Yoga

I've always thought that Yoga was some kind of magic.

I took my first class with my mum when I was a teenager.  It was in a primary school hall that smelled of chips, pink custard and sweaty plimsolls. We got our mats from a trolley behind long green curtains decorated with cartoon toadstools and mushrooms in various shades of brown and orange and red. The class was almost exclusively made up of middle aged ladies, farting their way through down-faced dog and child pose.  It might have put other people off but I just loved it.  It was a no-pressure kind of exercise.  The instructor kept encouraging us to wait; not to push anything and we had a little sleep at the end. She guided us through clenching and relaxing muscles from our toes to our heads and I slept really well that night for the first time since I'd got into the habit of reading under the covers with a torch.

In my early working life, yoga classes were the only way I coped with jobs I hated.  My yoga teacher was brilliant.  She was on the National Executive committee of the British Wheel of Yoga and wore classic black leotard and footless tights and had a plait that she could sit on. Her guided relaxations at the end of the lesson were what we all really came for. The fact that after a few months of patient waiting in badhakonasana our knees were nearly touching the ground was just an exciting bonus. One man always snored but swore he heard every word and it changed his life.

When I moved and had children I struggled to find a good class.  Fitness queens had decided that they needed to add yoga to their repertoire, alongside aerobics and weight training.  They pushed and shouted and encouraged the class to 'feel the burn'.  They changed the name to Callenetics or BodyBalance but it was it was just yoga poses without the magic. So I decided to go it alone, starting every day with a few stretches and ending it with a Shavasana pose, guiding my thoughts through my muscles from top to toe and focusing on breathing.

A few years ago I discovered Yoga with Adrienne on YouTube. She's sweet, has over 60 different routines and does the magic thing.  The dog even enjoys it.

He knows that he he's not really allowed to join in. While I'm lying on the floor, he'd love to take his opportunity to lick my ears but he knows the rules and leaves me in peace. Except for the routine I did the other day.  It was day 13 of her Revolution series and was called Practice Opening.  She said it would be perfect for when you needed to gain fresh perspective on things and hit the refresh button.
Lying on the floor in a hip-opening pose I followed her instruction and said, "I am open." The dog took this as an invitation to hit the refresh button and thoroughly washed my face for me.

I should have learnt that the universe is taking me literally at the moment but when an email appeared in my inbox telling me of a new video she had called, "Yoga for loneliness," I thought it would be worth a go. If you've been following my blogs you will know that grief has been in my life, which, let's face it, is the ultimate lonely status.  It was a nice workout and gave me enough energy to get to work. However, I was grumpy with people, snapping at someone who was being nice to me. It really was a Yoga for loneliness workout. If I hadn't been lonely before I certainly would be if I continued with that attitude. It would have suited me. I was more than happy to sit on the sofa and talk to no one.  I realised that I was being odd but seemed unable to do anything about it.  After a couple of days I met a friend in the supermarket.  I walked next to her for a while and then said, "Hello."
She looked at me, as though I was a complete stranger.  "It might have been a context thing," she suggested but I suspect it was the yoga magic, as we've met in the supermarket before.
Today, an invitation to a party arrived in the post.  I opened it up, eagerly. Do you send blank invitations to people you don't want to go to your party?

This yoga magic is too much. Yoga for loneliness works really well. Tomorrow's practice is called light practice.  I'm looking forward to suddenly being able to walk in the dark without a torch.

Fully Friday

"Are you a fully Friday teacher, Miss?" one of the youngest children in the school asked me on Thursday.
I wasn't sure if I had heard her properly. Exasperated with me after the third time I'd asked her to repeat the question she sighed, threw her arms in the air and flopped them at her sides as she said, "You know like Mrs C."   I'm still not sure what a fully Friday teacher is but Mrs C takes her class all day on Friday, while the class teacher has management and PPA time.

I told her that I probably wasn't, as I only teach music and swap between classes all the time.
"Oh," she said scratching her head, "I really thought you were a fully Friday teacher."

When my daughter worked in Windsor the MP was known as Adam on a Friday, which was not only a play on his name but also an allusion to the fact that he only seemed to work on a Friday.

Friday's are busy days for me. I start with school band practice at 8am and finish with Youth Orchestra by 8pm. I teach all day and run a club at lunch time and still manage to get into the staff room to take notes for the sitcom that needs to be written.  She might be right. I might be a fully Friday teacher.

Not today, though.  I think she jinxed me.  I was late. I overslept. I smudged my painted green nails. I didn't do my lunchtime club and had very relaxed lessons. I wasn't really with it in the staff room and know I missed things.  As I walked in I heard someone say, "It's a shame Julia wasn't in here earlier, that would have made a great blog." Everyone was flushed and giggly.  I have no idea what was going on.

Porridge

"Trust you to notice," said someone at the funeral I was at yesterday, "You're going to blog about this, aren't you?"
I smiled in that way you do, with a fixed top lip and blank eyes, when you can't quite get your head round what someone is saying. I couldn't quite see how I could write a blog about porridge but after a heavy night's sleep and a long walk, porridge is all I can think about.

I'm like porridge at the moment. I feel bland, boring,grey and  full of lumps.  Sometimes I'm too hot; sometimes too cold; rarely just right. Existing feels like moving through porridge.

"That's perfectly normal," people have told me this week.  "It's what happens after the death of a parent." This is slightly weird for me. Being perfectly fine is usual but to be 'perfectly normal' is not something I'm used to and I've decided that if this is normal, you can keep it.

I don't feel normal.  In fact, I feel very different.  I don't really feel like me.

I've been to work and not cared. I have no interest in doing things properly. I spend my days wishing I could get home to do nothing. I'd like to sit on the sofa and watch rubbish TV, knit or read my book. I'm not interested in whether there are weeds at the allotment. I don't want to eat or cook complicated meals and am more than happy with an avocado. I don't care if children I teach have practised.The swimming pool seems too far away to bother. There are piles of ironing and last night's dishes are unwashed.  I'm not planning lessons or thinking about writing reports. I'm letting other people worry about getting the music ready for a concert the choir have agreed to.  I haven't been blogging because no body really wants to read porridge.

People tell me that this is a normal part of grief.

My Mum says that her emotions flit between anger and guilt.
"They are two of the seven stages of grief," I told her. "It's shock then guilt followed by anger."
"Seven?" she shouted down the phone. "You mean there's more to come? Great!"
Even by screwing my face up and beating my temples lightly I couldn't drag the other four stages up from the depths of my memory.
"I think the last one is acceptance," I said, eventually.

After I put the phone down, I decided to look it up.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who did the initial work with terminally ill patients and wrote about it in a book called Death and Dying only had 5 stages. (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance) but this was later expanded to be appropriate to those suffering the loss of a loved one, or indeed any kind of loss (including divorce, redundancy or even the loss of a sports game).  They added  upward turn and reconstruction categories between depression and acceptance to make the number up to seven.

The only real stage I failed to remember was the depression one. Gradually getting better to get to acceptance are probably not stages we need to worry about.

I was wondering why I hadn't read much about the depression stage but I think I know now.  People don't write about it because they can't be bothered. It's boring to you, let alone anyone else.  It's the period when other people think you should be getting over it and moving on with your life. You don't want to think about anything. Sitting alone to reflect on your own, tedious private thoughts seems preferable.

The Long Suffering Husband hoped that after yesterday's funeral (of a friend) I'd be able to start to get back to normal. I wonder how he'll react when he discovers that this is 'perfectly normal' and that this porridge phase could last some time.

Sod

Being a parent of grown up children is interesting.  It comes with many challenges.  Hopefully, you will have done a good job and they will be confident, valuable members of society and leave home.  This might make you sad and cause you to drive 300 miles in a day just to see them but it will save you having to live with an adult child.  Many children can't scrape together the deposit for a flat or just like having their laundry done by Mum and their dinners cooked by Dad.

If you have small children, you might want to start planning for this possibility now.  People will tell you to start saving for college but they won't mention the biggest problem you are going to face if your children don't leave home when they become an adult.

My son is having a gap year and so we have the pleasure of his company this year, while he earns some money and does a bit of travelling.  It would be nice if it wasn't for the problem.

Where do you put three cars?

"We thought of that when we bought the house," said our neighbour with three grown up children who all still live at home.
I was impressed.  They moved in when we did - 23 years ago.
They have a large amount of paved space in front of their house, that often has seven or eight cars on.

We decided that we had to sacrifice our front garden.  I won't get rid of the tree, or the hedge but the grass was tatty anyway.  I refuse to pave over.  I worry about flooding, so we have compromised and plumped for gravel.

The Long Suffering Husband has been talking about making the garden a parking space for a while but it was winter and we felt lazy.  Then the local DIY store had a sale. As soon as the birds started singing the LSH jumped out of bed.
"Come on," he said, "there's too much to do.  We've got to dig it all out before the gravel arrives."
I was grumpy.
By the time my son got back from work we had got into it but were beginning to feel a bit old and stiff.  My son, who can usually be a lazy sod, decided he should help, as his failure to leave home had prompted this activity.

A lazy sod standing on his spade

"How far should I dig down?" he asked the LSH
"Just get rid of the sod,"
"That would have been easier," I said looking between the boy and the skip.

A skip full of sod

Biscuits, Beer and Beaches

Sometimes, you can go away to a foreign country and it can feel instantly like home. I felt like that in Vienna and my son, who is in Japan tells me he feels safer in Tokyo at night than in our own quiet Essex High Street.  Other times, you can go away in England and feel as though you have stepped onto another planet.

We are staying on the Dorset/Devon border and it could be a foreign land, or more accurately another time.  I remember this feeling when, as a child, in the Seventies, we went to Cornwall.  The shops closed half-way through the day, the pubs didn't serve food, cream teas were unique to the area (what magic was this clotted cream?)  and there was hardly a car to be seen.  We have rented somewhere to stay that is on a private estate.  It was the old dog kennels. The estate was built between 1874 and 1878 for James Peek (of the Peek Frean Biscuit factory fame). He built himself a whole village, including a church and school. The estate was taken over by a school and is now in the hands of a group of shareholders, who all own property on the land and work to manage the estate in a sensitive and ecological way.  All the water is managed by a reed-bed system and the grounds are picture perfect.  The estate also has it's own private beach (an SSSI) and manages it's own woodland.  There are buzzards in the sky and sheep in the fields. It's like stepping into a novel set in the 1950's countryside.

The area is a little unusual.  It's the kind of place where an Englishman's home can really be his castle. It's a place where a river flows down the street, deck chairs are perfectly lined up along the beach, beer is offered at the local church and map's don't need labels.

 

The estate is a place that gets stories swirling through my head. Every person you meet is of a certain type: white, middle class, with a sense of entitlement. All the adults have been to University and all the children are expected to go to. Only Waitrose vans are allowed to deliver to the estate.  Clothes are by Joules or Boden and shoes are Hafflingers. They picnic on the beach every Sunday and even though the beach is huge there are still spots that people consider to be their own.
"Mr S! How are you?  You better not be in my spot!"
"I'm over there, Flissy.  You snooze, you lose."
Flissy stomps off in a bit of a huff.  Her husband takes Mr S by the hand, grabbing his elbow with the other. They talk quietly for a while.
"Just call me, Mr United bloody Nations," he says loudly.
Ideas flit through my head about the deal they have just made.

I imagined a post Brexit world, where people could close the gates and pretend that they had actually managed to turn the clock back.
"It's been done," said the Long Suffering Husband. "Haven't you seen The Village?"
I haven't but he has told me that it doesn't end well.

That's not a lady. That's Julia

The Long Suffering Husband and I had walked further than we intended. From where we are staying to Lyme Regis was a 5 minute car drive and we guessed would be about 3 miles on the coastal path, through the undercliffs. It was a beautiful but challenging walk. Wild garlic, primroses and ancient ferns at your feet, and birds, trees and blue sky above. It was at least double the distance we had thought and was rather hilly, slippy and trippy in places. Arriving in civilisation we flopped on a pub picnic table bench, ordered food and drink while we waited for the next Sunday bus.

A boy on the next table had clearly had enough too. He was sitting on the floor under the table with their dog.  They thought that their dog might be thirsty.  It wasn't but our was. The boy became interested in our dog. He asked if he could say, "Hello."
"Of course you can.  He might not say anything back, he can be a bit funny like that," I told him.
"That's alright," said the boy as the dog turned and showed him his bottom.
 "Can I hold him?" he asked, reaching for the lead.
Unsteady on my feet from all the walking I landed on the floor next to him and let him hold the lead.
The boy was absorbed with how the mechanism worked. A flexi-lead can be a fascinating object.
He introduced himself as Bradley and shook my hand. I told him my name.
The dog took the opportunity to tie himself around three tables in search of a stray chip.
"I'm going to have to take the dog back now," I told the boy, explaining that I didn't want him to annoy people.

I got back onto the bench, with some difficulty.  The LSH was back from the bar.  Bradley decided to join us at our table. His parents looked worried. "Don't let him annoy you," they said. I didn't think anyone as happy as Bradley could annoy me.  He was interested in my camera, so I showed him my photos.
"Can I have a go?" he asked, picking the camera up and placing the strap around his neck.  There was a sharp intake of breath from his parent's table.
I showed him which buttons to press and he took my photo and several of the lens cap.  He looked at the LSH and said, "I'll try one of him." I thought it was a good picture but Bradley didn't like it.  He took more pictures of me.

His mum came over and told him that they were going to get some sweets. She cajoled, "You like sweets."
"No!" he said, "I like cameras."
His mum looked frightened.
"Oooh, sweets! You lucky thing!" I said.
Bradley decided to go with his mum.
"Enjoy your sweets," I shouted after them.
"That was a nice lady," his mum said to him as they were leaving.
"That wasn't a lady," Bradley said, "That was Julia!"

Extreme Adulting

The last couple of months have been rough.

My dad and a couple of friends have died.

It makes you think.

You think about your own place in the world and you contemplate your relationship with the people who are still living.

As part of the contemplation process I'm trying to be spontaneous, go with the flow and get in touch with old friends.  This isn't easy, as I'm exhausted.  I go to the High Street for coffee, planning to pop to the bank before I come home but when reality kicks in I'm too tired after talking to people for a while and going to the bank doesn't seem very important.

The Long Suffering Husband was nagging about booking a holiday (he's always thinking about holidays). It became a bit of an issue. I snapped, cried and we booked a short break in Dorset a few days before we left.  The day before, he mentioned that we were driving past my friends' house.  When you haven't seen someone for two years is it acceptable to invite yourself to stay the day before you arrive?

Luckily, I have friends that are exceptionally good hosts at a moment's notice.  They even had tea and coffee making facilities in the spare room and a dog bowl, despite not owning a dog.

People say that the sign of true friendship is that you can not see someone for years and still have things to talk about.  Within a few minutes we were talking as we used to at college.  We were looking words up in the dictionary (Calceiform - I remembered it!), discussing the state of the world and laughing about life. We had discussed Brexit, motorbikes, the depressing play for today, socks, cars, exhaust systems and our children with the kind of eye-rolling resignation parents in their fifties have about the life choices of their new adults that they still feel responsible for. Our children are 'adulting'. They are trying out adult activities for the first time: travelling on their own, renting a flat, paying bills, doing their own laundry.  They are doing the things we take for granted; the things we have been doing for so long that we've forgotten how difficult they were the first time.

My friends are also recently bereaved (a favourite Aunt) and have been dealing with her estate.  They suggested that the jobs around a death should be described as 'extreme adulting.' It's the BMX racing to popping to the shops on your sit-up-and-beg bike with the basket on the front.  The list of extreme adulting tasks include filling out a probate form, talking to a bereavement officer at a bank who can't say the word 'dead',  reading the inheritance tax literature, paying a solicitor's bill, choosing music for a funeral, writing a eulogy, taking out a mortgage to pay for funeral flowers and organising a party where the guest of honour is missing.

It has started me wondering, though, if there is another level to look forward to when we reach our seventies.  If adulting is sport and extreme adulting is extreme sport, do we have the deadly adulting to look forward to.  I remember reading about the rise in popularity of extreme sports that are killing people.  The man who paracuted into the London Olympics dressed as James Bond died in a wingsuit accident and Russians are taking parkour to extremes that are killing grandmaster chess champions by the dozen.  These 'deadly adulting' tasks could be things like learning to drive a mobility scooter or negotiating the correct dosage of pain relief.

That's something to look forward to.

The Easter Monster

It's happened again.

The poor people who are manning a company's social media PR are inundated with people complaining that they are single-handedly responsible for demise of British values, pandering to immigrants and the loss of the blue passport (IT WAS BLACK!).  It happened to a chocolate manufacturer last year when they called their eggs, "chocolate eggs" rather than "Easter eggs." How dare they?  At Christmas, it was a coffee shop that were waging a war on Christmas because their Christmas cups were red without the actual word on it.  Mostly, sane people know that this is click-bait.  Journalists write the story because they know it will get a certain percentage of the population will get upset and click on the story, which creates advertising revenue for the paper, allowing them to write stories that really matter. It is fake news. It's not real and it doesn't matter. This year, however, the Prime Minister has fallen for it and she has publicly joined the outrage but instead of targeting a large corporate behemoth they have picked on a charity.

This year, the National Trust PR people are fighting the Easter monster.  The Prime Minister is doubly outraged because she is a vicar's daughter and a National Trust member (who doesn't read the magazine, which has more references to Easter than plants or woodland).

I was thinking about what the Easter monster would look like and then I visited a small Essex village. Dropping into the bakery to pick up some lunch I noticed some biscuits.
"I'd like one of those animal biscuits, please."
"The Easter biscuit?"

I was surprised.  Then I realised that it was the Easter monster.

Advice for dealing with the recently bereaved.

Yesterday, I wrote a blog aimed at people who have been recently bereaved.  You might think that the advice would be useful if you have to spend time with someone whose relative has just died but you would be wrong.  Yesterday, I wrote that it is fine to tell someone who brings you another cake to F-off. You might assume that would mean that you shouldn't take cake round and that would be wrong. So here is some advice if you are trying to support someone through a loss.

1. Remember that they are the same person they were before the death.
            If they liked a joke, they will still like a joke. If they laughed a lot, they will still laugh (it's not wrong - it's normal).  If they are someone who likes to be busy they are unlikely to be comforted by a constant insistence that they need to rest. If they cried often they  will cry often but if you never saw them cry, you are unlikely to see them cry. If they were your friend before, they will want to be your friend after but if they never spoke to you before then.....well, I think you get the picture.

2. Never tell them that they should have done something differently.
        It's too late. It's too late to change anything important and so if you have suggestions of anything they should have done differently then you should keep it to yourself.  You shouldn't make any suggestions about something they could have done around the period of the death, dealing with the estate or what the funeral should have been like.

3.  If you only knew the person that has died then make an effort to get to know the names of his relatives before you go round and tell them how wonderful that person was. It will be a little embarrassing for everyone if, after an hour on chatting you have to ask the name of the person you are talking to, especially if it is the dead person's wife.

4.  Remember that how you knew the person is only a small part of who they were.
               Don't get upset if the family don't make a huge deal out of the half an hour you spent with him/her in 1983 at the funeral.  Don't be surprised that there is another side of the family that you never met.  Even if you feel these things then the immediate family don't need to know, they can't change anything.

5.  If you want to do something to commemorate the life of the person then you should but the immediate family don't need to go.  If they never went to one of your concerts before their loved one died, it could be cruel and unusual punishment to expect them to go after their death.  (I write this for the Long Suffering Husband, who would not want to have to go to memorial concerts if I died).

6. Bereaved families are fickle creatures.  They will be grateful of your company one moment, like flowers, cake or a huge lasagna but the very next day might want to be alone, wander around the house muttering, "look at all these bloody flowers, anyone would think that someone had died," or never want to see a cake again.  They may say, "Fuck off. I'm watching Gardener's World," but that won't mean they won't want to see you tomorrow.

7.  If they tell you to f-off, it's either because they like you enough to say what they need or you are a faceless corporate idiot.  If you are the former, don't take offence but try to develop a thick skin. If you are worker in a bank or utility company, try to be better.

8.  Just try to be normal. Obviously, if normality isn't your style then just be your usual weird self. Tomorrow, I'm having coffee with a friend who recently lost her husband  and I rashly promised her normality.  Luckily, she's only expecting the usual beige cardigan wearing, laughing about stupid things and moaning about work.  I hope I'll be able to follow my own advice. If not, we can just tell each other to F-off.

Advice for the recently Bereaved

I have an important piece of advice if you are recently bereaved. It's something that people won't tell you but it's important to know. It's something that's quite simple and also something you will want to do. You'll not find it in any book or article on bereavement but it's still part of the process.

You are intrigued now, aren't you? You are wondering what is so important to know that even bereavement councillors forget to mention.

It is simply that you can tell people to fuck off!

Yes, that's right. Add the profanity to your lexicon. Practise it in front of the mirror, so that it rolls off the tongue, without causing days of hand-wringing guilt. You might find you need it.

I know what you are thinking. You think that it would be so much better to be polite and normally I would agree with you but these are exceptional circumstances. No matter how hard you try to be nice an occasional, "Oh, fuck off!" will slip out, so you might as well make it your default answer.

Clearly, banks, building societies and utility companies deserve this response, when they've forgotten that they are dealing with a fragile human being. Their "fuck off" will have been prompted by hours on hold, crashing computers, asking someone who has lost their voice to, "speak up," asking for the same information for the eleventh time, for sending the wrong forms,  or for insisting that they don't make mistakes.

It is even acceptable to repeat this phrase to well meaning people. I know it's not nice but true friends should understand and forgive.

If you don't want to talk anymore you should be allowed to say, "fuck off!"
If you don't want to go out, try, "Fuck off, I'd rather watch Gardener's World. I'd like to spend my evening with Nigel."
If you don't want another well-meaning cake or huge lasagne you could say, "Not another fucking cake!"
When people try to hug you it is fine to say, "Fuck off. I don't do hugs."
If they put on a sympathetic voice and tell you that it's the stress you can say, "Fuck off! It's a fucking cold!"

A true friend will understand that this response is a perfectly normal part of grief and just balances out the swearing you are doing in private to the person who has died.