After two months of spending part of each day thinking that I was going to fall over, I am pleased to report that the labyrinthitis has been sent packing. (Thanks, in no small part, to homeopathy, which came to the rescue; I like to give credit where it is due.) Whenever I mentioned to friends or acquaintances that I had been diagnosed with this frustrating condition, I heard alarming stories - people confined to bed for weeks on end, work and studies interrupted, complete inability to carry out normal everyday tasks. 'Ye gods!', I thought, 'How will I manage?' Well, when you live alone, you manage all sorts of things.
I even managed to drive to Surrey for my youngest niece's wedding, a wonderful day, that I would not have missed for anything. My niece is one of the sunniest, kindest people I know but I had never seen her looking happier or more gorgeous than she did in her dream dress . . .
standing alongside the man she loves.
Her husband and his family are from Dublin and I shared a table at the wedding feast with his uncles and aunts and my sister's closest friend and her partner. The craic was very good indeed and I did allow myself a glass of champagne to toast the happy couple. (In these post-Massive Inconvenience days, alcohol is normally a no-no for me.)
Sláinte to two very special people.
* * * * *
Now that I am out of the labyrinth, I have been able to put the finishing touches to some pop-up writing workshops that I am running this summer, here in Mid-Devon. If you'd like to know more, just email me via the link over in the right-hand sidebar. I'm quite ridiculously excited about these; they have been in the pipeline for a while, having originally been planned to start in the autumn of 2010. At the time, I had no idea what life was about to chuck at me. Still, that was then and this is very much now. Not only that, after many, many months of vile weather, daily rain and no sun (apart from March) and having had no spring to speak of, it appears to be summer and, suddenly, everything is quite transformed.
I'm not quite sure how or why I lost the blogging habit. Perhaps the clue lies in the word 'habit'; five and and a half years into blogging and I had become too used to the sound of my own words. It did not explain, however, the fact that I seemed to have lost track of other people's blogs, blogs that I enjoyed, blogs that opened windows onto different lives, different worlds, blogs that connected like-minded people across time and space.
Perhaps, to paraphrase Salieri, there have just been too many words (except that it wasn't Salieri, was it? My niggling inner editor reminds me that it was Emperor 'too many notes' Joseph II.) For those of us in the UK, there has been a plethora of words in the past couple of months. We have been almost smothered by layer upon layer of news coverage, scaremongering features and opinion columns as the country has been engulfed by first one scandal, then another, until - inevitably, perhaps - the lid blew off the whole thing and urban pockets of the country erupted. We had still not recovered from the actions of profligate and greedy bankers, nor from the shock that many of our democratically-elected politicians had been lining their pockets with expenses fiddled from the public purse, before we were confronted by the grisly spectacle of phone-hacking journalists and all-powerful editors so devoid of sensitivity and decency that they were prepared to sanction anything that might boost circulation figures.
And then the rioting and the looting.
From the wealthiest and most influential to those who barely clung to the margins, there were individuals and groups who seemed to have slipped through or cast off the net of what we like to believe are our shared morality and values. The threads that held us together seemed to be unravelling.
In my head, Yeats's words on things falling apart and the centre not holding were surfacing yet again, as they tend to in times of strife and uncertainty. Except that they weren't falling apart and compassionate people made good things happen; as George Malone said in the final episode of Boys from the Blackstuff - in the wake of all the conspicuous consumption triggered by the greedy 'there is no such thing as society' 1980s: 'I can't believe that there's no hope.' George was speaking specifically of his own class, the urban working class, but his words (or, more correctly, writer Alan Bleasdale's words) have a resonance that now crosses class and social boundaries. There is hope and it could be seen on the streets of our cities after the looting.
Against this backdrop, it seemed almost futile to be writing about small, everyday things, although it is the small, everyday things that root us, that keep us sane. My canine-care life continued, with four-legged guests coming and going. Loved ones, family and friends came to stay, places were explored, books read, music and films enjoyed. My professional writing and editing life continued; it was the more personal, reflective writing that languished.
Reflecting, however, is precisely what I was doing. It is exactly a year since I was diagnosed with breast cancer and just under a year since the Massive Inconvenience was vanquished. Only a small scar remains and that is fading. To be truthful, I don't think about it too often. The Massive Inconvenience has become, like the past, another country. I have, however, learned more than I could have imagined possible and one of my more surprising discoveries is that I am - or at least, I have become - a far more positive person than I realised I was or could be. I say surprising as I had more than a few dark nights of the soul when I was a young woman and not just dark nights but dark days too, days that could spill into weeks and months. And sometimes did.
Maybe it's because, although I cannot afford to retire, I now earn my living doing two things I love: caring for animals and writing. Or maybe it's an age thing. In today's Observer Magazine, Miranda Sawyer, 45, discusses her own experience of, and thoughts on, the mid-life crisis and reaches an encouraging conclusion (of which, more later). She mentions her friend Sam, 'who is in his early 60s, and . . . is happier now than he has ever been, but that people who don't know him think he can't be, and treat him accordingly.' When it comes to the 60-something happiness factor, I'm with Sam. It is hard to imagine, when one is in one's 20s, 30s or 40s and, especially for me, the tedious 50s, which I experienced as a strange, no-woman's limbo between the end of being young and the beginning of being old (I think it's called menopause . . . ) that the 60s can bring such joy and delight and that one can actually wake up happy, for whole days at a stretch. There are, inevitably, the flatter, greyer days (which I attribute in part to the English weather) and the occasional down day but these are, thankfully, the exception.
So, emerging out of what I will probably come to see as my Quiet Period, I have resurrected everything I had planned to do last autumn, before the Massive Inconvenience got in the way.
After seven years of being a member of a writing group, I realised that it was time for a change, and I now work individually with my writing mentor, Briony Goffin. We get together for a couple of sessions each term and It has proved to be exactly the right decision, at the right time, and I am enjoying every minute of it. (Thank you, Briony.)
In September, I am starting a photography course, something I have wanted to do for years, learning about what goes on inside a camera because I love photography with a passion and I know that it is about so much more than looking through a viewfinder or looking at an LCD screen and framing a passable shot.
In September, and because I love music with an equal passion, I am starting piano lessons, hoping that the musical gene that runs through the family (professional pianist grandfather, piano-playing and singing mother, piano and violin-playing brother) has not passed me by completely. I can still read music and just about pick out a basic tune on the beautiful Victorian piano I was given last year but I know that I learn best when I'm studying with an inspirational teacher. (And I think I've found one.)
Then, last week, I took out, dusted down and oiled my late grandma's 100-year-old 27K Singer sewing machine for the first time in 35 years. It worked perfectly and has already been put to work - with plenty more to come.
This is just for starters.
As Miranda Sawyer says: 'Midlife or not, in the end, or in the middle, these are the days of my life. These are the days of your life. And the thing to do is live them.'
Which all chimed in, rather, with a song I heard on the car radio as I drove home from a great morning, spent with my Salad Days Friend, at a vintage textile fair in Honiton. There is a high point en route, on the A373 between Honiton and Cullompton, at which all Devon is spread out before you, its hills, its rolling fields, hedgerows, trees and meadows and I had just reached that point when the song started playing. Written by the Bee Gees, sung by Esther and Abi Ofarim (in 1967, for goodness sake). It still makes me moist-eyed but in a good way.
I never need much of an excuse to read or listen to journalist and broadcaster, Katherine Whitehorn, most recently on BBC R4's Reasons to be Cheerful series. Ms Whitehorn was castigating grumpiness (in programmes such as Grumpy Old Men and Grumpy Old Women, although, confusingly, both tended to feature not Grumpy Old but Grumpy Middle-aged Men and Women). There is, she argued, much more to be cheerful about than there is to set us moaning and she outlined some of the many changes in the modern world that have made our lives easier. At least, the lives of those of us in the developed nations.
The older I get, the more I agree with her. Yes, the world can be a harsh and frightening place but (and I'm now being UK-specific), the majority of us are not losing loved ones in the heat and dust of Helmand Province; we are not watching everything we have ever worked for being destroyed and carried away in the worst floods for almost a century. And even though we are promised public spending death by a thousand cuts, we have clothes on our backs, food on our tables . . .
I may now be (officially but not in my head) a pensioner and my pension may be rubbish but I have turned things that I love doing into ways of generating the income I need to stay in the home that I love (the bottom having fallen out of the market for the sort of freelance work I was doing pre-retirement. And, besides, it was probably time to make space for younger writers and editors).
It's not that I don't have my moments of irritation or exasperation but I can't imagine that anyone would want to read about them. And, besides, any number of things have made me happy in recent weeks, apart from my travels with the Edinburgh Boy. For example . . . Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje, a subtle, thought-provoking and finely wrought novel by one of my favourite writers; Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, a brilliant, ravishing film, with a surprising but highly effective soundtrack; various gorgeous and bargain items bought in Gudrun Sjödén's summer sale, (Gudrun Sjödén's clothes are described by one Mumsnet member as 'Boden on acid' and therefore guaranteed to bring out my old inner hippie); the kindness of my daughter and her husband in giving me a shiny, almost-new, flat-screen television when my older TV died a slow and painful death; finding an excellent local homeopath, whose skills and wisdom have got me back on the road to good health; and these characters, whose week-long stay almost converted me into a terrier fan.
And there was this, a song remembered from Family Favourites and my radio-fixated childhood, which featured on the soundtrack of a DVD I watched on my laptop on an overnight stop en route to Scotland. Seventy years ago it became - and remains to this day - the only Chinese popular song to become a hit in the West. There have been subsequent English language versions by Frankie Laine, Petula Clark and Aneka (of Japanese Boy fame) but none, I think, have anything like the impact of this, the original Méi gui méi gui zuì jiao mei by Miss Yao Lee. Evocative of another time, another place and quite wonderful.
Journey's end brought the Edinburgh Boy and I to the home of friends not far from the North Berwick coast. And here, my amazing god-daughter, Ms Gauchina (the mother of not one but two sets of twins - born just 19 months apart), was masterminding a surprise 60th birthday party for her mother and my good friend, Mrs Gaucho.
Everyone chipped in, Mr Gaucho doing last-minute supermarket runs ferrying in mega-bags of ice; various family members tracking down and installing a replacement gazebo; Gauchino Major and his girlfriend (a talented chef) arriving with the most amazing chocolate birthday cakes, and Mrs Gaucho's cousin, a Devon resident like me, in the kitchen. So I joined her in chopping, slicing and stirring to produce industrial sized quantities of taboulleh and insalata caprese etc etc.
Ms Gauchina was worried that not everything would be ready for Mrs Gaucho's arrival (timed precisely for 6.10pm). 'Don't worry,' I said - reassurance being one of a godmother's duties, 'you'll be amazed, especially at just how much we can do in the last 15 minutes.' As, indeed, we did.
So when Mrs Gaucho made her unsuspecting entrance, she couldn't quite believe that over 70 friends and family members, from every part of the country (or should that be countries?), not to mention hordes of small people and at least five dogs, were cheering her on.
To quote Noel Coward, it really was 'a marvellous party', enjoyed by everyone, especially by Mrs Gaucho herself. Old acquaintances were renewed - it was years since some of us had seen each other - and old conversations were resumed as easily as if they had been interrupted only hours earlier. Fizz flowed; there were speeches that had us laughing (and quietly suppressing the occasional tear); the tables groaned with good food; the music of our youth - and beyond - filled the air, and the East Lothian weather was kind to us.
It was the perfect way to say 'happy birthday' to Mrs Gaucho. She and Mr Gaucho are renowned not only for their hospitality but for the way in which, over the years, they have invited people to stay with them in their home, often for long periods. As a result, their own immediate family has been extended many times over. And, judging by her skills in orchestrating the party, it looks as if my lovely god-daughter has inherited that hospitality gene.
The Edinburgh Boy and I eventually sloped off around 1.00 am, leaving a sprinkling of die-hards, who were determined to party on, and we slept the good sleep of well-entertained travellers.
We headed off late the following day, after our morning walk and a mammoth post-party team effort clean-up in the kitchen, just as a bevy of guests were reappearing for Sunday brunch and others were still sleeping off the effects of the night before. It was so tempting to stay but I knew that there were 'miles to go before I sleep' and more Cumbrian fells to be walked before the day was out . . .
By the time we arrived home in Devon two days later, we had also squeezed in a long overdue visit to my daughter and her husband in the leafy Chilterns, and we had clocked up 1,000 miles, including detours, in the trusty Subaru. And they were absolutely worth it, those miles and detours. Every single one of them.
