Adjusting the Sails

A while ago, a calligrapher friend of mine gifted me the most beautiful card on which were written the words, ‘We cannot direct the wind but we can adjust the sails’. I taped this postcard to the green cupboard just above my kitchen sink and each time I went to open the door, the words would resonate in my head. As time went by, slowly and imperceptibly these words became my mantra. We all had to make changes to our lives last year. For some of us, those changes came easily and we learnt a lot about ourselves in the process. But for others, sailing in a new direction became perilous, especially as our boat turned away from the horizon and the endless dark and cavernous sea surrounded us.

I remember feeling quite daunted by how much time I had at my disposal. I would often wonder whether you could actually have too much time. Long days of little things sounded idyllic but in reality there were too many gaps in the day through which I could fall and become underwhelmed by nothingness. And then I recalled a quote from a television adaptation of Jane Eyre in which one of her step sisters advises, ‘If you divide each day into sections and perform some useful task to timetable, the day will be over before you know it’. This speech isn’t said in the book but for some reason it struck a chord with me at the time and got me thinking. They often say that your school days are the best days of your life, a sentiment you quickly dismiss when you’re young. Though as you get older and look back, you realise that the days weren’t just a dizzy haze of marmite sandwiches, the ‘must-have’ pencil cases from W.H.Smith and dust-gathered Oxford geometry sets, they were in fact full of purpose and direction. But more importantly, those days, like our rolled-up school skirts, became increasingly shorter. Perhaps that is what regiment does? It offers organisation and structure. So with this in mind, I set about drafting a daily timetable.

I began by devising three separate lists; what I needed to do each day, what I should do and lastly, what I wanted to do. The bones of the timetable had to incorporate one thing from each list. After this, I considered all of the other things, things that weren’t necessary but important for my morale.

I decided that one of the key things was to start the day with the right attitude and with that in mind, lesson one became getting dressed. I can actually hear you laughing so let me explain. I’ve often said on social media that making that extra effort in the morning can elevate the day. In my experience what you decide to wear each morning sets the tone for the day you will inevitably have. If you don your tatty lounging trousers encased with dried streaks of dog saliva and your expanding, shapeless t-shirt with remnants of yesterday’s pasta carbonara on it, then quite frankly your day will feel as unwashed and unloved as you. So every day I dried my hair properly, put on a touch of mascara, powder and blusher and wore the best parts of my wardrobe.

I knew I’d have to give one time slot a day to household chores. For me, cleaning is the school timetable equivalent of cross country on a day after heavy rain. Part of me thought why bother? It’s not as though anyone is coming round for tea. But I’ve always taken a great deal of pride in my home and I see it as a refection of me. So that was pencilled in as the second lesson; strategically positioned just before morning break!

Now if I sound as though I loathed PE at school, I actually didn’t. I was an efficient swimmer, a mean goal attack in netball and I was ferocious with a hockey stick. And whilst one could argue that with age my ‘contents may have settled in transit’, I still like to feel active outdoors. So with that in mind, lesson three became a walk or bike ride around the loch or on the country roads that surround our farm steading. And we were so blessed with the weather that we rarely missed our chance to get out.

After lunch, which was always eaten around the table, we would head out into the garden or over to the allotment. We Brits are a nation of gardeners. I was stunned to read that viewing figures for BBC Gardener’s World increased by 37.1% from 2.11 million to 2.90 million last year and although I was frustrated that I couldn’t get the supplies and seeds I wanted from my regular suppliers, I was heartened to think about all of the people around the United Kingdom suddenly planting bee-friendly flowers and cutting herbs and salads from recycled milk bottles.

And there is of course the social aspect of gardening too which often gets overlooked. People invariably assume it’s a solitary pastime, accompanied only by nagging doubt and a curious robin but actually I enjoyed far more conversations over my garden wall than I have in many other places. In fact, often my neighbour and I would meet over the rose hedge with a cup of coffee and share our gardening highs and lows. It was a similar situation over on the allotment. Walking past other plot holders, greeting them, sharing precious seedlings before putting the kettle on in our sheds.

My greatest gardening moment last year was when my tulips burst into bloom at home. It was the first time I had attempted Dutch planting (layering the bulbs at different depths) and I was thrilled with how well they’d grown. I shared so many photographs on social media, I’m sure my followers were fed-up with my tulip spam by the end of May. But just incase you missed them…

At about 4pm most days, I would come in from the garden and turn on my Instagram account. This was the last lesson of the day, not dissimilar to the library lesson at school; a time for reflection and inspiration. Social media became a lifeline for most of us during the lockdown. It offered us escapism from the monotony of our endless, repetitive days. It reminded us that we weren’t alone and that our struggles were the same as those of others. I tried to post something uplifting everyday but I always worried that my posts were insensitive. Was it right to post pretty pictures when so many people were grieving and suffering? I started signing off each post with the phrase, ‘We can do this folks, one day and one pretty picture at a time’. As soon as I saw other account holders signing off with this sentence, I knew that my account was helping rather than hindering.

But if I sound as though lockdown was one endless fairground ride, filled with laughter and care-free frivolity, I promise you, it wasn’t. Like all of you, we had our highs and lows.

I found last February very hard. The rain didn’t cease for a single day that month and I was frustrated by how little I could do. I was desperate to get back to Scone Palace in Perthshire, where I had started working the year before as a tour guide, a job I absolutely adored. But as we headed into March, the staff emails began to hint that the Covid pandemic may delay the opening of the palace in April. Then in June, I got the news that the family had decided not to open for the season. The decision was inevitable but it still floored me. I took quite a dip that day. My spirits plummeted and I turned away from the world for a while. We all crave more time but too much time is intimidating, it nudges at your composure and leaves you feeling discouraged and overawed.

And then of course there was the more pressing concern surrounding my husband’s job. To have only one of us working in the tourism industry was fine but to have both of our jobs reliant on the movement of people around the globe was unsettling to say the least. As an airline pilot and the main financial contributor to our daily lives, to say that we feared for our home at times is an understatement. We spent many an afternoon devising contingency plans, everything from delivery driving to opening up a Bed and Breakfast on the Isle of Mull. Then there were the smaller concerns, the ones that would creep up on you unannounced and fill you with foreboding. Things like heading out to the spartan, detached supermarket and fearing that the dog is going to overheat because his belly hair is scraping across the lawn!

But there were moments that made us laugh and on the whole, they outweighed those that made us feel unsettled. Whilst most of the nation was turning their browning bananas into loaves, Eliza was trying to master honeycomb. Let’s just say it took quite a few attempts and quite a few baking trays were sacrificed to the cause! Then she discovered a recipe for Rocky Road in my Hummingbird Bakery book, £30 worth of ingredients later and we were all floating on the mother of all sugar highs!

Then there was the Scrabble Championship. We take Scrabble very seriously in this house. No phones, no dictionary. If you can’t spell and define the word, it doesn’t go down on the board! We discovered some new television shows and revised the ones we had overlooked previously. We overdosed on Escape to the Chateau and Eliza got us both into Queer Eye. On the few rainy days, we would settle down to a Scandi Noir thriller with Sizzles curled up between us. Like so many pets, he got us through the darker days. We often joked that he’d become a therapy pet. If he refused to be cuddled, Eliza would remind him that giving affection was his only job in exchange for 4 luxurious beds dotted around the house, walks, treats and the exclusive use of an entire sofa!

So what did I learn about myself during this time? Well, there are the obvious things, things that I already knew but was reminded of daily. Things like not taking my freedoms for granted, appreciating my home and the countryside around me and of course, the health and comfort of my little family.

But there were surprising and unexpected things too. I had always convinced myself that I loved autumn and winter the most. In truth, I think this had a lot more to do with my self-esteem than the actual manifestation of the seasons themselves. The colder weather gave me the excuse to cover up my body, distorting my size and shape in a multitude of layers. The shorter, darker days permitted me to hibernate indoors for months on end. And yet when I look back through the photographs I took to document our lockdown days, I am struck by the light and colour in the images of summer. I am fully living in these pictures. I feel present in the moments they have captured. I have come to realise that there is a difference between hibernating in winter and allowing yourself to become insular and removed from the world. I am now a fully fledged summertime convert and whilst it may not always deliver the rain-free halcyon days of my childhood, it will I’m sure, continue to draw me out of myself.

I also began to realise that I’m far more curious than I thought I was. I am a self-confessed home body and although I don’t consider myself to be particularly introverted, I came to appreciate that lockdown was feeding that part of me which wants to withdraw and live unnoticed. Then suddenly, quite unexpectedly, I got the urge to travel. As the world was closing in around me and the horizon was settling at my garden gate, I wanted to push back and breathe in a different air. Out of the blue this urge to escape my physical and emotional boundaries took over and whilst most people were realising it was good to spend more time at home, I was contriving ways to get away! I started a Pinterest board on destinations I’d like to travel to. I ordered a stack of books from various destination authors and scoured Netflix for any programme that could teach me about another culture or landscape. Of course my husband just thought it was a response to the situation we were in but it’s nearly a year on and I’m still adding to that Pinterest page.

And so we are back where we started only this time there is hope. I am determined to come out of lockdown a better person, someone who is far more appreciative of the life she has been given. We all know that it is the irreplaceable things that are most precious to us but so too are the things that are abundant and can be returned. I have come to redefine what is truly precious, what is not to be wasted, squandered or treated carelessly. And as I start to adjust my sails and set a course for home, I shall bring the lessons I have learned with me.