Gasses gather inside you as if your own personal air balloon is being inflated

This plane is far too full. Given the many precautions of the airport with careful separation of passengers by means of floor signs, sealed off areas, seats taped over to enforce distancing and even the queueing policy and masks mandatory there was a sense of these people know how to make this Covid-safe space. But even in the airport, despite all appearances, there were obvious flaws. Every single hand cleansing dispenser was empty. I knew because I’m paranoid enough to insist on using them all. That should’ve given me a heads up that all was not what it seemed. However, it was only when I entered the departure lounge that everything went really pear-shaped. My gate was absolutely packed with the queue snaking right around the entire hall. People were trying to keep a safe distance but the room was just not big enough. 

Then, we were jammed into the airport buses, on route to the plane, like sardines. Gone was any pretence of social distancing. We were packed far too tightly to permit even a bulky handbag to separate us. I consoled myself with the thought that the plane would be better. After all, the last time I flew on this route, in Covid times, there were only 16 people on the whole plane. I actually managed to stretch out and sleep across three vacant seats for the first time in years. Not this time! The plane rapidly filled to the brim. Obviously, being a Christmas flight, many were returning to Dublin for the festive period. I initially thought I would be the only fortunate person on the plane to have vacant seats on either side of me. Unfortunately, once the door of the plane closed there was a rapid reshuffling and a man took one of the empty seats in my row. I briefly contemplated the social etiquette of pointing out he should sit in the seat indicated by his ticket. However, since there was by now a massive reseating going on all over the plane I decided making a fuss was not in order. At least I didn’t have the chap two rows ahead beside me. He was wearing a mask so small it did not cover his mouth or nose, more of a chin strap. Who does he think he is fooling? Never mind I put my head back and try to relax. The stewards came around to take the food order and I politely declined. I have purchased an expensive FFP3 mask for this flight and I’m not risking removing it to either drink or eat. But darn it the people all around me are suddenly removing their masks so they can stuff their faces. Perhaps I should just relax after all I have had Covid already in May. 

On that last trip, I had flown to Ireland from Malta and brought a packed lunch to eat on the plane during the journey. After the flight, I got onto the bus for the long journey to Belfast. On that particular last leg of the journey, I did not feel at all well. In fact, by the time it arrived in Belfast, outside the Europa hotel, I barely managed to stagger off the bus before vomiting on the pavement. This startled me as I rarely ever vomit. As I’ve mentioned before, even in the face of food poisoning (a dodgy Chinese family meal) all vomited but my dad and I.  Then, when sailing with friends in rough weather, who were vomiting in unison either side of me, I managed to still enjoy my Mars bar. So, it was weird for me to feel so bad. I recovered once I had emptied my stomach. But within two weeks my mum and I both had Covid. Did I catch it on the plane? Somehow two weeks seems too long. Who knows, it could have been from a supermarket trip, getting petrol for the car, a neighbour who came too close to talk.   I’ll never know but Covid was horrid. I had a mild but nasty period but my poor 87-year-old mum was eventually hospitalised and had to have oxygen. Thankfully she fought her way back to health despite her age, damaged lungs and asthma and came home safely. Mind you, both of us are convinced our brains are just not the same. 

So, the reason I’m a bit paranoid on this plane is because I’m heading once again to be with my mum and I’m frankly terrified I’ll pick up the virus on route. The science is rather vague about how long antibodies and T cells remain in your system after you’ve been exposed to the virus and recovered. A few months was mentioned initially but then it seemed to depend on the severity of the original infection. Those who with the milder symptoms seem to lose their immunity faster. Then, there’s also vagueness about whether you yourself could be immune but still carry the virus to others. Just the possibility of that has generated a longing for 2m between me and all my neighbours on this flight. The younger generation seems much more relaxed about this disease. The young man behind me is chatting up a pretty girl in the seat beside him. They have that excited nervous first conversation, not exactly flirty, but each wanting to put their best foot forward. I’m wishing they would talk less as they’re too close to me. 

There are only two elderly people on this flight and I can tell they are panicking. Both wear a visor and a mask to protect themselves, a smart move I should have thought of. When the old man had entered the plane he had started a heated argument with a young man with a crewcut seated in 1A. The elderly man was sure this upstart was sitting in his seat and argued loudly while hitting his boarding pass with a red pointed finger. The air steward intervened as the young man searched for his boarding pass on his phone. It took time for the truth to emerge as the elderly man behind his mask and visor couldn’t hear the steward very well. It turned out his boarding ticket was in row three not row one and he and his grey-haired wife were eventually persuaded to move on down the plane to their real seats. In the middle of the confusion, his wife took a severe cramp in her calf and had to stop and rub it while groaning in pain. I have real sympathy with this getting older. Along with more pain, it makes mistakes more likely. There really should be compassion for the elderly. Remembering to wear masks is tricky once you get past a certain age. You can easily forget. 

In Malta, masks are mandatory everywhere outdoors and I have managed to get a block from home before remembering to pull a mask from my bag. Why is it so tricky? It’s because it’s foreign. The younger generation can adapt to change but older people have their life long habits engraved in brains of cement.  When you periodically lose your train of thought, can’t find that word and miss place inanimate objects with depressing regularity then obeying brand new regulations is really tough. There is a video of a pensioner online, entering a supermarket and mistaking a drink dispenser for an alcoholic hand spray and pouring the brightly coloured sugar drink over both palms and then rubbing in the sticky stuff earnestly. One’s heart leaps in real sympathy. When they hand out fines for not wearing a mask I think old age should be a valid excuse! 

Travelling had already become harder, even before Covid hit and was becoming very tiring. The distance covered by travellers in the airport has become longer, time standing in queues in steep stairways adds to the torture. The steps on a Ryanair aircraft are rickety and narrow with steps that are smaller than normal-sized feet. You end up coming down the steps on your heels with most of your foot projecting out mid-air. The whole structure moves like a rickety ladder and there’s no room to carry a suitcase by your side. Instead, you have to hold it in front of you pulling you forward dangerously over your toes. The fact that these ladders fold into the plane has to be convenient for the airlines but it’s a real liability for the elderly/pregnant/parent with small children. 

Another couple in front of me is also courting across the aisle. I suspect young people are desperate to socialise. Planes are replacing nightclubs, pubs and other social venues. We older ones avoid such unnecessary exposure to germs.  The young are excited to have these hours to get to know someone new at last. I cannot blame them. After all, they are young and feel invincible. Their immune systems are humming along nicely. Fighting off infections like crack troops. Ours are a withered bunch who have been whittled away by chronic conditions. Our systems often already need medication to keep our troops in line and in order.  These elderly troops seem less vigilant and effective.  I can remember getting deep cuts in my knees, when younger, and they healed so quickly. Healed and left no scars. Now marks remain for years and can even grow to form deep creases. Opportunistic growths appear in unlikely places and these old bodies view these invaders as bedfellows that just have to be endured. Decisions are sometimes made to rip such opportunistic growths off a shoulder or back but need to be weighed with the scar that will be left. Deciding to go for the scar or just ignore this new tenant have to be thought through.  In fact, with time you are a bit embarrassed by your battlefield body.  Once a nurse was worried by a huge bleeding sore on my forearm when I had decided this particular growth had outgrown my tolerance for it.  On my next visit to a health clinic, a different nurse was horrified by the size of an unsightly growth on my wrist.  As I made my way home I was trying to work out which had caused more distress in medical staff.  To rip off or leave alone, difficult to decide?

The other change that age brings is that you are more sensitive to stress.  You’d think with experience you’d be able to weather difficulties better.  But the truth is with age you long for peace and quiet and toxic atmospheres corrode your wellbeing.  Unexpected stress freaks you out.  As do last-minute changes or having to rush because you are late.  Responsibilities weigh more heavily.  You sweat over grandchildren.  Worry about their safety, fear you will fail them through inattention or carelessness.  Knowing how tricky inanimate objects have become, like jar lids that won't open, you are freaked out by these active strong-willed characters.  Their minds are like quicksilver and you feel like a heavy-footed cart horse.  These bones don’t move so fast anymore and these old brains don’t process thoughts so well.  There are benefits. Strangely emotions grow stronger with age.  A beautiful landscape can move us to tears.  As can a child’s smile or a sweet memory of an old friend.

Sleep changes. When you are young you can do without sleep all night. Function pretty well all the next day before collapsing the next night. When you are old, sleep becomes something you keep track off like a bank balance. Every morning you will enquire of everyone you live with if they slept well. It is a subject of interest to you as sleeping has become a hit or miss affair. No more total collapse into a blissful full night’s sleep. Instead, bladder trips pepper the night and often sleep does not follow these outings. Then the night shift of bedroom roof inspection begins.  Tired of the horrible thoughts that bubble up in a sleep-deprived mind I generally get up and have breakfast at 3 am. With a full belly sometimes sleep comes as an unexpected desert. With such varied experiences at night no wonder the elderly have daily conversations about sleep. And that doesn’t even cover the dreams. In old age, you can find yourself back in stress-inducing situations that years ago you might have faced. But now, at this stage in life, the stress is hyper experienced and unbearable.  You wake up traumatised by an experience you manage to wade through with difficulty in your prime but is now played in your dream as an awful sequel. When an older person asks you with genuine concern ‘Did you sleep well?” Know in what context they ask.  They know what a bad night feels like, the emotions that rip open wounded hearts. So, out of love, they want to be reassured that your sleep was sound and blissful. It pleases them to know someone is getting a good night’s sleep.

My romantic neighbours behind me are on their second meal of this flight. They consume vast quantities of drink that we older travellers would never challenge our bladders with. These young people after hours of flight look remarkably fresh. It reminds me of two friends of mine who went into the local maternity ward at the same time and gave birth on the same day. Amused by the synchronicity of this event, photos were taken of the two friends with their new babies on the ward. The young mother in her 20’s looked like a model in her nightgown with a freshly flushed complexion glowing with happiness. My 43-year-old older friend held her baby like an anchor that was too heavy to hold and looked like she had been through 20 rounds of a vicious heavyweight boxing match.  Even her hair seemed freaked out. The contrast between the two mothers in the photograph had us all roaring in laughter and sympathy. As I look around this plane I can see a similar phenomenon.  The young look exactly as they did when they entered this plane. We oldies look like we’ve been dragged through bushes backwards for several nights. Eyelids are closing independently of their owners and mouths seem to be pulled by gravity into grimaces that speak of back pain that has reached intolerable proportions. Old bones shift uncomfortably and long to be flat on orthopaedic mattresses. Cramps come and go in unlikely places and vague indigestion has begun to brew. Gasses gather inside you as if your own personal air balloon is being inflated.  The noisy happy flirtatious chat of excited young people has become like dentist drills in our heads. We admire their energy and commitment but long for our own oblivion in a deep sleep. Our bank balances are running extremely low and being polite to others takes incredible effort. Excited chitchat from youngsters is like fingernails on the blackboard. 

But we must endure.  That’s what age teaches you. Patience with yourself and others, the flaws, the worries and the pains. It’s a hard-won quality and it makes you wish for all onboard this plane a safe journey and a good night sleep at the end of it. Because isn’t that what we all long for at the end of these lives of ours.

Patchwork quilt journeys and lessons learned

It seems surreal to be sitting back in Malta on my favourite bench, enjoying the sound of the sea and blue skies above, after an absence of almost 3 months. Travelling leaves little time for writing. Family time must be savoured wholly not crammed in between tasks. At least when I travel that's the mode that seems to operate best for me.

Now I sit and digest the experience of the past months. Savouring time with my mum in Northern Ireland where the pace of life is slow. There is a focus on gardening, eliminating weeds and tending borders. Her home is ordered and tidy with even cupboard contents and drawers all lined up with military precision. There is a never-ending battle with dirt and grime but she has fought these foes for seven decades and has honed her techniques. I looked on in amazement as she tackles the tasks of the day. At almost 85 she does not measure her energy levels and recalibrates the duties of the day. No, she looks at the goals needing to be accomplished and just goes and goes until they are completed. Even if afterwards she has to collapse in her armchair, it is with a deep sense of satisfaction – her tasks completed.

I look on in amazement. I am not like this. A book, a thought, a walk comes into my orbit and I down tools, instantly distracted. My tidiness is purely superficial. Examine the cupboard or a drawer in my home and you will find evidence of the chaos that permeates this universe.

Perhaps my writing is also my chaos. This trip has fuelled a thousand thoughts but none of them fully formed. I'll share some of them in the hope that they will give a patchwork quilt of these months.

A close friend has spent weeks in a mountain house in southern France. Situated in an idyllic hamlet overlooking spectacular views, it has proved the perfect antidote to years in the Paris city centre. Normally hard-working and ever up to speed with the virtual world he has had to cope with no Wi-Fi. The shocking change of place and pace from a hectic dirty city to the silence of the hillside and the buzz of insects and happy birds. He took to whittling, carving odd-shaped wooden light sabres and became engrossed in moss removal from old stone flagstones.  Both, he told me were the pastimes of paradise. Interspersed with meals and coffee on the table positioned outside to soak up the views.  Reading books was the main entertainment and with what excitement did he share their contents. Afterwards, I sighed in remembrance of days past when a slower pace of life allowed us time to digest what we read. Not this fetid immediacy of media assault online. 

The permanent indigestion of too much input dulls the senses. It's good to be reminded of other times, other places, other ways.

My other joy during this trip was to spend time with my grandsons in England. After two months of endless rain all summer in Northern Ireland it was shocking to discover that Folkestone still had proper summers. Even in September, the sun shone and school kids wore shorts to school. As my son his wife both work in London, my mission this trip was to accompany my four-year-old grandson in his first three weeks of big school.  I also had his two-year-old brother to care for. It was somehow weird pushing a toddler in the buggy and holding the hand of a small school child again after three decades. Given that I hated school myself it was with some trepidation I took on this epic task. Fortunately, Charlie made the job much easier being almost eager to run through the school gates. Other parents or guardians had weeping youngsters to disengage from while Charlie never even looked back. He explained patiently to his younger brother that he was going to school and would be back in three hours to see him, so he was not to worry. Then he’d turn on his heel and scurry into school.

I was left with ample opportunity to notice the tears unshed in parents’ eyes as they faced this cruel test - the first separation. Some mothers stayed on, ages after the school gates had closed in case a familiar head appeared above the window ledge in the classroom.

One father had adopted a prolonged waving goodbye ritual to his daughter.  She was a  tiny fragile figure who waddled slowly and reluctantly towards the classroom door. He climbed the school gate so that she could still see him waving even from a distance. She would occasionally stop, shoulders slumped in apparent despair and turn to look back sadly at her dad. This would engender a huge arm waving movement and shouts of  “have a grand day Leanne, I love you!! “ Not easy to do, halfway up a six-foot metal gate. His forced good humour and bonhomie would end with her entering the classroom. Then, he'd suddenly be silent all emotion leaving his face. He would drop down from his perch on the gate and walk hastily away. It's hard for dads, mostly it is mothers at the school gates and they tend to chat in bunches with other mothers. Comparing notes on how first days at school are doing. Remembering coats, water bottles and school bags. Hugging their children, they reluctantly let them go.

Fathers tended to festoon children rather like preparing them for battle. School bag over head and shoulder, coat over the other arm as if supplying armaments for the day ahead.  I noticed one morning, an older boy (P3?) waiting for the school gates to open. A crowd of older students stood waiting impatiently laughing together.   The P3 student was tall for his age and had his foot on his scooter. Strange that they have come back into fashion those odd-looking contraptions from my childhood. 

As he waited, he rocked to and fro on the scooter. A little bit overweight with thick glasses he seemed absent-minded. He didn't even notice a group of mothers behind him waiting with the youngest children hand-in-hand, his scooter almost hit one mother behind him and she scolded him whispering disapprovingly to the other mothers beside her. Suddenly, the scooter slipped up the gate. Perhaps the pushing crowd put him off balance and he fell awkwardly landing full weight on top of his own scooter. The crowd stood back while he jumped to his feet, face almost against the gate not moving. It had been a bad fall and the scooter was damaged but we all stood as a fellow statues watching his ramrod still back. Then a huge builder type man pushed through the crowd and picked up the broken scooter and asked the boy, “Are you alright mate?”  Immediately the boy burst into tears of pain and the man put his hand on his shoulder and lead him away to the open area away from the crowd. After the children had rushed through the now opened gate into school, I spotted the father kneeling examining the damage to the scooter and talking soothingly with the P3 pupil.  I then realised the boy was not even his son. His own son, a small reception class pupil, was standing patiently beside his dad. I could see the older P3 boy was calmer now and all three of them walked together to the now deserted school gate. 

I felt rather ashamed that in that sea of mummies and grandmothers, including me,  it was a father who saw the hurt in that small straight back facing the gates and took decisive compassionate action. It is probably in such small deeds like this real education takes place for all of us.

“Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom.”

— BAHÁ’U’LLÁH

Making Failure An Art Form - or falling with style

I have come to momentous moment in my life. At this stage, when there are no longer children around to focus on it is time to examine oneself with clarity.  To see where I have come from, where exactly I am now and hopefully to look forward to the path ahead. It is a eureka moment indeed to reflect on life. What one has achieved, or hasn’t.  What choices lead to which results. It looks a bit like an underground tube station map. There are main lines along which one has spent a disproportionate amount of energy and time. Then, there are the numerous dead ends. Lines that seem to beckon appealingly but end nowhere. Here are a few.

My unproductive knitting hobby. I never managed to finish single item. I even had a knitting machine with which I wrestled but produced nothing of value.  Looking back at primary school we had to knit a cushion cover. It took an entire year. Those were the days when the whole class would sit obediently knitting in complete silence for an hour a day. Educationalists would hold their heads in outrage at the waste of time it entailed.  The lack of academic content. Question the learning objectives and value of skills acquired. Point out the demanded silence was a form of abuse against talkative young eager minds. But if I'm honest I enjoyed knitting more than almost all my other classes.  There was a meditative silent stillness in the room. Just a click click of needles. You knew the task. The method was straightforward and when you returned to your work you could see visible progress each day. It achieved something. Your brain could find a stillness in the moment.  In the year, I almost finished my cushion cover. My tendency to knit tighter and tighter until the needles could barely get through the stitches meant I had a lot of ripping out and re-doing to do. My cushion cover which started almost a foot wide gradually narrowed down to 2/3 of its original width. This was disappointing but accepted as part of the journey. The knitting class became a metaphor for the rest of life. Sometimes you make a pigs ear out of things and have to go back to fix it. It's okay you get better each time you repeat something. Spotting a slip earlier rather than later helps. Missing a single stitch is not an option. You have to keep each and every one to have success. Don't waste time comparing your cushion cover with others. You'll be devastated by how far ahead they’ve got and what nicer colours they’ve chosen.  

My failed martial arts ability. Fuelled by movies I was convinced that I could get my black belt and go through life confident in every situation. It did make me fitter but I got no further than the yellow belt. That is not something one can boast or swagger about.  The kata were wonderful. I would go to an empty gym near my home and put on a cassette player (yes, that far back) and do the karate moves hypnotically until it felt as meditative as the knitting. I did not like spar fighting. It involves being punched and kicked and I was fearful of both. For some reason I was usually paired with a curly haired tough looking girl who would fight arms flailing like a paddle steamer round and round. It was impossible to block those blows as we been taught in karate and so I'd spend an inordinate amount of the fight running backwards around the mat. Fortunately, she wasn’t fit and usually ran out of steam before she could do me much harm. I learnt a lot. I do not like to be hurt and did not enjoy hurting others. So it was worth all the years of classes and is a somewhat valuable dead-end.

My inability to lose weight. I have kept diaries almost all my life and at the top from the very earliest I have recorded my weight in stones and pounds with despair. I look back at those weights with longing and wonder why on earth I obsessed about it.  If I knew then what I know now, I would have chilled out about being 10 stone. Now I dream of being under 11 stone. Elderly aunts used to say I had big bones, it drove me mad as an adolescent. I reckoned there were big dinosaur girls like me and other tiny fragile girls. I with my big bones obviously belong to the former group. These tiny birdlike aunts belonged to the latter category. I often broke things, handles off doors, cups, even windows and was terrified I might injure these elderly visitors with their matchstick arms, legs and necks. But they were tougher then they seemed and made me feel guilty and awkward. When today, I look at magazine covers of slim women staring out with razor cheekbones at slender bodies, I realise that such shapes are more appreciated than my broader lines. As a tall,sturdy, Yorkshire police woman friend of mine once moaned “if I'm reincarnated, I'm coming back as one of those butterfly women whose cases others have to carry!”  While there is genuine despair at the yearly expansion of quantity, regarding fat, perversely I'm infinitely grateful for being able to haul heavy gas cylinders up flights of stairs. After all quality (strength) trumps quantity (of fat content) every time.

My last dead end is an inner critical voice.   This strident voice has been heard echoing  through the decades. “You'll never pass, achieve or amount to anything!” How many initiatives died a death under the whithering machine gun of its cutting comments. Instead of pressing on to finish that knitting, get that black-belt or lose that weight I succumbed to that sneering tone of derision from within and gave up. If someone else voiced such hurtful jibes I'd respond with righteous contempt. But when that voice comes from deep inside your own brain your heart goes out of any enterprise. So having reflected on the past with clarity, my eureka moment was finding out that every path and turn has been plagued by an unnecessarily negative companion. As a dear friend Eleni announced when she returned from a weeks holiday in Paris with her husband. “He spent the whole time complaining about the price of coffee, bread, train tickets, taxis and the hotel room. As we walked down the Champs-Elysees, he whined about missing his own bed!”  She decided that this was the last holiday she would ever go with him. When I tried to remonstrate with her she became more emphatic.  “I mean it, if he's going to heaven I'm choosing hell. If he is going to Hell then I better be in heaven. In fact, heaven is going anywhere where he is not.” Her exasperation was excessive but she made a point that resonates.  So on careful reflection I’ve decided to be equally callous with my inner critic.  It is not a voice of humility nor does it provide an analytical perspective. It has to go! How to shut it up, is the tricky thing? At least, the direction ahead is clear. I'm excited about the future that could be mine, if like a stubborn nose polyp, this useless vocal appendage can be excised at last.