Menolyrical; Poetry Of The (Broken) Heart

I am very conscious that I need to get back onto the menoculayshunal posts. However, February has provided challenges as it often has throughout my life and apart from intermuttsus, there have been visitations and sports to delay my focus. Thankfully, nothing excessively distressing - so far...

Do you have a least favourite month? Mine is definitely February, for many and varied reasons. I have always held my metaphorical breath as we approach this part of the year. If there is going to be anything go awry and make life uncomfy for yours truly, it will almost always - though not, it is to be admitted, exclusively - be in February.

Despite being the shortest month, it always seems the longest. In the years that I have resided in the UK, this is partly due to that long haul out of winter and into spring, where Feb tends to be the bleakest of months. This year is proving to hold true to this experience.

For me, it marks the time when, if there is to be some poor news, poor news will make itself known. As those paying attention will have noted, this year, it was on the technological front for me. I also, as one on a narrow pension, find it getting narrower as the cost of living rockets upward, and there is a global threat on the horizon to make this worse for all who walk that particular line. One suspects many people (and not just in the UK) are starting to take stock and re-budget... but back to my personal point about Feb the Fearsome. 

On the non-human front, apart from tech issues, there tend to be things like the day when my wee cottage in OZ was hit by a major late summer storm, and half an enormous gum tree did everything bar bring the roof in. God bless Allianz Insurance... yes, late summer in OZ means February. Here in the Hutch, it was when I arrived back from OZ in February 2017 that I was hit with the news of the need for re-roofing and other heavy maintenance with frightening costs... and I landed up being the key organiser. That was one of the lowest years of my life, mentally speaking. Then in Feb 2019, as I prepared to take the biannual trip Down Under, the recognition that by the time I returned, dad would require much-increased care, and I'd have to prepare for that. How in Feb 2020, I landed in bed with the worst thing I'd experienced since the Hong Kong Flu in 1968 - I've never forgotten being ill that summer and I will not forget what I now know was a thing called SARS CoV-2. As well as dealing with the physical and mental strain of full-time care, I had to handle Coviditionitis...

This was the month in 1969 when news of my maternal grandmother's death shocked us all (it was unexpected - but to pass in one's sleep might also be considered desirable - though she was only five years older than I am now...) The same month six years later, her husband, that grand old shepherd of the hills, took his leave. Both these grandies were much loved and are still missed. Though our paternal grandad left in June (1971?), granny MacLean departed in February (1987). A close friend in Sydney attempted suicide twice on two Febs, one year apart. (I am pleased to report she survived and has thrived, but still, I could have done without being the one on call for those events - a selfish reflection, I know.)

I have not led a hugely romantic life, not that I have been immune to the charms of men. Only two were ever serious, though - and both managed to create emotional havoc in February. You might therefore understand that I am utterly ambivalent regarding today's date!

One of the things I uncovered in that 'arts folder' from the attic was this writing. It is dated April but relates to the first of the big disappointments, and it clearly had taken me several weeks to start excising the angst! I trust most of you have fonder Valentine memories...