Tedium

I once found some writing in my daughter’s room when she was about 9 or 10 years old. She had been suffering from a heavy cold and had written, with great daring “Fuck germs!” She was outraged that her body had let her down in this way and was making her feel so rotten. I had planned for a quiet half term last week, and it was even quieter than anticipated as I caught the cold that my daughter had brought home from college. Irritatingly, I wasn’t even ill enough to be dramatic, a few desultory sneezes, a nagging dull headache and scratchy throat. Just enough energy to remain functional. Meals were cooked, dirty laundry was made clean, the world’s most insignificant errands were completed. When the high point of the week is collecting a new kitchen sink plug from Screwfix, it’s hard not to be gloomy. It was as if the energy diverted to my immune system to defeat this tedious low level virus had removed my capacity to carry the everyday worries and sadnesses. All problems seemed insurmountable, lost in a cloud of fatigue. There is nothing poetic and beautiful in all this, and I am sorry.

But that is perhaps the point of writing regularly, to test out your thoughts, to hold them up to the light, to scrutinise them. I knew that this morning I needed to take my own advice and take a walk in the woods, let my steps become a meditation. The weather very thoughtfully put on a clear bright day for me and beckoned me out. I crossed the river Avon and headed for St Anne’s Woods and Nightingale Valley in Brislington. I’ve walked there before with the Redfield Ramblers, but staggering around after dark with a gaggle of talkative women is a very different experience (however enjoyable). November has arrived and temperatures are still mild, the front gardens I passed on the way to the woods still sport blooms, there are still roses, no frosts to wither them. A salvia in my own back garden has been flowering continuously for six months.

During the week of tedium I read several articles about muted autumn, the summer drought affecting the usual leaf colour change. The trees have been stressed and so have held onto their leaves for longer, there’s still a lot of green around. Fascinatingly, I learnt that the reds and golds that we see in autumn are there in leaves all the time, but are only revealed as the trees begin to break down the chlorophyll (green pigment) used in photosynthesis. The word nerd in me adds new items to the internal dictionary, yellow pigments are called carotenes and anthocyanins are the reds and pinks.

The seasons may be uncertain, but the days still shorten in the same way. As I walked in the woods, trying to reset myself, I was absorbing the changing quality of light, long shadows stretching. There is a stream running through this site, another soothing sound. I realised I had been craving this, and that I wanted the real thing, not a recorded version in a meditation app. The real thing of course comes with flytipping, nothing is perfect. Babbling brook with abandoned tyre, sorry squirrels. But if you stay very still and listen very carefully, you can hear the sound of leaves falling, you can be in the midst of a tiny miracle.

This week I've been mostly reading old Agatha Christie novels and doing jigsaws, but planning to be brave on Wednesday night and go and read a poem for the first time at an open mic night. I've realised that I only have eight more writing Mondays to go on this self-imposed blog challenge, it's made me ponder what I'd like to fill that space with...