Tick Tock

On the first day of the new year, I was reminded how precious our time with the people we love is, and how privileged I am to share each and every moment with them. It's not something I had forgotten, as such, but I had perhaps become so caught up in thinking it that I'd forgotten to feel it properly.                                                 

I usually curl up away from the world on New Years Eve, agitated by the incessant reminders that as I journeyed in and out of hospital time was doing little more than pass. I could always hear it ticking long before the chimes.

This year, it was time for something completely different. After a slightly unsettling conversation with a GP who reminded me that the NHS IVF cut-off is closer in practical terms than I had previously considered, I was very aware of the implications of transitioning into another year. A year when I'll turn 29, (which I will continue to deny, favouring a fifth attempt at 25), which is a little too close to 30 when so many decisions must be made long before I'm 35.

So it was with a jumbling tumble of  anxiety and anticipation that I curled up in the warm, with tea and the telly, to see 2014 out, and 2015 in. There was one notable difference this time though; I wasn't alone. I got to spend my New Year's Eve with someone who has always tried to ensure that I'm not on my own for any of the big things, and, more recently, has been there for all the little things too. 

I wasn't in any doubt about how fortunate I was to begin this year feeling safe, warm, loved, and happy - which I'm afraid I still peer quizzically at on occasion, like a dog that hasn't understood a command, as all this contentment is quite new a thing. 

Although unremarkable by the standards of many, it was a particularly good night by my own. I appreciated just how much of the previous year I had enjoyed, despite it also being one of the toughest. As it neared twelve, my companion smiled and pointed out that he wouldn't see me again this year. I felt a moment of bereavement, realising that whatever happened next we'd never again get the same time back. Those months and weeks and days and hours and minutes and seconds of things that were good were being swept away alongside all the bad stuff I had been so keen to move away from. After all that has happened this year, the one thing I had not anticipated was being sad to see it end. But I was, as 2014 drew its final breaths, sorry it was ending there, as all the firsts became lasts. 

What made me so fortunate was that all those lasts; last smiles, last hugs, last kisses, would be reborn in the fireworks before the smoke had begun to clear. Despite the many hardships hovering just over the horizon, the new year brought with it lots of hope. The sense of beginning was just as strong as the pang of loss, and the fireworks beautifully embodied the feeling that there would be pockets of the purest, brightest light in the approaching darkness.

When I woke today, still comforted by the hope and light and happiness that sent wisps of itself out into the future with tantalising clarity, its focus was even more keenly illustrated.

During the night, as I had mourned our lasts and sought solace in our nascent firsts, a neighbouring household could take comfort from neither.

At this stage I don't know who died - if it was the husband of the older couple, or his wife. Simply that yards away from my happiness someone elses lasts were much more final, and their firsts so much more sad. Someone, somewhere very close, had smiled with, and hugged, and kissed the one they loved for the last time. The very last. Their firsts would be so opposite to mine that it was almost impossible to think of them being played out simultaneously. All of my hopeful togethers are to be their desperate alones. All the love and support that carried me into the new year was stolen away for them as the joyous strains of Auld Lang Syne faded too. 

I will begin this new year so very thankful for the people with whom I will share the rest of it, and - I hope - will do my very best to appreciate the strength and depth with which we each love, and are loved, by things whose ties to the world are so frail.

Wishing on a Star

This year, just before Christmas, with nothing wrapped and some things still unmade, I did something I'd never normally do at such a time: I bought myself a present. It seems a little selfish when it's a season dedicated to thinking of others, but there are some moments which call out to be marked and this was one of them.

Around this time last year, as we left 2013 behind and stepped cautiously into a fresh annum, I posted Neil Gaiman's New Year Wish. It was perfect, and summed up many of my hopes for my friends and family. I knew my year was going to be tumultuous to say the least, but adored this little wish and dared to claim its sentiments for myself, and for you.

                                                            

The post was from his blog, here. 

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."

He added:

"I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think

there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind."

And: 

"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't

good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever." 

As I have already detailed in previous posts, one of Gaiman's books had  become particularly important to me during difficult times that year, so it seemed very fitting that I welcome the next with words of his instead of any other. Of course, I then forgot about them almost immediately as living took over from dreaming and was quite unrelenting in its dominance. 

That's not to say that 2014 was, for me, a bad one, just that it required an awful lot more determination than usual to think of it as good. It has been a year of extremes, and all that brings with it. Each moment of pain was matched with laughter, and for everything that came to an end something new began to grow and change. I had to learn to accept help and embrace the vulnerability that had made itself so unavoidable and left me unmasked and unsure.

And yet, in doing so I rediscovered my strength, and reconnected with who I am and  how I became what I think of as my self. I spent much of this year not feeling - or indeed looking - much like myself at all because of side affects from the medical treatment, but in many ways am more connected with my body than I have ever been before. As the fresh scars heal and I feel myself begin to re-emerge from the pudgier, pastier form in which I felt trapped for so long, I am much more aware of how I feel and how I move. I appreciate the battles - some won, others lost - which it has held fast throughout, and have a much deeper understanding of the ones yet to come. We are no longer enemies, my broken body and I. We are allies, brothers (or sisters) in arms, in a war that has ravaged us both.

As I wished you all a happy and healthy new year, I knew not to hope for the same things myself. Disappointment is not easily conquered, and I did not anticipate having the necessary time or energy to sulk properly. 

Then, one perfectly ordinary day, I spotted this on Facebook. The website Neverwear had collaborated with artist David Mack to produce a series of prints, bringing Neil's New Year's Wish to life. Re-reading and remembering it for the first time in nearly twelve months brought to my attention a quite magical and unexpected thing.

Despite all the twists and turns and darker days I, too, had managed all of the things on the lists of hopes and dreams I had for you. Many of them were only accomplished with the help of the people around me, and others I'd had to find it in myself to create or pursue.

At that moment, as the warm thrill of the realisation fluttered in my head and my heart, I cemented the final wish. I had, indeed, surprised myself.             

Several of the people dearest to me in the world already know their coming year will be a complicated one, and aren't sure how to greet so much uncertainty, or how they will begin to untangle it without unravelling themselves. Much as I would like to, I can't shield then from the tumult that awaits, but I can pledge to face it with them, and I do, so very faithfully. 

For you, as for them, I hope that 2015 brings each and every one of you the love and support I have been so fortunate to surround myself with when I needed it most. 

And I hope that you, too, manage to surprise yourself, by being kinder, stronger, happier, and braver than you believe you can be. Let's do it together.

Happy-Slapped by a Gastroenterologist

Welcome to the first blog entry of 2010. I wonder how many blogs this month have begun with variations on that introduction? I'll try to be more original in future - without resorting to the gratingly-zany wackiness of the Rowntrees Randoms advert. If I ever try and begin a banana with a random postman then you have my permission to pour custard on my cherry tomatoes. ...For anyone unfamiliar with the ad in question - who now thinks I'm still hung-over from New Years' - watch this codswallop:



Following a lovely Christmas with the newly-reconfigured family, nasty colds meant that many of us saw in the New Year with bugs that probably warrant their own X-file. I'm not a patient patient, and my cold was always much worse at night than during the day - leading to many a comparison between myself and one of the Gremlins (post midnight-snack.)

Being unwell on holidays really shouldn't be tolerated. In the same way the French protested against wheel clamping by injecting superglue into the lock of every contraption they happened across, Mother Nature should be forced to rethink; as each and any one of us shoves an Olbas inhalator up the nose of every passerby who sniffles within our reach.

My unseasonal malaise began just before Christmas, when I had to attend a routine check-up at the hospital. Due to a family history of Ulcerative Colitis (and a personal one come to that), I'm required to undergo cancer/abnormal-cell screening every couple of years. Now, it's never pleasant, but always necessary - and means letting a strange man get closer to me with a camera than even Paris Hilton would allow...

Honestly, people complain about CCTV, and "living in a Big Brother Orwellian State" but they haven't the faintest idea just how much of a liberty SnappySnaps and Co. actually take. Some things just ought not be captured on film; like any time Les Dennis or Keith Chegwin take their clothes off, or the inside of my remaining digestive tract. Colonoscopies are like clinical happy-slapping: inflicting pain on camera. Gregarious film critic Mark Kermode calls it "torture-porn" when they do so in movies, but I really don't think that what they do to me biannually is for anyone's gratification.

Ever since watching the BBC's season of charming Alan Bennett monologues, I can't help but read these more mundane of my ramblings in his distinctive kitchen-sink-drama voice. I have at least one acquaintance who finds Bennett inexorably dull, which probably lends itself better to the comparison than I have the right to seek in any other respect.

Due to a lack of inspiration - and indeed motivation - to write of late, I've found myself falling back in love with an old flame. What is the object of my re-ignited passion? ...Jewellery design.

Although as a dedicated logophile words will always be my first love, I must admit to several illicit affairs with various aspects of colour, shape and form. From a pre-pubescent love of photography, to an adolescent admiration for design, I have always enjoyed the creative process of weaving something that did not exist until I saw how it should be. All my writing stems from very similar origins, and my enjoyment of literary and fashionable pursuits have long jockeyed for position. Usually the two work reasonably well in tandem. I am flighty, and tire of projects easily, so when I become disillusioned with one outlet for my imagination, I've always been glad of the other to fall back on.

Writing is the one I could not live without - I'm far too opinionated and narcissistic not to have some journalistic outlet - but my eye for colour and unusual shapes means that design is very important to me too. It's a natural part of the way I interact with the world - I see it as an artist, albeit not one of any groundbreaking insight.

Professionally, there is very little opportunity to write at the moment, and apart from my usual poetic outlets, I've been lacking in productivity. Some poets can sit and write about any given subject 'on demand' - will themselves into a mindset where their talent is readily accessible. I, however, have never mastered that skill. While all creation - be it within science or the arts - is a somewhat magical affair, instead of being an alchemic recipe for new life and ideas, mine is far more of a New Age bastardization of Paganism. I don't mix all the ingredients and come up with something astonishing - I must just hang around on the second Tuesday of the full moon wearing red knickers, and wait for a word, or an idea to spark something into being. As the full moon this month was on a Wednesday and my red kecks were in the wash, no sparks flew. So back to jewellery design it is.

As the company I was involved with before have cut so many of its staff, I am not in the position I was previously of being able to design exquisitely expensive pieces and submit them to a workshop for manufacture. For a while at least, I will be back to making the items myself. Hopefully it will give me the chance to expand my silver and goldsmithing abilities, as I get back into manufacture as well as design. Gemmology is a subject I retain a highly-geeky knowledge of, and a return to jewellery design is an exciting prospect.

If and when I launch a few items online, it will be via an Etsy store, and I will announce the details and promotional codes here, so that those of you who suffer my ramblings have some form of compensation for so doing. So watch this space! ...Not literally. It could be a while, and if you just sit there watching then I'll end up being reported to Watchdog as the person responsible for your deaths - like the DJ who challenged his listeners to drink as much water as they could, and one of them died. While inciting such idiots to follow their natural instincts is not a crime I believe to be too heinous, nonetheless it's not the sort of publicity I really need!

So have a Happy New year, and don't have nightmares...