Last week was the beginning of my ‘more social than I’m used to’ October.
First, however, I had to deal with plumbing. Apparently, there is a leak from my flat into downstairs. I have no earthly idea how because the shower isn’t leaking and I hardly shower (I prefer baths except for hairwashing day!). However, landlords werer called and the plumber came and there is a leak on the pipe that feeds into the toilet, which isn’t above the flat downstairs, it’s above my stairs, but I suppose that could be it. Anyway, landlords were called and that got fixed on Wednesdays.
It did necessitate a small clear out and re-arrange of the cupboard of doom but it took me a couple of days to get the flat back under control.
Like I said it’s marginally tidy
With the added work stress of trying to get all the quarterly reporting together, if felt like a difficult week. On Friday, I got a flu jab and on Friday night I stayed with Ma, so we could go and get her flu and COVID jab on Saturday morning and then do the usual Saturday things. Saturday afternoon/evening, I did housework and prep (I’m happy to report that I’m up to date with my ironing!) because I had plans on Sunday.
I love the repurposed tube station sign at my doctors
On Sunday morning, I had a quick couple of hours at the plot and then Christelle, Mike and I went to the Grayson Perry exhibit at Pitzhanger Manor. Mike has never been to Pitzhanger Manor before and Christelle hasn’t been since it’s been restored so we got art and history in one go and then had lunch.
This isn’t from the Grayson Perry part of the exhibition
This week, is the usual round of work, home and mother, and also Grace on Saturday night and on Sunday I’m back to Surbiton for family lunch for my brother’s birthday, we’re going to Hart’s Boatyard, which means I’m going to spend a lot of time on the bus, which is where I’m getting my down time at the moment!
Last week was wet. I know it’s been wetter in other parts of the country, we have been unscathed but this week it came for us. In fairness, it was dry on Tuesday, but I could have done without it starting to rain, just as I was about to leave the house on Wednesday morning, we had a team meeting on Wednesday, so I had to go in! I do sometimes have to remind myself that I’m not the Wicked Witch of the West, I won’t melt if I get wet, but I’m thankful that I didn’t straighten my hair because that would have been annoying.
Last week was the usual, nothing much going on.
This week is October, I have a more interesting week. Work is all about quarterly reporting, the weekend is flu jab for me, and flu and COVID for Ma. On Sunday, I’m going to see the Grayson Perry exhibition at Pitzhanger Manor with Christelle and Mike. So mildly social and a bit busy!
‘I have £7 in my bank account’: how the two-child benefit cap changed Britain. Honestly, it was a stupid idea. People have babies and honestly the decision to keep a baby is often about capacity, but I don’t know anyone who had an abortion because of the cost of a baby, and what about people who have babies and are working and it’s fine and then they find themselves claiming benefit. I’ve been there and it sucks but you never think you’ll be there. I know it’s annoying to feel your taxes are paying for someone to make poor choices but as a childless person, that’s life. I don’t necessarily support people having IVF on the NHS but my taxes contribute, I didn’t support the invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan, I don’t think MP’s should get subsidised restaurants or bars, but my taxes pay for that. In the global south there is a large amount of research that says the best way to alleviate poverty and all the subsequent bad affects is to give poor people cash. Here the idea that you deal best with the impacts of homelessness is housing first. The way to get people out of poverty is not punishment, give them the cash, I don’t care if some of the people receiving the cash are feckless, you can deal with that when 99% of the rest of them aren’t cold and hungry. Or and here’s a radical idea, let’s create a world where a man working a full time job earns more that £800 a week!
Time for a noodle tax?: Doctor who sounded alarm on ultra-processed food urges tougher action. I do think that something needs to be done about this, but I also think that the problem isn’t food, the problem is capitalism. During the Industrial Revolution, there was writing bemoaning that because mothers weren’t at home that food became bread and jam. I’ve read articles talking about how much of the Industrial Revolution was dependent on colonialism, poor people couldn’t have bought the jam unless sugar was cheap. Why was sugar cheap? The problem is that everything is connected and capitalism requires a race to the bottom. Growing food, takes time, preserving food, takes time, cooking food, takes time and we’ll all so tired and so broke… It’s more than regulation, it’s going to take vision and commitment, and it’s going to cost….
Do you strive to be in control of your life? It might be holding you back … I have mad control issues, because I understand that I do not and cannot control key parts of my existence. I seek to control the things I can, to understand what I cannot and I have therapy and prayer to help me discern the difference.
I want to be a stay-at-home mum, and feel angry that society won’t let me. I found this fascinating. I’ve always thought that I was born to be a 1950’s housewife, I wanted to be a parent. It didn’t happen, it sucks not having the life you think you were born for. I remember when Jo told me she was pregnant, I cried a lot. Not because I wasn’t happy for her, I am and I love her junior version. But Lu was pregnant and now Jo was and I just felt bereft. Things that saved me, faith, friends, I’m a fantastic godparent and aunt and this year, the knowledge that looking after Ma and a 14 year old while coping with a job, a flat and an allotment, would do me in. At the point the eldest nephew and the godchild were born I was unemployed and borderline depressed it was incredibly tough but you know, I also got to help, I was the second person that met Ms. T (I joked at the time I was going to imprint on her like she was a baby duck!). Life happens fast, if you’re really lucky you get a life you can live with. I would always advise looking for the good stuff, doing things for others and practice being grateful. Unusually for me, I have a bible quote that keeps me when I wobble one this. From 1 Peter (my favourite apostle) 5:6-7 ‘God’s strong hand is on you: he’ll promote you at the right time. Live carefree before God; He is most careful with you‘. If it’s not Christian faith, find something that makes you feel like that, that you have a purpose and and a passion and do the best you can with everything else.
I’ve taken some form of vitamins for years. As peri menopause hit, I changed it up and this is what I’ve been taking for the last year. I split my supplements into morning and evening, so that’s how I’ll talk about them. Disclaimer, I probably should get all of this from my diet, this is what is working for me, I’m not saying you should…
Mornings
I’m in my fifties and peri menopause and there seems to be a positive correlation between collagen and oestrogen and you lose about a third of your collagen in the first years of menopause (and my knees seem to back that up!) so I take collagen peptides in my coffee every morning, I use Hunter and Gather (I don’t take the marine version because it tasted fishy!).
When I eat my breakfast, I take a bunch of stuff, starting with a pro-biotic, which helps keep my gut in order, I have always taken Vitamin D in winter but over COVID lockdown I switched to taking it year round and last year I switched to using NothingFishy (thanks social media advertising) because there was a bundle deal, I started with the Vitamin D3, the Omega 3 and the Irish Sea Moss. I’ve noticed a really difference taking these after three months, so I continued. I’ve also always taken a multi vitamin but stopped last year when I used up my Wilko stash, this summer, I added the women’s multivitamin from Oxford Origins to the line up
Evenings
About 7 years ago, when I started to skip periods, my doctor suggested that if I wanted to avoid HRT there had been some evidence that agnus castus was helpful for peri menopause. As part of a study on whether it was helpful for PMT, women of a certain age had reported that it helped them too. I tried it and it did help even out my periods and mood, it was another 4 years until I started on HRT, I still take it and I notice that it still helps my mood (I’m naturally grumpy but it stops me from being irrationally grumpy!). I also take a magnesium supplement because there is evidence that migraine sufferers have low levels of magnesium, and that magnesium helps with sleep (and my sleep has been terrible for ages and peri is not helping!). I take both of these at dinner.
While I recognise that you can’t supplement your way out of an unhealthy diet and lifestyle, I do think they are helping. So that’s what I’m taking.
As it gets colder and darker, I can’t deny the inevitable fact that it’ll be winter soon and I’m going to be spending more time indoors. Which means I start to think more about the state of the flat, in the summer, it’s fine if it gets a bit messy, that’s not a problem but in winter, those things niggle at my brain and I need more order and less mess. It’s why every autumn, I implement Golden Hour, because when it’s 6am on a cold, dark morning, and my bed is comfy and the duvet extra heavy, the best thing I can do for myself, is an easy path to coffee and the tiny dopamine kick of ‘the kitchen is tidy, I CAN do hard things’. It helps.
Things I can ignore in summer, cannot be ignored in autumn and so I have started to get around to the little things in the flat that have been annoying or irritating me, in the spirit of Michael Mosley, I’m trying to do ‘just one thing’ them as they start to really annoy me, here are the things I have done in August and September so far:
A new system of the leaning tower of Pisa that was my TBR pile
A riser for my work at home desk, instead of the pile of work notebooks that I was using before AND sorting and getting rid of the used notebooks!
Framing and putting my allotment awards on the wall. Because I need reminding that I have worked hard to create that plot.
Framing and hanging the ‘30 ways to poster’ in the kitchen
Off the top of my head, here is a list of things that I could do/need to do in the flat, there is probably more….
three bags of books that have been hanging around since April 2023 need to go to the charity shop
the freezers need defrosting
the oven needs cleaning
the cupboard of doom needs sorting and I need to sort out the council picking up some broken furniture (because I have no way to get to the tip!)
there’s a pile of allotment things in the hall that need sorting.
The box of pictures hanging out in the bedroom
I need to wash and sort out plastic pots.
I need to sort out the box of pictures that have been sitting in my bedroom since the work on the flat (April 2023!)
My bedroom needs a declutter.
My kitchen cupboards also need a clean and declutter.
The white cupboard in the living room needs a tidy.
The tiles in the bathroom need a ‘mould and mildew’ clean.
The bokashi bins need emptying.
Not all of them require money, most just require time and effort but I would like to see how many I can do because I think they would make my happier in my space this winter.
It feels like September is nearly over; autumn is relentless and I am tired. Other than that, it’s all good.
The liturgical year is currently in ‘ordinary time’. It’s not called ordinary because it’s dull, but because it’s counted. (The name comes from the Latin ordinalis, which refers to numbers in a series, its where we get the word order from too). So Ordinary time is the ordered life of the Church outside of feast (Christmas or Easter) and expectation and reflection (Advent and Lent). I’m in ‘ordinary time’ at the moment. I’m adjusting to Autumn and ‘caring’ for Ma but there are no major highs or lows, it’s ordinary and routine and that pretty much sums up last week. Ok, there was Tuesday, when I tried to recycle my keys but my being scatty and a bit brainless before 10am is ordinary.
Ma and I visited the Farmer’s Market in Surbiton on Saturday and I bought all the cheese! I got the number of ripening tomatoes down to one tray but I do need to go and do another pick today (after the rain) and there are about 5 kg of tomatoes in the freezer that I’ll process later in the year.
This week is much the same, I’m in the office tomorrow and Wednesday, there’s the EDAS AGM on Thursday. (After some consultation with plotholders, the Pumpkin Walk will go ahead on 26th October, I will be serving mulled wine to the masses and ticket sales will start soon, please do come along if you’re local, the tickets fee is nominal so we can keep the numbers containable.)
Because we’re nearly done with September (only 7 more days) my thoughts are slowly turning to October, which while not frantic is busier than September has been. There is stuff happening in three of the four weekends and sometimes a couple of things happening. So it’s going to be busy. But this week is still ‘ordinary time’, and I’m really grateful for it…
Last year, the lid on the travel mug I’d been using died and while technically it still worked it was becoming awkward to use. As soon as I’d bought it, I realised my mistake because it didn’t fit under coffee machines and while it was leak proof it was always tricky to open and use on the train.
In use at the office
Enter this Circular and Co cup, it’s leakproof, the size of a paper coffee cup, has a lid that you just pop up and down. I also appreciate the symmetry of some of it being made from old paper cups.
Finally, if you break the lid or the cup you can just replace the lid or the cup and not have to throw the whole thing away and there are instructions on how to take the lid apart and deep clean it.
These links are the culmination of at least a month of me collecting them and then forgetting to hit publish so some may be a little out of date!
Israeli forces kill at least nine Palestinians in West Bank raids. Israel won’t stop until someone (the US) stops them. They are gunning for genocide and calling criticism anti-semitic. It’s not anti-semitic to point out when people are wrong, the reasons for it are complex but it needs to stop. Take away their arms, sanction them, do to them what the West does to other states like Iran. No more playing favourites, the Israeli state is not moral it is refusing to compromise and blaming Palestinians for it. Enough.
East German culture has been ignored for too long. Until we embrace it, our country will remain dangerously divided. I grew up with the idea that West Germany spent a great deal of the post war years, addressing Nazism and that East Germany had not. And I suspect that assumption meant that when AfD started to rise that this was why. The old ‘those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it’ cliché. Given all things that are happening here, I think that’s too simple an assumption but somehow I’m not surprised to discover that the people behind AfD are not from where their supports are..
More than a million unpaid UK carers living in poverty, research finds. This is something that I’ve been thinking about recently. Fortunately, I won’t need give up work to care for my Mum, she’s doesn’t need full time care, just some help. So, I’ll juggle work a bit if there’s an emergency, I’ll use up leave to go to appointments with her, everything else will fit around the evenings and weekends. I know so many people who have done or are doing that. I don’t expect to be paid for looking after my mum, I recognise the privilege of having a parent that has been alive long enough to require help as she ages.
However, there is financial cost for caring, for me that the cost of travel and having to give up a day every weekend, this year I bought extra holiday and as I’ve used most of it on mum’s appointments that will continue next year. I’m lucky, I’m relatively well paid (for London) and I work in a company and have a manager who understand and give me time. Also Ma isn’t struggling for money, we can afford it (although if anyone would like to argue for a free bus pass for carers, I’m here for that!). If you can’t, there’s carer’s allowance.
Well, that’s the theory, but to qualify for the £4,258.80 pounds a year carer’s allowance, you need to earn less than £151.00 per week. Which is £7,852 a year. How many people do you know that can live on that? If you must give up work to care for someone and have a spouse who supports you, carer’s allowance will help to offset the cost of caring, if you don’t need to work for money, carer’s allowance is great. If you are single or if you and your partner both work, then you can’t claim carers allowance. 35 hours a week at minimum wage is £20,820.80. If you’re earning that, money is probably already tight, you need all the help you can get but you can’t get any help. Which means probably one of you giving up work and then everyone struggling. People who have full time jobs can’t claim carers allowance as they juggle the emotional and financial cost of caring for others and save the country a massive amount of money in care fees and NHS costs. It’s a ‘benefit’ designed for the 1950’s not for the 2000’s. We need to massively rethink how we view caring for sick, disabled, or elderly people. As part of the re-think we need to think give carers the same rights as parents to vary hours or take time out when required and we should increase the threshold of what you can earn before you can claim carer’s allowance. I think that if you are the primary support for someone who is claiming disability living allowance then you should get carers allowance regardless of how much you earn and we should perhaps define the role a bit better, looking after a disabled child, an elderly parent or a elderly parent with dementia are all very difference experiences with different tasks and we really need to look at how we choose to support people.
Ministers launch pension credit campaign after restricting winter fuel payments. I get why they did away with universal winter fuel payments but I really dislike taking a universal benefit and restricting it. The state pension is about £11k a year and the pension tax credit only takes it to the state pension, also that cliff edge of people who are about £500 a year over the pension tax credit threshold worries me too. I want to see this government raise capital gains tax (unearned wealth) instead of playing about with tax and benefits of working and/or poor people.
Stop press: it’s the very last Evening Standard in London today. And that tells us a lot about Britain in 2024. We used to get the Evening Standard every day, Dad used it for jobs and I’ve done that too. I learned to cook in part from the Nigel Slater and Lindsey Bareham columns, for years Ma had the ‘Thatcher Resigns’ front page framed. I still pick one up for Mum when I go into the offie, so she can do the crossword. It’ll be strange not to have it around…
Why stop at breakfast? We paediatricians think all of England’s primary pupils should have lunch for free. I do think that universal free school meals are the way to go. However, as a child of the 1970’s and 80’s who went to schools that were full of working-class kids (ILEA so we still got the free school milk in primary), there weren’t that many of us that couldn’t afford school dinner or packed lunch. There were a couple, and it was a smallish school, we all knew why. There was a disabled parent, a single parent, there were a couple of kids who probably should have been or were under social services. But for most of us, food wasn’t something we thought about, I can’t remember school dinners, I had a packed lunch which was a sandwich, a yoghurt, fruit and veg (I really liked to take a carrot instead of an apple!), maybe some crisps and some form of biscuit bar all through my school life (Grandad was the provider of fruit and biscuits because he was a feeder, a trait I definitely inherited). Most of my class did the same and there were variations, I came from a not much added sugar household, my cousins didn’t. Some of the kids ate more exciting food than the standard white working-class diet of the 70’s and 80’s but there was always food, enough of it and healthy enough. So, I have to ask what kind of society have we created where people can’t adequately feed their children? Where they don’t have the money or time or knowledge or equipment to make enough decent food for themselves or their kids? So much so that our children are getting shorter and less healthy, that they have tooth decay so bad they must have all their teeth removed? That the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health is supportive of the idea of free school breakfasts and lunches? Am I living in the upside down because this is mental.
Sunscreen is taxed as a ‘cosmetic’ in the UK. As a skin cancer survivor, I’m appalled. I didn’t realise and it’s really stupid. I also use factor 50 religiously on my face and arms (generally the only bits of me I actively expose to the sun) and recommend the Altruist range because it’s inexpensive for sunscreen and designed by a NHS dermatologist. I use the sun cream (for body and face) and the primer. I’m fond of the whole range and use the moisturisers too!
Nic Dempsey 