Memories are made of this?

My dad has a lot of stories to tell. The best and most vivid of them are from his childhood. I guess that’s what comes of growing up in a large family in wartime London, and being evacuated for eighteen months to a farm in Cornwall. Of course, his ability to recall so many memories in such detail could also be the way his brain is wired. Whatever the cause, I am thankful for the effect. I love his stories.

No such rich source material for me. I grew up in our average-sized family in peacetime Kent and went nowhere without my parents until, aged eleven, I was prised away to join a week’s school trip to Dorset. I can recall very little detail from that week, but I know I was unhappy. The thing I don’t know is whether I was unhappy for ten minutes, ten hours or the whole five days. That’s the fickleness of memory.

I suspect one of the reasons I have so few stories to tell is the sheer uneventfulness of my childhood. Any memories I do have are like poorly taken photographs—fuzzy round the edges, but I can just about work out what’s going on in them—and mostly seem to involve mild pain or minor injury. Usually, I am the victim—falling on wet paving stones and cutting open my chin, stepping on a rusty nail, being hit in the face with a bat during some boisterous game—but, on occasion, it is someone else’s misfortune that comes to mind, like the time I thrust a paint-filled sponge into a class mate’s eye. I can’t recall what led up to this attack or what followed, but I’m fairly sure she deserved it. Or, at least, that’s the feeling I recall now.

It’s not that I mind having had nothing dangerous or especially exciting happen to me when I was growing up. I have a lively imagination. I write and improvise. I read books, watch films, listen to other people’s stories. And, thank God, I still have my short-term memory intact, for now.

In improv they say your ‘ordinary’ is your genius. I just wish my ‘ordinary’ was more memorable.

Missing things

Great passions have sprung from the loss and return of a glove. But there’s something deeply unromantic about a missing sock. Even a handkerchief is capable of exciting more passion than a sock. Would Othello have worked himself into such a jealous rage over a lost sock? I don’t think so.

The fact is, no-one’s going to chase after you to return a sock – or if they do, you are certain to deny all knowledge of it. ‘That ugly, shapeless thing – mine? What do you take me for!’ But away from the judging eyes of the world, the loss of a sock can be deeply affecting.

It was only an ordinary walking sock. Yes, it had trudged up Munros with me and teetered along Crib Goch for more hours than I care to remember, but it could have been replaced many times over in the months and years that I’ve spent regretting its loss. In truth, it wasn’t the missing sock that was the problem – it was the one left behind. What was to be done with it? Discard a perfectly good sock for a fault not its own? I couldn’t do it. So, instead, the sock languished in the depths of my drawer, resurfacing every now and then, just when my memory of its former, happier existence had started to fade.

Finally, tired of my own hopeless, sentimental narrative, in which somehow, from somewhere the missing sock would return, I plucked the article from my drawer – still unwithered by age – and binned it.

TWO DAYS LATER, the other sock turned up – dusty and runkled from a long encounter with the back of a radiator, but otherwise as pristine as its recently discarded companion. Any joy felt was swiftly followed by dismay. Was it my fate to spend yet more months and years plagued by a single, odd sock?

Struck by a sudden thought, and barely daring to hope, I rushed to the bin in my bedroom. And, lo! My own tardiness was my salvation! For there, still nestling amongst the other rubbish was the original sock.

I could not get that pair of socks on my feet fast enough. I wore them all day. I am wearing them now.

Okay. So it’s not Arthur Miller, but it’s got all the elements of a modern tragedy – pathos, conflict, irony, catharsis – and I, for one, will be checking behind my radiators more carefully in future.

Worrying tendencies

I’ve just started keeping a ‘things I needn’t have worried about’ book. There are only a couple of entries so far, both fairly minor. The idea is to produce an indisputable record of what a pointless, unnecessary, emotionally-draining activity worrying tends to be.

I’ve always been a bit of a worrier. One of my earliest school reports observes, ‘Melanie has a nervous smile.’ And worrying, unlike nervous smiling, is not one of those things you grow out of. In fact, you’re far more likely to grow into it; so that by the time you have achieved a confident smile, worrying feels as natural and unavoidable as breathing.

Worrying runs in my family. If it had been an Olympic sport (and I haven’t given up hope), we would have been the cream of Team GB – Mum and me in the Paired Worrying, teaming up with my brother and sister for the Worry Relay. Dad, who’s far too sanguine to qualify, would have been the ideal coach. He could have kept the rest of us from peaking too early.

It can be a bit like a relay race, worrying. The sort of relay race of nightmares where all the worries are thundering down the track towards you, batons extended, and there’s just you standing there waiting. And you’re starting to sweat, worrying how you’re going to keep hold of all of those batons, but then the first worry arrives and – hey! you’ve done it! – the baton is firmly in your grasp, you could be off and running. But already it’s too late, because there’s another worry heading straight for you, just metres away, and another one, and another one…

Or, as Shakespeare put it, ‘When worries come, they come not single spies, but in battalion.’ (What he actually said was sorrows, but it’s close enough.)

And what’s the use of worrying? It’s not as if you can rule out bad things happening by worrying about them, is it? That’s just crazy. And since we all know that it’s nearly always the things we haven’t worried about that happen, what are we going to do? Worry about every possible thing that might happen, just so we can rule it out? Utter madness.

No – it’s time this whole worry thing took a long walk off a short plank, and I’m on its case. By the end of the year, all its false claims and gratuitious scaremongering will be down in black and white. There’ll be nowhere to hide.

Who’s worried now?

Exercising the mind

As a child, I was never happier than when I was chasing a football over a bumpy patch of grass in Knole Park, or knocking the heads off my mum’s flowers with my reverse sweep cover drive. Then, in my teenage years, it was tennis – hours and hours of thumping down my demon, left-handed serves and picking off winners at the net. (There are still moments in the summer when I get all wistful for the days when a date with a grass court would make everything right with life again.) I played several seasons of hockey – and kept all my teeth – cycled across bits of France, Spain and Ireland with a tent, had a spell of indoor rowing (I know), and have intermittently practised yoga and pilates. On top of that, for sustained periods of my life, I’ve run. A lot. I had training schedules and a special waist belt for my high-protein drinks. I entered races. I completed two half marathons, for God’s sake.

So, in summary, that should be more than enough evidence that I am someone who enjoys regular exercise. There is also a whole raft of independent research to support my personal experience of the link between exercise – especially the sort that involves repetitive, monotonous actions – and creativity. AND YET, it’s still the area of my life that gets squeezed out when everything else is kicking and screaming for my attention.

I’ve always known that exercise is good for me. I don’t mean that in a ‘Government Health Guidelines’ sense. It really does make me feel more alive and in the world when I’m exercising regularly. I take after my dad. He’s eighty four in March and still goes for daily bike rides. He also exercises with weights, a trampette and one of those balls that looks like a space hopper. He is a living, breathing, closely-related reminder of what I need to do.

So, dear reader, I did it. I went out for a run. Not far, and it was more of a slow shuffle than a run, but I kept going and when I stopped I felt good. There were no lofty thoughts en route, but that was due to the non-stop chatting with my ultra running friend Helen, who had kindly agreed to shuffle along with me.

A couple of days later, I went out for another run – this time alone. To be honest, nothing much happened in the inspiration department then, either, which isn’t surprising. My brain has more pressing concerns at this stage – like trying to persuade my legs and lungs to keep up.

But I reckon that if I can stick with it, and not do anything daft, in a few weeks’ time thoughts other than ‘relax your shoulders’ and ‘breathe’, might start to form. Watch this space…

Hooray! Hooray? It’s a Holi-Holiday

Yes, thank you. I had a very pleasant Christmas and New Year. Nice of you to ask.

Over a ten day period I slept in five different beds and travelled to four different counties. No, I wasn’t taking part in the 10 Day/5 Bed/4 County Challenge – that pinnacle of the British sporting calendar. And, no, sadly, I wasn’t being sponsored for charity.

I was taking a holiday.

We all need to get away. Have a break from whatever it is we do the rest of the time. And I did have a relaxing and enjoyable time, overall. Admittedly, my neck still isn’t right after all those encounters with strange mattresses. And the nine hour drive from Somerset to Yorkshire – the M1, the black ice, the M1 – will be etched in my memory until the M1 no longer has any roadworks. But it did me good to have a change of scene, and it was great to shake up the familiar rhythms and routines of my day – although however much I shook them up, my sleep pattern refused to be anything other than its usual disrupted self.

That being said, I repeat: we all need to get away. The thing we don’t need – and I think I’m not alone here – is the coming back.

I don’t know about you – maybe you didn’t even have a break – but I’ve been like a badly behaved dog ever since I got home. I won’t sit. I won’t stay. Not even for treats.

Working from home doesn’t help, of course. When I worked in an office the pain was a shared, collective experience and I was tethered in one place. The day had a start and a finish. It didn’t stretch into a shimmering blue nothingness, like a highway in a U.S. road movie.

I know I sound ungrateful. I don’t mean to. I think it’s the Puritan in me. That and the Protestant Work Ethic. I’m sure my holiday did me good. I’m just not sure it did me enough good to survive all the heavy sighing of the past week.

Still, I’m looking on the bright side. In another few days, it’ll be like I’ve never been away.

It’s good to talk

I’ve had some wonderful conversations this Christmas. I use the word loosely.

Over the past ten days, in the company of close family and friends, I’ve enjoyed the easy intimacy of shared stories (including the ones I’ve heard many times before).

I’ve relished the cut and thrust of lively discussions – from cyber warfare to ‘A Hundred and One Dalmations’; from improvised jazz to Fiona Bruce’s dress sense.

And there’s been a healthy dose of good, old-fashioned banter – most of it affectionate.

I’ve been been entertained and amused, inspired and moved.

I am thankful for the power and the playfulness of the spoken word. I am thankful for the gifts of speech and comprehension.

And now, post-Christmas, I am thankful for one last, but much cherished gift: silence.

A Christmas list

13 things I have learned in the past fortnight:

1. Improvisation is not just something I do in the classroom or on stage. It’s life.

2. Writing full-time is different to working full-time.

3. The less I achieve, the more breaks and treats I require.

4. When I relax, I am more creative. When I am creative, I am more relaxed.

5. Kindness and compassion can be self-administered.

6. I need air, light and movement every day. The shorter the day, the greater the need.

7. When my daily routine has stopped working, I can change it.

8. I am no longer a morning person.

9. Ten minutes of busy-minded meditation is still good.

10. There are some bits of Christmas I like.

11. Christmas shopping is best done in 15-minute bursts, followed by 24-hour recovery periods.

12. If you leave an anxious dog alone with something shreddable, it can only end badly.

13. At a busy time of year, a list is good enough.

Season’s greetings!

Stopping by Woods

There’s a little scrap of woods a stone’s throw from my house. Scruffy, with pockets of litter – hemmed in by the backs of people’s gardens, a clogged up drainage channel and new build houses, it’s a place to walk the dog in the morning. Other people walk their dogs there, too, so it’s as well to keep one eye on the ground.

It was a morning like any other. We were both in our own worlds. Me – composing a text message as I trailed along behind the dog, eyes flicking to the path ahead. The dog – tail up, following her nose.

I could have missed it entirely, but something about the shimmering white light at the end of a path rarely taken by me or the dog stopped me in my tracks. Moth-like, I drew closer and at a certain point I saw them in all their glory: sunbeams – like something a child might draw with pencil and ruler – slanting through the trees.

I stepped into the nearest beam of light and closed my eyes. I don’t know why. Superstition, fancy, an imagined warmth. Nothing happened – no pot of gold, no unicorn galloping out of the trees – but for a fraction of time both seemed almost possible.

Of all the words that might capture this experience – so many now drained of meaning – there is one that my agnostic self hesitates to use; but standing in a sunbeam, right there on my suburban doorstep, the ever present thrum of A14 traffic as backdrop, I felt blessed.

I rejoined the dog and having completed our short circuit, returned for one more look at at my sunbeams. Already the sun had moved on, only a ghostly trace remaining.