Life has a way of pulling the rug - the mater has had a fall and is now in hospital with a hip fracture, about to have surgery, a half-hip replacement.  It happened the day before she was due to go off on a mini-cruise.  She went out to call on a neighbour, the path was wet and she slipped.  As she is very fit and in good health, things will probably turn out ok, but still, it is not nothing for someone of 89 and three quarters to go through this.  So one has an undercurrent of anxiety, and one is beetling around with hospital trips and trying to sort out a number of practical things.  And as one particularly needs a proper measure of sleep at a time like this, one has of course not slept - and one's wretched neuro-symptoms are sabre-rattling.

These Boots ...

New boot-friends, identical to my old pair.  When you find something that works, stay with it, especially if you have M.E. and have never liked shopping.  New boots are like a blank page or a new pen, no?  They represent possibility.  They also come with a challenge.  Where shall we go, what shall we do?  We'll keep you warm and take you places - let's go!  I haven't the heart to tell them that the walk to the Brighton shopping mall and back to get them is pushing the boat out because usually I get a taxi for the return journey, which is uphill.  The taxis don't like it because the journey is so short, hardly worth their while, and I don't like it because it puts me in mind of roads not-travelled - we must be very Zen and not think about them too much and remember, also, that the short-distance walk may be full of substance and things just waiting for you to notice them.  Aside from walking, these boots are going to be on my feet for the next two years or so, until the heel and the fleece inside are all worn down.   They will be the substance around and beneath my feet.  If there is a boot-blessing, then now is the time to utter it.

Prepare to (possibly) Meet Thy Doom

I am thinking, not for the first time, that the End may well be nigh.  It has rained and drizzled for more weeks than I can count and the builder who was scheduled to do some work to the outside of Signs Cottage has given up sending funny texts about Noah's Ark and probably decided that as we are living in the last days fixing the peeling paint situation on our well-rotted window frames should not be high on his list of priorities.  The cat has arthritis and the fur on her back is in a shocking state because she is unable to wash herself there.  We give her medicine but the vet says she also needs to have her fur clipped.  The late roses that appeared so exuberantly have wilted and hung their heads before their prime.  I bought a pair of Emu boots 'gainst the spectre of another snowed-up winter and had to take them back because they were too small, but the next size up was too big.  It all begins to add up, doesn't it?  And further, there is nothing at time of posting - apart from the cat's fur, but this will be remedied - that I need to be properly anxious about.  My children are both well and prospering, as much as anyone in rented accommodation in the Smoke in this god-forsaken recession (which Cameron now says isn't a recession any more but we know better) can prosper.  The almost-ninety-year-old mater carries on with her twice weekly pilates classes and is going with her spouse on a late autumn cruise.  Our boiler, despite its great age, shows no sign of packing up.  And yet, and yet - "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved" (Jeremiah 8:20).  You get my drift. 

I have said as much before and it bears repeating: I have long suspected that it is only my anxiety that prevents the world from falling into imminent destruction; in which case, dear reader, you should be worried, or at least doing everything possible to be saved a.s.a.p.  I have spoken.

mellow fruitfulness

It's pretty - beautiful even, but after so many days of rain one longs for blue - an autumn day spiked with gold.  Still, the trees keep giving according to their natures.  There are chestnuts lying on the ground waiting to be found.  Mr. Signs fills his pockets with them and eats them raw.  I buy mine ready-cooked and vacuum packed, to eat with sweetheart cabbage dressed with olive oil and black pepper.  Even so, it is in the spirit of the season.  When autumn comes, so does the desire for chestnuts and shiny conkers lined along the windowsill. The leaves have not quite turned, but when they do I will gather some to press between the pages of heavy books (I used to have an ancient bible for this but now use old recipe books and a history of Anglo Saxon England which I bought as an English undergraduate but never read, it was expensive so good to feel it is being put to use).  When the leaves are dry I will fix them to the edges of the windowpane with dots of glue. 

When my children were young I made a space for a nature corner, as parents of Steiner school children often do.  In autumn there might be acorns, berries and leaves.  There would also be a knitted gnome or two, crystals and a beeswax candle in a wooden holder.  I might create such a space again this year.  First I must go out and gather something.  When the rain lets up I will.

Being Mrs. Pepperpot

I am in Brighton getting the flat prepared for people coming to stay.  After driving here I knew I could go to the nearest Co-op and back because the walk would be flat, but no more.  They had no lettuce or any vegetable other than Savoy cabbage and the bread was Warburtons thick sliced - perfect for bacon.  So, a supper of bacon sandwiches with decaf tea, two cherry tomatoes.  This morning, fruit and coffee plus more of the same, or I may get a takeaway from the Moroccan salad bar. Then back to the forest for my book group.

I have been thinking about Mrs. Pepperpot who is Pepperpot by name and also shrinks to the size of one, conveniently or inconveniently depending on one's perspective, when her husband is out at work.  By hook or by crook she has to negotiate the tasks of the day, e.g. housework and the making of pancakes against seemingly insurmountable obstacles.  Fortunately she has this gift, that she is able to converse with animals and seems generally in harmonious relationship with the natural world, and even inanimate objects respond to her energetic commands.  Her predicament may have some resonance for someone with moderate M.E. who might appear to the world as a normally-functioning person and might well choose Mrs. Pepperpot's affliction over her own, for Mrs. P is in robust good health, whatever her size.  She also brings a cheerful acceptance to her predicament and this helps her to be creative and inventive.  Well one does what one can, and I enjoyed the bacon sandwiches.  But it is half past nine in the morning and I can already feel myself about to shrink.

The Purity of the Road

The title is of course from Kerouac, and this is by no stretch of the imagination a Kerouacian road.  It leads from the nearby golf course into the forest.  At some point it becomes a path trodden on the forest floor, and even that peters out and then you have to find your own way.  People get lost in it.

We went to see On The Road at the cinema last night.  Though it had bad reviews and clearly they chose the wrong actor to play JK, it captures something of the beat buzz and that drive to be constantly on the move.  I wouldn't want to go time-travelling back there (or anywhere before Germaine Greer wrote The Female Eunuch) as a female - I just know I would have ended up barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen while the men went off and had adventures.

There is something about a road, and a white line arrowed to anywhere that is not whatever one knows as Here.  It is sometimes said that a real traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.  I should perhaps adopt this approach because my fixed plans often unravel, however intent I may be on reaching my goal.  To go the distance you need fuel in your tank.  I am not speaking of my Nissan Micra, the trusty Signsmobile, but the vehicle that is my body.  I am a PWME and therefore compromised.  I can't do roads.  I can do short-distance flights.  I make promises I can't keep* and commit to projects I can't complete, but hell, so did Dean Moriarty who was mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time and just like him, I burn, burn, burn - in my fashion.  


* so if I don't do a post a day don't shoot me.       

p.s.  Spam-merchants have invaded my house, so comment Word Verification is back, sorry.                                    

If you have not yet looked at the beautiful blog that is Spitalfields Life, then please do yourself a favour and have a look.  It is a work of love and dedication by someone called "The Gentle Author" who has promised to put up a post each day about life in Spitalfields, at the heart of London, until 2037.

Blessed is the one who feels able to say "This is both my task and my delight".