suffolk Archives - Jenny May

Swallows on the Wire

I invite you to join me in slowing down and taking some time to immerse yourself in the small wild of the nature that is all around us.

I have been quiet lately and that quiet has allowed me to make some changes.

Firstly, the reason why I’ve not really been communicative: well, to start with I got a bit down when I was told by oncology that they wanted to extend this latest lot of chemo from three to six months. Having originally thought that all treatment would be done by late spring for it then to be extended to late summer; to then have to go, ok, now it will be early December, felt a bit much.

The second reason was that the world seemed to have become very loud and very angry. It is as if we can no longer entertain nuance and everything became polarised and you were either one way or the other, for or against, a good or a bad person.

Being in a pandemic is hard and straight off the back of years of infighting regarding our status in the EU made the already prickled even pricklier. Add into that being diagnosed with cancer and having to do all the treatments by yourself and not even being allowed to hug your own mum – well, quite frankly, I wasn’t coping well and knew I had to make some changes. And I did.

I have been off social media now for six weeks and you know what – it’s been wonderful. There are elements I miss but if I’m honest, those elements were getting lost in the angry noise. I shall use it again, but to a much lesser extent.

An unexpected by-product of being off all social media is that my long-form reading has returned and I am back to devouring books, but more excitingly for me, my creativity has been creeping back in.

As part of my self-care (to use a perhaps vastly overused phrase these days) I had to make my world small for a while, to cope. I am sorry to have not been in contact with many of you who are wonderful in checking in with me. It is not that I don’t care, just that for a while, there was only so much I could manage. I have also slowed my way of life. Yes, partly because after more than nine months of cancer treatment I don’t have an awful lot of energy, but I have been focusing down on the things that I feel are essential to me at my core.

And that brings us to nature. I have noticed that at any crisis point in my life the only thing I can contemplate doing is to be outside; walking, gardening, just sitting; I need to be in the natural world. Normally I busy myself working in the garden but in my state of slowing and bringing the world in close, I have spent more time just observing. Really looking, feeling, seeing, hearing and tasting. From out of this I began a diary of my observations, and from that something new came: my podcast – Swallows on the Wire. In this podcast I invite you to join me in slowing down and taking some time to immerse yourself in the small wild of the nature that is all around us. I believe the smallest of interactions with the natural world can be beneficial – even just taking full notice of the dandelions that grow in the cracks of an industrial estate. We don’t have to jet off around the world to experience true wonders, we can find them everywhere – if we look and listen.

The title of the podcast came from a morning walk I took in early August where I stood under telephone wires on which perched swallows, dotted like notes on a stave. I scribbled the image on a bit of paper and added two more stave lines; the swallows I changed to dots. Out of this was born the title music, written by the swallows, interpreted and performed by my best friend Ilona, for which I give huge thanks.

Episodes one, two and three are available to listen to now on anchor fm and spotify. These are short nature diary entries and bring us up to the present date. They will then be weekly, with perhaps the odd bonus episode in between. To listen, click here

If you need a moment of calm or some time to reconnect with the natural world, just listen to the Swallows on the Wire…

Swallows and snow globes

It is okay to recognise that some things are hard and sad and difficult.

The other day, I both stood on my own in a field giggling and also had a bit of a cry. The cry wasn’t in the field but back at home and was because, quite frankly, cancer treatment is flipping hard work, and I think we all know what I really mean by, flipping. Most days I am pretty okay and just get on with it all, but overwhelm can sometimes creep through the cracks.

I am now half way through radiotherapy and the worst so far is feeling very, very tired and generally a bit sick. The latter is probably that my poor little liver might be getting a bit of a poke from the laser beam. (I know, I know, it’s not a laser beam, but it’s more fun to think of it that way. I can pretend I am in a James Bond film and will at any moment cunningly escape with excellent martial arts moves and then nip off to the bar for a swift martini.)

My ability to concentrate, think or focus on anything appears to be dreadful on more days than not. This will be a heady mix of chemo fog, tiredness from radiotherapy and the underlying continuous emotional and physical weight of six months of treatment in one form or another and with more to come – all in a pandemic. Well, if you’re going to do something, you may as well go the whole hog.

This is why I took myself out for a walk. Physically sluggish, emotionally a little messy and mentally unable to concentrate on anything, I had to get outside. My legs may have moved like lead and as if I were walking through treacle, but my heart instantly felt lighter especially when only a few minutes later I saw a swallow perched on a telephone wire in the bright sunshine after a rain shower.

I stood in a snow globe for a while. No, I haven’t completely lost it. A tree* was shedding soft motes of pollen which were being swirled in the breeze, barely perceptible in the sun but a blizzard against the backdrop of stormy clouds; I stopped to watch. The other snow storm at this time of year is the absolute froth of the umbelliferous cow parsley (also known as Queen Anne’s Lace and related to the carrot, don’t you know). Much to the horror of many gardeners I’m sure, I am letting this wildflower grow quite prolifically in our borders.

*I am leaning towards it possibly being a goat/pussy willow but I stand ready to be corrected because my tree identification game is bad!

Almost home and with the clouds gathering overhead, I stood for a while as swallows swooped above me. It was a magical moment of watching and listening to these birds as well as others singing further afield. All around me was the buzz of insects enjoying wild honeysuckle wrapped around the limbs of trees and the air was generating that exciting electric feeling that comes before a storm – and then a horse gave an almighty neigh, and this is what set me off giggling.

I went home and had my little cry. My walk broke the spell of me just pushing everything to the back of my brain where it sat growing and growling for attention. Sometimes you can work so hard at getting on and through things, you can forget to stop and feel what you need to feel. It is okay to recognise that some things are hard and sad and difficult and I am advocating allowing yourself a little cry sometimes if you need it.

Winter, Act 2: The Jewelled Dual

A courteous bow

Strut, abreast they walk

With puffed, pumped chest, they talk

All with manners at this early part

While waiting for a sign to start

Full starch, back and forth they pace

Feigning manners and grace, until

With a gentle sloping arch of golden tail on icy ground

The rapier black and brown soft trails to demarcate and bound

Grand stand and boast

In jewelled and shiny coats

Puff and ruffle, intent and show

And it begins – crouch low

Jump high

Feet and legs to opponent’s chest extend

Push and serve a blow, then land to defend

Another turn around the ring

Cock heads bobbed, out-stretched wing

Beady eyes, take size the foe

Scrape low and here we go

A feathered flap, lift hard and haul

A clash of claw

A civilised brawl

A pant and puff of breath from beak

Hangs clouds in frozen air, it speaks

Of old ways, rites and honour

Of settling scores with brutal glamour

But, gentlemen of landed gentry know rules that we do not

For just as soon as battle starts, then it is stopped

The ritual has been played

A settlement now made

Who victorious stands, I do not know

But I watch as side-by-side, they go.

Overlapping starts and ends

We have all had to cope with an unwanted ending…of a casual carelessness that the loss of has been heart-breaking.

I have a strange relationship with endings, in that, I don’t feel them. Or rather, I think that either, by the time things end I have already felt them to know then that they are going to or, as in today’s case, I am already too focused on the next thing.

I had my last chemotherapy today; number 12. Three months of weekly treatment. I should be feeling giddy and excited and super happy (and of course, I am very happy) but, yesterday I had an appointment with the surgeon and so now, I think my head is already focusing on getting ready for surgery and that recovery. After that, there will be radiotherapy. And I know, from past experience that the mental and emotional dealing with having had cancer, doesn’t come until a year or two later. It’s as if you have the resource to get through the physical side but have to put the mental stuff on hold. When your body has recovered enough, the balance is tipped and it is the mind and heart that then needs to process and heal. So, that is why, when I finished treatment today I didn’t really feel any different.

MOTH and I were talking about this to my sister the other day about getting to the point where you know when something has ended, even before it actually has. When I was in sixth form, I remember a teacher saying to me one day, “You’re already done with this, aren’t you? You’re ready to go.” And I was, although I did see my A-levels out. Similarly, in a previous life, when I had worked for a publishing house for ten years, on my last day I walked out of the office just as normal – and it was okay. By that point I had long felt like I had already left, I had had the knowledge that it was done long before my resignation was handed in. There are a few people I will always hold dearly in my heart from that time, I hope you know who you are, but I never felt it was really a complete goodbye to them, perhaps a hiatus.

Some endings are ok. Some are not. I think the ones that happen naturally and hand you the innate knowing that they are there and it is their time, are the okay ones. It doesn’t always make them easy, but I think it can make them easier. It is the ones that come abruptly, unbidden, leaving unfinished business that are not okay. I have a few of these to work through one day.

There is nothing more to these musings other than a recognition of a gentle end to the chemotherapy part of my treatment. Perhaps the juxtaposition with Spring finally feeling like we can actually say it is here with all its beginnings has made me notice the rhythm of overlapping endings and beginnings.

We had a lovely video chat with friends at the weekend who we haven’t been able to see since a fleeting doorstop visit at Christmas to pass presents over at a distance. We talked about Spring and I mentioned that it has, in the past, always been one of my least favourite seasons. I have always found it fidgety and fractious which somehow made me feel almost tense, but this year I am enjoying it more. I wonder if we all are after a year of restrictions. Thinking back to a year ago, we were a global nation just setting out to start understanding what was happening and what was to come. Now, we are all a year wiser and more knowledgeable and weary. Our own restless beings are full of a desire to get going, get on and continue. Just like the bulbs poking sleepy heads above soil, just like small buds appearing on fruit trees that will, in not too much time, burst with blossom, just like the first spring flowers bravely daring to unfurl themselves, we want to be living, to be doing.

We have all had to cope with an unwanted ending of the way we could just live without thought, taking for rite, daily life, hugs, little touches, crowds. A casual carelessness that the loss of has been heart-breaking. But we have all come a long way. We all feel the desire for this way of things to end. But we must all see this through. It will come and the ending will be more than okay.

Nothing but food

Mealtimes have become the main event rather than the punctuation. But here is a danger; the comfort or boredom snacking.

There is nothing to talk about but food. Oh, and – when is bins? I don’t know about you, but between the amount of time we have been in lockdown and the weather being so bad that even the allowed daily exercise has been put largely on hold, it feels that there is very little to say about what anyone has done each week. Living rurally, we were completely snowed in and so I didn’t even get to my blood or chemo appointments this week. They may not exactly be highlights but at least they mean I get to leave the house.

I love having catch ups with my closest ones on various on-line platforms but they, as well as phone calls can end up a little like this: “Anyone done anything this week?” “Not really.” “Pretty much the same as last week.” “Yep.” “Yep, me too.”

At least before the snow we were able to start talking about what was coming out in the garden and the things we were thinking of getting planted, but even that has been thwarted until things improve. The snow itself, did of course, provide a new topic of conversation for a while especially when wondering just who had left trails up and down our garden when I wasn’t looking – turns out, it was pheasants.

But it’s not as if there is nothing to do, it’s just that somehow, in our long confinements, everything just feels a bit samey. If it weren’t for all my hospital appointments the calendar would be redundant; even weekends have no meaning anymore as, because MOTH and I have been working from home, work is an any day, every day, any time thing.

And so food seems to be the thing that is keeping us all going – literally and figuratively. The highlight of most days is the coming meal. It is a marker of time passing and something nice (hopefully) to look forward to, something that is different to the previous day. Mealtimes have become the main event rather than the punctuation. But here is a danger; the comfort or boredom snacking, accompany this with not being out and active and you can understand why a rotation of jogging bottoms are becoming my staple wardrobe. I’ve not helped myself by coming up with a dangerously easy, tasty quick bake, the recipe for which is below. The cats appear to be in on it too and I couldn’t count the number of times a day I refill their biscuit bowls. They, however do not have jogging bottoms. And the birds are no better.

On an unrelated food note, do you ever feel like you have the same things over and over again? After feeling like this a while back, I started keeping a list of the different meals I cook and it’s now in the seventies. And yes, I realise this is a very nerdy thing to do. But trust me, when you have the mind-blank of writing the shopping list for the week – it helps to be a nerd.

For a life writer, this lack of doing anything makes it very hard to write about, well, doing anything. Before you know it I’ll be telling you about the ironing or how I’ve re-labelled all my wallet files (and just how is it that in a supposedly going paper-less world there is still just so much blinking life-admin paperwork?) or even tidying the stationery drawer, which is on my radar to do. Perhaps we will all end up with a new level of tolerance of the mundane where every-day activities are the height of excitement. On a serious note, we might all be learning to find a new joy in smaller less exuberant activities, which actually, I think could be a good thing in a way.

Whatever you are all not-doing this week, I hope it is punctuated by some lovely food. I for one am off to have supper after posting this and to think about what we need to get out of the freezer to cook tomorrow.

And, just when is bins?

For my easy soft-bake flapjack recipe, click here

A message of cope

I guess I am hoping that anyone who is feeling lock down fatigue can be kind to themselves and feel proud for coping because that is more than amazing.

Today is a classic British February day – grey. Grey, drizzle, damp, mild then cold, bleak – bleh! And, of course, we are in lockdown. There is much talk of lockdown fatigue and finally I really get it. I have to admit that in lockdown one, I was so busy with the garden and working from home, that aside from the miserableness of not being able to physically see family and the rather over-zealous sudden plethora of on-line meet-ups, I didn’t feel the effects too badly. Certainly there was fear, worry and a kind of dazed incomprehension, but I was busy.

This time I often feel it is not just groundhog day, but groundhog hour, perhaps even minute. Firstly, the weather is not conducive to gardening – unless you like bog snorkelling your way around the borders, that is. Walks are getting trickier too as the Suffolk clay, mixed with huge douses of rain make for incredibly slippery and unmanageable paths (on our last mini walk, my mum and I each accrued a good two inches in height with the mud which accumulated on our boots – which yes, brought us to the grand heights of five foot-three and five respectively). And the grey – eugh – the never ending bleakness that stretches from supposed sunrise to indeterminable sunset.

But this time round I also have the added open-endedness of being signed off sick. I had had hopes of keeping my hand in a bit more than I am managing but I have to admit, that having chemotherapy every week is harder than I had anticipated – it is exhausting. Apart from the fact that chemo day itself can take a good six hours out of the day, there never seems to be time to recuperate from one round before the next is upon me. I had to have a sit down the other day just from putting the washing up away.

I had also had visions of me indulgently focusing on my art and crafting. Of channelling healing through creative practice, but I don’t seem to have the energy or focus for much of that either. It doesn’t help that my eyesight is fuzzy from the chemo and that loss of mental focus is another very normal side effect and, due to hot flushes coming and going at will, I sleep very badly and sporadically, leaving me constantly tired but never able to properly sleep.

This all leaves me, grudgingly at times, having to accept that more and more I need to do – nothing. And that this is okay. And I want to say that it’s okay for everyone else too. Some creatures hibernate over winter, others go into a sense of torpor. When faced with huge negative events, our brains will often naturally shut off from these things which lends us into a strange, almost dissociative state which in itself causes unease and tiredness. At the moment, we are a nation, a world that is – coping, a word perhaps undervalued. To cope: to deal with difficulties in a calm and adequate manner. It has no bells, the whistles would be more like a party blower with a hole in, but it is a quiet strength – getting on with things in the face of a difficult or unpleasant situation. Let’s have some synonyms: manage, survive, get through, carry on, subsist, endure, withstand, bear – these all sound pretty strong to me.

To avoid any further feelings of conflict I am starting to learn that acceptance is a key part of being able to positively cope with what is. Accepting that all I am capable of at times is rest, is making resting more effective. It is hard when I want to be doing, but I found that I was neither doing or resting when I was fighting my need to just stop. I was, instead, being physically still with my brain being annoyed – not helpful. I think a key thing to remember is that accepting a situation as it is at the time, is not giving in to the idea that that is how it will be forever, it is for the time only and that change will come.

I guess I am hoping that anyone who is feeling lock down fatigue, tiredness, confusion – the good old malaise, can be kind to themselves by accepting that, that is what is happening for them at this moment but that the moment won’t last for all time and that things will change. And to also feel very proud of themselves for coping because to cope is in my mind more than amazing, it is strong and it is withstanding, it is moving steadily and it is okay.

*I have no relevant images to go with this post as I have had a very hard week from the chemo and have done pretty much nothing of note. So instead, just a few nice ones from better times, times that I know will come again.

Jenny Antoinette

I feel something like…Mary Antoinette with her eighteenth century pouffe (although without the parrot, fruit bowl, animals, toy ships or other novelty items) but with a great pomp of a towering edifice on top of my head.

MOTH and I took a gentle, state-sanctioned, walk the other day. It was a glorious morning, ice and frost had sugared everything to white and the sky was that wonderful bright blue that seems so particular to winter. As we passed under trees that were in the sun, we were rained on by tiny frozen pellets as the ice melted enough from the branches to fall in crystal droplets, but not enough to turn to liquid.

It was obviously a day that had caught a lot of people’s attention and although I generally avoid social media most of the time, beautiful photos of walks popped up everywhere. It felt as if, for a day at least, there was a shared excitement of the beauty of nature rippling through a collective consciousness. Whether it was because we are once again being asked to stay home as much as possible or just the inevitable grasp at a nice day after bleak greyness and damp I don’t know, but so many people felt the magnificence in the day and went out to experience it. This, I feel, can only be a good thing, especially when we have all just undergone a universal global moment of, ‘what on earth’ with the happenings on the other side of the pond alongside our own home-grown recklessness. (That is as close as I will come to political ranting here, I promise.)

I had to take a quick break from writing to run downstairs and feed the birds. It was a hurried and early off today for my pre-chemo blood tests and I didn’t have time before going out. Goodness, do I feel the guilt if I forget to feed them or even just put their food out late. The sparrows barrel in and u-turn in a huff if they see the feeders empty, the starlings strut about the tray obstreperously pecking at the emptiness, the blue tits perch forlornly looking to where food is not – they certainly know how to show their feelings and frankly they do exaggerate, there are always fat balls and nut butter out as well.

I was very pleased to spot a new bird in the garden recently, a redwing. As well as it being a great year for fungi, there has been an abundance of berries this winter; hawthorn, pyracantha, holly and cotoneaster, particularly and the birds have been gorging. According to the RSPB, the redwing is the UKs smallest true thrush, looking very similar but with a blush of red under the wing. They visit in the winter months and they love berries. There is a possibility I may be mistaken and it is a fieldfare, but I am holding out that I am right if only because it would be nice to be. I’m pretty sure though that I have seen the bold stripy chest of the redwing through my binoculars, the using of which always makes me feel like I am the proverbial nosy neighbour, which I am, it’s just I’m only interested in the birds.

On another short walk, my mum and I came across a small and very neat nest perched among some scrub and brambles about a foot off the ground. It has been suggested that the nest was that of the chiff chaff – perhaps one of the most onomatopoeic of the birds. We also enjoyed the sight of a tree doing yoga or rather, what we think was a huge and old piece of ivy that had entwined the tree to make it look as if it were contorting itself into the tree yoga pose. It seems in lockdown, even nature is taking up hobbies.

It is a very odd feeling to wear a hat over a wig. I feel something like one of the changing guards with their large Bearskin hats or perhaps a little like Mary Antoinette with her eighteenth century pouffe (although without the parrot, fruit bowl, animals, toy ships or other novelty items) but with a great pomp of a towering edifice on top of my head. I know this is not actually what it looks like, in fact, I don’t think anyone would know there was anything out of the ordinary if it wasn’t mentioned, but it certainly feels as if there is rather a lot going on up there.

I don’t wear my wig every day, it is very tight and can get itchy and there is a strange feeling of being disingenuous; looking as if I have hair, when I do not. But, I have to admit it does give me a greater sense of ‘normality’ for a while when I do wear it, not having the glaring, ‘I have cancer,’ look going on. And it is definitely warm, which at the moment is a bonus. Perhaps to garner the mood I should embrace the look and add a redwing representation to my wig/hat combo.

Grazing Bales

Sunday, late afternoon; I’ve just been out for a short post-work walk and am wondering why I don’t do so more often. I always feel at my best mentally and emotionally when I am outside and in nature.

Today, the weather and scenery were stunning. Having just had several days of rain, (which I was most happy to see arrive after the driest May on record had the land scorched to dust) the sun has returned. Yesterday was all big blue expansive skies that seem to be bigger than they ought to, today the blue has been punctuated with white cloud and a slight breeze.

The route I took is quite short and one I have done many times before. If I don’t dawdle (which of course, I always do, stopping to look, smell, feel and listen to all the wonders around me) I can leave the house and be back again in half an hour – if I rush. But why rush? I’ll never understand people who charge their way through a walk. Why aren’t they stopping to trail their hands in the long grass, to peek into ditches, do they not close their eyes and breathe the fresh air pretending for a brief moment that nothing else exists? I can’t imagine going for a walk and not holding stones or picking up feathers or peering as close as I can at insects and lamenting, as ever, my lack of bird call knowledge when I hear the twittering around me. Although, today, I was quite happy that I was able to identify a chiff chaff.

Not all land owners and farmers are great at encouraging people to walk the public footpaths by keeping them clear and easily identifiable – there are a few round here like that. But, others are very good at it, and my walk begins around fields on a path that is kept mown; wide enough for one, or two if you are very close. I was led initially by several tiny brown flittering butterflies who appeared to skip about only a few inches ahead of my toes. One finally settled long enough on a butter cup for me to take a quick (terrible) picture and I think they were small heaths. The area I was currently walking round has been left to go to wild land and long grasses and the beautiful feathery fronds jigged in the breeze with their soft green and purple hues. Beautiful. But, as with as many places there is talk of it being built on which saddens me greatly. I can see brambles beginning to flower in the hedgerows, bringing promises of delicious fruits to come. I will be out picking and eating later in the year.

A little further along my walk I spot a large black shape on a nettle leaf. Looking closer it is a caterpillar, dark and bristly; looking extremely gothic. As I peer further into the nettle patch, I see that there are in fact many of them, all on nettle leaves, and so once more I take to my books and the internet to find out what they are: the caterpillars of the Peacock butterfly.

The reason I had stopped and began perusing the nettles was because I was getting myself back together after being highly startled by a pair of pheasants. I think though that they may have been more startled by me. I gave my apologies, especially as it was a male and female I had rudely interrupted. They flew off in the clumsy, flapping barking that they do without giving me the courtesy of an apology for scaring the life out of me.

Against all the blue, green and yellow of this early summer day, large shining black plastic greeted me next – the covering for bales of straw. My best friend and I have long loved the sight of bales in fields, particularly as we feel they always seem as if they are grazing. Many a time we have sent each other pictures of such with the caption: grazing bales. I may have tweeted a video at her this time.

My head and heart by this point wanted to continue to walk for hours. Unfortunately my body, with its various ails, does not comply and so reluctantly I begin to head home. I can manage an hour of gentle walking but by the end will still be in pain, so I am learning to take things easier than I would like – learning but not liking – I get very grumpy about this.

But I am blessed, I know, to be able to go out at all and also to be close enough to be out in nature so quickly. I know not everyone can and so I recorded just a short part of my walk, which you can watch below. Watching nature and imagining yourself in it can be beneficial too. When I was going through cancer treatment, I would sometimes close my eyes and take myself off for a walk in my mind. I would imagine every detail from putting on my shoes and picking up my keys, to what I would see and feel out there; and I’m sure it helped me. Perhaps, if you can’t get out, for whatever reason, I can give you this little bit of nature.