielding these beautiful sights.

Lastly, I once again looked at an email I received over the weekend announcing that I will soon be sent a link to one of the films I worked on last year as an Extra, before being invited to its London premiere later in the summer. At last – I will be an actual film star!

Cheered up a bit now.

All vaxxed up and nowhere to go

Spellcheck doesn’t like ‘vaxxed’. It insists on putting little red dots underneath the spelling and inviting me to change it to ‘vexed’. How vexatious!

But, this is the new normal – ‘vaxxed’ is becoming part of our daily conversation. I am now proudly telling people that I am ‘fully vaxxed’, as I have been fortunate enough to receive my second jab earlier than expected. Who knows whether that will make it more, or less, effective than waiting the full 12 weeks, but I was happy to accept a cancellation at short notice even though it meant travelling to the other side of the borough to get it. It was administered in a warren of an old-fashioned GP practice which had been accessorised by a couple of mid-sized marquees in which we all had to wait the mandatory 15 minutes after our jabs. There was some sort of system, but I didn’t seem to be part of it – I somehow blundered into one of the tents and stayed there voluntarily for 10 minutes (because I insist on lying down for the injection itself and then waiting – still lying down – for a few minutes before gently sitting up, so I have already completed the first five minutes before releasing myself to the waiting room. My request to lie down was met with bemusement at both vaccinations, but this second time the nurse seemed completely nonplussed and, I felt, slightly antagonistic, although ultimately obliging. It was the end of the day – she was almost certainly just counting down until she could go home).

As before, I have suffered no side-effects apart from a slightly tender upper arm for a day or so. I seriously wonder whether it’s doing anything at all. I took an antibody test last week (before the second vaccination) for the purposes of research for UK Biobank, and it seems I had no perceptible antibodies to Covid. My husband had the same result. Weird, although we are told not to be concerned about it. Still, I’ve done my bit now. I’ll try not to let it go to my head and make me careless.

Chance would be a fine thing though. I feel completely listless today, after my burst of theatre booking. I’ve been pottering in the garden, and realising how clumsy I truly am. It’s a wonder I achieve anything practical at all. I look at what I’m trying to achieve, and it’s as though my hands are being operated by some blind bystander who’s been asked to do a very slightly different task. Ah well, I expect some of the plants will survive.

I was pleased to be asked to do another delivery on one of my regular routes to the Park, but once I got going I realised I had no energy at all and it was as much as I could do to put one foot in front of the other. I suppose I must be exaggerating because I ended up covering five miles all the same, but it was not as enjoyable as it should have been.

I wonder if it has anything to do with there being nothing in the diary until May? Yes, I have booked several things and there are dinners, plays and a Cornwall trip to look forward to, but they still seem a long way away.

Gawd, I think I need to stop this and wait until I can write something more upbeat!

I’m going to break open a chorizo ring for supper. That’s today’s excitement right there.

Just thought – maybe the torpor is a ‘vaxxing’ side-effect.

Recommencement

I spent a happy day last week booking theatre visits for later this year. I currently have 6 performances scheduled, and hopefully tomorrow will secure a couple more as the various theatres reopen their box offices to tempt me.

National COVID Memorial Wall – South Bank opposite the Palace of Westminster

And, gloriously in yesterday’s sunshine, I made my way up to London for the first time in four long months. Despite my local train line being ‘engineering-ed’ for the day, I managed to get on a very crowded bus to Richmond Station which was not suffering the same ignominy. As I often do, I got off the train a stop before Waterloo and emerged at Vauxhall (to the sight of a street urinal (in use!) right in my path towards the river – what bizarre changes have occurred over these past few months), and set off along the river towards St Thomas’ Hospital to meet my daughter at Waterloo. I was touched to see en route the new National COVID Memorial Wall, covered in red and pink hearts – one for each death (I think). Although I didn’t much like the numerous cellophane parcels of rotting flowers alongside, the wall itself is somehow rather affecting in its simplicity and slightly random nature. The hearts are all different sizes and people have chosen to write on them in different ways. I could have spent ages just looking at it, but I was on a timetable so hurried on by.

We later walked through Covent Garden and it was lovely in the sunshine, with lots of people at the outdoor tables in their perspex boxes with (at the time unnecessary) heaters. This now resembles many other European cities I have visited where these outdoor arrangements have been common for some time – I guess because they have more reliable weather than we do.

After a long chat, some food and some exploring, I said goodbye and returned across Waterloo Bridge as the sun was lowering and the light was beautiful. Still one of my favourite ends to an evening – the walk back to the train.

Mind the gap

There wasn’t supposed to be such a long gap between posts as there seems to have been from the one just published and the one before that. Just incompetence in actually publishing. I know I pressed the ‘publish’ button, but sometimes it doesn’t complete.

So, that’s another failure. One thing after another.

(“Another” being the lack of success of the latest attempt to get rid of chronic migraine. Although there may have been mild improvement – ie. a few odd days off here and there, and a slight improvement in my sleep which wasn’t really a problem anyway – I am still waking to an evil headache more days than not, and also – to my annoyance – my resting heart rate has gone up a few notches. Whilst my Fitbit still awards me Excellent for my age etc, I am disappointed that one of things I clung to as a source of pride (resting heart rate in mid-50s) has been taken from me. It’s now in the low-60s – still apparently brilliant, of course.)

It’s just as well the small birds are singing and the Spring is here (despite snow yesterday).

Oh, and remember, I have a three-night break in Cornwall partially booked for May. Now that really does help!

Onward and upward etc.

Hair isn’t everything?*

These last few days of full lockdown are annoying me now. So much so that I surprised myself yesterday by booking a hotel for a few days in Cornwall in May. No idea if I’ll actually go, but I’d like to think I will. Just for a bit more walking. I’m so tired of tramping around my local area, beautiful though much of it is, but hopefully the sea air and cliff paths will be more invigorating.

Anyhow, when I booked it I was still reeling from another brief encounter with the window-cleaner. I cheerily popped my head out of the back door when he was tackling the kitchen windows the other day and enquired after his health etc. Did he want a cup of tea (now my china-cup-proper-coffee-making neighbour has moved away!)?

No, he still doesn’t want my tea or inferior coffee, but then…

…”I expect you’re looking forward to next week?” (Cheery laugh)

“Well, I’m not sure it will make a huge difference to me day to day” (I say, rather low-key and morose I suppose, but that’s me)

…”Hairdressers are open!” (Bastard!)

So, I’ve spent the last couple of days being appalled at my huge band of grey hair which I had hitherto almost accepted. I think perhaps I’ll have to stay indoors forever now, unless I adopt a hat.

I hate hats.

*And what is more, this has also driven me back to Fleabag (which I had recently weaned myself off) to check the quote in the script. It seems that, much against my better judgment, “Hair. Is. Everything.”

And if that is actually the case and my hair is everything about me, then I am properly old – and that hurts.

Mind you, the greyness does seem to be self-highlighted, varied in colour and actually streaked as though someone has put in some little foils overnight while I was sleeping. So, let me just take a moment to feel vindicated, as it confirms what I have valiantly proclaimed over the years that my hair highlights itself, which people always seemed to disbelieve. So there. I win.

One of the things I was going to write about

I’ve been putting off writing about this, which has been lurking in the background for the past month. There is something about closure, even for people only peripherally involved in trauma or sadness it seems.

I mentioned a few posts ago that a folk-singer friend was missing.

Yesterday, I attended his funeral. He was 68, and his body was found in the Thames several weeks after he left his home. There is no doubt, I believe, that no-one else was involved and that this was not an accident.

We have sung for him as a group; our Sunday evening marathon Zoom-pub session was dedicated to his memory, not only our folk-group singers but others of his friends too, and his sister and niece listened in. Clearly emotional, but no actual tears until the very final number – hats off to the friend who agreed to sing it at all (The Parting Glass).

His sister led the funeral – there was no official or religious celebrant, as he rejected his original Roman Catholicism many years ago. Although it is sad to be at a funeral at all, it is also always interesting to find out more about a person. We learned more about his love for music and an impromptu performance on the West End stage.

I don’t think I’ve been to a funeral and not learned something new (apart perhaps from my best friend’s where I delivered the eulogy and therefore had garnered all the stories beforehand). Even my parents’ funerals yielded new revelations at the wakes – in one case something so startling about someone else in my family that I will have to live until my own death with the fact that I’m not supposed to know it.

There were two pieces of music played over the speaker system at the crematorium which featured the deceased himself – firstly Amazing Grace sung with his professional singer daughter, and secondly his own rendition of Let It Be which jerked the tears out again. His daughter: “Dad would have bloody loved the idea of singing at his own funeral”. We all had to agree.

And, perhaps turning the unfortunate COVID restrictions on numbers in the crematorium to an advantage, miniature bottles of Irish whiskey were handed out to each member of the in-person congregation as they filed out at the end.

It was interesting that, watching from my sofa on my laptop, with no-one else present, I cried far more than I would have done in the crematorium. I suppose this is a result of the lack of self-consciousness. I was brought up not to show much emotion, but somehow find I cry incredibly easily at some things and always struggle at a funeral. Of course, when you are very close to the deceased – your parents or child etc – then it is likely that you will cry, but being in unseemly floods of tears when you barely knew them is odd (isn’t it? I don’t really know). At home, you can just let rip – all the memories of others long gone, or of those you would dread to lose just wring those tears out.

Just before I sang on Sunday night in the memorial pub session, I heard from my brother that he is in hospital with a crashing headache caused by a bleed on the brain. I haven’t told him this, but that is what killed my best friend.

So, I have spent large parts of the last two days weeping much more than usual. Possibly as a result, I have a headache myself now which is refusing to shift. It is not often that I have to take myself back to bed of a morning, but today was one such. A beautiful sunny day to be missing!

But one small positive – I switched on the TV when I got back into bed and had one of the breakfast programmes on. And this has confirmed that I am completely right never to watch them. So that’s something, I suppose.

Hurrah.

Impossibly overexcited

Not sure whether this is a symptom of lockdown, or just a result of my normal household inertia, but this weekend marks a rare domestic high point and I have spent a morning of ridiculous overexcitement.

Not only have we agreed in principle the works (VAST!) which are required to bring our house up to the standard I seem to require (- ie replacing a ceiling which is about to fall down and a carpet which was ruined by the previous household’s children and dog (we moved in 17 years ago); dealing with several patches of damp and filling in the related investigative holes which have arisen over the years; putting in a downstairs loo (something we have disagreed about for ever) and reconfiguring our kitchen/dining space to allow us to sit at the dining table and look at our garden – (this last is admittedly not critical, but has been something I have wanted to do for some time, and our kitchen is definitely past its best) BUT, we have just installed a replacement front door bell and a new washing machine! On the same day!

The workings of the washing machine have propelled me to the laptop to rave about it. After spending a night in the middle of the kitchen floor, no doubt allowing it to acclimatise to its new surroundings a little before subjecting it to the indignity of being shoved under an old worktop, the machine was duly tested and I descended from my office to find it majestically foaming (internally – thank goodness) at 95° as it ran a pre-use cleansing programme, still in the middle of the floor. As I write, it is now completing its first ever wash and I can barely hear it at all. It seems to have accepted quite readily its under-worktop space – and had the good grace not to break any of the floor tiles in the process of relocating there (unlike its grumpy predecessor which, on its arrival, immediately ruined part of our then-lovely new floor and had, in more recent years, put on a dreadful howling show as its bearings went, and staged dirty protests on regular occasions – most particularly when new white bedding came near. I know there are things you can do about some of this – we did them sometimes, to no avail).

This new machine is also a dryer! I don’t really believe in those, but realised that it would sometimes be useful to have one. I promise not to use it much. Honest.

The front door bell has not worked for at least two years. I still don’t understand why, but as I didn’t like the old one much anyway, I had given up trying to get it to work and, instead (and in light of the much increased number of deliveries during the pandemic) I had placed a piece of paper underneath the bell push with ‘Please knock loudly. Bell not working” on it, eventually finding a marker pen that did not fade after a week. This resulted in an interesting variety of knocking methods, some of which were completely silent (delivery drivers, you know who you are! – or perhaps you just arrived before I found the good marker pen, and faced a completely blank piece of paper which might have once said ‘This bell works perfectly, and you only have to look at it to operate it’) and some which were so spectacularly and successfully loud that we would greet the perpetrators with laughing congratulations.

The other person in this house has worked tirelessly over the past couple of weeks to order the correct parts (all the necessary correct parts, several deliveries required, each heralded by variable front door knockings) for a replacement and more satisfactory bell. Yesterday, being ‘the day of making huge domestic progress’, saw the installation of this new bell. Only small amounts of accompanying swearing seemed to be required. It actually looks like a proper bell, and somehow I love it.

Mind you, the first time someone used it for real – a beer delivery, yay – I immediately began to look for my pencil case and satchel to pack up my school things and head home.

Yes, it is different, but hopefully effective in reaching all parts of the house whatever noise we are making elsewhere.

Now to go and see if the white sheets and pillowcases are ok…

‘Stops writing while the going is good…’

Joyful incoherence

It has been a strange few weeks.

I have not written much on this blog this month, partly because there are a couple of sad and confusing topics which I cannot yet bring myself to cover here even though I sort of want to, and also (more mundanely) because I have been trying to finish my ‘avid theatre-goer in COVID times’ essay. I have been trying to get this finished for months – during which time I have of course kept watching more things which I wanted to incorporate.

On and on it went. Procrastination, more writing, procrastination, editing, additions, avoidance, more editing – hopeless.

However, yesterday, serendipitously on the actual one-year anniversary of UK theatres being forced to close as the country prepared for lockdown #1, I managed to load it up onto this very site here.

And Tweet about it on the best possible day to do so. Genius. It is, of course, too long. I realised this last weekend and tried valiantly to shorten it. I chopped unnecessary bits out, then wrote extra bits. I took out all the silly personal references. I re-read it and decided it was pompous, uninformed and actually rather incoherent in places. And boring. So I restructured it so there was a better narrative flow (there, you see, I can do pompous alright), re-wrote it more in my own voice (whatever that actually is) and gently took the piss out of myself in places (yeah, that’s my own voice!). So most of the silly personal references were back in. But it seemed to read a little better, so I did one more revision. Same number of words I had started with. Sigh. And no-one will read it anyway, will they?

With a lighter feel, especially as my feverish Twitterings yesterday evening had brought at least 10 people to this website (hahahaha – ten!), I today turned to the job of writing a short history of my old rowing club. They only want a few paragraphs for their website at present – surely I can rustle that up? No doubt it will be several pages of rambling nonsense but I will be ruthless this time – again, hahahaha. After at least half an hour of serious web-surfing and fervid note-taking, I started looking at that Twitter bird again. Counting the page impressions – that way madness surely lies…

So it was that I chanced upon a promotional Tweet for Dermot O’Leary’s podcast series People, Just People. And joy of joys, there was a ridiculously funny trailer for the latest edition with Andrew Scott and Olivia Colman which I watched several times before having some lunch.

Back at my desk, I forced myself to scribble another page of rowing club history notes (my current notebook has quite small pages), then I set off on my walk as the sun came out. I listened to Newscast first – I am a creature of habit after all. And then the O’Leary podcast*.

By this time I was in Richmond Park and although the weather was nice now, there were not many people around. Which was just as well, because here was one of those occasions when I couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

These may be one of the best broadcasters and two of the finest actors of our current times, but honestly, the whole hour was just gloriously incoherent. At one stage, Dermot used the phrase ‘this is like herding cats’ (one of my former colleagues used this expression all the time, which made me smile even wider with nostalgia), and raucous laughter drowned out the ends of any sentences which were in danger of actually being finished.

Gin-in-a-tin from M&S probably featured more heavily than it should have done, but was a wonderful Fleabag reminiscence for all concerned. I am honestly none the wiser about anything they may have been discussing, but who cares? In these isolated times it was just joyful to hear people having a laugh together. Tears streamed in the happy breeze.

It was thus with a light heart and an only-ever-so-slightly-still-teary eye that I sat down for my evening’s 10 pages of self-improvement reading. I’m reading Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera, and very much enjoying it, but laugh-out-loud it generally is not – particularly the couple of pages I started with detailing horrendous slaughter and harrowing brutality.

And now I’m off to watch a documentary about the murderous Rose West. Cheery stuff.

This all makes me think, as ever, about the importance of humour and lightness – the incongruity of a tipsy luvvie exchange wedged between my literary efforts, a serious news discussion and the atrocities of Empire.

Keeps me sane.

Or does it….?

‘Descends into self-incoherence’

*Available on Audible

COVID test

No, I don’t have COVID. At least, I don’t have any symptoms and I’ve had my first jab, so I’m not worried.

But I was sent an invitation to the Ipsos MORI/Imperial College REACT survey, and I agreed to do a test for them today.

They sent me a kit with an explanatory leaflet. It arrived in a very late postal delivery on Saturday and I finally read the blurb yesterday. It seems you have to book your courier before you do anything else, so I did that and chose the first date – today! I checked I had all the necessary items in the pack and realised that I was required to assemble the cardboard return box myself. About 15 minutes later, and stressed beyond words (apart from four-letter ones) I had an approximation of a box. That’ll have to do.

Irritatingly, the test has to be done at the crack of dawn and be ready for collection at 8am. 8 am!!! I’m normally just stirring myself at that time. So, I got up at 7 and staggered around a bit. Thank goodness I’d done the hard work and built the box yesterday.

I sat down to watch the instruction video suggested in my letter. At least, I think it was the video they suggested. I used the web address they gave, but the video seemed to differ from the instructions written in my letter and leaflet. In fact, I nearly cancelled everything when it referred to two small tubes – when quite clearly I only had one. I quickly reverted to the paperwork. The video was altogether too much for my befuddled morning brain.

And here’s the thing. I increasingly find I can’t manage simple sets of instructions without massive self-doubt, so this was very unhelpful.

No matter, I ploughed on and launched myself into the actual test. I think I did it right, although I resisted the urge to mimic one of the earliest TV reportages of testing in Spain where the test-stick was rammed at least 6 inches into some poor woman’s face (well, that’s what we reckoned at the time). All was fine. No actual gagging or proper discomfort. I got the stick in the tube ok and the tube in the hazard bag. Now to put it in the box. When the awful realisation dawned that I had somehow made the box inside out! I guess it wouldn’t have mattered if it was wrong – it was going by courier after all, and I had to stick a special label on it anyway. But I felt stupid and decided I had to put it right. Not any easier second time round when you have two left hands and have left your best spectacles upstairs. FFS – who puts the instructions on the outside? And upside down?

Once I’d put the finished articles carefully in the fridge, I could relax. It was 7.55. Of course, the courier (a man in an unmarked white van) didn’t arrive until 11.30 and didn’t seem at all grateful, but it’s all in a good cause.

Mind you, if I’m positive and they ground me, I might feel a little less charitable.

Now, back to my everlasting writing…

Achievement morning

It is 10am.

I have already succeeded (I use that word advisedly, and quite probably incorrectly) in the following:

Washing the dishes from yesterday evening’s meal, which includes the grill pan after sausages, and a saucepan with mashed potato remnants. Two of my absolute faves.
Vacuuming the kitchen floor and under the tables in the breakfast room where the cat seems to shed more fur than he actually wears on a more-than-weekly basis.
Mopping the kitchen floor to try and remove the various unexplained stains and smears that most definitely have nothing to do with my culinary catastrophes.
Taking in the post (none of it for me) and the milk from the step.
Completing my daily diary – for the wrong day. (In fairness to myself, days are pretty much all the same and who will ever care if I have listed my exciting Sainsbury’s trip inaccurately. As long as there is never a police investigation for which evidence will be needed…maybe I should change it after all? Or maybe I have watched too many detective procedurals on TV?)
Almost getting rid of today’s headache. Almost. Not completely. Still there. Making me annoyed. Can you tell?

Look on the bright side. I can tick some things off my to-do list and feel better about myself.

Except I don’t. Grrrrr.

Angels in my office

Hot on the heels of the emotion-draining finale of Russell T Davies’ wonderful It’s A Sin on Channel 4, I have watched the National Theatre’s Angels In America, Parts One and Two. Staged and recorded on the South Bank back in 2017, these are now available on NT At Home for a small rental fee. Given my current obsession with theatre (what timing – I know! Ridiculous!), it amazes me that I didn’t go to see this when it was playing. Sadly, most productions just passed me by when I was working, and it was as much as I could do to watch a challenging drama on TV, let alone stay up in London after work to go to a theatre. Or, more to the point, engage my brain sufficiently to be aware of what was available and get round to booking it. That is a great shame, in retrospect, but I am making up for it now, nobly aided by the increasing number of theatres who are sharing their back catalogues online.

It is definitely not the same experience – sitting at my desk peering at the production on the small screen. Sometimes I connect to the TV downstairs and watch with my husband, but we are already behind on our planned TV box-set bingeing and films we have listed to watch. So, more often than not, I watch alone on my laptop with headphones on. In some ways this is more intimate and, given that watching with just one other person in the living room is hardly going to replicate the experience of sitting in a huge auditorium (or even a small one) with hundreds of strangers, I see it as a reasonable choice, unless it’s being live-streamed which is a different matter.

I watched Part Two in the morning. This did feel a little strange. Or at least, it felt strange to re-engage with the theatrical world at 10am at my office desk, and weird afterwards that it was only lunchtime, but during the course of the play I was completely enraptured by the performances, carried away into the NT’s magical space, and it could have been any time at all.

I have seen so many extracts from and references to Angels in America since I have been following actors, theatres and directors on social media, so I was excited to see that it was available to rent. I have definitely not been disappointed. I feel I don’t want to explain it – it touched on such a broad range of life through its ‘gay fantasia’: politics, love, sexuality, familial relationships, mental health, angels… It was serious but also light and funny and camp and gorgeous and stark. (Never a dull moment!)

The staging was brilliant: sometimes multiple scenes visible through each other at the same time (I love when they do this in the theatre – not entirely sure why); movement from one place to another, one dimension to another; minimalist representation of spaces. Of course, it would have been much better to see it in situ (and LIVE!!!), but on the other hand we have the advantage of the camera close-up from time to time which is harder to get when sitting in the cheap seats. Thus what is lost in the awesomeness of staging mechanics on the night, is gained in the actors’ facial and physical detail.

Enough! I know I am, once again, fan-girling. Daily life experiences at the moment are severely straitened, and that may be making this worse, but I seem to be hurtling down another drama-obsessive theatrical path – all luvvied up.

Ah well, there are worse things.

Post-script: The problem with doing culture in the mornings is where do you go from there? I went to Sainsburys. That brought me back down to earth.

Ironing through a void

It seems that there is a national obsession with ironing and a raging debate over whether or not to iron tea-towels. There has apparently even been a YouGov poll about it.

This has been sparked by a Tweet from Kirstie Allsopp – of Location Location Location fame – asking much the same question and prompting a huge amount of Twitter traffic throughout the week. I guess whoever monitors social media for HMG noticed this trending and realised that at some point the government will need to have a position on it, so added to their daily questionnaire.

I’m not sure whether a Linked In post a couple of days ago was directly as a result of this pressing trend, but a former colleague was seeking a redesign of ironing boards which she considers unsatisfactory and intimidating, if not downright dangerous. I tend to agree on this, and added that my own board, which dates – in my ownership at least – from a jumble sale in 1988, has an occasional fault which results in spontaneous crashing to the floor at completely unpredictable moments. Adds to the jeopardy of an otherwise humdrum life I suppose.

But humdrum and malfunctioning domestic appliances are fine. All of this nonsense pales into insignificance while we wait to hear whether one of my fellow folk-singers can be found safe after leaving his home without phone or vital medication almost 3 days ago. I think several of us have similarly pessimistic thoughts; I noticed two other folk-group members walking down by the riverside yesterday, glancing nervously at the reeds along the banks and hoping we wouldn’t discover anything. I couldn’t bring myself to run and catch them up – there would have been too many tears between us.

This is an odd period of helplessness. An hour’s ironing on Sunday became a form of therapy.

Key change

I’m having a musical theatre phase. I blame Phillip Schofield.

I listened to Mr Schofield’s autobiography recently on Audible and was reminded of his starring role in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in the 1990s. His obvious love of the whole experience was very evocative and touched a musical and theatrical nerve in me. Of course, I had to listen to a few Joseph songs as background research. I knew every word to some of them – we did it at school!

So it was that, when my daily podcast listen ended mid-Park yesterday, I set to thinking about musicals I’ve enjoyed and landed on Dear Evan Hansen which was one of the last live productions I saw in London before Coronavirus closed everything down. A quick Spotify search and I was off, into the realms of over-emoting and dramatic key changes.

Within seconds of the first big number, I realised I was walking faster, taller, shoulders back, feet better planted at each step. Eyes raised to the skies, I breathed in and out – this almost had me being proper mindful! How strange. I wouldn’t say I am a fully signed-up devotee of this kind of music, but I’m a sucker for a live performance and would kill to be able to take part in a really good musical (ok, I exaggerate and that ship most definitely never floated let alone sailed). But it seems that this music has uplifting and therapeutic properties. Hurrah!

I know I beat time a little with my hands as I get swept up in the moment – I hope no-one notices. I also can’t help smiling when I know they’re going up a key – triumphant each time I remember before it happens.

I am almost (almost) certain I didn’t sing anything until I had closed my front door at home.

Almost certain…

Baking hot

I’ve remembered why I don’t bake very often.

It is not because I am rubbish at it. I am competent enough, especially if there is little to be done on the decorative front.

It is because, unless the baking is being done purely for someone else’s consumption, it means a massive calorific overdose which I can, frankly, do without.

On Valentine’s Day, in addition to giving a place-setting full of gummy and chocolate treats (and receiving a box of Maltesers which is traditional gift fare for me – and always welcome, I might add), I thought I would show my wifely skills in an unaccustomed burst of culinary creativity.

One of the small miracles of this, was that I had not only saved a recipe from a recent magazine, but had also succeeded in purchasing the necessary ingredients and – amazingly – remembered where I had secreted the relevant page from the magazine!

Ninety minutes later I had seven rather beautiful banana-choc turnovers. Almost professional-looking, although just sufficiently misshapen enough to pass as my own.

I rather belatedly read the advice that these were best served hot, straight from the oven. There are only the two of us locked down together here – so I valiantly managed to eat four of these myself during the course of the afternoon, admittedly not all whilst they were still warm.

I am informed today that they are actually nicer cold – and fortunately the final pair have disappeared between breakfast and lunch, so the tyranny of eating them all up has gone away.

I’m not sure which emotion has won. Pride and satisfaction at achieving something practical, or annoyance at my greed and over-indulgence. Honours even, I suppose and today is a new day when I can stomp around the park a bit more to try and atone for the latter.

Romance

Yesterday was very exciting.

I was taken on a trip in the car!

I had already done a GP surgery delivery on foot in the morning – two miles there, two miles back, a podcast listened on the outward journey, a nice chat with my son on the phone on the return – high achievements for a morning for me, despite a rather weepy start to the day. (Well, the weeping continued on the walk of course, as it was bitingly cold, but by this stage my heart wasn’t in it and my eyes were crying without my say-so.)

As I sat down for a bite to eat, Mr J announced that we could leave ‘anytime you like’ on our little vehicular tour. I hurried down my mini-quiche and grabbed a few bits of outdoor clothing in case we stopped anywhere. This was to be an early Valentine’s treat. He knows how I like to get out-and-about.

He proceeded to whisk me down to Epsom where he had important business to transact (a signature to obtain), and as we travelled, we passed a pleasant time commenting on the relative rurality compared to our own locale. On arrival, I was happy to gawp at the rather nice houses in this area to which I had never previously ventured (the excitement of places newly discovered! Not quite a new country but we have adjusted our expectations in Corona-time). I was able to make small talk in his colleague’s front garden – pleasant indeed to have new company even for such a short time. I was glad of my gloves and scarf which had seemed slightly overkill in the car.

Then we were off again, winding down a few lanes and graduating back to dual-carriageways as we skirted round our home town and headed north towards … Isleworth. Yes, it dawned on me we were going to collect his motorcycle from a small business park. That would explain the pile of extra warm clothes on the back seat, concealing the crash helmet and gauntlets. Hmm. So much for romance eh? I should have guessed, really. I picked him up from this same location just last week when the bike went in for repair. Romantic it is not.

This time I was able to get a much better look as I wandered foolishly around in the freezing cold (gloves and scarf in fact NOT sufficiently warm here – further north I suppose) while a serious manly conversation was had regarding (1) the merits (or otherwise) of taking even more bits off the elderly motorcycle in order to reveal further areas in need of repair; (2) the perils and costs of motorcycling into London (and how to minimise same – top tips from the garage in fact already shared last year, but good to revisit); (3) the cold weather and how much colder it was with the workshop door open (!); (4) COVID and the government’s approach and why the chap in the garage had nothing better to do than chat to his one customer that day as a result of said approach, and – finally – (5) the bill and how sir would indeed have to venture inside the workshop to complete the transaction, so masks ahoy!

I took the opportunity to nose around for a while and discovered a row of Rolls Royces, Bentleys and Jaguars just across the way. Even these did not really add to the romance of the location – they all seemed a bit old to me. I expect they were actually antiques and worth a fortune, but were rather wasted on me. Now, had they been trains…

As I dutifully drove home, taking care to allow the motorcycle past me at the first set of traffic lights and avoiding unseemly racing (no fun now everywhere is 20 mph limits anyway), I mused on the true romance of the trip. This may have been prompted by gazing, whilst waiting at a temporary traffic light, at some rather picturesque Thames flooding at Twickenham. I had been given an adventure and an escape from home at a time when I am almost climbing the walls with entrapment and lack of holiday planning. A kindness. Truly a romantic gesture.

Then I remembered that for our most recent wedding anniversary he took me to a small Oxfordshire industrial estate to pick up a bit for his boat. There is a pattern to this romance.