Grandpa's Gardening

"Grandpa's Gardening" is a term my mum coined to describe sitting (or sleeping) in the garden and calling it gardening. I had an excellent time "gardening" today, whilst Emily along with the lovely Peta Evans of Living Image Gardens, transformed our garden.

Before: patio

Peta repositioned the patio stones
over sand and plum slate

Our garden is long and narrow, and mostly in shade. The patio end is never in direct sunlight. Peta helped Emily to choose alpines and other plans that would thrive without much light. The plan was to create a rockery on the right of this image, and a barbecue space on the left. We don't own the house, so couldn't go for a full garden redesign, but these changes have turned what we have from just a neat garden a really special place to be.

The materials and plants came from B&Q. The slate is "plum slate" in two sizes (small and large), laid over sharp sand to form the barbecue pit (the sand was also added to our chalky soil to help out the alpines). The barbecue is Longley by Blooma.

The completed barbecue pit

To create the rockery, Peta used timber to frame the bed, and filled it with a mix of the soil that was taken away from the barbecue pit, compost, and sand. Three larger stones created a space for a raised bed at the back. There were some large cobbles in the garden that they used to add interest around the plants.

The rockery is framed and raised with timber beams; large stones add another level

The final touches were three lamps for citronella candles (Blooma at B&Q) and the gorgeous reconditioned, cast iron bench Emily found at the South Bucks Hospice shop at Aston Clinton. We also have some lovely solar dragonfly lamps and post lamps to bring some colour to the garden at night.

I am really looking forward to summer in our gorgeous garden. One of the things I really love is sitting in the garden and working or reading outside with the cat. When I had the choice as a child I would always work outside. I haven't done any gardening myself for over ten years, but the sight and smell of summer flowers relaxes me. When I am having difficulties with my mental health, I find that sunshine is good for me, but hard to force myself into. Having a lovely setting, and somewhere to sit, makes even the worst of days that little bit brighter. 

The completed rockery and reconditioned bench

Chilterns Ripple Rug

I have been fascinated with t-shirt yarn for some time, and bought some back in January with a view to making a blanket for the cat. It proved trickier than I had expected, and the cat had selected her bed before I got anywhere, but I am working towards finishing a long treatment at the moment and was thinking about a thank you present for the community that has supported me through it. I wanted to make something for one of the treatment rooms, and settled on a rug.

We are surrounded here in Bucks by the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (at least, so long as it's not driven through by a high-speed train, but that's another story). I was drawn to the idea of a ripple blanket - like the peaks of the hills - made in t-shirt yarn to be about 1.5m in diameter, and chose to use the 12-point Rainbow Ripple Blanket (Ravelry). I spent a bit of time in my stash and at Hobbycraft selecting just the right colours of Boodles to represent the Chilterns; grey for flint, two greens for the woodland and fields, two blues for the sky and water, and a white chalk border.

The Chilterns ripple rug: flint, water, fields, sky, woodland and chalk
Pattern, Rainbow Ripple Baby Blanket (c) Celeste Young

The process of making a gift is always tied up in enjoyment and worry for me. I always worry about the recipient, and how they will react. In this project, I've also found the time I spent working was a good time to reflect on what this period of treatment has meant for me, and how I'm going to move on. Ending with a craft project gave me time to think that I might otherwise have not made space for.

I found it really easy to work up, and used a 12mm hook to make it slightly looser in texture. The nature of Boodles is that some skeins are very thick whilst others are very thin, and the thick yarn was far too thick for the 9mm hook they recommend. My only real problem has been blocking it; it takes blocking pretty well in the short term but will quickly shrink back. I'm not sure how well it will actually work as a rug but hope that when it's in situ it will wear in. I am still considering stitching it to a backing to hold the shape, but I like the effect of being able to see the floor through the holes.

If I were to make it again, I would probably choose an even bigger crochet hook, to try and avoid it folding in on itself. 

Who's afraid of the mental patient?

Mental health stigma seems to peak around Hallowe'en season. We all heard about the outcry over major supermarket 'mental' costumes back in September.

I know I'm a little late to the Hallowe'en party but I was in Hobbycraft the other day (other craft shops are available, etc.) browsing through the books. Whilst browsing, I found Super Scary Crochet, which I had seen and liked before so I started to flick through. Lots of the patterns are really fun, I liked "Mummy" (and really liked that her description of a mummy, whilst brief, aims at accuracy - nerd alert!). Unfortunately, in the middle of a lot of really fun amigurumi patterns is "Murderous Mental Mary".

"Mary is a serial murderer who lives in an institution ...
She has murdered lots of nurses and ... doctors"
Pattern (c) Nicki Trench, www.nickitrench.com

According to the pattern description, "Mary is a serial murderer who lives in an institution, but occasionally escapes. She has murdered lots of nurses and has a blood lust for doctors. Each time she kills, she dribbles blood with excitement" (see left, below).

Mary's inclusion in this book plays into the same fears that the "mental patient" and "psycho ward" costumes play into. There is no need to play up a character with talk about mental health issues, or "institutions", but the hyperbole of horror is always out to shock, and my guess is that this was the author's intention here. A murderer in a high-security prison? Not scary enough. Let's make her mental, and add some "blood lust" in for that extra frisson of excitment.

"Each time she kills, she
dribbles blood with excitement"
Pattern (c) Nicki Trench,
www.nickitrench.com

To be clear, although I think this is all pretty rotten, Nicki Trench didn't invent the idea of the "mental patient" as a figure of horror and disgust any more than did Tesco and Asda. The fear of the "other" and of a loss of control are well-documented areas of the human psyche. We fear that we know we could become, the things that hold up a mirror to what we perceive as the worst of ourselves. A murderer is horrifying, but a murderer who is out of control and "mental" is almost irresistible to our own internal lust for horror and fantasy. This always has been the case, one only needs look at the ways in which Bedlam hospital was opened to the public for their gawping in the C18th to see the noble history of how we relate to mental illness. 'Bedlam' is also currently the name of a popular C4 documentary about a mental health trust in South London; the very name has become synonymous will illness and spectacle. (For a good overview of the history of Bedlam, I would recommend Catharine Arnold's excellent study, Bedlam: London and its mad.)

Don't misunderstand my intentions here, I'm not going to start calling for people to stop stocking Ms. Trench's books, or start a letter-writing campaign. Nicki Trench is a talented designer, and I'd always urge you to support creatives - they need to eat, too. 'Mary' is but a symbol of how widespread in our culture the fear of "madness" is. 

I also want to address the accusation that people who are worried about the association between horror and depictions of mental illness have lost our sense of humour. I am always aware of the risk of "going on about stigma or overblowing it. It might seem petty in the grand scheme of things, but I see people day in, day out, who are terrified of disclosing mental health issues to anyone (even a professional) in case they lose their job, lose their friends, are labelled a "freak". That fear hasn't just popped into their heads from nowhere, the stigma is real and damaging. It leads people to avoid seeking help, and in extreme cases not seeking help can lead to death.

If you want to do something to help, take a look at Time to Change. You could even sign up to their pledge and make my day. 

To end on a lighter note, here's a video made by the charity Bring Change 2 Mind:

I will knit and wear a Scarf of Doom with pride

I have had a problems with my mental health over the years, as most people who know me will know, but many things help to keep me ticking over when it's pretty crappy. Knitting is definitely one of them. The satisfaction of producing something handmade is always brilliant, even when it's as simple as a scarf that will take 3 hours. And, moreover, there are always other knitters to talk to, encourage, be supported by, and learn from. Not to mention all those potential knitters to bring to the dark side!

Deadly Knitshade is the sort of knitter all knitters want to be. She's a fab designer, a brilliant and clever writer, and she scrapes a living doing what we all love. Proper kudos! She also learned to knit - like so many others - when life was a bit shit. She appeared on BBC London news a few weeks ago (alongside the perfectly marvelous Aneeta Patel of Knitting SOS), and managed to do an early morning interview, whilst knitting a garter-stitch scarf. Quite an achievement! Both Lauren and Aneeta are fabulous ambassadors for the knitting community, and the range of knitted items they had between them to show off would be enough, I hope, to convince the world that these talented ladies have something pretty special going on.

However, not everyone was as entranced by this performance as they might have been and the haters came out in force. Hiding behind the internet, ordinary people (even some knitters) started bitching about the scarf and using it as a means to cast aspersions on Lauren herself; even on the lovely blue hair! (I also have blue hair at the moment, blue hair is cool.) Very sadly, the staff of some well-known yarn companies joined in on their Facebook pages. As Ms. Knitshade has failed to name and shame them in her blog, I will follow suit, but I will also think twice before I shop with them again.

And so to the Scarf of Doom. It has become a symbol for all that is best about the knitting community. We make stuff that looks however the [cough] we like. If we want to make a fugly scarf, and if we (or anyone else) is proud to wear it, then we damn well will and all the internet hate in the world won't stop us.

I have raided my stash and found some left-overs that will look brilliantly bold and probably clash quite a lot. My Scarf of Doom will stand for all I love about knitting; it will make me happy!

Woolly solidarity!

Aneeta's books: Knitty Gritty, and Knitty Gritty: The Tricky Bits
Deadly Knitshade's books: Stitch London, and Knit the City
Ravelry users' Scarves of Doom

Originally posted on RowleyPolyBird

Why I'm Running 13.1 Miles

On the 9th October, I'm running the Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon for young people's charity YouthNet. It's been a really difficult period of training - recently interrupted for weeks at a time by ill health - and I'm working really hard to do this.

In the grand scheme of things, I suppose not many people have heard of YouthNet, the charity that runs TheSite and Do-It, but they have an enormous, unseen impact. I started as a service user on TheSite ten years ago, so I feel like they've seen me through my awkward adolescence and out the other side.

I'm not going to claim to have had a terribly difficult life; I had a rough time with mental health difficulties as a teenager, which manifested in a number of different ways, but generally my family were supportive. I still needed somewhere more private and anonymous to talk and be listened to. A non-judgemental outlet is one of the most helpful things you can give to young people in these circumstances, and that is a huge part of the ethos of TheSite. The fact sheets present information without judgement, and the message board and live chat user communities provide a peer-support system that allows people to be anonymous and therefore more open than they would be among friends and family.

Back in 1996, when the charity was first forming, it was very difficult to find funding. The idea of a charity offering services entirely online seemed somewhat limited in the days of dial-up, and there were concerns about the sort of information children and young people might be able to access (predictably, early on the non-judgemental nature of the information TheSite.org provides has in the past riled the Daily Mail). Now, we can hardly imagine the world without the internet, and it seems obvious to me that young people who find it difficult to access support services turn to the internet for help. Indeed, TheSite.org appears in the top results on Google for issues such as unplanned pregnancy and self-harm. Online support isn't the be-all and end-all for big issues but it can be very helpful in sign-posting people to local services, and persuading them to seek help.

I'm hoping to start training as a chat moderator in the next few weeks, to help facilitate the live chats. These days, a lot of people come to the community through the live chats and it's inspiring to see how uplifting the community can be for people who are in real distress.


Originally posted on RowleyPolyBird

Only Skin Deep?

Image has been on my mind a lot lately.

If I'm honest, image is on my mind a lot, full stop. If I'm not fretting that my straighteners don't work in humid weather (grrrrr), I'm probably staring agonisingly at my wardrobe / make-up bag, wondering why nothing I own makes me look how I want to.

Actually, I'm even multi-tasking whilst I write this - touching up my roots with my favourite Superdrug blonde - the one that looks like banana-flavour penicillin when you mix it.

I was watching the lovely Ms. Cherry Healey on BBC3 the other day; Cherry's Body Dilemmas (and doesn't she look good in a corset?). I was fascinated by it. I don't suppose this is the place to go into my own particular quirks and insecurities, but I'm a mess of them. For all that the UK media is obsessed with our bodies and how we use and see them, it's actually quite unusual to see this level of frankness and diversity on mainstream telly.

The way we talk about our bodies is warped. It's all extremes and almost never rational. From the HateMail's Liz Jones and her anorexic obsessions to the constant railing against celebrities' wobbly bits and how fatties are eating the NHS out of house and home. The sad truth is that we just can't bear the sight of ourselves.

But what is most refreshing is to see someone who is thin, successful, beautiful, etc., facing up to her own self-consciousness with others without judgement. I admit it challenged my assumption that gorgeous people both know how they look and judge others harshly. I was particularly inspired by the beautiful, and stunningly dressed, Kirsty Lou and her blog. Whilst I cower in high street changing rooms sobbing over size labels, she makes her own clothes and refuses be conformed into someone else's body.

I was struck by her admission that she's suffered because of how she looks. It resonated with me. I've had people cross the street in London to tell me I should diet; they've taunted me from cars in Oxford at 7am and in the back streets of Edinburgh late at night. Friends have called me fat in public and looked astonished when I was upset by it. I even find myself justifying my weight to doctors who don't believe I exercise. I desperately want to take my feminista deconstruction kit to conformist body-shape standards but the truth is that all this just really bloody well hurts and it's too personal to try.

But in the mean time, brava Cherry, Kirsty et. al. for honesty without sentimentality or falsehoods. If telly makes a difference, this is what it looks like. And an honourable mention to Hadley Freeman of the Guardian for this piece which I heartily "hear, hear"-ed earlier this month.

It happens that today is also the fourth anniversary of the death of Sophie Lancaster, a young woman who was killed for her looks. I remember being devastated by the story when I first heard it, as I am by any form of hate crime. The senselessness of the loss of life - not just hers, but also the life her boyfriend and family had known with her in it. S.O.P.H.I.E. (Stamp Out Prejudice, Hatred and Intolerance Everywhere), the foundation her mother founded, is doing great things to teach children that image isn't everything. I wanted to share the video they released today, as further food for thought. We all judge people harshly for how they look; this is a stark reminder of what that culture of judgement does to the world we live in.

Originally posted on RowleyPolyBird

Vincent, The Doctor and Me

The Starry Night (June 1889). Oil on canvas.

This week's Doctor Who fascinated me. Vincent van Gogh has always intrigued me, of course, because his legacy has always been as much to do with his mental health as it has his work.

And I loved that this formed a pivotal plot-point; that there was never a possibility of watering down his deep depressions.

For a start, it has made me want to read more about him both as a man and an artist. I assume a lot of research went into his speeches, and that is wonderful. I found myself looking at paintings that I had never thought to consider before.

I may have a degree that (nominally) included some art history, but I was all about the imagery - politics is everything in my art-brain. I love hearing people talk about art, though, and about how it is achieved. I read Noes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale a couple of years ago, and loved the way he talks about his artist's use of colour. The protagonist is a female artist who suffers from bi-polar disorder (also, somewhat erroneously, known as 'manic depression'). Her art is abstract, the sort of thing that I once dismissed as "stuff a four-year-old could paint" when I visited the Guggenheim in Bilbao.

Then I read Patrick Gale's description of colour, and how it is achieved, and began to think differently. Look at the sky. If you're like me, and don't really have a brain for painting, it's usually blue, pink or grey. I had never seen the green underneath the blue, or the purple in the grey. Colour was flat, except in variegated yarn...

And then, last February, my friend Clinton took me to see Rothko at the Tate Modern in London. I was totally indulging him, I thought; maintaining that I 'don't understand' modern art and can't respond to the abstract. But I was blown away by the sheer size and scale of the work, and the gorgeous depth. I won't pretend that I understand what happened in my mind when I looked at it, but there were some canvasses that I was so captured by that I couldn't take my eyes off them. I remember this one, in particular;

Black on Maroon (1959), Oil on Canvas

I can't tell you what it was about it that I loved. I remember saying to Clinton that it evoked a sense of the trinity in me. Something about the infinite colours appearing as just three; the way in which it is one construction in which three elements are apparent but the whole spectrum is present. It was complicated, and somehow moving.

I don't know anything about Mark Rothko, not really, except that he was active in the 1950s and painted abstract canvasses. So only as much as I have already told you! But that painting made me feel like I knew something of his mind. It's daft, of course, to claim to know the mind of one you can't ever meet, so I imagine that what I felt was something more innate, more inherently human. Not a unique sensation that can only be imparted by the work of one individual, but a shared sense of wonder and then of sadness. Not sadness in the depression sense; that is something very different in my mind. No, this was a melancholy sense that things will never be complete. A knowledge that I will never know the mind that created the image before me, nor the true complexity of the process by which it was borne out. It was a philosophical sadness, that the true nature of the universe cannot be revealed in this lifetime.

All of this came flooding back to me when I considered the scenes in the Musée d'Orsay. That way in which we respond to art so instinctively. We formulate complex ideas on the outworkings of someone else's imagination, and we form them in seconds, although we can never truly know the mind of the artist.

And I agree with the assessment of the writers; that van Gogh did not betray his illness through his work. I don't feel darkness when I look at his work; even the later paintings like The Starry Night, which are full of dark colour, don't make me feel sad or empty. The focus is an overlooked beauty. The beauty of a truly starry night when the wonders of creation are revealed. There is no way to look at The Starry Night and see only darkness. Indeed, one is more likely to see only light.

But this ability to see beauty, and experience joy, does not diminish the capacity of the brain to harm. Just as the body has its mechanisms for keeping us stable (the process GCSE students call 'homeostasis'), so does the brain. Just as the other organs in our bodies can go wrong, so the brain can go wrong; and it can have a real impact on your emotional stability.

I feel like it's a risk for me to admit to this, but I expect a lot of other people felt the same; I really identified with the pure fear that was in the character of Vincent when he thought he was going to lose Amy and the Doctor. I have been scared at what might happen if my friends leave, or change, or both. I have told people I can't cope without them, and I have thrown myself face-down on my bed and wept at the thought that they might not come back. But that has not prevented me, like our fictionalised Vincent, from sometimes managing to take a deep breath and carry on. Like another great man presented this series, Winston Churchill, I "Keep Buggering On" when the world and my emotions want me to stop. 

Now, I will never produce the wonderful art that van Gogh, Tchaikovsky, Sylvia Plath or Virginia Wolf created from their depressions. But I hope I can learn to at least understand and try to explain my own mind, such as it is. I hope, with God's help, I can channel all that bad stuff into something good. At the very least, I have promised myself that I will do my bit to challenge the stigma of mental illness. Because, damnit, poor mental health doesn't have to be validated or explained by genius. Just as there are people on the autistic spectrum who are not savant and there are deaf people who cannot craft a symphony like Beethoven, so there are people with depression who are not creative in that way. 

So it is thanks to people like van Gogh and Virginia Woolf that I can expect people to have some understanding of what it is like to live in this brain and this illness of mine. It won't be clear to everyone - maybe you wonder what sort of pretentious garbage this all is, anyway? - but I can identify myself in them and remember that you do not have to be healthy to make a difference in this world, as long as you have hope.

"Now I think I know what you tried to say to me,

How you suffered for your sanity,

How you tried to set them free.

They would not listen, they're not listening still;

perhaps they never will."

Originally posted on RowleyPolyBird