Snake watch, happy ending?

I feel I owe you, My Dear Reader, a conclusion, but you will be disappointed. Yesterday I went out in the morning and cut dry poppies and deadheaded everything that needed it in the flower bed. Then Staffan kept me company while I picked the rest of black currants, cut back raspberries, tied up the last beans and weeded in the farthest corner, where there is a perfect hide for snakes - if I were a snake that's what I would choose. Staffan kept going in to watch the Olympics. I cannot say I felt quite safe, and I don't think I will ever feel safe again. But I am also mortally scared every time I drive through one of those humongous British roundabouts, yet do I have a choice? Driving and gardening are part of the quality of life.

Today I had a sore eye (nothing serious, happens every now and then), which got better in the afternoon, but right as I started digging and dividing day lilies, a thunderstorm came so I have a very good excuse. However, I did go out, and the day lilies bed is right where the snake was. I suppose I have got over it, just as everybody said I would and as deep down I knew I would, although I promise, it was as serious as I wrote in the first post.

I have no wish to read more about snakes nor look at and touch a picture of a snake. 

Snake watch, day 3

Click for beginning, Part 1 and Part 2 of this story

Uneventful day from the snake-watching point of view and otherwise. Woke up as usual, breakfast, coffee on the patio. Realised that I needed to get my repeated medical prescription to the surgery and made it a reason to take a short, quick walk (now experimentally proved that the distance through the park is 500 m and takes 5 minutes). Then back to work, writing the last (?) chapter, checking email every now and then and replying to everything urgent – don't people at the Faculty ever take vacation? Looked up some web sites to research red-head characters in children's books, but didn't find anything helpful. Brief lunch break. More writing. Didn't go out at all.

Had a very nice tea with some of the students who are still around, talking dangerous beasts (flying ants, frogs, turtles), grammatical gender in different languages, train journeys and educational systems. Back home, quiet dinner. Then we watched a movie while the rest of the world watched the opening of the Olympics. We saw a little bit of it (James Bond and Mr Bean), muted during the rock, and switched off after Denmark.

Snake watch, day 2

Click for beginning and Part 1 of this story

I got up as usual this morning stating that it was cloudy and perhaps not tempting to go out at all, but by the time we had coffee on the patio it was sunny again. I had a dentist appointment at 11.30 so I knew there was no point starting anything creative, and among the morning emails there were some that needed urgent action so that took care of my morning. However, on my way to the dentist I couldn't help thinking, feeling more and more sick every minute, and telling myself that I'd rather go to the dentist every day than... I was a bit early and popped into one of my favourite charity shops where I always look for small things for the dolls houses. Behind me, two ladies were talking about gardening. I ran away.

On the way home I decided I needed help. It had really gone too far. I looked up Counselling on the University web with advice to try some self-help before seeking a professional. On the self-help page I found a long list of problems including phobias, with just the kind of idiotic advice I don't want. Indeed, look at how you come over arachnophobia in six easy steps:

1. Reading about spiders
   
2. Looking at and then touching a photograph of a spider
   
3. Looking at/touching a plastic model of a spider
   
4. Looking at/touching a jar with a small spider in it
   
5. Picking the spider out of the jar
   
6. Picking up a large spider.
   

I am sure that arachnophobics find this terrifying. Now let's translate this to herpetophobia.

1. I have just read Lucy Christopher's Stolen, so I've done this one.
   
2. Go ahead and touch it. [I had a picture of a snake here. It boosted ny statistics. I guess people were disappointed when they were directed to this page, I have removed it. Imagine touching the picture of a snake on the screen] 
3. Yes, they sell those in all zoos. Our kids have some. They are horrid.
   
4. Looking at/touching a jar with a small cobra in it. Hmm...
   
5. Picking the cobra out of the jar. I want to see the counsellor do it
   
6. Picking up a LARGE cobra...
   

You see, it's not that easy. What was helpful, I must admit, was the reminder that hiding from the problem won't solve it. Not that I didn't know it, and not that my dear friend Alyona didn't talk to me for an hour on Skype yesterday. But somehow “managing the level of anxiety” did it for me.

Staffan and I had a Talk. And we agreed that we would go out there together for a little while. Which was very noble of him. I had two strong incentives. A patch on the lawn where Staffan had efficiently exterminated mushrooms by pouring boiling water on them needed mending. And the blackcurrants needed picking. Staffan took the lead to the greenhouse to get the tools, and we picked some tomatoes while we were at it. I fixed the grass patch, and then Staffan put a garden chair exactly on the spot where the snake had been, and I picked the currants while the cat rustled in the shrubs. I still feel sick as I am writing this.

Then I went out for dinner with Morag and David, and to their standard “How are you?” I told them how I was. They were not impressed, and David said he liked snakes and wanted to be a herpetologist when he was young.

Back home and watching the garden through my window. So much needs to be done...

Snake watch, day 1

I am determined to cope with my current herpetophobic issues, but I am not sure how. Perhaps if I keep track of what I am doing it will help. If not - keeping track of what I am doing can be of interest in itself, a repeat of "What professors do".

So: I got up about 7:30 as I usually do when I don't have to be anywhere in the morning. We had breakfast and a long, quiet coffee on the patio. Normally, I would have gone to the raspberry patch to get us a handful of raspberries, but I didn't because the raspberry patch is exactly where I had seen the snake. I can see through my study window that there are tons of raspberries, and the black currants need to be picked now if at all. But I cannot make myself leave the patio. Normally I would also have gone around the whole garden, checking on my beans and courgettes and maybe cutting some rhubarb for pudding. Not today. Instead, I went right to my desk and wrote away like mad until I was desperate for coffee. Staffan was away on some errand, so I had my coffee at my desk. I worked until lunch. Normally, I would have gone several more rounds in the garden, a five-minute break every half hour or so, looking at my flower bed and my wild garden behind the conifers; I would have been in the greenhouse to water the tomatoes and perhaps harvest a few for lunch. Not today. The greenhouse is behind the garage, right in the middle of the jungle.

Staffan made lunch, and then I went back to my desk. Writing went reasonably well, although the chapter I thought would be easy turned out to be quite a tough one, unless I compomised with myself.  I checked my email every now and then and replied to everything that was urgent and sometimes to what wasn't, just to do something else than write.

At half past two I felt I needed a break. Normally, I would go out in the garden where there is always something that needs to be done. Continue with my big hedge project, tying back and trimming branches. Weed below the hedge. Trim grass around small shrubs. Cut away withered prairie grass. Thin new strawberry shoots. Replant day lilies. Not today.

Instead I went for a walk. I have downloaded a training programme for my phone which uses GPS to tell me how far I have walked and how fast. I am not sure it will work in the long run, but so far it's fun. Today I walked to the river and back. I was surprised that this walk was shorter than my circular walk in the park.

I left and came back through the patio door which is the farthest I have ventured through the garden. I did watch the road extra carefully as I walked. Every grey stick is a suspect.

When I came back I felt I couldn't go on with the chapter. Sometimes it is like this. Fortunately there is always somethinjg else I can do. I reviewed a tremendously boring article, so boring that I wrote three times as many comments as I am expected to - maybe the author can learn something from them. I am not recommending this article for publication.

Staffan is mowing the lawn. I am looking longingly through the window. Snakes sleep at night, don't they? Maybe I can do some star-gazing.

Paradise lost

This is a self-therapy session. If you have problems with it, don't read. But I know that there are many people out there who share my anxieties, many many more than would admit it even to themselves. Whenever I feel that my conversation partner is anxious about something, I share my anxiety, and they always thank me afterwards.

Yesterday, I saw a snake in the garden.

I was marking my territory, as I do several times a day, dead-heading flowers, picking raspberries, trimming hedges, weeding – not serious trimming or weeding, but in passing, as a short break from writing. I heard a rustle and turned to talk to the cat, and there it was, slithering – uuuh, this word! - along the paved path. I saw clearly that it was a harmless garden snake: big white spots on the head. But it doesn't matter. Snakes are my worst nightmare, my Room 101 if anyone would want me to denounce my children.

Some of it must have a tangible reason. Adults do scare children to protect me, and I was always told as a child to wear rubber boots when walking in the wood, because there may be snakes. In Karelia, where I spent most of my childhood summers, adders were common. I would see a dozen every summer, sometimes almost stepping on them. One year, a small boy was bitten. My mother was in panic and managed to get one of the two antidote vials available in the whole Soviet Union (or so she said; they were certainly hard to obtain), which we dutifully kept in the refrigerator during winter and brought with us on holidays. I was also taught how to treat a bite. But I have actually never been scared of being bitten. It is simply that the sight of snakes makes me physically sick.

Some people are scared of spiders, birds or wasps. Some are scared of heights, tunnels or caves, small toilets or crammed rooms. When I say “scared” I mean horror that you cannot cope with. And don't tell me you can be hypnotised. My kids once made me watch a television programme in which people with phobias were made to do things there were scared of. One woman who was scared of birds had to go into a bird cage with hundreds of pigeons, each with a hundred-dollar bill tied to its leg. The woman could keep all the money she managed to untie in five minutes. The kids argued that I should do something like this for my herpetophobia. I argued that if that woman had a real phobia she would not enter the cage for a million dollars.

On another occasion we visited the Stockholm Aquarium during a petting session. I was absolutely fine with huge hairy spiders, but that scaly python that Julia let hang over her neck... I did touch it, and it was unexpectedly soft and warm.

Anton and I went to a snake show in Australia. I went because he was very eager. He was nine then. Obviously herpentophobia is not hereditary. The snake master brought one of his pets close to the public to watch. I climbed back over three benches. “You don't take any risks”, he said. We also watched a snake swallow a rat (which luckily was dead). It sort of draw itself over the carcass. It was disgusting, but the snake was behind glass. I am fine with snakes behind glass. Although when we watch nature programmes and there are snakes, I close my eyes till Staffan tells me it's over.

Anyway, I saw a snake in my garden yesterday, and I was shaking for the rest of the day and felt sick and couldn't work any more and cried myself to sleep because I knew I would never be able to go out into the garden again. Staffan told me I was silly. Most people would tell me I am silly. The garden is surely full of snakes that I hadn't seen before. This particular snake is by now far away. It was probably more scared of me than I was of it. Garden snakes don't bite. They bring luck. And so on.

But the people who have a secret phobia would say to themselves: “I know exactly how it feels”. It's silly, it's irrational, but it's there and it won't go away.

I haven't been in the garden since then. I have this vision of a slithering body under every shrub, everywhere I go with my garden tools, with my bare hands. Never, never again. Which is very sad, because gardening has become the foremost joy in my life. I have just about got it the way I want it.

My cleaning lady Helen listened to my confession this morning and suggested that I buy a portable radio and play it very loudly when I am gardening. She said she didn't have a phobia but thought she could understand it. I know she cannot, but it was nice of her. She made me promise to make a list of all my ventures into the garden and show her next week. So far I haven't been further out than the patio. 

Yes, I know that hedgehogs are skillful snake hunters. 

Blog challenge Day 26 – Your fears

In CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), the first thing you have to do is make a list of your fears. CBT implies, as follows from the name, that you understand your behaviour and therefore can cope with it. In this case, understand why you are scared of certain things. It doesn't necessarily mean that you stop being scared, but you feel better about being scared.

I used to be scared of calling up people on the phone because I was scared I wouldn't hear what they said and respond inadequately. This has had quite a significant impact on my professional life. People who don't suffer from phobias will never understand. You are not lazy, you are not showing off, you are not in a bad mood – you simply cannot do it, although sometimes you have to, and then it costs you more energy than anyone can imagine. If you do suffer from a phobia, any phobia, you will understand other people whatever their special phobia might be: lifts, planes, heights, caves, snakes, birds, cats, crowded places, talking in public. You recognise a soulmate.

I am scared of snakes, but I am ok with spiders. I am scared of driving to unfamiliar places because I am scared that I won't find a parking space and be late. I am scared of using ticket machines or self-checkouts, because I am scared of making a mistake. I am scared of talking to people who speak a broad dialect because I can misunderstand what they say, and it's embarrassing. In terms of understanding behaviour, making a fool of myself must be my biggest problem. I won't go deep into my childhood to investigate it.

But these are small, everyday fears that you either learn to cope with or you don't, and then they will spoil your life. When I was young I was scared of dying. All people are scared of dying, but some people think about it all the time and suffer from it. I was scared to go to sleep because I was scared of not waking up. I wanted someone by my side when I went to sleep. Recently, perhaps five-six years ago, I realised that going to sleep and never waking up is the best way to die. You won't even notice. This is very logical from the CBT point of view, but it won't work if you are young.

What I am really scared of is one of those states when you are paralysed and cannot communicate, or you are losing your memory and sometimes understand what's going on but cannot do anything. Anton, who puts titles on my film-renting list, has made me watch The Butterfly and the Diving Bell and The Notebook. I am glad I have seen them, but they haunt me. McEwan's Amsterdam haunts me too. Many years ago I saw my great-aunt going senile, and it was scary. Sometimes she was clear in her mind, just to wander away five minutes later. She could also get aggressive. I am scared of becoming like that. I am scared of not being able to talk. They say that people sometimes forget their mothertongue, but not other languages, or forget one at a time. I am scared of being enclosed in myself. Scared of being in a diving bell. Nowadays, when I go to sleep I think that I would certainly like to wake up next morning, but if I don't it's not that bad.

We are responsible for those we have tamed

So why am I pretending it hasn't happened? Perhaps now, with the imminent danger over, I can articulate the experience of the past 20 hours. I came home early yesterday, after a day of back-to-back meetings that had all been satisfactory, and I was cheerful. I had had a very late and substantial business lunch so I wasn't as famished as I usually am when I came home, and it was Friday, so I sat down in a comfortable armchair with a glass of blush wine. Miso came and jumped onto my lap. Well, she didn't quite jump, rather crawled, but I took no notice because cats are like that. Only five minutes later it was obvisouly very, very wrong. I cannot explain it, but she felt like a piece of dead skin, and she didn't purr, and she hadn't groomed herself. We sat there for a while, and Staffan held her for a while, and I held her again, and then I heard Staffan call someone, and for some reason I thought he was calling Julia who knows all about cats and would know what to do. In fact, Staffan called the 24-hour veterinary service which just happened to be two streets from us here in Milton. We had driven past it at least twice a day the past eighteen months, with unuttered hope that we would never need it.

I knew Miso was really bad because she didn't even try to escape, and she lay dead still on the examination table, but she screamed with pain when the doctor squeezed her. She had bad wounds that I hadn't seen, and bruises, and, X-ray showed, broken ribs. And, blood test showed, kidney failure.

We don't know how old Miso is because we took her from a home, but she is at least twelve. Cats can live longer than that, but of course I have been thinking about how much longer she will be with us. When I see the agility with which she jumps through a half-open window I hope she will live many years. I am such a fatalist that I keep telling myself that we can't really know who of us goes first. So I shouldn't say I wasn't prepared. But I wasn't.When Staffan tried to hold my hand I had to brush it away not to burst into tears there and then. I guess the veterinary people have seen this happen over and over again.

They kept her overnight, and we came back to a silent, empty house, looking at her bowls and her blanket and stumbling over a tin of cat food in the fridge. We went to bed without a purring bundle of fur on my hip. We got up without a hungry scream in the kitchen. Nobody came to demand a lick of frothed milk from my coffee. The morning was very, very long. In my mind, I was digging a little grave at the bottom of the garden, behind the conifers. Staffan and I kept talking about irrelevant things.

Then we called the veterinary and heard that Miso was eating and doing fine. We could come and see her in the afternoon. We did. She was tired, but who wouldn't be after such a night. She had a tube attached to her little paw; half her back had been shaven to clean the wounds. But she was glad to see us, she sat up, she purred, she ate some food, just so show us (I know I am being silly now). The nurse praised her for patience and good behaviour.

With some luck, we can take her home tomorrow. Her kidneys will never be ok, but we can keep her going with the right kind of food and some medication. Maybe a month, maybe a year, maybe several years.

Blog challenge Day 2: Your first love

In Turgenev's novelette First Love, one of the characters says: "I never had a first love, I started direct with the second". I did, however, have a first love. I was eight, and he was in my class. One of the most popular boys. I did the classic thing, described in so many literary works and private stories: I wrote a letter, decorated with hearts, and put it on his desk. The teacher intercepted it, but not before all classmates had seen it. If I had been bullied before it got ten times worth. But I had my reward. We got "engaged", Tom Sawyer style, exchanged homemade rings, and we were both firm that we would get married when we grew up. Then I discovered that my fiance was in the same manner engaged to another girl, a close friend. I told her that it was silly to be engaged and advised her to break up. I don't remember whether she followed my advice, but I remained engaged for a while before it wore out. We were in same class for the rest of school.

Ugh, that was boring! I could have invented something much more exciting.

Autumn reflections

The numerous pictures that friends put on Facebook of their basketfuls of mushrooms make me melancholy. Mushroom picking was an indispensable part of my childhood and youth, and I know I will never do it again. Not because we live in a country without mushrooms (I am sure there must be some further up in the North), but because mushrooms are banned from our home.

It's exactly twenty seven years ago, twenty seven years of borrowed time. I have never told this story outside the closest circle of friends.

It was a bright sunny autumn afternoon, and I took Julia in her push-chair to the little wood right outside our house, to the secret places that my father had marked on a pencil-sketched map. I didn't even have to go to the secret places because there were zillions of mushrooms all along the road. I know every mushroom there is to know, so I came home with two huge bags. The stepchildren were visiting, and I made a stew. It was so good that we finished it before Staffan had a chance to taste.

I was viciously sick early in the morning. I knew it was the mushroom stew, and I remembered an inscription I had seen on a tomb with four names and the same date: “They ate mushrooms”. I alerted Staffan and told him he had to take us all to Emergency, me and the three children. He laughed. He said I knew all mushrooms there were to know. He said people didn't die of mushrooms. The kids were sick too, but we probably had a stomach flu. It was not until late afternoon that I persuaded him to call Health hotline. At ER they were unimpressed, took blood tests and gave us barf bags. Then suddenly they were all panic, perforated me with tubes and syringes, gave me a revolting black liquid to drink and took me away to a ward, while the kids were taken to the children's clinic, and Staffan, with baby Julia, went with them. I didn't see them for quite a while, but I was too sick to care.

The doctors and nurses took me seriously, but I had my own concerns. Although I hadn't yet missed my period I knew I was pregnant. I asked a nurse to take a pregnancy test. She must have thought I was brain-damaged: dying, and asking for a pregnancy test. I didn't know I was dying. A writer friend asked me afterwards, almost envious: what was it like? Typical writer to be curious. An experience we all go through sooner or later, but few have the privilege to share.

If it is a comfort, people apparently don't know they are dying. Also you imagine that a deathly poisonous mushroom makes you die quickly. When I didn't die quickly, when I stopped throwing up after a day and a half, I entered what is called ante mortem euphoria. I wasn't in pain, I wasn't hungry or thirsty or sleepy. I couldn't read or listen to radio, but it didn't matter. Convalescent patients feel bored. I wasn't a convalescent. Time did not exist. Time no more. Daylight came and went. I lay back and felt peaceful.

Far away in another galaxy, Staffan had been told that he was practically a widower. I phoned him that evening to say that I felt great and longed to go home.

If I had stopped to think, I would have figured it out. They took off my wedding ring. They brought over my son from the children's clinic to say goodbye. (The kids made it, they were staying for observation). They were pumping gallons of drugs into me. I had a nurse by my side 24 hours. The nurses kept asking whether there was anything I wanted. I wanted a pregnancy test. On the fourth day they had to open a large blood vessel in my throat to put in more tubes. Not even that made me suspicious. I was beyond comprehension. When they told me on the fifth day that my pregnancy test was positive I cried. As it turned out, it was not the mushrooms, but the antidotes that killed the baby.

On Saturday, a week after my mushroom-picking walk, they took off the tubes. I felt ravenous. I hadn't eaten anything since that mushroom stew. They let me go home over the weekend. I was tired and grieving my baby. I was also worried because I had missed a PhD seminar. This gives a sense of my denial.

Obviously I am alive. The kids and I were a cover story of a major medical journal. Anton was born a year later. I almost never think about it. But mushrooms are banned from our home.

Memories

My uncle died yesterday. There were many male relatives I used to call "uncle" but he was a real uncle, my mother's brother. He was the kindest, warmest man imaginable. I bet my cousins would not agree, but that is how I remember him. I used to be dumped at their place for weekends, and apart from playing war with my four year younger cousin (which I never did otherwise) the pleasure was an amusement park in the vicinity. It was part of the visit. I wonder whether my cousin was ever taken there on his own. Once when I came there, the cousin had a cold. What a disappointment! No amusement park? I feel ashamed when I think about it now, but my uncle took me to the park and stood patiently watching me ride the merry-go-rounds and swing on the swings. It was winter and cold, and the park was almost empty. Maybe he even bought a ballon for me.

May he rest in peace. 

Happy New Year!

It's always a challenge to take up something you haven't done for a while, and with each day that goes it gets more and more of a challenge, and the worst thing you can do it come with a long and complicated explanation of why you have been so lazy all this time. Yes, I do have zillions of reasons, but I won't go into any of them. Let's just start twenty-ten afresh.

That said, the most logical thing to do on the first day of the new year is to look back. (No, it should have been on the last day of the year. On the first day of the new year you look forward. Bother!)

Anyway, 2009 has been in every respect an eventful year. We bought the house and moved, we got back our wonderful cat (I just can't believe I survived without her), we made the acquaintance of many new people like carpenters, gardeners, plumbers, electricians, tilers, gasmen (yes, I do know the Flanders and Swann song), not to mention the long chain of media companies. We feel much more appreciated by our friends who come to visit. All autumn, I felt I was running a B&B. Note: this is not a complain, but a statement of fact. We enjoy friends, and since we have become increasingly patriotic, we are proud to show them King's Chapel and Ely and more Ely, and Trinity and St John, and more Ely and more King's Chapel. I haven't become bored yet.

Work becomes more and more exciting as I learn more and start expressing my opinion at meetings, and although I haven't fully mastered the vocabulary I know SMT from MML. I am also a Homerton Fellow now. I get my free meals every week, and I have to work hard for them. I have managed to create a Research Centre which we will inaugurate in the beginning of February, and I am running a conference in September, something I once swore I'd never do again. But it is a bit like childbirth: after a while you forget the anguish. I did, on the other hand, participate in quite a few conferences, too many in fact, the latest just two weeks ago in Sweden (too far away from Stockholm to see the family). I got stuck in a snow storm – just because I had been boasting of the mild, sunny weather in Cambridge. There was snow chaos in Cambridge when I finally got home.

My new scholarly book came out in late summer, but I am more excited about my memoirs, to be released any day. I received an author copy some weeks ago, so I know the book exists. It was painful to write, but I am glad I did.

I went to Moscow in October, first time in six years, and I didn't tell anyone. I went for a school reunion. I think I will write separately about it.

In terms of hobbies, I have started making room boxes and am on my third right now, but perhaps it is also a topic for a separate entry. In addition I have taken drawing classes and joined the Faculty choir. What next?

On a more melancholy tone, a very close friend in Moscow died a few weeks ago. I don't think I have understood it yet.

Just in time to finish off the year I bought a new computer. I am getting to terms with it.

Page proofs of my life

I am reading page proofs. So what else is new?

I am reading page proofs of my memoirs. You would think that I knew my own text by heart, and I have already read the copy-edited version. But it is only when it comes to page proofs that a book becomes real. I am now releasing - have actually already released part of myself, for anyone to read about. It's not like publishing a scholarly book. It's not even like publishing a novel, which was very exciting in its own way. It is definitely not like publishing a cook book.

There are things in the memoirs that I have never told anyone before. There are parts that I have told many times to various audiences. There are parts that still hurt. There are parts that make me cry. Especially when reading page proofs. Because from now one, it is real.

Some previews have called the book an autobiography. It is not. It's memoirs. The difference is decisive.

Incidentally...

...we have just got a new grandchild.