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Even more of my Lockdown One sort-of-memoir!
Chapter 12
Day 16
The first of May. It was pouring with rain when I woke up in the middle of the night. In the morning it was just the same.
I was regretting putting my seedlings out into the weather to harden up before planting out. I was too scared to go and look at them, in case the rain had snapped all their baby leaves off or broken their freshly grown stems.
I wished I had a long raincoat, and vowed to find one online. There would be more of these drippy days in my future and I really didn’t want the rain to keep me at home, as nice as it was to be tucked away.
Perhaps later it will ease, I thought, but the radar was predicting a full day of rain.
I sat at the kitchen table noting that I’d slightly reduced the clutter that seemed to be mirroring the state of my brain at the moment. I wondered if everyone’s homes were much more cluttery than usual. I couldn’t really find an explanation for this jumble at my house.
It felt like the less cluttered the days were with activities like work and trips to the bus stop at the top of the hill, the more cluttered the house became.
The activity seemed to need to settle itself elsewhere. And that elsewhere was the laundry, the kitchen table, the living room, my bedroom floor.
Maybe today would be the day things got a little bit more streamlined, I thought hopefully. I’m not a tidy Trudy by any means, but it was all starting to get on my nerves.
I would begin writing the book I’d just been commissioned to whip up and then begin sorting out the messy bits, day by day.
I’m writing about the pressure on mums and how they can feel less clutter-y and care for themselves as more of a priority. I find it’s always good to write the book you most need!
I’m trying to live with a different sort of me during these stressful times and it’s unnerving. The old me loved to cook and eat – this me finds it hard to do both. The old me was not messy – this me is a bit messy. The old me puttered along using routine as a trusty guide – this me doesn’t.
It’s all manageable, but the cooking and eating thing is a real challenge. There are so many meals to cover each day, as you will well remember when we come out the other side of this. I lost my appetite when I lost my job, but I still need to trot out meals and be a proper functioning adult/mum during these stressful days. It’s a real puzzle working out how to do that when your body is playing tricks on you. Add to that a hungry young adult living in the house, an adult with completely different foodie tastes to my own and it gets even more complicated.
I wished my appetite would come back. Sigh. Even when I cook things I don’t feel like eating them and have to force myself. It’s honestly very, very bloody annoying.
I just wished I could find that secret recipe that was a) easy and fun to make b) delicious to me c) also delicious to my kid and d) something we both wanted to eat over and over again.
Where is a magical recipe when you need one?! Honestly I am tearing up as I write this and it’s not even that big a deal. Except maybe it is?
Maybe I should make rice in the morning? And then I could have it with some broccoli and kimchi and avocado? Perhaps that would warm me up for the day’s eating? I am going to try that.
Day 17 – 6877 steps
It was raining again this morning, but it was only light rain and I had dug out a short musk-pink rain jacket to walk in, keen not to miss another day.
I’d just do a short walk, I decided, as the wind whipped up around me. I’d go and check for pond life, say hello to the ducks and swamp hens, take a peep into the trees in case there were tawny frogmouths hiding in their midst and then circle home past the café.
I was very, very sleepy after a fitful nightmare filled sleep and accidentally called my kid his brother’s name when I heard him shuffling down the hallway as I put on my shoes to a chorus of dog barks. (I never, ever, EVER do that! I must have been sleep talking!)
My left knee was hurting. It had been pinging me in a painful way on and off since I started this walking and today it was particularly sore. I walked on it carefully, which resulted in my left hip starting to pinch and hurt too.
By the time I got to the bridge over the wetlands I’d passed FOUR men wearing bright blue hoodies or rain jackets. I looked down at my own pink confection and wondered if there had been a memo.
By this stage, I was in quite a lot of pain. I tiptoed through the mud to the middle of the bridge and tried to shake of the soreness by staring into the water. Strangely this didn’t work, so I tiptoed on and into the treed path. I took some deep breaths and stretched my neck upwards, part looking into the branches and part trying to relax into the walk and coax my body into compliance.
The hip and knee still hurt, so I slowed my pace and crossed the other bridge over the wetlands, stopping again in the middle. The water, while not magically healing my sore bits, was looking very … abundant. It had been raining a lot and the vegetation growing on the surface had floated off towards the edges of the lake.
I decided to head back, taking things slowly. As I headed away from the wetland area a handsome man appeared through the trees carrying a coffee.
Hello! he said, cheerily.
Hi! I called back, suddenly bolstered.
The rain meant there weren’t many dogs in the park today. Just the odd labradoodle and possibly two of the black dogs in the distance, but I could not be sure.
As I navigated puddles on the gravel pathway I thought about all the different ways we make choices in life and how some steps take us places we’d never imagine, while others are barely noticeable.
I got to a particularly puddle-y bit of the path and remembered being here in similar conditions about 5 years ago. My life was so different then, and tears welled in my eyes as my brain zipped through the hard things that had happened at breakneck speed.
No, I thought. Just NO. I was enjoying this rainy, handsome-man-dotted walk and I was not going to slide into malaise. I blinked the tears away and walked on.
I walked past a dog collar complete with tags lying on the grass. Past a poster seeking a LOST BIRD (a cockatiel). Past a mauled tennis ball with only half of its neon green outer remaining, its weird insides on show (like mine?)
I walked onto the footpath and up the road towards the café.
I had just listened to a bit in Anna’s book where she spoke to eloquently about love and loneliness.
Perhaps this is why I’d tapped into those sad buried memories? There was something apt about revisiting that emotional stuff as the rain was falling around me and my feet were trudging through the muddy footprints of other walkers. I was not alone.
When I finally arrived at the café with my sore knee and my sore hip it was two minutes before they opened. Despite having signage out and their special footpath barriers in place, the door was still locked. I did not realise this until I’d smiled at the lady inside and given it a push.
Oh no! I was that annoying customer who had arrived 2 minutes early. I waved apologetically and turned away to wait the required 2 minutes, but I soon heard her opening the door and inviting me out of the cold.
I am SO sorry, I told her but she shook her head.
I’m too early! I continued.
Only 2 minutes! She said kindly.
But that is your last quiet 2 minutes before the day begins, I said sadly. I had once owned a café and I knew how precious this time was.
It’s okay! She said.
I ordered my coffee and slunk outside where cars were now pulling into the kerb, keen to get their own hot start to the day.
A minute later and my coffee was in my hand.
I apologised a third time and vowed a) to never arrive early again and b) to warn others against this very annoying practice as a sort of penance.
Then I headed home to take a hot bath and get started on the thousands of words I needed to write that day.
I’d decided to get up at 5am from now on, working on a book I’d just been commissioned to write between 5 and 7, then walking, then writing my walking diary, then moving on to other things.
This new 5am plan meant I could come back to the commissioned book later in the day, in the secure and satisfying knowledge that I had started the bulk of the day’s work on it before I’d even hit the walking track.
I know this is very early to be putting nose to grindstone, but I suffer from a sort of morning-itis which compels me to do all my most productive work in the early part of the day. I am not a night owl at all, much preferring the still, dark and serene pre-dawn and the hours that follow it.
I’m not sure why I am like this, but I think it is possibly related to my anxiety. I like to hit the ground getting stuff done, then later in the day I could do other less important things or even take a restorative nap.
Like everyone, I was wildly itching to get out of my neighbourhood every day, but COVID-19 circumstances meant that it was only allowed if it was essential.
I made a note to myself to head to the shops to get an essential stretchy bandage thing for my knee, in the hopes that a bit of support would stop it from setting off a chain reaction of woes on my next walk.
Then I boldly added a bunch of other to-dos to my list because I was feeling happy and energised by my rainy walk, despite the pain. There was something about letting the elements overwhelm me that brightened me right up and washed the darkness and panic away. For a few short hours, at least, I felt invincible!
More from me elsewhere: Friday Night Lights: What to watch, make, read, eat, buy + do this weekend
Have you ever made an “impossible pie”? It’s an 80’s classic that is like a quiche BUT it magically makes its own pastry. (That’s the impossible part!) The mum of a high school friend posted the recipe on Facebook during lockdown. I’d never heard of it before then. It’s made with eggs, milk, flour, cheese and salmon. A bit of baking soda. You can also make a sweet version with fruit and coconut flakes. The 80’s recipe I have used tinned peaches. It became my go to recipe in lockdown because it’s perfect for those moments when you don’t know what to cook because you are tired and have no appetite. Very easy to make, it’s delicious and actually tastes better cold so you can bake it early in the day and know you have dinner done, or bake it for dinner and know you have cold leftovers for lunch. I did a tuna version and also found adding Panko bread crumbs worked well. I added flaked almonds on the sweet version I made. I used fresh berries. If you google impossible pie lots of recipes come up.
Oh Pippy, I love these writings so much and have just had a catch up. I love reading them because you have that way of writing that make me go 'hmmmmm yeah' sometimes out loud. Like the bit about the tennis ball showing its innards (like mine!) I think I gasped. I think what I like most of all is rawness and honestly, like generally in life. I like it a lot. I think I just wanted to say that. This year has been gahhhh right! I think I might try to start to walk more but every time I do I end up not feeling my foot all over again and have the back problem. I might keep trying though just out of spite. I never walk the running path anymore because I cant run and the last time I walked it I burst into tears of rage when I suddenly realised that I was really angry about it. But I do love to see all your flower and garden pictures so I reckon if I start walking a completely different way to look at peoples gardens that might make things better! I think I pretty much have my hormones sorted for menopause now but I also think there is this list of stuff about menopause that keeps building up for me (like random things like brain fog, blurred vision, odd funny moments, and just STUFF) And sometimes I feel tickety boo and sometimes I hate everything. Lovage Edie xxx