writing, not drowning

How to avoid getting cross

I woke this morning to a cluster of news headlines that made me shake my head in sadness and disbelief. I contemplated writing a blogpost about said headlines but realised that many, many others will be doing the same thing. So I wasn't sure that I could add anything that, if it had not already been said, would have been said within a few hours.

As I prepared breakfast, I heard the unmistakeable opening bars of this:

It behoves us all, at times, to hold back on the judgement, to imagine standing in another person's shoes, to see the world from their perspective, and to remember that each one of us is unique. We are who and what we are and we are all connected.

A simple piece of music so often goes straight to the heart of things. 

Resolving not to . . .

You know that thing about piecrusts and promises? The same could be said about New Year resolutions, so I am making no promises to myself this year. That way, I avoid setting myself up for self-recrimination or bitter disappointment. (And who needs them on New Year's Day?)

With one exception - I firmly resolve not to knit any of these for my family or friends. And, much as I love vintage patterns, I can just hear the sighs of relief:

Meanwhile, here is Leonard Cohen - because I can think of no-one with whom I would rather start the year:

Advance Notice: 60 going on 16 has been officially designated an Olympics 2012-free zone. Just so you know . . .

 

Will you still need me, will you still feed me . . . ?

I was 19 when the Beatles released this track on the Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, (1 June 1967). I was at the start of all sorts of things in my life, not least of which was motherhood. And the answer to the question you might be asking is that, for a whole host of reasons, I have never had the slightest regret about being - by today's standards - such a young mother.

As for my mothering skills, you'd have to ask my daughter, except that behind the outgoing, sunny exterior is a very private person, so I doubt that we'd be able to persuade her to make a public appearance. You'll just have to take my word for it that she lit up my life when the midwife placed her in my arms and, all these years later, she continues to do so. She is an amazing woman of whom I am immensely proud.

But back to the song. At 19, I was incapable of imagining what it would be like to be 64, let alone whether my then Other Half would still be needing me or feeding me. (To which the answers were, as I soon discovered, 'no' and 'no', so my small daughter and I steered a different course.)  

I tend not to do 'hello, it's my birthday' posts; as I said to Twitter chum @maribeeb, yesterday, 'a bit cheesy, no?' However, today I have a proper excuse because, as of today, I am fully cognisant of what it is to be 64 and I can tell you this. It's just like 19 but with the addition of, hopefully, a soupçon of the wisdom of years and, very probably, a couple of extra inches round the middle. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. And for me, there have been many more valued friendships forged, more books read, more music listened to, more parts of the world travelled to and explored, many hundreds of thousands of words written, many thousands of photographs taken . . .

Lest you think my life has been a bit of a doddle, there have been profound shocks and great sadnesses and betrayals too and, in my late thirties and for a few years thereafter, a string of losses and bereavements that came hurtling out of the blue and so close together that it was like watching powerlessly as a line of dominoes toppled before my eyes. I had no doubt at all, at that time, what it was to be acquainted with grief.

But I prefer, on this blog at least, to stand four-square with Jane Austen and 'let other pens dwell on guilt and misery'. ( I didn't think much of this sentiment when I was studying Mansfield Park for A-level; I was a teenager for goodness sake, I wallowed in guilt and misery. Tsk, tsk.) Besides which, there has always been the joy of animals . . 

Although I didn't read his novels, I remember an interview that the author, Dick Francis, gave towards the end of his life in which he said that the saddest thing about getting older was the number of beloved dogs that he had outlived.

(I do a mental tally: the dogs of my earlier years, Bruno, Rusty, Albert and Rennie, and, latterly, the Squadron Leader, the Rough Diamond, and my daughter's dog, the Divine Miss M. The cats deserve a mention too: Snooky, Fluffy, Tibby, Timothy, Victoria, Sunshine, Tara, Merlin, Tabitha and Muffin and, more recently Mr C's twin brother. Then there was Susan, the tortoise, and the hamster, Deborah . . .  and the horses on which I learned to ride in my middle years. Do not worry, my current companions, Mr C, the cat, and the Edinburgh Boy and Christmas Holly have no literacy skills whatsoever, so cannot read this. Besides, today - as on most days - the dogs have plenty of canine distractions and are happily bounding around with this week's guests: Little Miss P, the Mad Merle and the Seal. Mr C, sensibly, has retired to his dog-free quarters upstairs. )

Anyway, that's enough 'ageing woman looks back at her life and becomes perilously anthropomorphic' waffle. Here's the music:

One year on but who's counting?

At this time, exactly a year ago, I was supine on a hospital trolley having a surreal conversation with an anaesthetist about his hermaphrodite dog. (I still don't know whether he tells all his patients that one . . . but it made me laugh.)

So, yes, a year ago, the Massive Inconvenience (or a very small Grade 2 oestrogen-receptor positive tumour) was about to be removed from my left breast. (I thought a bit of context would help if you've just started reading this blog or have arrived here by cyber-chance.)

To say I've learned a great deal in the past twelve months would be something of an understatement. The most positive aspect is that I know myself a good deal better than when I embarked on this journey - and that has been a gift. 

Another thing I have learned is that the two most common bedfellows of cancer - or, more precisely, a cancer diagnosis - are anger and fear. It was something I recognised at an intuitive level very early on and, having recognised them for what they were, decided to do my very best to kick them out of bed - permanently. I knew, beyond any shadow of doubt, that anger and fear had no place on my journey to recovery, despite the fact that many aspects of cancer treatment seem guaranteed to stoke up the fires of uncertainty. One has only to visit some of the breast cancer online forums to see how true this is; while some members are empathetic and supportive of each, others are almost screaming with rage at anyone who dares to question any element of the various standard treatments. But we are all individual and the downside of the 'one size fits all' approach is that . . . it doesn't.

Keeping myself focused on recovery and keeping anger and fear at arm's length enabled me to make informed decisions about my own treatment. Looking back over the year, I feel even more strongly that those decisions were right then and they continue to be so.

Theroretically, I should have been trotting along for my first annual follow-up visit about now but, by last week, I had heard nothing from the centre at hospital where I was treated. So I telephoned and asked to speak to one of the breast care nurses. They were all busy. And according to the young male administrator I spoke to, the centre is weeks behind with appointments 'because of building works'; nevertheless, he offered to make an appointment for me with my surgeon there and then. However, when I told him the name of my surgeon, I was told that he is away for personal reasons (date of return unknown); meanwhile, the surgeon who is covering for him is booked up for weeks ahead and is then on study leave, followed by annual leave . . .

The young male administrator eventually offered me an appointment in November, adding that he thinks that's OK because 'after all, it's just a follow-up, isn't it?'

Well, that's one way of looking at it and, in one way, he's right because I have no reason to feel fearful. But that might not be the case for everyone, especially for patients who have been treated for a more advanced or more aggressive form of breast cancer. I said that I thought some of them might be getting anxious if they hadn't heard and anxiety is not conducive to recovery.  Wouldn't it be a good idea, I suggested, to let patients know that there is currently a delay in follow-up appointments?

'Oh we've got hundreds of patients,' he replied, 'we couldn't possibly ring them all.'

'What about a standard letter, just explaining the situation, and urging anyone who is concerned to ring the centre?'

'Oh, right, mmm, I see what you mean.'

I'm not absolutely sure that he did and I doubt that patients will receive any sort of holding communication any time soon. And who knows how long I might have waited for that appointment, had I not picked up the phone?

Which brings me to the other things I've learned; first, that we are all much greater than the sum of our symptoms and, second, that we have to take ownership of our disease and its treatment. We need to ask questions and, above all, we deserve honest answers. We may all be wearing identical hospital gowns but that's where the similarity ends.

But enough of the philosophising; let us have some music to mark the day. Time, I think, for a small celebration.

AWOL

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.