I sit here writing this blog after having spent the past six hours typing up copious volumes of notes for a section of my PhD chapter. There are workmen bashing away upstairs fitting our new bathroom, and the dogs are going spare at them passing the glass living room door on their way in and out of the corridor. I am thinking of the tutees I have to teach this evening and am trying to make up revision schedules for them. I also have to help get the house ready for selling (almost there now), and sort out the garden. I also have to plan dinner, cancel my wisdom tooth removal consultation…..again….. and carry out a series of niggly little jobs which all add up to minutes and hours in my daily schedule.
What I wish I could do more every day is……….enjoy some more ‘me time’.
My ‘me time’ is very precious to me and I get grumpy if I am deprived of it. That 30 – 60 minutes each day to chill, read, do some sewing, play the piano, notch up a few more kilometres on the rowing machine, or watch Netflix seems so elusive. Other things like to jostle their way into my daily life so that, by the time I eventually collapse onto the sofa at 10pm (after I finish tutoring) I am lucky if I stay awake. I got a new cross-stitch project in the post today (I’m so excited to do it!) and as I gaze at the lovely picture of Lake Como I wonder when I will get the time to do it. I have about 30 more projects in my craft cupboard waiting in my to-do queue. I know I should *make* time for these things, but that isn’t always easy; besides, if I do sit down to enjoy a few minutes to myself, I feel guilty for not doing other things, so my ‘me time’ is abandoned. “I’ll make sure I take an hour tomorrow”, I tell myself. And that never happens. One could argue that, in the time I am writing this blog, I could be enjoying some ‘me time’, but I consider spilling words onto a screen as a good form of therapy (even if nobody reads them, which is totally fine by me!). Plus, at this particular moment in time, it is hard to relax with workmen about and dogs barking continuously (now where are my noise-cancelling headphones?).
I have now deleted Facebook and Twitter off my phone – I rarely use Twitter anyway and will be deleting it soon – but have kept Instagram and Pinterest. I have also made it hard for myself to look at social media on my laptop too. Hours scrolling through other peoples’ posts is time wasted – I want to use this time more productively for my own benefit. I kind of feel that I’m a bit old for social media now anyway, to be honest, and am actually a Luddite when it comes to online communication. I’d rather send cards/letters to friends or phone them for a chat. More about my increasingly antagonistic relationship with social media in another blog in due course. And don’t get me started on Chat GPT (I’ll blog about my thoughts on this on Tuesday).
I think I need to be stricter with my daily routines. I don’t like planners – they are too rigid and I like to live life as it happens. Maybe if I determined that on such-and-such an afternoon, I will do this/that, then I shouldn’t allow other things to elbow their ways ahead of my ‘afternoon off’ and postpone them instead. I do tend to put other people’s demands above my own which is probably part of the problem.
When I was a research nurse, I had a picture beside my desk in my office which bore the slogan “Sometimes I just sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits”. I need to make more time to “just sits”, chill, or do something I enjoy doing. As a very young child, I would spend hours sitting on my house staircase just looking out of the Velux window at the white clouds drifting past in the blue sky. I need to be very young me again. Maybe this could be my “Spring Resolution”.
My Dad is 90 years old today! He doesn’t look it (he looks 10 years younger than that, just as my Mum always used to look 10 years younger than her age).
We are visiting him at his home today; he has had a virus recently so the meal I had planned has been deferred until he feels better. However, I thought it would be interesting to know what has happened on this day in history. So here are a few things that the 16th of March has brought over the centuries:
1322: The Battle of Boroughbridge takes place in the first War of Scottish Independence.
1792: Assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden (he was shot at a masked ball at the Opera; he died a few days later).
1834: Charles Darwin, aboard HMS Beagle, anchors in the recently British-acquired Falkland Islands for the first time.
1850: Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is published.
1867: First publication of an article in The Lancet by Joseph Lister outlining the discovery of antiseptic surgery.
1933: My Dad born!
1934: Academy Award gold statuette first called Oscar in print by Sidney Skolsky.
1935: Scotland beats England 10-7 at Murrayfield, Edinburgh, to allow Ireland to win the Home Nations Rugby Championship with a 2-1 record.
1940: German air raid on Scapa Flow.
1968: Robert F Kennedy announces presidential campaign
1976: British Prime Minister Harold Wilson announces his resignation.
1996: Mike Tyson TKOs Frank Bruno in third round to gain heavyweight title.
2014: Voters in Crimea vote overwhelmingly to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia.
2022: British-Iranians Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori return to the UK after being detained for five and six years on spying charges.
This blog post has been on my mind for a while. It hasn’t been comfortable writing it but I like to spill my thoughts and feelings into words sometimes. It has been a tough year, but hope is becoming less of a glimmer and more of a sunbeam now.
A year ago today, we buried my beloved Mum. She had been living with metastasized cancer for almost three years but she kept her wit right up until her last day on this planet which was wholly spent asleep. The day that she passed away was a day that I had been dreading, not only since she got her diagnosis but for as long as I can remember. As a very young child, I can recall in my nightly prayers praying that God would make sure that “Mummy and Daddy didn’t die or hurt themselves”; I think both as a child, and as a middle-aged woman, I wanted my parents to live forever.
My Mum and I were very close. We’d go on shopping trips (our clothes tastes differed greatly as they would between generations) or outings for coffee. After my radiotherapy finished, and as a belated 21st birthday present, my Mum took me to Paris for the weekend – that was a time of much laughter and fun as we tried out our sketchy French – particularly my Mum’s strange pronunciation – everywhere we went. After I got married, I called Mum and Dad every other day and, since Covid, I phoned twice every day (I still phone my Dad at 10am and 5.30pm everyday now). I still expect my Mum to pick up the phone and answer with her customary “Hi, Juney – I’m being very lazy but thought I would wait for your call before I got up”. I still fight the urge to pick up the phone and let her know about conversations I have had with people she knew, or if I notice an announcement in the paper that a friend of hers has passed away. It’s the weirdest feeling. With my husband’s mother having passed away six weeks before my own Mum, I am suddenly thrown into the role of family matriarch – something I still can’t get my head around. Am I not too young to be a matriarch? Also, who do I go to for advice on things? My Mum was my fount of knowledge, wisdom, and experience – I tapped into it frequently. Now, there is nobody. I just have to hobble through and hope for the best.
I’m so thankful that we had her for 81 years. 81 sounds old, but my Mum always looked at least 10 years younger than her age. And she was active – oh boy! Intensely house proud, she would be cleaning their flat every day, or going out for long, long walks with my Dad – a past-time they both loved. She also loved her coffee mornings with her former work colleagues with whom she had kept in contact since her retirement. Then April 2019 happened, and things gradually came to a stop.
It’s not been an easy year. I think, for me, I have found it hard to take ownership of the fact that Mum has gone. I have a Christian faith and so I know she has gone to a better place, but I weirdly can’t think of it as being my Mum who has gone. Only four people have asked how I have been following her death: two of my best friends, my PhD supervisor, and the wife of the minister of the church we now go to. Everybody else expressed their sorrow but then immediately asked “How are your Dad and brother coping?” Every time. Nobody asked how I was doing. This isn’t meant to come across as a personal pity-party, but I think this has fed into me thinking, and feeling, that I have to be strong for my Dad and brother as it is their wife and Mum who has gone, more than mine.
Sadly, both my husband and I have had to deal with our respective losses largely by ourselves. The local church (which both my parents [Dad had been an Elder there] and my husband had been going to regularly, and was indeed one of the pianists at, for over a decade. I stopped going after 2012 for much the same reasons as the ones I will give now) remained silent. Nobody came out to visit us, or gave us much needed spiritual support during our grief. Nobody from the church phoned us up to ask how we were and if we would like a visit or some practical help. Nobody asked after our kids who had lost both of their grandmothers in the space of six weeks. Only one couple out of the whole congregation turned up one evening with a prepared meal and some baking for us – we so appreciated it. I know people are busy, but aren’t church families supposed to be there to support those in need? And isn’t that support supposed to come from those in leadership roles? We really hoped that someone would just come to the door and offer us some solace through Bible verses or prayer. The church has Elders, and while we weren’t members of the church, we were ‘associate members’ – why didn’t any of them come and see us, especially as so many of them knew my Mum and, indeed, us? We were both feeling incredibly numb and vulnerable; both of us hate asking people for help (mainly because in the past, when I have, nothing happened). People saying, “I’ll pray for you” became, to me, merely a Christian-ised way of signing off from a conversation. How often I wanted to yell “Pray WITH me! I don’t know how to deal with this!” but the opportunity to do so didn’t arise. Surely church Elders still do pastoral visits these days, don’t they? I know one lady (who wasn’t even our Elder) used to drop by with the church magazine in the years following my cancer surgery. On the occasions she dropped by and I was in, I enjoyed seeing her and having a chat. She was the only person who used to do so. Now that the magazine is digital, there is tumbleweed. Don’t get me wrong – I appreciated any prayers that were going, but when you feel your own already shaky and dwindling faith draining away further, they seemed to lose their importance. They seemed empty. I used to wonder if people really were praying for us, or was it just the ‘right thing’ to say? [I like to think the former as I do aim to find the best in people].
So, locally, we were floundering quite a lot. We felt that others thought that we shouldn’t be mourning our mothers as they were both in their 80s, and then we questioned whether we were making too much of it. But, as I’ve mentioned, we were both close to our mothers – as were the kids to their grandmothers – and if you can’t grieve your parents, who can you grieve? I like to think that if any of my friends fell ill, that I would provide some form of help (indeed, I have provided meals for friends who have been in need over recent years among other things). But, it’s sad (and more than a little disappointing) that when the person in need is yourself and help – whether it be practical, emotional, or spiritual – is lacking.
Well, that all changed when – during COVID – we started virtually attending a church in Edinburgh whose members have helped us immensely over the past year. It’s not Church of Scotland this time but an Independent church (doesn’t belong to a denomination). Despite us living 23 miles away, the minister (and on one occasion his wife) visited us four times over four Fridays last March/April and provided the spiritual support we were so badly needing. In addition, we have made other friends there who genuinely pray WITH us in these early (and currently uncertain) days. They are keen for us to get involved in different things there, which I am so happy about – I like to use my (recently rusted) ‘gifts’. One of our main reasons for moving home is so that we can be nearer this congregation and, basically, start again. I have learned so much from these experiences – mostly things which I have taken for granted (or thought that other people would be doing so held off doing them myself).
Out of my experience 11 years ago and, more recently our mothers’ deaths, I have learned how important it is to look out for people who are hurting and to actually DO something about it. When we move, I want to become active in visiting people – I like chatting – so that they never feel isolated as we have done. Although I miss you, Mum, more than you know, thank you for helping me to realise that at times of greatest need, the best thing I can do is be there for whoever needs it. Even if ‘being there’ means not talking but just being there. It’s what you have done for others over your lifetime. It may take me a little while longer to take ownership of the fact that you have gone, but with a little help from our new friends, we’ll get by.
After managing to avoid ‘Rona for almost three years – almost being OTT about not contracting it – today I have tested positive for the virus. My husband had tested positive over the weekend and so it was inevitable that I would eventually get it too…… he is good at sharing. Meanwhile, I silently curse the person who passed it onto him, especially as this week marks the first anniversary of my Mum’s passing. I had hoped to have spent some time with my Dad this Friday – that isn’t going to happen now – as well as visiting her grave to put some flowers on it. It’s a tough week as it is, without Rona making an appearance too. However, such is life!
I have been in the high risk category for vaccinations, etc., and had received an informative letter a couple of years ago, from the Scottish Government, which outlined what I should do if I succumbed to Covid as I may be required to have anti-viral treatment. On seeing that my lateral flow test had an extremely faint second line this morning (it actually needn’t have bothered turning up as it was that faint), I called the number I was asked to, and – to cut a long story short – was told by the very nice doctor that I happily wouldn’t need anti-virals and that all I was to do was to sit and enjoy Netflix for a few days. Who am I to disobey doctor’s orders? So, while my husband is whiling away his Rona-induced isolation by feeding his addiction to a Lego Hobbit Playstation game, I will be enjoying either a Gilmore Girls marathon or feeding my Civilization video game addiction whilst feeling ever so slightly guilty that I am not working on my thesis. A hurting head and fever are not conducive to productivity!
I am hoping to be well enough to post on this blog as usual on Thursday. In the meantime, I’m off for my next dose of paracetamol. And to switch on Netflix.
I have always loved learning things, and in particular, I have always loved reading. My parents used to tell me that ever since I could walk, I wouldn’t be seen anywhere without a book under each arm. By the time I was five, I was in the top reading group at school, reading well above my age level, and by the time I finished primary school, I was top in English, grammar, science, and maths and was (informal) Dux of my primary school (my teacher and headteacher told both me and my parents this, but actually she decided to formally award Dux to another girl in my class – who cheated at maths – because my class teacher didn’t like my handwriting! I am still bitter about it to this day, especially when people always compliment me on my handwriting…. Oddly enough, this was repeated later on with my Master’s degree – I was marked by two markers as having passed with Distinction, but then unexplainedly demoted by a third marker to a Merit despite my work having been graded ‘Excellent’ all down my marking sheet. Yeah, cheers for that. I wasn’t even allowed to appeal. Huh. Apparently, there were ‘too many’ Distinctions that year so mine went down a league. Even now I can’t look at my Master’s certificate without feeling cheated. However, ‘we move’ – as the youngsters these days say. I’m just so happy I got my Master’s, especially not having done a full English undergraduate degree).
I knew when I started senior school that I wanted to study English at Uni when I finished school. It was always my strongest subject, closely followed by Biology. I wanted to spend my life researching books and writing about books, and lecturing people about books. I applied to Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities for their English Language and Literature degrees (as they were in those days) and got accepted by Glasgow but rejected by Edinburgh (which, incidentally, was my dream university). However, to cut a long story short, I eventually turned down my place at Glasgow; they had a scarcity of accommodation, and I would have needed to have commuted in every day from Edinburgh which really wasn’t feasible and would be expensive financially and time-wise. As it was too late by then to apply for a space on another course that year, I spent my Gap Year as a nursing assistant in a psychogeriatric ward in order to earn some money and ‘experience’ the world a bit. I ended up loving this so much that I decided to ditch applying again for English, and instead applied for a nursing degree at the university which was literally seven minutes’ walk from my home.
Me in my ‘last life’ as a nurse.
Fast forward sixteen years, and I had to medically retire from nursing due to my third cancer diagnosis. I loved my job – particularly in critical care – but there was no way I could continue. The long hours (usually working long shifts on days off too to cover for absent colleagues), minimal sleep between shifts, and the general low morale and excessive stress of the job took their collective toll on me. So, I had to think about what to do with my life. I was 41 years old – in my view, most people had their lives sorted by now, and here was me about to start from the bottom again. As my cancer treatment was lengthy and debilitating, one evening I made the bold move of enrolling on an undergraduate Open University English module (in the days you could just randomly apply to do any module you liked whether you were working for a degree or not). I was going to do this English study that I so desired when I was a teenager. I’ve written blogs on my Open Uni journey so won’t repeat myself suffice to say that I absolutely loved my studies so much that I enrolled on and completed a Master’s in English, also through the Open Uni. I have since been studying for my PhD at Edinburgh Uni (my dream university) where I am a-l-m-o-s-t finished writing my thesis. I have the best supervisor in the world and I am loving every minute of researching for my degree – well, mostly loving every minute. Let’s not gloss over the fact that it’s tough and there are days when impostor syndrome kicks in, self-doubt, and just general fed up-ness with my never-ending thesis.
Only some of my PhD research tools!
I embarked on my part-time PhD when I was in my mid-40s, a time when my kids were all grown up and at Uni or finishing school and were increasingly independent. At the time, my parents were both well as was my mother-in-law, and circumstances seemed to continue as they had been throughout my Open Uni study. I had a wee office to hide away in every day at home (which I preferred to the open plan, distracting PhD office at the uni) – first year was a breeze. It was different though. I was the dinosaur of my cohort. It’s something I didn’t feel with online study as most people were about my age plus, learning remotely, you only really interact through formal forums or through dedicated Facebook groups. But I really noticed it on campus. The youngsters (all in their 20s) were all wanting to meet up to go out in the evenings, when I just wanted to go home, put my PJs on and just read with a hot chocolate. They’d all talk about their favourite music bands, and I’m thinking that I still remember the original version of the cover song they are talking about. Don’t get me wrong, they were (and are) a lovely bunch and never let me feel excluded, but when you feel that inside you are their age, but you’re actually not, it can be a little odd. I have to admit to feeling envious of those youngsters though and the fact that they were studying for their PhDs whilst they were in their 20s – they have a whole life ahead of them to follow their dreams, while I’m likely to be way too old by the time I finish mine to follow my own.
Powell’s ‘A Dance to the Music of Time’ series – I am writing my thesis on these wonderful books.
I presented my first conference at Oxford Uni in the late summer of 2018, and then – at the start of second year – everything seemed to go downhill. My Mum was misdiagnosed by her GP as having ‘swine flu’ but which, several months and a private CT scan later, turned out to be advanced metastatic breast cancer. Then my mother-in-law kept falling/fitting and going into hospital at six-weekly intervals. On top of this, my daughter was having a tough time with her mental health and, as a result of all of these, my PhD study took a major hit. I had to be daughter, daughter-in-law, and mother to these three women – there was no way I could focus on my studies. Any time I could focus, it was well into the evening – after tutoring my school students – when I was physically exhausted. So, on the advice of my supervisor, I took an interruption from my PhD study for 8 months. Being able to do take that break in order to be the supportive family member that I needed to be, was so great; by the time I returned to my studies just before Christmas 2020, things had calmed down – Mum’s cancer was being controlled well, mother-in-law had had her medication updated, and my daughter was at Uni (albeit under COVID lockdown). I felt mentally and emotionally ready to get going on my research again and so I set to on my second thesis chapter.
I had almost finished this when I needed to take another break a year later. Mother-in-law had fallen ill again on Boxing Day (from which she ultimately passed away two weeks later) and it was becoming more evident that Mum wasn’t going to be around much longer. The previous July we had received the news that her cancer had spread to her liver; by the December she was a skeleton of a lady and was really not well. So, I took another six months off so that I could spend Mum’s remaining weeks with her. She passed away at the end of February 2022. I was all for giving up my PhD then – I thought my supervisor would be frustrated with me, and fed up that I was still about, writing this magnum opus. I had had no focus for months and Mum’s passing hit me hard – reading anything was too much let alone books by my beloved Anthony Powell. I also thought of my full-time cohort, many of whom had already graduated while I am still stuck with only two out of three chapters written and no appetite to get back to it. But on the last day she had the ability to speak, Mum made me promise to see my studies through. She knew this was my dream degree, and she said she didn’t want her not being about to stop me finishing what I had started. So, I did promise her I would see it through – and I am, albeit at a pace akin to a snail as we now prepare our house for selling.
Me finally meeting the woman whose encyclopaedia of Powell’s ‘Dance’ novels is making writing my thesis so much easier – Hilary Spurling. She was the only author with whom Anthony Powell entrusted the writing of his biography.
Taking breaks during such big projects is absolutely OK. Researching for a PhD is a lonely business – unlike a school or undergraduate/Master’s university class where you have course-mates studying the same things as you. Add on top of this family issues, personal health issues, or anything else, then your standard of work is going to suffer. When I started my studies, I was determined I would finish in four years. A super-fast part-timer. But, life threw the kitchen sink (and the toolbox) at me and here I am, about to start year six, still plodding on. I’ll get there. I’ll do it. But I want to be well in the process. I presented my second paper at a conference last summer and got such encouraging feedback from it, that I remembered just why I am doing this research in the first place. Although I have had to take time out, twice, I would rather submit a thesis that I loved doing and is my very best work rather than plough onwards and feel that I resented doing it every minute. I’ve invested time, money, and energy into this – I’m going to make it count even if it takes me that little bit longer.
These are only some factors which make my PhD very important to me. Besides these, I love researching the author Anthony Powell (who, annoyingly, very few people have heard of) and finding brand new links that have not been connected before. I argue that he is just as effective a commentator of London society in the 1920s – 1970s as Charles Dickens was in the previous century. I have ambitions to teach a Powell course at the university – whether that be an evening class or by another means – and I have a post-doctoral research area all ready (if I am offered a place to study for this when I finish my PhD). My love of learning and reading that was part of my identity as a toddler still remains to this day.
This level of study does mean a lot of sacrifices – I am self-funding and so I have to pay the yearly fees, but my tutoring helps cover these. It means sacrificing some aspects of my free time or social life, but it is worth it. I am aiming to finish early 2024 – family health permitting. I want my almost 90-year old Dad to come to my graduation. I want to realise my teenage dream. The importance of my PhD to me is also because I’m not just doing it for me, or my late Mum, or indeed my family. I am also doing it for my supervisor (whose knowledge is inspiring), my friends at the Anthony Powell Society, (who have been so encouraging and informative), for my recently retired second supervisor, (who gave me such valuable feedback during the first two years of my studies), and also for Anthony Powell himself. Although he is no longer alive, I hope that my thesis will raise his profile a bit in the literary world so that more people can see for themselves the genius behind his writing.
June's Jottings 