Tick Tock...

a newsletter for Knots in the String.

The world hasn’t got much better in the last week and how naïve it would be to hope.

What it does do though, for those of us so far from war’s ugly pointlessness, is make us realise how lucky we are that we have time. Time to value what we have and time to realise that we must not waste time.

I reached a rather huge milestone in my life last year and celebrated with nice food, family love and a beautiful cake.

My husband followed me three months later – with love, food and a yes, a nice cake.

What we realised then is that we’re fast running out of second chances and that we must take our chances when we can. Enjoy life because you never know…

With that in mind, I went to one of our surf beaches last Saturday. Surf beaches have been forbidden to me since the Great Vestibular Event of 2015 when I permanently lost 95% of my right-side balance. There one day and gone the next – but that’s perhaps a story for another time.

Last week we had a few days of steady rain and the rivers and creeks flowed into the sea, turning our regular swimming spots into dirty waterscapes. Only one beach was immune but it’s a surf beach and is the stuff of skull and crossbones for me. But being hot and bothered in the humidity and thinking we could just dampen ourselves down on the very edges of the water, and knowing we’re not getting any younger, a friend and I decided to visit this spot.

The waves roared, a vicious assault crashing with such force that the wash rolled in and up to the sags. As a spectacle it was breathtaking – beautiful aquamarine waves rising above the beach and with the light of diamonds and ivory shining through, to curve to an impossible arc and then bash down with white water arcing into the sunlight.

There were other folk we knew in the waist-height shore-wash so we decided to join them. No further than the waist, wet ourselves down and then sit and watch the power of the sea.

We had no time to gasp at the water temperature, or even to back off. The surge just grabbed us around the calves and pulled. It took all one’s strength to stay upright as the waves relentlessly pounded the shore. In between sets, we had a chance to dunk under, swim a few strokes back and forth and then brace ourselves for the next lot.

We had just decided to quit while we were ahead and were walking out of the water when a rogue wave broke a second time and hit us in our lower backs, knocking us right under. The undertow was enormous and as I swirled in the mix of sand and water like linen in a washing machine, I struggled to get up and out.

That was when the damage was done.

I tore my right gluteus minimalis (Again. This is a regular injury.) and aggravated the right vestibular nerve of my ear so that the next morning, I was barely upright and it felt as if I walked across a constantly rippling surface. My vision was as if I sat in a car bumping across extremely rough ground.

Today, I’ve had an Epley Manoeuvre for the inevitable BPPV and trust me, that’s like medieval torture. Ye Gods!

For soothing the right vestibular, I also have special stabilisation exercises and will be able to start driving again tomorrow.

All this after a swim!

I wondered later why I did it knowing my disability, and I think perhaps it was overfamiliarity and unconscious comfort with my condition.

But also the knowledge and frustration that my time is ticking away and that one is only young once. Tick tock! I don’t want to spend what time I have sitting on a couch. It’s not what life is. But what I neglected to factor in was that I’m no longer young and I am, to be frank, ‘unbalanced’. (In so many ways, some say).

Oh well, one lives and learns and must take the rough with the smooth.

Next time I swim, it will be like this:

Not like this:

Reading:

Apart from imitating the spin cycle on the washing machine, I’ve finished listening to the audio of Amor Towle’s novella, The Didemenico Fragment. I liked the elegance of it, the subtle wit, the storyline. But the narrator didn’t press my buttons, despite his huge credentials.

I’m following Towles with The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan, which was a free audiobook. It’s narrated with a throaty female Irish voice. Beautiful.

On my Kindle I’m looking for soothing escapism. I see on Facebook that many others feel the need to do the same just now and I reflect how lucky we are to have that luxury, while people, homes, gardens, parks and animals are being bombed unto death.

And such a statement makes me suck in my breath and I think once again, as I do every day, that I never thought to see this happen again…

Thus I’m halfway through the Anne books by LM Montgomery. I’ve found dozens of beautiful paragraphs I would like to copy into a journal to hug for the tough times. I’d want to write them down in a notebook with a beautiful handmade cover…

…the kind my daughter makes, and I would want to use a Mont Blanc pen (which I’ve never owned) and I would want my writing hand to be the style that in a hundred years, descendants might say ‘How Beautiful!’ The truth of course, is somewhat different.

I love Montgomery’s writing. Have done since I was young and my mother encouraged me to read about Anne. So these readings are two-pronged, reminding me of my Mum and allowing me to escape the depressing horror of the news media.

Busy Fingers:

I’ve also been stitching hearts for the local Ukrainian Association, to do with what they will. They were packed ready for mailing today.

And I’m plugging on with the vibrant, delicious colours of another glasses case.

With the steamy weather keeping me inside quite frequently last week, the words of the latest WIP gathered pace. But I suppose that’s another bit of tick-tock that rubs at my sensibilities. Time’s passing and I can’t see this book being published till the southern spring.

As I sit in the city writing Knots in the String – I’m struck by the noise of peak hour, helicopters overhead, the inevitable sirens and I crave the quiet escape my coast gives me. Only another day and I’ll be back amongst breezes that sough through the foreshore grasses. I’ll be knee-deep in dandelion-rich lawns. Hearing Hedwig the barn owl at night, screeching to all others, feathered and not, to beware her patch.

And I will see our terrier lose his city-based depression – believe me, it’s entirely possible for a dog to be weighed down by something he doesn’t wish to become accustomed to.

Bit like me really, in respect of Time passing way too quickly.

Toodles, my friends.