Friday 24 November 2023
I have been reading my journal from this time last year. I don’t remember doing as much as we did in the first week of living here. I suppose I just thought it was all unpacking and sorting. I am now being reminded how utterly exhausted I was, physically but also mentally, this time last year. I do feel we have done a lot with the house in the past year but nowadays it’s in bursts rather than a steady constant – I can see that the overachieving of the first week here was not sustainable.
Another thing to reflect on for the year is fashion. Today, I am wearing fairly presentable clothing, though I now notice everything is black. But I wouldn’t be appalled if I went out like this and bumped into another person. I would also feel okay wearing this particular outfit in London. However, there are many days when I wear indoors what I wouldn’t want to be seen wearing outside. I don’t mean in terms of not flattering, I mean in terms of a combination of an absence of style and not feeling comfortable in what I’m wearing, which probably does incorporate not flattering. I am far too often unstylishly practical and I don’t want to get used to dressing that way, it doesn’t make me feel good. It is perfectly possible to buy and wear stylish warm clothes, indeed I probably have some. I just think there’s a certain mindset to cold-weather-wear, which is along the lines of layer, layer, layer with a disregard for the layers as a whole. Quite often the smart element of what I choose to wear is an underlayer, so is never seen. The other week, I wore a pair of stretchy cord leggings-loungewear that are too loose around the bum and waist and which I constantly have to keep pulling up. I can’t remember the outer layer I was wearing but I know it was a top that served as warmth rather than a fashion statement. And then the Openreach engineers, three of them, turned up and I had to spend time with people wearing clothing I felt self-conscious wearing. It doesn’t matter what I’m wearing, I know that, but it does matter to me how I feel.
Maybe the lesson here is to focus on the outer layer. I think my biggest fashion problem is with my warm jumpers and warm legwear (legwear? “Trousers” is wrong and sounds too formal). Tomorrow, I am meeting a friend from Manchester in Lancaster for a long overdue catch-up and she’s mentioned she would like to look in some vintage clothes shops there for a winter coat. I am thinking this is a good opportunity to look for some interesting, flattering (or at least not unflattering) jumpers and/or cardigans. I’m not sure that cardigans are ever particularly flattering but you never know. Subject to the weather forecast, I have a vintage, woollen coat that I hardly ever wear but which I brought up here from London, realising it’s more often cold enough for that kind of thick (yet, dare I say it, stylish) coat up here than down there. I might actually wear that tomorrow.
Despite the wind and rain yesterday, I did get out for a walk (got a lift with Chris part way up the road), didn’t get wet or blown away and, as ever, it was good to go out for a walk and work through some of my writing blockages. Today, I intend to go out for a walk, though may leave it for a while in the hope the sun comes out as the temperature now is allegedly 1°C with a feels-like of -8°C. It can’t feel that cold, surely …
