HOLDING HANDS IN THE PARK
The velux windows are so dirty that you can’t really see through them anymore. They are also covered in wriggling tracks made of little interlocking triangles. I don’t know what made them but have a feeling it was the wasps from the summer; nibbling away at the windows. They are now long gone, after we got the wasp man in, as too many were finding their way into the house. I got stung in bed twice. I shudder a bit at that now; but when you are still more or less asleep and roll onto a wasp you don’t really notice its sting until later when you wake to a red lump on your skin and the squashed corpse of the wasp besides you.
I suppose that that is one of the advantages of winter, the biting insects all disappear away to wherever it is they disappear to but then so do the bats. It is only in the last month or so that the bats in the street have gone. But for a time, every time I took Dash the dog out for his night time wee there would be the bats jinking and flittering in the gloom. I loved that, especially when, out of nowhere, one would flick past; so close to us.
Now, now that it is winter, the leaves are all turning to mush on the pavements, making them slippy and insecure and the birds! Somehow the birds look colder than I feel on my daily walks. Just a couple of hours ago I was walking at Levengrove park and down by the sea on the grass, was a flock of oyster catchers. They were so still and the sky so glum that they spoke of the coldness I could feel on my chest where my coat no longer meets in the middle and the wind reaches in to make my skin shrink and shiver. I did have Wendy’s hand to hold though, which not only warmed my skin but my heart.
She was very warming on Saturday when I was lying in bed feeling sorry for myself. I cannot remember just what I had said on Instagram the night before but I was so tired and I had been giving emotional talks in the week and working so hard. It was as if the joy I hope lives inside me somewhere, had twisted itself like a gut can and died of lack of nourishment. My mind does not treat me well at such times and sends me along alleys it would prefer not to go. But as I was staring into the dark, I heard Wendy coming up stairs to slip into bed besides me and cuddle up. I am not too sure what I think when she says that over the years she has grown to see how terribly fragile I can be! She described me as a paper thin china bowl that is easily cracked and so often needs mended.
In the past I might have tensed at that, done that manly: I am no delicate flower thing, but since filling in my PIP claim earlier in the year I have changed my mind. I remember my startled recognition at how much support I get at just this basic living stuff. I relaxed even more when Wendy said such things and snuggled in closer, with not a hint that this reality diminishes me in her eyes.
I have often thought I just got on with life but I don’t, a glance can make me think I am hated; an awkward silence in a meeting make me think everyone despises me and wonders what I am doing in the meetings I attend.
I do not really know why I do the work I do. Although I love it; it tears chunks out of me all the time and causes me to doubt myself more and more. I still find it incredible that me, with my diagnosis of schizophrenia and my compulsory treatment am heading up the involuntary treatment workstream at the Scott Review. It sometimes seems similar to placing a prisoner, still serving out their sentence, in charge of penal reform. And of course it is so easy to doubt, I am so much not an academic; my language does not easily fit into the business of health and policy; my normal companions are not the movers and shakers of Scottish Society. Still, for the moment, that is what I am doing. I have no idea whether I am doing it well or not or even if I should be, still, it seems to be what I do occasionally.
However I am much more comfortable taking photographs of Charlotte getting ready to get on the train with Wendy and James to go to the panto in Glasgow. To eat my cheese and pickle sandwiches on that train and let Charlotte cuddle in when she is upset because either she or her brother have been kicking each other over some slight they have both already forgotten about.
I am also pretty delighted to be besides the sea, watching the noisy power of a gaggle of geese fly low over the hedge just above my head on their way to their nearest field. To turn the corner of the path and see the seals perched on their rocks on the Firth.
I am even more comfortable when I am lying in bed, with the downie warm and soft on me, the radio on, my book besides me, my last whisky of the night on the bedside table besides me and the night beckoning with the foxes calling and the owls screeching.
There is no point to this story I am afraid. I walked in the park, I bought a Christmas tree for the house that miraculously fitted into the car. I drank the nicest sweet potato and chilli soup I have ever had. I held Wendy’s hand and grinned at her teasing. I spoke to a professor in the Netherlands and later I will speak to another professor in Norway. When I speak to them I try to put them at ease and I try to listen and understand what they are telling me. I try to involve my companions but most often I wonder what on earth I am doing; think I am more suited to looking for shirts that will fit me in the charity shops and do my posts about sunsets on facebook.
At the moment I am very happy; the rain of the morning has stopped, there is blue sky. The children will be on their way home from school soon and tomorrow I will drive for a couple of hours to see my sister. Such things are wonderful and much more real than reviews and policy meetings. Next year the wasps will be out again and again we will need to make the decision about whether to let them be or evict them from the roof spaces.
At some stage I will have to clean the windows. I like it when I can see out of them and I like it when the sun shines through them and lights up the room.
(Photos: Levengrove park, Charlotte, Cardross station. December 21)
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