I did my weekly shop yesterday and it was quiet but there was hardly anything there and this was playing and seems apt…
It’s not the end of the world but it’s worrying and I’m concerned for my friends and family who are ‘at risk’ but if we’re sensible, it will be ok!
Happy Friday! It’s been a busy week, on the one hand it’s getting lighter in the morning so I’m much more awake and upbeat, on the other things feel like they are about to be really grim, corona virus and the subsequent tanking of the economy are not great harbingers of spring…
Here are this week’s links
Chris Grayling poisons everything he touches. Yet still he rises
The Coronavirus Is More Than Just a Health Crisis
For Johnson’s new voters, the betrayal starts now
Our social crisis is no longer just about inequality, it’s about life and death
UK’s lost sea meadows to be resurrected in climate fight
It’s time to end 9-5 office hours: the business case for the five-hour workday
For Tuesdays during Lent, I’m going to talk about my faith and spiritual practice (or lack thereof). So this is the time to look away if you’re not interested in this topic. No worries, there will be an allotment post tomorrow and I’ll see you then!
Everyone seems full of panic right now. There is the flooding, the coronavirus, the uncertainty of Brexit negotiations, global heating and all other sorts of chaos that seems right around the corner. Everyone seems worried and anxious and scared.
This is not the part where I tell you that my faith in God takes all suffering away. Faith is not a magic wand for the hard parts of life and God doesn’t promise to make it all better (promises to be with you – yes, solve it all – no).
So what does faith do, if it doesn’t make everything better? Well it’s makes me a lot less anxious
We had a priest at Church who used to change the words to the Mass, instead of “protect us from all anxiety” he would say “protect us from all useless anxiety”, I noticed and I asked him why and he said that in his experience anxiety could be call to do something but that worrying about something you couldn’t change was useless and scary so he wanted protection from that. It’s true, when I am worried about something it’s usually a prompt to take action. So if I’m worried about money, it’s probably because I haven’t been paying attention to my bank balance, once I check it and know where I am then the anxiety goes away. That’s healthy and you can see the emotion is useful.
There’s another sort of anxiety that isn’t healthy and faith does help me with that, I don’t compare my life to others or worry overmuch about what much happen next. Not just because ‘comparison is the thief of joy’ but because I know that however good it is, it could all go tomorrow, but that however bad it is, it’ll all work out.
So be content with who you are and don’t put on airs. God’s strong hand is on you, He’ll promote you at the right time
1 Peter 5:6-6
When I was confirmed I agreed to God’s Plan for my life and I say it every time I say The Lord’s Prayer – ‘Thy will be done/On earth as it is in Heaven’. So while my life is by no means perfect and it’s often not clear to me about what exactly God’s plan is, I know it’s there and when I most need it to, it’ll becomes clear.
That’s not to say I find it easy. I don’t. What I know is that at the times when it has felt unbearable, something has happened to make it bearable. At the times when I have been in the places that God wanted me to be, it has been transcendent.
This isn’t how faith works for everyone, but it’s how it works for me.
Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.
Galatians 6:4-5
Happy Monday!
Last week was stupidly busy, mostly taken up with trying to iron out any wrinkles that could stopped our team from home working so I logged lots of time with the IT dept. I also recognise the ridiculousness of having to work a full week in the office because I’m trying to sort out working from home. Anyway, we’re ready and we’ll be having tests over the next couple of weeks. Assuming that the world doesn’t end before then!
I don’t panic, I made sure to re-up my asthma meds this week and got some paracetamol but that was stuff I was planning to do anyway. I have plenty of food at home and can work from home really easily. If it comes to quarantine there are enough books in the flat that I’ll never be bored! I’m not being blasé about it, I’m washing my hands often and thoroughly but I’m not a key worker and I will be paid if the office shuts down. Once you have done everything you can, anxiety is the most useless emotion so I don’t worry…
In other news, I also had something cold like going on, I had a couple of days of blocked eustachian tubes followed by a sore chest but a quiet weekend and some night nurse seems to have dealt with it. I had a blood test and a tetanus booster on Wednesday (and I’m still mildly allergic to the plasters – it’s really odd, it’s just the round ones at the doctors!), got a flower on the way into work on Friday (The Salvation Army was celebrating International Women’s Day. Nothing at all out of the ordinary.
This week, Sarah is coming to dinner tonight, and I’m knees deep in work and really don’t have anything else to do except work, read and sleep..
Happy Friday! This week was all a bit ‘waiting for the apocalypse’. Public transport is heavy with the scent of hand sanitiser! It’s not happened yet but who knows. Here are this week’s links
It’s not just chlorinated chicken: five foods a US trade deal could bring to the UK. Lots of my friends in the US only eat organic and this is why. It’s also why I’m thinking more about how self-sufficient I can be in vegetables, because I’ll need the money to spend on ensuring better quality meat, which I will be eating a hell of a lot less of should any of this come to pass.
Faced with the coronavirus, Boris Johnson must stop playing the invisible man
How I managed to raise a little bookworm in the age of smartphones and tablets. I found this unbearably smug. She seems only to have one kid, her method is not tried and tested. It worked on one kid, whose mother was a reader, would it work on another? My mum read and I’m a reader, my brother is not. We had exactly the same upbringing in relation to books and he reads but it’s not the default option for entertainment that it is for me.
Boris Johnson’s baby news: his transition from politician to celebrity is complete. Also any female politician admitting to a sixth or seventh child engaged to be married for the third time to the father of the baby but not yet divorced from her previous husband who was undergoing treatment for cancer, with a history of moving onto the next person before she was divorced, would be absolutely destroyed in the media. Think about the way that Jeremy Corbyn’s private life was examined and reported? The way the ‘family and morals’ papers are treating this news like a national event is hypocritical and sickening….
Labour can’t have it both ways on immigration
On fishing and farming, Johnson may again be forced to back down
Coronavirus will show us what this government is really made of
February’s reading started strong and then sort of trailed off, I couldn’t find anything I was really interested in partly it’s because I’m really busy at work and partly because I’m waiting for The Mirror and the Light! Which should arrive today, I may just spend the weekend in the 1530’s as imagined by Hilary Mantel!
Good Husbandry: Growing a Family on a Community Farm – Kristin Kimball
I have read and really enjoyed ‘The Dirty Life’ which is her first book about her relationship with the husband and the farm. I’m not going to pretend I understand anything about the life she describes so unflichingly, I’m just romantic enough to think I could do it and just practical enough to know that it’s not my thing. The difference between when I read her first book and now, is that I have an allotment. An allotment is not the same as a farm but I have a better understanding of the effort and the worry of growing food even though I’m not dependent on it either as my sole source of food or income. There is an allotment joke about how one year we might grow two punnets of tomatoes which will take the overall cost down to £30 per tomato! So the effort it takes to wrestle a living from the land is not lost on me and Kimball is clear about the hardship and about her choosing of that hardship. She is also clear about how she finds grace and meaning from her way of life but at the same time completely open about the struggle that it takes to get there.
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: Travels Through my Childhood – Bill Bryson
This was on the TBR shelf at home, I have a really bad habit (one I’m working on in 2020) of racing through the fiction TBR and leaving the non-fiction. So this has been on the shelf since the last time I was in Northumberland (it was part of a Barter Books haul). As ever with Bryson’s books, I found it informative and entertaining, it also confirmed my belief that the 1950’s (especially in the US) was completely insane…
Waking up with the Duke – Lorraine Heath
This was discussed on a recent episode of Fated Mates and they are really good at selling the books they like just through talking about them. I was sold and I pretty much agree with what they said. Everyone in the book is, not exactly lying but just not saying painful, truthful things. There is a lot that the heroine isn’t told to ‘protect her’ and there are no villains just imperfect people mucking up things. It’s a really lovely book, it does have some of the usual hand waving required to believe in the HEA but it was a lovely book.
Pleasures of a Notorious Gentleman – Lorraine Heath
I’m reading this trilogy backwards, the trilogy is about the sons of a notorious Duchess and this is the book before Waking up with the Duke, and about the middle brother, Stephen, who has no title, and Mercy. We start the book with Mercy at the home of the Duke presenting the family with the son of the presumed dead (by Mercy), Stephen. Stephen was in the Light Brigade at the Crimea and was much injured, Mercy was one of Nightingale’s nurses which is where they met and he knocked her up. Except Stephen isn’t dead but he has amnesia and Mercy wasn’t the one he knocked up. She helped another nurse, Sarah, give birth and when Sarah abandoned the baby, Mercy took on motherhood and claimed it so that she’d be allowed to stay with the baby. There is a lot of work to do to give them a happy ending and most of it would have been resolved quicker if they’d used both their brains and their tongues to talk. 2 books in, I’m already tired of what marvelous lovers these brothers are but mostly because someone Stephen served with in the Crimea but doesn’t remember, tells him how amazing Mercy was, he believes the story she’s told him. Rather than take the word of the woman he says he’s in love with, he’ll believe a completely strange man. Ruined it. Is it believable, well that last bit is, but I was not convinced by the HEA because of that.
The Bright Beauty – Emily Cavannagh
This was an Amazon free book a while ago and I finally got around to it. It’s a story of twin sisters, Franci and Charlotte (Lottie) told by them. Lottie is bipolar (are you bipolar or do you have bipolar?) and it centres on Franci being called to come and help her sister in California because she’s been in an accident. It’s about how the disease changes you and changes the people looking after you.
I felt a huge amount of sympathy for Franci and a huge amount of frustration with Charlotte. Like an addict her disease tells her, that it’s everyone else, if they would just leave her to it, she’d be fine, but as the people around her point out, it’ll never be fine, she’ll always find a reason not to take her medication and with a child in the mix, you can never be left to it. I found Charlotte difficult because mental illness, is quite selfish and we see that as Charlotte resents Franci’s family and can’t understand why she can’t drop everything and come and look after her and her child indefinitely. It’s also in the very real irritation she feels and expresses when Franci asks her if she’s taking her meds, she’s not, Franci’s right but Charlotte just can’t see it, there is no real understanding of the consequences of her actions on other people.
Chasing Cassandra – Lisa Klepas
I’m almost at the point that a new Klepas is an auto buy for me and I really enjoyed this, it’s funny and simple. I quite like a story where the things that the characters need to overcome are in themselves and that this allows them to be fully loved. I did feel that the plot moppet was a bit much and the story I wanted was more of Tom and his family. His mother refusing to speak to him because when his father returned for money Tom didn’t make him stay and now his sisters don’t speak to him. I wanted to know about that, about whether some of this is the cause of much of his behaviour. It could have been more interesting but I was still very fond of it!
We finally had a good chunk of time when it wasn’t raining! Behold we put more beds in and there was wood chip so we did our thing. This picture is from the work area. We have a couple of more beds to put in but the drill ran out of battery and we only have enough wood for one more bed anyway.
We have left the path extra wide because we can put potato pots and things there and still have space, eventually (probably next autumn we will move/adjust some beds at the top end in order to give us more of a straight path all the way from the top to the bottom of the plot.
We didn’t do a lot more but we did take down the kale which was starting to flower. We love kale and it kept us in greens for all of the winter. I can see why this time of year is the hungry gap, we have some underdeveloped leeks, some corn salad and some tiny sprouting broccoli growing right now. That and the herbs, which are growing but don’t provide all that much sustenance! Every year I say I need to get better about over wintering and having food growing at this time of year. At least I still have some squash to eat!
There is a lot more to do but I really feel that we’ve broken the back of it. Next up compost buying and sorting but that probably won’t happen until the end of the month
For Tuesdays during Lent, I’m going to talk about my faith and spiritual practice (or lack thereof). So this is the time to look away if you’re not interested in this topic. No worries, there will be an allotment post tomorrow and I’ll see you then!
One of the things I really miss about living in Fulham is having a Church community and a church I’m comfortable-ish in. There are lots of churches in Ealing but I miss the connection I used to have at St Thomas’ and the ease of just knowing when I could turn up because I knew the Mass times and I knew the church because I’d spent so much time there.
I don’t have that anymore. Having left my home parish due to the rise of conservative attitudes and clericalism within the church (personally there were lots of reasons but the decision to change the Mass with no consultation because consultation that had happened was overwhelmingly opposed, was my last straw), I don’t feel that any RC church is a place that shares my Christian values so where do I go? CoE churches are a minefield because you never know what you’re going to get, in Ealing they seem to be either happy clappy or Anglo Catholic (and if I wanted to be a member of a faith community that didn’t allow women to be priests, I’d still be a Catholic!). Grace fits for most of it but the timeframes don’t always work and you can’t really just turn up to a service so I have struggled to be an active member for several years. Other Christian denominations, my Grandad was a Salvationist, I can and have gone to Methodist churches but I like Mass…
Last week, I spent some time working out where and how I could get ashed for Ash Wednesday. St Paul’s at 5pm is pretty much next door to the office will there be a problem getting in just for a service? The nearest Church to my house is very evangelical and the only Ash Wednesday service was at 10am, there other church near the office is St Nicholas Cole Abbey and that is coffee shop by day and has no Ash Wednesday service.
This is a perennial problem of the established Church (and I mean churches with building and presence not just the Established Church which is the CoE) and people like me. Church is a community, showing up is important and they should minister to the needs of their parishioners but what if you just need to turn up for one thing, or just hear Mass because you need to find comfort in the structure of it?
It’s a conundrum for churches which should be for everyone and it’s a conundrum for me because I don’t fit any of the recognized boxes that accompany organised church. I’m female, I’m single, childless and middle aged and I have a very clear idea of my faith and my relationship with God, I’m not lonely, or poverty stricken, I don’t have a drug problem and I don’t have a God or community shaped hole in my life. Most of the outreach that church communities engage in don’t work for me because I don’t fit the demographic. That’s not in anyway boasting about my specialness, most churches really struggle with single, childless, women with opinions. Old maids are for cleaning churches, doing what the priest tells you and pining after the v. few single men in the church congregation (it’s part of the reason I stopped going to St Thomas’.)
So what do I do? I could just pick a church and go and work at being a member of the community but I was part of a community and I was quite clearly rejected for being who I am and not being obedient enough. So there is a lot of fear for me in doing that, it perhaps takes a level of vulnerability I can’t brave right now. Grace was part of a solution, but part of the problem for me, was me, sometimes I don’t want a radical re-imagination of worship, sometimes I just want to go to Mass and be comforted by the familiar structure of it and the comfort of communion. I’m aware that living in community is sometimes about learning to live in community and that this isn’t always perfect, but I do need to live in a community where I’m not viewed as lesser because I’m single, as my friend Kathy says “One is a whole number”.
On Ash Wednesday, I left work later than I wanted and I would rather skip church than be late, so I didn’t go at all. Proof that I don’t have any answers but it bears thinking about….
Happy Monday and welcome to March!
March is a good month, in fact in March we get both the first day of metreorological Spring and the Spring equinox, it’s Women’s History Month and also World Book Day, International Women Day, St Patrick’s Day (St David’s Day but that’s not an excuse to drink Guinness!) Mother’s Day and the clocks go forward. Joy seems a lot closer in March for me it’s the month I start to feel a bit more myself because it’s not so dark.
Other plans for the month, well there’s sowing to do for the plot, Mother’s Day and my sister-in-law’s 40th birthday party and yes I am contemplating a massive ‘oh no 4-0’ poster. What are you all up to March?
But let’s talk about the week just gone because it was quite a week. At work we stepped up our Business Continuity planning (yes I’m sure you all know why!), I planned and hosted a drinks event for the company’s Foundation and I had another ‘inexplicable fever’. I’m still calling it inexplicable but the doctor says it’s a peri-menopause symptom, which sucks because they seem to be happening monthly and I’m not bouncing back as quickly as I used to! I have some blood tests this week but I’m worried he’s only testing for hormones (which go up and down) and not other things it could be. It took three years to get an asthma diagnoses because the doctors couldn’t see past my weight, now they seem not to see past my age!
Other than that work, thinking about the allotment and trying to get enough sleep (which is another thing that has gone even more missing recently and is perimenopausal…joy!)
At some point in the not too distant future, one of the children in my life (Tabitha or Oli are my personal bets) will be very dismissive of She Bangs the Drums and I just won’t get it. In exactly the same way that I don’t get Ma’s Billy Fury ‘thing’ and I really won’t get the stuff that was the soundtrack of the year they did GCSE’s (or whatever they’re calling them).
For the record, I don’t recall it being a song a really loved at the time but I do know all the words…
