A DAY OF SUDDEN SHOWERS

Away back to the Highlands (A series for three wednesdays)

A day of sudden showers, a hefty breeze; lots of sunshine and blue sky. I love days like this, such a change from the long dry days of the last month or so. A welcome return to the Scotland I know and am familiar with.

The last few days have been not so much dramatic as different and maybe a little odd.

I finished work at twelve on Friday and set off for the Highlands. Wendy and Louie pleaded with me in a mocking way, to stay, but their point was made, despite the smiles. I am away more than anyone else in the family, usually I don’t want to be away as I am off working, with no time for pleasure or long walks or musing but this time when Louie asked if I wanted to go away I couldn’t answer as she wanted. I did want to be away. To do the Moniack Mhor Writing Centre stuff on the Saturday, to see my friends, to get a chance to write and be by myself and finally to do the bit of work that I had to be in Inverness for in the first place, and well, that bit was a by- product of the weekend which helped the rest happen.

I hadn’t known it was the bank holiday when I agreed to go north and, initially, I had expected to be back on the Monday so I must admit I felt a bit guilty when I set off. My spirits were not high and the queue of cars and lorries going north along the A82 and Loch Lomond felt frustrating and irritating.

My mood when I go this way up the west coast until I cut east along the Great Glen to the east is usually optimistic and bright. It is a stunningly attractive route and I often stop to take photos but this time my thoughts slipped sideways into something bitter.

I was remembering my sudden phone appointment with my psychiatrist the day before. It was meant to be in person and at three thirty and I had been looking forward to it. She is only a locum and I have only seen her once but when I did see her, she seemed to see me very much as a person. I felt very present and very heard and now unexpectedly, at one thirty on the Thursday, I was on the phone with her. Instantly on guard as she said she would never challenge another doctor’s diagnosis but wanted to talk more about past episodes of illness.

It threw me a bit and immediately made me think she did indeed doubt my diagnosis. I know I don’t fit in the typical stereotype of schizophrenia and I too very much doubt my diagnosis. On the one hand I know I am utterly evil; a devil destroying the world and on the other when I pause to look at illness in the abstract, I think I probably have a personality disorder or Autism with a bit of weird thinking. However, I want the schizophrenia diagnosis very much. It is a comfort to me. When I am at my worst in my thoughts, it helps me say to myself that my identity is psychosis rather than pure malice. So, when she said this and tried to pry deeper, I felt apprehensive.

When she suddenly asked if my mood was lower than my manner implied and I tried to explain how I feel, how I live my life, I was surprised when she tried to move me on and stop me speaking about it and got me to agree that the constant performance I do is a good thing and not utterly exhausting.

Then, talking about my drinking, she first said the only way I will ever reduce it is if I really want to; not to do it for my family or Wendy, only to change her mind later and say that is in itself a good reason after all.

Finally, when I talked about Calum, my son, she said she had had no idea I had a son. It was a meeting in which she hurried me along, didn’t really want to give me time to talk and did not really listen to me.

I left if feeling out of sorts; winded by something unexpected.

After it, I went back to work to forget all about it but in the evening I couldn’t settle . My throat was doing its hollow, clenched, anxious, thing, I wanted to be alone and far from everyone and at the same time wanted to be with my family and did none of it very well at all.

I had thought of filling in my emotion diary for my psychologist but couldn’t get the energy and now on this journey north I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I think the worst of the feelings was that sense of betrayal when I realised she knew almost nothing about me, didn’t even know that by far the worst thing in my life was when my son stopped contact with me. But also; that being hurried along. I was, as I often fear, just an appointment that needs completed and got out the way.

I wasn’t been heard, there was, after all, no connection and if there was empathy or compassion it was in the abstract.

I thought this as I drove up towards Rannoch moor and then as I came into Glencoe and as I drove through Fort William and Spean Bridge. My lunch sat on the floor and I did not want it. I thought, how in my talk at the British Academy later this year, I will talk about love and belonging and connection and how I assume, most of the time, that it is just time and busyness that stops this in mental health services and I reluctantly realised it really is just a job for many people. They cultivate a more or less approachable manner, but it is just a veneer to help them do their jobs well. It made me sad and lonely.

As I drove, I wondered what I would do when my diagnosis changes and they stop treating me and I wondered why my psychiatrist asked me over and over again what it was I wanted from her. It felt like such a strange question. I am not sure I do want anything from her, apart from kindness. I have no choice but to see her and do not really expect anything at all. I long ago gave up expecting anything.

It must be way back in my twenties that I still had expectations of them. Since then I see them because they tell me to see them.

It made me very sad. I hardly stopped to take pictures or look at the view. It wasn’t until I got to Loch Lochy that I pulled over into a car park and finally found I had enough of an appetite to eat my sandwiches. A man drew up in a white Jaguar and leaped out to walk by the shore and talk excitably on the phone. He smiled at me when he passed me and said he had never been here before and that the Highlands were beautiful and that he had left his family in Manchester for a few days and was originally from Lithuania and was on his way to Skye and loving every moment. Then the man who had been trying to do something with a pole to the cars stacked on his truck, asked if I could stand back and check the pole was clearing the cars. I told him it was, but he carried on checking anyway which amused me. I would have been the same. Presumably at some stage he would go under a low bridge and was not convinced his cars were low enough and in his anxiety needed to check again and again.

By the time I drove off I was slightly happier and by the time I got to Fort Augustus my thoughts were less intense. By the time I turned left at Drumnadrochit to go over the hill to Muir of Ord I had stopped thinking of it all and was instead looking forward to seeing my friends, Andy and Frances.

I arrived a bit late. Fran was away cooking a meal at Moniack Mhor for the young people who I would be meeting with Andy the next day. Andy had made Paneer curry for us, for when Frances got home but said she would be stressed because days like these always lasted longer than expected.

Their house, their life is sort of idyllic to me. A long, long, croft house that they have built on over the years. When they first bought it, a substantial portion of it was still an old Byre. Now it is surrounded by poppies and herbs, the flagstones have thyme in the gaps, the fields butting up to it are full of sheep and lambs. They have plum trees and rescued hens and the veggie patches and inside it is just lovely. Two sitting rooms from when they were using it as an Air B&B, a lovely room for me up in the cambered roofs and a view over the fields to the hills.

Andy gave me a hug and told me their cat had been run over that morning. I did not know how to reply because I know full well that a death like that, while not that of a human is a sad, sad, thing, not to be shrugged off with an ‘Oh that’s life!’ sort of gesture and yet we do not have the room or culture to let us do much more than get on with life as if it really is just a minor inconvenience.

We went for a walk in the woods with Andy and his daughter’s dogs who were staying the night and, walking behind him, I tried to tell which of his legs was the one with the artificial knee from his recent operation. He picked comfrey as we approached home. Apparently, it stinks if soaked in water and yet the mixture is a wonderful fertiliser for tomato plants.

Back at the house the expected rain still hadn’t arrived. I sat outside on a bench and phoned someone, my mum or Wendy, I can’t quite remember. And as I spoke on the phone Andy came out with a glass of tonic and black current gin that he had made himself, the gin that is. It was delicious.

Later we sat side by side in the garden as the dogs rushed around chasing each other.

Frances had been promised a gin on arrival home and while we were idly contemplating standing beside the road with a tea towel over one arm and a drink on a silver plate, she got home, prompting Andy to dash inside for her drink with orders for me to detain her till he had poured it.

We had a lovely welcome hug and the sadness of the day became apparent as Fran talked about the disaster of her cooking up at Moniack Mhor (the writing centre) because she just couldn’t concentrate on it with the thought of her dead cat. In the end it became quite funny with each mistake on the dairy free or the gluten free portion and even funnier when her colleague texted her to say how wonderful the food she thought was awful had turned out to be.

It was strange to learn that the road outside the house used to be very different, a cat would have been fine to wander along it at will in the past. Once when their children were young they had ducks which would fly a hundred yards or so up it and then slowly waddle down to the house through the rest of the day.

Time passes quickly nowadays. I remember when I first started visiting Andy and Frances we would stay up way into the small hours talking and drinking. We still drink a lot but by ten, one or other of us is likely to be nodding off, to the relief of everyone else who also wants away to their beds.

Up in my room the rain had started and I lay in my bed listening to it. I love being in a house safe from the wild wind and rain. It makes me feel cosy and looked after.

In the morning Andy and Frances were off to take part in a demonstration against what is happening in Palestine. I would have quite liked to join them but am never sure if I would be welcome as, although I think what Israel is doing is almost incomprehensibly awful; I still think it has a right to exist. I still live a naïve life of hoping for harmony and peace even though I can’t imagine that being possible for generations to come.

I thought of the young care experienced people, away over in Moniack, preparing for their celebration the next day. I had heard some had been in tears at the ending of the project and this fell awkwardly on my conscience. A wonderful project, do all things like this have to come to an end? Is it especially hard for care experienced people when it stops, I assume it is. And could we have raised the funds to keep it going anyway? I don’t know but doubt it, Care experience was a trend recently, now less so. It is sad how desperately important things become fashionable. Flash into bright wonderful projects and then fade away as the funds fade too, only to arrive at the latest fashionable subject. Had we done well by the additional funds we had raised for young people to get involved in creative expression more generally? I didn’t know and had played little part in it. I didn’t know if by giving thanks the next day I would be providing false words of thanks. I did not really know if I knew enough about what the staff do at Moniack Mhor to act as a board member in situations like this.

Luckily, I also spoke to Wendy and Louie before going to sleep. They were snuggled up on the couch, with Louie almost upside down beside her Mum, both wild and silly on my phone screen. Full of laughter, full of nonsense. What a lovely way to finish the day that was. the difficulty of my drive and the thoughts I had fell away to my sleep in a comfy bed in a lovely room.

At the other end of the house Andy and Fran would have been cuddling each other with the dogs on the bed besides them; remembering their cat, hopefully able to sleep, to relax a bit and get some peace.

Thank you so much for reading this. Moniack Mhor is where some of the chapters of START and Blackbird Singing came together. Do visit their website and have a look at the Creativity and Care project. They do fantastic work. It is such a privilege to be a Board Member