Monochrome tendencies

Here I am, a day late already, so much for resolve. But in my defence, I've been ill. The kind of ill you get better from, so I don't need any sympathy, but also the kind of ill that sends you falling into to bed with such lassitude that whole days drift past and you've done nothing more strenuous than turn the pillow over looking for a cool bit. Maybe drink a Lemsip and deign to get in a bath that has been run for you. If it'd been left to you it would have overflowed and you'd have found it hard to care. Meetings are missed, emails are unsent, pyjamas are unchanged out of. I already had a policy of avoiding people who cost me energy, but for the last week or so I've just been avoiding people full stop.

I probably had it coming. I had a cold when my mum first went into hospital back in September, but I only remember it because I hovered in the doorway for fear of passing it onto her... it wasn't a showstopper. But apart from that I've been fine for months, through the Big Move, through the days of no broadband, through the long fading of light into a winter of sombre significance and many train journeys. I used to melt into a puddle of blood and tears every month, but that's been under control for over a year now, thanks to the marvels of artificial progestogen (I think I may be a little tougher and less accommodating than I used to be but hey, WORTH IT). I ain't no hippie but I do think when you have to power through, you power through, and then you have a little break from all the powering, and then you fall over. There's probably science that explains that, right?

Anyway, when it comes, it comes, and I'm well brought up enough to know that you can't fight it, all you can do is ride it out. You can go for a little walk in the woods, watch the snow falling on the river, and shed a few tears for all the sadness in the world. You can catch up on all the Nordic Noir you've been missing. You can rediscover the joy of soup. You can read a bit of Tove Jansson, who writes so beautifully about the introspective moods of midwinter. You can spend a lot of time thinking about trees, and a little bit of time talking to them.

This morning the sun rose and shone into my bedroom, and I sat up in bed and saw the heron sitting on his (her? how can you tell?) favourite rock in the river. It was magical. I can do melancholy with the best of them - in Rupert Thomson's Divided Kingdom I would definitely live in the Green Quarter - but it's good to remember that colour floods back into the world just as surely as it can drain out.

joella

Emerging, blinking, into spring

The Crook O'Lune this Aft O'Noon #whyiammovingbacktolancashire
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

It's been a bit of a long dark winter, to be honest. It's had its upsides -- not least the discovery that this view appears on the cycle path from Halton to Caton -- which, come June, will be the location of my local Co-op. Just when it feels like this is the hardest thing I've ever done, the reasons for doing it reassert themselves big time.

But there have been some downsides too. I had a little meltdown just before Christmas. I was cycling back to the Interim Bungalow in the dark and the cold, having just failed to get a project agreed by the technology board at NGO X, and on the same day having had a really disheartening conversation with someone who I'd been pinning a lot of hopes on for another project, and I burst into tears. The project should have been agreed, but I hadn't put enough time into it. The conversation should have gone better -- I have since learnt that he's a man not known for his listening skills, but I could have prepared better for it. A third project should have got external funding and didn't -- nothing I could have done about that but now we needed a Plan B, and I hadn't given that any thought at all for weeks. And there were other things, that people who work for organisations with blogging policies don't write about on their blogs. Work was looking shit from all directions, basically. I hadn't seen it coming, and I didn't know what to do.

I am generally one of those people who steps into a vacuum, says 'oh all right, I know it's not technically my job, but then it's not technically *anyone's* job, so I'll have a go at sorting that out'. Several of those projects landed on my desk that way. And usually that's fine, but there were too many of them, they were all going wrong, and -- crucially -- I didn't have any expansion space. I have been working part time for five years and it's one of the best decisions I ever made, but before Lancaster Cohousing came along, before I was selling a house and living in two places and grappling with logistics and managing a website and a document collection and coordinating an allotment group and trying to do all this by bike and bus and train... if I needed to do a bit more, then I did. I think all part time managers do -- they check their email, they make themselves available, they spend a couple of hours here and there on their non-working days thinking about things that need thinking about, writing things that need writing, generally aiming to cover the gaps while not losing their precious work-life balance.

But I can't do that at the moment. I felt like it had been raining for about two months then there was a huge mudslide.

And then there was Christmas, which was also kind of dark. What I really wanted to do was sleep, and hang out in my pyjamas watching Inspector Morse. What happened was we had Christmas Day with ex-housemate S, her Quiet Young Man, his parents, Tungsten & Particle, all three of M's offspring, his ex-wife, and her mother. This was not my idea, and I initially resisted it pretty assertively. But it was our last Christmas in Oxford, and in the end I went along with it because both M and ex-housemate S like having a house full of people at Christmas, M really wanted to see his children on the day, and this was the only way it was likely to happen. I didn't think there was a way I could reasonably avoid it without making a statement that I didn't want to make (nobody who likes Christmas ever believes that some of us really would be happier on our own with some sherry and a good book) -- but I was tired, I was stressed, I drank too much and it was generally not my finest hour. Boxing Day was no fun at all.

It was all linked with the wider malaise though, which itself is all linked with bigger, deeper changes, and maybe it was worth going through it -- as several days later my head cleared and a possible way forward emerged. I talked stuff through with my manager right at the end of December, and we made some decisions that weren't that easy (giving stuff up is hard, especially if you are the one who made it happen in the first place) but I think will see me through this transition year, work wise, and then we will reassess.

Not out of the woods yet, but the light is returning and the crocuses are out, so optimism is easier. My new house has a roof and windows, and is no longer an abstract concept. And I've joined Pinterest, to help me start imagining what Lancaster Jo's life will be like.

joella

In which we acknowledge the possibility of spring, and consider that we may not live to see it

Not being funny or anything, but I fucking hate February. And this one's turning out more vicious than most. The real freeze combined with the pay freeze = less money just when you need more. The end of January wasn't quite beans on toast, but only because I had a Significant Birthday and allowances were made.

And I never quite got back into my (already not much more than desultory) exercise routine - weekly yoga, weekly-ish swimming, bit of cycling round the place - after I had that chunk cut out of my foot. It's a dangerous thing for the middle-aged to lose their routines. Disaffection spreads, and so do midriffs.

A wise woman looked at the two of us and suggested snowdrop therapy. We looked at each other and figured it was worth a go. And so it was that we bundled up late on a frosty morning and headed over to Welford Park.

A note for the under 60s: you will stand out like a sore thumb. But it is a remarkable place and I thoroughly recommend it. Snowdrops do their thing for a scant month of the year, and to dedicate your whole grounds to them takes serious class. Which they have at Welford Park, as well as lots of soup, cake and jam. Oh, and sausages. It's like a day trip to a pre-war universe.

I also got to play with the camera on my new iPhone, which is basic but which delivered some pleasing results.

But I was also wearing sunglasses (it was sunny, but also a bit hailing) because I had a headache. And I have had a headache, on and off, for the last fortnight. It's probably a virus, and the case of dark, dark red Australian wine that my dad sent me for my birthday* probably hasn't helped.

But there have been days of lying in a darkened room, necking codeine and clutching my temples, shouting at people I quite often want to shout at but normally manage not to, and general low-to-medium grade misery. I went to the doctor, who took some blood to check for various terrifying brain conditions, but said that it was probably indeed a virus and would go away in due course.

In the small bursts of energy I get when I don't think I'm dying of a terrifying brain condition, I have been doing spring anticipation activities like planting garlic, darning jumpers, changing the bed (not something that can be contemplated while there's no chance of line drying) and cleaning the oven.

And, like the birds and the bees, I wait.

joella

* The last two bottles left are both called Willy Willy. I think there's probably some Freudian reluctance stopping me opening them. But I expect I'll get over it shortly.

Seasonal highlights part one: pre-Christmas

There's a new dog in town. Well, actually, he lives in Lancashire with the parentals, but I paid a pre-Christmas visit and got to take him for walks. He's about a year old. He wasn't technically a rescue dog, but he needed rescuing - he was bred as a show dog and then wasn't quite good looking enough. He's very thin, he doesn't eat, he sits sideways like he was taught to, and he trots dutifully along beside you with no obvious enthusiasm. It's quite heartbreaking. But he can actually fetch, which is promising, and once he's learnt to wee outside and eat proper dog food (rather than table scraps, which is what he was brought up on), he'll be right. I'm glad he didn't pass muster, he'll have a better life than if he had.

So there's the dachshund. And then there's the Miele. I have never had much luck with washing machines. This is the fourth one through these doors in eight years. The first was one M bought off Dave the Rave when he left the country. It never did more than get stuff wet, really, but it worked. We sold it on when M inherited his mum's. Which was a new-ish Electrolux, but broke down a couple of years later just before ex-housemate S left. Mistake #1 was not getting it repaired. We had a tumble dryer at that point, but it was in the bathroom, and I'd found out how many water and electrical regulations that was breaking. So I got rid of the broken washing machine, sold on the tumble dryer, and bought a Hotpoint washer-dryer. That was mistake #2.

Anyone will tell you that washer-dryers are shit, including the engineers you have to call out to them on a depressingly regular basis. They don't wash very well, they hardly dry at all, they *eat* electricity in the process, and then they blow up. Which ours duly did. I hated it from the start, but I cried when it died. Where were we going to find the cash for a new washing machine just before Christmas?

The answer was that I bought M a third of a washing machine for Christmas, and he bought me two thirds of a washing machine. And this time, we got it right. We bought a Miele. It was number two on the Which Washing Machine list (number one is a Miele as well), and even the man who knows everything about washing machines says they're basically the bollocks. And I love it. It is the MacBook of washing machines. It arrived on the 22nd, and after we installed it, I stroked its sturdy corners and sat cross-legged in front of it for its entire first cycle.

But it's not all been introspective dog-walking and appliance-stroking. No. It's a social time of year, and while I begged off the NGO X Christmas party (ceilidh! karaoke! other circles of hell!) we did have a team high tea, which was good fun and marvellously festive, though I would have preferred a higher sandwich:cake ratio myself. I did some mulled celebrating of the solstice, which was also lovely, but I think the highlight was the Queen of Clubs Pre-Christmas Cabaret, featuring Oxford Maqam, Kimwei and Scarlett in the Wilderness, all playing to a shawl-swathed audience in the tiny and ridiculously atmospheric Bartlemas Chapel. I am suspicious of any act whose description contains the word 'burlesque' (SITW - the first two acts were anything but), but it was far too cold for corsetry. And I think all the better for it. Worth listening out for any of them... and remarkable to see them all in the same place. My hat was off to the organisers. At least, as soon as I got back in the warm.

Now, I must away and wash my pyjamas. Again.

joella

Celeriac dreams

It's counter intuitive, but getting an organic veg box delivered has saved us a lot of money. The vegetables may be relatively expensive, but they arrive every week demanding to be eaten. We peer into the box every Tuesday and then make plans, which generally involve things we have in the cupboard. Plus cheese. 

So we hardly go to the supermarket at all -- I do an online shop (or go to Sainsburys on a Saturday morning with ex housemate S and baby Tungsten) every month or so to replenish the things that live in the cupboard, plus cheese, and we are blessed with corner shops (one of which sells samosas) to meet most other conceivable food needs. 

I used to go to Tesco at least once a week, and somehow ended up buying lots of random stuff, plus things like ready meals that we just don't eat anymore because we've all the veg to get through. 

We use Abel & Cole, derided by hardcore greenies as the supermarket of veg box schemes, but they have two big advantages over genuinely local set-ups: first, you can tell them that you don't like Jerusalem artichokes and you won't get any, and second, they do use non-UK produce (though they don't air freight) from time to time, so it's not root vegetables and nothing but root vegetables the whole winter through. 

It's not far off it though, and I am beginning to run out of inspired things to do with parsnips, and to tire of scraping mud off carrots. I cannot imagine ever running out of onions, or to think 'hmm, I fancy swede tonight'. 

Perhaps the biggest challenge has been the celeriac -- they are so damn big. Two hungry people can only eat half a celeriac a day tops, and once you've had a celeriac day, you need a few days off. I've put them in soups and mashed them with potatoes; M has made stew with them and grated them into salads. Yet still they come. 

But hey, we have the internet. So I was delighted to find this recipe for smoked salmon and celeriac dauphinoise -- sounds posh, but it's dead easy (especially for me, as I didn't cook it...). We had it with rocket salad and something Jamie Oliverish involving beetroot and thyme. Mmmmm. I'd say the smoked salmon was optional, but you'd be hard pushed to make a decent vegan version.

Right, must dash, I've a date with a cabbage.

joella