4ams

Another even-numbered year, another Taylor Swift album, which for a Swiftie adds a sense of completeness that the odd ones just don’t have*. After a few listens I was hooked on Midnights’ dark riffs and synth-bass, extracting from the moody, murky mix, a few memorable lines (’it’s me, hi!’) to sing episodically, whenever the impulse took me.

Apart from the killer one-liner the album offers another interesting takeaway - the concept of a particular time of day that holds significance for an individual. Midnights as the name makes obvious, contains songs all written to embody different midnights in Swift’s life and just as you’d expect from an album about the witching hour, the songs are dark and intimate. Like many great concept albums, it provokes reflection in the listener: what is my midnight, what happened during my midnights, and how have my midnights changed over the years?

Having been a shift worker for a third of my life, and now with a nine-month-old, I am well acquainted with most hours of the day and night. However, the time that most speaks to me is not midnight, but 4am. I haven’t seen that many of them, but the ones I have seen have been memorable.

Nowadays I see far more 4ams than previously. That hour often coincides with the baby’s early morning feed, something that cannot be put off, as the wailing reaches a pitch where it overrides the monitor and comes straight through the walls. I fumble my way to the baby’s room, everything protesting at getting out of bed when it is still dark and cold.

Earlier in the year, in those truly newborn days, I would see 4am, as well as every other even hour of the night, as I tried to follow the recommended two-hourly feeding regime. But 4am was special. It was the hour when the sky started to lighten, a sign that a long night of frustrated feeding and crying was over and it would soon be another summer day with this beguiling new addition to my life.

That early-morning sense of hope has deeper roots though. 4am reminds me of my very first few shifts as a doctor, when I, anxious and ignorant, was left manning a surgical ward overnight. This start as a new doctor coincided with the height of summer and as terrifying as those night shifts were, the glimpse of a lightening sky from 4am onwards would be a hopeful sign that the shift would soon end.

Night shifts have haunted me throughout my career and they have not always occurred during the bright summer months. Grim midwinter nights on the medical wards usually saw the worst fatigue set in the early morning, but 4am was when the tide turned. In the worst of the pandemic, 4am marked the reopening of the hospital’s coffee stand, which always shut for an hour’s break at 3am. Small rituals like getting coffee as soon as the bleary-eyed barista emerged, became a beacon during the most awful shifts imaginable. 4am, be it dark or light, always proved to be the shift’s solstice.

It would be hard to imagine the coming extremes from the 4ams of my university years. It wasn’t often I had to pull an all-nighter for work but on the rare occasion I battled a deadline overnight, 4am would mark the final push of words as I raced to submit an essay for the morning. The motivational playlists from those times chronicle high-energy pop tempered with power ballads, the auditory equivalent of a speedball, to get me through those frantic last hours in a blaze of Bonnie Tyler and Britney.

Memorable, but in a different way, were the university 4ams of nights out and end of year balls. By this point the heels would long be off and the search for a bolstering bacon butty would begin. These were different dawns, ones that were meant to hold the quintessential university experience, but actually betrayed the fact that most of us were more young, than adult. Aching feet and bodily fatigue meant that these nights for me, were more wearying than energising. 4am would see me crawling back into bed, grateful for oblivion after 20 hours of consciousness.

And before that? 4ams as a child were rare occasions, usually coinciding with an early morning flight. I can still feel that jarring process of waking when I would normally be in the Mariana Trench depths of childhood sleep, brushing my teeth in a fugue state and then being bundled into a still-cold car to go to the airport for the 8am flight. Somehow my mother would already be fully functional throughout this process, something I would look at with incredulity.

But now, I inhabit that role. After I put the baby down after the 4am feed I find it hard to go back to bed. There is something enticing about those quiet, pre-dawn hours when the rest of the household sleeps. Making the first cup of tea or folding the laundry has a meditative quality at this time. If God is to be found, it will be in the early hours of the morning.

As the year turns, it is natural to look to the future and try to anticipate what is to come. As a child, I don’t know if I could have predicted the importance of 4am, an hour mostly dedicated to sleep. We have no idea what things will come to hold significance in our lives. Like a conversation with a loved one, which unknowingly becomes the last, life is full of everyday events that take on greater meaning over time. I don’t know what my future 4ams will bring, but if the past is anything to go by, they will be special.

*8 out of the 10 Taylor Swift studio albums have been released in even numbered years.

I am my hair

I have been told that motherhood is a case of knowing what to let slide. Be it the dishes in the sink or the overflowing laundry bin, things can wait until you have more time. I’d like to think that’s the reason it took me six and a half months to get round to booking a haircut, but it’s more likely that I was just disorganised. Seeing that I had enough time during baby naps to mainline the second season of Bridgerton in a single day, I probably had enough time to call up and nip down to my local hairdresser.

Be that as it may, half a year later, I was looking forward to a trip to the hairdressers and finally, some self-care. A fresh haircut, I imagined, would do wonders for my sense of self-esteem, which had suffered with the physical transformation of pregnancy. As I entered the chic establishment I tried to ignore the ill-looking creature reflected in their many mirrors. Soon, at least, this creature would have great hair.

It all started out so normally. As usual, the stylist took my coat, asked me about what I wanted done to my hair and offered me a drink. The trouble started when we came to the wash. As I lay back, my neck crooked at that uncomfortable angle unique to the hairdressers, the comments started.

“Your hair is so thick isn’t it?” she said.

It’s true, I have thick hair.

“Gosh, it must be so difficult to deal with.”

Not really. I countered with some comments about the benefits of having thick hair.

“Oh my gosh, it’s sooo thick,” the stylist went on, and not in a positive way. Cue more comments about thick hair, how difficult it must be and something about comparing it to a lion’s mane.

This is not uncommon unfortunately. Hairdressers, not used to hair as thick as mine, have often made comments about it. This time, however, I did not shrug it off; I shut down and silently raged. I refused the hairdresser’s attempts to reengage me and opted for full passive-aggression instead.

A cut and blowdry can feel like an eternity when there’s a chill in the air. The hairdresser picking up on the vibe, gave up on smalltalk and called a colleague over to help. So, with two people attacking my hair with absurdly large barrel brushes I unpicked my thoughts. Why did the hairdresser’s comments, inane as they were, hurt so much?

Perhaps because my hair is inescapably part of me. Although it can be manipulated into silky locks, the underlying structure, as it grows out from the root, is wiry and coarse. I cannot change that. To dislike my hair is to dislike something inherent about me, like disliking my liver or my pancreas. But unlike viscera, my hair is a visible representation of my genes and therefore, my background. Criticising my hair can be as personal as criticising the colour of my skin or eyes, or by greater extrapolation, who my parents are.

I believe I was meant to acquiesce to the hairdresser’s comments, to agree that my hair was difficult, and to even apologise for it, but the truth is, my hair is not difficult to manage (at least not the way I do it!), only other people imagine it is. This automatic assumption, that my hair is a problem, highlights the underlying prejudice of many in the beauty industry. If thick, wiry hair is not valued and that hair is an intrinsic part of me and my heritage, the logic follows that I am not valued.

However, the reason the hairdresser’s comments angered me was not a sense of personal injury. I feared for another physical offshoot of myself: my son. The thought of someone disparaging him on account of his appearance was maddening. Having spent the past six months with this adorable baby, I know there is so much more to him than his hair, but as evidenced by the hairdresser, others may judge more cursorily. Even I had to catch myself after thinking he was ‘lucky’ to have inherited his father’s fine hair, rather than my mine.

Since having a baby, I don’t let things go so easily. This may be the ‘mama bear’ effect of new motherhood, but I also think it is the desperate times we find ourselves in. This is not a status quo worth preserving. Circumstances need to improve drastically and I believe that means immediate remediation. By pointing out how things could be done better, even if it is advocating for something seemingly small like a more understanding encounter at the hairdressers, I feel I am taking positive action in the world.

With my hair ‘normalized,’ I stood up to pay. When they asked if I was happy with my cut, rather than smile and lie, as I would have done a few months ago, I was honest. People go to the hairdressers for an ego-boost, not to be chided for their lack of self-care or worse still, to be shamed for their natural hair. They needed to know this.

I walked out of the hairdressers fizzing with emotion, but wholly convinced I had done the right thing. After all, I am my hair and my hair, like myself, is good enough as it is.

How to Be an Activist

It is sobering to think that the average human lifespan is just 72 years old. As an average, this means the range of figures spans from the unacceptably low life expectancy of the early-50s to the octogenarians of Japan. The maxim is true, life is short.

This can make it difficult to start something new at 35 years old. After being politically apathetic for the last three and a half decades, I feel embarrassingly late to the game when it comes to activism. But as I said previously, I have an imperative to act now. A new baby means I cannot, in good conscience, stand by as the world burns.

Just as the compulsion to act has increased, the time I have to engage has reduced dramatically. Even writing this blog has been crammed into the baby’s sporadic nap times. But satisfying this need to do something positive in the world is as vital as emptying the nappy bin at the moment. The only benefit of doom scrolling is to spur action for change, otherwise it is mere self-flagellation. But where should a complete novice begin?

I have always found it easier to condense complex topics into simple step-wise processes. This started in medical school as I tried to cram whole textbooks of knowledge into my head. Borrowing from these times, I thought I’d use the simple three-step approach of ‘look, feel, move,’ often used for examining a joint, to direct my efforts.

Look

Firstly, I wanted to shake the feeling of despondency that came from reading the news and instead find inspiration in ordinary people making positive change. Thus, I changed my reading material away from BBC News and Twitter, and picked up books like ‘Hope in the Dark’ by Rebecca Solnit and a condensed version of Greta Thunberg’s speeches, ‘No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference.’

Solnit’s essays list many positive examples of activism from the Zapatista movement in Mexico to the World Trade Organisation blockade in Seattle in 1999. Having been too young to be contemporaneously aware of these movements, reading about them acts as a roadmap as to how activism works and what it can achieve. Furthermore, if something has been done before, it can be done again. Adding zest to the basal education provided by Solnit, are Thunberg’s speeches. Her polemics are incredibly motivating and as embodied by the title, offers encouragement to even the most uninitiated of individuals.

Feel

With fire in my belly, the next stage involved deciding where to focus my efforts. There was only so much time in the day, and even less with a new baby, therefore I had to be selective in what I wanted to be involved in. But there was so much!  From the chipping away of women’s rights in the US, to the capitalism-driven, cost of living crisis, everything demanded my attention. Where would I even start?

Running the risk of being overwhelmed, I decided to block any websites that did not lead to action. Whilst useful in stirring up emotion they did not offer any helpful solutions for the feelings they incited, so these attention-sapping sites had to go. Instantly I had a lot more time on my hands and could really reflect on what I wanted to spend my time on.

I researched causes I was interested in and then narrowed my search to groups in my local area, realising that I would be more likely to engage if it was logistically favourable. The recent flourishing of online events, also offered a practical way to get involved despite commitments at home. I signed up to mailing lists and remote meetings and soon I had a wealth of activities to choose from.

Move

And from there I could turn to action itself. There are as many outlets for activism as there are causes and I had to decide what I could physically do, given my limited time. My personal choices will, no doubt, be different from anyone else’s but there is something to be said for the ability to attend an online talk whilst pureeing cauliflower for the baby’s dinner. This blending of activism and the domestic, opens up a whole new host of people to a cause. From that, it is a springboard into further activities and initiatives. I myself have signed up for further online classes as a result of a lecture I attended earlier in the month.

And there is still room for old-fashioned activism in the form of gatherings. Nothing gets the blood pumping quite like physically joining an event, as happened when I attended the ‘Doctors Pay Restoration’ march. With a 30% relative pay cut since I started working as a doctor, it felt good to protest against the attrition in the health service.

It has been a long time coming, but the many strikes in this summer of discontent, speak to an ongoing faith in the power of activism. I am proud to be, in my own way, finally part of that.

What a Wonderful World

Is it just me or does it feel like we’re in a bit of a tailspin at the moment?

I don’t just mean the usual ‘four horseman’ stuff, although with the rise in corona cases, the war in Ukraine, and the cost of living meaning we’re tightening our belts literally as well as metaphorically, the comparison is hard to ignore. Then again, the apocalyptic tetrad is never far away. I’m sure when the Great Influenza pandemic followed World War One in 1918, people must also have felt the end was nigh.

In addition to the obvious disasters, there is something insidious to our current age. Take, for instance, this recent spell of good weather in the UK. We’ve seen highs of 30°C before, but now it's more symbolic than a hot spell. It’s an incontrovertible sign of climate change. Unsurprising then that as I open the curtains to another sunny day, I am more worried than pleased at the brilliant blue sky.

It would be one thing to face these issues dead on, and to acknowledge there is a problem, but when our leaders bluff their way through life and step on difficult but necessary policies in order to win votes, it is easy to despair. How are we going to improve things if we’re being gaslighted by the very people who are meant to be making things better?

Into this, I have brought a child.

A beautiful walk with my new addition

It is wrong to call him an antidote to the pain of these times. I don’t look to him to provide proof that there is good in the world. That is too much of a responsibility to ask any one person, let alone your four-month-old son, to give you a reason to hope. And yet, there is something emphatically wonderful about babies. In the last few months I have seen this small creature transform into a smiling, curious being. From the frenzy of work, my world has condensed into hours of nursery rhymes and naptimes, but there is no less occupation in this new way of life. He shows me that.

A morning where we may loll around together, is interspersed by several new discoveries for the both of us. I may be trying to hang up the laundry with him in one arm when his gaze makes me stop. With the studied concentration of an archer he is looking at a crocheted blanket. I look at it too. I’d never noticed the pattern before, but on closer consideration it does have a complex knit and is actually rather beautiful.

He loves trees. A walk outside is an event as the rustling leaves can alternately thrill or terrify him. More often than not though, they are a source of joy and we spend hours strolling through the park, the cover of his buggy down, so he can coo and gurgle at the canopy above him. Before having him, I can’t remember the number of times I looked at treetops, but now, appreciating his horizontal stance, I see what he sees and as a result, realise how incredible it all is.

This joy of being around him and learning through him, heightens the everyday. Seeing how he now grasps a toy when only a few weeks ago this was not in his repertoire feels like an incredible achievement. I revel in it, far more than I do my own successes. I am not unique. Most people just want the best for their kids. Offsetting the great joy of raising children is the responsibility of providing for them, and this collective motivation fuels many good works. All over the planet there are billions of adults striving to improve the world for their loved ones. The sheer scale of it is inspiring. This great investment in someone else, especially someone so young and dependent on me, has changed my perspective on a lot of things.

I found this out during the latest political upheaval, when a criminal Prime Minister was ousted in chaos. His replacements, former cronies turned Brutus, were hardly an improvement. Ordinarily this would have led to a jaded diatribe from me, but with my son delighting in the world around him, there was no way to accept the deplorable status quo. What kind of example would I be setting by insisting bad behaviour was the way of the world and it would never change? My goal is clear; I need to believe that things can get better. I cannot be cynical any longer.

As climate change takes hold and the world burns, it is easy to despair. For too long I have been passive, not knowing where to start with activism and disbelieving that my actions could have an effect. Paralysis is no longer an option. In the Book of Revelation the four horsemen are summoned, but unlike in the Biblical tale, I believe we can banish them again. I want my son´s experience of this world to be one of wonder, not dread, and with this incentive in mind, I am ready to act now.

The Elizabeth Line

When Spacex opens its astroports for interplanetary travel, I imagine they’ll emulate the design of London’s newest transport link: the Elizabeth line. Tuesday the 24th of May 2022 saw the opening of the central section of the latest purple strip on the iconic tube map (move over Metropolitan line), connecting southeast London’s Abbey Wood, to northwest London’s Paddington in less than half an hour.

An underground line opening is a rare occurence. With the exception of the Victoria and Jubilee lines, the other tube lines were all opened before 1907, which means being part of an inaugural journey is much rarer than a blue moon. Putting aside the fact that the Elizabeth line is not technically a tube line (for one thing, the train is powered by overhead power lines like a, ahem, train, rather than on fourth rail electicity like the tube), chances are there won’t be too many opportunities to travel on a brand new transport system in a lifetime. And that excitement was evident at the opening last week.

Long after the 6:30 am opening and the morning commuter rush, the new network was still buzzing with passengers. As I arrived at Canary Wharf, purple-clad assistants handed out information leaflets, which earlier in the day were supplemented by commemorative pins. But there was no need for further embellishment upon entering the station. The aesthetic of the Elizabeth line seems to be space-age greige. Although the colour may betray wear and tear sooner rather than later, the cavernous structure will never cease to impress. Considering the station is 28m below ground at Canary Wharf, the airy interior is the architectural equivalent of Mary Poppins’ bag.

Extending into the distance, an extensive glass platform screen guarded the nine carriages of the white Elizabeth line train, which waited behind it like some sleek, snouted earthworm. This is how they’ll dock space shuttles when tourism expands to include mere mortals, as well as a chosen few astronauts and billionaires. Similar to space travel, once boarded, the Elizabeth line rocketed along its designated stations to reach Tottenham Court Road, the heart of London, in a mere 12 minutes. But unlike rockets, the journey was smooth and as a result, disarmingly quiet, especially when compared to the other screeching tube lines.

As I disembarked at another futuristic platform, I looked back at the train. It would be completing its trip in a few minutes at Paddington but eventually the route would stretch uninterrupted as far as Reading. 13 years of construction to condense a journey of 73 miles, including a whistle-stop ride through central London, to just over an hour. Don’t let the critics fool you, it’s an incredible feat.

And as for critics, there do seem to be a lot of them. The Elizabeth Line was pestered by delays, even before the onset of a global pandemic, and constantly berated for being over-budget. That is par for the course for big engineering projects. No matter how assiduously planned, life nearly always throws something unexpected into the works. The Gotthard Base Tunnel, for example, was twice as expensive as initially projected. But the astounding ability to pass under the Alps through the world’s longest and deepest tunnel, means that most people in Switzerland now celebrate the tunnel rather than decry its cost.

Things that are worth having often take time and money. Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge took 33 years to complete but to this day it is still revered as a marvel of engineering. Why not celebrate construction projects, especially ones that require the combined and sustained effort of so many? On inauguration day many of the Elizabeth Line construction workers, made obvious by their high-vis jackets, were present in the stations. I heard one person proudly relay to someone on the other end of his mobile that, yes, he had worked on the Elizabeth Line and that so far things were working well. It seems churlish to ignore so many man-hours in favour of the usual negative headlines.

And whilst the Elizabeth Line may not serve the whole country, I don’t believe this is a reason to argue against its construction. It was born of a desire to improve transport links and in doing so, improve the lives of many people. And isn’t that what we should be aspiring to? Connected cities with a superior public transport system that negates the need for a car? How much better it is to build positive infrastructure than to just bemoan the state of things.

Brunel died before the completion of Clifton Suspension Bridge but he, like those who worked on multigenerational projects, knew they were working towards something better. There was a hope that even if they may not live to see it, something extraordinary would result from their contribution. In these times of existential dread, where the thought of war and climate change can be paralysing, we should take a cue from such examples and in this, I include the Elizabeth Line. Remarkable things can be achieved, obstacles overcome and even maps redrawn, if only we have the right vision.

The short-sighted ape

Controversial though it might be, I admit it: for my birthday I went to the zoo.

I suppose it was partly nostalgia that fuelled my decision. It had been decades since I had been to London Zoo and I wanted to recapture that childhood sense of wonder and excitement, something that I had long dissociated from birthdays, but hoped could still be revived by a trip to Regent’s Park. Casting ethical considerations aside (at least temporarily), Philippe, my husband, forked up the eye-watering fee and we entered the jungle…

Mid-January in Europe may not the best time to visit the zoo. For one thing, the environment is already so frigid, both zoo-goers and zoo-inhabitants are preoccupied with enduring the weather, rather than focusing on each other. Bearing in mind that for much of the animal kingdom, winter is a time of hibernation, I can’t blame any of the animals for hunkering down in some warm, hidden crevice of their enclosure to disappear until spring. I myself felt the lure of the cafe not ten minutes after our entry.

As Philippe and I walked past empty den after empty den, the zoo took on the air of an abandoned theme park. Not only were many of the enclosures deserted, but the walkways too were devoid of life. Apart from one or two parents dragging around frozen toddlers, there were few other creatures inside or outside the enclosures. With so many animal no-shows and the park to ourselves, it began to feel eerily like Jurassic Park (at least the bit before the powercut, when the dinosaurs are freed).

Were we due an outbreak? Were the wildebeest about to start stampeding over the horizon a la Lion King? Hoping for a little action, we made our way to the lion enclosure.

On a hot summer’s day I imagine the ‘Land of the Lions’ is the place to be at London Zoo. Sporting an Indian village aesthetic complete with fake food stalls and rentable lodges, the lion paddocks are visible through sheet glass. The lions, however, less so. But just as we reached the edge of the outdoor expanse and were giving up on them, there they were. Pressed flush against the plate glass, a lioness lay on her back, belly fully exposed to spectators two mere inches away.

There was something incredible and yet uncanny in being able to see a wild creature at such proximity and in such a vulnerable condition. Even a household cat would react to the approach of strangers, and yet these apex predators seemed even more domesticated than the average tabby. At one point the lioness woke, lifted her head and matched an arresting amber eye with mine for a second. But then with utter indifference, despite my being so close, she lay down again and went back to sleep.

Crouched a short distance away from the lioness, but also against the glass, a lion rested. It is rare to see zoo animals so close to the edges of their enclosure, but it was evident the animals were taking refuge under the few covered areas they had. How strange that a lion, adapted for heat and the savannah, should have to experience a British winter. It seemed preternaturally wrong.

The disconnect between wild and winter continued as we shuffled past two-humped camels and a few brave monkeys, who dared stay outdoors in order to jump manically from post to post. At one point a grey langur monkey stilled to the sound of a commotion in the trees across the park. A flock of crows were disputing something and the noise was distracting. As I watched, the monkey sat there with a look of such concentrated focus that his manner was indistinguishable from a human’s. Only in this case, the monkey no longer tried to follow the sound as he knew there would be no getting past the net over his enclosure.

The parrots, however, still tried their luck. Held in coops next to each other, two scarlet macaw looked on as a hyacinth cousin tried to claw its way to freedom. Hanging on by its beak, the bird alternated its jailbreak with obnoxious calls, contributing to the ruckus that disturbed the langur on the other side of the park. The birds were incredibly beautiful and I could see why people would covet their colours. Instead of a flash of crimson and turquoise in the rainforest, what a feast to see them all side by side in a rainbow display. But the sight of them. all unnaturally close, under a cold, grey sky was unsettling and sad.

And yet, here they were for their own good. ZSL does a comprehensive job of explaining the backgrounds of the animals in the zoo, more often than not listing how very endangered the species is. In a sense then, it is for the best that at least some animals are kept in captivity, not simply for the enjoyment of a gawking birthday girl, but for the posterity of threatened species. But more is the pity that such a situation exists.

We timed the end of our visit with a walk past my favourite animal, the giraffe. In my opinion, giraffe are the most extraordinary animals, and evidence of just how incredible the world is. That something so bizarrely and beautifully formed could exist reminds me of how lucky I am to live on a planet with such creatures. However, even giraffe, with few natural predators, are still classed as a threatened species as their habitats are endangered by human activity.

Of course, it’s easy for me to bemoan the loss of biodiversity from my snug London home. I, who can go to Regent’s Park to get a ‘fix’ of extraordinary fauna, cannot begin to imagine the pressures of co-existing with these animals in their natural environment. It would be hypocritical of me to go to the zoo for my own pleasure whilst denouncing people who have an altogether more practical reality with wildlife. But I can’t help but feel that in our effort to interact with these amazing creatures, be it in the zoo or in their native habitats, humans, that notoriously short-sighted ape, are getting something wrong.

A Fallow Year

I think you can get away with wishing someone a ‘happy new year’ if it falls within the first week of said new year. After that there seems to be a touch of desperation in the phrase, as though you’re trying to convince yourself that the holiday season isn’t really over, and that it really is 5 o’ clock (or in this case, midnight on January the 1st) somewhere.

So this blog, which falls 9 days after the birth of 2022, shouldn’t really contain any such wish but I can’t help but express it - happy new year! Part of that sentiment is driven by the fact that I haven’t written a regular blog in such a long time. Looking back at the website, I see one or two entries for the whole of 2021, which is a hideous return on my Squarespace subscription. Explanation for the radio silence is coming but let me just say, it feels good to be sitting back at the desk on a Sunday evening, wracking my brains for something to put down on the page.

So, why was I was AWOL? Why after three years of fairly consistent publication (and a longer history of general writing) did I stop? This is a question I asked myself many times over the past year in a number of different moods. At first, there was panic, when I missed self-imposed deadlines in spring, and then as the hope of regular production slipped away, I stopped warring with myself and instead reflected on what I thought was apathy. This year of creative quiet revealed some insights, which may be useful for anyone who feels in they are in a rut.

What quickly became evident was that I was tired. 2020, the global annus horriblis, had worn me out and I could not be bothered to sustain any non-essential commitment. After a year working as a doctor during the pandemic of the century, my adrenaline was spent and what little resources I did have were reserved for work and family. Anything else was extraneous, something I could not afford to service when systems were stretched.

Accordingly, my creative drive dried up and I felt I had nothing to write about. This is a strange phenomenon for a writer. I had experienced writer’s block before but never in such a global distribution. There had always been something I wanted to say, even if it wasn’t fit for public consumption. Last year, however, thoughts and ideas came and went, but very little met the threshold to put down on paper. Every time I tried to write, it felt like a struggle, and the longer I left it, the harder it became to break what was now a set pattern.

Why even bother? What difference did it make whether I wrote or not? People survived without my writing and there was no penalty or prize for me personally, such that I needed to churn out copy.

The inertia persisted and to be honest, it still persists now as I reluctantly grind out these paragraphs. What has brought me back to my desk is that I know I am better off when I do write. In the same way that exercising, unappealling though it initially is, eventually gives me an endorphin high, I know that writing is essential for another aspect of my well-being. In the end, the benefits of writing are too powerful for me to not do it.

Trying to resume a practice is not easy though and after such a prolonged break even 5 minutes of freestyle stream of consciousness can be a challenge. Again, like resuming training after an injury, it is a question of building up stamina and discipline, and importantly ignoring the critical inner monologue that has filled the creative vacuum.

And finally, I am back. For most of last year I saw my lack of output as a failure of willpower. It was only when a friend kindly pointed out that I should instead consider it as a time of replenishment that I shifted my attitude. He explained farmers often let the ground rest for a season such that it can be sewn afresh after a year of ‘laying fallow.’ This new metaphorical take on my 2021 creative slumber seems much kinder than the initial berating approach.

What better time to return then, than a full cycle of seasons after my last blog? Here I begin again, creative drive restored at the beginning of what will hopefully be a happy new year.

An unprepossessing field, but actually a metaphorical hotbed…