My dog and I have been ill like “baton touch” as the Japanese would say, which means, as if we were running a relay race and passing on the baton of illness to one another.
First it was my dog’s ears, I believe. They became infected after she scratched them to bits, possibly because she had an allergic reaction brought on by the summer’s heat. Ah – the summer.
Yet even though it’s October the warm sunny days seem to be here to stay. Nothing wrong with that, apart from when I was ill and bed bound, I was forced to watch the beautiful blue sky days pass by through my windows.
In the garden I felt the warm summer breeze caress my dry skin, my tan already faded to old terracotta. In the bathroom I squirted aloe vera gel onto my arms and legs and wondered when did summer happen, exactly?
When I talk with my Obaachan in Japan the summer has definitely been happening. Too much, too hot – unbearable.
People ask me how is your grandmother doing? I tell them, well, she’s doing well but she’s almost ninety and we’re going back to Japan to see her for her 90th birthday. Then I follow up with the caveat that because Japan’s summer has been so hot, so humid, she’s housebound. Everyone needs an air-conditioner to survive; she can’t get out to walk to the shops or meet her friends, so she feels weaker. Also, bored. The old people in her area are all locked up in cooled rooms, like during lockdown.
I’m getting married next year. Which is why I’m going to Japan for Obaachan’s birthday and also taking an entourage of English folk with me who are all related to my husband-to-be. There will surely be a lot of culture-shocks form both family clans. I’ll have to be the translator. The lone translator between ten people all of whom want to understand one another – I’ll not think about how difficult or fundamentally impossible this task may be until I’m on the very expensive flight to Haneda, to save my wits.
The reason I got ill is because I was trying to be good at all my jobs and it took its toll. I have my paid job then my charity job then my wedding job then my house job – all the while pulling along my little brown dog ROLO with me wherever’s dog friendly. (I also think I have an aversion to rest, or I’ve taught myself how to tolerate being too busy, whichever it is, my habits aren’t great.) No wonder the two of us get ill together.
Here's how it went: I was thinking about different people and languages, and working to a school calendar at the same time as the standard calendar, and then my dog hurt her paw, so she was a hob-along in bandages wearing dumb paw-boots; I did First Aid Training which made me afraid of everything killing everyone, specifically through catastrophic blood loss, then I gave a speech in front of an audience at a Japanese festival on an unseasonably hot day and cried in front of everyone when I mentioned my dead mother, then a girl wearing a green headscarf and pink kimono (rad combo) handed me a tissue from the crowd; I got thrush and back at home I curled up in a heap under a cheap blue velvet duvet with my dog and slept for 80 hours.
The torrent of activities made me miss summer, during which I had this strong desire to use my whetstone I had bought a year ago to sharpen the kitchen knives. I was slicing some chilies and realised the knives were blunt – right after my First Aid Training course – and freaked out about the dangers of blunt knives, so became determined to sharpen them.
But alas, I went to Norfolk to visit friends who have a little girl and live next to the ruin of a Norman castle. Then I went to my fiancée’s family home to help clear the garden because they’re hosting our wedding next year. I also went to Oxford to walk through ancient Wytham woods with a friend.
The rail strikes finally put an end to my weekends away. Once the plug got pulled on my adrenaline, I got ill and then all my other inane worldly tasks were forgotten too, like updating Instagram or boiling eggs.
It then became October and half-term was being mentioned and it was still unseasonably warm. The charity has finally begun to close down, and I’ve had some rest, and I’ve even stopped drinking alcohol to give my immune system the helping-hand it was crying out for.
I’ve spoken to my Obaachan, and she says it’s finally started to cool down in Japan as well. She tells me she is able to go outside again; she is so grateful for Autumn.
I have noticed the immense number of spiders living in and around my house. Munching flies and leaving their corpses dangling by threads like mobiles from my ceiling. They’re fattening themselves up and I say go ahead, just please don’t be poisonous. ROLO ate some poisonous red berries from a yew tree, and I had to go to an emergency vet to get her stomach pumped. I wish she had more canine street-smarts, but in good news, I am no longer ill.
Today I have turned a momentous corner in my life. I managed to sharpen the knives. I know that the seasons are turning, and I’m pleased with the way things are going. Even though, when I look at my garden the tulip bulbs I planted three days ago have been unearthed by some squirrel (or my dog), I know I’ll live to fight another day.
