A Walk with Welly, 7th February

I was determined to make carrot cake today. Thinking it would do me good to try a something new I went online to find a recipe, hopefully with ingredients that I would already have in. Walnuts, carrots, cream cheese, self raising flour are all in my cupboard just waiting to be in a carrot cake. I found a recipe and I had the ingredients... but the measures were in cups (for goodness sake USA the rest of us went imperial donkeys ago). Well thinking how silly, cup measures are for women's under- garments (and forever perplexing for me). That was it, I suddenly panicked that I would have to think about converting the measures. So the carrot cake project for today was shelved for a day when my head wants to think. 

So I diverted to my needed, "I don't need to think about this" routine, (ideal when ones head is in crisis) and decided to get Welly up and out for our normal walk in the woods by the river. He'd had his breakfast, so surely would be raring to go.

On the contrary, he had other ideas for his morning.....

refusing to believe its actually morning... a classic Welly pose.

 Still in denial

Anyway I managed to persuade him that good things lay in store in the woods. He wasn't impressed by this young field spaniel.... a newbie on the block and with a weapon. So frightening, his heckles went up! And then he ran away.

Unusually he got his feet wet. He isn't one for puddles, or rivers or the sea!

This is his look when he wants a biscuit out of my pocket at the halfway mark. Sit dead in front of me and doesn't budge until post snack time. He is very predictable.

And this is the look when the biscuit is on top of the camera.

I usually find it very hard to photograph Wellington as he is always ahead of me. I normally only see his little bum on a walk!

 Welly with something disgusting. Probably a rabbit skin. "Don't even try and take it off me.... you'll have to catch me first"

"And when I do this puppy look you really don't mind if I eat it"

Now this was most unusual. A trick. Standing still on a mossy tree trunk. The problem was capturing the moment. Every time I stood back to snap him he jumped off. Even more bizarrely he was happy to keep getting back on.  Eventually he got the hang of staying still (biscuit on top of camera again)

Dog ahead alert... on my path! Another newbie (she was a lovely old girl)

And then she wandered off. 

Getting the hang of posing for the camera.

This is what you want in a dog... perfect poise

(Now he is just showing off his standing still skills learnt today)

Tired now, but on the home straight.

One last picture, again an unusual thing for him to do!

.

Well... I'm over that cliff.

Not sure what to say.
My voice fumbles for words. I can't put socks on or tie my laces without it feeling like a mental battle. Sentences can't be strung together easily. I have forgotten so many things in my memory and my short term memory is shot to pieces. Making a meal seems like a triumph when I have done it. It used to be so automatic.

So this is what a mental breakdown feels like.

So I went to my GP last week, crushed by the stress of work. He gave me a sick note.
I went back this week. He prescribe antidepressants and another sick note. For sure now I will be dismissed from school. Dispatched as a bad teacher when in fact its just a bad time.

Not sure about taking the pills. Surely I can walk this off and leave it behind. On the other side of and at the bottom of that huge cliff. Its bizarre. Some things make me feel really positive down here whilst others make me want to run. Or hide.

Sunlight and clouds all at the same time.

I need sunlight. I need a rest. Admitting I need a break is the first art of the battle people say. I've been on an emotional bender for years. Well is it OK if I hibernate? Or should I walk it out? I can't decide. I have projects and ambitions in my mind that I really want to achieve. Think my way out of it, or have a rest? I can't decide.

I visited Paris. Once.

I visited Paris. Once. 

Passed through it many times en-route from La Roultiere to the UK.

Ironically, although living in France, MrLR was adverse to travel. So we did not get around much.

Anyhow. Because I can't remember, I have to look at pictures to tell me I did it. Once.

Easter and warm enough for this at Huttopia Versailles.

A much deserved biere blonde.

Perfect engineering and design beauty

Perfect offspring (occasionally)

Taller than the Eiffel Tower

Where do the people end and de Vinci begin.

Form and orderly queue #MonaLisaMania

Perfect stairs

The coast is the place where I feel most calm.

Throughout my year in Northumberland, the one thing that has retrieved my believe in myself and any potential future I have here is my love of the glorious coastline here. Whenever I feel that all my worries are squashing the life out of me, if I can, Welly and I retreat to the coast. We walk, we sit, we watch the waves and I build silly little towers of stone. Its very restorative, and calming. It turns a day into a holiday. It empties my mind of my divorce and my lost french life. If the children come with me I am sure it helps them too. They have had the most enormous wrench imposed on them and I need them to survive.

I had deleted many of my early blogs here which contained many of my coastal pictures because they felt like a feedback loop. Whilst the coast provides relieve, it also reminded me that I had very very dark days. Days when I felt the only escape was to wade into the water and let the tide consume me. However my pictures are now reminding me of what I have to do when the bleakness sets in. Walk, breathe and notice small details of nature. 

I always knew the power that the sea had on me. But visiting Druridge for the first time since our return to the UK reminded me that I would need a strong relationship with the coast to survive this enormous stressfull change. It was March 23rd 2012. A beautiful day in Hexham. I needed a happy day with the children to remind them we would be OK. So we headed northeast, and straight into a sea fret!

Welly had never seen the sea before and the kids havent grown up with it in the way that I had. The waves were fascinating to them and terrifying for Welly!

Welly can't make out what to do with the waves. Water you can't drink and it moves all the time!

Cold north sea. Dont get wet I reminded them we have no spare clothes.

Getting wetter by the minute but he doesn't seem to mind! Yet.....

Wet clothes now caked in sand.... but look at the smile!

Dune duty... one most tumble down them!

Now he's cold!

Welly strikes a bum pose in the family photo!

It was a very happy dune day. The sea air had worked its magic on me and the kids! 

Looking over a Cliff

At this moment in time I am standing on the edge of a huge cliff. Behind me is a landscape I have come to know, but not always like. It has open spaces, and dark tangled forests. It has areas that pollute and areas that cleanse. It has roads that have criss-crossed, and I have had choices to take different routes, sometimes a left instead of a right. But here I am. At the edge of this god-damn cliff. And its a bit of a relief. Its going to force me to make a decision. Its a huge cliff. Step over it could be suicidal. But retreat back into that known but uncomfortable landscape could be too. It could bundle me back to another cliff in 4 weeks or 6 months time. It could hold me in a crowded place where I might be able to function but not actually breath.

I have been back in teaching since last April on and off, with various bits of long term supply. I've been lucky really to find the work. In the most I enjoyed it. Having friendly supportive colleagues and staff room banter was wonderful after the voiceless period in France. A chance to talk intelligently about the ideas for teaching our young children, and ultimately enabling them to have choices in life and to be able to make informed decisions. Teaching was a path that was kind of chosen for my by my circumstances. A path where there was old familiarity. A career that I could just pick up again (that makes it sound easy - it wasn't) and enjoy a reasonable salary. But what I increasingly found was that teaching was no longer a 200 count thread.. Its 600! And I can't pick up all the thread at once. Problem is that the school to which I have been appointed seems to be the luxury heavy duty 800 thread. A sign of luxury for some. A sign of weight for others. And for me, being a bedlinen obsessive, bloody impossible to iron, fold and conquer without reinforcing joinery in the linen cupboard. Trouble is I haven't had time to go to the timber yard. And sleeping under 800 thread linen should make you feel that you've achieved something in life. Actually it doesn't necessary give you a better nights sleep.

I'm guessing those of you not involved in beds might be wondering wtf I am talking about.

So this cliff. Do I hold my breath, step forward and away from the uncomfortable known, or be brave and say actually I can't sleep under that weight, all that singing all dancing bed linen. I don't believe it will make me perform as a better teacher; I think it will make me so stressed I will crack. I don't believe in all the data and compartments that out youngest generations are being squeezed into. Some say that children with S.E.N are square pegs in round holes in our mainstream school system. I say we, adults and children are all different irregular shapes. We can't all fit into that circular hole. I'm one of them. Definitely multi dimensional too.

Back to the cliff. I see this big empty landscape. Its rather scary. Its open and has no shelter. I has no lanes or routes to tell me which direction to go in. It definitely has no money trees. What it does have it time, space and my health. It holds my children in a place where I can actually have the mental and emotional capacity to care for them. They deserve my every attention. I know once over the cliff,  this empty landscape will gradually fill with paths, lanes, dark forests and areas of honesty, like a watercolour gradually appearing in a picture capture movie.

But I still don't know whether to take that forward or backward move. Both have their insecurities and worries. Both have challenges. But which challenge am I prepared to face?

Retrieval...

What do I mean by retrieving my click.

Its getting my eye back in and finding the confidence to use it. 

Its finding laughter with old friends and new ones. 

Its moving away from, "she's all right.... shame about her husband" and then losing the chance to interact intelligently but light heartedly with others.

Its making something new and light out of something old and dark.

Its capturing moments of landscape and people.

Its being Pootle, who was magic, very ditsy, spontaneous, musical, artistic and warm. And actually quite clever.

Re-Launch

Its been some time that I have felt like doing anything with my blog. I deleted it all as the words that I had written were hampering me from being able to move forward and re-emerge. That severe self editing has definitely helped; I still refer back to those awful dark days of the initial breakdown of my marriage and return to England, but its now a tidy corner of my mind, rather than a messy uncontrollable bundle of confusion, depression and loneliness.

But I do need to just pick out some elements of that period here, because without them I would not have started to find Pootle again.

(The hummingbird is the Native American symbol for renewal and rebirth)

I am no longer directionless. Northumberland has been completely internalised and I have started on a path of learning and health that I will not be distracted from.  I am doing my up most to ensure the children emerge from the changes with more vigour, rather than let the trauma of separation and cataclysmic change sap all their life force. I am encouraged by new friendships here and a welcome from strangers that I will be forever grateful. Some of those strangers are already friends and their belief in what Poots can do is just incredible!

More later....