Trials, Tribulations and Mood-Busters

The school holidays are so far mimicking the summer; doom and gloom interspersed with bright sunshine and the faint promise of settled days just around the corner. As some of you reading this will know, I have a friend who was seriously injured in a horrible accident last week; a driver going far too fast in atrocious conditions - and having had a fair few drinks – took a corner too quickly and ploughed into her as she was walking towards her car. I feel a sense of outrage – of sheer affront – as I look at my friend – my strong, capable, funny, dear friend – lying broken in a hospital bed. Her brain is slowly starting a long process of recovery, but will have to re-learn how to speak and walk. My throat constricts as her five year old daughter announces that it isn’t Mummy lying there, and as her seven year old boy screws up his face against the world and punches a wall. I hold my outrage in my mind at the same time as I feel sheer relief and gratitude that she is, in fact, lying here alive.

We can feel so many things at the same time; I feel deliciously lazy as I spend all morning in my pyjamas with the children; mild panic as I realise that another precious day of holiday is hurtling past us with little focus or purpose; joy as we come across a young hare, gazing silently into the distance, sitting by the sundial among the herbs. I feel giggly and childish when I take the children roller-skating and my son and I collapse, again and again, in a heap on the floor, while my three year old glides by effortlessly. Our rhythm has slowed, and since picnics and parks and beaches have been a bit of a wash out, so far, we’ve just, to coin a phrase, hung out, and it’s been great.

I did promise a fellow blogger, ages ago, to come up with my top five mood-busters, and having read many other sane and sensible ways to beat the blues, here are my own idiosyncratic, but usually failsafe, ways to come out on top. I’m lucky that I’ve never suffered from deep depression, although I worry for Britain, and anxiety can often catch me unawares.

1. I indulge myself. Shocking, but true. I wallow in my own misery – but with a strict time-limit. When I was younger, and, say, mourning the break up of a relationship, I’d allow myself a whole weekend of sobbing to girlfriends, re-reading love letters, playing sad music. These days if I’m feeling down it’s more like half an hour in the bath and a quick cry before getting the tea. But I always have to acknowledge how I’m feeling and have a short burst of self-pity before I get stern and get on with phase two.

Things that help me get through phase two include:

2. Cleaning, or more often, clearing out. I am a terrible horder and attacking a room or a cupboard helps me re-direct all my negative energy. I am the world’s most inefficient and, frankly, slobby housewife, but cleaning the kitchen floor has the same effect.

3. Reading, by a real fire in winter, or in the garden in summer. If I’m feeling low, I re-read old favourites, particularly children’s books, which instantly transport me back to a safe and cosy world, where there was often someone else to sort out the problem.

4. If I’m feeling low and have that empty, nothing-new-happening feeling, I plan little tiny treats for myself, to give myself little things to look forward to. They’re rarely anything big or expensive, but it’s astonishing how the promise of a new book or a new lipstick or a trip to somewhere I haven’t been before can make me feel rich, and gives me a little marker on the horizon.

5. Gardening. My passion for gardening appeared out of the blue, and has a miraculous effect on my mood. I love walking too, but although I live in a really beautiful part of the country, there aren’t actually many good options for walks nearby – we’re mostly surrounded my farmland. So in lieu of a bracing walk along a beach, I get digging and staking and pruning and planting. I used to suffer from the January blues – now those dreary late-winter days are filled with seed catalogues and plans and promises. Anyone who loves gardening will know what I mean – I feel reconnected to the life-force, to the pulse of the earth, just by digging a little hole in the ground. Magic.