How to feel a little calmer while life has some challenges.

Do we have a time limit on suffering, a socially acceptable period such as a year?  After my mother and aunt died a few years ago, I gave myself exactly twelve months to grieve and eased back a little on myself.  In practical terms, this meant that I didn't take on extra projects at work for a few months and let the ironing build up more than normal.  Emotionally, I just about managed to accept feeling more ragged, sore and a little messy behind closed doors.  After the year was up, I thought I better stop mentioning bereavement.  By then, everyone had stopped asking anyway.  Who wants to hear and listen to these complicated, messy, painful emotions after a while?  I wanted to show how "well" I was doing with some lighter topics of conversation. Now we have passed the year into the pandemic, I wonder if this same time limit is being applied?  For much of the first year, our conversations have often been more caring, more thoughtful, checking in on...

Last week, we actually left our local area and packed up the car for a trip away.  Something that I would never have registered as being a big deal until living through a pandemic.  I booked a few nights away in a cosy cottage, tucked in the rolling hills outside Bath where we could enjoy being somewhere different.  It was a wonderful tonic to see a familiar landscape, still unchanged by the ups and downs of these difficult months.  Familiar ancient trees welcomed us with their enormous open arms and I felt myself relax and rest a little more than usual. On the sunniest day, we decided to complete a circular walk, through a valley towards a pretty village and back in a giant loop. All was well until we arrived at a field with about thirty lively black cows who greeted us at the muddy gate with unbridled enthusiasm, calling their fellow mates to run and meet us.  Wonderful as they were, we decided to not enter their field in case they decided to nibble us or our ...

Did birdsong actually become louder during lockdown of spring 2020 or did we just imagine this?  73% of participants in a recent study reported hearing louder birdsong during the first lockdown.  I was tending my neighbour's garden for these months, feeding a host of wild birds who frequented and nested in their "nature-friendly" garden.  After putting out the seed and fat balls, I would sit for an hour or so with my writing book and be kept company by a delightful cacophony of lilting bird tunes. I watched the delicate interaction between bird species, all seemingly able to live harmoniously in a small garden.  The elegant pigeons that always arrived first at the bird-feeder were visibly protective of their feeding.  But they always left enough for the smaller birds with sparrows, blackbirds, robins and sometimes lively starlings all having their share.  I wondered if the birds were singing more cheerfully and exuberantly as they were being uninterrupted ...

"Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans" is a phrase that often appears on colourful inspirational cards and magnets.  I even had this boldly displayed on my fridge for a few years, in the extremely slim chance that I might realise the truth within these words.  More often than not, I rolled my eyes while opening the fridge as I rushed from completing one plan to the next during my very focused and busy life as a teacher. During our long pandemic year, I have been forced to re-consider this phrase.  It could even be tweaked to read:   "Life is what happens to us while we can't actually make plans". I still find it rather surreal to be waiting on data, variants, vaccines and travel ministers before we can start to even think about making a plan to travel out of the UK.  But this is how the pandemic has gone.  My penchant for the security of making and completing plans has been tested so many times in the pandemic that I cope by making as ...

Since I started cold-water sea swimming this winter, weather forecasts have taken on a whole new significance.  I study them with great interest, looking for good days for swimming i.e. sunny!  Having swum in all conditions and temperatures this winter, surprising myself each time, I have become almost relaxed about the cold or gusty winds.  In fact, my swimming has more recently become slightly ordinary without the extreme feeling of chill afterwards.  I wasn't sure if this was due to the incredible adaptation that my body has undergone while being plunged into the cold sea regularly?  Or whether the sea might actually have warmed up a little by now?  This week's dramatic weather variation might have just solved this puzzle... While everyone was enjoying the heat-wave last week and finally meeting friends outdoors in small groups, I had to share my sea-swim with others.  Paddle-boarders were confidently out wearing shorts and T-shirts on their precari...

Freedom has come.  On Monday, we were finally released from our lockdown after months of being mostly at home in England.  Our release date was perfectly timed to coincide with three days of surprisingly warm weather.  In our corner of the country, we have been in lockdown since November 5th which makes a total of nearly five months.  While some regions of the UK had a few weeks break before Christmas, we stayed in the same restrictions to deal with our new more spreadable Kent variant.  But not any more!  It feels as if the stable door has been opened, and we are now allowed to venture out into our paddock of lush green grass while feeling the sunshine on our skin for the first time. Yesterday I was very excited to be able to meet more than one other person outdoors.  I met a small group of friends on the beach, and we sat actually together around a table.  Cups of herbal tea were made in the beach hut and a delicious home-made cake appeared to h...

My recent conversations out on my long daily walks have changed.  Rarely do I hear people talk about how peaceful and nourishing it is to be in a lockdown by the sea (even though I appreciate this every day).  Thankfully, the difficult conversations have now ceased about who we know with Covid at the moment and how they are recovering.  The latest, sensitive topic of conversation has become the vaccine... have you had it yet, which one did you have and did you have any side-effects?  I have avoided writing about the vaccine as it such an emotive, personal issue with seemingly polarised views.  Either we are supposed to be evangelical about the wonder of science and how the vaccine is going to save us all from being stuck in this pandemic.  Or we are alternatively at the other end of the spectrum as an "anti-vaxer".  But as I step back from these extremes and start to ask some sensible, balanced questions, nothing seems quite so black and white after al...

When the WHO declared a global pandemic on March 11th 2020, I thought maybe they were being over-cautious?  Perhaps my optimistic view was partly from living in Asia for three years, narrowly missing two potential global pandemics.  Having accepted a job in Kuala Lumpur in early February 2003, I quickly watched with concern about the outbreak of SARS in late February 2003.  Although SARS had significant impact on five countries, including neighbouring Singapore, it was incredibly contained.  By the time I started my job in August 2003, it was no longer a real problem.  The second potential pandemic was "bird flu" which was hugely serious for millions of birds in South East Asia, but did not transmit to rapid spread in humans as feared. Today marks the one-year anniversary of the start of this coronavirus global pandemic.  Most anniversaries of difficult events such as the loss of a job or loved one mark a stretch of time passing of remembrance, grief and ad...

Spring in Hokkaido. Hokkaido is Japan's most northerly, wildest island which is unlike the rest of cosmopolitan Japan.  It experiences Siberian winters which mean frozen seas, deep snow and unimaginable cold.  Inhabitants who stay through this season are rugged, hardy people who are not unnerved by little social contact through these long, dark months.  When spring arrives, it does so rapidly to maximise the shorter season of growth and sunshine.  Snow and ice thaws to quickly reveal a warm, welcoming and hospitable lush, green habitat.  The plethora of wild flowers that thrive in this remote island in the spring are renowned for their beauty. As I watched a recent documentary about Hokkaido, I wondered what it would be like to live two completely different types of life there?  One of survival and endurance through a bitter Siberian winter and the opposite of Mediterranean-warmth and abundance of nature.  Here in England, as our cold and snowy conditi...

"Wintering is a season in the cold.  It is a fallow period in life when you're cut off from the world, feeling sidelined or blocked from progress... Yet it is also inevitable" (Katherine May in Wintering)   With rare heavy snow last week in our seaside town plus bitterly cold winds, I finally gave into the idea of embracing and enjoying the winter rather than wishing it was over.  The snow gave a magical, lighter quality to these days and I smiled every time I saw the fluffy white covering from my window.  I forgot about the pandemic for much of the week (except trying to socially distance while navigating ice) and took on this new challenge... keeping warm, eking out food until we can make it to a shop, and not slipping over! As I ventured out into the treacherous conditions, determined to still walk each day for an hour or so, I was finally forced to slow down.  With two walking poles and enough layers of clothing to make it to the North Pole, I managed long w...

I think I might have got hooked on sea swimming, just a little, perhaps?  Last week I saw that snow was forecast and my first thought was "great, I can swim while the beach is covered in snow".  I have been excited for days that our little seaside town might get snow that actually settles on the ground rather than the mushy wet slush we've had.  I've not seen snow for years and while we are starting month FOUR of pretty much "lockdown" in this area, snow is beyond exciting.  It means I can have a mini-adventure right from my house and see the world looking all sparkly and white.  Snow feels like a change, a much needed break from the monotony and routine of these weeks of "staying at home".  I was so excited yesterday morning when I woke expecting swathes of pristine, not-yet-walked-on snow.  As I opened the curtains, my heart sank just a little because the snow wasn't settling.  But there were delicate snowflakes coming down alongside the free...

Does anyone else feel like they are plodding slowly through mud each day while wearing heavy soil-clad boots?  It is grey and raining here for the hundredth day (or so it feels) and we are still "staying at home".  Once upon a time, "lockdown" was a new and challenging thing to adjust to.  I embraced it as much as anyone can.  I've made countless delicious meals to make days at home a little more exciting.  Every day I savour my time outdoors on my long daily walk, noticing the signs of nature that are changing around me each week.  I plan my days, set tasks for each week and keep myself pretty busy.  I've done it all.  And now something seems to have changed... I feel a little "grey" like the endless clouds, which is definitely not like me.  There is no novelty to this staying at home season anymore and I feel like yelling to anyone that can hear, that we've been in lockdown since November 5th in my seaside town.  When a portion of the ...