I’ve been struggling to write a bit recently and I’m a bit behind on my posts, but here’s one now. …just in time for the end of summer!
It’s perhaps an unpopular opinion, but summer is my least favourite season. So where my blog ‘a guide to thriving in winter’ talked about ways you can, well, thrive in winter, this blog is about how I survive summer. Although struggle through it might be a more accurate thing to say. I wanted to include hints and tips in case you struggle with it too, but actually I’m not sure I have that many! If you’re the polar opposite of me and LOVE summer then you won’t need any tips, but you might want to read on to hear about the other side.
Everywhere is busy
For a start, summer is so much busier. People decide they want to be out and about more, adults take breaks and kids get a long summer holiday. So, understandably lots of the most well-known ‘idyllic’ countryside spots and coolest attractions are crawling with people. I dislike places with lots of people if you hadn’t gathered that already…maybe that’s your vibe, but it certainly isn’t mine. This means I have to get more creative with where I go (which isn’t actually a bad thing) and I save all the popular tourist sites for the depths of winter. If you hate crowds, like I do I suggest giving that tactic a try. For example, I’ve visited Dunnottar castle in the depths of winter and the height of summer. In winter I was the only one there for at least half an hour. It felt so magical and atmospheric. In summer, I struggled to find anywhere to park. Cars were haphazardly left on the verges about a mile up the road and once we finally made it to castle there were people everywhere. I’m sure they were having a delightful day, but, to me, the place lost it’s charm in that moment.
Wasps
I hate wasps! I know they have great value in terms of biodiversity and pollination, I know that they’re unlikely to sting you if you just stay out of their way and don’t flap about when they’re near, I know that the stings don’t hurt that much, but I still hate them. I have a visceral, almost uncontrollable fear. When they’re around I feel the panic rising, I have to really focus on staying where I am and concentrating on the task I’m performing or the conversation I’m having. Sometimes it gets all a bit much and I have to do a little run! It’s embarrassing, but I just can’t help it. What makes it worse sometimes is how flippant folk can be about it. I guess it’s easy to shrug off a fear that you don’t understand, but it definitely just heightens my feelings in the moment. Just a few soothing placations and a but of support is all I need. To make things a little easier for myself I stop wearing perfume, I wear less hairspray, I don’t wear bright colours and I’m careful about where and when I sit outside. It probably all sounds like a bit much, but they’re the little things that help get me through.
Over-heating
I’m pale and freckly, I burn and I over-heat easily. I’m sensitive to summer! When I get hot, I get anxious and stressed (so I become even more afraid of wasps – fabulous). I just feel trapped by the heat…I mean, you’ve all been too hot, you get it! Ironically, I live in the UK, currently Scotland, but even a Scottish summer can be a bit toasty for me. Anyway, I hate getting to and starting work feeling flustered and sweaty. I also find that I have to treat my ME more carefully in the warmer months. The heat and humidity suck my energy and increase my likelihood of relapse. I find over summer I teeter on the edge of getting ill a lot more, which means I have to rest more and say no more often. If I’m honest though I think I’m probably not particularly set up for summer. I don’t make it easy on myself. I like wearing a lot of black, I don’t own a lot of summer clothes, I like wearing boots and I don’t like showing a lot of skin. It’s a recipe for disaster! I don’t have many tips to get through overheating other than; wear cycling shorts under skirts to avoid the chub rub, get to places early so that you can stand outside and cool down before you have to go inside, always have water with you and wear sunscreen!
People talking about the weather
This is my last point and I’ll keep it very short. As I mentioned in my ‘thriving in winter blog’, it annoys me enormously when visiting a place in winter how much people say “this would look nice in summer”. There’s a comment that annoys me even more in summer…I hate it when it rains or we have a grey day and folk say “well that’s our summer over then”. The eyeroll I think about performing in that moment is truly epic.
Now, before I finish, I do enjoy some aspects of summer. I don’t spend every day weeping and wishing for the next season to begin. I love chilling on a beach enjoying a cider, I love that it gets a little warmer for sea swimming, I love picnics and barbeques, I love the lighter and longer evenings and I love all the seasonal fruit. I’m not a total fun sponge! I promise. I am looking forward to autumn though…those crisp mornings and crunchy leaves. Perfect.
It was my birthday recently, my 34th if you hadn’t guessed that already, and I thought what a perfect time to ruminate on 34 things I’ve learnt over 34 years.
You can’t pour from an empty cup: This is such a big one for me. I learnt it when I was living in a yoga retreat up in North Yorkshire and a lot of the Buddhist teachings we were touching on would centre around how you have to look after yourself before you look after others. Initially I thought it all sounded a bit selfish but then I heard the phrase ‘you can’t pour from an empty cup’ and it all made sense. If I don’t look after my own emotional and mental wellbeing first and foremost then I don’t have anything to give other people in terms of emotional support. It’s a saying I parrot to people ALL the time when they’re getting burnt out, but feeling pressure to support others.
Baking bread at the yoga retreat.
2. Be a lighthouse: I found this quote on a Yogi tea teabag and I didn’t get it at first. Now I feel like it’s a softer version of ‘be the change you want to see in the world’ (the fake Ghandi quote!), or perhaps ‘treat others how you want to be treated’!
3. Every job is stressful: It’s probably a little tough to see where I’m going with this one, but bear with me! I was moaning about academia to a pal and talking about stressed I was, and I was romanticising a job I once had trying to convince myself the grass was greener before. He just shrugged and said “well, every job’s stressful”. At first, I was a bit hurt that he didn’t just validate my feelings, but then I realised he was right! Every job IS stressful. I realised then that it wasn’t about trying to find a job that wasn’t stressful it was about finding a job that was worth it. I remember this every time I start talking about other careers as if the grass would be so much greener!
That’s me, covered in gannet shit, in the grass is greener job! It was the best job I’ve ever had…so far!
4. Giving fewer fucks: Now, I’ve read a lot of these types of posts and many of them say that since they’ve gotten older they no longer give a fuck what people think. I have to say I still give a lot of fucks and I still care what people think. But I give infinitely fewer fucks than when I was 24 or indeed 14 (and I hope to give even fewer when I’m 44)! I just think life is so much easier, freer, and happier when you care less about what people think.
5. You don’t need an excuse to say no: Oh, how my life changed when I learnt you could just say ‘no’. Not ‘no, I have a fake dentist’s appointment’, or ‘no, my mum says I’m not allowed out’, or ‘no, I’m not feeling very well’. Just ‘no’ or ‘no, I don’t want to’! I still remember the first time I did this when I said ‘no’ to an extra shift at a pub I was working at. I just said ‘no’ and it was life changing!
6. You can be honest about needing time to yourself: On one occasion whilst I was living in the yoga retreat, I was supposed to go for a walk with another lady that worked there. On the day she asked me if we could reschedule because she needed some time by herself. IT BLEW MY MIND! I didn’t realise that you could do that! It didn’t even cross my mind that needing some me time could be a valid excuse to cancel plans. It was honest, simple and powerful. I’ve never forgotten it.
7. Don’t moan (a lot) without doing something about it: Everybody moans. Moaning is a valid and useful thing to do, it’s also kind of fun sometimes. But, being a broken record is annoying! If I catch myself repeating my moan to too many people too many times, that’s when I realise, I need to do something about it. If I’m sounding off so much, it must be because something is deeply affecting me and therefore, I need to change it.
8. It’s raining microbes: Okay so this is oddly specific, but I had the most awesome botanist teach me during some of my lab practicals in my undergrad. To help us stop contaminating our agar plates she would dance around the room with wild hand gestures declaring that it was raining microbes, reminding use to use the plate lids as an umbrella and keep the plates close to the Bunsen burner in the safety of the convection current. I feel like that advice has had a lasting impact!
9. You can feel two things at once: You might read this and think, duh, obviously! But, it’s something that’s only just clicked! Since having ME I often struggle to marry up my emotions. Among other conflicting feelings I often feel grateful for the health I have, but also deeply sad for what I’ve lost. It can be tough to process. Then one day I saw a TikTok that talked about how you can feel two things at once and suddenly it all made sense. You CAN feel two things at once! Duh!
10. Life is a stage and nobody cares about your problems: Awful right? This isn’t one of the lessons I hold dear, but it’s certainly one I remember. When I was 16 I worked in a shoe shop and one day the manager saw I was upset in the stock room. She wanted me back on the shop floor and she was a colossal dick, so she looked me in the eye and said ‘life is a stage and nobody cares about your problems’. I repeated it like a mantra as I sunk into a long period of chronic depression. I genuinely believed it. Now, it serves as a beacon that I never want to work for anyone like that again, that I never want to feel like that again and that people can do an oscar worthy job of acting fine when they’re actually in a pit of despair. It was a cruel but valuable lesson.
11. You can’t change people around you (but you can change yourself): This was something I learned from my first therapist (post-awful shoe shop lady)! I was lamenting about how awful my boyfriend was and how he wasn’t behaving the way I wanted him to. My therapist explained that I couldn’t change him, but I could change myself. Now that I’m older I know that you shouldn’t try to change anyone anyway, but I was young, and I was careering wildly through my first ‘relationship’ so I didn’t really understand that. Now, when situations or people are hard work I often find myself thinking how can I change. How can I change the way I think, how can I change the situation, how can I take control? Hopefully this doesn’t need saying, but I definitely don’t mean make all the compromises and be a doormat! For me it’s about asking how I can take back my power in a situation…or at least try to.
12. Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about: I feel like this is pretty obvious! But, be kind to people. Sometimes the people who are struggling the most put the bravest faces on (see number 10).
13. Don’t let a boy take away your sparkle: I used to be on the Aberystwyth University dance team and after winning a dance competition up in Bangor everyone was very drunk on the bus home…apart from me. I had a migraine! Suddenly a shout from the front of the bus pierced through the pain in my head, “DON’T LET A BOY TAKE AWAY YOUR SPARKLE”. As well as piercing through the pain it pierced through a few lies I had been telling myself. I was with a boy who took away my sparkle! It’s a very showdance saying, but within it is a very profound message. You should only be with people (of any gender) who let you keep your sparkle!
14. Don’t wait for people. Do things by yourself: I left school at 16 (college dropout!) and all my friends stayed in education and went off to uni. That meant at some point I was kind of left on my own. It got to a point where if I didn’t do things by myself I didn’t do things at all. It taught me a great deal of independence and it’s something I still live by now.
15. Friends for a reason, season or lifetime: I always thought this was a super lame saying, but it’s so very true! I’ve had friends that fit into all of these categories, and although it was hard in the beginning to accept that certain friendships were over, I find it a lot easier now. People change, people move countries and just because a friendship has drifted apart it doesn’t invalidate the friendship that you had.
16. Nothing and nobody is perfect: The moment I learned this as a teenager in therapy, life got a lot less painful!
17. Trying to be the most ‘me’ is my biggest goal: I dunno, I just think that learning to be and living as the truest version of myself is my biggest goal in life. It’s not easy and there are multiple layers to it but it feels super worthwhile.
18. Variety is the spice of life: A substitute maths teacher said this to my class as she decided to teach us about taxes. I don’t remember enjoying the maths lesson, but she was right. Variety is the spice of life!
19. Trust your gut: Wow has my gut tried to warn me about some things. Things that I’ve gone and done anyway, and they’ve turned out terribly! I knew deep down they’d be terrible, but I did them because I didn’t believe my gut was right. I don’t regret anything because all of those terrible experience shaped the person I am now, but these days I’d rather trust my gut and have fewer bad memories!
20. Nobody is ‘just’ anything: I used to have a bad habit of telling people I was ‘just’ a cleaner or ‘just’ a barmaid. I can’t remember who told me that I wasn’t ‘just’ anything, but it made a big impression. They were right and now I make a concerted effort to not say ‘just’ whether I’m talking about myself or about someone else. We are more than our jobs.
21. With Edina in ab fab being considered the fat one, no wonder I have weight issues: In fairness I seem to remember most of it is Edina making self-deprecating jokes about her own weight, but it’s not really just about Edina. It’s about that slew of make over programmes in the 2000s that tore apart the way women looked and with surgical precision picked fault with weight, ageing and style (or perceived lack of it). It’s about Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones’s Diary. It’s about those paparazzi shots of celebrities on the beach with their cellulite circled on the front cover. I don’t know if things have gotten better in the media or if I’ve gotten better at filtering it out, but either way it took me a long time to realise the impact that kind of thing has had on me and even longer to learn to ignore it (or at least try to).
22. Your PhD is your main priority: So, this isn’t about PhD’s, it’s about priorities. I was juggling too many things in my first year and I got a bit overwhelmed. It’s been a pattern of mine, peak and then burn out. My supervisor told me that my PhD was main priority and everything else fell secondary to that….work wise! (He’s not a sadist!) It probably shouldn’t have taken me that long to start learning how to prioritise, but anyway it did and prioritising is great!
23. You have to want to help yourself: I’m not sure how to explain it, but you can be given all the help and advice in the world, but until you’re ready to help yourself it’s not really going to work.
24. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink: I think this is essentially the reverse of the above. You can reach out to someone, you can leave the door open (figuratively) and you can offer help, but ultimately unless they’re thirsty for it, they won’t drink the water. So it’s good not to force people into accepting your help. People operate in their own time.
25. Don’t take yourself too seriously: I didn’t really realise I was taking myself to seriously until I made a new friend during my masters. She had rainbow hair, she had a flat full of plushies and she openly and unashamedly expressed her love for Harry Potter. She was so unapologetically herself and I admired that so much. It made me realise I was focusing on being a grown-up and a scientist too much and not stopping to have wild, silly, colourful fun.
26. Specifying when you need to vent, not fix: Does that need more explanation? Probably not! Basically, when I learnt I could tell someone that I just needed to have a little moan and get something of my chest, and that I didn’t need to hear suggestions to fix my problem…it changed my life!
27. You get out what you put in: I’m absolutely 100% sure this doesn’t work for everything! There are plenty of times I can think of where I worked very hard and flat out failed or didn’t really get any reward. There are also times I haven’t worked hard and done really well. BUT, having said that, I think in a more general way this holds pretty true. I feel like it’s a good rule regardless!
28. How do you eat an elephant: …with lots of small bites! This is another saying I really rolled my eyes at when I first heard it, but actually anytime I have a big task to tackle I think about how I’d go about eating an elephant! It’s been useful.
29. Stop and smell the roses: I think both literally and figuratively it’s important to stop and smell the roses.
30. Some people just look busy: I don’t think it improved my life when I learnt that some people seem to get through their work life by mostly just looking busy, but it certainly made me a little more savvy (and maybe a little more angry!).
31. It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey: Eurgh, this is such an over-used fortune cookie type saying, but it’s SO damn true!
32. Flipping a coin when you’re torn between two options: This is another obvious one, but it really works. I think you generally know deep down what you want to do, but sometimes your judgement is clouded by a tonne of stuff. When you flip a coin there’s this visceral reaction to the outcome. You’re either super happy and relieved it turned out the way you ‘secretly’ wanted, or you’re disappointed it didn’t. Either way, you have your answer!
33. Every day is a new day: I put this one in because of the sheer amount of times I’ve written off a day of work because of an unproductive morning, or written off the week because I’ve messed up a new routine, or thought I’ll start *insert thing* on Monday. I’m not saying that doing those things is bad, but it’s often been helpful to remind myself that tomorrow will also work, even if it’s a random Thursday in the middle of the month, or that the week isn’t a total failure because of one slip up.
34. Nip it in the bud: So, this is one I struggle with, because I can be a real people pleaser. I have a friend (you know who you are) who is very good at telling people what she thinks and when they’ve upset her. I find it really difficult to express my feelings if someone has said something or done something that’s hurt me, and I also find it very difficult when someone confronts me with something I’ve done that’s had a negative impact on them. Although it’s uncomfortable I’ve learned a lot from watching this friend nip things in the bud with people before those feelings fester and turn into something much bigger. I’ve learnt about her, I’ve learnt about myself, I’ve learnt about friendships, it’s brought us closer, and I’ve learnt a valuable life lesson…even if it’s one that still needs work!
So, that’s it. 34 things for 34 years. Do any of these resonate with you? If this inspires you to think about some of the lessons or pivotal sayings that have impacted you throughout your life, let me know what they are. I’d love to hear them.
(Just before I start, if you want to know more about ME/CFS in general follow the link to another one of my blogs just here, if you want to know how I developed ME/CFS follow this link here, and if you want to know how I was doing a couple of years ago follow this link here.)
I haven’t written an ME related blog for a long while, but seeing as it’s ME awareness month, I’ve recently had a little flare up, AND I’ve been chatting to some chronically ill friends and acquaintances recently it seemed like a good time.
As a bit of very speedy background, after being a very healthy individual for 29 years I developed ME in the last year of my undergraduate degree. Although I had a really rough period where I was pretty much housebound, spending most of my time in bed, I’ve more or less recovered at a fairly consistent (albeit seemingly glacial) rate over the last 4 years. In this, I am incredibly lucky. There is no diagnostic test for ME, no established treatment plan, and no prognosis. Many folk, like myself, go home and just try to figure it out for themselves.
So, ~4 years after diagnosis, where am I at now? I guess that’s somewhat complicated! According to the NHS, ‘severe ME’ describes people that are bedbound (or at least housebound), ‘moderate ME’ describes people who can’t work or continue full time education, and ‘mild ME’ describes those who can carry out everyday activities whilst maintaining a job, but they do this with difficulty and have to sacrifice hobbies or social activities. If you’re thinking that mild ME doesn’t sound too bad, imagine your entire life being stripped back so it just revolves around work and basic chores, because you have no reserves left for anything else. No beers with friends on a Friday, no playing footie in the garden with your kids, no midweek French class…you get the drift. Doesn’t sound so mild anymore, right? Anyway, where do I fit into this short list of NHS definitions? I’m definitely not severe, I’m certainly not moderate, and actually I’m not even mild. I exist in a space that would be considered by many as recovered, but I feel remiss to accept that definition.
I think I would be considered ‘recovered’ because I hold down a full-time job (well, a PhD), a social life and multiple hobbies, which even include a certain amount of physical activity. I even started running and playing badminton for a brief period a couple of years ago (before I had a relapse)! I would disagree with the term recovered though, as sometimes I still have relapses or flare ups, I’m certainly not at pre-ME fitness and ME still, to some extent, shapes how I live my life. It’s hard to say why I have flare-ups. Sometimes I think it’s stress, or that I’ve overdone trying to build up my exercise, or even that I’ve eaten something that doesn’t agree with me. But, if I’m honest, I never really know. I generally just pick the option that seems most sensible and settle on it because I want an answer. Relapses for me most commonly mean one, or a combination of the following symptoms: Chest pain, headaches, joint pain, muscle pain, brain fog and/or fatigue. I also developed IBS as a fun side gig to ME, but I almost consider that an entirely separate entity now! Nowadays relapses normally have a peak in which I have to rest totally for a full day with time either side where I just need to cut back on activities. It’s rare that flare-ups last longer, but this most recent relapse had a peak of about a week and then of course time either side where things were ramping up or cooling down.
I have a lot of feelings about where I’m at now and I’ll share some of those below. I’ve tried to be open and vulnerable and I appreciate that might not make for comfortable reading. I think it’s important for me to share though and if it makes just one person feel even slightly less alone or slightly more seen then I think it’s worth me exposing myself!
Let’s start with a positive (I’m a silver lining’s kind of girl)! I’m so grateful that I have recovered so much as I know many folk suffer a lot more for a lot longer. I’ve learned to enjoy a tonne of new things like playing videogames, chilling in cafes, sitting and watching the world go by (generally just being) and deep diving into various crafts. But, I‘m also grieving the life and the person I feel like I’ve lost. I miss regularly climbing mountains, I miss running, I miss pushing myself and I miss trusting my body and feeling fearless in what it can achieve.
In some ways I think having ME has helped me manage my PhD, and well, life for that matter. It’s taught me to get better at managing my stress, asking for help and saying no. I’m not by any means saying I’m flawless at those things by the way! I still get stressed, I still say yes when I don’t want to sometimes, and I still forget I can ask for help from time to time. But, I’m infinitely better at those things than I was before! Whilst things are fine with the PhD, I’m low key terrified about what I’m going to do next. I worry about being able to keep up with the fixed hours of a ‘normal’ job, I worry about what that would mean financially and in terms of my independence. I’ve always fallen on my feet and I’m trying to have faith that that will happen again. I’m hoping I’ll just stumble across some super flexible, well-paying unicorn job that matches my skillset whilst I’m doing my careers searches. I know some of your values, needs and fears change with age, but I used to have wild dreams and be fairly carefree about where I would move and what I would do. I just knew that I’d be fine and I’d figure it out. I knew I could physically push through any difficulties that come as part of the new job/ new move upheaval. I struggle to think past the PhD now (although admittedly that’s not all to do with ME). A little while ago a job came up in conservation working with a friend on a reserve I’d lived and worked on before. (Pre-ME, I always thought of going back to conservation if science didn’t work out.) This job was a unicorn job! Now, ME aside, I want to finish my PhD, I don’t think I’d want to live on an island separated from my partner, I don’t think I was entirely qualified anymore and literally the perfect person got the job anyway. So, it was never going to happen, but I think what I found so difficult is that for all the time I spent thinking and talking about how cool that job could be I always had to admit the hard truth to myself that I’m not physically capable of working in conservation anymore (or at least for the foreseeable future). I’m just not well enough…and yeah, maybe I will be in the future (I still trust that I will continue to gradually get better), but it was still a hard thing to swallow.
Things like I’ve just talked about can leave me feeling a little trapped in a body that doesn’t work like it used to… and yes, I know it could be worse, but that’s not a helpful way of thinking either. ME has had a huge impact on my body confidence. It’s not just about what my body can do, it’s about how it looks now. It just doesn’t feel like ‘me’. I’m a lot fluffier now, as in I’m the fluffiest I’ve ever been! I have to say that there are of course other factors, I’m older, it’s a pandemic, I’m in a relationship etc… but ultimately, I can’t exercise like I used to. It’s such a hard thing to try to balance. I start exercising, build it up, get excited, struggle to listen to my body, relapse, take a break, get disheartened… It’s a vicious cycle. Because exercising is temperamental, I’ve also tried to just control my weight with food, but that quickly becomes unhealthy (I’ve not always had the healthiest journey with eating anyway). Counting calories becomes obsessive, then I don’t eat enough, then I get lethargic, then I have a flare-up. It’s another unpleasant cycle. I’m trying a novel new thing at the moment, which is eating and exercising intuitively and learning to be comfortable in my body. It’s the opposite of easy, but actually it’s making me face some of the unhealthy attitudes I’ve held surrounding weight gain throughout my entire life and that cannot be a bad thing.
Having said all that, I also feel guilty. I know that someone with even mild ME might read this and think “how dare she complain with the life she’s leading”?! By all intents and purposes, I’m living a totally ‘normal’ life and my Instagram shows me being in the lab, going on walks (even up the occasional small mountain/big hill), hanging out with friends etc… Don’t get me wrong, I am SO grateful, and I have so many wonderful things going on, but I have the before and after ME comparison in my head and I still feel limited. I want more. I know I’ve written about this before, but I also still worry sometimes that it’s not ME. I worry that it’s something else, or that it’s a crutch, an excuse, something psychological. That makes me feel a strange type of guilt and fear too, like I’m going to get found out as a fake. Imposter syndrome but for a chronic illness!
Despite everything though I’m not sure I would choose for it to never have happened. I’ve learned so much and grown emotionally. I’ve made choices and friends that I don’t think I would have made before and they’ve led on to some excellent experiences. It just hurts sometimes, and I really wish there was an end date. I used to spend a lot of time wearing a bit of a mask, kind of a toxic positivity mask. As a matter of survival I thought I had to stay positive and optimistic about my ME pretty much all the time lest it effect my recovery, but that took a toll and now I’m just trying to let myself feel everything. I can have good days and bad. I can be grateful and think it’s all a bit shit simultaneously. I’m a good multi-tasker! I have a long way to go mentally and physically, but I have a delightful support network of friends, family and now even a therapist. Look at me go!
Anyway, a big thank you for reading this. These posts are never easy to write so I always hugely appreciate anyone making it this far!
Hmm, so I’m not going to lie, I’ve been feeling a bit uninspired the last few months and I was really struggling to think about what I was going to write about for April. (I promised myself that I was going to write a blog a month). Then I remembered just how many parks Aberdeen has and thought I’d give you a whistle stop tour of a few of them until my inspiration comes back.
Johnson Park
Well, let’s start with Johnston Park (Johnston Gardens). I’ve only been to this small park once as it’s a fair walk from where I live, but it’s really pretty. If I lived near here though I’d definitely be popping into this park all the time. It’s packed with greenery layered above a large pond area. It feels quite private, and in some ways a little secret. There’s also a bright blue bridge which is perfect for photography if you’re into that. It’s also a great area for spotting kingfishers! In terms of history, these gardens used to be part of the Johnston House estate, but it was gifted to the city in the mid-30s. I’m certainly glad that we have public access now.
Victoria Park
Victoria park, named after Queen Victoria, is one of my favourite parks to go to. I don’t do it very often, but I love going to grab a coffee (and maybe a cinnamon bun) from Cult of Coffee and then heading to the park to enjoy it. There’s one specific bench that is literally the perfect suntrap, I won’t divulge which one…too many people seem to know about it already! This was Aberdeen’s first public park, and it was created in 1871. I can’t imagine a city without a park, but maybe as Aberdeen was smaller and there was more green space in general it wasn’t quite so necessary until that point. It was however created out of ‘a desire to improve the urban and industrial environment’, so maybe it was more necessary than I’m imagining. There’s a path around the whole park, which seems good for runners, there’s a small rose garden, an area for chess or drafts (I can’t remember) and a few other cute nooks and crannies. The main feature though is a huge granite fountain which is apparently made from 14 different types of granite quarried in Aberdeenshire and donated by granite polishers. That’s a lot of granite!
Westburn Park
Westburn park is literally next door to Victoria park. It’s just a busy road that separates them. For a long time I though that historically it was the same park but it had just been divided over time by a city that needed more roads! But, actually, Westburn park was once belonged by Westburn House, a mansion built in the mid-1800s. The house became a tea house in 1901, but unfortunately, it’s now a ruin. It’s such a shame as it would make the cutest café. I have to say it’s not my favourite park, but if I’m honest I’m not sure it’s meant for me. It seems like the perfect place to take your dog or your children, and I have neither. It even has a children’s cycling proficiency track. There’s also an open section of water called the Gilcomston Burn running through the park. It’s unsatisfyingly asymmetrical!
Seaton Park
Seaton park is another one of my favourites and is definitely the park I visit the most. The park is huge and feels wild, there’s even a wetland area. There are parts of the park that make me feel like I’m not in the city at all and I love that. It’s been a great comfort during the pandemic to grab a coffee from Shelter or Kilau, walk past the St Machar’s Cathedral and down to the River Don. The park is full of wildlife; lots of different birds, red squirrel and otter. Sometimes when I want a slightly longer walk I wander east to the little village by the ‘Brig O Balgownie’ and dream about living here or west to the Wallace tower. It’s such a cool place. When I was writing this I also found out about Mr Therm! Mr Therm is a former steam engine which used to transport coal to the harbour, but it’s now in the children’s play area. I’ve never noticed it before because I don’t pay much attention to the playground. But, that sounds pretty awesome to me!
Duthie Park
This is another park I’ve only been to once. I was meant to go again before I wrote this, but I had an ME flare up and I didn’t make it. It’s a big park set back from the River Dee but it’s the Winter Gardens that I really fell in love with. They are currently closed to the public due to COVID, but once they’re open again I really recommend a visit. The park has a tonne of Victorian features like boating ponds, bandstands and fountains. I’ve driven passed lots of times and seen folk doing group exercise. It looks like a really nice spot for that.
Hazelhead Park
Hazelhead is huge. It’s also quite far out so I’ve only been there once. It’s not my favourite, but to be fair I wasn’t in the best mood when I was there, and it was winter. I should probably visit again! I particularly need to go and see the rose gardens when they’re actually in bloom. They’re really quite extensive. I actually went because I wanted to visit the memorial to the Piper Alpha incident (I’ll let you google that). It’s a really cool monument. I also stumbled across another monument to the Aberdeen crematorium scandal. I’ll let you google that too if you’re interested, I learned something really quite shocking.
In addition to the park there’s also an area of woodland nearby. In fact, there are two areas of woodland which kind of merge into one (Den woods and Anderson woods). They also join up with Countesswells woods to make the largest woods in Aberdeen. If you live nearby or you have a car, I think this is the perfect quick escape from the city.
There are of course plenty more parks in Aberdeen, but these are the ones I’ve visited. Green space is so important, and I think it’s become more important since the pandemic…so, get out there and enjoy it.
It’s time for the second instalment of the family tree! Last time I wrote about my grandmother’s mother’s side, so all the folk that led to my great grandmother, Dorothy Amy. This this time I’ll write about my grandmother’s father’s side stemming from my great grandfather, Bill Wood. I hope that’s not too confusing and, as before, I hope it’s broad enough that you’ll find nuggets of interest even if you’re not directly related to me!
Dorothy Amy’s ancestors were largely nailers (people who made nails), and even though I haven’t quite managed to finish this line yet, I can tell you now that my great grandfather’s ancestors were overwhelmingly coal miners. My great grandad Bill was the most recent coal miner on my family tree and it makes sense to start with him. William Henry Wood was born in Belper in 1908 and is frustratingly difficult to find records for! But what I can tell you is that he is listed as being a ‘colliery coal cutting operator below’ in the 1939 census. Let’s unpack that for a second. So, a colliery is a coal mine, which means a collier is a coal miner, and in lots of the census records I read they specify whether the miner worked above ground or below by just writing the job and then adding the caveat ‘above’ or ‘below’. Having not worked in a coal mine myself and being unfamiliar with the workings, I googled for images of coal cutting machines around the 1940s and the results are pretty much as bleak as I imagined (see image below)! I couldn’t find any more official records of his mining activities, but my grandad remembers him working with the classic mining tools of pickaxe and shovel and that he came home covered in coal dust from his job at the Denby colliery in Derbyshire. My mum has fond memories of him telling her as a child that he’d been mining below the house that day (her parents and grandparents lived next door to one another). I mean, that obviously wasn’t true, but it’s really very sweet!
Great grandad Bill was following in his father’s dusty footsteps. William Wood (my great great grandfather) was born in 1879 and died in 1915 at the age of just 36. In that time, he was listed as working as a ‘colliery engine fireman above’ in 1905, a ‘collier fireman’ in 1908 and finally a ‘boiler fireman’ in the electric works in 1911 for the Derby Corporation. He died young in a hit and run. According to rumour, and I guess family legend, folk knew who it was but as they were wealthy they got away with. Folk also say that William was robbed as he lay there in the middle of the road but I have no idea if that’s really true. Elizabeth, his wife, lived over 40 years without him! She was never listed as having a job, but that’s the case for most of the women in the tree.
Moving on, William and Elizabeth’s parents are definitely an interesting bunch. William’s mother and father (my great great great grandparents) are John Wood (1851 – 1909) and Emma Wood nee Morris (1853 – 1929). John is, you guessed it, a coal miner! In fact, he started mining at the age of 10 and then continued to work as a miner for at least the next 20 years. Around the time he started working a new mining act came in that actually raised the working age to 12, several years before that you could find children as young as 4 working in the mines. It isn’t clear what John did in the mine but in particularly narrow spaces that could hold pit ponies, small women and children hauled the coal out on their hands and knees whilst harnessed to a cart. As well as being smaller, women and children were often cheaper than ponies. Younger children around this time were often sat at trap doors used to periodically ventilate deep shafts and passageways as it was reportedly so hot in some parts of the mine that folk worked whilst nearly naked. It’s generally reported that these children spent most of their developmental years in darkness.
At 40 years old John is mercifully back above ground and actually listed as a beer house keeper and licensed victualler (a person licensed to sell alcohol). I don’t know if he owns the pub or manages it, but he’s listed as being the beer house keeper of ‘The Stanhope Arms’ in Castle Gresley until his death in 1909. A few years after John dies it appears that his wife, Emma, has taken over the alcohol license and she is listed as having an off license. She lives with her sons who are all colliers, one of them is a boiler fireman and another works in motor haulage underground, her daughter doesn’t work. That, to me, seems like a pretty badass thing for a woman to be doing around the turn of the century!
I think this could be ‘The Stanhope Arms’ now the ‘White Lion’.
So that’s the parents of William Wood but what about the parents of Elizabeth Wood nee Wagstaffe (my other great great great grandparents)? Well, Thomas Wagstaffe (1856 – 1916) was a miner (obviously!) and Catherine Wagstaffe nee Oakes (1856 – 1937) was a miner’s wife…like, she was literally listed as ‘miner’s wife in the 1881 census! The interesting thing, for me, about Thomas Wagstaffe is his clear job progression through the census records. In 1861 he is a young scholar, but by 1871 at the age of 14 he is already working in the mine. In 1881 he is still a coal miner but 10 years later in 1891 he is the colliery deputy. By 1901 he is the colliery under-manager and then on a marriage record for one of his children in 1905 he listed as colliery manager. When he dies at around the age of 60 he leaves £916 to his wife, Catherine, and daughter (Elizabeth – who is also a widow by this point). I used an inflation calculator (I have no idea how accurate those things are) and it suggested that £916 is worth about £80,000 now! I’m not sure how much colliery managers earned annually but it sounds pretty good to me! In addition to that, on the ancestry website somebody has uploaded pictures of Thomas and his wife Catherine. I don’t think I have any way of proving that these people in the photos are really Thomas and Catherine Wagstaffe, but they seemed to have enough money to afford nice clothes and get their photographs taken, so I’m happy to go along with it and accept these photos at face value.
Thomas and Catherine Wagstaffe (I think Catherine is the lady on the left).
Both Thomas and Catherine’s parents and parent’s parents are, of course, also coal miners…but there are a couple of other interesting nuggets of information here. Thomas’s father, George Wagstaffe, who is my great great great great grandfather not only worked in a mine but perished in one too. Now, coal mines are dangerous places so maybe some of my other ancestors died in mining accidents as well, but for George I have the receipts! Whilst he was working as a loader in one of the pits (coal mines) owned by Crewe Coal and Iron Company he was crushed underneath about 12 tonnes of coal. An inquest was held where they decided it was an accident and that whole incident made the papers. How awful though? It gives me shivers to think of it. …and also, how awful to have been the man that checked the props and declared the tunnel as safe?
The other interesting nugget I found out is that Catherine Wagstaffe nee Oake’s mother, Elizabeth Oakes nee Williams is Welsh. This excites me because finding ancestors that existed outside of the Midlands is like GOLD DUST! It also means that I’m at least 1/64th Welsh and that’s just delightful. I always thought I had a drop of Celtic blood in there somewhere! Elizabeth was born in Llansanffraid Glan Conwy in Caernarfonshire (North Wales) and I have no idea how she made it over the border to marry an Englishman. In 1851 she was working as a servant in Llynsfaern, Caernarfonshire and it’s possible (although the records were sketchy) that her soon to be husband was also working as a servant, but over the border in Cheshire (don’t worry he later became a miner and returned to the midlands!). Did servants have training? Could they both have met there? Did they have family friends that introduced them? I have so many questions about how these folk met…and met for long enough that they decided to marry! Anyway, I know that Elizabeth’s parents were Ellis Williams and Elizabeth Williams nee Roberts and I really wanted to explore my distant Welsh roots, BUT, it was a total minefield. There are multiple couples called Ellis and Elizabeth Williams who have daughters called Elizabeth in that area of Caernarfonshire AND all of the Ellis’s are farmers or agricultural labourers. It’s insane. I eventually want to have another go at unpicking the records, but it’ll be a mission that I come back to another day.
As I mentioned before, there are still a couple of lines I haven’t finished following from this part of the tree, but I always like to make note of the earliest records and have a little investigate of the time period. At the moment, the earliest records from this line are of my 11th great grandparents, John Mather (1634 – ?) and Elizabeth Mather (1636 – 1662) who lived in Staffordshire. This means that they grew up under the rule of Charles 1st and throughout the English Civil war (Staffordshire supported the parliamentary cause…who ultimately won). The war was one of the catalysts or contributing factors for the worst witch hunt in English history. Luckily for John and Elizabeth the puritanical witch hunting craze didn’t reach as far as Staffordshire. I’m actually reading a book about those witch hunts at the moment so it’s on my mind a lot! They then lived through the period in which England had no reigning monarch and the parliament ruled under Oliver and then Richard Cromwell (1653 – 1659). Oliver Cromwell divides opinion. He’s hailed as the father of English democracy and was celebrated as bringing in a new wave of tolerance (tolerance by 17th century standards!), which makes him a fairly popular figure in English history. But, he also invaded Ireland and his name in that regard is linked to words like genocide, massacre and ethnic cleansing. The war he led with his ‘New Model Army’ triggered a famine which was then worsened by bubonic plague. Understandably, in Ireland, Cromwell is not a popular historical figure. After living through such an interesting and tumultuous period in history John and Elizabeth died in more peaceful years under the rule of Charles 2nd. Phew! Anyway, that’s it for this ancestry instalment. On the Worth side I still have my grandad’s mother’s line and my grandad’s father’s line to do and I’m hoping to get these completed this year…so you’ll get two more family Worth blogs whether you want them or not!
This blog took way longer than I imagined! In October, whilst I was looking at the driving route to Loch Muick (I want to walk around it at some point) on my trusty OS map I noticed just how many tiny little markers there were along the roads that indicated ‘places of interest’. I decided it would be a great idea to visit every one of those, probably underappreciated, sites all the way from Aberdeen to Balmoral. I thought that we (my partner and I) would be able to knock it out in a day. 12 places of interest, 1 day, blog ready in time for my November post. Fool! That was a bit optimistic, to put it lightly, especially with that quickly fading Autumn light. A lot of the sites were difficult to find and once we’d taken the time to locate them, we wanted to linger and enjoy them rather than hurry off. I’m glad we didn’t rush it.
So, with a few months delay I’m going to tell you a tiny bit about those sites! Most of them have tricky parking, as in you just need to find somewhere as safe as possible along the side of the road and just go for. I also think it helps having an OS map, whether that’s on your phone or a physical copy, because most of them are literally just dots on the landscape with no signage. I think that’s part of the fun though. Just seeing something marked on a map and exploring until you find it.
1. Binghill Stone Circle.
This was the first stop for us, and it was a great way to start. To find it we pulled over and parked out of the way on the side of the road near Milltimber woods on Contlaw Road, and then walked through some gates with ‘private property’ signs and asked for some help in locating the circle. We spoke to a super helpful chap who owned the land and he said he thought it was easier to park and access the circle from Binghill Road…something I’d definitely suggest trying if you want to check out this site. In terms of directions once you’re off the road all I can really say is walk uphill into the woods and search around the area marked as “Recumbent Stone Circle” on Google maps. You really just have to follow your gut instinct and have an explore.
Once you get there only 3 of the stones are still standing, including the recumbent, although some of the smaller kerb stones are also in their original position. By ‘recumbent’ I mean that it is, as the name suggests, lying down…on purpose! The recumbent is flanked by two tall stones and then the other stones follow around in a circle, graded in height. Apparently, these recumbent stone circles are unique to Aberdeenshire, in Scotland and Cork and Kerry, in Ireland. They’re not quite sure what these recumbent stone circles were used for, but they think they could have been used for ritual purposes related to the moon. By ‘they’, I guess I mean historians! This stone circle is dated as Neolithic/Bronze Age, so around 3000BC. It’s hard to fathom anything that long ago!
History aside, this place just feels magical. We sat here for quite a while just chatting about the past, wondering what things might have been like, how the land might have lain, where people could have lived, what relationships were like…just pure conjecture and wild imagining!
2. Park House Symbol Stone.
Hmm, this is an odd one. To start with, I still have no idea where you should park if you want to see this. I struggled to understand the access to the area (coming from England, I still sometimes struggle to understand access rights and I get scared). We ended up parking precariously off the side of the road and scrambling up a bank onto the Deeside Way, and then walking onto the Park House Estate. There must be better ways of doing this!
Anyway, at Park house is a Pictish symbol stone which is thought to be early Middle Ages (5th to 10th century AD). The symbol stone is actually sat on top of a replica (an apparently inaccurate replica). This shows what it ‘should’ have looked like in its heyday with a mirror and a double-sided comb, a notched flower, a crescent and a V-rod. I have no idea what that all means!
3. Gibbet Stone – Mill of Dess.
This large mill stone shaped stone is easy to see from the road, but I would have had a hard time guessing what it was before reading about it. For parking you just have to find some vaguely okay space on the side of the road to stop! The same goes for most of these sites. This gibbet stone is thought to be the place into which a gibbet tree was inserted. What’s a gibbet stone, gibbet tree or indeed gibbet I hear you ask? Well, there’s no nice way to put it, a gibbet is something you hang somebody from/in. Whether that’s as a punishment (i.e. displayed in a cage but not left to die), directly as a method of execution (hanging by the neck or starvation in said cage) or as a warning (by leaving or placing a body there until it fell down – you can imagine what a state that would’ve been). So, a gibbet stone was what you stuck or fixed the gibbet tree/gibbet into. Gibbets or gibbet trees didn’t always require a stone, but it was thought that this particular gibbet stone was placed and used on the nearby Gallows Hillock.
I’m a fan of dark history so I was looking forward to seeing this one!
4. Aboyne Stone Circle.
This was one of the sites we spent the most time trying to locate, and then once we found it we wondered why it ever took so long! Parking in Aboyne is easy as it actually has carparks and safe places to pull over. Wherever you stop in Aboyne (it isn’t big), the stone circle is easily reached after walking past one of the local cemeteries (possibly belonging to St Margaret’s) and up the main path through the woods. On google maps the street is called ‘Aboyne Stone Circle’ and I think there is a sign directing you vaguely the right way, so it’s not totally hidden. At some point there’s a track that trails off left (North West) into the woods and the stone circle sits not far away from a field. If you’ve reached a farm gate on the main path then you’ve gone a bit too far, but head left (West) into the woods from that point and you should be alright. I appreciate it’s a fairly poor description, but it’s better than what we had!
The circle, once you find it, is very, very small at about 2.5 metres wide. This alone makes it pretty interesting. Apparently one of the stones, although firmly situated, might not be in it’s original place. My incredibly untrained eye couldn’t tell you which one though! The circle is dated somewhere in the Bronze Age (2200 BC – 800 BC) and the thoughts are that it could be a four poster stone circle. I’ve just learned that means there are four (or sometimes more) upright stones in an irregular quadrilateral. The circle is either this or a transition from a four poster circle to something else!
5. “Stone”!
So, this one outfoxed us for far too long! On the map it’s just a black dot that has ‘stone’ written next to it and I was therefore convinced it must be a standing stone. It’s marked as being right on the side of the road, so every time we drove through the area I’d peer intensely out of the window looking for it, but I never caught sight of it. Anyway, it came time to stop and look for it, so we stopped at the pull in next to the big ‘YOU ARE NOW IN THE HIGHLANDS’ sign. We walked up and down the road several times, scrubbed about in the bushes and even asked a lady coming out of her house, but we couldn’t find it. She said that her mother was interested in local history and had never mentioned a standing stone nearby. Eventually, it dawned on me that the ‘YOU ARE NOW IN THE HIGHLANDS’ sign is the stone marked on the map!
6. Loch Kinord Crannog, Castle and Castle.
So, this is a little off the direct Aberdeen to Balmoral road but I counted it as part of my route because I can do what I want! Plus, it’s a nice walk around Loch Kinord. There are 3 historical things of note there. Firstly, the crannog. A crannog is a manmade island constructed from wood (and presumably other bits) and this one was built around 2500 years ago. There would have once been a hut on top of the island but now it’s just the island itself, and you would 100% think it was natural. Secondly, is Kinord Castle. Okay, there’s no castle there anymore, just another island…but, you can imagine! Kinord Castle was burned down in the 1600s but as far as I know it had stood for about 600 years up to that point! Thirdly, and finally, is the Kinord Cross. Kinord Cross is a kite-shaped pink granite stone with an elaborate cross carved into it. This Christian monument was made sometime in the 9th century. It was moved to Aboyne Castle in the 19th century and then finally moved back to the loch in the mid-1900s.
I can’t imagine any of these sites will change your life but, as I say, it’s a nice walk around Loch Kinord.
7. Tullich Church and Souterrain.
Tullich Church is a great place to park for the souterrain, and it’s worth checking out too. This is a ruined medieval church (built on the site of an even older church) and it has a collection of very cool Christian and Pictish stones held safely behind glass. There’s a great information board all about the stones so I’ll let that do the talking if you decide to visit.
We actually visited for the souterrain though (not the church) and found it on our last trip along this route. I kept putting it off because there were always cows in the field and I’m super wary (read scared) of cows! Luckily on the last visit there were no cows around and we strode confidently across the field to a rocky/scrubby area and located the souterrain. Unfortunately, you can no longer get inside but we shone torches into the cavities and imagined what life was like around 0 AD when this was thought to date back to! The souterrain is an underground space, but it’s not really known what they were used for. Storage for grains? A place to hide? Or a bit of both? What do you think?
If you want to visit a really cool souterrain that you can crawl inside, I definitely recommend the Culsh earth house near Tarland.
8. Abergain Castle
I wasn’t expecting much from this ruined castle but this was definitely a hidden gem! We pulled off the ‘main’ road and parked on the side of a farm access road (out of the way of farm traffic) and then walked across some sheep fields and up into the woods. Abergairn is what remains of a small tower house built in the early 1600s and because of its small stature it was thought to be a hunting lodge. It’s a stunning area. We went whilst the Autumn colours were at their peak, which definitely made everything look beautiful, but there was a stillness and peace there that made you want to linger for as long as possible.
9. St Manir’s Standing Stone.
To visit this stone there’s a super handy forestry commission carpark just down the road. From the parking area you just need to hop over a stream and a fence and then you’re at the standing stone. A very mini adventure! As well as the stone this is also apparently the site of a burial ground and a church but little/no evidence of that remains to someone like me (i.e. not an archaeologist). Apparently, the 6th century chapel that used to be situated here used this standing stone as a reading desk and much later, unbaptised children were buried here up until the 19th century.
In the comments section of a random Aberdeenshire history post I also read that from this standing stone you can see the hill on which the last Deeside witch was burned. I have no evidence to back this up, but I choose to believe it! That’s my ethos for many a historical tale!
10. Abergeldie Castle.
Abergeldie Castle is a 16th century tower house which prompted me to enter the lottery more regularly. I spent the whole time walking around this area deciding which bit I’d turn into an Airbnb or a granny flat for my parents, what I’d plant where, where I’d put the barbeque, what I’d use the pit prison for etc… (Probably wine to be fair). Not long after we got back from our day trip I asked Twitter whether anybody knew the status of this house. There were lots of incredibly old private signs that made it seem like it probably wasn’t private anymore, all gates were open, no lights were on, nobody was around and everything looked very unloved. But, on the other hand, we felt like we were trespassing, there were enough possessions (like work jackets and spades) still around that we felt somebody could have lived there recently or perhaps be thinking about renovating and it definitely had been very loved at some point. It was all a bit mysterious. Anyway, it turns out that the man that had lived there had moved into an old people’s home many years prior and had recently passed away. Which is all a bit sad. It is a really beautiful spot and whoever gets to live there next is incredibly lucky…and wealthy!
To get to this castle we parked by the red phone booth/book swap just down the road, which is worth stopping at anyway.
11. Scurriestone.
This is an easy one to get to. We just parked at a little pull in and then walked into the field where the stone stands. Apparently, it’s thought to mark the spot where “the road diverged to the fords of the Dee and the Muick”, but that’s a little tricky to imagine now. It’s just listed as prehistoric which spans a large wedge of time…basically, it’s very old.
12. Knock Castle.
I think this is now amongst my favourite castles in Aberdeenshire. Knock sits on top of a hill surrounded by larches and it unquestionably pretty.
Knock is a 16th century tower house, which is full of tragedy. It was owned by the Gordons who had beef with a neighbouring clan, the Forbes. One of the Gordon’s, Henry, was killed by the Forbes clan so the castle went to Gordon’s son, Alexander. At some point Alexander’s son secretly married a Forbes girl, which as you can imagine did not go down well. The father of this girl had Alexander and 7 of his brothers killed whilst they were digging peat. I think there’s some chat about how they were armed and digging peat on Forbes land at the time (so not wholly innocent) but, after this long it’s probably hard to know the ins and outs of it. Anyway, the brothers (including Alexander) were then beheaded and their heads were spiked on top of their spades. Charming! On hearing this news Alexander fell to his death down the Knock Castle stairs and apparently his miserable and tormented ghost still haunts the ruins. The Forbes did not get away with this scot free however, and the head of the Forbes clan was executed by the law, his lands were also taken away and given to Abergeldie.
To get to Knock Castle we parked off the road at a quiet junction and just walked up to it, but I saw that other people had driven much closer to the castle and just parked in the middle of the road! It’s another one of those places where you just have to find a spot that looks acceptable and go for it!
I think if I can conclude anything from this series of excursions between Aberdeen and Balmoral it’s that this county is just packed with history. You can barely move without tripping over some ancient site and because of that I imagine there’s something for everyone. Unfortunately, however, there’s often not a lot of easily available information on most of these places and you end up trawling random sites with numerous search terms just to find a golden nugget of information. But, maybe that’s part of the fun, I guess not everything should be easy and I don’t necessarily think you need to know exactly what you’re looking at to enjoy it. Two of the best websites in terms of standing stones, circles and souterrains were https://www.megalithic.co.uk/ and https://www.canmore.org.uk/ if you’re ever interested in finding out about anything in your area.
One of my ‘100 things’ in 2020 was to do a 365 photo challenge, essentially, just take a photo every day. I don’t know if there are actual official channels for that sort of thing but I was, for the most part, just planning to keep it for myself. I’ve tried before but always failed. I normally get to a point where I’ve taken a series of very poor quality pictures and I embarrass myself with my own lack of skill! But this time I soldiered through!
My main aim was just to document something every day to get myself taking pictures more consistently. I found this challenging at many, many points! I struggled to find ‘beauty’ around the Raigmore hospital where I was doing my PIPS, I struggled to find things in my flat during lockdowns, and sometimes I was just purely unmotivated and uninspired. Sometimes, it would get the end of the day and I’d just take a lame, half-hearted selfie (normally in bed), but I’m glad I took those lame selfies and just kept going! As I mentioned, I wasn’t really planning to put this anywhere remotely public, but now I’ve succeeded in taking all the photos and put them together, I kind of like it! It does mean some of the photos are more personal or mundane than I would have liked! I’ll bear that in mind for future years!
All black and white photos mark what I call an ‘M.E. day’. If you’ve ever read anything of mine before you probably know that I am mostly recovered from M.E. (a chronic illness I developed around 4 years ago), but I still have the odd ‘mini-relapse’. These last longer than a day, but the black and white photo marks the point at which I thought I was peaking or felt particularly bad.
Anyway, my year started out strong in January with a trip up to Banff and Macduff on new years day and I finally got a chilli on my plant. I also gave a talk to the Tarland bee group and I started my PIPS internship at the Raigmore hospital in Inverness. I stayed up in Inverness over February and March, but came back a few times to go to an EASTBIO event, celebrate my best pal’s birthday, get my contraceptive implant changed and do a STEM course. During one of my trips back I took a picture of a notice in the zoology building asking people who had travelled through Wuhan in the last fortnight to self-isolate. I thought it would all blow over and I wanted to look back on that crazy time we thought a pandemic might happen! Ha! Anyway, back in Inverness I used my new location as much as I could to get to a few places further afield, like the Isle of Skye, Nairn, the Black Isle and Loch Ness. I would have travelled more but in mid-March my PIPS was cut short due to things with COVID looking more serious. So, I came home and quarantined for a bit. We all know what happens next… lockdown! I mooched about the house, bought a Nintendo switch, played a lot of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and made some cocktails. At the beginning of June, I turned 33 years old. Somewhere around the end of June I had my worst IBS flare up ever, I looked pregnant and I thought I might have appendicitis. It was awful. These are the personal (and unflattering) photos I was speaking, but they certainly mark a moment!! Post-June, I did some crafts, was able to get back to the lab and collect some honeybee samples and then in mid-July I was able to get a train down to Herefordshire to see my parents. That trip was extended because of awful weather, a derailment in Stonehaven the day I was meant to travel and an Aberdeen lockdown. All the omens told me to stay in Hereford a while longer, so I did! When I finally got back, I dyed my hair pink, started to travel more around Aberdeenshire again, had my first vehicle breakdown and started seeing my friends more again. Then I visited a lot of graveyards so I could write a blog, I carved pumpkins for the first time in years and had a banging afternoon tea. In December I just plodded on, went blonder and had my first Christmas away from my family, spending it in Aberdeen with my partner.
All in all, when I look at all the photos together, I realise it wasn’t actually a bad year, despite the pandemic!
2020 365
I’m trying to do it again this year and my aim is to be more creative, and maybe take better pictures in general (whatever that means)! I ‘only’ have my iPhone as a camera, but I’ve recently been super inspired by some amazing iPhone Instagram accounts and that makes me want to try out some different things and play around more. I was also very lucky that my parents helped me buy a GoPro this Christmas, so I’m hoping to have a play with that as much as possible and maybe add some short clips of video to my 365. Watch this space.
I mean it’s fairly self-explanatory! These are the 100 things I would like to do in 2021. I published my 100 things in 2020 list earlier this month (Jan 2020) and how I got on with that, and thought I’d also like to publish this years, in anticipation. I can probably count on one hand who’ll be interested in reading it, but it’s my blog, and I’ll do what I want!
Be more experimental with you kombucha. Actually make something with it!
Do a life modelling course.
Meet Mattia’s family in Italy.
See Grandad.
Go to Derbyshire to explore family history.
See G.
See Hannah.
See other Hannah!
Visit Ramsey.
Get another piercing!
Visit 5 more Aberdeenshire castle.
Keep up monthly blogs.
Write short quarterly blogs.
Have a decent roast.
Do a jigsaw.
Give a talk.
Make a dress.
Publish something, anywhere other than my blog.
Make elderflower wine/cordial.
Make a climate blanket.
Actually fill in my 365 diary.
Complete another 365 photo challenge.
Make a willow basket.
Catch all fish and bugs in ACNH (Animal Crossing New Horizons).
Read 12 books.
Walk half of Aberdeenshire’s coastline (83 miles).
Have a yoga/meditation routine.
Make own granola again.
Climb Morven.
Climb Lochnagar.
Swing on a swing.
See an otter.
Climb hill of cat.
Go out for cocktails.
Have a decent afternoon tea.
Make bara brith.
See the mappa mundi again.
Get fish for my tank.
Weekly yoga posts on IG.
Visit Balmoral.
Swim in the sea.
Take an Italian course.
Make mince from scratch for mince pies.
Wear lipstick at least once a month.
Wear heels out…just once!
Enter the lottery every week and keep track of winnings and losses.
Pay off credit card debt.
Write a letter.
Finally go to Balmedie beach.
Go to the cinema.
Grow and dye armpit hairs!
Crochet a jumper.
Carry binoculars with you more and keep a bird list.
Get a new pet slime mould.
Drink more water.
Eat more veggies (5 a day!).
Do a 30 day YWA (Yoga With Adrienne) challenge.
Do that wild June thing.
Walk around Loch Muick.
Visit Arbroath.
Make mead!
See a red squirrel.
Make a terrarium.
Make a spring/summer wreath.
Paddle in a river.
Make a monkey’s fist doorstop.
See whales/dolphins/porpii.
Make a rope knot mat.
Walk the Belties.
Gamble 1ps and 2ps in an arcade.
Make mulled cider.
Watch a sunset.
Naturally dye something.
Do some tie dyeing.
Felt some slippers.
Visit St. Andrews.
Have a beach bonfire/BBQ.
Go and see a dentist.
Make own lebkuchen.
Finish grandmother’s line on the family tree.
Go to the Gordon Highlanders museum.
Buy yourself a bunch of flowers.
Finish your house diorama thing.
Re-learn sailing knots.
Finish mooncake cross stitch and start baby yoda!
Make mum’s old cucumber/celery vinegar thing.
Cuddle a dog.
Run 5K!
Visit Hazelhead park.
Go for a walk along the Dee.
Dye hair an un-natural colour again!
Go on a whisky tour in Aberdeenshire.
Do one (or two) of the Aberdeen dark history audio tours.
Eat a Bratwurst and drink mulled wine at a Christmas market.
Buy a mystery box or auction on a suitcase or something!
Get Grandmother’s and Great-Grandmother’s rings re-sized to fit my chonky fingers.
Make a spring/summer salad with edible, foraged flowers.
Go to the aquarium in Banff.
Whittle something again!
Re-pot all current houseplants into pretty/better sized pots.
(A bonus picture of my face, because people like pictures!…you’re welcome!)
How I like to reflect and plan over the new years period.
Happy new year folks. It’s the end of 2020, something I know a lot of you have been looking forward to. I used to find the new year period quite difficult. Like a lot of people, I felt under pressure to make new year’s eve a big event where I’d celebrate everything I’d achieved over the preceding year, and toast in all the exciting things that would happen throughout the year to come. Ultimately, I’d find the whole thing both underwhelming and overwhelming at the same time. I’d feel like I hadn’t achieved ‘enough’, I’d compare myself to others and find myself lacking, and I had no idea how to make my next year ‘better’.
Now, I don’t put any pressure on new year as a single night and I use the whole period as a time of reflection and forethought. Hopefully that doesn’t sound too pretentious or airy fairy! As part of that process, I write a list. Basically, I love writing lists, I love having things to tick off and I love having something to look back on. Lists help me to keep my blinkers on to what I’m doing, what I want and what I have achieved. It’s not fool proof and of course I still find myself making unhelpful comparisons, but it goes some way to helping me keep focus.
For the past 2 years I’ve written a list of 100 things that I want to do over the new year. I originally got the idea from Countryfile magazine (I think) where they suggested a list of 100 nature focused things to do over the coming year. I decided I wanted to make my own broader list. In the first year (2019) I only managed to do 20 out of my 100 things and last year (2020) I managed to do 62 of them. I start compiling it around the beginning of December and I really enjoy mulling over the kind of things I would like to do or perhaps achieve over the coming year. I wouldn’t call it a bucket list and it’s certainly not a list of things I HAVE to do or SHOULD do, it’s more a tool to help me focus throughout the year on what’s important to me. What’s important to me could be as simple as dedicating some time to idly cloud-watch or as complex as figuring out which types of pollen are in my honey (I didn’t manage that one)! Just from these two years I’m learning that I almost always fail to reach fitness goals and yet I’m still moved to create them, I think I have more money than I do and I think I have more ‘free’ time than I actually have!
I would definitely encourage you to have a think on your own list and if you can’t manage to think of 100 things just make a shorter list. As a guide I’ve provided my 2020 list with a few comments and photos. The first 62 things are those that I managed to achieve and the 48 things that follow are those that I didn’t.
This year I had to make some changes because, well…the pandemic! A few months in I realised many of the goals would be impossible or irresponsible to aim for, so I made some new and more home and Aberdeenshire based goals, plans and aims. The original things are still shown below but crossed out, with the new 2020 friendly goal listed beside it.
Visit 10 5 Aberdeenshire castles. (Banff castle, Crathes castle, Knock castle, Findlater castle, Abergeldie castle, Abergain castle. Also, Kinord castle and the Peel of Lumphanan but I wasn’t sure if they counted!)
2. Read 12 Books. (1. The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide, 2. The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski, 3. The Outrun: A Memoir by Amy Liptrot, 4. Better Recovery From Viral Illness by Darrel O. Ho-Yen, 5. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeymoon, 6. The History of Bees by Maja Lunde, 7. Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Lon-Distance Swimmer by Lynne Cox, 8. The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper’s Women by Hallie Rubenhold, 9. The Hormone Diaries: The Bloody Truth About Our Periods by Hannah Witton, 10. She Speaks: The Power of Women’s Voices by Yvette Cooper, 11. Louis Pasteur book, 12. Untamed by Glennon Doyle.)
3. Keep up to date with bee research.
4. Write monthly blog posts.
5. Climb a mountain. (Carn na Leitire in Abriachan.)
10. Visit Muir of Dinnet – Burn o Vat. (With Yvonne from Tarland beekeepers in January.)
11. Climb Bennachie (12/9/20).
12. Go on a boat trip. Finger or hand crochet something. (Blanket).
13. Get a facial. Research family history.
14. Visit Banff and Macduff.
15. Visit the Black Isle.
16. Make margaritas.
17. Get some sea monkeys.
18. See a red squirrel.
19. Raise a kombucha SCOBY.
20. Find 5 geocaches (orginally 10). (Mostly around Nairn.)
21. Go to the Isle of Skye.
22. Visit St. Machar cathedral. (Even went for a tour around the conservation work.)
23. Grow an avocado plant.
24. Sew something.
25. Paint something.
26 .Book Chernobyl trip. Make a macrame wall hanging.
27. Write a paper – publishing it doesn’t matter. (Completing my second year PhD assignment which counted in my eyes!)
28. Go to the Den and the Glen. Carve a turnip/pumpkin.
29. Complete a cross stitch.
30. Needle felt something.
31. Bake a cake.
32. Lie on a beach. (Hmm, I mean I did lie down on a beach BUT it was very cold and I had a lot of layers on. Not quite what I had in mind!)
33. Go on an Aberdeen tour. Climb Scolty hill.
34. Visit St. Andrews. Crochet something.
35. Learn more about Aberdeen’s history.
36. Make a Christmas wreath.
37. Visit a seabird colony. Fill your flat with plants. (I guess ‘fill’ is open to interpretation but I did by A LOT of plants this year!)
38. Monitor health better. (This one is also very open to interpretation but I feel like I did this.)
39. Stop and smell the roses.
40. Work a 9 – 5 (as opposed to overwork.)
41. Stand up for yourself. (I’m still working on this but I stood up for myself more I think.)
42. Celebrate your achievements.
43. Get another piercing.
44. Give a talk.
45. See an otter.
46. Learn more about politics. (I kept very up to date for a while and it made me really, really anxious!)
47. Do a jigsaw.
48. Have a day with an average resting heart rate below 50 (I have quite a low heart rate anyway! I think the lowest average HR for a day this year was 48).
49. Stroke a cat.
50. Complete a yoga challenge.
51. Drive a car.
52. Complete a 365 picture challenge.
53.Go to the theatre.
54. Go for a fancy afternoon tea.
55. Have a decent Sunday roast.
56. Go to a Highland show. ID 10 flowers.
57. Write a letter with a fountain pen.
58. Do some origami.
59. Buy a ring and wear it. (I really don’t like my hands so this is more of a challenge than it sounds.)
60. Go camping. (With parents in a campervan – it counts!)
61. Skim stones.
62. Watch a sunset.
The following 48 things I didn’t manage to do!
63. Keep up to date with M.E. research. (I started to do this, but it was really depressing so I stopped.)
64. Wear high heels…just once.
65. See whales or dolphins or porpii!
66. Go to a spa. Make a rope knot mat.
67. Get nails done.
68. Get a massage. Gamble 1ps and 2ps at an arcade.
69. Visit Loch Muick.
70. Visit Abroath.
71. Find out what pollen’s in my honey.
72. Swim in the sea.
73. Make mead.
74. See grandad. ID 5 spiders to get back into it. (Only did one!)
75. Get back into yoga.
76. Go on a ghost tour. Walk the Belties route in Tarland. (We went but did the wrong walk!)
77. Learn some Gaelic.
78. See a contemporary dance. Make another Winogradsky column.
79. Get to know Aberdeenshire whiskies.
80. Visit Forsinard.
81. Make a terrarium. (I tried to make a bog biome but nothing thrived, everything struggled so I scrapped it and now I’m turning it into a fish tank.)
82. Go to a conference. Nail forearm stands.
83. Climb Arthur’s seat. Whittle something.
84. Go in a hot tub.
85. ID ‘some’ mosses.
86. Nail crow pose.
87. Re-learn sailing knots.
88. Dancer without an aide.
89. Run somewhere – any distance.
90. Have a bonfire.
91. Meditate ‘regularly’. (I meditated more than last year but definitely not ‘regularly’.)
92. Cook more. (I can’t remember how much I cooked the year before but I definitely didn’t cook as much as I intended!)
93. Dance often. (Again, I danced more than previously but I wouldn’t say it was ‘often’.)
94. Eat less meat and dairy. (Yeaaaah, no.)
95. Do the splits.
96. Go to a BBQ or have a BBQ.
97. Bathe/paddle/swim in fresh water.
98. Reach level 1000 in game.
99. Go to the Shetlands. Make a sourdough starter.
100. Make a monkey’s fist doorstop.
So, there you go. My 2020 ‘100 things’ list. If you make your own I’d love to know the kind of things you put on it and if by the end of 2021 you’ve found it helpful.
I love winter! If you know me, or you’ve read any of my blogs before, then you’re probably already aware that I struggle in summer but truly enjoy winter. Most of the people I know have that flipped around and are summer lovers, winter sceptics! So, as my planned blog for December is taking longer than I expected I thought why not push that back and write about why I thrive in winter, and perhaps how you can too. If you live in the North North, like the Arctic circle, you might need more than I’m suggesting here, but I think this is appropriate for the latitude I dwell on!
Firstly, I love being cosy and hunkering down and you can only really do that if it’s cold outside. I even generally keep my heating low because I’d rather wrap myself up in fleecy PJs, jumpers and my dressing gown, which is 5 sizes too big for me than feel stuffy in an over-heated apartment. If I’m in my flat, I’m wearing my dressing gown. If I’m in a zoom meeting it’s probably wrapped around my waist, if I’ve opened the door to you and I look ‘put together’ my dressing gown has been hastily whipped off just before and it goes straight back on after the door is shut. I whole heartedly suggest you get yourself a gown that you want to wear like a second skin, it is a true winter joy!
I also have multiple blankets and even crocheted a poncho-style blanket I can wear whilst I’m mooching about my apartment. When I lived in Aberystwyth, I had an attic flat by the sea, with no heating and no shower (it did have a bathtub). It was extremely cold…as in, I could see my breath indoors sometimes! I did have an electric heater but as we all know these are expensive to run and if I’m honest it only really took the edge off the cold. The size of the immersion heater meant I couldn’t fill the bath up all the way with hot water so I would sit in a warm puddle of water up to my hips and wash my hair with a jug, shivering the whole time! It’s crazy to think I pay only £50 more in Aberdeen for double the space, an extra bedroom, heating, and a bath/shower. I did love my tiny, cold, Welsh seaside flat though and still think of it very fondly! Anyway, the point of that little side-story was that blankets were one of my saviours (this was in the days before my dressing gown)! I literally wore one like a cape at all the times, which is where the idea for a poncho blanket came from…it just took a few years to come to fruition! Having so many blankets also means that I can sleep with my window open throughout most of winter and just bury myself under a nest of downy and woolly layers. I kind of remind myself of a rodent under all it’s bedding with just it’s nose sticking out for air. I love the fresh air.
On the same cosiness theme as fleecy layers and blankets are hot water bottles. I genuinely get a bit excited the first time I get to use it at the beginning of winter/end of autumn. I felted myself a hot water bottle cover during my winter stint living on the Isle of Islay, which makes it feel even more special. I used a tonne of different colours to remind me of all the rainbows I saw on the island because I’d never seen so many, so regularly. It’s getting a bit thin and worn now after so many years of use, but it gives me emotional warm and fuzzies as well as literally pumping out heat! It’s attached to me throughout most of winter. I tuck it into the waistband of my dressing gown or under my arm whilst I wander about my flat and it sits under my feet whilst I’m working from home. It’s even left the house with me a couple of times! I used to tuck it under my jumper whilst I sat on the quadbike mowing the reeds on Islay and I’ve taken it to work with me at the university on the weekend. (They shut the heating off on the weekend in winter and it gets a bit chilly in the office). Anyway, get a hot water bottle. You will not regret it!
As well as warm layers, I also love a bit of warm light, like fairy lights and lamps. I light candles infinitely more in the colder, darker months and as a result my flat always smells awesome. For me, candles really make a difference and they don’t have to be expensive. They make ‘normal’ things like taking a bath and reading a book more special too. Candles are great for the evenings but something that has made a REAL difference to me, especially in the morning, is having a sunrise/sunset alarm clock. I struggle to get out of bed at the best of times, but I REALLY struggle to get up when it’s dark outside. Mid-winter in Aberdeen the sun rises at 0845 and sets at 1530 so unless I’m having an ultimate lie in, it’s dark when I get up throughout winter. Having an artificial sunrise on a dark morning has been life changing! I’m still grumpy and I still don’t like crawling out of my blanket nest, but I’m summer level grumpy not tickling a sleeping dragon level grumpy (if you get the HP reference there, I salute you!). There are lots of different makes and models out there and I couldn’t recommend getting one more.
Talking of light – Vitamin D. Our bodies synthesise vitamin D when the sunlight hits our skin throughout the summer months. (We can also get it from eating things like oily fish, meat, cheese and mushrooms). In the UK we can’t synthesise vitamin D in the winter because there isn’t enough UVB radiation in sunlight. So, no matter how many walks you go at midday between October and March you’re not going to be getting any vitamin D out of it. Not to mention you’re probably not going to have much skin exposed in those months anyway. The idea is that we make all our vitamin D in summer and that we make enough to see us through winter. BUT the reality for many of us is that we now have inside jobs and probably don’t spend 20 mins outside in the sun between 11am and 3pm every day….so we don’t make enough vitamin D in summer to tide us over anymore. That means that many of us are low in vitamin D and this can cause things like fatigue, low mood, hair loss, muscle pains and frequent infections: Vitamin D is super important for healthy bones, teeth and muscles. Because of that it’s now advised that we supplement with about 10µg of vitamin D per day throughout those darker months. (Of course, if you have any concerns or any extra health considerations you should see your doctor before you go down to Boots). Whilst we’re talking about this, I think it’s also very important to note that folk with darker skin need to get more sun than us pale folk to make the same amount of vitamin D. So, if you have dark skin you are more likely to have low vitamin D levels throughout the whole year (especially in places like the UK). Also, if you’re a modest dresser then you may not have enough exposed skin to be making enough vitamin D even in summer. Something to think about. It’s always hard to tell if something like a supplement makes a difference or not, but I feel like it works for me!
Despite the fact you’re not getting any vitamin D out of it I still think it’s crazy important to get out and about throughout winter so you don’t get cabin fever. In fact, winter is my favourite time to explore lots of places. Mostly, because it’s quiet but also because I’m a huge fan of open, desolate and bleak landscapes! I think they have a huge amount of atmosphere. I mentioned in one of my other blogs about how I went to Dunnottar castle in Stonehaven in both winter and summer and how different those two experiences were, but the same thing can be said for most places. There’s so much beauty in a winter landscape but, I think, in general, maybe you have to look a little harder to see it. More often than not when I’m out and about with someone in winter I hear them say at some point…”I bet this is lovely in summer”. I’ve had to train myself to reply with something like “hmm, yeah” or “I bet” but really, inside, I’m shouting “IT’S LOVELY RIGHT NOW”. I’ve never heard someone in summer say, “I bet this looks lovely in winter”. Maybe I should start. I get it though, I really do. Summer is warm and colourful and more obviously full of life…it’s just a huge bugbear of mine!
Something that might help you appreciate being out and about in winter is a flask…or three. I have a tea/coffee flask, a soup flask and a whisky flask and each one is loved and appreciated throughout the cooler months. My consumption of hot drinks in the house skyrockets too and my alcohol choices go from summery chilled white wines and margaritas to brandy macs, whiskies and espresso martinis. I like drinking, and warming yourself up or killing off the cold ‘germs’ lingering in your throat is a great excuse! (Don’t tell me if there’s any science debunking that cold ‘germ’ thing. I don’t want to know)!
Anyway, because I still try to get out and about as much as I can my skin definitely takes a hit, so, I take the opportunity in winter to pamper myself. By pamper I just mean I up my skincare in general; more baths, more exfoliating, more face masks, more moisturising…you get the idea…just ‘more’! I know a lot of us are on a budget, but this really doesn’t have to cost much, and it so makes a difference. Alongside this type of self-care I think I naturally allow myself to relax with less guilt in winter too. I do more yoga, crafts and reading (which constitutes relaxing for me). Maybe the winter hibernation vibes let introverts like me spend more time getting on with introvert things!
Talking of introvert things, I think winter, which of course marks both the end of the current year and the beginning of the next, is a great time to reflect on what has happened and ruminate over what could be. This is something I REALLY enjoy doing. Now, I’m not talking about 5-year career plans (eurgh) or weight goals or anything like that, but something much softer. I’m actually going to write another blog at the beginning of the year about my ‘100 things to do in a year’ list and the cards I use to help me focus on what’s important to me. As this blog is already 2000 words long I won’t say any more about that ‘softer’ type of planning here or now…but look out for it if you’re interested in that.
So these are just some of the things I love about winter and some of the things that help make it such a pleasant time, for me. Of course, I also love Christmas and a sprinkling of snow and the smell of cold air and blue skied frosty days, but that all seemed too obvious. I can’t force you to like this season but hopefully if you’re a winter sceptic this has given you something to think about!
In A Kingdom By The Sea 