It’s all about the birds (magpies and mental health)

It has been a busy few days. There was the funeral and my daughter moved the next day. We helped. The Long Suffering Husband hired a van and my Fitbit told me that I’d done 74 flights of stairs carrying everything out of her flat. I joked that I was postponing my mental breakdown for Monday.
“I was nearly one of those annoying people who said, ‘I bet this will make the blog,’” her boyfriend said.
I had to point out that he wasn’t funny enough and even his reference to central sluts probably wasn’t going to do it.

Leicestershire is a funny place, though. There are villages that sound like they are named after masters of the hunt: Ashby-de-la Zouch, Newton Burgoland, Kirkby Mallory,  Newbold Verdon, Stoney Stanton, Broughton Astley and Dunton Bassett to name a few. The birds sound different too.
I wish Shazam worked on birdsong. Google doesn't quite have it covered at 3am, when you can't sleep and you can hear what sound like large birds shouting, "Choff, Choff."

I wasn't entirely joking about the breakdown.  People talking about their mental health has become very fashionable but it's not easy and not something I ever thought would happen to me.  "I'll be fine. I'm strong," I said to myself. I thought I'd got all the strategies in place. I walk, do yoga, drink water, eat well. I'm a breathing master and being outside, reading psychology papers and counting are my idea of fun. However, even with all known CBT strategies I've been struggling.  Woah! I can't believe I just confessed to that.
*hot flush* *deep breaths*

As soon as mum was diagnosed I saw a single Magpie on my daily walk. "One for sorrow," I muttered to myself, desperately looking round to see if I could see another.  I heard the Magpie's song in my sleep.  From the day Mum died until the funeral I didn't see one Magpie. Today, on breakdown day they are all over the place.  It seems like it's Magpie sex day.  They are in hedgerows and bushes, flapping and trilling (normally they click). I walked most of the day and they didn't stop.  Eventually, the dog made me go home.  He had spent the weekend with my sister, finishing off the funeral salmon and he was tired of waddling in the sunshine. We sat in the garden. Normally, it is his job to protect me from flying things.  He parades the perimeter barking at flies, pigeons and low flying aircraft.  Not today, though.  Today, he sat under the chair, farting, too full to move.  All of a sudden a magpie flew into me.  It actually flew into me. It's wing clipped the side of my face. One for sorrow.

Birds and Singing

Birds and Singing

Yesterday was the day of my mum’s funeral. If a day like that can ever be, it was a nice day. We held it together, were supported by friends, family and birds.

I found that I was strangely comforted by the rhythm and pattern of the religion. The vicar gave a wonderful address about love and quoted the Bible and Larkin (Phillip not Pop) and even if he refused my offer to come back for a curled up sandwich, he is a very nice man.

In the last few months, the whole religion thing has been a bit of a challenge. At school I have quietly mumbled my own slightly sweary version of Amen at the end of prayers. It’s funny how, even when you think you might be an atheist, you still ask God to send a sign.  

“I know you are a total bastard all-powerful being who could do something about human suffering but doesn’t,” I ranted when I was worried about a concert, “But the least you could do is send me a trumpet player.”  Two days later, a new member of the orchestra turned up without warning: a lovely little girl carrying a cornet in a big blue box. My sister, in a low moment walking the dog, also hoped for a sign. “A feather. No, not a feather, there are feathers everywhere. Feathers just mean dead birds. Live birds would be better.” And a robin appeared on the hedge, sang and followed her back down the lane, popping into the garden every day for peanuts and lemon drizzle cake.

After Mum died, the Robin disappeared for a while.  I looked for geese (as Mum loved geese) and my sister fretted about the baby blue tits (nature is a bitch).

As we were preparing for the funeral the robin came back. He sat with us and chatted. He had a lot to say. It’s just a shame we don’t speak Robin.

Mum was buried in the woodland area of the cemetery, everyone threw a flower in and the birds sang. 

We are a family that loves singing. Mum loved opera and Etta James, and we filled the church with music. We sang Jerusalem and Amazing Grace. 

After the service I bravely hugged and waited to accept condolences but all anyone could talk about was the organist.

“Please tell me that there’s going to be a blog about the organist?” They asked.

“Your Mum would have loved the organist.”

“I properly lost it about the organist”

I wasn’t as surprised as everyone else. The vicar had warned me, without actually warning me. 

The organ is a fiendishly difficult instrument to play and the church has a very good organist, who, according to the vicar was ‘unfortunately on holiday.’

The poor lady who had agreed to step in was clearly very nervous. There was a hesitancy to her playing that led us to be unsure of when to start singing but Jerusalem quietly passed without incident. Amazing Grace, however, was a different story. It was almost as though she had never heard the tune and found it impossible to pick the melody out from the ornamentation in the third line. People looked at each other, some laughed. The less determined gave up. I could hear my Dad’s brother helpfully belting it out. (You can take the boy out of the choir but the choirboy remains). Her timing was shocking too. At first we tried to follow her but by the last verse we finished first. 

By the end of the evening we were cheering up our Aunt with a singalong, properly channelling Mum, who taught us everything we know about singing confidently, loudly and hilariously out of tune. The robin, full of salted peanuts and Twiglets, joined us, singing his little heart out and as the last guests left the geese were going nuts in squawking song. 

“Listen to those geese.” I said to my sister. “And did you hear the robin? It’s been like a sign.”

“Yep, it’s all about the birds and the singing,” she confirmed.

It can’t be a ... without ....

Last week my daughter sent me a picture of a packet of Tunnocks Teacakes (other brands might be available but they are not relevant to this story) and asked if I could guess her plans. It was obvious.
In our house, it’s not a picnic without Tunnocks Teacakes. Why and how this happened is a mystery because although these chocolate coated marshmallows on a biscuit base are delicious they do tend to melt or get squashed.

I think this is like the NLP technique of anchoring, where you train your brain to associate an internal response with an external trigger. I trained my children to see those particular treats and think, “Picnic.”

My sister and I have been throwing all our efforts into organising the best party ever. We decided we didn’t like the term wake and the vicar’s suggestion of calling it ‘refreshments’ sounded too tame for our fun loving friends and family. “Why don’t you invite everyone back for one last party?” Mum’s neighbour suggested. We were hooked. My parents always threw the best parties. We have been shopping, gardening, cleaning, decorating the garden with fairy lights and my homemade knitted bunting. Obviously, this is all a brilliant distraction technique from thinking about The Great Elephant Wars of 2018 but as we are not mentioning the war this is a good thing. Before we had this distraction we were sitting in coffee shops making conversation with pensioners about mobility scooters and their 84 year old boyfriend. (Margaret we love you).

Yesterday, I wrote a blog about our trip to Costco and after my sister messaged me to say that we didn’t get a tent and that we forgot Twiglets (again, other brands might be available etc). I was relieved. I had been thinking that we needed those delicious marmity knobbly snacks because it’s not a party without Twiglets but my brain had the following internal dialogue:
“There aren’t any Twiglets in Costco. What are we going to do without Twiglets?”
“Well, there wouldn’t be, would there Stupid? Because giants don’t eat Twiglets.”
“That’s ok then we can get them from Tesco.”
“So, it’s all about you is it?”
“No it’s just not a party without Twiglets.”
“Says you! Don’t say anything!”
“Ok. You’re right.”

After we came clean about our mutual need for Twiglets (it is possible to obsess over the strangest things when you are not mentioning the war) the offers to bring Twiglets flooded in. We had already brought enough to last until Christmas so no one needs to bring them.

While we were shopping, I bought a couple of packets of polo mints (again, other brands... etc) because it’s not a funeral without Polos. It does have to be a Polo. This is for the times you are waiting. Sitting in the church on the hard pews, getting to the cemetery, travelling back to the house are all waiting times where you could need a distraction. My mum would fill these moments with a Polo sucking competition. Everyone pops a mint in at the same time, sticking tongues out at regular intervals to see who can keep the perfect  circle of mintiness for the longest. I did only get enough for us, so, if you are coming to the funeral, you might want to bring your own packet.

My Nan would have loved Costco

Growing up, we had two nannies: Big Nanny and Little Nanny. Little Nan belonged to my mum and was short, slim, well groomed, Welsh, wore nice shoes, shouted at the wrestling on a Saturday, made milk jelly and sniffed in disgust at almost everything my grandad did. Big Nan was almost the opposite.

I was responsible for their names and I’ve often wondered how my Dad felt, explaining to his mum that I called her big. Although, thinking about it now I know that she would have just laughed, gathered me up in her enormous bosom for a hug and agreed that she was, indeed, big. To a little girl like me, that side of the family were like jolly giants, with my Dad only appearing normal because he was the runt of the litter.

Big Nan never recovered from the war. Some people suffered shell shock, were bombed out of their houses or lost husbands but my Nan never recovered from rationing. Even into the 1980s her larder was stacked with essentials, particularly sugar.

My mum’s wonderful neighbours have taken pity on my sister and I and are catering the funeral party. Yesterday, they took us to Costco to stock up. We were both Costco virgins and a little anxious about the trip as neither of us are enthusiastic shoppers. We were also going in the morning, which was a worry. We were probably right to be concerned. My sister wandered round saying things like, “They sell tents. Shall we get a tent?” and finding bits of chicken to eat.

“It’s a shop for giants,” I thought out loud, which earned me a look from a passing couple, who were larger than average. I wasn’t looking at them, though. The trollies were huge, there were olive trees for sale in the foyer that wouldn’t look out of place on a Greek hillside, food came in huge packets, birthday cakes serve 48 people and even the Belgian buns were the size of my head. I’m not sure how effective we were at shopping. We did fill two trollies and I don’t think we bought a tent.


At one point during the shop, I think I was possessed by Big Nanny. She saw the bags of sugar. “Go on,” she said, “You’ll need those if you are going to make cake. You can never have too much sugar and just look how cheap it is. You’d almost pay that for a small bag.”
I was powerless to resist. “I would have loved Costco,” her ghostly voice whispered in my ear.

Don’t Mention the War

I have been quiet lately. No blogging. No other writing. If you texted me then I probably replied with a heart emoji. If I saw you in the distance then I dropped my eyes to the ground and scuttled past. Obviously, I have been perfectly fine but then, as I reminded my son,  I only have two states of being: perfectly fine and bloody brilliant. The problem is that I’ve just returned from The Great Elephant Wars of 2018. War is never pleasant. People who return sometimes can’t talk. It takes time.

I read Wonder. It’s a brilliant book. The English teacher has a precept of the month and gets the children to think about it. Something like, “When given the choice between being right and being kind, choose kind.” I love these little mottos, aphorisms or rules for life. Everybody does. We add pictures to them and turn them into memes.

Anyway, in Wonder the teacher asks the children to send him their own rule for life on a postcard. His address is published in the book, so I sent him mine:

“Try to laugh a little every day, even when life is shit.”

Then I realised that I haven’t shared my laughter with anyone, which has become a precept of mine since I started this blog. I said to my sister, “It’s a shame I can’t do blogging at the moment because some of this is really funny.”

“Just start,” the writing books say. So I’ve started. Just don’t mention the war.

The signs were there

I hate letting people down. If I've agreed to do something then I will do it, even if it means splitting myself in two, three or even eight. Sometimes this is exhausting and recently I had decided that something had to give for a while. Cutting down on my commitments so that I can spend more time with Mum was a huge relief. Getting the balance right, people told me, can be tricky. "Make sure you look after yourself," they said. "Make sure you still do things you enjoy."

I decided that my Friday evening Youth Orchestra lifts my spirits and I knew I would be supported by my wonderfully bonkers committee (WBC). We were due to play at an event the following weekend that had made us all twitch with the spelling of 'kidz'.  I wasn't sure about my brain, fairly certain that I could be there in body but my mind could stubbornly refuse to attend. We made a decision to go but reduce the time we were there and delegating tasks. Children had to take their own stand and music.

Half an hour before I should have left I realised that I didn't have anything to put my music in and having visions of it flying around a field I ran (literally) round Tesco, pushing in front of barely seen friends in the queue.

I was late, stressed and confused. I couldn't quite find my way and my daughter and WBC member found the whole thing very funny.
"You're just not functioning properly, are you?" they said.
We arrived with 2 minuites to spare.
"Help. I've probably come in the wrong gate but we are performing at 11," I said to a man in a hi-vis vest. He suggested I abandon the car and run. Men were offering to swap me their babies for my heavy box of percussion instruments, despite my daughter's warnings that I was in no fit state to be trusted with a baby.

The boy on the gate couldn't point me in the direction of the bandstand but was very interested to know where we had heard of the event. The WBC were in hysterics as I tried to string words together. "Booked to play at 11. Late. Where?"

The WBC looked around. "It's more field than fete," they observed.
"I probably should have cancelled this pertinence," I told the WBC, confusing my words.
 "The signs were there," they said. " I did wonder when you replied to my text about bringing music stands with, "You should get yourself cheese eating."

It was an event with many signs.

Behind the field, over a bridge guarded by trolls with signs demanding a return to the good old days, was a museum, miniature train and model gnome village. I was surprised at how passive-aggressive gnomes are. Signs stated things like,"Pine cones don't sing and dance. If we wanted them in the water we would put them there."
The signs seemed to be written for children, which was strange as most were under five. They said things like, "Children, please keep your parents under control. Badly behaved parents will be shot."
Leaving the troll area the passivity was dropped.

 Corporal punishment ruled. I wondered if the trolls on the bridge had won and returned us to 'the good old days where beating children was acceptable.

However, nothing causes as much offence as a badly placed apostrophe.

Little Parcels of Laughter

The cake situation is getting serious.

“Tell them they can visit but they mustn’t bring cake,” Mum shouts from her bed as my sister answers the phone.
The food bin is groaning and even the dog sighs, sniffs and flops on the floor refusing to mop up ‘accidentally’ dropped pieces.
My sister is far too polite to tell them anything of the sort. She knows that it’s not cake they are bringing but little parcels of love.

“Maybe we should make a list of what people should bring instead,” I suggested, “you know, milk, washing up liquid, teabags, bleach.....” (You do seem to use an extraordinary amount of cleaning products when supporting a sick person.)
Mum thought that wouldn’t work because she would only want organic full fat milk, Fairy liquid and Yorkshire tea and you couldn’t ask people to only bring organic milk.

Visitors can make or break the day. Some days are good for visits and others aren’t. Even on those days the person that stands on the doorstep with a bunch of tulips and doesn’t take offense when you don’t invite them in is appreciated.

A good visit on a good day can lift the spirits so much that you begin to wonder if it’s all been a big mistake, they’ve got it all wrong, everything is perfectly fine and you are all going to live forever.  Yesterday was one of those days.

Two of my mums sisters arrived with my one legged uncle, who, with no children to entertain managed to keep his prosthetic leg on. They brought cake. Mum rolled her eyes, out loud, in the way you can only get away with in front of family.

Conversation, as it always does, turned to Mary Berry. The queen of cake and cookery shows always appears at these occasions. We discussed Bake Off and moved on to her new show which we hoped
would be more like normal cooking.
“They’re ridiculous,” Mum said, “they spent five hours making that.”
“Did you see the judge that got all emotional about that pudding?” my sister said.
We all agreed it probably tasted the same as if you’d used a packet of frozen puff pastry, some stewed apples and a scoop of ice cream.
“What is this thing with the steam?” my aunt asked. “I mean they opened up a clam shell and wafted this steam of fish smell up someone’s nose. I’d gag. Can you imagine? Stink of Canvey Island up your nose?”
“And foam.” This was clearly a subject my uncle was very passionate about. “What is it with bloomin foam? Three little dots of coloured liquid and a blob of foam. It just wouldn’t be enough for me. I’d have to send it back and say, ‘you’re having a laugh, mate.’ It’s ridiculous!”
“It looks like cuckoo spit,” my aunt observed.
“Is it actually cuckoo’s spit, like they use in bird’s nest soup?” someone asked and the conversation rolled around nests cliffs and bird spit for a while until we decided to google it.
“It’s an insect: a froghopper.” my sister with the newest phone (because she dropped the last one down the toilet) told us first.
“Is it one of those flat green triangular bugs?" I asked.
We looked at a picture.
It was brown with orange stripes.
I thought it improbable that one little bug could produce so much spit.
"It might not be little," my aunt suggested. "There needs to be a pound coin for scale."
We thought we might have noticed a great orange striped bug wandering around gobbing on all the plants.
I was stuck on the green bug. "Is it called a Katydid?" I hoped my sister would look it up.
"I used to love those books," my aunt briefly changed the subject.
We looked at the picture.
"That's not a bug. It's a leaf."
"I've never seen one of those."
Mum had. "They're always on the raspberries."
I agreed, having eaten a few in the past.

The bumble bee that my sister rescued with some sugar water flew in to give her its daily update.
"Oh look, here's my swan," she said. We laughed but words can get mixed up if you haven't slept enough.

It was a great visit which included reminiscing about dustbin flowers (hydrangeas), Chum the dog and outside toilets and it lifted everyone's spirits.

I've decided that little parcels of laughter are the most powerful gifts of love that can be given.