Back in 2011, I wrote a little blog post about a song I remembered from primary school. Nothing grand, nothing with a Wikipedia page, nothing anybody outside a generation of classrooms would ever have heard of. Just a strange little musical number from the mid-to-late 80s, sung by a bunch of children who almost certainly had no idea what they were performing.
The only lyrics I could recall were:
“The blackbird sings a tuneful song, With turns and trills so fine, Such skill has he, such majesty, But it’s not as good as mine.”
And for years, that fragment has lived rent-free in my head — a dirge-like, slightly smug verse from a “fake song” written by a character inside a school musical. As best as I can remember, the plot involved a composer who knew he was being spied on, and so he deliberately wrote a terrible dirge to trick whoever was trying to copy him.
It was clever. It was funny. It was, in its own tiny way, art.
And yet… it seems to have vanished from the universe.
🕳 A Song That Fell Through the Cracks
When I say vanished, I mean properly vanished.
You can usually find anything online these days — half-remembered TV jingles, obscure adventure game walk-throughs, the full lyrics to commercial jingles that aired once in 1984. But this? This little school musical? Nothing.
No recordings.
No sheet music.
No mention in BBC Schools Radio archives.
No teachers’ resource PDFs.
No nostalgia forum threads.
Not even a throwaway reference in a Reddit comment.
Just my 2011 blog post… and my own memory, which has been clinging to that blackbird verse like a last surviving witness.
It’s completely mad when you think about it. Someone, somewhere, sat down in the 1980s and wrote this musical. They composed melodies, crafted characters, wove a plot about artistic pride and deception. They sent the work out into classrooms, where children in school halls around the UK sang their hearts out to it.
And now, nearly forty years later, the only evidence it ever existed is a few lines stuck in my head and an old blog entry on a site best known these days for dormancy and a very occasional burst of random recollections.
🎨 The Quiet Tragedy (and Beauty) of Lost Creativity
There’s something strangely beautiful about that.
We tend to think art only “matters” if it becomes part of the cultural machine — if it’s recorded, archived, written about, remastered, reposted, commented on, placed onto a shelf somewhere.
But so much creative work — especially in schools — is ephemeral by design:
Perform it once in assembly.
Stick the poster on the corridor wall.
Fold up the lyric sheets.
Box up the cassette.
Move on to the next term’s topic.
No cameras in every parent’s hand. No YouTube to immortalise it. No cloud storage full of forgotten MP3s.
Just a moment that existed briefly, fully, joyfully… and then dissolved.
And yet here I am, decades on, still humming “but it’s not as good as mine,” still wondering who wrote it, and still moved by the idea that I might be the last person on Earth who remembers it.
There’s something quietly touching in that — a reminder that even small, fleeting acts of creativity can lodge themselves somewhere deep.
🔍 So Here’s My Hope…
I’m posting this in the faint hope that someone, somewhere, might Google a lyric snippet, or remember doing that musical in the 80s:
The one with the composer.
The spy.
The fake dirge.
The hilariously pompous blackbird song.
If any of this rings a bell — even a faint one — please get in touch. I would love to give this little fragment its proper title, its composer, its context, and maybe even its full lyrics.
Because right now, this tiny piece of someone’s genuine creative work is balanced on one wobbly stool: my memory.
And I think it deserves at least a small place on the internet — somewhere safer than the inside of my brain.
I never really gave it much thought, in truth, but always had a kind of warm fuzzy glow that I still hosted a few domain names through the employer of my first ‘proper job’.
Notwithstanding I’m sure that a series of mergers and takeovers and things make that company completely unrecognisable from the initially small local internet hosting business I joined back at the start of the millennium (!).
I remember when Nominet launched the me.uk extension the technical guys developing a system to apply for them on launch, I logged into my account and successfully snagged both my forename and surname – not sure why on the former, but the latter has enabled me to have a very neat email address over the years, as I’ve transferred it from a hosted account, to connecting it to my Googlemail account before finally completing the ubiquitous Apple ecosystem my life is connected to.
So I had one domain name, this one, pointed to the WordPress nameserver to handle hosting, with the MX records pointing back to my old employer to handle email forwarding, the other two names the DNS was handled by the old employer – with the MX records for my surname pointing at Apple, and web forwarded here, and for my forename it was all just web and email forwarding.
I hadn’t realised they disabled email forwarding some time ago – I’m not even sure how I noticed, but it prompted one of those far too late at night rabbit holes. Things I’ve not thought about for years if not decades – A records, CNAME records, MX records, name servers – all came flooding back as I belligerently decided to transfer these last little remnants and sever all ties, to a host with less restrictive offerings.
If nothing else it’s made me update all the registrant details for the domains, spread between at least three former addresses – haha! And so far I seem to have managed to get everything pointing in the right direction, without utterly destroying my live email account too. Which is a bonus!
But yeah, it felt kinda weird to have formally severed any relationship with that first foray into gainful employment – even if nobody at the company from the office workers to the owners are probably in any way related to the folk I worked with an for!
I’ve been periodically glancing blogward and feeling an urge to update it, without much inspiration for meaningful content (ha, how would that change my infrequent musings – I hear you say!). So tonight I logged on and with the help of a quick search I realised I never mentioned the wonder of Quaker parrots on here. Which is dreadfully remiss. Having returned to this paragraph having been writing for a while, this has turned into a bloody dissertation – I do apologise!
Paz, already an old lady by now, on a play date with Lloyd and Frankie
Like most things in life for someone who rarely has a plan or goal, my introduction to them was completely accidental! I’m sure I’ve mentioned my cockatiels on here, sadly they’ve long since passed away. As a child I first encountered a cockatiel at a house my Dad was doing some work at over the weekends, he was called Matey and we were smitten with him. We’d had pet budgies at home so were already definitely pet bird aficionados.
A birthday or two later my brother Rich received a cockatiel he called Paz, my childhood forays into cockatiel ownership was a bit more fraught – we rescued an untamed one I called Archie. Despite trying to utilise the hand-reared Paz and lots of patience and treats, Archie was not keen on the idea of being tamed – and when something spooked him to the point that she nearly savaged Paz to death in a fight we opted to re-home him to an aviary to let her be wild, where she thrived.
Undeterred I was treated to a hand-reared freshly weaned cockatiel, a beautiful pearl little bird I called Klaw (this so far is a lesson in the miss-more-than-hit process of letting children name their pets I guess!). He was awesome, I remember banning my Dad from spending too much with him to avoid him bonding with him which Paz had done, haha. Sadly, he succumbed quite soon to some kind of congenital illness, worst of all after he’d passed away Paz started showing symptoms too but thankfully recovered.
Lloydie!
Fast forward to adulthood, freshly graduated and working and buying my first house (that said, before that whilst still renting Rich moved in with Paz for a while, still going strong!), one of the first things I did was buy myself a cockatiel. Lloyd was another pearl mutation, who turned out to be a she – and Frankie arrived soon after, another girl – a present from my then partner. A couple of years later we added a third, Phoebe.
Shortly after that relationship broke down, Phoebe – in echoes of Klaw – picked up some kind of illness. Now armed with the internet and more readily available avian veterinarians I spent a fortune trying to get her well, but alas she wasn’t strong enough. Frankie had bonded with Phoebe and was terribly impacted, since Lloyd had clearly bonded with me from being my only bird she never really showed much interest in Frankie, bless her.
Phoebe – doing her best Bruce Forsyth impression!
The silver lining was Frankie became more tame with me, particularly if she went through a spate of egg laying! After buying the a new house after the break-up, it was me, Lloyd and Frankie living happily with the neighbours cats looking at them through the patio doors. Lloyd had a few medical issues along the way, including egg-binding which my network of avian vets were able to resolve. But one day unexpectedly on returning home I found her at the bottom of her cage. I was devastated.
Frankie
Which left me and Frankie. I think we got through the loss together, she became much more fully tame and wanted to spend all her time with me – which made it much easier! I decided that since I go to work, and do leave the house on occasion I should look at getting her a companion of her own kind again – however, I didn’t want to inflict a young rambunctious baby on her – partly because it would probably annoy her, and also in a more macabre sense I’d just repeat the problem as it’s likely the young ‘un would outlive her considerably.
So I turned to rescues – which, frankly, is what in good conscience any aspiring bird-keeper should do – I was pretty ignorant to that in my formative forays into parrot-keeping. I registered for a load of them, one in particular was really communicative and did a home-check. They briefly suggested I ‘safehouse’ an Amazon but I had been really clear I was looking for an older cockatiel where maybe the owner had passed away, or had fallen out of favour for some other reason.
Then the lady who’d home checked me got in touch – she’d hand-reared a Quaker parrot that had been rejected by its mother, it was incredibly tame and playful but unfortunately her son had an allergic reaction to its feathers. Perhaps foolishly I arranged to go and see it. Rook was an absolute delight, a powder blue tiny bundle of chaos, playfulness and affection – frankly, the temptation was too strong and he came home with me. He was respectful of Frankie mostly, but certainly the two of them showed no interest in one another once his quarantine period upstairs was over, except for stealing each others’ food!
Rook – little blue bundle of chaos
So that plan didn’t really work, did it? It was okay though – with scheduled out time and Rook’s contentment to play on his stand, Frankie still had plenty of me-time, Then the lesson in patience manifest – another rescue reached out, they’d got a gentle 20 year old cockatiel called Bill (Frankie was 18 or 19 by this point). His owner had passed away, their family had good intentions and took him on but neglected him over time, he ended up in a room on his own, more often than not covered up. Exactly what I was looking for when I first started the search.
I visited Bill and brought him home the same day – he was a nervous but lovely boy, he liked to fold the paper at the bottom of his cage, and he had a nice sing song. I sited his (awful) cage next to Frankie’s and let them case each other out. Frankie was fascinated, rather than sit with me she’d sit like a sentinel on Bill’s cage, eventually getting in there with him largely to steal his food. This process lasted a few weeks but eventually they both decided to ‘move in’ together in Frankie’s much nicer cage – perfect solution!
Gentle Bill – such a lovely little soul
Rook meanwhile was really only interested in human interaction – which is good as he had a much more powerful beak than the tiels! His story was to end in tragedy too though, sadly. After showing symptoms of ill-health I took him straight to the avian vet, tests revealed not very much, but armed with formula I tried to build his strength and get him well. I’d thought we’d had a good day, I was feeding him a pomegranate seed before bed time (his favourite snack), he said ‘Whatcha got?’ – he’d hardly been talking whilst ill – but alas, I found him on the bottom of the cage the next morning.
Bill, Rook and Frankie could co-exist in an uneasy truce!
That hit me hard. He should’ve had a lifespan sufficient so that we could’ve retired together as a pair of grumpy old men. He was so much fun, a lovely little soul who adored my girlfriend as much as me – he was a really big loss. Foolishly I went to work that day, It was my introduction to Quaker parrots – my first love will always be the peaceful souls that cockatiels are, but it’s hard not to be intoxicated by the agents of chaos that are Quaker parrots.
My logic-chip kicked in at this point – I had two older tiels, Frankie had had considerable veterinary issues – including a hysterectomy – I used to joke she was probably the most expensive cockatiel in the world with her ongoing veterinary care. Bill I knew less about his history but he’d not got the best diet and whilst I improved it it was with limited success – it was likely they’d both have a few years left max so I’d see that out and then perhaps take a break from the emotional rollercoaster of caring for these amazing creatures.
A year or so later Bill started to show swelling, I took him to the vet who had to sedate him to x-ray him – she found fluids in his abdomen which she was able to drain, but it also showed his internal organs weren’t in great shape. Bill came home much more comfortable, but needed a follow-up appointment for further tests, and unfortunately the gentle little man didn’t pull through the sedation this time, he passed away on the table.
I took him home so that Frankie could see what happened – conscious that she never got to see what happened to Phoebe, unlike with Lloyd and Rook. I like to think, perhaps foolishly, it helped her to realise what had happened. I resolved to myself that at this point it would be Frankie and me now, the dice-roll of introducing another bird too open to going wrong, and also Frankie had ongoing medical issues (she was basically on the pill to suppress egg production since she only had half a reproductive system!).
Sonic (Boom)
But of course, as mentioned above, I don’t thrive at planning or goal-setting! We are in the midst of lockdown thanks to Covid-19 – the Facebook page that I’d set up for Rook initially, which had been taken over by Frankie and Bill, received a message from a lady who had – guess what – a Quaker parrot, powder-blue no less, who needed a home. Sonic was bonded to her husband who was about to be away on tour with the armed forces and she felt it wasn’t fair, and having seen Rook’s shenanigans she thought she’d found the perfect home.
I was reticent, then I saw the pictures and videos. Sonic was about one and a half, the age Rook was when he passed away roughly – I arranged a not inconsiderable road trip to see him (okay, her – I’ve since had her sex-tested!) probably flouting the rules at the time for necessary travel. Sonic is also a delight, tame as you like – we got on brilliantly from the off. Obviously she came home with me, much to Frankie’s chagrin (you could almost see the look on her face: “Why have you brought another one of those back with you?”
Sonic looks just like Rook, she has a little more grey in her wings. She’s just as tame and can also talk, when she first arrive she used to enjoy throwing toys on the floor and laughing – she doesn’t laugh so much any more, and unlike Rook is a reluctant talker. She has a huge vocabulary, but you only hear her talking either when she’s in her cage chilling out, or if we take a shower together. She’s much more affectionate and loves to be petted – whereas Rook was a real monster for playing.
This was one of the prompts to get her DNA tested for sex – I wondered if these quite strikingly different personality traits meant she was female. I was right! It doesn’t make any difference to me, but it’s good to know to watch out for issues like egg-binding. Just like Rook, Sonic didn’t really bother with Frankie and vice versa – I always supervised them when out together and gave Frankie extra time out without the blue menace and things worked well.
Frankie had started to have seizures which was alarming, back to the vet we went, he couldn’t really find a cause but as she visited fairly often for her contraceptive shots, the vet agreed to monitor her. The seizures gradually became more frequent and severe, including instances of coughing up blood – Frankie had showed me numerous times she had a fierce will to live and I’d made a tacit agreement with her that as long as that was the case I’d do everything I could to deal with her health issues.
Unfortunately – still in lockdown – it was becoming so bad, with lockdown easing slightly I was terrified she’d have a particularly bad episode whilst I was at work or out and basically drown to death. I took the desperately difficult call to have her put to sleep at the vet – 20 years of companionship, the soul that kept me sane in alone in lockdown before Sonic arrived. It was a hard decision. I still think it was the right decision. My only regret is that because of the pandemic legislation at the time I wasn’t permitted to be with her at the end, I had to hand her over to a vet in a car park.
Since Sonic showed no real interest in Frankie I didn’t ask to bring her home, instead asked them to arrange a cremation (yes, I do have a little birdy mausoleum of their ashes, I’m that person!). Sonic I suspect was probably happy to have me just to herself, and to be honest, whilst I was reticent to take on another bird when contemplating the demise of my cockatiels, given the timing during the pandemic, having Sonic around really saved me from myself – and she continues to thrive. She’s around five years old now and very well settled in.
She’s very much bonded to me – unsurprisingly, we were stuck together in a house alone during a pandemic! But she’s warmed to my girlfriend who now lives with us, Definitely the case of a happy accident – I might not have initially been looking for Quaker parrots in my life, but I’m sure glad that they arrived. They’re little bipolar bundles of affection, playfulness, song, fun.- and occasional violence! They’re not to be taken lightly, they demand a lot of attention and time – but if you provide that, they’re also so rewarding!
It’s important to remember to pack the correct bass before a gig…
For somebody with no inherent musical skill – probably as a result of singularly failing to engage with opportunities to learn music at school, something I’d love to have a word with past-Alan about – it’s a bit of a surprise how much musical performance I’ve ended up doing over the last few years.
My first foray was with the Star Copiers – a venture that started with two friends who were learning guitar, a challenge set by a friend organising a festival that saw a fledgling band start along with another friend on vocal duties.
After they’d performed a few times, at another festival a drunken conversation with Mark saw me say something foolish like “you know what you need, someone to sit on one of those box things to keep you in time“, “Good idea!” he said “You’ve got the job – go and buy one of those box things!“
And so it began, I managed to bash my way through the first cheap eBay cajon (and learned what a cajon was called), so bought a more expensive one, visiting a dealer in his warehouse and feeling like a massive fraud – and well, we actually managed to secure some pretty cool gigs for a bunch of mates pissing around covering songs in our own inimitable style. We even recorded a couple of songs and released them into the wild to raise money for St. Giles hospice, even securing a donation in exchange for some t-shirts from the frontman of Alice Donut, the band whose song we covered in tribute to our dear friend Richard.
Along the way I was invited to perform on my box with Ferocious Dog, Nick Parker, Dis-honest Foke, Morganella and a fair few other artists. It’s funny how things escalate from one throwaway comment at a festival, isn’t it?
As the Star Copiers fizzled out, the Car Boot Bandits came to the fore – pretty much the same deal from my point of view, cover versions (and one original song – which I wrote after learning to butcher a few chords on a ukulele), but then Covid-19 landed and it really took the wind out of the band sails, never managing to reconvene after the world closed down for a year and a bit. That said, I did record a song for Pete Drake (another artist I’ve box-banged with!) utilising ukuleles, cajon and some backing vocals from Ella for his Pete Drake Project album under the Car Boots Bandits name, despite the rest of the band not being involved due to lockdown restrictions.
Something submitted jokingly to Radio Nottingham of our only original song saw the local station make some kind of collaboration/mash-up with LadBaby too. I wasn’t sure whether to be honoured or horrified!
Running in parallel with these acts were Darwin’s Rejects – another group of festival friends, but with I think it’s fair to say a more ambitious end-game. Sometimes at festivals we mix-and-matched line-ups on festival open-mic stages, usually under the name of the Egyptian Whores. A couple of times when their percussionist Jim wasn’t available for a gig I was asked to deputise on my box – a real honour and always fun! At this time mostly a cover band too, but with a couple of their own songs in the mix. It made me realise how much I’d missed both the performing aspect of being in a band, but also the camaraderie of rehearsals.
It must have been obvious to everyone else, not least Ella as well as the rest of the Darwin’s (at that time) boys. A plan was hatched. Warren had determined the missing piece for the band’s sound was bass guitar, “you could learn that” he said to me I thought jokingly when we were rehearsing ahead of a gig I was covering for Jim. I didn’t take it too seriously, albeit idly fantasising that this could be a cool idea. Bass is like a fusion of percussion and guitar really after all!
In the background this conversation carried on between Warren and Ella – and on Christmas morning 2022 a lovely rubber stringed bass ukulele was under the tree for me. Okay, I might have got wind of this before Christmas even if I wasn’t permitted to open it before then! I dutifully signed up to some bass resources online and started to methodically try to learn to play, and progressed pretty well – but with gigs mounting up and me trying to learn ‘properly’ rehearsals left me feeling very out of my depth.
So I refocused, I developed a ‘cheat sheet’ template (initially on paper, now on an iPad) and realised that whilst I wouldn’t be a virtuoso I could get away with moving around mostly root notes to add some passable depth to our songs. Initially training myself to move round the fretboard I probably did one note per bar, but then built up to add some different patterns to lock into Jim’s drums. I progressed more quickly – I was on stage within a couple of months for my debut a couple of months from receiving my first bass guitar. Terrifying and thrilling in equal measure.
Since then we’ve been working on more of our own material – I love the collaborative approach, working out what patterns sound best for my parts, I’ve even offered up songs of my own which sates the creative writing dearth as we’re trying to work up enough songs to make up what will be our debut album later this year. The EP we released last year came a little too soon for me to actually play on so whilst I can merrily play those songs now, back then it made more sense for Warren to do it – so from a personal pride point of view I’m excited to actually have my own contributions laid down in recordings.
So yeah, the accidental performer thing seems to be such a recurring theme that it must just be something about me – I absolutely love being on a stage and hopefully contributing to something that people are enjoying. We’ve had some great feedback and I’m really excited about some of the things we’ve been working on that have yet to make it out into the wild – all of this stems back to innocently making a suggestion to Mark all those years ago about the need for a dude sitting on a box keeping time.
In the meantime I now have a choice of two basses – both ukulele sized albeit tuned like.a regular bass guitar, I like the quirkiness and convenience of size, a choice in pedal set ups, an amp – hmm, expensive hobby indeed. That’s what Russ always describes being in a grassroots band as being – and he’s not wrong, haha! But it’s a whole lot of fun!
It’s difficult to try to sum up what Nottingham Forest’s unlikely promotion to the Premier League means. Even now, two days on, it’s not really sunk in properly. From a purely self-indulgent point of view, this is an attempt to put into words what it means to me.
Being a football fan can feel like being in a toxic relationship at times, but punctuated by occasional dizzying highs. We’ve waited for more than two decades to reach the top flight of English football, three decades since we last played on the hallowed turf of Wembley.
In the intervening years I’ve oscillated from being a full on home-and-away fan whose life was totally mapped out by the fixture list, to disinterested observer as the lures of girls and going out took centre sway from mid-to-late teens, back to full on season ticket and away games, forum moderator, blogger and occasional radio guest.
More recently a combination of factors – disillusionment with the previous owner, life events making attendance less of a priority for me and my brother saw us make a collective decision to hang up our long-standing season tickets, him to spend more time with his kids, me to be in festival fields and gigs.
But the pull is always there, the app to check the scores not too far away to click. I’d pop down a few times a season, but never felt like I’d made a bad call. The thing I missed most were the acquaintances who became friends through Forest. The camaraderie.
The first time I stepped back from Forest back in the 1990s, my brother was busy gallivanting around Europe in the UEFA cup run under Frank Clark.
“It’s okay, I’ll go next time” I naively thought, much more interested at the time in burgeoning first loves and an adolescent social life. What foresight, huh?
This time round our partially Fawaz-inspired withdrawal looked like a reasonable bet. Even the initial acquisition of the club by Greek businessman Evangelos Marinakis looked set to follow the same blueprint for a while, meddling at all levels, a continued revolving door of managers – I’d still pop down now and again, I’d still follow from afar.
This season has been crazy. Hughton’s awful start consigned him to the sack, Steve Cooper duly arrived and well, has delivered what so many have failed to do before. Suddenly “oh I’ve got a free weekend coming up let’s pop and see the Reds” became impossible, matches were sold out a week in advance. I couldn’t even avail myself of the spectacularly awful-yet-amazing “fruit salad” third kit, if anyone has one in L or XL they don’t want then get in touch!
Fortunately I was able to amass sufficient ticket purchases to be able to qualify for the playoff games at the City Ground and Wembley, and it’s just impossible to put into words what it means. I sat on my own at the City Ground for the visit of Sheffield United – ironically in the same stand as my very first game – and celebrated maniacally with strangers after the penalty shootout took us into uncharted playoff territory.
More happily I spent Wembley with my brother, nephew and two friends. I saw countless others in the concourses and outside the ground. Wembley (old Wembley, of course) was an annual trip as I was getting into Forest. My record then was 3 visits, 2 losses and 1 win. It’s not a nice place to lose, that’s for sure. My Dad would take us down there on a bus, that’s what we did with my nephew, passing the baton down to the next generation.
Despite the Wembley experience doing its best to suck the soul out of you with no discernible queuing organisation outside and surly humourless security inside, it couldn’t suppress a magical afternoon. Sure, the match was underwhelming, we got lucky with some decisions (for once!), but ultimately we ended with that unbelievable cathartic moment.
For fans older than me, who witnessed real glory, and for those of my generation who at least saw us lift some cups and be an established top flight team it was tears, years of pent up frustration and that gradual gnawing acceptance that we’d never get there, released in a burst of emotion we can’t quite understand and certainly can’t put into words.
Joe Worrall described Nottingham Forest as the equivalent of a dog that’s been beaten to the point of its’ spirit being crushed, left to either lash out or sink into depression, until Steve Cooper arrived to rescue it and nurture it. It’s the same for the older fans. We’ve had years of accepting our lot as mediocre second tier fodder who occasionally might threaten the playoffs or flirt with relegation (whilst being constantly reminded that apparently we live in the past).
For the younger fans it was outright euphoria – and this next phase of Forest is for them. They’ve stuck with the team through some lean times out of pure unadulterated loyalty – not with hazy memories of past glories, aside from those they’ve read about or heard from older family members. A generation of fans have never known us as a top flight club, but they’ve stuck with it and are reaping their rewards.
I think about Connie, who used to sit near us in our season ticket seats. She still does now, long after it could be argued we gave up the ghost. Her Dad is of a similar vintage to me and my bro (a bit older, so he can remember much headier heights), this is for her. But it’s also for us, for enduring Megson, Chester away in the cup, Oldham away, absolute misery in the play-off semi finals in both the Championship and League One, countless other humiliations.
This photo captures the zeitgeist perfectly, by Ami Ford (@amifordphoto)
I think about the kids at Nottingham schools with Forest shirts on non-uniform days not being outnumbered by Man City or Liverpool shirts, or being asked what their Premier League team is. This promotion is for them. They can collect Forest players in Match Attax or Panini albums.
And on a more practical level the frankly immoral imbalance of wealth distribution in football means our financial future is a lot more secure now. How Forest move on now will be interesting, the owner sounds ambitious, and frankly there’s cautious cause for optimism based on the way we seem to be run these days with very few misses in terms of player recruitment.
What Steve Cooper, the team and all the staff have done – and the fans too (I was dead against the displays and things when they were mooted years ago, I was wrong – they are brilliant, Forza Garibaldi take a big bow) isn’t so much as awaken a sleeping giant or any other such lazy hyperbole, but they’ve given a fanbase emaciated by a lack of success genuine cause for celebration, a sense of pride that reverberates around the city and a massive shot of delight at a time that is tough for many.
It’s likely tickets will remain hard to come by for the foreseeable unless the local authorities can get a wriggle on and work with Forest to redevelop the City Ground, and whilst it denies me the chance to pop down to the game on a whim, I don’t begrudge it at all, the folk that held out longer than me deserve to be there, and the team deserves a full house each week.
I’ve had a blast re-immersing myself in it, but can’t imagine going back to the world of season tickets and regular away travel these days. And given, by and large, when I have been a home and away regular the only things we had were play off failures, relegations and a solitary promotion from League One (oh, and Frank Clark’s promotion back to the promised land in the 90s too), maybe that’s not such a bad thing for the greater good of the club!
I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough this week on what feels like a bit of crash course in mental health self-awareness. It feels silly really, I’ve done countless courses on mental health awareness for work, and it all makes sense – but it’s a whole different gravy applying it to yourself when you’re in the throes of it compared to if you were spotting the signs in a team mate or employee, or a friend even.
The first obstacle is acknowledging and admitting that you are in a position of mental ill health. It took my boss to point that out to me (in a gentle way). We are conditioned societally to be strong, to cope with things. I’m not sure that it’s specifically true that it’s more so for men, anecdotally people seem to think so – it doesn’t really matter though, I certainly found it tough to accept. I’ve never been a “man up” kind of man, but I think we all naturally feel a little disappointed in ourselves if we are finding it difficult to cope with life.
Exposing that vulnerability filled me with an enormous sense of dread – people might judge, people might see me as a burden, people might see me as weak. In addition to that, people have their own problems – if you fall into the trap of trying to rank them, you end up feeling like you’re really making a mountain out of a molehill. I knew there were options for referring to NHS treatments but well, the NHS is really rather busy right now what with the whole pandemic thing, right?
That process of opening up was actually positive – some intuitive people probed (gently), others I selectively reached out to were receptive, kind and supportive. Realising that really recovery was only going to be driven by myself, nobody else has a magic wand to ‘fix’ me, that reluctance to share with people diminished. It’s helped me realise that when others are suffering I don’t need to feel pressured to solve their problems, but to be open to listening to them.
So by the time referrals to NHS CBT therapy and talking to a therapist via our Employee Assistance Programme (which I’m very lucky to have) had materialised into appointments I was actually already on the right road to recovery, definitely ably assisted by the group I talked about in my last blog post, as well as some great book recommendations. There were, and have been, and probably will be, bumps in the road – but the broad trajectory was improvement from the low base of going to bed and not caring whether I woke up again or not.
On Monday the NHS webinar I attend was addressing people who literally aren’t able to function – helping them form strategies to be able to build up to the basic tasks of managing their hygiene, their home and their work. Not really relevant for me, but reassuring that I’ve been really good at staying on top of those things. I’ve not shunned what social contact I’ve been able to have and I’ve been doing really well at staying physically active, eating well and hydrating.
My work-organised therapist is more bespoke but still centred around CBT – they’ve been really positive sessions, and the session today probably confirmed that landmark moment. Next week we’re going to spend the session mapping out an exit strategy from being in therapy. A lot of my issues are probably akin to the grieving cycle, unfortunately some of that just takes time to process, but the CBT techniques combined with the other extra-curricular steps I’ve taken have undoubtedly helped make more sense of and apply some structure to that processing.
I’ll miss my weekly catch-ups with Holly as they’ve been incredibly helpful and affirming, but equally, I’d rather not need to have them. Whilst I’m finding it increasingly less relevant I will stick to the NHS webinars too – each week we fill in a questionnaire to ascertain where we’re at with various measures – a couple of times that’s prompted a clinician to call me to check in, which at first was frustrating as it’s an indicator that those scores aren’t great, but latterly it’s more of a comfort that there’s a safety net there if needed. I think they have it set to a bit of a hair trigger personally, but better that than the other way, right?
More than anything though this process has helped me to correct the stigma I attached to my own mental health – not for others suffering, but just for myself. Mental Health is a shit term really – mental health should be the default, shouldn’t it? It should mean you are mentally healthy, and when things go awry then that is mental ill health. Just as with your physical health, there’s a sliding scale – we could all be more physically healthy despite describing ourselves as fit and well, the same goes for your mind. And of course that doesn’t even touch on the fact that the two are inextricably linked.
Maintaining good mental health is a never ending process just like maintaining your physical health. I think we all know that, but can lose sight of the muscle-memory nature of that when things start to go wrong. Just because you’ve risen from the pit of despair doesn’t make the kind of tools and techniques you used to ascend any less relevant. Perversely, I can see a path to actually being a much more content person than I was back when I thought I was a content person – but that will always require incremental adjustments and work to maintain.
So I’m feeling good about transitioning away from being ‘in therapy’ to more wholly self-managing the things I’m working through – and frankly, most of that management has been by me, but with a great support network of family, friends, colleagues and professionals when needed. I suppose the moral of the story, as ever, is that if you are struggling then please please do reach out for help. Particularly in the wake of 15 months of severe restrictions on our freedom, it feels like there could be a secondary pandemic of mental ill health issues on the horizon.
Amidst the swirling vortex of proactive research (to me, my mind was like a technical problem I might encounter – it’s not working how I’d like, I’ll Google it and find a fix), CBT webinars, CBT therapy sessions, private writing therapy and support from friends there’s been a really helpful group I’ve been participating with on Facebook. I reference it very fleetingly in a previous post, but it has been truly helpful – as indeed have most of the things I’ve been dabbling with.
It’s a fairly simple formula, which I’ll be about to make sound even more simple. My friend Naomi set it up – she described it as an opportunity to ‘unfuck yourself’ in her typically direct style. Grounded in elements of what CBT and NLP try to teach you, with a few lashings of mindfulness and – frankly – common sense, all wrapped up in a lovely supportive environment with other people with similar aims. It sounds very fluffy when you read that back, it’s really not – it’s about positive affirmation though, and trying to – again, paraphrasing Naomi, rewinding your tape and recording something better over it.
The basic tenet is to follow seven steps every day for a 30 day cycle. Seven is an auspicious number if you have certain beliefs (I probably don’t), and 30 days is what NLP or CBT will tell you is the time you’d need to change your habits or reprogram your neural-pathways. It’s not just about mental health though, it’s about physical health too – the two are of course inextricably linked to one another as I suspect I found to my detriment when I had my vasovagal issues a few weeks ago.
Without spoilering too much (I’ll link to Naomi’s page at the end so you can read the details), it’s really quite a simple programme – but there’s no compulsion to nail everything every time, and just because your 30 days finish it doesn’t mean you can’t recommence with a new round of them.
First up – eat healthily, and do that in a way that has meaning for you. For me I track my calories in and out, I’ve been doing that for nearly a year because I wanted to get myself in shape having let myself get quite overweight. Ironically at the moment as I’m close to target I’ve been quite lax on this in recent days, I’m planning on being sensible again from next week. That doesn’t mean dieting per say, just be mindful of what you’re putting in your body and what effect it may have on you.
Secondly is hydrating – again, something I’ve been good at – not least because you can chug a load of water if you’re feeling hungry when limiting calorie intake and make yourself feel full, but hydration in general is bloody important and overlooked often for those of us with busy lives. Lay off the alcohol (something I’d already been doing, never having been a big home drinker), don’t just drink caffeinated things although the odd one is okay. Try to make it mostly water.
Third is getting physical – of course, that will vary for people depending on their mobility or fitness levels. But at the very least spend 30 minutes a day outside, being active. For me of course that centres around playing football as much as humanly possible, or going out for walks. For others it might be a stroll around the garden, it might even just be sitting outside with a good book, or appreciating the scenery or birdsong. Get some vitamin D in you, escape the confines of four walls.
Fourth is finding the time to be creative or to enjoy simply playing. This could be anything, play an instrument, write a blog post, read a book, take photographs, do a jigsaw, paint or draw something. Probably best to avoid immersing in a computer game (for this purpose at least, if not in general), you could learn something new either just for the fun of it or even for professional or academic furtherment. For me this tends to be writing, messing around with music or reading.
Fifth is hard. A social media de-tox. When it started I was doing quite well at this – restricting myself to either two half hour windows of usage, or one solid hour per day. I activated scheduled quiet mode on my phone’s Facebook app and was doing quite well at sticking to it at first, then found the ‘deactivate for 15 minutes’ button quite easy to press. That said, when I do indulge most of my activity is centred around the group associated with this scheme, I don’t ‘doom scroll’ endlessly, I’ve done well at steering clear of more toxic environments like Twitter and Instagram. It feels shameful in some ways to find it so difficult to lay off Facebook, but my usage stats show that I’m using it less often and for less time than before.
Sixth sounds simple too – rest. Go to bed at a sensible time, get up at a sensible time, and actually get up – don’t set an alarm and languish. I’m not bad at this to be fair, except for the going to bed at a sensible time bit. I suppose having a 9-5ish job lends itself well to that pattern – but even before starting this I’ve been making a point of getting up and active at weekends or bank holidays too. Past Alan could easily have languished in bed for half the day if given the chance! I think we all know deep down that if we get up when we wake up we generally feel better than snoozing again. By the same token, and one I can definitely get better at, if you need to rest outside of your normal sleeping/waking patterns, then you bloody well should.
Seventh is the worst, but probably the most important. You need to write something positive about yourself – something that you believe. It feels uncomfortable for most people because we’re not encouraged to be self-aggrandising. This isn’t that, this is extolling your virtues to yourself, and deep down you know you have them – those things about yourself you’re proud of. Write them down, take a photo of yourself with it, save the paper, tell yourself out loud a few times what you’ve written. Try to believe it. After thirty days, retrieve the notes and read them back. Some of us have braved sharing these in our group, you don’t have to. Full body photos are a good idea if you want to track progress on losing weight or inches, but also taking body language cues.
It’s also important to track each day – just a simple notepad could do the trick, I reverted to corporate mode and made myself a PowerPoint template to fill in, I just made traffic lights for each of the seven steps. Social media was stubbornly amber, the rest were mostly green. I left space to note what I’d eaten, exercise I’d taken, random thoughts for the day, how things felt. It really did me a favour because a lot of the work I’ve been set for my assorted therapies have been centred around these kind of things – not that I’m looking for shortcuts, but it’s great to have some reassurance that I’m already working on things that are compatible with these solutions to.
So did I enter the process broken? Almost certainly. Am I fixed? No, not yet – whilst I’m sure I knew already that there is no magic wand for working through depression and anxiety, we are all individuals after all, what I have been able to do is have tangible evidence of progress compared to where I was. I also have tangible evidence of where I might have slipped back a little and had bad days, and I’ve learned not to beat myself up about that largely thanks to a wonderfully supportive group of folk who are trying to overcome their own challenges too. And hopefully I’ve been able to offer that same encouragement to them when they feel low.
We all have challenges in life – and if you look very hard you’ll find reasons to wonder why you might not be coping with yours when someone elses are so much worse. But that doesn’t invalidate how you may be feeling, whether you are able to function or cope. A non-judgmental and supportive environment is really invaluable in helping you to realise this.
Being nice to yourself, and others – who knew that might make your world seem like a better place? It sounds so simple doesn’t it? But if it was, then the world would be a happier place. All we can really do is our bit within it.
If you’d like to read Naomi’s much more succinct and less waffly guide to the Cunning Plan, then it’s here.
I’ve been finding it helpful to type these introspective little pieces as I work my way through a few struggles. The one saving grace I’ve held on to whilst I’ve had mental health difficulties over the last few weeks is the work I’ve been putting into my physical health since last June.
My stats are all green now on my Smart scales, my fitness levels are great and I’m in better shape than I’ve probably been since my teens, if I’m honest. Lots of walking, and since it’s been available again lots of playing football has been great along with tracking what I eat, making sure I hydrate, getting sensible amounts of sleep and pretty much giving up alcohol – it’s genuinely wonderful to wake up easily each morning and feel good ready to face the day.
That’s how I felt yesterday, I woke up before my alarm went off – I read a couple of chapters of my book before getting up and getting ready to start the day. I logged into work and had a really good productive day – ticked off loads of things on my list, popped out to grab some lunch, finished up early and had my assessment for the work-provided therapy I’ve been referred to.
That was a great conversation too – of course the subject matter was at times difficult, but I was honest, the lady handling the call was brilliant. She’s recommended a non-intensive course of CBT which I think means I’m suffering from mild to moderate anxiety and/or depression. I finished the call feeling uplifted – a path forward, something that might help to put a framework around some of the thinking and learning I’ve already been doing in my own scatterbrain way.
I logged back into work, we had a catch up call to close the day – it was fun, we’d all had a decent day, we had positive updates. I had one more call with one of my team to run through some stuff, also positive. It was basically as near as damn it a good day – the only fly in the ointment being a working at home day, so no actual people contact.
Work over, I logged out and headed out for a walk just to get a bit of fresh air and exercise – the sun was out, I tuned into a Podcast (Lee Mack and Neil Webster’s ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Buddha’ – I’d recommend it for a light hearted exploration of Buddhism – which, ironically, is not that dissimilar to the book I referenced earlier but with added spirituality). It was a fun episode, it was a good walk – I didn’t go too far, with football planned for the next day I just wanted to ‘top up’ on activity. I stopped for a while in the park half way round to read a couple of chapters of my book, pausing the Podcast and enjoying the birdsong.
Once home again I cracked open the final HelloFresh order from my box and got cracking. Mango Chutney glazed chicken with Cumin Bulgar Wheat and roasted carrots – like all HelloFresh orders it takes all the pots and pans and impliments and fills up the dishwasher! It was fun to prepare though, I plated up both portions, one to go in the fridge later, one to eat and tucked in. It was lovely and satisfying. I sat on the settee to let my dinner settle and felt generally all was well with the world, considering.
After half an hour or so I figured it was time to get up. I’d opened the front door a crack and the back door to air the house after a bit of smokiness from the cooking, I picked up my bowl and got up to push the front door to, and that’s the last thing I remember except for the initial sensation of losing consciousness. I remember fleetingly worrying about breaking the bowl I was holding, the next thing I knew I was on the floor by the now closed front door, my arms jerking uncontrollably still holding the bowl I was still worried about breaking.
I’ve no idea how long I was out, or how long the seizure/fit lasted, as it waned I sat on the floor feeling disoriented and confused. I’d struck my head either on the floor, door or bowl, it felt tender but wasn’t bleeding. As I oriented myself I crawled over to the settee where my phone was, I dialled 111. I spoke to the lady on the other end for 20 minutes or so, she put me on hold a couple of times to talk to a supervisor/clinicial after going through check lists. She said to await a call from a clinician or a visit from a paramedic in either a 30 minute or 2 hour window depending on which happened.
I texted Mum, then was naughty and went to finish sorting out the kitchen / put second portion in the fridge whilst I waited for her to arrive. We waited, I did call back to chase as 2 hours came and went – they confirmed a paramedic had been dispatched. Right on cue he arrived pretty much as I hung up. He was lovely and caring, I masked up and he checked me over – mainly focusing on heart-related issues, stroke symptoms, blood sugar levels. Everything came back looking okay, which is reassuring, but he did identify a ‘regular irregular’ rhythm on the ECG scan he ran. Whilst not a significant concern, he advised I should go to A&E for blood tests as a precaution.
So we drove down to Burton A&E (good to know there’s one so close, I had no idea!). I’ve been advised not to drive until we get more answers, so Mum kindly dropped me off but couldn’t stay due to Covid-19 restrictions, after a lot of waiting and more similar tests in A&E it was established that whatever it was, it didn’t appear to be anything that was an imminent emergency. I was to be referred for more non-emergency testing, which is reassuring. I got home by about 5am and went to bed, thankful for our wonderful NHS and that to the best of their knowledge there wasn’t any dramatically sinister medical thing I’d need to contend with.
So I don’t know what caused me to black out and shake uncontrollably, it leaves you feeling tremendously vulnerable – but I was reassured that I wasn’t dealing with some kind of cardiac episode or stroke. Upon reading up and guidance from knowledgable friends the most likely culprit is a vasovagal – a fairly common thing, and something that is unlikely to require any medical intervention at all. I do sometimes get light-headed if I get up quickly from a sitting and particularly reclined position. And I do like a good recline!
I can manage elements of that – now I’ll eat my meals sitting at the dining table I’ve set up, eat slowly, enjoy it, give myself time to let the food settle, don’t get up quickly. It’s easy really isn’t it? Lots of what I’ve been trying to do mentally recently is forming good habits – similarly with the physical health kick before that. I’m really reassured that I think whatever it was that happened – whilst scary – isn’t likely to be a medical emergency, as much as it felt like it and it was appropriate to treat it as such.
Of course, further tests etc might tell me something different – and I’m taking the advice of the A&E doctors in taking it easy, taking some time away from work, not driving, taking a break from football. Just gentle walks for the next few days and seeing how things go. I did that today, Mum came with Buddy to make sure I didn’t collapse somewhere out and about. I didn’t, I felt fine, we extended our route to be a little further than the initial conservative plan and I even included the hilly bit of the local woodland. I felt fine. I really don’t want to lose the fitness levels I’ve been building up so well.
I and others jumped to the conclusion that I’d probably reacted to my assorted woes by doing too much exercise and stuff – I don’t think that’s the case. I’ve been mindful that I’ve been doing more intensive exercise but I’ve felt great doing it, I wouldn’t have played football so much if I was struggling. As a precaution I’ll lay off it a week, but I’m tentatively planning a comeback on Sunday. So I don’t think this really was a case of my body saying “stop!”, it was just a coincidence – but it’s a useful reminder. Listen to your bodies. Mentally certainly I recognise I’m fragile right now, and there’s bound to be causal links between that and my physical faculties in dealing with things that might normally just be a fleeting bout of light-headedness.
The title of this post isn’t meant to disparage a more serious mental condition, but it’s a good metaphor for my state of mind over the last few weeks. Plus by being called Al I’ve been able to weave it into irresistible puns based on that, and who doesn’t love a good pun?
I’ve been reading ‘Think less, live more’ by Richard Carlson. It’s not a particularly new book, it was first published in the 1990s and a colleague recommended it to me and I’ve been taking a lot from it. I’m only about 41% of the way through it according to my Books app, but it’s really helped me to put a framework around some of the things I’ve been grappling with myself.
To paraphrase its basic tenet (probably really badly) it outright states that your feelings are driven by your thoughts – and you have some degree of control of your thoughts, if you’re present enough to acknowledge them, recognise them and decide whether or not that type of thought is likely to fuel your happiness. I guess that kind of theory more recently would be badged as Mindfulness orBeing Present. But I’m quite drawn to how Carlson achieves the same effect without feeling like you might have to bust out the buddhist bells and whack some joss sticks on.
As you can probably imagine, much of my thoughts have not been leading me toward happiness in recent times. When those negative thoughts surface now I’ve tried to learn to call them out to myself, to put them to one side, and leave some room for less damaging ones. It sounds really silly, but it’s been working – which surprised me. I’ve never been much of a self-help book kind of person, maybe it’s a case of finding something helpful at the right time?
So anyway, multiple personalties, right? In my private writing space I’ve been identifying my different voices, thought processes and moods. Of course, I’ve changed mine and anyone elses’ name on there because it’s anonymous and whilst I clearly felt the urge to expel whatever was going on in my mind somewhere, I’m certainly not prepared to go into too much detail in public. So I couldn’t take advantage of the subsequent pun-based idea I had, so I’m going to do it here without going into specifics.
For me at least, which this writing is principally for, it’s a combination of insightful and amusing – and I think to try to derive some amusement from what has been a genuine struggle is not necessarily a bad thing.
I’d like to introduce you to the Als.
Logic-Al is getting much more airtime in my internal monologue lately – he’s able to dispassionately weigh up the outcome of events and not worry about how that outcome came about. He recognises that however regrettable something might be, you can’t change it once it’s happened – so it makes most sense to focus on the present. He can seem a bit heartless or dispassionate, but he’s usually right. He’s been very much brought to the fore by the book I mentioned.
Analytic-Al was in the chair at first – he wanted to understand everything, he relived events both recent and further back, he scrutinised clues, agonised over the minutae of detail. Anyone vaguely familiar with my career would probably not be surprised he is often at the front of the queue, these are skills that have earned me my wages for less emotionally charged subjects. Whilst he arguably causes pain by reliving or discovering things, without him the road to recovery probably wouldn’t have been discovered, so whilst he needs to be tempered, he’s not a bad egg.
Cynic-Al has a very dim view of future opportunities – he’ll cherry-pick some of Analytic-Al’s work to turn everything that has happened back on himself. Things he should have done differently, things he should have anticipated, things he could have done better. He’s a bit of an arsehole in truth. He creates patterns that don’t really exist to sabotage the future, finds correlations without establishing whether one variable truly drives the other. He’s a terrible analyst.
Miserab-Al can’t see past the losses. He wallows self-piteously, simulteneously failing to see the myriad of positives in life that remain whilst agrandising things that are lost to almost mythic proportions. He feeds on the work of Cynic-Al and can’t envisage a path to a future with happiness, whilst often glancing wistfully backward through rose-tinted glasses.
Judgement-Al shifts the focus outward – he is concerned with the unfairness of situations, he fixates on how unfairly he feels he’s been treated by people, fate, whatever else. He looks to point the finger at other parties, trapped in his own bubble of feeling and unable to consider the bigger picture, life is unfair sometimes after all. He doesn’t have a very loud voice in my pantheon of personalities, I’m happy to say, but he pops up now and again.
Philosophic-Al is more accepting, he also takes Analytic-Al’s work but layers empathetic interpretations – he is in many ways the counterbalance to Judgement-Al. He isn’t devoid of emotion, and probably doesn’t put enough value on his own needs, but his heart is in the right place. At his core he is looking for answers like Analytic-Al, but with the ultimate goal of a calm resolution, whatever that resolution might be.
Antisociab-Al is a bit of a paradox. Nearly all of the Al’s are craving human contact, whilst the restrictions of lockdown are gradually relaxing allowing a little more mixing for those of us unfortunate enough to live alone, a year or so of heavier restrictions are surely going to make you ripe for wanting to be around people. Not always. Sometimes you don’t want to inflict Miserab-Al on the wider world, he’s quite a burdensome fellow. Again, luckily, he’s not really been a dominant part of the conversation so far. Even in more normal times it can be quite overwhelming to people, especially after a period of time without being able to.
Sociab-Al on the other hand has been more dominant too – he’s quite limited on options, but he’s been able to fashion ways for him to spend more time with more people in the last couple of weeks than he’d been able to in the twelve months prior. Whether it be football being available to play again (and boy, he’s played a LOT of football, I’m amazed he can still walk), meeting folk in gardens, for walks, clandestine secret project meetings he’s not allowed to talk about. He’s been a bit of a hero to be honest, he’s accepted the offers he’s received and run with them. He’s a good influence.
Inimic-Al has probably been the most eerily quiet. He has a silly name because I struggled to think of a better word that ended in al or le. But he’s angry. He’s similar to Judgement-Al I suppose, but instead of lamenting injustice he is just fucking furious about it. I know he’s there somewhere, more generally in life I’m quite good at keeping him under control – I’m at heart a peace loving person, I crave harmony, and I like to see the best in people. Inimic-Al is the opposite of that – he wants chaos, vengeance and beelines for the worst case scenario when it comes to the motivations of others. I don’t like him at all, in truth.
I’m sure there’s other Als that I’ve not been able to pigeon-hole into my weird personality segmentation – it’s nice that Comic-Al came forward with the idea for the puns to be honest, he’s not often far from the forefront of the conversation – I do have quite a fatalistic sense of humour, and it’s often by go-to mechanism to lighten a sad or stressful situation.
Welcome to the weird way I try to categorise my thought processes! I’m sure there might be other Als lurking about that I’ve not been able to identify (or come up with a pun for, more like!). It’s fascinating how we have such a wonderful capacity for abstract thought compared to our animal brethren, yet we seem to have reached a point where a significant chunk of the time we actually utilise it in ways that disadvantage us, or compound rather than resolve whatever problems we are working through.
It’s been a while since I’ve written on here – aside from some geeking out with new routers and smart kit at home the last thing I talked about was struggling with lock down. Well, here we are nearly a year later and whilst restrictions are easing, we are still seriously hobbled with our ability to live our lives.
The period where things are starting to ease might be the worst, because you can almost see and touch the other side, but you’re still feeling desperately impatient for it to arrive. So that’s the general state of mind I’ve been feeling – cautiously optimistic that we’re over the worst of these things, that normality can resume, but also desperately impatient for some kind of normality.
Then along comes March. An underwhelming birthday – I think we’ve all had at least one now, some folk are now having their second lockdown birthdays, so that’s not a “poor me” statement. Days later I had to take my pet cockatiel of 20 years to be put to sleep, a not entirely unexpected thing – she has been poorly – but gut-wrenching nonetheless. Another family pet bereavement followed, then a friend passed away. Then my relationship collapsed on itself, and my whole world fell apart.
So much for cautious optimism, huh?
I won’t lie, the succession of things that individually I’m probably robust enough to cope with, whilst feeling sad of course, nearly broke me. I’m obviously not going to go into details or specifics, because this isn’t an anonymous platform no matter how few people read it. I’m lucky enough to have friends intuitive enough to look through the veil, so to speak, and I’m lucky to have a very cool boss who does the same.
I’m getting help, and probably the most difficult part of that process was admitting that I needed it. We all see the memes and the posts about it being ‘okay to not be okay’, we might even share them comfortable in the knowledge that at that time we are okay. But it’s quite difficult when you’re in that position, years of conditioning – mostly unwitting conditioning – to ‘get on with it’ is tough to break through. There’s always someone else worse off than you, right?
So I suppose if someone reads this in a similar position, look for help. Find some people to talk to without judgement, refer yourself for talking therapy via the NHS or – if you’re lucky like me – via your workplace. I’m trying to take some positive steps myself too – eating healthily, hydrating, finding time to exercise, be creative, making a point of writing something positive about myself down each day and severely restricting my social media use.
I’ve set up scheduled ‘Quiet mode’ on Facebook, which undoubtedly is my social media Achilles heel – now when I open the app on my phone it shows a picture of a cat instead of my news feed except for two half hour chunks of the day. I thought I’d find that really hard, and I probably will – it’s only been a day so far – but yesterday during my second half hour opportunity to binge on Facebook I found myself cooking my dinner rather than focusing on it entirely.
Outside of this I have set up private space to be able to write more openly about things, writing is often my creative outlet that I neglect, that has been helpful. There are a number of us doing the ‘positive steps’ plan, and we’ve got a group set up on, ironically, Facebook. We are technically allowed to use that group outside of our social media quiet time, but I don’t trust myself not to get lured into the rest of it so I’m being quite strict with myself. It’s good to have a support network though, and indeed, be part of that support network to help others with what their issues and goals are.
Yesterday after 9+ hours of no Facebook the time came and there were 20+ notifications, I’ll be honest, most of them were pretty meaningless. The ones from the group were ace, and there was one with an update on the lilies I sent to my Aunty in memory of her dog Digby she had to take for his final trip to the vet. They looked awesome, that aside it was mostly people posting pictures in beer gardens since the pubs have reopened.
I think I have a bit of a journey ahead of me to stabilise myself, but I’m certainly massively further along than I was, I’m cautiously optimistic (there’s that phrase again!) that I’m doing the right things – and as lockdown measures continue to ease it will be easier and easier to spend time with people and combat the crippling loneliness I’ve been enduring for, well, it’s more than a year now, isn’t it?
That was a cheery post wasn’t it? Haha! At least it implies the possibility of a happy ending 🙂
Goddammit 
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