It might seem crazy what I'm 'bout to say, doo-doo doo-doo dooby-doo-doo……

Which probably qualifies as one of my longer blog titles. If I had the urge, I suppose I could draw up some kind of chart or spreadsheet entitled, “Ruth’s Blog Headings” but I don’t know that I can be bothered. It doesn’t sound that thrilling, does it? Although, while we’re on the subject, “I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike, I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride it where I like …… oh hang on” and “Hair toss, check my nails, baby how you feelin’?” are also fairly hefty. If you’re new here (welcome!) feel free to scroll back and see what you think.

Anyway, on to the subject of the blog, which is why we’re all here. I do love a bit of Pharrell and who can resist a quick burst of, “Happy?” As I’ve shared elsewhere, finding all this extra time has meant that Mr Leigh and I have been lavishing a lot of love and care on the garden. Yesterday, we all enjoyed our very first home-grown sweetcorn, and it was the most delicious thing ever. Picture five people with butter running down their chins, chomping on corn cobs and smacking their lips and you have the scene at tea time last night. Courgettes are doubling in size almost as we look at them, the runner beans are rampant, the pumpkins are swelling, the fruit is fruiting and the poly tunnel is alive with yummy vegetables. Every spring, we start off well, weeding, planting, watering and hoping for a good crop, but by July, we’re in the midst of the catering season and feeling terribly guilty for not spending enough time nurturing plant life. Not any more!

On Monday, I realised something amazing. I’d go so far as to say it was an epiphany. It’s only in novels that people climb mountains, or stand at the top of waterfalls, or stride along a wide golden beach gazing out to sea and murmuring, “At last! Truly, I have found the meaning of life,” or similar. I was standing at the sink looking out at the herbs and thinking, “I really must get out there and pull those thistles up.” It wasn’t even a particularly sunny day, but the greengage trees were waving in the wind, loaded with fruit, the chickens were pecking and clucking contentedly and all was right with my world. Scrubbing industriously at a tea-stained mug, I suddenly realised I was happy.

Now when I say happy, I don’t mean that fleeting feeling we all get, directly related to good things happening. I’m referring to an emotion I have never felt in nearly fifty-four years of life, that whatever happens, whatever annoyances, gripes or grievances I may have, I am content. This is new. However happy I was before (and I was. Who wouldn’t be with my lovely husband and children?) something was always there, eating away at my joy as a wasp nibbles at a perfectly ripe Victoria plum. I used to berate myself. Why couldn’t I find that elusive feeling of contentment? My deeply-loved husband and children, my wonderful friends, my faith, my life experience, where I found myself in beautiful rural Suffolk was surely enough. Something was always missing. And that made me feel sad. But now I’ve arrived at the destination, finally mooring my skiff to the jetty.

It hasn’t been easy to get here. Two and a half years of counselling, painful life lessons learned, realising that if people and situations won’t change, I must change and all that jazz. Heck, it’s hard being an adult but it does have its compensations.

On Monday, I ticked lots of things off my huge to do list, which is always good. I baked bread. I picked vegetables. I acquired a second-hand mower for my parents for the knockdown price of £10 and a lovely second-hand wooden bench for the garden. Maybe all of those things contributed to my arrival at Happy Town. A routine phone call to Utility Warehouse doesn't sound like much fun, but the lady I spoke to, Latara, made it so. Who'd have thought that talking about broadband and electricity tariffs could be so much fun? But it was. Life is, and I think should be, often, a joyous disorder. 

I’m a writer, so I like painting word pictures to illustrate my point. Let’s imagine that I’m a house. A nice, semi-detached Victorian house, for the sake of argument. A quick glance would show you curtains at the windows, flowers in the garden and veg in the veg patch. You might say to yourself, “Wow, look at that. I wish I could be like that house. My beans aren't doing too well and my flowers are choked with weeds.” If you came a bit closer, you might notice that the windows aren’t sparkling, there are nettles growing and the lawn could do with a mow. Still, that’s life, and the house looks pretty good, even close up. To extend the metaphor, while all this is going on, I’m round the back frantically underpinning, extending, re-pointing and shoring up because it doesn’t matter how many nice things people say about the house, I know it’s not right and it could be so much better.

I’ve stopped doing that now, after a lifetime of believing that I have to work harder than anyone else to be liked and valued. There are lots of things wrong with me. I’m a bit messy. I’m not very good at routine. I take on responsibilities I shouldn’t. I’m not great at character assessment. That said, I’m creative. I’m kind. I’m generous. I love helping people.

Which means that I can now give myself license to feel like a room without a roof, believe that happiness is the truth and that I finally know what happiness is to me. Here come bad news talking this and that? I think we all know what it can do with itself!

Because I’m happy.

Coming out of my shell

It’s been a funny old week. I mean that in both senses of the word. Those long, uninterrupted days of early lock down, where I could stay in bed if I liked, writing and supping tea, or amble about watering things and working out plot lines in my head are drawing to a close. We’re in the next stage. I’ve got two new clients which is brilliant. One in particular has handed me the dream job. I get to talk to lovely people, revel in gorgeous photos of their homes, then distil my notes into mellifluous prose. Some of my old clients are coming back (welcome!) People are starting to book parties again, so both halves of my old life are revving up.

I liked having time. It’s not something I had much of before the pandemic. I was always driving somewhere, ticking something off a massive to-do list, worrying about something. A bit like Road Runner. Whereas since March, I’ve been more like a tortoise, ambling about, letting the sunshine heat me up and revitalise me and spending time in my shell. Turns out it’s quite a good place to be from time to time. I can think in there.

My mum was ninety on Sunday. In spite of her protestations that it was just another day, my sister and I organised our first meal out for months, appropriately socially distanced and threw an open house in the front garden of my parents’ bungalow. Watching everyone drinking tea, eating cake, chatting and laughing did my heart good. The sun shone too, which is always helpful with outside events. Halfway through proceedings, my niece reminded me that we’d left a very important family member out. She walked down the back garden to release her from her pen and returned clutching her to her chest.

When my sister was ten, she succeeded where I had always failed in obtaining a real, live pet. This was a fine-looking tortoise, probably aged about twenty, who we called Timbo (after a male DJ on Essex Radio, since you ask). Many years later, we found out he was a she. Hey ho.

Timbo loves company. Like all tortoises, she’s got very poor eyesight but excellent hearing and a great sense of smell. “Is it alive?” asked an elderly guest, recoiling. Once everyone had realised that there was a friendly reptile in their midst, the party continued, Timbo being fed cucumber, lettuce, strawberries and raw pepper by her adoring fans. At one point, she relieved herself lavishly, alarmingly close to the birthday girl’s sandals, but a discreet flick into the hedge took care of that.

Once everyone had gone home, we tidied up and then sank into comfy chairs in the front room. I haven’t seen my sister and her family since February so there was a lot of catching up to do. Somehow, we got on to the subject of their friend Karen who has inherited her mother’s house rabbit. She has also taken in another creature, known by one and all as Gary the Psycho Tortoise.

When my brother in law mentioned Gary, I fell about laughing. Gary. I mean, Gary! Who calls a tortoise Gary? Once I’d calmed down a bit, I asked for more details. It seems that Gary is a troubled soul. Violent and obstinate, he headbutts his way out of his accommodation each morning, ignoring the door and necessitating the application of much gaffer tape. In addition, his libido knows no bounds. Visitors to Karen and Pete’s are often startled when Gary approaches at top speed and begins to – ahem – get to know their foot a little better. The moment of truth, it seems, is close by when Gary’s eyes cross.

Karen and Pete are extremely kindly and compassionate folk. They are trying to make Gary a better person/tortoise and find his softer side. Sadly, he doesn’t appear to have one. He is frequently put in the naughty corner and has even been seeing an animal behavioural psychologist. This news reduced me to helpless tears of laughter. I haven’t laughed that much since I don’t know when. So many questions. How does the psychologist communicate with Gary? Are his problems rooted in nature or nurture? Does he get given homework? Is it a talking cure? (probably not). And most of all, how can Gary be brought out of his shell?

I am nothing like Gary. That said, I have been seeing a counsellor for some time, but we speak the same language and he’s never put me in the naughty corner. I may be a bit more like Timbo, affectionate, fond of company and occasionally short-sighted when it comes to painful realisations.

I’ve been the life and soul of the party for so long (approximately since the age of nineteen, when I began to suspect that fun-loving, jolly people had a better time of it than introspective, depressed types) that I’d forgotten, if I ever knew, that retreating into a quiet place to reflect is a Very Good Thing. Lock down provided me with that opportunity and it’s done me no end of good. I’ve started to poke my head out a bit now and feel the sun on my back. I don’t know what the rest of this year holds, but I am looking forward to finding out.

Images by Pixabay

Ruth is a freelance writer and speaker. She is married with three children, runs a catering company and keeps chickens and quail. She has her first novel in the editing stage, another two on the go, writes poetry as the mood takes her, writes for a number of Christian charities and has her own business writing blogs for small Suffolk businesses. She is a recovering over-achiever who is now able to do the school run in her onesie most days. She blogs at @bigwordsandmadeupstories, covering topics as diverse as King Zog of Albania, a Christingle plagued by punch-ups and tummy upsets, and the inevitable decline of elderly parents. She has abnormally narrow sinuses and a morbid fear of raw tomatoes, but has decided not to let this get in the way of a meaningful life.

It's the end of the world as we know it....

..... a slight exaggeration. It is the end of a huge part of our family life this week, however. Our youngest child will be leaving primary school on Friday and with her ends nearly fourteen years of a long and devoted relationship with Wickham Market Primary School. I remember sitting at toddlers holding her, a tiny windy baby in my arms, and calculating, to my alarm, that I would be in the playground until 2020. In 2008, this seemed an endless stretch of time. I had a little boy in Year 1 and another in nursery and was firmly embedded in school life.

Writing this, I’m aware that no little voice is shouting, “Mummy!” I am not being interrupted by indignant re-tellings of who did what to whom and no-one needs me to join them in the toilet for urgent wiping enhancement. Peace reigns. My first little boy is now nearly 17, 6-foot tall with a growly voice and big muscles. My nursery child is staring his first year of GCSE work in the face and trawling through all his homework on Teams. My daughter is crashed out on the sofa, exhausted after the toils of school.

Covid-19 took Year 6, screwed it up into a ball and hurled it out into the stratosphere. No SATS (hooray!) but also, no Year 6 production. No summer term of hormonally-driven drama (yay!) but also, no leavers’ assembly, at least not in the traditional way.

Thrice-blessed Head of Wickham, Helen Murray and her team have come up with a genius idea to help the Year 6 parents experience the last assembly. We will be in our cars on the playground, listening to our children singing the leavers’ song and no doubt wiping tears from our eyes.

There will be no anxious queue snaking up to the hall doors, no PTA raffle, no hugging and saying goodbye afterwards. This year group will look back on their final days at primary school in a very different way to everyone else. Writing this, I feel tears welling up in my eyes, and I’m not a crier.

It’s important to focus on the good and the encouraging, however. Learning has continued, albeit in a different way. There are many happy memories to treasure. The children are going on to high school, a whole new adventure for which their years at Wickham have prepared them.

Over the years, there have been times when I dreaded and even feared the playground. Tears, bullying, mean behaviour – and that was just the parents. For the past two weeks, I’ve been walking in and savouring the huge expanse of green, the play equipment bought with the blood, sweat and tears of many PTAs over the years, the trees, the bushes and the atmosphere. So many last times. It’s sad. I’m sad, if I’m honest. I didn’t want it to be this way. Like all the other Year 6 parents, I wanted to sit in the audience cheering on our children up on the stage and agreeing that they all looked ready for high school. I was so looking forward to the leavers’ assembly, with the heady mix of emotion. We won’t have that, but we have so many other things to be grateful for.

I’ve been a Wickham parent for so long that I’m as much part of the furniture as the out of reach football in the gutter and the benches by the grass. From a practical point of view, life will be easier in the next academic year. 2019/2020 was the year of three children at three educational establishments. By September, we’ll be back down to two.

We’ll write thank you cards, of course, and I will bring my present to the front office so as not to embarrass my daughter. Actually, though, this blog is my thank you to all the people who work so hard to make Wickham Market Primary School a great place to be.

Thank you all. I’ve loved being part of your community.

Images from Pixabay

Ruth Leigh blogs at Big Words and Made Up Stories. You can also find her on Instagram: ruththewriter1.

Words

If you’re of a certain age (and you’d need to have been watching Top of the Pops in 1982, by my calculations), you may remember a ditty called, “Words” by FR David which made it all the way to number 2 in the UK charts. FR had a strangely warbly voice, and even now, if the word, “words” comes up in conversation, I will either think or say, “words!” in a similarly trillworthy fashion.

I made that up. Trillworthy I mean. I double checked with Google, which replied, “Did you mean trailworthy?” No, Google, I didn’t. I appreciate that people use and abuse you, then drop you like a hot potato, but if I’d meant worthy of a trail, I would have written it.

Words. Aren’t they great? There are millions of them and we get new ones every year. My lovely friend Sarah from Devon joined Facebook a couple of weeks ago and coined a fabulous word to describe the condition so much typing had brought on. “Fingerachytrouble.” I loved that. That’s an example of a portmanteau word, but you knew that.

Sixteen or so years ago, I was fortunate enough to go through the early months of first-time motherhood with two top mates, Kath and Hannah. We were all new mums and our friendship was one of the things which kept us all going. Every so often, we’d have a toy swap. Kath and I exchanged a crate each, making our babies think they had parents who could afford limitless entertainment (this was not the case). I gave her something we called “Beebutterflything.” Why? Because it sort of looked like a bee, while also strongly resembling a butterfly, but then it also had other qualities which were indefinable. Hence beebutterflything.

Kath gave me something always referred to as “Caterpillarsnakedog.” Please see above for the reason why.

Last week, I went on my first Zoom quiz. It was loads of fun. I won’t lie to you; wine had been taken and there was much chortling and snorting. One of the rounds, delivered by my lovely friend Jenny, challenged us to work out the meaning of some words which sounded terribly rude but weren’t. Here are my favourites. A point if you can work them out without looking at the footnotes:

Scurryfunge[1] (something which I am sure our own dear Queen has never done)

Tittynopes[2] (if you are a picky eater, you will not see these)

Abibliophobia [3] (I suffer very badly from this)

My challenge to you, dear readers, is to try to use at least one of these words in conversation over the coming week. Let me know how you get on.

You could say that words are my business. I certainly write hundreds of thousands of them every year and quite often people even pay me for them. I love them and I always have. I love the diversity, the origins, the sound, the shape and the fluidity of them. Here are some of my favourites, none of which I use often enough:

Reticule

Equipage

Mellifluous

Twilight

Rambunctious

Consanguineous

Meretricious

Dusk

Succulent

Picayune

Maybe I should challenge myself to weave at least one into my next ten blogs.

As a self-employed writer, I daily find myself adrift on a foamy sea of words. Some of my clients want facts, clearly stated with no nonsense, and that’s what they get. Others, God bless them, are happy for me to write pretty much what I think will work. Yet others give me a clear brief and then let me amble around plucking the right adjectives from the air. Only in my own blog, the blog I produce monthly for More Than Writers and in my two, nearly finished works of fiction, can I wander off down bosky paths (there’s another one) and employ any kind of words I like.

Let’s finish with a quote. It’s one of my favourites.

"Good words are worth much, and cost little."

George Herbert, 17^th century poet, priest and general all-round good egg said that. He died of TB aged only 39, having devoted the last few years of his life to pastoring his little parish in Wiltshire.

Enjoy the words you read and the words you speak this coming week.

---

[1] Cleaning frantically before unexpected company arrives

[2] Crumbs left on a plate after the end of a meal

[3] The fear of running out of something to read

The Cheese Emergency Hotline

Once, a long, long time ago, we all used to go out without wearing masks and performing the Covid Leap. In those days, you could book a restaurant and have dinner out, saving on cooking and washing up. As 4^th July approaches, I wonder what scenes we’ll see on our streets. Brawls in bistros? Clashes in cafés? Terseness in trattorias? Who knows?

Pre-lock down, on the rare occasions I went out to eat, I would always order the cheeseboard rather than pudding. I’m not a massive fan of desserts. Cheese, however, is surely one of the greatest culinary inventions ever. Maybe one of the reasons I like it so much is that my writer’s eye is caught by the many wonderfully named varieties. Who wouldn’t titter when invited to partake of Bob’s Organic Knob? (A real cheese. I kid you not). The Stinking Bishop is a lively little number, washed in perry and liable to ooze its way clean off the cheeseboard, like an oleaginous serpent. From the same stable as the Bishop comes Slack Ma Girdle, wrapped in nettles. Ticklemore is made in baskets, giving it an unusual dimpled exterior.

Before the pandemic hit, I spent a good deal of my time meeting potential clients and advising them on menus (for those of you who don’t know, I run a catering business). I’d often recommend a lovely local cheese platter to follow the main course. I don’t know what it is about British folk, but having eaten heartily of tapas and paella, they’d sink into garden chairs sighing, “I genuinely couldn’t eat another thing!” As soon as I appeared with the fromage platters, however, they’d leap to their feet crying, “Cheese!” with huge delight. They would then fall on the magnificent display as if they hadn’t eaten for a week.

It’s not just the cheese itself I love, it’s what goes with it. I discovered years ago that dried apricots and crumbly cheese taste great together. We pair hard sheep’s milk cheese Manchego with membrillo (quince jelly). A fig paste also goes well with most cheeses.

Since March, I’ve been shopping for my family, my elderly parents and my mother in law and her husband. Wickham Market has a mini market on Wednesdays and Saturdays, plus the fabulous butcher’s shop EW Revett and Son on the Hill. A visit to Revetts’ is always an absolute pleasure. I can be assured of top-quality banter on the butchery side, whereas crossing over to the deli is more of a serene experience, as I choose just the right cheese, pies and cakes. It was there that I first sampled Blacksticks Blue. Gosh, it’s yummy.

The cheese stall at the market is also awash with good things. Over thirty years ago when I worked in the catering department at the University of Exeter, we used to serve cheeseboards at lots of our functions. Sage Derby, a pleasingly pale green cheese with black rind was a firm favourite. After I left Exeter, I didn’t see it again, so imagine my delight when it popped up on the cheese stall. The lady serving and I had a long and impassioned discussion about cheese. Yesterday, when I popped over to stock up on Sage Derby, she told me that she’d sold lots of it since my initial purchase. I asked her if I could nick the phrase she used, and she said yes.

“I didn’t know anything about Sage Derby until you told me about it. You’ve opened my eyes to a whole new world.”

Now, that might sound a bit OTT. We are talking about cheese here. But it’s true. Talking about food is almost as much fun as eating it. Almost. And it is a world in itself.

Back in March, the stall was selling something calling itself, “The Emergency Cheese Box.” I laughed and snapped one up for my husband’s birthday. I really like the idea of cheese purveyors being an emergency service. Hence the title of this blog.

The emergency vehicle would be Cheddar yellow, with a picture of a large piece of Cambridge Blue on the side. If there were flashing lights (and I feel that there would have to be), they would be a deep, Red Leicester colour. The driver and his partner would be fully equipped with oatcakes, cheese knives for emergency surgery, grapes, dried apricots and every cheese under the sun. They would dash about the countryside attending to cheese emergencies and return home, smelling faintly of Somerset Brie and with a warm glow of satisfaction at a job well done.

If I had to choose, my top three favourite cheeses would be:

Cambridge Blue

Sage Derby

Cornish Yarg

What are yours?