Thursday & rain & is it all too much

The lovely and smiley lady at the Whitchurch/Pangbourne toll bridge, who favors bright pink cashmere sweaters, and is always so put together at seven in the morning that she puts me to shame with my scrubbed face and pony tail and grubby jodphurs, told me on Monday that a nice gentleman had told her that this rain that we're having is going to last a month. I didn't believe her then, but here we are on Thursday and it's still going. The morning was one of those pink and optimistic ones where you actually for a moment glimpse who you are again. I remember taking Charlie's hand and saying something platitudinous like "I love it when the sun shines." This is what happens in England. A nation fixated on the weather. And because the weather is so completely and utterly crap most of the time, we are, most of the time, depressed and miserable and down in the mouth. Down in the mouth is such a wonderful expression because it describes not only the electronic speed limit signs that flash your speed at you with a smiley face or a glum face (and they're so effective you come sliding to a stop as if your headmistress is glaring at you), but it's also the face of the guy coming at you from the other direction when you're in traffic early in the morning on a grey day. Glum. I think that's the old-fashioned word for it. I tend to be jovial in traffic. I tend to smile and let people in and roll down the window to wave heartily when people let me in. Today, in fact, a man in a Lamborgini backed up under the railway bridge near Pangbourne High Street to let me through because there was a butcher's van in the way, and I felt somewhat triumphant. And it changed my view of men in Lambos, albeit it purple metalic ones (cars not men). This is the fundamental difference between the English and the Americans, though. Not the backing up of Lamborginis, of course, but the resting state. Americans have a resting optimism. The English, I'm afraid, have a resting liverishness. They are (I could say we are, but I choose not to, not today in the rain) a bit miserable, a bit full of shame, and a little down in the mouth. And I think it might have everything to do with the weather.

Stephen Fry who is very good on this stuff, draws the parallel between mental health and the weather. He doesn't say that mental health is affected by the weather but that it is like the weather, that even though there are clouds, one should remember that the blue skies are always there but hidden. He probably says it with a "hey-ho" too.

I would go one step further. I have noticed how different everyone is when the sun is out. How there is a general brightness and hilarity with the sunshine. How even the most grumpy of organs (Daily Mail, anyone) will give up their endless attack on the Labour government with a "Phew wot a scorcher" headline and a lovely picture of comely Samantha in her bikini in Primrose Hill.

I've been cheering myself up, somewhat childishly, by playing on repeat the clip of Keir Starmer calling for the return of the sausages in Gaza. It's very silly, I know, and it's a very serious issue, but I've been laughing so hard that I almost fell out of my chair. I can't help myself. It's the most English thing I've ever seen.

Yesterday, stuck between meetings at the elegant & welcoming Covent Garden Hotel in London I was witnessing (eavesdropping, let's be fair) a meeting between two English writer/producers who are responsible for a very successful show that did well on both sides of the Atlantic and an American executive and his cohort who started the conversation with "no-one needs to come to Hollywood anymore because everyone is in London" and then continued to blow smoke up the arses of the writers to such an astonishing degree that I wondered whether I should take notes for posterity (or posteriority). The man was so nimble, so silver-tongued and elegant in his flattery, that the Englishmen didn't really know what had hit them ("I don't suppose you've tried directing yet, have you? You really should." "Are you swamped with offers? You guys are such hot shit." "Man, this script is Fargo meets Shogun with shades of The Godfather. It's a masterpiece.") And soon they began to drop their English reserve and became comfortable with the warm, oozy feeling of being bathed in compliments. Their defences down, suddenly they behave completely out of character, sprawling in their chairs, their voices raised, and responding to the flagrant flattery like it's heroin. I felt a bit awkward. In situations like this I don't really know which team I'm on or who I'm rooting for. It's a little bit like when you're fourteen and you unwisely try to play your parent your favorite album. You just can't hear it through their ears without hating on it just a bit. I did this with Blondie's Parallel Lines after a dinner party my parents had with some of their best friends. David B, a lovely ex-arm man, picked up the sleeve and read the lyrics out loud in his aristocratic, rather mellifluous timbre "One way....or another... I'm going to get you, get you, get you...." You can imagine. Oy doyed as they say on Lawng Island.

In other news, what have we done? We're in puppy heaven (or hell). Pip is a sweet-natured-very good-boy, a little whippet. Charlie wakes up with him at three in the morning and takes him outside onto the lawn where they both pee. It's a male-bonding thing in a house full of women. I'm so grateful for this matey stuff, because it means I can sleep through. But omg, what have we done? We actually can't go out to dinner, or really do anything social together because of the puppy. For the next few months, we have to be hyper vigilant and hyper aware that every journey will involve a puppy cage. Everyone said to me, oh puppies are a lot of work. And I laughed at them. Ha ha ha, I thought. I can do this. I've had puppies. I'm a dog person. I know what I'm doing. No I don't. I've just managed to stop him gnawing on all of my favorite cookbooks, which I keep in the kitchen at dog bed height (the ones I like less or use less are on a bookshelf in the other room.)

It's been an insane few weeks. I've discovered that I'm one of those people that is super sensitive to the moon. I know, I know. Mock me now. But I am! I listen to Kirsty Gallagher and every day she says exactly how I'm feeling. I wake up intensely anxious and wonder what's happening to me. "Did we swap" I said to Charlie? "Are we in some weird Jamie Lee Curtis movie?" I'm the one who used to wake up with the massive burst of optimism, that would skip downstairs, breathe in the air and smile, and the bluebirds would fly down and land on my shoulder. What on earth happened? Has this happened to you? Have you been affected by the Mercury Chryon or whatever it's called? Have you felt like your head is exploding? 

And on top of this, I've chosen to migrate this blog to Substack, which is sooo scary and big and surrounded by Really Important Writers. I have complete and utter stage fright.  

We've emptied my mother's house. Well, a nice man called Hugo and his team did all the hard work and they couldn't have been more fantastic, but have you ever had to wade through reams of old photos, old books, childhood memorabilia, clothes, furniture, bedding, favorite Christmas decorations and be the executioner? Keep/Charity/Chuck. It's hellish. And even if you don't feel it at the time, there is an emotional toll that's hard to shake. Old scrapbooks, and Dawn Palethorpes's My Horses & I, my mother's battered French copy of "Le Petit Prince" and Norwegian sweaters, old albums, tablecloths from my grandmother, my father's old cufflinks, some of them made of coral from the far east, letters (oh, the letters and love letters from and to everyone in the family). And then the most beautiful dresses my mother made for their yearly grown-up trips to Barbados. I think they ran with a fast and glamorous crowd there, and my mother, refusing to be outdone by all the London Grande Dames who shopped at Harrods and Harvey Nichols and Biba, made beautiful long dresses, in groovy fabrics befitting of the era (1970s), a lot of them stitched by hand, lined in silk, with bows and ruffles and large blowsy silk flowers. There was a bar called Greensleeves, which is no longer there, where my mother was rumored to have said "Oh my goodness, this is the jetset." My father laughed about it, about her naivete, but I've always found it quite touching. She is and was her mother's daughter, and wanted to dress the part. There are pictures of her on the beach with the sunset behind her, rum punch in her hand, in a flowery, floaty dress, just slightly sunburned, her teeth white, her eyes sparkling. She was so beautiful. She still is.And so the only thing we can count on is change. We cannot lament the end of summer or say what summer?, because here we are, and the blackberries have already started to rot, and the Virginia creeper is glowing crimson on outside walls, and people are making plans for Christmas. The only thing we can do is to stay here, right here, in the present moment, as the days darken, and the crows become more insistent as they do their rounds of the oak trees before bedtime, and I suppose greet the blue skies with joy even if they are less frequent than we would like. I keep coming back to this idea that we have to

"Accept yourself as you are and life as it is." - Jeanne de Salzmann

As opposed to how we'd like things to be.  Again, one step closer to equanimity. One hopes.

Oh, and one more thing I've been thinking about. Do you ever feel that you are flawed? Do you ever feel that every day you have to somehow fix yourself?  I was noodling this idea at four in the morning and I mumbled something to Charlie, who'd actually just been pee-bonding with the dog on the lawn and was still awake, with dew-stained chilly feet. It's probably a particularly neurotic position, but I think I spend a lot of time thinking about self-improvement. Now, wouldn't life be so much easier if you came from a position of believing you were okay? Maybe it's just not possible to be a strategic comms professional and a  brilliant cook and a terrific gardener and a great rider and a voracious reader and a good friend and a thoughtful parent and a dutiful child and a responsible pet owner and an inspired thinker and a seeker and a writer and an artist. And maybe you can't have a minimal house (the new fad according to HTSI is merchandised clutter, or something like that - it's maximal to the max but in lots of very arty piles) and good handwriting and be able to throw together a watercolor, a mulberry cardamom cake, a boeuf bourgignon AND do the dance sequence from the opening credits of "The Perfect Couple." It's all so exhausting, isn't it? How much, really, is enough?

Honestly, it's enough to make me want to escape to a Greek Island with a book and a hammock. Oh but I forgot. I have a puppy.