July was music. It was singing along to Stevie Wonder at Black Weir Fields in Cardiff fulfilling a decades old dream. Joyous, happy crowds singing along to Superstition, Sir Duke and Loves in Need of Love filling my heart. It was sitting in gardens and pubs listening to musicians performing at our community music festival Ilkley Live. It was sitting back down at the piano, Andrea encouraging me to play and asking Emily if I could maybe, perhaps borrow her violin sometime. It was sun soaked ambles across new to me moorland paths with friends, sometimes alone.
It was day trips to see the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, now an annual thing, and David Hockney at Salts Mill which is never not soothing. It was sea swims in Penarth, the first time I’ve dipped my toes in the water in three decades of visiting my sister and a six hour homeward bound conversation with middle child after completing his first year at uni. It was reading, reading and reading while grappling with writing my own words. It was discovering that I do have an imagination and I can write fiction. It was sketching the outline of this next phase of my writing life as the children make their way into the world and my husband job hunts.
It was coaching calls with Sarah Raad and searching the cupboard for bed linen. The nest is open, not empty I heard someone say on Instagram. It’s a revolving door, arms forever open, ready to listen. It was, ‘Have you still got a key’ and ‘No, there isn’t as much food in the house as there used to be’ against the soundtrack of the fridge door opening and closing.
It was walking to the vets to collect Bella’s ashes and walking home along the riverside, bumping into friends who took us into their home to feed us tea and bacon butties and love.
It was the house crackling with energy as the middle child landed back from Cardiff. It was the eldest bringing a softer energy from Newcastle. It was the young person who’d been in care and lived with us for their A levels returning after their first year at university. Disoriented maybe to be back in this town that is home, but isn’t and wondering where home is now?
It was middle and eldest sons not seeing each other at home, missing each other by a day, but somehow managing to find each other in the shadows of Sacre Coeur in three deep crowds for the final laps of the Tour de France. In France separately on holiday. It was flying to Mallorca for a same same but different summer holiday as last year with husband, the 16-year-old and her friend and it was home to Storm Floris.
This year it’s been throwing the jigsaw pieces up in the air and wondering where the pieces will fall. It’s been a visceral need, desire to be at home. July bucked that trend.
August brings birthdays, mine, my cousin. my sister, my niece and my sister-in-law. August is London again for a Prom and a wander with my sisters. August is bedrooms emptying, coach and train tickets out of town with shouts of, ‘See you at Christmas’. August is moonlight swims at the lido.
August is putting the new jigsaw puzzle together, finding those outer edges with the straight lines. August is listening to my voice, hearing what it’s saying and leaning into it. It’s reading and re-reading Antonia Taylor and Andrea Mann’s wise words on finding our voice. It’s the irony of helping my clients to find their voice whilst sometimes struggling to find my own.
August is GCSE results and digging out tents and dispensing stay safe advice to the Leeds Fest bound teenager, a rite of passage round here. August is continuing the summer reset. It’s a new website for my client writing. It’s keeping on keeping on with the fiction writing now that the creative writing course has finished, and it’s giving space for these Gently Does It letters to meander and evolve to where, I don’t know yet.
From Level 42 to Curiosity killed the Cat, the Eurythmics and Wham! The musical rabbit hole is my favourite kind of writing rabbit hole to fall down.
The thing about writing memoir is that I see it as permission to lose myself down all manner of rabbit holes and my favourite is a musical rabbit hole, especially when it distracts from the day’s reality, like the 19-year-old and his version of packing.
Because by the time this lands I’m hoping I’ll either be standing on Penarth pier looking out to sea or perched on my sister’s sofa looking at the sea through the window of her living room. Or more likely, we’re still in the car. All ahead of settling the curly haired middle child into his room at university, but that’s not where my head is right now.
Hitting play on Wilson Philips ‘Hold On’ Spotify Radio on Monday (sparked by the cousin’s WhatsApp group mentioned in last week’s post) led to hearing Level 42’s Lessons in Love. This promptly reminded me of my first gig. I don’t know about yours but mine was Level 42 at the Oxford Apollo in November 1985.
I went as my brother’s plus one after his friend dropped out last minute. He barely uttered a word to me (and nor me him) as mum dropped us off at the door and he made his way determinedly to our seats towards the front of the theatre, me trailing behind not having a clue what to do.
What was going to happen? What do you do at a gig? Do you have to sit? Can you stand and dance even if you have a seat?
I was taking it all in, watching everyone for clues and beyond excited. And all on a Sunday evening with school the next day.
We found our seats and waited. There was a polite but get on with it energy as the support band did their bit and then bam. Light show, smoke machine (I could be making that bit up), synths and bass colliding and on troop Level 42 led by slap-bass maestro Mark King.
And because Google is my friend on this quest I’ve discovered the set list for that night. The opening track was The Chinese Way and they probably closed with The Sun Goes Down (Living it up). This level of detail might seem a little over the top, but I like to know these things.
About halfway through the opener – The Chinese Way – my brother elbowed me in the ribs, stood up and stalked past me to the aisle with a throwaway ‘come on then’. I watched as he joined the throng of people making their way in that funny not-running but not-walking way to the standing area in front of the stage. I scuttled after him and stood wide eyed, ear drums bursting, eyes fixed on the stage.
It was already a hot sweaty mess, the rest of the gig is a bit of a blurb and I loved it.
Musical nostalgia mixed with sentimentality
I was 14, my brother two years older and I didn’t know Level 42 other than recognising Living it Up having heard it through the walls of his bedroom. The energy was infectious, I was on a natural high for days and spent the next evening recording my brother’s Level 42 vinyl onto cassette tapes.
It was heaven for this teenager. I loved the Friday night Funk a duck disco at the community centre where, with all the other local teenagers, we’d take turns dancing while desperately trying to look like we were a bit too cool for a community centre disco while blagging our way past the bouncers into the bar.
At junior school I’d begged my parents to let me go to Saturday morning disco dancing classes. Mum agreed – reluctantly. My Saturdays were usually spent in piano and violin lessons while concerts usually involved me and other small musicians performing preludes and sonatas to an enthusiastic, supportive if polite audience made up of parents and friends. Not learning dance moves to Ottowan’s ‘Hands Up’.
Thinking about this first gig opens a door in my brain and soon I’m remembering my first subscriber issue of Smash Hits with Annie Lennox on the cover.
I’d commit lyrics from Smash Hits to memory and cut out photos of Ben Volpeliere-White from Curiosity killed the Cat, Duran Duran’s John Taylor, Madonna and blue-tac them alongside Tom Cruise mixed in with the fashion pages ripped from Just Seventeen. A sprawling teenage gallery wall taking over the space next to my bed in our rented cottage.
In all honesty, I was a bit disappointed it wasn’t John Taylor or Andrew Ridgeley on the front cover of my first subscriber copy. The Eurythmics weren’t my go-to listen but I loved blasting the thumping bass, guitar and clashing brass of ‘Would I lie to you’ through the orange foam headphones of my blue Walkman, bought with my 14th birthday money in Boots in Oxford one August Saturday in 1985 (I wrote about that day here in ‘The Blue Walkman’).
Musical throwbacks that help the writing to flow
Putting this musical jigsaw together helps me to order those early to mid 1980s years. It also brings a lightness and a bit of fun to a period that didn’t feel light at all.
How can I not smile at the memory of an 11-year old me sitting crossed legged with a friend in the garden of the village shop we were living in while memorising the lyrics printed on the back of Wham’s Fantastic! Mum and dad serving customers in the shop while Young Guns echoed through the open living room windows.
These early to mid 1980s were turbulent years for our family. We’d relocated away from our hub of family and friends and moved four times in under three years. It was a precarious time and we were a long way in every sense from the solid, secure, happy home we’d moved from.
I remember being silent during a lot of the eighties, at home and in school. Observing what was going on around me, picking up snatches of grown-up conversations at home and lurking on the fringes of friendship groups at school. I was uncertain of where I fitted in other than when I was sitting on my bed reading Smash Hits and Just Seventeen while listening to tapes on my Walkman and Radio 1.
My words are in an actual book
I’d written about buying the blue Walkman for my 14th birthday when submissions for the fourth London Writers Salon anthology opened. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I hit submitted an extract.
I’m thrilled that my name sits amongst an amazing bunch of short story, poetry and memoir writers. This writing community got me writing in 2000 and keeps me writing today with confidence boosting, thought provoking, funny chats in the different writing rooms, live podcasts and Writers Hour.
I’m also really pleased these words are out there. Not just for the 53-year-old me but also for the 14-year-old me who – with Annie Lennox’s help – was able to transport herself to somewhere other than our rented cottage in a village with a cemetery but no church, a post box but no post office and just a handful of houses on her 14th birthday.
The anthology is available to buy here, and the digital version will be available soon (I’ll share the link when I have it) and you can check out the previous three editions here along with other LWS merchandise.
One of the reasons I write is because I spent so long observing and internalising my life. Writing it out is my way of making sense of it all and letting a lot of it go. I didn’t sit down with the aim of writing a book or even seeing my words in print. I just wanted to write and I guess I still do.
Thanks, as always, for reading, and jump into the comments with any first gig/cassette/vinyl memories.
Harriet
Music trivia
(this is the tip of the iceberg, there are plenty more memories to come)
First cassette: 1982, Complete Madness, Madness (although for transparency, I wanted to buy the Kids from Fame but was dissuaded by my brother and sisters)
First single: 1981, Shakin’ Stevens, You drive me crazy
First LP: 1983, Wham, Fantastic!
First gig: 1985, Level 42, Oxford Apollo
First stadium gig: 1986, Queen, Wembley Stadium on the It’s a Kind of Magic tour supported by The Alarm, INXS and Status Quo
Most recent gig: Elvis Costello, Leeds City Varieties, September 2024
Greetings from the sofa in my kitchen this mid-September Friday afternoon. It’s been a chilly day softened by the welcome appearance of clear blue sky and the all-important sun.
Dear Charlie,
As much as you confuse me with talk about basketball and ‘getting it in the hoop’ or something like that, you’re not 50% bad. Love from Olly
I couldn’t remember why I kept these birthday cards until I read the messages inside. My sons’ birthdays are two days apart, Olly first, Charlie second and it’s one of those daft things that gives me a huge amount of joy. I love seeing their friendship develop, independently of me and their dad, and I hope it’s the same with their wider family of cousins, uncles and aunts too.
To Olly,
As much as you confuse me with talk about 3D printers and sciency stuff, you’re not half bad. Love from Charlie
I stumbled across the cards yesterday morning as I was rifling through some postcards and greetings cards looking for one to give my cousin who I was meeting in Leeds for an afternoon of chatting and mooching.
This is one of the cousins who grew up with the sofa I’m now sitting on in her living room just a few miles down the road from where I live now. Her home now though is on the south coast an hour’s drive away from where I used to live in Bournemouth. And her parents and one of her sisters live in Buckinghamshire towns along the road from another Buckinghamshire town where I went to school as a teenager.
It’s topsy turvy (and well done if you followed any of the above. I think I even confused myself).
This cousin is one in an army of siblings, cousins, uncles, aunts and godparents that makes up my family web. I guess it means that I’ve always had this feeling of never entirely being alone, a feeling I’ve wanted to pass on to my children.
Even when I’ve felt at my lowest, most isolated, grieving, being diagnosed with cancer, whatever it’s been, I’ve always known that should I want to, there was someone I could call or text.
Someone who’d get it in a way that maybe a friend wouldn’t. Our conversations come with additional layer of, not just our own shared history, but the shared history from our parents, our grandparents. A history and photographic evidence that knits us together, sometimes tightly but also with a fair amount of give too.
There are a number of family WhatsApp groups. Heck there’s even one with four of us cousins that we use to alert each other whenever one of us hears S Club 7’s Reach or Wilson Phillips ‘Hold On’ on the radio. It lies dormant for months on end but will suddenly ping into action and flash with emojis and memes or a single word ‘Banger’. You’re all crackers as their mum would say. Absolutely but boy does it make me smile.
I guess I’ve always known I’m lucky to have this ready-made web of friends dotted around the country, but it doesn’t do any harm to remind myself of that. And that’s what I felt wandering around Leeds yesterday.
Frequent visits to my cousin’s family home for Christmas and summer holidays as a child also meant that I grew up associating this corner of Yorkshire with home and family. The heather covered moorland and ferns. The rocks and paths to scramble up. So different from where we lived in the home counties of Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire.
It’s why relocating here made sense seven years ago when Andy was made redundant and found a job here. It made sense even though none of that branch of the family live here anymore and we’d only uprooted the children three years earlier when we swapped Bath for Bournemouth.
I said at the time that if the job had been anywhere else in the country I’d have stayed put with the children by the sea. Uprooting the children again was a tough decision, but coming here softened the change a little.
We don’t live in a Yorkshire stone terrace like I’d dreamed of growing up, but when I see photos of me and my siblings as young children swaddled in anoraks perched with mum in the shadow of the Cow and Calf rocks, the same Cow and Calf rocks that I see from my daughter’s bedroom window, I feel myself rooted into this landscape in a way that I don’t think I did in Bournemouth no matter how much I love the sea.
I loved listening to my cousin talk about her teenage hangouts in Leeds yesterday just as I loved walking through Ilkley with her mum a few months ago as she pointed out the estate agents and the dress shop where she used to work, or when my uncle talks about dog walks on the Otley Chevin. I love that there’s something bigger than me connecting me to this place, something that goes beyond simply having chalked up seven years living here.
This theme of family, home, belonging and the landscape we live in has featured heavily in the memoir writing these past few weeks and I loved chatting with my cousin about how different it feels living by the sea versus living by the moor. Yorkshire stone was mentioned a few times. More for me to noodle in the coming week and it’ll be interesting to see what comes out in the writing.
What else has caught my eye this week?
Happy Birthday Mary Oliver
It would have been poet Mary Oliver’s birthday on Monday. It was only after I framed her classic quote, ‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life’ and put it on the wall behind my writing desk next to a photo of mum and some of her artwork that I realised one of the readings at mum’s funeral was Oliver’s ‘In Blackwater Woods’. I’d love to say that Oliver’s words pierced my consciousness on the day we buried mum, but I’m not sure they did, I’m not sure much did. Maybe they did what they always do though and simply glided over me, soothing me with their gentle touch. Reading In Blackwater Woods again today in the order of service, I give them space to work their magic again.
I keep Mary Oliver’s A thousand mornings by my bed and have the corners turned down on a few pages. I also love the Mary Oliver Instagram feed where they share recordings of her reading her poetry, like this reading of When I am among the trees.
Three things to remember from Mary Oliver’s A Thousand Mornings
As long as you’re dancing, you can
break the rules.
Sometimes breaking the rules is just
extending the rules.
Sometimes there are no rules.
This writing, it’s getting easier you know
Talking of rules, I’m finding that it’s getting easier to write this each week and that grasping onto thoughts of what I should write are dissolving in favour of simply writing what’s popped into my head.
I can feel my grip on the writing loosening and that can only be a good thing. I’ve also started jotting down thoughts into my phone as the week unfolds not knowing which one will evolve into a post I can send out. It’s a sort of diary and it’s proving interesting at the end of the week to see that what occupied my mind on a wet Monday afternoon has completely disappeared by the time we get to this point in the week.
This really has felt a little rushed today, half thoughts tapped and typed out onto the screen so I’d be interested to see what you pick up on and if anything resonates. I know I’m lucky and that not everyone has these happy, solid family connections but maybe you’ve found a way to create connections like this in other ways?
Thank you as ever for reading and wishing you a happy weekend, Harriet
Making the most of the 19-year old and his mischief and mayhem, tomfoolery and shenanigans and worldly wisdom before he leaves us for Freshers Week.
Hello, how are you? How’s this first week of September been for you?
This week I’ve taken inspiration (and a kick up the backside) from the 19 year old and his latest denim creation, fashioned partly on our kitchen table and at his sewing class at The Sewing Shed.
After making a denim bag out of an old pair of jeans at the beginning of the year he decided he quite fancied working with denim again. He didn’t know what he wanted to make, didn’t have a pattern in mind, he just knew he wanted to work with the fabric again. He put a shout out to friends and fellow sewers for donations of unwanted denim and soon bags for life sprouting jeans, denim skirts and shirts started appearing around the house.
Over the early spring months the denim creation grew, and grew as he stitched mismatched pieces together. It was enormous and shapeless or rather, it had a shape just not a recognisable shape. Not recognisable as a piece of clothing or anything else for that matter.
Over the summer it lay somewhat folornly scrunched up in a fabric tote bag that moved from the back of a kitchen chair to the bottom of the stairs to the windowsill on the landing.
I’d forgotten about it until Tuesday morning when, after two back to back sewing classes, he brandished it in the kitchen much as I imagine thousands of over-excited four and five-year olds did with their creations after their first day at school this week.
He’d turned the mismatched denim into a pair of jeans. An oversized pair of straight legged jeans with just the waistband and zip to be added, all in time for Freshers Week.
This middle child of mine is the one most likely to cut through my excuses and crap for not doing something or over-thinking myself to a standstill. He’s also most likely to threaten to come into the Oliver Bonas where I work and cause some mischief and mayhem, shenanigans or tomfoolery.
In conversation with him earlier this year we talked about his ‘have a go’ confidence. He’s learned to sew and crochet. He went climbing twice this week. He taught himself to unicycle when he was eight or nine, ditto Rubik’s Cubes, 3D printing and the ukulele. He’s taught himself to play The Boomtown Rats ‘I don’t like Mondays’ with gusto on the piano over the course of a couple of weeks while I’ve mostly ignored the piano, to my shame, despite the good intentions I wrote about earlier this year.
The thing is, he doesn’t over think this stuff, he just has a go. Although there’s lots of other stuff he does overthink so maybe I’m wrong about this..but let’s go with it for the moment.
What’s the worst that could happen? Easy for you to say…
He’s blessed with a certain amount of confidence, not to mention youth and energy but with a shrug he simply said, ‘I just think, what’s the worst that could happen. I don’t go into something thinking I’ll be able to do it, I just think what’s the worst that could happen.’
Easy, no?
This from a child who was flying planes in Air Cadets at the age of 15. So when he says ‘what’s the worst that could happen’ my brain obviously pictures all manner of disastrous possibilities, but save the flying, he has a point.
I on the other hand am a scaredy cat, prone to over-thinking and definitely prefer having my feet on terra firma. Other than that time I did the zip wire from the end of Bournemouth Pier, flying over the sea and beach before landing next to people sunbathing. I did that twice.
That said I carry that conversation with me and it was this denim creation that popped into my head earlier this morning after getting frustrated with this Substack. I’ve written not one, not two, but three different Substacks to send out this week, none of them ‘feeling’ quite right. All of them languishing in drafts much as the denim did in the tote bag.
I was trying far too hard to stitch my thoughts into a recognisable pattern. Some weeks the thoughts and words fall into place. I know what I want to say, I just have to find the words and put them in an order that makes sense and flows.
The trick is to work out what to do in the weeks when that doesn’t happen, and not take the easy way out and not post anything. I guess I’m saying here that sometimes these missives will be a random collection of thoughts reflecting what’s going on in my 53-year old head, other times they might have a point.
“The difference between a writer and a non writer is that a writer keeps writing… That’s the only difference, you just keep writing…even if you put six words together… And if you can allow yourself to experience that, instead of abstracting your goals out into this, I want to write this 300 page novel, you know, then you’re true to yourself. You’re true to starting really close in and staying close in all the way along. You may think you’re beginning a novel, but actually you could be writing something else. Just stay close to the physical frontier and be thankful for the harvest that you’re making.”
David Whyte (taken from the London Writers’ Salon Podcast Ep #114)
A typical week of walking, writing and a bit of work too
This week I’ve been doing a seven-day writing sprint with Bec Evans and Chris Smith from Breakthroughs & Blocks. I have them to thank for not only helping me to exercise my writing muscle but to also get comfortable with setting myself writing goals, rather than my usual, ‘Well, I’ll just write and see what happens’ which comes with all sorts of get out clauses.
My intention for this writing sprint was to keep my weekly posting streak on Substack going, and to edit a chapter from the memoir project.
Walks with the dog on the moor definitely help. We set off together and she stops to sniff while I stop to tap notes and take photos. It just doesn’t feel like the writing has gone entirely gone to plan this week. I mean I’ve written words, they just weren’t the words I thought I was going to write. I didn’t end up editing the chapter about home as I planned, but I did start a new one based on a friendship breakdown.
But still, as the writers on the sprint and at writing group last night reminded me, it’s still progress even if it is disjointed and wonky.
And with that I’ll leave you in peace and thank you for helping me to keep to my Substack weekly posting streak. This is week 4 and I’d love to keep going so big thanks for being here and for reading my words.
‘I’ve got nineteen books and those piles of CDs; but what about my 3D printer? And my crochet & Rubik’s cubes?’ said the 19-year-old when I asked him what he’s packing for university.
Packing lists with a difference
There was no mention of clothes, toiletries, bedding or anything to cook or eat with in the list.
He’s had a year at home after taking A Levels last summer. A year spent working out whether university was right for him, and if it was, where and what to study. He’s enjoyed not being at school and earning money even if one of those jobs saw him back in school albeit with a lanyard denoting his new role as a member of staff rather than student.
His hair has grown, toppling his older brother from the leadership position in the curly hair stakes and he’s rapidly catching him up on the tattooed forearms league too. He’s been on a few trips with friends, and become a regular at the open mic and quiz night at the pub.
We’ve loved having him at home with his expanding vinyl and CD collection and a steady stream of stories featuring an ever-lengthening list of friends I can’t keep up with. His brain is quick and works differently from mine. It’s exhausting at times but a lot of fun.
He’s not my first child to leave home via university and it’s tempting to bat away the feelings I find difficult to name simply because this isn’t our first child leaving home rodeo.
He’s still my child and he’s leaving home and I feel this change even if I can’t find the words to express it.
Talking about everything other than how we feel
It’s so tempting isn’t it, so easy to rattle off, ‘I’m fine’ when asked how we feel, especially when life is complicated, whether that’s complicated with a big ‘C’ or little ‘c’. The words on the feelings wheel sellotaped to the fridge door feel unfamiliar, uncomfortable to say out loud. Over the top. So much easier to sink back into ‘fine’. It seems like I never really learned any emotional vocabulary.
There was a lot of talking when I was growing up, especially by mum. Her endless phone calls with friends and her sister the stuff of family legend. Dad’s phone calls were far fewer and much shorter in length, yet he was a fabulous letter writer, certainly as a newly wed writing to mum. He went to AA meetings multiple times a week for several decades so at some point he must have talked about how he felt, I guess.
I don’t remember us talking about feelings generally though. It wasn’t something we did, especially if there was a chance that what we were feeling wasn’t a happy or content kind of feeling. It was very much a case of ‘one day at a time’ and let’s keep going.
I don’t know really what I’m saying here but it occurs to me as I type this is that I have learned to start listening to my body, asking it to show me what’s going on and how I’m feeling. That’s what I’m paying attention to.
The past few days there’s been a familiar leaden weight in my stomach. It feels tight, my breathing rapid and shallow. I wake to a headache above my right eye and there’s an annoying fatigue that lingers.
Sensations I recognise as my signs of, if not stress, then let’s say feeling out of sorts, signs that change is afoot. Too many young people coming and going. Not being able to keep up with who’s in, who’s out. Who needs a listening ear and who needs me to back off.
There’s change that’s out of my control and I feel like I need to tether myself to something that makes sense to me. I have a strong need to be at home or walking on the moor where I can clear my head. Going to work and writing helps as does seeing my fabulous reflexologist who soothes my nervous system, gets the energy flowing and balances me. My not so secret weapon in dislodging the boulder in my stomach.
Bursting with Ready Brek pride
That said, I’ve also been aware of a new feeling in my body that’s becoming increasingly familiar and most welcome. It’s like there’s a warmth in my chest. Light yet powerful, a bit like the Ready Brek glow. I noticed it first when the eldest graduated and landed his first job as a fully fledged adult. I noticed it again when the middle child had his place at uni confirmed, saying to me that he finally felt like he’d ‘made the right decision’. I felt it when I waved the youngest off on holiday with a friend and her family.
I guess this is what people mean by bursting with pride. And relief too that life does sometimes slot into place. It’s not that I haven’t been proud before, I have, I am proud of them, constantly. I guess this is the first time I felt it so strongly though.
So attuned has my nervous system been to life going wrong that I’m unused to this warm feeling. I like it and want more of it.
I like walking around with a relaxed smile, having happy news to share. I notice how different it feels from the heavy weight in my stomach I thought this had become a permanent fixture after too many years of death, of cancer, redundancy and relocation.
I didn’t really know how to do deep contentment and joy. If it was there, it was surface level, happy. All tight fixed smiles rather than a deep seated contentment.
Leaving home in different ways
I guess the additional layer of emotional complexity right now though is that it’s not just the middle child who’s leaving.
Tomorrow, we drive the teenager we’ve given a home to for the past year to university. They’re a care leaver and long time friend to my middle child.
For more than half of their young life they’ve lived with foster parents, and lived independently as a young teen (with support from a social worker, but still) before moving in with us last August. A move that would give them some safety and security so they could finish their A Levels without having to worry about well, everything.
They aced it and tomorrow they leave us for university and the mother of all adventures. So while there’s the middle child with his big hair and CDs, there’s also this young person who’s opened my eyes about family, home and what it truly means to be resilient in more ways than I can articulate right now.
Three humans, three chickens and a dog
What I do know is that as of the penultimate weekend in September there’ll just be three humans plus the dog and three chickens at home. Dinner for three – me, the husband and the 15-year-old. I feel for her already, she and the teenager developed the most beautiful friendship that I’m sure will endure, but it might take a while for things for it to settle into a new way of being.
I also notice, as I write this, the evening before the teenager leaves, the car packed to the gills with her belongings, that there’s a big difference to how it feels knowing someone is leaving and the reality when it happens. We’re antsy, overly polite and considerate with each other, I put on Mickyb’s skate songs Spotify playlist trusting 70s disco and 80s house to distract as we cobble together a final meal.
That looks a little bonkers written down, but it feels surreal that this evening is the teenager’s final evening living with us. That this is it. She may well return, the door will always be open to her but her new life lies ahead, and that might not include coming back here, at least not just yet, but who knows?
Our middle child though will be leaving in a slightly different way.
A new energy at home and a clearer surfaces
Our home will be quieter and yes, as the cliche goes, it will be so much tidier. Our middle child has never entirely got to grips with the words clean, tidy or declutter, his head too full of weird and wonderful things he wants to make and places he wants to be.
I guess, put simply we, I mean, I will miss them. Sadness at the end of this phase tempered with punch the air pride.
So spare a thought for our 15-year-old as she navigates life at home with me and her dad. Time will tell if having additional bedrooms to spread her clothes and make up into will be enough of a trade-off for being left with us on her own. She also has GCSEs next summer so maybe wish us luck too.
Thanks for reading (and listening), it feels so much better to have got these words and thoughts out. Please feel free to comment below or hit reply if this landed in your inbox rather than via the Substack App. I’d love to hear from you…
We were on our final lap of the Summer Exhibition and we’d probably walked past several times already, but when there are more than 1700 works of art to take in, is it any surprise we missed a few?
A smorgasbord of art on a Friday lunchtime
In the end ‘the Tracey Emin’ we overheard another visitor mention turned out to be not one but four large paintings hanging in the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition but with eight, or is it nine rooms packed floor to ceiling with art, sculpture, design and architecture maybe it wasn’t so surprising my friend and I had walked past Emin’s award-winning work.
Because where else can you experience that many incredible works of art in one place and where anything from half to up to two-thirds have been entered by members of the public?
Yep, imagine your art on a wall next to Tracey Emin or Grayson Perry overseeing where it hangs? It can happen and as a writer, with a very small ‘w’, who struggles to share any of their writing I salute any creative willing to put themselves out there.
Mum was an artist in the same way that so many public entrants to the Summer Exhibition are. She created a huge body of work – sketches, prints, acrylics, oil and watercolours – whilst working, raising us children and keeping our family afloat in every sense, but to my knowledge rarely exhibited her art outside our home.
We used to get frustrated with her, for not giving herself a chance, for not putting herself out there. Her talent was obvious to us, but it takes a huge amount of time, hard work and belief to get a piece of work to the point where it’s submission ready and having poured heart and soul into it, to then face the possibility of rejection.
I can also understand why, in the maelstrom of family life, she might also have wanted to keep this creative part of her tucked away, something just for her.
She’d hang her still life sketches, prints and paintings on the walls of our family homes, carry a sketchbook and pencil around in her handbag, she’d go to art classes. It was a space where she was happy, where she felt at home, so why bring stress and anxiety to something she loved doing. I’m not saying there wasn’t a part of her that didn’t want to show her work more widely, there was, but it’s not as straightforward as simply filling out an entry form.
I guess I grew up surrounded by art but I can’t say I’m knowledgeable at all. It was always just there, on the walls. We didn’t sit around having endless conversations about art and I’m hopeless at delving into the deeper meaning of a painting. I just know how a sketch or oil painting can make me feel.
Sometimes it’s a colour I’m drawn to more likely feeling it triggers. If I have the right glasses on I might pick out a detail. Mostly though I love the effect a wall covered with art gives me. My eyes darting from still life sketch to a landscape or portrait picking up a colour, a line, a shape or something intangible.
I find it soothing as I focus in, silencing the surrounding hubub.
I guess what I love about the Summer Exhibition is that you don’t know what you’re going to get. You just know it’s going to be a total assault on the senses, in a good way. That there’s going to be the most incredible smorgasbord of styles, some irreverent and bonkers, some challenging and confronting, some confusing and others simply beautiful, and all for £24.
I wish I could point out more of my favourites but a bit like my reading, I remember how a book made me feel, but I’m not so good at remembering why or any of the specifics.
I do remember the deep sigh I felt last Friday though when I saw the wall filled with trees (above, bottom left), I remember the painting that looked like a Hockney but wasn’t, I remember the model of homes for refugees, and two pared back still life paintings next to each other.
I took the teenagers with me last year and one of them loved it so much they went back again this year with their girlfriend (who, FYI loved the Tracey Emin). No surprise that what they spotted and remembered compared to this 53 year old were quite different and it led to a fabulous conversation and swapping photos afterwards.
I guess the overriding feelings I have a week on is that I still feel energised and somehow emboldened. It somehow restores and boosts my faith in humans, reminding me that there are some crazy talented people out there. It’s why I’d encourage you to visit next summer, even if you don’t think you’re an ‘art’ person, go and be entertained and inspired.
Big thanks to the artists, makers and creators out there for daring to share, for giving me a bloody good excuse to have a trip to London and a boot up the backside to share some words too.
Because I know, I know weeks, no, let’s be honest, months without word from me and then two posts in two weeks. What can I say? I’ve been told on more than one occasion that I have a habit of holding on to things tightly, that I find it difficult to let go and writing is no exception.
I can write with pure unadulterated freedom when it’s just me and my notebook but when it comes to sharing those words, I’ll hesitate, go off and make a cup of tea and while the kettle’s boiling in pops the self-doubt and ‘who do you think you are’.
I’m working on that though, so thanks for being here, thanks for reading and thanks for encouraging me to keep going.
It was 1993, I was 21 and spending the summer working in Palma de Mallorca. My parents kept my letters home & discovering them sparked all sorts of thoughts when I returned to the island this summer.
Hola amigos, que tal?
I tapped the bones of this post into my phone in the morning heat while waiting for the coach to take me, my husband, teenage daughter and friend back to Palma airport after two weeks on the beach in Alcudía. The thoughts that sparked this writing though started forming a month or so ago when I discovered a bundle of letters I wrote home in the summer of 1993 while living and working in Palma de Mallorca. My parents kept those letters (amongst many others) and it’s been a true voyage of discovering reading them.
Airmail letters on flimsy see through paper, others on cream paper and matching envelopes but all in navy ink. Written, I’m imagining, from my bed in the second floor flat on Calle Gabriel Alomar where I was living. I was 21 and had just finished my fourth and final year at Newcastle Poly** studying French and Spanish.
My bedroom was at the back of the flat I shared with two young Spanish women and had whitewashed walls and a tiled floor, an iron bedstead, table and chair for my books and cassette player with shutters to keep the room dark and cool against the 37c heat outside. The cooling sea breeze from Palma beach was a few minutes-walk away, as was the cathedral.
I’d found work experience at Texas Hiperhogar the DIY superstore in Palma after spotting an index card pinned to the Modern Languages noticeboard not long after my final exams.
‘Summer work experience, Texas Homecare, Palma de Mallorca. Contact Mike for more info’
Spending the summer in Spain felt like a smart move, It would delay the return home to mum and dad and if it came with the chance to recreate even a fraction of the fun I’d had in Málaga the summer before in my third year, it was too good an opportunity to ignore.
Three decades on and reading the letters as a 53-year-old I’m taken back by their lightness. There’s a playfulness to them even when I’m writing about the flatmate who took an instant dislike me, shouting at me for sitting in ‘her chair’ and who’d switch TV channels midway through a film I was watching.
If you’d asked me about that summer (before discovering those letters) I’d mention spotting the British actress Imelda Staunton at baggage reclaim on arrival at Palma airport or Brian, my boss-to-be and and manager at the DIY store, not turning up to collect me from the airport because he didn’t receive the fax I’d sent with my flight details. I’d talk about the hostile flatmate and a random roll out the red carpet moment in honour of Dennis Thatcher visiting the store (thankfully he left Maggie at home).
I wouldn’t spend too much time talking about it though. Málaga was my Spanish story. That was all Semana Santa, la Fería, cafe con leche and tostada in the cafe across the road from the university, the Picasso museum and all nighters in Pedregalejo. Not forgetting tía Pilar my live-in landlady who rented rooms to ‘nice Spanish girls from good families’ (her words not mine, and I can’t remember how I ended up there) in her flat on Calle Larios where she’d keep a close eye on us all.
The Palma memories slid off me and I didn’t pay them too much notice, it felt like a summer without colour and my face wouldn’t break into a smile as it does on hearing Málaga mentioned.
But unfolding these piece of paper reveal colour and texture to that Palma summer that I’d forgotten, or not acknowledged.
The letters also reveal a connection with my dad in particular that surprises me. Me writing directly to him and enlisting his help with job hunting while mum was away on holiday with her girlfriends shows a side to our relationship that I’d forgotten, especially in the latter years of his life.
And they are stuffed with anecdotes from my days spent in the superstore. Stories about the Canadian customer who wanted to replace the desk fan he’d bought a few weeks earlier because he was worried it would take off, saying it ‘went like the clappers’ even on the lowest setting.
How would I translate ‘went like the clappers’ I wondered.
There’s a detailed account of the hour I spent helping a spritely 83-year-old English woman buy a bedspread only for her to return it the next day with an apologetic smile saying it didn’t suit after all and a bag of sweets for me as a thank you. And for balance, there’s the British Jaguar driving customer who blasts me for keeping him waiting for too long.
I write about my colleagues from the Information desk, Catalina and Feli, who take me under their wing and on one occasion rescue me from the wood cutting section where I’d been banished (after the rollocking from the Jaguar driver I think) bringing me back to the safety of Information desk, with its multiple phone lines ringing and builders loitering with their plastic bags full of peseta notes waiting to pay for planks of wood, taps, basins and other bathroom fixtures and fittings.
And there’s Antonio who explains that his flawless English is thanks to his Newcastle born and bred mum. It turns out that the grandparents he visits every summer live in Heaton around the corner from where I lived as a student.
Back in Mallorca, memories of Palma and Málaga have bubbled to the surface these past two weeks and I notice how content I feel speaking Spanish again. It takes a few days for my mouth and brain to warm up and work together to form the words and phrases, for me to get used to the vibrations the sounds make again.
It’s a muscle memory that’s weak through lack of use but my voice soon remembers how to soften and move to accommodate the Spanish sounds.
I love the soft ‘v’ and ‘d’ of ‘verdad’, I love the letter ‘j’ and a simple ‘no pasa nada’. Sometimes I have complete memory blanks mid-conversation but hey, I’m 53 and that’s just as likely to happen in English as in Spanish.
On our early morning trips to the beach in AlcudíaI find myself adopting the hands-on hips stance just like the small group of Mallorquin women meeting for their morning dip and natter. We’re in a tourist hotspot and my ears pick out German, French and Dutch and English but there’s plenty of Spanish too especially when families and friends gather gather under the shade of the palm trees and set up tables and chairs groaning with food. Hours spent chatting and laughing, working their way through the multiple cool boxes they’ve pulled along on a trolley.
And as the days pass my feet sink deeper into the hot sand, I let the salty sea support me as I let go and give my brain space for the Spanish words and phrases to float to the surface.
Reading the letters remind me of that in between phase I was in back then in 1993. On the cusp of adulthood – not fully in the world of salaried payslips, tax codes and pension plans – but not completely out of student life either. Within the upright handwritten words I feel myself wanting to slowly loosen the threads connecting me to home.
All I had to do was catch the bus to work, smile and chat with my colleagues and customers, catch the bus back home for lunch, have a siesta and wander down to the beach, walk along the sea front or head to the shops in the centre of town.
In one of the letters I write, ‘I think looking back, that I was very spoilt with Málaga. I didn’t have to do anything, I had ready made friends through the university and tía Pilar and her granddaughter Marta.’
It’s the only time I hint at the loneliness I sometimes felt in Palma because despite my hopes, there were far fewer nights out blagging free shots and beers like we did from the barmen in Cien por Cien and el Barquito in Málaga. Maybe that was a good thing.
When I found the letters my instinct was to bury them at the back of a very deep, dark cupboard because I wasn’t sure I wanted to face my 21-year-old self.
I should have given myself a little more credit.
I’ve also learned through memoir writing to lean into the friction of these uncomfortable feelings and hold memories and moments up to the light. I know that when I do this I see something different, something fresh, almost always new and often surprising. It also helps me to let go of stale, unhelpful, unchallenged memories, and that is refreshing
As for the Spanish speaking and heading back to Spain, well I’m hoping that my 56-day streak on Duolingo (at time of writing) will help me to keep flexing my Spanish speaking muscle.
And whisper it, but there are signs that my 15 year old daughter wants to carry on studying Spanish after GCSEs next summer and I’m thrilled about that. I’m plotting a return to Palma probably next year now because despite best laid plans we didn’t make it there this time, and if I’m going to visit Palma I’ll also need to head back to Málaga too. Maybe I’ll take my teenage daughter with me.
Thank you, as ever for writing and subscribing. I’d love to hear from you so please jump into the comments. I’d love to hear about your letter writing memories or reflections of life as a young adult.
Hasta luego, Harriet
**I went to Newcastle Poly in 1989 and graduated in 1993, the year it became the University of Northumbria. Technically I graduated in French and Spanish from the University of Northumbria, but I’ll always be a Newcastle Poly girl….
Is one of the reasons I’ve struggled to feel at home – not just here in Yorkshire but from my twenties onwards – because I haven’t felt at home in my body and in myself?
H.O.M.E.
Home. This short word, these four little letters have occupied a lot of headspace these past few weeks following my last post and various conversations, especially with Lindsay Johnstone who writes What Now? and other writers on her Memoir in a Month course. (I’d highly recommend it, she’s running another in September if you’re interested).
There’s been a lot of scrapbook writing. Odd thoughts tapped into Notes on my phone as I walk into town, sentences half heartedly strung together in my notebook and the occasional flick through the photo album.
There’s also been a lot of not-writing writing. The writing that happens while washing up and doing all the other life stuff like making parent’s evening appointments and picking up yet more milk from Tesco.
I try to capture these fleeting thoughts and ideas, but the longer I leave it between posts the harder it is to pull them together into something that makes sense. I made a commitment to myself and to you though, to write regularly. Or rather to share my writing regularly so that’s what I’ll do. I’ll put on my writing playlist, sit down with a cup of tea and see where the writing takes me. Bear with…
Feeling at home in my body
Later this afternoon I’ll be driving along the A65 to Airedale Hospital for my annual mammogram. Six years post-diagnosis, five year after finishing treatment my scanxiety, that knot in my stomach, tends to surface around halfway through the drive to the hospital rather than in the days before as it used to.
It appears somewhere between Addingham and Silsden but disappears the closer I get to Aldi, distracted as I work out if I have time to pop in before my appointment and have a rummage through the special aisles, or not. Stopping at Aldi and picking up flowers and brioche (not to mention cushions and candles) was as much part of my cancer routine as the weekly PICC line flushes, blood tests and scans.
The mammogram appointment letter arrived a few weeks ago, around the same time I found out I could stop taking Tamoxifen, a friend was diagnosed with breast cancer, bumping into a woman I’d met in the chemo lounge years earlier but not seen since, and Mother’s Day.
Mother’s Day, the ninth since mum died, passed in a blur of grey sky and rain. I’d been silently congratulating myself on feeling fine about it even though I’d been surrounded by Mother’s Day cards and gifts at work. I was surprised then to feel so wonky on the day, much as I had last year.
Spring is a strange season. I mean it’s very welcome with its blossom, lighter afternoons and lush foliage and all those signs of regeneration and growth but it’s also the season of mum’s death, as well as my annual mammogram which brings memories of my diagnosis to the fore all juxtaposed with the joy of childrens’ and Andy’s birthdays.
The final fraying thread connecting me to cancer
The thing with being told I could stop taking Tamoxifen is that it was the final, fraying thread tying me to breast cancer. A little over five years of daily pill taking. It had plunged me into chemical menopause overnight, the last line of defence in the treatment plan for my oestrogen positive, ductal invasive breast cancer. I thought five years of pill popping might call for more than the brief text message.
“Hi Mrs Mason The specialist advised a 5 year course for your Tamoxifen so this can now be stopped.”
I called the breast cancer nurse who confirmed the text was correct. I asked if I could expect any side effects as I had when I first started taking it, ‘Oh, I don’t know’ she said, and our conversation was over.
And so I found myself in tears in front of the GP the other Friday afternoon. I’d made the appointment after feeling some pelvic pain in the days after I stopped taking Tamoxifen. Discomfort and pain that disappeared as the appointment got closer and I came close to cancelling because I wasn’t ill, was I.
I didn’t want to use up an appointment for no good reason but I also felt that there needed to be, or rather I needed some sort of conversation with a human being to acknowledge that treatment had finished, that I was done.
I didn’t ring the bell in the chemotherapy or radiotherapy waiting rooms after my final appointments. A bell was too loud, too public. The clanging of metal on metal too harsh, and it didn’t feel like anything was over. I guess it wasn’t over, not only because I was on Tamoxifen but also because there’s something insidious about cancer. It can stay with you long after the hospital appointments disappear from your diary.
I guess it’s also worth adding that I’d also spent the morning before seeing the GP with the recently diagnosed friend and was surprised at how emotional I felt as I drove away from her.
Do you talk about it?
The GP was fabulous, she listened, passed me tissues and gently asked if I ever talked about my breast cancer. I paused, and realised that no, I don’t think I do talk about it. Much like I don’t often talk about how I miss mum. I don’t think I mentioned her at all on Mother’s Day which seems really odd now that I see it written down.
With the cancer, I might reference it, as in this thing happened but that six years post diagnosis I didn’t think I had a right to talk about it anymore. I was fine, wasn’t I? Time to move on and continue the forward facing position I’d adopted.
I apologised for using up the GP’s time and told her that I almost cancelled. She put me straight and we agreed that I was probably overdue a return visit to Maggie’s cancer centre for a chat.
I think I hesitated in answering the GP’s question about whether I talk about cancer because I recognise this habit I have of talking and writing a lot of words but not necessarily sharing how I feel.
Or at least only wanting to share feelings that are somehow appropriate and acceptable.
I also hesitated in writing this post because I don’t want to sound like I’m moaning. I know I’m six years down the line, that my cancer was common and with good outcomes and I’m still here, fit and healthy.
I’d also been persuading myself that I should be writing about ‘home’ after my last post, but I’ve found it hard to string my thoughts together into anything that makes sense. I think I also came to the realisation that it’s all connected anyway.
Feeling at home in your body
I suspect that one of the reasons I’ve struggled to feel at home – not just in Yorkshire now I think about it – but from my twenties onwards is because I haven’t felt at home in my body, or in myself. From shingles and post viral illnesses to ME/chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia and cancer. The signs have been there, the body knows the score indeed, it’s just that I haven’t been listening properly.
Because how can you feel at home, knit and weave yourself into a landscape and community if you don’t know yourself. If you aren’t paying attention, listening, acknowledging what’s really going on inside?
And I guess as I’ve hinted at here, it’s not just the cancer. It’s what came before it. Stripping out and naming the emotions linked to each individual event is hard, impossible even and while for the most part I walk through life happy, content even there are times when I feel its weight creep up on me.
I get out daily, and take my vitamin D. I walk on the moor and go to Pilates, stretching my body at home too. I love the jolts of energy and colour that working my shifts at Oliver Bonas brings as well as writing for my clients not to mention chats with friends and family, but that can all be true whilst still feeling the heaviness.
We need safe spaces to explore our complicated emotions
I hope that what I’m creating here in Gently Does It is a safe space not just for me to share and explore these themes and feelings, but for you too. I loved reading the comments following the last post and I guess it shows that many of us are walking around harbouring these conflicting and sometimes confusing emotions.
I’ve included a few of the articles, books and podcasts I’ve found useful over the past few weeks as I’ve been thinking about feeling at home in my body (and anywhere else for that matter). I hope you find something interesting and/or helpful there too.
And with that I’ll leave you in peace. Thank you for reading, the comments are always open and I’ll be here reading and ready to reply. If you’re not a Substack-er simply hit reply to the email and message me directly.
“Trauma leads to disorganization in the various systems of the body, which causes the body to work even harder to find any semblance of coherence. For some who have experienced trauma, you might feel like an entire section of your orchestra has betrayed you and left the building; another person might feel like a few instruments are out of pitch. Either way, our bodies learn how to play the music the best we can given our situation.”
“In the moves I imagine myself making, I’m always in a perfect place. A house that doesn’t leak during heavy rains. One with no musty smells in the basement. One without walls that crack and need repair. A home without a filthy oven that needs cleaning. A place where there will be no health problems, no marital problems, no financial woes, no income tax, no work that feels banal and boring.’“
Louise de Salvo, On Moving: a writer’s meditation on new houses, old haunts and finding home again
“We also look at how important attachment is in determining how much we feel we belong, or don’t. How self esteem also impacts and how very important human connection is to psychologically tether us to a sense of belonging. We also look at why you might feel you don’t belong in the very place you think you might have an automatic right to – your own family.”
Breathing in between the gluggle jugs and jumpers: lessons from the shopfloor on leaning into a slower pace
Greetings from Ilkley where I’m writing this sitting in bed with a morning cup of tea, curtains still drawn masking the still black sky and hints of sleet and snow forecast for later. I’ll give my Vitamin D a much-needed boost later and do a shift at my other job in Oliver Bonas where the sale rails have made way for sherbet-like Spring colours that do not match the sky outside.
All very peppy and perky and the perfect antidote to the murky sky outside.
The intensity of those Christmas, Twixmas and New Year shifts I wrote about last year has given way to a gentler rhythm, but I have been told there might be a pre-Valentine’s Day rush for cards and jewellery and to be ready for blank faces responding to gentle enquiries of ‘Does she prefer silver or gold?’.
Embracing a slower pace
I think the biggest challenge in these early 2024 shifts (other than taking a photo I’m happy to wear on my new lanyard) has been this slower pace.
The fast pace and intensity of Christmas was my normal and when January hit things inevitably slowed down. Customers were back to work and fed up with the persistent gale force winds and torrential downpours. Bored of wrestling themselves into waterproof coats and shoes, shoulders perma-hunched and heads dropped to withstand the wind.
Shopping weather it ain’t and those that were brave enough to venture out weren’t always in the mood for a chat.
I noticed how I’d fidget in the quiet moments, rock backwards and forwards from the balls of my feet to my heels. I’d do laps of the store righting photo frames, twitching jumpers on hangers that I’d lined up on my previous lap.
There were classic water cooler conversations about what to watch. Everything from Band of Brothers to Vigil and Mr Bates vs the Post Office. But I’d struggle to switch from conversations about the episode of The Great Pottery Throwdown where the contestants made gluggle jugs and how I was sure that our gluggle jugs appeared in the background, back to serving mode. My mind would often go blank when faced with the till.
But I do delight in saying the word gluggle and I defy you to say it and not smile too.
It took a few shifts to work out that while this quieter, slower pace wasn’t exactly normal, it wasn’t not normal. I just had to lean into it and remember to pause and breathe.
I’ll add here that I do two four-hour shifts a week which means I often miss things like unpacking big stock deliveries and I’m often not around for the big merchandising switcheroos. My focus is always on the customer, covering the lunchtime shift and handling the restock where we bring up products from the stockroom to replace stock we’ve sold.
It has given me time to start getting to know my colleagues though, and them me. We’ve had chats about my writing and their studies. A couple of them are students so we talk about how and where we get the work done. I introduce them to Writers Hour. We talk accountability and the merits of studying in cafes, where the best local co-working spaces are and how we love our local library.
We share stories about our families, my children who are closer in age to many of my colleagues than they are me. I’m asked, ‘Would you ever move back down south?’ to which I answer, ‘I’m not sure, but I do love the Northumberland coast.’
It’s ok to relax into the slow moments
I’m reprogramming my brain and body to relax in these slower moments, to allow myself to stand and just be. The shop can change a lot in between shifts and this slower pace gives me a chance to discover the new lines and rediscover existing products given a new perch, in between wiping finger marks off the glass jewellery cabinets and dust from plant pots released from the dungeon.
Cool head, warm heart
Without going too deep about all of this, what I’ve noticed is that my tendency to want to be seen to be doing something, that ‘look at me and what I’ve done, I’m busy busy’ to prove my usefulness and value is so very deeply ingrained.
I’m learning though that it’s ok, that it is in fact sometimes part of this job, to simply be there, ready to smile a hello. You’re not exactly doing nothing, because you’re always ‘on’ but taking a moment, standing still is ok.
I also have a habit of responding overly quickly to requests and questions, often with a speed and urgency that isn’t warranted and that’s when I make mistakes. I rush, charge at things, forgetting that no one’s timing me on how long it takes me to run down the stairs to retrieve a Click and Collect parcel.
Cool head, warm heart is our mantra.
And don’t forget to breathe
I guess it’s a bit like those moments mid-warrior pose in yoga, the hundreds in pilates or squats in any exercise class when the instructor helpfully calls out, ‘Don’t forget to breathe’ and the whole class groans, because what the heck? You want me to breathe as well as co-ordinate my limbs and button in my abs.
Well, yes. Learning to pause and breathe is so bloody helpful but it’s something that I think a lot of us need reminding to do. It’s why I turn to Suzy Reading and her book ‘Rest to reset’ for simple guidance and practical exercises you can do anywhere.
Thank you
I’ll sign off with a heartfelt thank you to everyone who reads my words, whether you’ve just found me on Substack or you’ve been receiving my sporadic emails from the beginning in those heady pre-Substack days.
I’m incredibly grateful for every subscribe, like and comment and particularly enjoyed the piano conversations on the back of my last post and hope that it has nudged a few more people to play again.
Is it one place, or maybe there’s more than one place where you feel at home. And what makes it home anyway, what does that feel like?
This proved to be a tough piece of writing to pull together. It’s taken countless drafts, lots of copying and pasting, deleting and moving to ‘spare copy’ as I try to lift my head out of the weeds and work out what I think. I spent a lot of time listing the homes I’ve lived in along with key dates before realising that this is less about geography and front doors than grief, loss and holding on.
Sometimes the writing is messy though and there isn’t a clear cut answer or beginning and end, but I hope it makes some sort of sense.
This house in Ilkley has been home since July 2018 in the sense that it’s the address on my driver’s licence, and bank and mortgage statements land on the doormat with my name on them.
I love our home among the trees, that in less than 10 minutes I can be climbing Ilkley Moor, hopping across becks, walking on rocky paths and amongst the ferns, staring up at the wide-open sky.
I love walking down the hill into town, passing the kid’s school and waving to the baristas in La Stazione, knowing that they’ll already be making me my large flat white and upselling me a toasted teacake before I’ve set foot inside.
I love going to work at Oliver Bonas, familiar faces, friends and the children coming in and giving me a hug, staying for a quick chat, colleagues adding a new layer of friendship and connections to this life here, but it hasn’t always felt like this.
Back in January I spent a few days at my sister’s home in a village in between Frome. and Bath. I’d caught the train from Ilkley, changing at Leeds and Bristol Temple Meads where I found myself catching the commuter train I used to get when we lived in Bath and I worked for Lloyds TSB in their offices on Bristol Harbour. The train line passes along the bottom of our old road.
We moved into the Oldfield Park corner of Bath in 2001 and our Victorian end of terrace was home for 13 years. It was the first house that Andy and I bought together. We were married in Priston Mill just outside Bath in 2002. The boys were born at the Princess Anne Wing at the RUH in 2003 and 2005 while the youngest was born in her bedroom overlooking the back garden in 2009 while the boys slept in their bunkbeds.
Our neighbours were our friends – adults and children alike. The children went to the local primary and we were regulars at the butchers and greengrocers on Moorland Road and Harry at Oldfield Park Bookshop was my go-to for ‘What can I read next?’ book recommendations and a chat. Victoria Park was our playground, the mellow yellow Bath stone and Georgian grandeur of Royal Crescent and The Circus on our doorstep.
It was the family life I’d hankered after since a teenager and I thought we’d live in that house if not forever then for a long time. Why would we move? But life isn’t like that, and in the summer of 2014 we relocated to Bournemouth.
A relocation driven by a combination of debilitating chronic fatigue (me), redundancy (Andy), a new job in Bournemouth (Andy) and trying to bring up our young children (both of us).
The idea of a slow seaside family life where we spent our spare time on the beach together rather than living separately seemed like the obvious, sensible option.
We lived with Alum Chine’s sandy beach at the bottom of our road and the gazillion photos on my phone show how much we loved beach life. The children barefoot or in flip flops, towels thrown over their shoulders walking to the beach after school, jumping off the prom into the sand while the dog bounded into the sea (and the children too sometimes).
The disconnect between the external and internal landscapes
But while the external landscape soothed, the emotional landscape was quite different because those three years will also forever be associated with the deaths of my parents and grandmother between May and September in 2015.
Three messy, complicated years, overwhelmed with grief, panic attacks, anger and confusion before redundancy hit again in 2017 and after being presented with a job opportunity in Skipton and a lack of jobs in the south, we landed in Yorkshire.
Morning dog walks on the beach after school drop off had become my anchor points, the rhythm and ritual and backdrop of the blue sky and sea soothing me during those three years, so I figured I’d just swap beach walks for moorland walks and sooner or later all would be fine.
Reinvention and change can be exciting, exhilarating even, but not on this scale and not like this, especially with the final blow – a breast cancer diagnosis six months after moving to Ilkley.
All of this makes this house in Ilkley my 22nd (give or take) home which gives me a batting average of one house move every two or so years of my life – so far. I compare this with my husband who’s up to ten, I think and whose parents live in the house they moved to when he was a pre-schooler. When we visit them in Bristol we sleep in his old bedroom (it’s been redecorated since!). His sisters live a few roundabouts away on the ring road whereas my siblings are now in Cardiff, Frome and Tokyo.
Holding my breathe while trying to take one step at a time
I think this feeling of not knowing where home was or where I was meant to be really landed after I finished cancer treatment in January 2019. There was initial relief that the invasive stage of treatment was over and I attempted to move into recovery mode albeit while adjusting to daily doses of Tamoxifen – hello menopause.
I thought I could finally sink into Ilkley life but instead the reality of living hundreds of miles from family, friends, people and places I knew hit me hard. The uncertainty of trying to sell our Bournemouth home while renting a too-small dark bungalow in Ilkley and competing with umpteen other families all searching for a home to buy while going through chemotherapy put us under immense pressure.
We finally completed on our current home when I was about halfway through chemotherapy after going to closed bids.
Finishing treatment I realised that I’d hit pause on grieving mum and dad’s deaths. I’d been holding my breath while trying to take one step at a time and I needed to exhale. There’s only so much we can cope with emotionally at one time so I guess the floodgates opened as the hospital visits finished.
I was an alien, unfamiliar to every person living there and unfamiliar with every street; I was unfamiliar, even, with the house we’d rented, despite the fact our favourite pictures were on the walls, familiar rugs were on the floors, and I’d filled a bookshelf with favourite books of poetry. Home, I realised in a very real way that autumn, felt like something much more than putting chairs in rooms. Clover Stroud, On the way home feels
Trying too hard to fit in and not listening to myself
The disconnect between the warm and welcoming community in Ilkley, the new friends who’d dropped off food parcels when I was diagnosed, driven me to chemotherapy and bought me coffees to buoy me and how I felt inside was stark.
I had this notion that as long as I was with Andy and the children and had a front door I could lock, my books on the bookshelves, walls covered with mum’s paintings and sketches, I could if I tried hard enough, make myself to feel at home through sheer bloody mindedness.
This disconnect manifested itself in rushing into work and pushing myself physically – Pilates, Couch to 5km and increasingly long walks on the moor – all of which were followed by regular emotional breakdowns with lots of tears and bone crunching fatigue, reminiscent of the chronic fatigue from years earlier.
I was utterly lost and discombobulated on every level, pushing and trying too hard, not listening what my body and heart were telling me and that’s not a great foundation for finding connections, making friends and feeling rooted.
Clinging onto the idea of where home is (and isn’t)
I think I was still clinging onto the idea that even though we weren’t living in Bath anymore, I could still call it ‘home’. I felt like I needed somewhere solid, somewhere I could tether myself to. Regular trips to see friends were possible while we were in Bournemouth, still giving me a toehold into the community we’d left, harder when we were so far north.
Friendships can and do shift when you move away. The mix of quick catch ups while passing in the playground or street supplemented by coffees and meals out give friendships the chance to evolve. These touch points weave together to create a shared history based on shared experiences.
Texts and WhatsApps help to fill that gap – up to a point – but it takes effort. The distance can lead to visits having an air of ceremony, the pressure of expectations making them hard to relax into and gaps can appear, especially when one of you is grieving and feeling unmoored.
What’s helping? Writing, time and letting go
Writing is helping me to sift through these conflicting emotions and thoughts by getting them out of my head and onto paper. These online writing communities are also a Godsend.
London Writers Salon Writers Hour gave me the space to explore these thoughts from the safety of my notebook and my little writing cocoon. A protective buffer between me and real life where I’ve been free to explore and write it all out. Alone but together is their mantra, and boy does it work.
So writing is helping, and so is realising that it’s going to take time. Cancer and Covid interrupted our settling into Yorkshire life and it made perfect sense when my counsellor said that it sounded like I’d been ‘holding on’ to a lot.
I was. I was clinging on to ideas about life, family and friendships including a fixed notion of what and where home was and wasn’t. She helped me to start letting go, to start releasing my grip, creating space for alternative views and reframing experiences.
Travelling back from my sister’s home in January a thought struck me. Maybe I just have multiple places I can call home. I know that landing at either of my sisters’ places always feels like home.
I walk through their front doors, smile and breathe deeply. These places are where the external and internal landscapes blend together. We’ve experienced the same losses and life changes, we don’t have to explain ourselves, we can just be.
Maybe along with Ilkley, these too are my homes, Bath and Bournemouth too, even though I no longer live there.
So I guess where I’ve got it is this: what if I stop looking for one single place that’s home but embrace the fact that I’m lucky enough to have a few different places where I feel at home, even if a bit of train travel might be needed to get there.
I’m also incredibly aware of my privilege in having lived in, still live in, such beautiful places. The story of home has many layers, it’s nuanced and there’s a lot more to my relationship with home than I’ve gone into here. This is very much a starting point, a pull on the thread and I’ll see where it takes me.
But enough about me, how about you? Where’s home for you, where do you feel at home?
