The past few weeks have been extraordinary. I have been more active than for several years, and I have also been travelling more than I have done for a long time. The main reason for this is that I have taken a lover, which has been just wonderful. Always a good boost to a flagging spirit, but we have developed a real rapport as well, and it’s been really good to have someone I can talk to about just about anything. It’s the first time I’ve been in a sexual relationship for 3 years, and I have found difficulty maintaining erection and orgasm, but I’m working with my GP to see if we can discover what the cause of that is. It does seem to link closely with my sleep – when I am rested and relaxed things are much better than when I’ve not been sleeping and am therefore tense. Symptoms of CFS seem to relate to this too: when my system is in the state I described previously as ‘physiological anxiety’ it is difficult to become physiologically aroused. Anyway, this is all fascinating stuff, but I don’t want to frighten my more sensitive readers, so I’ll leave it there.

Off up north again tomorrow for ten days, should be utterly blissful.

Apologies for absence – I’ve had internet problems again. Have just managed to sort them out.

More than that, though, I’m keen to identify and deal with the underlying cause, whatever that might be. Does anyone have any experience of this – anxiety without cause/object – and any ideas what I might do to be able to rest and sleep again?

An online conversation with someone else who has CFS yesterday sparked this thought.

Does anyone else have a similar experience when it comes to bugs and CFS?

I'm still having serious sleep problems - the one thing I've really not had any success in dealing with. I’ve tried a few melatonin capsules over the past few days, given to me by a friend who swears by them, and have got two good nights, but the others have been lamentable. Will have to go to the docs to talk it through again; I’d like to find a solution which doesn’t require me to take any more pills.

Just off to the docs now, in fact; I’ve been asked to take a new round of tests in preparation for a referral to the local CFS service here.

Even though my sleep hasn’t been much cop recently and I’m therefore pretty tired, but even so, I’ve been able to do quite a lot of writing over the past week. It’s been wonderful to be able to create, and a good feeling to be productive as well. Although it’s been cold, with the sun out it’s been warm enough to sit out in my courtyard, which is a wonderful atmosphere in which to think and write, and also something I so badly missed when I was in London – my own bit of outdoor space to which I can go even when I’m not feeling that strong. I feel really lucky to have it.

I also managed to get to a friend’s stag do in London, and was pleased with the way I handled it – went to the first couple of stages and then came home before things got too late (and boozy). Had a lot of fun, and my friend was delighted that I was able to make it, so it worked out well.

The past few days have been bliss. For the first time since I've been ill, I've been able to sit in my garden and relax in the sun. I knew that having a private outdoor space would affect hugely the way I feel about the place I live, but this week has been the first time I've been able actually to experience what it's like. Even when the weather hasn't been good enough to be outside, having good views from my window - of my private courtyard at the back, and of the scrub land at the front, which no one else uses, so is effectively private - has given me a sense of living in a larger space than that contained by the four walls of my house, whereas the space outside my flat in London came to feel threatening more than anything else. Now that I can actually use the outside space, it has brought a whole new dimension to my experience of this house and environment.

Another thing which has brought me joy in the past week has been actually to do some creative writing, for the first time in a couple of years. Predictably, I've not gone back to that poetry book since posting about it a couple of weeks ago, but when I visited a friend with whom I frequently write last week, we shared some ideas for books, and started writing a couple of them. I've been writing the opening of his idea, and he mine, and we'll pass our work on to each other and build it up that way. As I said before, when I'm able to think creatively it makes me feel so much more energetic, and alive. It would be good for me to find ways in which I can do creative work more of the time; for example, since returning, my sleep hasn't been that good, and the tiredness I've felt has made me feel less able to be creative. If I could build up the habit of writing and creating even when feeling less like it, I'm sure I'd be able to write more of the time, and not just when I'm in tippy top shape.

Anyway, I've heard that we are due some snow at the weekend, so as the sun is out now, I'm going outside.

I’ve been in a consuming phase for a few months now – since I moved, really. By this I mean I find it hard to stop myself eating and drinking more than I actually need. I’m snacking quite a lot, and have put on weight. I think this shows I’m not 100% settled in to my new home – I see it as a sign of being not quite comfortable – and also of boredom – as I am spending the majority of my time in one room, it’s a distraction activity. I am slowly increasing the amount of time I spend out of the house, and the weather is starting to perk up as Spring comes on, and I think this combination, along with slowly getting to know more people in the area and having more of a social life, will help me to cut down this consumption. I have put on a fair amount of weight and am not feeling great about my body at the moment. I am really keen to get back on the restrictive diet I’ve talked about before, but the combination of the effort required plus a lack of willpower at the moment is making this difficult to contemplate!

I’ve written before about how I’ve found it easier to perform creative tasks than analytical ones, and about how being creative, when I’m able to do it, can lift both my spirit and my health state.

I’ve just started reading a book by Stephen Fry, called The Ode Less Travelled (a bad pun, I know), which is about poetry, and particularly the fact that many people feel intimidated from trying it by its seeming complexity. I’ve been surprised by just how much the first chapters have inspired me to start trying my hand once more at writing some poetry. It’s something I should always have been into, as both language and beauty are so important to me, but I have always felt an unease about trying. Part of this is the fear of failure – of having to write lots of bad poetry as practice for (hopefully) eventually writing some good stuff – but also because of the feeling that I simply don’t know what makes a good or a bad poem. I wrote a couple of poems several years ago, which were written more or less on instinct. A couple of poet friends said some nice things about them, but I really didn’t know what it was which made some parts work, and others not work. This book breaks down the structure of poetry to demystify all this, and I’m finding it a great help and inspiration to get writing again. I’ve also found the first few exercises (writing lines about anything at all in iambic pentameter – and I’ve discovered what that is, into the bargain) far more enjoyable, and less difficult, than I would have expected.

Given that my energy and strength are limited, writing poetry is something that should fit really well within my capabilities, more so than many other creative pursuits which require more activity, eg painting, playing a musical instrument, and so on. I‘m excited!

I’ve now been in the countryside for almost three months. Apart from not yet being connected to the internet at home – which is why this blog has been so sparsely populated since November – the move and subsequent settling in went surprisingly well. Last weekend I went back to London for the first time, to catch up with several groups of friends. It was an interesting experience, and I tried actually to feel what it was like being back: did I feel that this was still my home and I never should have left or, conversely, that it was a horrid, noisy, dirty place and how could I ever have lived there? Neither, in fact, although I did feel confirmed in my belief that I have made the right move for me, by leaving, and at the right time. I started off by feeling in overwhelmingly and oddly familiar surroundings. This is the first time I have left a home of many years, and then gone back to it, since I was growing up. I felt a curious mixture of ‘yes, I do belong here; this is what I know’ and feeling different and, in a way, slightly out of the loop. I was consciously aware that I do now live in very different surroundings, and did feel slightly out of place in the city, as thought in fact I no longer do belong there. This sense was strongest by far when I went to my old neighbourhood, and saw things I’ve seen literally hundreds of times, yet saw them in a different way; with both nostalgia and distance. No; I now belong, if anywhere, where I now live, although I have yet to make many social connections here. 

The weekend in London was also a good test-bed for how well I can cope with travel and a busy short break. I’ve not travelled, other than to family homes for short respite breaks, for about three years now, and my last holiday was not a positive experience overall. This has left me rather nervous of travelling: especially the whole airport experience. Here was a chance to have a short city break by train. I had actually packed in a fairly full itinerary: shopping, lunch, haircut, supper, drinks with friends on Friday; meet friends for breakfast, then a full day and evening’s get-together with a disparate group I’ve not seen for ages on Saturday; three meetings on Sunday; and two on Monday before coming home. On reflection I probably tried to pack in one too many activities on each day, and on Saturday ended up drinking far more than I’m able to cope with these days, which took some recovering from; by Monday, I was ready to come straight home, and so missed out on seeing a couple of good friends. Now, five days later, however, I have suffered no set-back in health and can look back on a really enjoyable, and immensely sociable, weekend. I can learn from some of the excesses (at least, I hope I can!) which led to me being over-tired by Monday, and it gives me something to work on in terms of future travel, which is wonderful. 

In my feelings about the difficulties of travel, and in other ways, I had felt I had become a real home-body: needing routine, constancy and locality. I have been amazed how well I have responded to being uprooted to a completely new location, and a completely different environment to boot. I think this was possible because it was my choice to move, and because I waited until I was 100% convinced that I wanted to – was desperate to – make this move. Still, I was apprehensive about how I would respond to my new environment, at least at first. It’s been wonderful how positive I’ve been about it; apart from a short wobble before christmas, I’ve had no real concerns about making connections here; I know I will, eventually, and it’s just a question of going around when I can to places where I can meet people, and biding my time. The monthly book group in the town’s bookshop has been a good place to start. This trip to London acted as a buffer in giving me lots of social contact in one weekend (although it has also given me hunger for more social contact!) but also acted as confirmation that I am truly happy in my new setting, and therefore can be happy to go for a time with less social contact than I’d ideally like just so that I can live in this setting. 

In fact, thinking about it, a friend suggested, some months ago when I was having trouble finding somewhere to live in the town itself, that I could go back to my original plan and rent somewhere out in the countryside for, say, six months before looking again for somewhere in a more built-up area. I had abandoned this idea because of the problems of transport, and concomitant worries about isolation. However, she suggested I treat this time in the countryside as a kind of retreat. I liked the idea of having a sort of enforced retreat as the antidote to the kind of environment I had been experiencing in London. In truth, what I have ended up with is, while not a compromise in any way, the ideal medium: it feels like countryside where I live, but I have the bonus of a frequent bus taking me into the local town (only a mile away) and another bus taking me in 25 minutes to the nearest city (and shopping centre) and the main line to London. Places I had looked at nearer the town all had issues with noise, which was one of the main things driving me from London. Here I can get the quiet I needed, and so can have my retreat when I want it, but have easy access to other people and things to do when I need it, and so do not need to fear isolation. 

The one time at the weekend when I really did feel like I no longer belonged in London was on my last night, when I got up in the night to go to the loo. A small window in the bathroom was open, and the noise – of traffic, sirens, dogs barking and people chatting and shouting – felt shocking and alien to me, whereas only three months ago they were my constant nocturnal companions. The only noise which has woken me up at night has been an owl. This I’m happy to live with.

I wrote this several weeks ago, but have only been able to get on to a computer today - hope it finds you all well. I have had a down patch since the new year due to the amount of things I had been doing over the previous couple of weeks - it is a tough time of year no matter how little one tries to take part in it - and picking up a cold from my sisters' children. This has now passed, I think, so I hope to get back to the strength I had before that pretty quickly.

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I’m spending christmas day with my sister and her family. It’s been lovely to be so close to them – they live only two miles away. I’ve not been close to my family for many years, but over the past few years have made steps to becoming closer with family members, and have felt very positive, although a little apprehensive, about moving so close to some of them physically. The main reason for doing this was so that they could support me at times when I needed help, but I also sensed that moving geographically closer to them would be a good thing to do at this time as part of the process of becoming closer to them relationship-wise. It’s been working well so far.

I’ve been here a month today, and still feel very much that I have made the right choice in moving here. Over the past few days, I have felt twinges of concern about how I’ll get to know people and develop a social network as I’ve not yet had chance to start this process. Having said that, I have made contact with the local camera club – which does seem rather serious and with an average age teetering around 60, although many of the people seemed rather friendly, and I can see it could provide rich material for a writing project! – and have also chatted to a few people in the streets and in shops, which gives me confidence about making friends down here. But much of the time I am on my own, in a way that feels different from when I was in London, I think because if I felt lonely there I could easily call someone or go to see someone (assuming I was well enough, of course), whereas now I can’t do this apart from my sister. It is also less easy to fall out of the door and find something to do. Having said that, I don’t see this necessarily as a down-side; it’s simply something which will take a while to adjust to; and the upsides far outweigh this. The fact that I’ve still not managed to get an internet connection at home has exacerbated this feeling of isolation, as well as being the reason I’ve not updated this blog for so long.

I have, however, continued to feel remarkably well. As this was the main – nay, the only – reason I moved down here, I cannot complain if a few other things aren’t going quite as I expected. I have been able to get out and about a lot, and have been able to do a fair bit of walking. There is a large area of old pasture-land across the road from me (see photo, if I manage to upload it), which is good for walking; this is one of the most significant differences from where I lived before: that I can literally walk out of my door in to fields. This was my desire when I first thought of moving out of London, but then practical considerations, such as being able to get to shops and amenities, and socialising, came in to play, and I settled on moving to a small town. But the location I’m in is, thanks to the little circular bus route which goes past my road, easily within reach of the town centre while being effectively, from the point of view of the environment around me, in the countryside. I really do feel that this environment is going to give me just about the best chance I can have of recovering from this illness.

I’ve completely avoided christmas for quite a few years now, as I find it (a) meaningless and (b) incredibly stressful, so celebrating it with my sister and her family will be a rather strange experience, although I’m sure this will be in a good way. Whatever you’re doing, and whoever you’re with, I hope you have an enjoyable day.

My move went extremely smoothly, apart from an obligatory trio of catastrophes which struck in quick succession: I lost the keys to the hired van, got a parking ticket and then pranged it! At that point I was starting to think I was headed for disaster, but everything else went like a dream, and I got into my new place at 10pm. Moved all my stuff in the next morning, and was already 'in' by the next day, in that I had enough unpacked and enough furniture set out that it already felt like a home rather than a warehouse.

I don't yet have internet access at home, which is why this is the first post for ages. Posts are likely to be soporadic until after the new year.