What a Difference a Month Makes

Day 31 - 8:10am, 31st January 2019

It's amazing the difference a month makes, 31 little days. For one, the iPhone is no longer desperate to correct the lighting first thing in the morning, but that aside. We are leaving behind the blues of January, with its focus on self help, of turning over a new leaf and for re-inventing yourself. In its place is February, when we begin to venture out of our caves and think about love. (Presumably, a month of gym visits and promising to give up all chocolate biscuits once the Christmas goodies have been cleared is enough to rebuild our self esteem and make us adorable to whomever we want to flaunt ourselves to.) And it is the only month of the year that changes its duration, where there is some give and take to get us back into line.

There is some speculation as to whether a painting that appeared yesterday on a wall in Edinburgh is a Banksy. If it is decreed it is, presumably by Banksy owning it, then Edinburgh has its latest tourist attraction. I can't see anyone being able to sell it though. You might be able to sell off your garage in Wales for £100,000, but it is a bit harder to pull apart the side of a tenement! That might just be a little bit too much give and take . . .

Living on the White Side of the Street

Day 30 - 09:19am, Wednesday 30 January 2019

The temperature has dropped again today. This is confirmed by Surfer Dude, let's call him, who has caved in to the weather to the extent that today he is prepared to wear a hoodie. Still wearing short shorts and with large swathes of bare leg, but this time he's teamed them with a hoodie. I wonder how cold it would have to get for him to acquiesce to a pair of trousers.

It makes me smile as it reminds me of my own Little Master. He too, if given the choice, would be in shorts regardless of the weather. I often wonder if people look at him and think: poor child, could his mother not have given him trousers on a day like today? When the truth is generally that mummy did and he chose to ignore them. And I've long since learned that you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink, particularly if they are autistic. He knows his own mind and body.

I love how the winter divides our street into them and us. Them is the sunny side of the street and by lunchtime, the pavement is black and shiny. Us is the white side of the street, where the frost never lifts because the sun never manages to rise above the line of the houses. You would think it could make more of an effort to be inclusive.

Mr Fox doesn't discriminate. Walking back from Brownies tonight, I spot him fleeing from our garden. He swiftly crosses to the other side of the street and disappears from sight. Little Miss hasn't see him and expresses her disappointment. Mr Fox, as she calls him and all of foxhood, is a regular visitor to Grandma and Grandpa's garden, where he is tame enough (or at least, blase enough) not to be spooked by children peering at him through the conservatory. This fellow is more jumpy. He too knows his own mind.

My Favourite Things

Day 29 - 10am, 29 January 2019

I ask the nursery children what their favourite place is so that we can to use it as a location for our story massage; I am expecting to hear "the park." Instead, they venture Nandos, Tesco's, Sainsbury's ("that's my mum's favourite place") and TK Maxx! And the massage move that sums them up best is 'the drum' - a move that is like gentle birthday bumps. I must be doing something wrong, because children plus shops has never been a combination that works for me.

But we go with it. And so our story dutiful meanders from the park to the shops and restaurant and then back home again. Where the snakes, a snail, Incy Wincy Spider and a dinosaur engage in my favourite activity, which today is sleeping. Goodnight!

Taking the Day as it Comes

Day 28 - 8:14am, 28th January 2019

I think the iPhone needs to take the credit for this photo. It still wants to fix the lighting, but for being taken when I didn't even have time to stop and point the camera at anything in particular, it is a miracle it is not as blurry as I was blurry-eyed at the time. 

For someone with a headache who had intended to go to bed early, bed was a shameful one am affair last night. And I am not good on lack of sleep, I admit that freely. It has its uses at times. When you are struggling to get the words out and there is a deadline looming, it can help that your brain has left the building and you let whatever it is you are writing write itself. But, generally speaking, I crumple after one night. Any productivity gains are fleeting, at best, and living with the she-devil the next day is not nice for anyone, including me.

 Almost ten hours on from the walk-by photo shoot, however, today has panned out okay. Bus pass replaced for free before work, including photo that is marginally better than the last, meaning I made yoga at lunchtime. The piece of work I was working on finished and inroads made elsewhere. Little Miss seems to have forgotten about her homework, which is good, because the thought of creating a model eco-house of the future is a stretch further than I feel like going tonight. 

Of course, it could mean that I write the addresses on the remaining kids' thank you cards from Christmas ready to post tomorrow, plan the story massage sessions for the nursery and nurture groups tomorrow, or even do any of the other things that remain unchecked on my to do list. Or maybe I could just make myself a cup of coffee and watch old episodes of The Simpsons instead.

When There's Nothing to Say

Day 27 - 11:35am, 27th January 2019

As I approach the Water, there are a group of people with wheelbarrows in the car park of the visitor centre, suggesting they have been out or are about to go out on a river clear up. I am pleased to see when I get to the bridge that both Christmas trees have gone from the water. But then I feel a pang of guilt that I come here every day as an observer, not a doer. I stand quietly by.

I read a TIME article that the monk that taught the West mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh has gone home to 'transition' from life to death. He has stopped his medication, which he took following a stroke three years ago. The article highlights that not only is he able to physically speak any more, but that he has been criticised for not having spoken out about the Communist party. The piece draws to a close with the reminder that Buddhism teaches that Nhat Hanh needs to offer his presence . . . "the Zen master is evidently playing the long game - the longest game of all, in fact, which is eternity." Sometimes, words are not necessary, our presence, or lack of it, says it all.

Just in Time

Day 26, 9:51am, 26 January 2019

I get Little Miss to her Acro Dance just in time. Afterwards, we just make the bus to take us into town. 'Just in time' seems synonymous with life at the moment. Scraping by, everything last minute. So buying her Girlguiding blanket and getting back in time for lunch and before the boys go to taekwon-do seems like a victory. A small one, but a victory. Or it does until I lose my bus pass. It is either lost on the bus to the hairdressers, at the hairdressers or in Iceland (the shop). It rattles me and I feel the tension rising within me. Back home, I am more sharp with the kids than I intend to be at their token tidying up efforts. 

It takes a trip to see Stan and Ollie to resettle me. I don't get Laurel and Hardy. Slapstick in general does not appeal. I don't warm to their characters either during most of it, it feels a little mawkish to be watching their decline. But as the film draws to a close, tears roll down my cheek as I am half expecting Hardy to collapse on stage as they make their final performance. Just in time, it feels like I have found a heart and the tears are cathartic.

On the Defence

Day 25 - 7:52am, 25th January 2019

A poem appears in my memories on Facebook this morning. It makes me smile. I wrote it about a year ago when I opened a jar of hot chocolate for the first time and found that there was a "contents may settle during transit" message on endless repeat across the foil.

A year on, and it is the catering staff at work that seem to be worried how users may react, deciding a pre-emptive message is required before all hell breaks loose. I can only assume that they think the news that the milk is now being kept in the fridge by the coffee machine will prompt some sort of revolution or be the source of numerous complaints - milk in the fridge, by heavens!

A piece of headed paper has been stuck to the machine, which announces in large capital letters and a new font colour that it is a "Polite Notice." I can't remember the exact wording of what it says, only that it is awkwardly written and contains double the amount of words that it needs to. Basically, what it amounts to is that the milk should be kept in the fridge by the coffee machine, not on the counter top as it has until now. It ends with the allergen advice that the milk may contain milk.

I am interested to find out how they scale up from a polite notice. Is the next one going to contain swear words? Will it be a 'by order' and if so, by whom? It is a sad state of affairs that we should be reduced to this sort of paranoia-induced bureaucracy.

Why is it that everybody feels the need to be on the defence? Give us all a little credit. Surely, a post-it note saying "Milk in fridge" would have sufficed so that people knew where to look the first time they saw it wasn't on the counter. Especially given that most people circumvent the counter-top milk and head for the fresh milk in the fridge anyway.

Following the String Course

I have still been thinking a lot about the Sea of Trees from Tuesday. I am haunted by the poet talking about blue and red pieces of thread. Apparently, those who go into the forest to commit suicide often tie blue plastic threads to the trees so that they can either find their way back or to show the park rangers where to find their body when they are gone. In his poem, the poet contrasts this with the idea in Japanese folklore of invisible red threads that tie our souls to one another.

This reminds me of red arteries and blue veins, circulating our body and maintaining our lives. Both are red, but it is not obvious, because the blood going back to the heart in the veins appears blue. How close life and death are, a constant cycle of red and blue, neither more important than the other, both equally necessary, all the time. Without one there is no other.

I like the idea that there is always a lifeline, right to the last minute, that there is always the hope that in the deathly forest they can find life. The lava may have driven life from the mountainside, but life returns. Not pretty, perhaps, but it adapts. It finds a way. I pray that everyone who goes to the forest finds there way home.

Twinkle, Twinkle,

Day 23 - 9:37am, 23 January 2019

Jack Frost must have been working hard last night, pasting his crystals to the ground. This morning they are everywhere. The car thermometer is showing minus four degrees. It is so cold, it hurts my face and chest to breathe. Yet, coming along the road just after I take the photo, a student I'm assuming passes me wearing only a pair of very short shorts and a matching t-shirt. His gait suggests he has all the time in the world. The only thing he is missing is a surf board and he wouldn't have looked out of place on an Australian beach, but he breezes past nonetheless, seemingly immune to the bone-chilling frost in the air.

I walk Little Miss up to Brownies. The pavement is alive with an endless supply of crystals, winking up at us. The frost has not lifted here all day, it has etched itself to the pavement. But just over an hour later I return to collect her. The temperature has lifted and the sparkle has gone, leaving behind a black, soggy pavement. The sparkle is still there though, albeit in patches. You just have to look a little harder to find it and that's okay. 

Joining the Dots

Day 22 - 1:30pm, 22 January 2019

There's no GPS in the suicide forest, nor compasses; iron deposits in the volcanic soil are thought to knock them out. Aokigahara (青木ヶ原), also known as the Sea of Trees (樹海), sits at the bottom of Mount Fiji. The trees have grown out of hardened lava, the calling card of an eruption that happened some 300 years ago. Their roots cannot penetrate the earth to a great depth so they compensate by forming an above-the-ground network. There is little in the way of wildlife and the trees are so dense in parts that the sun cannot stretch down to the forest floor and the wind ruffles its hair (hence the sea of trees) but cannot weave a dance through it. There is also the danger of coming upon a corpse or the This is no place to go forest bathing.

But today I go virtual forest bathing, listening to a radio programme about the suicide forest, in which a small group of poets go into the forest to write poetry. One of the poets explains that there is an invisible layer of words over everything, a presence that others are unaware of - the poet's job is to see the connections and raise others' awareness of the words by joining the dots.

And that is what I am aiming for here - in my life, work, family, writing and even in the daily walk down here - to find the points of connection. Sometimes all I see are dots, sprinkled everywhere, senseless, meaningless, random and tiring; but once I can see the connection, it is there, self-supporting. A weight lifted. I create the bridge, but then I walk over it and move on.

A Nice View on Blue Monday

Day 21 - 8:25am, 21 January 2019

It's one am, and for anyone that knows me, that is about four hours past my functioning ability! So this is going to be brief, particularly as I know tomorrow is going to be a crazy busy. It starts with a child planning meeting for Little Master, there's a Bodybalance class to go to, online food shopping to take delivery of, kids to pick up from school and get to the dentist. Little Miss then has gymnastics and hubby (and I, if I have the energy to go and can be bothered to arrange a babysitter) have a parent council meeting in the evening. Little Master still has homework that needs completing and Little Miss is keen to push on with hers. Everything is being run to a schedule.

Hot on the heels of the blood red moon, it is Blue Monday. (Technically not as its past midnight, but let's run with it.) I am reflective, not necessarily because of the moon's position in the sky or the fact that it is the third Monday in January, but having written my notes in advance of tomorrow morning's meeting, I realise there is much to be positive about. When you stop and think about it, his progress has been noticeable. It's harder to see it without that longer timeline, because day-to-day it is hard sometimes hard to raise your head above the parapet. But it's all about perspective, and he's got places to go has our lad, they all do.

Apparently, the fireworks in the sky are not over. The moon may no longer be red, but today's event is the conjunction of Saturn and Pluto. I love the way the local paper reports it. The headline reads, "Miss the Super Blood Wolf Moon? You can see another stunning astronomical event tonight." The article notes that tonight will be a rare Venus-Jupiter conjunction, known as "kissing planets", where the planets temporarily appear closer together in the night sky. But almost as soon as they offer this golden nugget - sensual planets, who knew! - they take the shine off it. Of course, they are not really near one another, it's all a matter of perspective and some 365 million miles. And, according to NASA, a conjunction has no astronomical value, but it's nice to view. On Blue Monday, that seems good enough for me.