May 2012 – Networks and vines

The sermon in Church on Sunday was about Jesus being a grapevine.  “It’s not a literal description of Himself,” Canon June said, and went on to explain about how faith works like a grapevine; Jesus is the central tree and his followers are the branches.  If any of the ‘branches’ leave, then the branches higher up are more likely to wither away, or lose faith.

“It’s a lot like networking,” my husband said later, as we snatched five minutes to sit in the sunshine with a cup of tea.  “Any network is only as good as the people in the chain to either side of you.  It’s not always easy to keep the network going, but the benefit is that you make contact with people that you might otherwise have nothing to do with.”  He’s had to spend a lot of time recently in business network meetings and was amused by the connection.  He’s sure Jesus was no stranger to breakfast meetings, albeit of a slightly different sort!

It doesn’t matter how you describe it, networking (or grapevining) is part of what sustains us.  Our families are networks, connecting us across not just our country but continents as well.  Our places of work too – how many jobs have been filled thanks to the old adage ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know?’  Facebook and Twitter are networks of ‘friends’ (although how much of a friend is debatable sometimes, but don’t get me started!) and often throw up surprises in terms of just who knows everybody else.  It can be a very small world.  At school, I’m part of what my husband calls the ‘Mummy Network’; a group of Mums who will happily wait with another Mum’s child after school if that Mum is running late.  Sometimes it might mean one of small daughter’s friends coming for tea at very short notice, but that’s how the Mummy Network works and school pick-up time is better for it.  Sports groups, pub quizzes, even just walking the dog brings you into contact with people you would never normally meet, offering new conversations and a new perspective on the everyday.

One of the Five Ways to Wellbeing (www. http://neweconomics.org/projects/five-ways-well-being) is to connect with the people around you and think of those connections as the cornerstones of life.  We all need to make links with other people to help us feel that we are making a contribution to society and most importantly, to keep us well.  Some people find the thought of networking rather daunting, but it’s just another name for something as simple as talking to the shopkeeper when you’re buying the morning paper.  It’s something most of us do without thinking.

Without contact with other people, our lives become less meaningful and like Jesus’ grapevine, something in us withers and dies.  So get out there, make those connections and be reminded how small the world really is!

April 2012 – Are You Being Served?

Small daughter is still at that lovely age where she likes to play shops and cafes.  She was playing with my Dad the other day, and whilst he was ordering from the imaginary menu, sighed loudly and said, “You know, you’d be much better going to the cafe next door, they’ve got a better menu than here.”

“That’s not very good customer service,” my Dad said, once he had stopped laughing, but small daughter wasn’t swayed.

“Don’t worry,” she said, conspiratorially, “It’ll still be me but you can pretend I look different.”

It started me thinking about how many shops I’ve been in where I’d have preferred to go the shop next door to see if the customer service was any better.  I’m sure you’ve been to the same stores as well: shop assistants who obviously see the customer as an inconvenient interruption to their conversations; service with a scowl and a snarl; staff who disappear out of sight as soon as you look around for some help.  Poor customer service is what’s keeping Mary Portas in a job and in some cases, it’s a good thing too.

Good customer service is one of those things that we expect wherever we are.  It may be a railway station, a library or in a hospital, not just in stores.  We expect to be treated with respect and courtesy and for people to go out of their way to make our visit exceptional.  We compare our surly employees to America’s over-cheerful ‘have-a-nice-day’ brigade and often find ourselves falling short, blaming it on the English reserve and our natural inclination to shy away from wishing anybody we don’t know a nice day.

But next time you’re out shopping, take a look at the people around you and perhaps it’s no surprise that customer service isn’t as great as it should be.  Cross faces, screaming children, shopping that’s a chore instead of a pleasure.  Shopping with a scowl and a snarl.  An expectation that someone should be treated exceptionally without being exceptional themselves.  Perhaps the shop assistants, hospital staff or ticket office clerks simply reflect back what they see in their customers.

I wonder if changing our attitude to thinking about everybody we meet as a ‘customer’ would change our experiences.  It costs nothing to smile at someone, to hold a door open for them or to move out of the way or even offer to help if they’re struggling with a buggy.  My daughters are constantly embarrassed by me talking to strangers in queues, but I find that those strangers will always talk back, smiling and sharing the experience instead of standing solitary and miserable.  I’m not quite at the point of telling random people to have a nice day, but I have found that smiling at someone and saying ‘thank you’ for something they have done for you is much more likely to get you good service.  We are all mirrors, after all.

March 2012 – Half full or half empty?

I realised the other day – and not for the first time – how easy it is to spiral downwards into self-pity.  I’ve caught small daughter’s cough and have spent the last week feeling very sorry for myself and wishing that the world would stop for a few days so that I could spend those few days in bed.  It struck me just how self-pitying I was becoming when I found myself out for the dog’s night-time walk and muttering all the way along Winwick’s dark streets about how badly done to I was.  Nobody else ever takes the dog for a walk, cleans the house, gets the school lunchboxes ready, cooks the meals.  It’s all rubbish, of course, and the dog would probably have told me so if he had learnt to say anything but ‘woof’.  But sometimes I think you have to have these moments, even if just to remind yourself how ridiculous you are being.  I read once that if the urge for badly-done-to muttering strikes you, you should add in every possible grievance until you laugh.  So I have to walk the dog, clean the house, make sandwiches, cook the meals, make the sun shine, mend the church roof, sort out those roadworks on the M62, find a cure for cancer … all these things wrong in the world and it’s all down to me to fix.  By this point, I’m smiling again, the dog’s ready to go home and I can remember all the lovely things that have happened this week instead.

On Friday, big daughter announced that my husband and I were having a ‘date night’.  She cleaned the kitchen, moved the dining table so that we would be undisturbed, lit more candles than I knew we had in the house and cooked a fabulous meal for us with very little help.  Small daughter took on waitressing duties and attempted to be the caberet, but was hoicked out of the way every time she was about to have a ‘ta-da’ moment.  It was lovely and definitely not the sort of evening that happens to a badly-done-to mother.

My husband, who had spent the previous week working late, announced that he needed fresh air with the dog and took him out for every walk over the weekend.  Not exactly what happens when I’m the only one in the house to walk the dog.

Small daughter proclaimed (complete with ‘ta-da’) that she’d tidied her bedroom (now that really is a ‘ta-da’ moment!) and when I went to look, she really had.  So, perhaps someone else does do some cleaning up after all.

There are so many times when it’s easy to look on the black side and think about what’s going wrong instead of going right.  I know that I have days, probably much as we all do, when the glass is half-empty instead of half-full but I’ve realised that the half-empty days show me how full my glass really is – and most of the time, it’s overflowing.

February 2012 – Under the Weather

It’s another dark and windy morning, and returning from giving big daughter a lift to the school bus stop, through the window I can see small daughter cosily wrapped up in her dressing gown and snuggled up with my husband.  Small daughter isn’t very well today and won’t be going to school so you might think that she’d be better off tucked up back into bed, but she’s one of those people who needs to be cuddled when she’s not well – which is the reason why I’ve sat up half the night with a small girl who sounds as if she’s got a lifelong fifty-a-day habit.  It’s as if her self-assurance tank is empty and she needs it to be refilled before she can comfortably allow herself to be wrapped up in her duvet and go back to sleep.

Many of us are exactly the same when we’re feeling under the weather.  Our sense of invulnerability has been shaken and only the affection and attention of someone looking after us can restore it.  It reminds us that we’re not invincible and we don’t like it.

“I hope I don’t get it,” big daughter says later that day, as small daughter starts coughing again.

“Me too,” I agree, “I’m too busy to be poorly.”

And so is everybody else.  We battle on even when all we want to do is lie down in a darkened room and sleep until the illness has gone away.  We stuff ourselves with medicines to keep ourselves going because we are the only ones who can possibly do the job we are doing.  Being poorly reminds us that we are not indispensible and we like that feeling even less.

My Dad belongs to the other camp of those who cope with illness.  Often you find out that he has been feeling unwell only after he has recovered.  He doesn’t want any fuss, has no intention of staying in bed during daylight hours and any help that he accepts is very definitely on his terms.  I have to be careful not to smother him with attention as that often has the exact opposite effect of the one I was intending.  My best friend’s husband, diagnosed last year with testicular cancer, is exactly the same.  For him, it is as if accepting any emotional help is admitting that there is something wrong which might seem strange as he is, without question, accepting the help of the medical profession.  Fortunately, his consultant’s prognosis of a complete recovery has been absolutely right and in time, my friend’s husband will probably choose to talk about his experiences as an anecdote in the past in a way that he never would whilst his treatment was ongoing.

How we all deal with illness is, ultimately, very personal.  Small daughter, after a day of resting at home, will be back at school tomorrow.  Illness is our bodies’ way of telling us to rest but when you’re five, however necessary it is, resting is boring!

January 2012 – New Year Wishes

Ever since I’ve been very small, I’ve always thought of the months of the year as the hours on a clock.  January, the start of the year, is where one o’clock would be, and as the year passes I can see the clock hands sweeping past the months to return to December at the top of the year.

This isn’t a traditional view of time, I know; think of a timeline and it’s linear – a long line of events stretching backwards and forwards along the years.  I like to think of it as a clock, though, because each year you get to start again at the top, to make a fresh start and do some things the same and others differently.  Perhaps it’s to do with being a gardener; each year you can look at your successes and failures and know that you’ll get a chance to do it all again next season.

From the first stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, I can see the New Year stretching ahead of me; it’s like standing at the edge of a diving board waiting to launch out into the unknown.  It’s never unknown, though is it; already there are events written on next year’s calendar – birthdays, school trips, meetings – but there is still scope for something exciting, unknown, an adventure to happen.  This could be the year of the Really Big Adventure.

I have a friend who dreads the New Year.  “Same old, same old,” she says, with more than a hint of despair.  Same old hateful job, same old endless commute, same old worries about money, her children, not having enough time.  I think it would be easy for any of us to greet the New Year with that attitude; let’s be honest, it’s not been a great 2011 for lots of people for one reason or another, but if it’s true that you get what you wish for, then isn’t a New Year an opportunity to wish for something else?  I may be fanciful, but I think that this time of year is more magical than any other, and I like to think that more wishes come true so it’s important to wish for the right things.

A book I’ve been reading recently suggests that you can influence your wishes by a positive mental attitude – the ‘like attracts like’ principle.  It sounds easy but like most things that sound easy, I expect it takes more work than you imagine.  My resolution this year will be to try to be positive, to imagine life getting better for everyone, and to do what I can to make my wishes come true.  As for my friend, well, “Same old, same old” doesn’t sound like a good wish to me, so I’ll wish for better times for her and hope that this one comes true.

December 2011 – He’s Behind You!

We put our Christmas decorations up early on Sunday morning.  For the first time, small daughter was able to help instead of discovering the next morning that the fairies had decorated the house overnight.  She was delighted, greeting the ornaments to go on the tree like long lost friends and wanting to eat all the chocolate decorations at once, just in case they melted.  We put on our Christmas CDs and bounced around the house in pyjamas and Santa hats, agreeing that the weather outside really was frightful, even though it was howling wind and rain instead of snow.

The day before, small daughter went with my husband to his company’s children’s Christmas party – this year a pantomime in a theatre in Crewe (not a random town choice, his office is based there!).  They went on the train, armed with a picnic and a flashing toy to wave at the pantomime baddy, then took a taxi to the theatre.  Small daughter was beside herself with excitement even before she got on the train, so it was little surprise that during a quiet moment in the performance, she shrieked, “You’re a loser!” at the wicked queen and made everyone laugh.

Christmas is such a magical time.  We forget, in the rush to buy presents and food and get everything done on time just how lovely it all is.  Small daughter, unencumbered by the necessities of getting ready for Christmas, is enjoying the build-up more and more as every day passes.  Her excitement is infectious; big daughter often forgets that it’s not cool to get over-excited about it all and joins in with abandon.  They compare treats in their advent calendars and stand together to watch their advent candles burn down to the next number.  Then small daughter gets out the Argos catalogue again and asks me if she can add yet another toy to her Christmas list.

I do wonder sometimes what Christmas would be like if the TV didn’t show adverts of things to buy, but of course that’s never going to happen.  The world is based on buying and selling and advertisers earn their livings by making us believe that we want things that we never knew we wanted.  It seems unfair to me that with everyone suffering from the economic climate, advertising becomes slicker and more sophisticated and the must-have gifts are the ones that people can least afford.

My girls finish school earlier in December than usual thanks to the way that Christmas falls this year, so I am determined to have all the buying, wrapping and list-making out of the way by the time that they break up.  We’ll have a week to have fun and do our best to add to the Christmas excitement without the help of things that we don’t need to buy.  With any luck, we’ll be able to start one or two new Christmas family traditions that my girls will be able to keep forever, as that sort of thing has no sell by date and is quite simply priceless.

November 2011 – Don’t Blink or You’ll Miss It!

November’s a funny month, isn’t it?  It creeps in after the excitement of the half-term school holiday, Hallowe’en (very exciting in our house this year as small daughter was allowed to go trick-or-treating with big daughter and her friends for the first time.  I’m not sure whether small daughter singing “I’ve been eaten by a boa constrictor” is a trick or a treat but she came back with plenty of sweeties!), and the clock change.  All of a sudden, it’s dark by 5.30pm and Christmas is about eight weeks away.

According the poem about the months that I remember learning at school, “Dull November brings the blast, then the leaves go whirling past”.  There are certainly plenty of leaves in our garden.  The dog is less impressed with the whirling leaves than with the brush which makes it practically impossible to get anything done while he’s dancing around.  The garden is starting to look bedraggled and tired, apart from bursts of colour where leaves are turning bright red or orange.  It feels like the garden is shutting down, ready for the long months of winter when nothing much will grow except for a few brave snowdrops in January.

My resolution this year was to slow down, and I realised this morning – shortly after counting the weeks until Christmas and discovering that it was much sooner than I thought – that I’ve not been doing that at all.  November has just become a time to prepare for Christmas.  I’ve been buying and wrapping presents, determined not to leave it all until the last minute.  I’ve been making lists of jobs that I want to do, such as making the wreath for the front door and stocking up on treats for cosy nights in by the fire watching re-runs of James Bond or Toy Story films.  I’ve completely forgotten that November is a lovely time in its own right to enjoy crunching through the leaves, soaking up the warmth of the late autumn sunshine and watching the squirrels bouncing around the garden in search of food.

Having the dog certainly helps with my resolution of slowing down; you notice more when you’re walking, you stop to talk to people, you pick up the scents and smells that are completely unnoticed when you’re in a car.  Being outside renews the spirit and calms a troubled mind, which is why gardening is such a valuable activity for people with depression and other mental illnesses.  It’s also impossible to be grumpy for long when you’re out walking, as my husband has found after a long day at work when he gets home late and takes the dog for a last walk around the block.  And of course, it’s also a fantastic time to make the mental lists of all those jobs in preparation for Christmas that you need to do when you get home!  So perhaps I am sticking to my resolution – as long as I slow down long enough to think about it!