Spring is steadily arriving and we are feeling for our limits.
I’ve hurt my hip; an injury picked up from cycling. I struggle for a few weeks then finally cave and pay my nearest physiotherapist to bend me into a variety of uncomfortable shapes, parts of my body that she calls by their Latinate names. I'm groggy with a head cold, slightly — if not unpleasantly — dazzled by the lights overhead, tension bands casting their shadows. I'm reassured by her confirmation that certain muscles are inflamed — a condition with its own acronym, no less — and agitated by repetitious movement. I'm not to cycle but instead lift into a half-bridge thirty times a day, sit on the edge of a chair and lift my leg horizontally, hold it for an agonizing twenty seconds before replacing my foot on the floor. An email soon drops into my inbox replete with short videos which demonstrate these movements at a zen-like half-speed with none of my added grimacing. These ostensibly simple movements are very sore and equally humbling; they make me feel a million years old.
Some things, naturally, cannot be avoided. We have builders coming next week and the sitting room must be emptied of its four years of accumulated stuff; I assemble eight boxes’ worth of books, stack our collection of coasters, roll up rugs. We pile these things up in our spare room to its non-existent rafters; after this exertion, I lie flat on the floorboards for some time, my knees held tight to my chest. Come Tuesday, I open the door at 8am, bleary-eyed to three cheery men (boys, really) with monosyllabic names; I brew tea for them while they get to work sectioning off downstairs with large sheets of plastic, gaffa-taped to the walls like so many shower curtains. A and I joke that it looks like the abandoned houses from the final season of The Wire. They are taking the walls back to brick which is a teeth-chatteringly loud and proportionately dusty undertaking; we have moved most of what we can, resign to wrapping our Everest of shoes in the hallway in plastic, ditto the sofa.
I stay upstairs, sequestered away from the noise, and try to find somewhere to sit where my hip is least likely to hurt — floor on a yoga mat (no), bed (no), so instead: one of the dining chairs carried up from the kitchen and heavily padded with a moth-munched blanket. I fold back the shutters, mop the windows of their collected condensation and watch for Cliff, the postman; gaze enviably at the woman from the road running parallel with all six of her dogs. I watch the rain shine rain shine of mid-April weather which is steadily dulling my enthusiasm for the walk I had planned later on. I'm soon bored, internet-deprived and hyper-aware of my lack of access to the kitchen; I have, at least, prepared my snacks — the dregs of a bag of salt and vinegar crisps, a veggie Pepperami, two vegan Babybels and two small, sharp-tasting apples — all of which make their own idiosyncratic dents in the duvet. I eke these out over the course of seven hours until the builders down tools for the day and I emerge through the plastic sheeting, feeling the first dust which has settled on every surface like snow. Hands washed, I microwave the last of a batch of parsnip soup and eat it with two planks of focaccia fished from the freezer, toasted under the grill, catching and blackened at the edges. Thereafter, I fall asleep in a perfect circle of sun on my bed, a contented cat.
I am — drilling allowing — reading Kate Briggs' wonderful new novel The Long Form which consists, in a roundabout way, of a day in the life of Helen and her baby, Rose. Helen walks the baby in the same loop around their flat, reconsidering the pot plants, the reconfiguration of shapes of Rose's mobile as it spins: 'the setting for an improvised daily practice with all the workings laid bare.' She recalls memories of living with her best friend Rebba, of their parties which would end when the sun rose and cracked over their heads 'like a great egg', thinks about the act of care-taking in all of its myriad forms. She lunges comically in the direction of the park with a screaming Rose strapped to her chest: '...like an exercising man, like an ancient horse, with high springy steps...everyday, comical but motivated, full-body dancing for the purpose of getting someone else to sleep' and considers the importance of properly public, communal space. She reads Tom Fielding's Tom Jones and considers The Novel as a container for and organiser of human lives; in its taking-seriously of and deep thoughtfulness about quotidian experience, it reminded me of Rebecca May Johnson's Small Fires (which I consider, as you should also, canon). It's a very moving, profound novel that will doubtless reward rereading; I'm very glad to have read it just this once.
Awake again, I set out for aforementioned walk which, in its directionlessness, feels not unlike the allotted walks of the pandemic-era (remember that?). I go a little way up the road then a little way again, turn down an unfamiliar street and take a photo of the hot pink blossom gathering in the gutter after this week’s ferocious wind. The weather has its limits, too; the generosity of a sunny day only reaches so far before the rain returns. My outfits for these occasional excursions, given the changeable weather, are erratic at best: Nike hi-tops with long, ribbed socks, leggings, a stretchy denim skirt, my aubergine-purple Uniqlo fleece, a limp bobble hat, headphones clamped over my ears. I'm soon shaking off my earlier containment and feel better for getting the pavement under my feet. I skirt the Common, dodging wheelie bins and wingmirrors, toy with the idea of going further and further still but knowing I shouldn't, not really, not without consequence. I grudgingly reign in that impulse, acknowledge the dull thump in my right hip. The clouds too are urging me home and, looking up at that mass of grey, I try to conjure all of the sunnier days to come. For today, at least, I'm butting up against my limits and heeding their call to rest and recover. Back home, having pushed through the plastic, I watch the crags of my wheat bag spin on the microwave's plate; I think of Rose's mobile:
'It took shape. It changed shape. It beckoned her with its light and shadow and with the stretches and points of her interest she turned towards it. Phasing, through calmed then bored, agitated then enlivened, stressed then distressed, her sensational lifeforce wholly uncontained by the space she could take up in a room...Rose flexed the space-time around her.'
Hey Liv thanks for the mention! Excited to read The Long Form when I get the chance