Clover Stroud: On The Way Life Feels

Heat, Botox,, Zuckerberg, dead children on Instagram, and other things are all making me feel unreal; I want to put words around this sense of unreality, since perhaps you are feeling it too. I keep thinking I’m losing my mind. For a while I thought it was because of the destabilising feeling of moving countries.

I am writing this on a keyboard so sticky, it’s giving me a shiver reaction, as Dash calls it. Everything about this morning is nice, apart from the keyboard. It’s 630am on Sunday morning, and I’ve already stepped outside to walk the dogs in the quiet early morning light; there is a cup of tea beside me and the house is sleeping.

Last week was a bit like a microcosm of life: some things and even whole days went really, really well, and the moment dazzled, but there were also some things that went badly wrong, that threw me into a great deal of chaos and mess. I am not going to go into what these where, as ultimately, the mess is of a practical nature, and like all practical mess, can be cleared up. I just need to get out my wheelbarrow and shovel to clear up the mess, which I’ve done, ahem, many, many times before.

I made a mistake, three months ago, when we moved back to England, after three years in America. I thought that feeling settled “at home” would happen almost immediately. It had taken a long time to settle in America, and feel at home. I got there eventually, so much so that I miss feelings of America a lot now.

This is a free post because, well, you’ll see… Well, that was definitely not the cheerful, end-of-summer, celebrating-the-rain and seeing friends kind of bank holiday I had been really, really looking forward to. Not at all. I’m writing this on Monday evening, having just left the house for the first time in five days, and until about an hour ago, the only adults I talked to all weekend were HMRC and a second hand car salesman, both on the phone.

When someone you love above anyone else dies, the emotional reality of the fact that you will never, never, never see that person again (at least, in this life) works its way into your body and soul as a pain so intense, it’s hurt is physical as much as mental. This is especially true when that person dies in an untimely way.

On 22 August, 2021, I decided to stop drinking alcohol. At that time, I didn’t think I was an alcoholic, if being an alcoholic meant being someone whose life was unmanageable due to drink. I wasn’t a falling down drunk. I rarely drank in the day time. I am proud of this milestone And yet… alcohol is a lot more complicated than that, isn’t it? Every year, around this time, I write something about alcohol, and what it feels like to take it out of my life.

Something I liked best about being on holiday for the last two weeks of July, was that I ate absolutely everything I wanted. On the very first day, while my family were tearing into buttery croissants and slathering quince jam onto baguettes, I thought, for a very few moments, that I’d just have some scrambled eggs and sliced cucumbers, or even skip breakfast all together, which is what I normally do at home now.

My mind has been running up and down the number of days left on holiday, counting them up and down, up and down, like fingers over piano keys. I started with an incredibly luxurious 15, so that my hands could stretch out over two whole scales. 15 whole days of holiday ahead of me! That felt like forever.

It’s 5.02am and I’ve been awake for not quite an hour. I’m relieved that 5am has arrived, as actually getting up at an hour associated with 4am is too early. I was awake at 4.23am, but I lay in bed and listened to the crickets and watched the blueness of dawn through the thin curtains, shutters flung open. I’ve made a cup of tea in the rental house where we are in Brittany, using tea I brought with me.