I first saw Suzanne Vega at the Manchester Apollo in the mid-80s with my Dad. I played her debut album relentlessly, I can still sing the main and backing vocals for every track. It felt like she was involving you in an intimate conversation.
In 2020 I bought a ticket to see her again, in London. I was still working remotely in the role I had moved to Manchester for in January that year, but had been forced to move back to London that summer (see Finding my Feet). It would have been the first live music event I had been to since the start of the pandemic. She was playing at the Barbican, round the corner from the flat I had moved back into, and I hoped it would make me feel at home in my London neighbourhood again. I booked just one ticket, willing to take a risk for myself but uncomfortable booking a ticket for my Dad, who would have enjoyed coming down to London for a concert in different times. Then the number of coronavirus cases and deaths began to increase, Christmas 2020 was effectively cancelled, live music shut down again, and the concert was postponed. I bought the album New York Songs and Stories that the tour was meant to promote (and a copy for my Dad for Christmas) and forgot about the gig. Tonight I got to use my ticket. I recently sold the London flat that I had to move back into in 2020. It's nearly five years since Mr D died and nearly twenty since we first moved in. After a lot of soul searching and looking further afield, I moved just round the corner. Perhaps it took moving my whole life to Manchester and back to help me shake off the things that made me want to leave. I needed to miss them. Being alone in a new city during lockdown made me appreciate the things that made my London neighbourhood my home. My vinyl copy of Suzanne Vega's debut album is still in storage in Manchester, but I hope to be reunited with the rest of my things soon. So how was the gig? Suzanne was charming, witty, a superb story teller and still had the power to make you feel like she was involving you in an intimate conversation through her music. A fitting way to celebrate a two year journey as I finally (fingers crossed) make a fresh start.
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My Salford flat was small but sleek, with a view of the lock. The city was literally being rebuilt around me, it felt like an appropriate setting to rebuild myself. I swapped my evening view of St James Clerkenwell (where I had read the eulogy for Mr D at his funeral) bathed in a pink sunset, for red lights shining on the cranes of expanding Manchester. When I arrived, it rained. Not just a bit, a lot...every day for weeks. I knew it wasn’t called the rainy city for nothing, and remembered this from my student time, but arriving in January to cold, dark, wet evenings was hard. Still I persevered, I had lots of friends booked in to stay in my tiny second bedroom – a luxury I allowed myself as a necessary survival tactic – and I was getting out and about, auditioning with bands and walking the city (when it wasn't raining, and often when it was). It was hard going, I worked hard in my new job and often felt lonely, but I was closer to my family and reconnected with valued northern friends I hadn’t spent proper time with for decades. As I got through February, the coming spring and lighter evenings started to make me feel lighter. However there had been something growing in the background, and on Monday 16 March 2020 it was announced that my place of work was to close that day due to the emerging Coronavirus pandemic. A friend had been visiting for the weekend, I dropped them at Manchester Piccadilly and went straight into work to collect my laptop on the way home. I sat in my Salford flat in shock, wondering what would happen next. On Monday 23 March the national lockdown started. My plan in choosing where to live had been sound but now I found myself in a small, rented flat with no study area or outside space – a big change from my London home with a large, private communal garden, which now sat empty (the buyer for my flat pulled out due to uncertainty around the virus). I hadn’t had the chance to establish a social network in Manchester. The funky co-working spaces for residents, and lockside gym classes all shut. I couldn’t visit my family or the couple of friends I had reconnected with. The new development didn’t have the same sense of community as my London flat, perhaps it just hadn’t had a chance to develop as a lot of it was still being built, but I didn’t know any of my neighbours. Luckily I still had my job but it was now a very different experience. I couldn't go into the new teaching space that I was helping to develop, with students and music meandering through the corridors. Instead I sat on a swiss ball at a makeshift desk, hastily assembled from Argos flatpack, in my combined kitchen/living room. All interaction was through Zoom - so very focussed and intense, with none of the casual conversation that establishes relationships. I was hugely grateful that I had at least had a couple of months to get to know the College and my colleagues, but to have it all snatched away again felt terribly cruel. After a day spent on Zoom, an evening on Zoom to connect with friends and family felt too much and I began to isolate myself. The old feelings of loneliness, injustice and despair that I felt in the immediate aftermath of my husband’s sudden death threatened to engulf me again. As the third anniversary (or ‘sadiversary’ as fellow widows call it) approached, I had a few days off, booked before the pandemic. I was supposed to save this time for moving house, but that was no longer going to happen. I considered cancelling, but I was exhausted. I was working long, inefficient hours and felt cramped from too long in a bad workspace. The sun had started to shine again, and I considered my options. Walking is always a great way to make friends. I had started to follow some local walking groups on the Meetup app. I only managed to go on one Ramblers group walk before we went into lockdown, but it turned out to be pivotal in light of what was coming. I took the tram and joined a walk starting from Prestwich, which finished up very near my new flat. Until then I hadn’t realised how much ‘green’ space I could access locally. I found out about the Salford Trail, part of which was on the walk, and started to explore the River Irwell. Everyone was very friendly, and it had given me hope of making new friends. This gave me a crucial starting point once lockdown started, even though I couldn’t join any more group walks. Across that Easter weekend the weather was glorious so I walked alone on every day of my week’s holiday. I explored other parts of the Salford Trail such as Salford Quays and ventured further up the River Irwell to Clifton Viaduct, Aqueduct and Livia Forest. I found out more about local history at Weaste Cemetery (a beautiful space with grade II listed buildings and a wildflower meadow, where Joseph Brotherton, Sir Charles Hallé and Mark Addy are buried), Kersal Wetlands (Manchester Racecourse, now a flood basin), The Meadows and Peel Park. I walked as far as I could, alone and on foot without car or public transport. Refreshing my eyes, soaking up the sun during the day, and feeling the pleasing weariness of tired muscles in the evening. I started to explore the canals and urban areas around Manchester, using the Ramblers app and suggestions from the local Facebook Group to navigate – I could see where bridges were, and make sure I didn’t get stuck on the wrong side of a canal on a long walk! I found new places such as Piccadilly Village on the Ashton Canal, and New Islington. The local Ramblers Facebook Group was a lifeline. Members shared photos and routes where they had been walking, also advice on how to safely walk within the lockdown rules. It gave me confidence to explore, as well as more route ideas. I had been taking photos of where I was walking, and it was lovely when the group featured one of my pictures as the cover photo – it made me feel part of something. The timing of such an important move for me personally turned out to be very unfortunate. Just when I needed the support of physical social networks, everyone had to shut themselves away. My parents were close by, but I couldn’t see them. I am a musician and usually make friends through joining bands, but no one could rehearse or perform any more. Being supported in walking through the Ramblers made me feel part of something, and got me out exploring my local area. It started to feel more like home as a result.
Sadly, as the pandemic has continued, I have had to give up my Salford flat and come back to London. This has been tough, however I am clinging on to my job through remote working, and I hope to be able to come back. In the meantime, I am fortunate to have some lovely local friends for weekend walks, and I pop back occasionally to top up on some hills. Many people are struggling with the financial and emotional effects of Coronavirus on their lives, friends and families. Whether it is with the Ramblers, or another group or network, walking is a vital way for me to maintain my mental wellbeing. This was originally written as a shorter piece for The Ramblers, published 24 July 2020 here https://www.ramblers.org.uk/news/blogs/2020/july/finding-my-feet.aspx I finally got round to watching this week’s Dr Who. Me and my Dad are massive fans. We're also both terrified of spiders. Other fans will know that this week's episode presented something of a dilemma - it wasn't Daleks or Cybermen that would have us hiding under the sofa. In fact we can't hide under the sofa because...well...there might be something there...
My Dad braved it first. He eventually 'watched it' with the picture off, and warned me it was tough, but I was determined not to miss the episode. As it goes the spiders were fine. Well, not really, but I managed to watch enough to 'enjoy' the episode. What really threw me were the scenes where the recently widowed character, Graham (played by Bradley Walsh), has to return to the house he shared with his wife for the first time after her death. He has been exploring time and space with The Doctor since she died, but it is the first time he has to move through this familiar shared space knowing that she is no longer there. Of course we all spend time alone in the homes we share with other people. If it is a busy household we even savour these moments, but there is a subtle shift when you know that this is how it is going to be forever going forward. The bricks and mortar, furniture and evidence of a life shared are all still there, but it has been fundamentally changed. Graham sees her everywhere, telling him the practical things he needs to know. He talks to her as he wanders about without purpose. Another widow who watched the episode put it to me "I sat in an empty house, watching him in an empty house". Graham has seen so much since she died - whilst technically it was only 30 minutes ago, he has been travelling in the Tardis for three episodes, and only just managed to get back to Sheffield. Eventually he begs the Doctor to take him with her on her travels. “Grief takes time. I don’t want to spend it sitting at home, she is everywhere. Travelling with you makes it better.” I am putting our flat on the market this week. We lived here together for 15 years, it's my home and I have hung on as long as I can, but sadly it's time to go. It has affected me in ways I hadn’t expected. It’s been 19 months, and sometimes I fool myself that I am OK, I am moving on. Maybe I am, its hard to tell. There are still times when I wish the Dr would come and take me away in the Tardis... Dr Who Series 11:4. Arachnids in the UK Picture of the Tardis from here. I’m so excited. I have loved Pump Street Bakery since it opened. I live in London but when I started my PhD I did a wonderful Master's placement at Aldeburgh Music. I was lucky enough to stay in one of the coastguard cottages in Orford when I was there, through one of Mr D's work colleagues. It was a very special time in my life. I had left the grind of my old professional life behind, and had the amazing opportunity to be paid to think creatively about music making. I immersed myself in the work of Aldeburgh Music and the beautiful coastal village. I worked hard and sometimes, for a special treat, I popped along to the tiny town square for a jam donut and a coffee in the Pump Street Bakery. Word hadn't spread yet, it was still relatively new, and the bakery felt like my special secret. They tasted like the best jam donuts in the whole world.
After my placement finished, we often came to Orford for the weekend. Sometimes we stayed at the lovely Crown and Castle Hotel, others times we went back to the cottage. We walked all over the coast, loving the bracing beauty in the winter or visiting Orford Ness by boat in the summer. Sadly it was one of these weekends when Mr D died. I had bought him the weekend as a birthday treat, and it was just two weeks after his birthday and three days before our nineteenth wedding anniversary when he died suddenly, on one of our forest walks. I no longer feel I can go back to my special place. I feel a huge need to reclaim it, but I haven't been able to yet. So imagine my delight when I saw a post on Facebook advertising the Pump Street Bakery London pop-up store. Even more amazing it will be 5 minutes round the corner from where I now work. The London pop-up will be at 67 Redchurch Street, Shoreditch, London 13th-18th November, 10am-6pm (closing 4pm Sunday) with @pumpstbakery baked goods driven up from Orford every day. The jam donuts are coming to me! Image from the Visit Suffolk website. You can find out more about the bakery, and on Redchurch Street, Shoreditch here. I am finding it harder to make time to write longer posts at the moment. I am still saving my thoughts, I just have less time to craft them into a coherent piece. I decided to share some fragments as they happen for a little while instead, so here goes...
I was sitting in Pret A Manger today having lunch. I always pop round the corner from our offices for 20 minutes with some food and the previous night's episode of The Archers. It is the only moment of tranquility in my day, and has become something of a ritual. Today's moment of calm was sadly not to be. As so often happens, I was ambushed by something that would be totally mundane to many, but for me unlocks a torrent of memories and emotions. I had got myself settled in my favourite spot when three helicopter paramedics came in for lunch. I recognised them immediately from their distinctive orange jumpsuits and the paraphernalia they had hung about them. They sat and chatted with their lunch; I sat paralysed, unable to eat mine. The last time I saw these uniforms was over a year ago, at the place where Mr D died. They looked so incongruous in the peaceful surroundings where, what felt like moments before, we had stopped after a morning's forest walk. I remember thinking how pissed off he would be when he regained consciousness and I told him that he had missed a ride in the waiting helicopter. I thought about how we would laugh about it. We never got that trip, instead we left together in an ambulance, after the two separate teams that arrived had worked on him for nearly an hour. We didn’t get sirens or blue flashing lights, there was no rush... May 2009
During the monsoons of the inaugural BUPA 10km run in 2008 I lost a mud drenched pair of trousers en route and my trainers didn’t survive. Persistent heavy rain had transformed Green Park into something reminiscent of school history lessons about the mud filled trenches of the First World War. I was cold, wet and weighed down with mud before I even started. I had been working hard in a new job and training had suffered as a result. I wasn’t happy with my time and it certainly wasn’t a relaxing Bank Holiday Monday. Still I had committed to completing the race, my sponsors were depending on me, and it had to be done... It would be fair to ask why I signed up straight away to do it all again the following year. However 2009 was a totally different experience, and there was more to it than just the weather (we were blessed with an overcast temperate day with just a light dusting of rain to refresh us early on). I was made redundant in March 2009 when my retail group collapsed during the Bauger Crisis and Icelandic Crash that felled several UK High Street Retail brands. I had invested the larger part of my physical and emotional energy in three very demanding roles over three years as a Finance Director for several well known retailers. I had also maintained a busy parallel career as a musician and performer. My friends and colleagues were bewildered by the number of musical projects, rehearsals and performances I was getting through in a week, on top of a demanding job. Sleep was for wimps and if I managed six hours of down time between an evening rehearsal and work the next day I felt lucky. When you are managing two separate demanding lives you focus on getting things done; ticking the boxes on your to-do list, moving onto the next thing. What you don’t do is stop to reflect on whether you enjoyed any of it. I am a natural cynic and it has taken some internal struggle to admit it, but I wasn’t happy. Whilst I congratulated myself on how much I was achieving, I forgot to schedule any time for reflection on whether any of it was worthwhile. This lifestyle gradually took its toll. I was frequently unwell, irritable (even more than usual), late for everything and finding it hard to concentrate; some days I could barely string a sentence together. The patience of my friends, colleagues, husband and fellow musicians stretched beyond reason. My short term memory was getting progressively worse and I was approaching middle age with more flab than I was happy with. So when the axe finally fell, to be honest it was a bit of a relief. On being made redundant I was immediately escorted from the premises without even being able to collect my things or speak to my team. I felt ashamed and humiliated even though I had done nothing wrong. In fact I had seen it coming and done much to make my team resilient and able to withstand the coming months. However, after the shock of the first 24 hours I couldn’t deny that the main emotion I was feeling was excitement. The strain of presenting the reaction that I thought people expected, whilst my mind was running away with opportunities, led to some very emotional ups and downs. I dutifully signed up for job alerts and went to see my recruitment contacts, but my heart wasn’t really in it and I felt guilty for even admitting it to myself. So what next? I stepped off the corporate treadmill and went back to school. I did something I have wanted to for many years, I enrolled on the full time Sound and Audio Engineering Diploma at SAE London. As an ex-scientist, musician, performer and self confessed techie gadget junkie I had finally found my subject. Electronics, music theory, soldering, electronic music composition and big desks with lots of shiny knobs, faders and buttons just waiting for me. As I sat on the bus in the sunshine on the way to my afternoon classes, I gave a little mental salute as I passed my former offices each day. Of course I knew it couldn’t last forever, I would have to earn a crust again at some point, but I had twelve months to enjoy and I felt I had more than earned it. It was my duty to make the most of the opportunity that had been thrust upon me. Oh, and the run? I trained properly, slept well, lost weight and beat last year’s result by over 10 minutes. I think that says it all really. Fast forward to May 2018 That was 2009, fast forward nearly a decade to 2018 and I am running the London 10k again. It is another pivotal moment in my life; much more momentous than the last, when I never could have come close to imagining what was coming. It is a year since Mr D died suddenly of a heart attack. So much in my life has changed; partly out of practical necessity, partly as a way to regroup and partly to find some sense of purpose again. I have a new job, and bizarrely I am once again walking past those old offices where I was so unceremoniously ejected in 2009. I have returned to Finance, but in a very different capacity that unexpectedly ties together the personal and professional threads of the last decade; working for a charity that supports people of all ages to break down barriers to music-making, through the use of technology. So how did it go? I knocked more than 3 minutes off my personal best, running very comfortably inside 1 hour. It felt good, and I felt fitter than I ever have before. I may well run a 10k again, but next time I hope it is simply because I like running, and there isn't a story to be told... I have been feeling pretty sorted in recent months. Strong enough to stop going to counselling, in a new job, all horrific tax, finance and probate settled, a short term plan to help me stay in my home, possessions dealt with, eating and sleeping normally. Yet in the back of my mind the suspicion lurked, what if it is all a front? What if I am not really sorted at all, just better at compartmentalising? What might open the box and send me unraveling back to the start? Do not pass go, do not collect £200.
The late bad weather masked the start of spring, and so the start of a dreaded run of anniversaries snuck up on me. Mr D's birthday on Saturday, closely followed by the date of death, our 20th wedding anniversary, and of course the funeral. I can barely believe it is almost a year. It feels like a dream, something that happened to someone else. Yet every time I open my calendar to book a meeting, haircut, rehearsal, anything; one of these dates slaps me in the face. I had been doing OK, yet somehow my brain and body are conspiring to drag me back. The old feelings are returning as I think “this day last year...”. I really hope I can stay strong over the next four weeks. I can’t afford to undo all the hard work I have done, I have to survive. As someone said to me recently; don’t put yourself through it, you have probably suffered enough already... In 2009 I had a life changing opportunity. If you read the post prior to this, you will know that I was working as a Finance Director in fashion retail, approaching burnout. In March that year, the group I was working for went into administration.1 Many brands disappeared overnight and many of my colleagues were immediately unemployed. I was one of the lucky ones, my brands were immediately resold by the administrators. The newly formed group had to take on all of the employees of the brands that they purchased, but then made some of them redundant. I was one of these employees, so I left with some money. I had already decided that this would be my last role of this kind. I felt very jaded about the industry, and a decade of long, stressful days with many working weekends was beginning to affect my health. Before my 30-day redundancy consultation period was up I had already enrolled on a full-time Sound and Audio Engineering Diploma. This was my chance to finally make a life change that I had been mulling over for some time. I loved every minute of it, and to this day it is still one of the favourite passages in my life. However it was also a period of personal loss, different to the loss I have experienced this year, but still very significant. The diploma was a very thorough programme, covering not just the technical side of sound engineering, but also the more philosophical aspects of sound, music and listening. I learned to think about how we experience music, for example, the difference between live and recorded listening experiences and the importance of critical listening. I began to appreciate that we can never truly know exactly what anyone else is hearing, any more than we can know what they are thinking or feeling. It is a deeply personal experience. Of course, biology, psychology and neuroscience can provide an understanding of human hearing response but there is so much that impacts the journey of a sound wave before it becomes a perceived sound in your brain. Each person’s ears have a unique shape and perform acoustic shadowing that provides additional information about where the sound is in relation to you, for example above or behind you.2 Delicate bones in the inner ear amplify the sound, tiny hair cells in the cochlear unpack frequency, nerves transmit this sound to the brain where it is interpreted.3 What we hear is influenced by where we are standing in the room, what we can see, how close we are to the sound source, reflected sound that bounces from surfaces, whether we recognise the sound4 and even how we are feeling in that moment. I understood the problem of ‘transparency’ of sound for the first time; how important it was to choose a reference track that I could take from desk to desk, or studio to studio, to try and unpack some of the differences caused by the room and equipment. A track that I had listened to hundreds of times, across as many different scenarios as possible, and could use to understand what I was listening to, and how it might sound when recorded and played somewhere else. I sat in a critical listening class where the discussion turned to that week’s listening homework, and an exquisitely placed triangle hit. I had listened to the track extensively, picked it apart, understood every aspect, but triangle? Really? Somehow I had missed the triangle. I went back to the track after class and I still couldn’t hear it. This was the start of many similar disquieting experiences. I began to recognise the heart stopping feeling I experienced each time I realised that I was missing something that everyone else could hear; and worse still, the fear that I was going to be found out. During this period I suffered a damaged ear drum. The hospital consultant was puzzled, I came in with physical damage to one ear drum, but did I know that I had failed the hearing tests with significant symmetrical loss across both ears? I started to piece everything together as I finished my diploma. I worked hard and did well, but I knew my passion to move into sound engineering was dead in the water. I continued to work as a sound engineering volunteer for community groups and venues, but the fear of getting found out became too overwhelming. It was usually something entirely trivial that tripped me up, rather than anything lacking in my ability to do my job; but once the seed of doubt was sown you had to move on. I was diagnosed officially in 2010 when I was 39. I have a high frequency loss of about 75% of the normal hearing threshold, for sounds above 5,000Hz. Humans perceive sounds from around 20-20,000Hz on a logarithmic scale. Some high frequency hearing loss is normal as we grow older, but this was far in advanced of the loss I should have had for my age. 5,000Hz is significant because this is the frequency where many of the sounds that characterise speech occur, for example consonants that allow us to distinguish between different words.5 I was in denial and avoided getting hearing aids for several years. I exhausted myself trying to hide my condition. Even when I did start to wear NHS hearing aids, I grew my hair to cover my ears so that I could hide them in auditions and rehearsals. An unhelpful side-effect is hyperacusis.6 What this means for me is that sudden loud noises, especially at high frequencies, are very distressing and can make me pass out. So when I was the lead singer in a covers band, and there was feedback from the PA at a live event, I could feel the panic rising, breaking out into a cold sweat, desperate for them to fix it before the shutters came down. I stopped singing live altogether for a time as a result. I play big band jazz and in concert bands, so I often have trumpets or trombones behind me. A piercing high note from a trumpet (they can never play them quietly!) has a similar effect, so I sometimes spend gigs with an ear defender in one ear and my hearing aid in the other to try and cope. I take paracetamol before every gig in case I get a noise induced migraine. Without my hearing aids (and even sometimes with them), I often rely on guessing what words might be from the context of a conversation, getting as close as possible to the person speaking and trying to optimise visibility of their lips. Subsequent discussion with friends and colleagues has revealed that this is often interpreted as a very intense focus on the person I am talking to, which can make them uncomfortable without quite realising why. I often get it wrong, which usually results in a supportive laugh from people that know me, but can sometimes be more uncomfortable. Everyday situations, such as sitting in a hospital reception room waiting for your name to be called, become highly stressful. My disability is largely hidden. My current hearing aids are much smaller and less noticeable than my NHS ones and I sometime forget to put them in. I take them out to travel on public transport so that I can listen to music on headphones, and occasionally forget to put them back in when I arrive at my destination. I take them out when I am working in a noisy environment to cut out background chatter. I then get caught out by people coming up behind me at my desk, speaking as they approach and expecting an immediate reaction. Instead I am startled when I realise there is someone behind me and I have no idea why they are there, or how long they have been behind me. Some people assume you are stupid, that English isn’t your first language (yes really), or that you are being wilfully difficult to make a point. Of course, it is none of those things. I don’t know exactly when the loss started, whether it was gradual or sudden, but I do know that my hearing wasn’t always as it is now. In 2015 I was working with the London Symphony Orchestra’s Education and Community Programme LSO Discovery7. I was invited to a performance as part of LSO On Track8. The programme included one of my favourite pieces of music, The Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams. I don’t know when I first heard the piece, possibly it was when I was studying music as a teenager at school. Written originally for violin and piano in 1914, the fully scored version was first performed in 1920.9 The piece is based on a poem by George Meredith, written in 1881.10 He rises and begins to round, It is an optimistic piece, redolent of the beauty and stillness of the English countryside, seemingly at odds with the wartime context at the time of writing.9 Over the years I have absorbed it and know every note of the violin part as it represents the lark climbing into a clear blue sky. This particular performance was a few years after my official diagnosis of hearing loss, but I was still struggling to cope with my hearing aids. As the piece started, the comforting swell of the strings enveloped me. As the violin began to climb against the sustained chord, my heart began to swell with the beauty of it, as it always does, focussing intently on the lark’s journey, circling higher and higher. Then the sustained strings dropped away, leaving the violin alone. That’s when I first noticed a problem. I could hear the violin soaring in my head, but I couldn’t hear it in the concert hall. I sat in shock, faced with the undeniable evidence that I couldn’t hear something that I knew should be there. I had heard it before so many times, and could still hear it on most recordings with headphones, but in a live concert hall environment, the lark was lost to me. I sat with tears dropping gently down my face, my heart thumping, feeling slightly sick and staring straight to the front so that the people either side of me didn’t notice. The beauty of the music that I could hear only made my melancholy worse. I still can’t listen to the piece today without recollecting how distraught I was in that moment. In recent years I have ‘come out’ so to speak. I have cut my hair short again (always my preferred style) and become more open about my hearing with my musician and professional colleagues. So why have I chosen to write about this now, and here in this blog? This year I have had to come to terms with many losses. With the death of my husband, I felt that I had lost the one person who lived with me through the years of being diagnosed, and knew in depth about my struggle to cope with my hearing loss. He was the only person that knew I couldn’t hear him talking in the morning, bleary with sleep and with one ear smothered by a pillow. He knew that when I withdrew from a busy social gathering, it wasn’t because I was being rude, I was exhausted with the additional concentration required to listen properly and needed some time out. He knew that I loved subtitled Scandi-Noir crime series on BBC4, not least because the English subtitles made it so much easier for me to follow. I was finally inspired to write this piece by a talk at the British Library earlier this month between the percussionist Evelyn Glennie and the neuroscientist Colin Blakemore called “Feeling Sound”.11 I greatly admire Evelyn’s approach to her hearing loss.12 So many people don’t understand that any loss, such as hearing or sight, exists on a spectrum. This can range from full loss, to partial loss or a very specific type of loss such as difficulty hearing sounds in a particular frequency range or distortion of some kind. For the person experiencing the loss, they are in some ways simply sensing the world around us all in a different way. It was a privilege to hear Evelyn describe how her first percussion teacher inspired her by asking her to take out her hearing aids and feel the sound of a drum in the room, through the walls and her body; and the fundamental impact that this had on her life. The change in my hearing has made me examine my relationship with sound and music at a detailed level over many years. I have evolved different coping mechanisms for different musical situations. I listen in a different way, and whilst it is sometimes exhausting, I wonder if I also take something different away because I analyse and unpack what I am hearing so carefully. During the talk, Evelyn was asked if she had considered some of the surgical procedures available, such as cochlear implants, to restore some of her hearing. She said she had thought about it, but ultimately no, she didn’t want the procedure. "I have spent so long hearing and listening in my own way and refining all my other senses in order to do what I do, to suddenly have everything changed at the age I am would be a risk I do not wish to make." 13 Notes
In 2009 I was a burnt-out Finance professional, working in High Street Fashion Retail at the start of the longest and deepest economic downturn I had experienced in my lifetime. I felt jaded about my industry. I was lucky to work in design-led, aspirational brands that produced beautifully constructed pieces, designed to last. However I couldn’t ignore the other brands in my industry producing tonnes of cheap clothing made from non-biogradable man-made fibres that were destined for landfill. Or the change in attitude caused by clothing so cheap that a garment could be bought for a night out and then discarded. Or the plight of the people that made them, only made visible by terrible tragedies such as the garment factories that collapsed in the Rana Plaza catastrophe in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2013. I felt uneasy about the pressure the industry placed on consumers to replace clothing every season, to discard rather than cherish, so that daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual sales and margin forecasts could be met. My job and the success of my brands depended on people buying things they didn’t need, and maybe couldn’t afford. If they couldn’t buy it full price that was ok, we had already factored markdown into our buy, we would get you later. Except that this just isn’t sustainable in any sense of the word.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to look good; clothing is a way to show individuality. After years working in fashion I know the value of a well thought out accessory, and I love putting an outfit together. An outfit that makes me feel great can change how I feel about my day, I step out with a spring in my step, and I am not ashamed of that. I also appreciate the supremely comfortable clothes that seem to hug me on a cold Winter’s day, or float around my skin on hot sultry evenings. I think carefully before I let a new piece into my wardrobe; it has to work with what I already have, be beautifully made, washable and ideally made of a natural fabric. I can sew and have always repaired things rather than throw them away. I have pieces that I have bought on trips that I cannot easily buy again, so I wash them with care, iron them with respect and fix them when they start to disintegrate. I am probably one of the few people my age that knows how to darn a sock, and actually does it. It is always hard to arrive at the painful point when I have to acknowledge that the garment I love no longer makes me feel good because it is worn beyond repair. I have a deep relationship with my clothing which couldn’t be further from the ‘throw away’ culture. Recently though, this relationship has changed. I have lost a lot of weight in the 8 months since my husband died. He died in the Spring and I was vaguely aware that many of my Summer clothes were very baggy and I wasn’t looking my best, but so much was wrong at that time that it didn’t seem so important. I bought a new dress for the funeral, but other than that I soldiered on, tightening belts on skinny jeans that were now baggy round the bum, cinching in dresses at the waist, tucking tops into trousers to stop them slipping down (rather than wearing them loose, which I used to do to hide my ‘muffin top’). The clothes were the same but I looked very different. As the seasons changed, I got out the Winter clothes stored under my bed, looking forward to wearing old friends. However every time I pulled on an old favourite it felt all wrong. I was arriving at work later and later every morning; I wasn’t sleeping and I have never been a morning person, but this was now compounded by a new problem – I was trying on several outfits before I could leave the house. I had to work through the pile of Winter clothes, trying each piece on, assessing, and realising it didn’t just look slightly large, it was all wrong. I might finally find a top that sort of worked, but the coordinating skirt then fell off my hips. Then I couldn’t find anything else that went with the top, so I started again, and so on. I persevered, wearing things anyway, desperate for them to work. I had altered as many things as I could, but the weight continued to fall off, and another dress size hit the road. The problem had gone way beyond tightening my belt (which was also way beyond the smallest buckle hole). Even my underwear didn’t fit. People started to ask me if I was ill. I started to wonder if I was ill. Losing weight is so often associated with looking good, and I had been trying to lose a few pounds for years, but such a sudden loss, accentuated by my baggy wardrobe, simply made me look…well…probably how I was feeling. I was trying to fit into a new solo life, still dealing with the huge weight of probate bureaucracy, worried about my future, uncomfortable in many social settings. One more of the many secondary losses* that come with suddenly losing a life partner through death; loss of identity and sense of self. I had to take back control. I needed to feel good about myself. I started running again, to reconnect with my body. I began to trust it again; I wasn’t ill and I was still strong. A week out on a Healthy Holiday** boosted my tone and my sleep, so I started to look healthy rather than ill. Now it was time to turn the time, care and attention that I had applied to recycling my husband’s beautiful wardrobe to my own. I carefully sorted all of my clothes into categories – what could still be altered, what could be sold on Ebay, what could be given to charity shops, what was beyond repair and had to be consigned to the dustbin. A lady messaged me after buying one of my dresses on Ebay to tell me how lovely it was, and how much she enjoyed wearing it. It made me happy to think that other people might love my things as much as I had, and anything I sold gave me a fighting fund to start again. This was the first time I had bought new clothing on this scale for a long time and I needed it! It hasn’t been easy. Rather than my style evolving (or not) over time, I have had to have a total rethink. My body shape is so different that I can wear things I would never have considered before, but two decades have passed since I was last this shape. It has taken time to adjust. Now people have started telling me I look great but I am cautious. I didn’t dislike my curvier self and I was always very fit, I could always run 10k comfortably. I realised I was made to feel uneasy about my curves by other people. I could easily put the weight back on again and I need to feel OK with that. I now understand that I am still me, whatever my shape. I like looking good but I realise, more than ever now, that we should never judge anyone for their shape or appearance. It is more important to know what is happening inside. *Secondary Loss — one loss isn’t enough??!! **At the Body Retreat with the lovely Juls and Julie When Mr D died we were away for the weekend together, celebrating as I was about to start a new job. The transition had been messy, I had to start my new role part time whilst completing a demanding semester of lecturing, so I was working long hours to keep up. I was going to have a proper leaving ‘do’ later on, once I had settled into my new job, but of course that never happened. So, I left the place where I had studied, gained my PhD and worked for the last seven years without a proper goodbye, or even telling people where I was going. This made it hard to tell anyone what had happened. It’s hardly a great conversation opener ‘sorry I left with saying goodbye but, by the way, my husband died’. A few months later, as I picked up the shattered pieces of my life, I decided to contact a few people I probably wouldn’t ever have bumped into again, but instinctively knew could be important to me. I had already started the process of holding useful people close, and letting unhelpful people go. A personal tragedy brings out the best and the worst in the people around you, and you realise very quickly who your true friends are, who will get you through.
One of the people I had contacted asked if I wanted to go with them to a Prom. I hadn’t been for years, certainly not proper ‘promenading’ as I had done in my youth. Suddenly I felt like my old self, twenty years earlier, full of hope and excitement at living in London, being able to go to the Proms for the price of a sandwich and hear something new, as long as I was prepared to queue in truly British style. So it was that I found myself standing in the arena at the Royal Albert Hall, on a hot weekday evening, as the opening of Passages* washed over me. Hypnotic, rich, deep cellos swelled out of the heat. A single alto saxophone began to weave above them. This was joined by a countermelody on a soprano saxophone, then a flute, dancing above the cellos, swooping into the spaces they made. I stood transported, eyes closed, my senses overwhelmed. As a typical insistent Philip Glass rhythm began to push purposefully on, I opened my eyes and looked up at the surreal acoustic mushrooms, around at the red and gold splendour; feeling the heat of hundreds of other bodies in the arena, all attention focussed forward as the sound filled the space. It is a dangerous but exhilarating combination when you are shell-shocked, wearing your nervous system on the outside, raw and exposed, all senses heightened. It seemed unimaginable that I could experience something so beautiful. This was something Mr D would never have the opportunity to experience, which filled me with sadness and regret, but I could. I am here. I am alive. The rest of the music was stunning – beautiful, exotic and truly inspiring, perfect for a late summer evening. Perhaps it made me feel a little heady, but I realised I also felt a glimmer of optimism. I went to several more Prom concerts. I ordered Passages online and the retailer kept promising to deliver but it never came. Then, around a month later they said they were going to stop trying to look for it. I could stream it online but I have always felt a perverse desire to own a physical ‘full fat’ representation of any music that has truly moved me (even if it is only a CD, I am not a vinyl purist although I truly love the format). I started to try harder to track down a copy. As the Proms ended and the seasons changed, a CD finally arrived. However, it felt like the moment had passed. I left it on a shelf, not even bothering to remove the shrink-wrap. Then one day I decided to unwrap it and put it on. As the cellos at the beginning of Offering washed over me, so did the intense feelings of that night. I have listened to Passages a lot as Autumn turns to Winter, and I move closer to the end of the hardest year of my life. The woodwind trio dancing above the stately swell of the cellos still brings a lump to my throat and makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, but Summer will come again, they represent hope… *Prom 41: Passages by Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar Performed by Anoushka Shankar and the Britten Sinfonia 22:15 Tuesday 15 Aug 2017 Royal Albert Hall https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/e8c3d4 |