Safety valves

On Monday evening I was watching Channel 4’s ‘Food Unwrapped’. The subject was detoxification and among the features was one on hangovers, where several studenty subjects were encouraged to party and then tested the next day to see what was going on with their bodies. The headaches, nausea and exhaustion, the expert explained, were all signs that their bodies were working efficiently – breaking down the toxins and expelling them.

If you’re a long-term reader of this blog you’ll know that I suffer from regular migraines. I tend to beat myself up about them. They’re my fault, I say to myself. I don’t know how to live properly. I’m still hung up on past events. I kick against them and see them as a waste of time.

But yesterday when I woke up with a migraine and said to Frog, ‘I feel as if I’ve been partying for the last two weeks’, I found that my attitude had changed.

I’m more Aunt Polly than Pollyanna. I race around ‘doing’ things. I fret. I don’t give myself time to rest. When I have a migraine however I have to stop. I can’t read or watch television or write or garden or walk. I can hardly talk. I have to do nothing.

Migraines are a safety valve, I realised. They rid my body of all the nasty hormones I’ve been creating and bring me back to the present, to simply living. If I didn’t get them I might be storing up far more serious health problems.

I’d quite like to blog about this, I thought as I brushed my teeth this morning. But it’s not quite enough. (As my writing sister Emma says, you need at least two ideas to make a story.) What else can I write about? Blogging came the answer.

I’ve always been ambivalent about the value of blogging. Is it self-indulgent? Does it distract me from the serious business of novel-writing?

    ‘Why do I do it?’ I asked Frog the other day.

    ‘Disclosure,’ he said.

    That’s what I write novels for, I thought.

Recently I’ve been working hard on the novel, doing what I hope is a final draft and giving myself until Christmas for it. I’ve almost completely stopped blogging, thinking that I can’t have both blog posts and the novel fermenting in my head at the same time. In the last week or so however I’ve found myself wanting to blog again.

And I think it’s OK to do so. Blogging is light relief. It’s novel-writing in miniature. It keeps me going. It’s another safety valve.

And that was a very long-winded post. Blame the dregs of the migraine.

Time to live

Recently I’ve been re-reading some of my children’s books, among them Pollyanna. I’ve discovered that she’s not at all the saccharine creature I remember (probably from the film – was it Disney?) but instead drives everybody mad by inadvertently wrong-footing them all the time.

My battered 1969 edition of Pollyanna (with cover illustration by Shirley Hughes)

Having been orphaned, she goes to live with her starchy aunt. Aunt Polly outlines Pollyanna’s new schedule: tidying her bedroom, reading aloud, cookery lessons, sewing lessons, music lessons.

    ‘Oh, but Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly,’ Pollyanna cries in dismay, ‘you haven’t left me any time at all just to – to live.’

    Which brings me to the original reason for this blog post – an explanation of my profile picture, ‘Summer girl daydreaming’ by Margaret W Tarrant.

'Summer girl daydreaming' by Margaret W Tarrant

As I’ve explained before, this picture was given to me by my aunt, Annabelle, when I was four (and she fourteen). I’ve always treasured it, partly because it was such a grown-up present to receive and partly because it reminds me how important it is to make time for doing nothing.

    I mentioned the picture to Annabelle recently and she dismissed it as sentimental. I’m sure it is, but I still need it.
    I'm more Aunt Polly than Pollyanna, which is probably why I found the book so funny this time round.

    

Pruning and digging out by the root

We spend Friday and Saturday taming the edges of the garden. This is necessary because some of the hedges are now so tall we’ve lost our view, because branches are upsetting our phone and broadband lines, because fruit trees are losing sun, and because we’re losing lawn space as hedges creep forwards. It's not the right time of year for such work but we are careful, looking out for nests and avoiding anything with fruit or nuts so as not to deplete the birds’ foodstore

Our phone and broadband lines disappearing into a tangle of branches

Even though nothing in our house runs on wood, I persuade Frog to saw up larger chunks and I add them to my woodstore under the shed. I like to be prepared for the collapse of civilisation.

My woodstore under the shed

The dog passes the time barking down rabbit-holes through the chicken wire put across the hedge by Frog in order to stop her barking down rabbit-holes (and then excavating them and then coming inside covered in mud).

The dog, frustrated in her attempts to get at the rabbits

 

Frog does the destructive work – chainsawing and lopping – and I drag things to the bonfire. It is soothing, mindless activity. We make a good team. The sun shines. I am happy.

Frog at his favourite sort of gardening - the destructive sort

I started the weekend sad. Summer is drawing to an end. My lovely niece left Exeter last week after three years at the university. The novel, which is semi-autobiographical, is forcing me to relive some of the worst times of my life.

I’m trying to dig those times out by the root and leave them to die in the sun. They can’t be tamed. Pruning is not enough. But on Saturday night – bone weary, my hair stinking of smoke – I dream for the first time ever of a way through.

Welcome

Welcome to my first follower from India, Mahesh Acharya. You can meet him at his blog 'Melting Pot of Ideas'. 

Devon photographer



Brindle, photographed by Sam Baker
www.sambakerphotography.co.uk


You may remember a post of mine about the life and death of Brindle, one of our dogs. At the end of this I included a photograph of Brindle taken (in about 1997) by Sam Baker, a friend who was just out of art college. Sam is now a professional photographer, specialising in 'photographs with personality'.

She still lives in Devon and still does animal portraits. In addition she now photographs events - including sports, parties and artistic performance.

She has a new website www.sambakerphotography.co.uk . Do check her out.