I’ve been enjoying week one of two of my Easter holidays.
After a hectic term of juggling full-time teaching with a part time degree, I was utterly run down by the time I walked out of the classroom last Friday. I put myself under extra stress over the last few weeks to get as much of my final assignment done as possible so that I wouldn’t have it hanging over my head during my time off. I then celebrated this week by doing… absolutely nothing.
Seriously, nothing. I should really have kept going to the gym to keep my energy levels up, but I just crashed and burned. Here is what I have done since finishing work on Friday afternoon:
End of term spring concert with Rock Choir
Father Ted night at the local comedy club, with the actor who played Father Damo
Went for a walk and Sunday lunch in Carnlough
Lay in bed drinking coffee
Got my hair trimmed
Practised piano
Got an Indian Head Massage
Went to a Laughter Yoga session (absolutely insane)
Played ukulele at a community centre’s afternoon tea for local pensioners
Booked appointment to get my nails done tomorrow
Ate 1.5 Easter eggs
Watched Belfast (the film, not the city)
Napped
Had a couple of showers, I think
Cooked, ate, slept etc.
That actually sounds like a lot of stuff now that I see it written down in list form. I feel as if all I did was lie in bed watching pointless videos on Facebook, so this post has been reassuring.
Performed a set in public with the ukulele group tonight for the first time.
It was a fundraising gig held in – of all places – an orange hall. Normally I would refuse to set foot in one of these places as a matter of principle, but I was assured that the event itself was not affiliated with the Orange Order… and besides, I really wanted to play!
We were on quite near to the end, which meant sitting through – amongst other things – an accordion band, a compère with an almost indecipherable countryside accent whose speciality appeared to be telling mildly sexist jokes, and a Brethren quartet called something like Redemption Groove, who were wearing suits and singing hymns.
Our group leader looked somewhat panicked as we went backstage to get ready after a round of “I can’t wait to die and meet Jesus” or something to that effect. Wearing colourful shirts and hats with bright garlands and ukuleles round our necks, we were not at all in keeping with the vibe of the evening. “I didn’t realise it was going to be so religious,” she hissed in an anxious whisper. “We have to drop Fat Bottomed Girls!”
We had an absolute blast though, and the crowd did start to smile and tap their toes and even sing along when we got to our Country Roads finale. New experience: perform in a band. Check!
I remember being quite anxious and despondent about turning 30, and then my 30th birthday ended up being fantastic – living it up in South Korea with an amazing bunch of friends.
Life took a bit of a twisty downward spiral a few years into my thirties, however. Undiagnosed depression led me to move from country to country, chasing the happiness I could no longer find in the things I used to love. I became isolated, withdrawn, unhealthy, overweight, and probably close to being a full-blown alcoholic. Then I came home, got help, and with medication and support was able to start climbing back up.
Of course, recovery is never as simple as that. It took several years of ups and downs, changed medication, CBT, and lifestyle changes for my mental health to settle down and me to start to remember who I was before it all went wrong. By that stage, I was approaching the end of my thirties, and I had this growing determination that I was going to enter my forties as I meant to go on. Not as a tired, unhealthy, obese, unfit, bored woman who felt frumpy and timid, but as ME! Young(ish), energetic, fit, healthy, vibrant, and confident. And so I set about making it happen.
I’ve been thinking about that over the past few days. I’ve just booked a holiday in France for the Easter break. I spent the weekend jumping in the waves with friends and swimming out into the depths of the lough while snow lay on the ground. We chatted about things we did last year – a Mud Run obstacle course, a marathon relay, cliff-jumping, a 10km race, hiking, paddle boarding, too many cold water swims to count – and things we want to try this year. Tonight I went to my beloved Rock Choir and came back with a huge smile on my face after singing my heart out and laughing with my newest friends. Tomorrow night I’ll be jamming with the ukulele group, while Thursday sees the return of my weekly art class. I’ve been teaching myself Spanish on Duolingo, and am taking up an old school friend on her offer to meet up and practice Spanish conversation over coffee. At work today, I gave a presentation to a group of potential new students and their teachers with next to no notice, and felt completely confident in myself and my role – a huge deal, when I think about how stressed and overwhelmed I was still feeling this time last year, after only a few months in the job. My diary is filling up with concerts, comedy gigs, trips.
And I just feel… alive. Properly, happily, confidently ALIVE. Which, after feeling numb for the better part of a decade, is an inexplicably glorious feeling. No longer do I sigh and say “I would love to do that”. I see something I want to do and I get out there and do it, and it feels so good to be living my life again.
Maybe, for me, it’s not so much a case of life beginning at 40, but of it getting started again.
Tonight was my second week at Ballymena’s new ukulele jam group, and I love it!
I even went out and drove there in the snow and ice, which I’ve steadfastly refused to do since I wrote off the car on black ice several years ago. It took me about 20 minutes to do a 5 minute journey, as I drove at the speed of a particularly nervous snail, but it was worth it. Strumming, singing, harmonising, and a few percussion instruments and a harmonica thrown in – that’s my idea of a good night!
The snow started coming down heavily again on my way home. It looked like that scene in The Snowman where he’s on the motorbike and the beam of light from the headlight highlights the falling snow. I would not be happy if I had to go to work in the morning, but as half the country appears to be going on strike tomorrow, the powers that be have decided to close the college. Hurrah!
Apparently it’s to be the biggest day of industrial action the country has ever seen. Healthcare, transport, education, civil servants. I wouldn’t be striking if I was required to come to work, because I don’t really believe it works – I think affects the wrong people, and as I teach vulnerable students with special needs, I don’t feel it’s fair for them to be the ones that suffer. For many of them, college is their one constant, their safe place. Us striking wouldn’t have any effect on the fat cats, but it would upset the students we care about. I don’t strike, but I support the rights of others to do so if they believe it’s what’s required.
There won’t even be anyone to grit the roads tomorrow, so a warning has been issued to stay home unless absolutely necessary. For a lot of working class people, it is absolutely necessary. If they get into car accidents, there won’t be adequate emergency services to help them. Ordinary people are the ones impacted.
I don’t know what the answer is to the shite state of affairs in this country, but I don’t think this is it. Unfortunately it seems to be the only option left for many people.
I send a message to the group chat and smile throughout the day as other excited messages ping in.
Tuesday has become the highlight of my week. No matter what sort of a day I have at work, however chaotic the students are, whatever goes wrong, I know that my evening is going to be spent singing, dancing, and laughing. Rock Choir only came to Ballymena in September, but already I can’t imagine life without it!
Tonight was the first session of the new term, after several weeks off for Christmas, and we were all so excited to be back. Not only that, but our performances over the festive period generated a lot of publicity, so dozens of new people signed up for their free taster session. There was a real buzz, and the harmonies sounded fantastic with all those extra voices!
At the end, the leader asked the existing members to perform Sweet Child o’ Mine, one of our songs from last term, to let the newbies hear a finished song. One of the ladies I’d been chatting to in the break came over to me, laughing, when we finished it.
I just wanted to say, I have never in my life seen anyone look as happy to be singing as you did there!
I laughed too. I just can’t help it – I can’t keep the smile off my face, or my arms and feet from moving. It truly is my happy place. I was actually worried when I saw this video, taken when we were trialling a new arrangement with several other Rock Choirs at a special event with the founder herself. I hadn’t realised until I watched the recording that I’d started dancing with wild abandon when the chorus hit. I left an apologetic comment on the video on Facebook, worried that I’d sort of messed up footage that was meant to be used for official promotional stuff, but the founder replied that she was happy I enjoyed it so much.
Honestly, if you can’t spot me, just wait for the chorus and look for over-enthusiasm!
We went for to one of our favourite spots for Sunday lunch and a walk – the Fullerton Arms for delicious seafood chowder (me) and roast chicken (Clarke), followed by a walk up to Carrick-a-rede and round to Ballintoy harbour. It was cold and frosty, and a bit slippery in places, but the scenery looked as breathtaking as ever in the winter sun.
We love Ballintoy so much that we even had some of our wedding photos taken there! Neither of us wanted a big wedding, so instead we spent a lovely afternoon in March 2022, just the two of us, walking around our favourite coastal spots and getting photos taken. This is my favourite one, taken in Ballintoy.
We opted to get married in a simple, fuss-free Humanist ceremony in, erm, a field. But not just any field – this one has a spectacular backdrop!
Only our very closest family and friends joined us at sunset for the ceremony, and the farmer set out hay bales and blankets for them to sit on.
Afterwards we all just went for a relaxed dinner and drinks at a nearby hotel. No major expense, no stress, no reception, no fancy outfits. Clarke wore jeans and his favourite jacket, I wore a simple hippy dress and shiny hiking boots! There’s even a photo of me climbing over a fence. I don’t think that’s normal bride behaviour! Let’s face it, I was never going to be a glamorous, girly bride.
We very much did it our way, and enjoyed every moment. Plus it means that our coastal walks are even more special now, because we get to remember our wedding day every time we go to our favourite spots!
Unfortunately, no amount of reminiscing or happy memories can take away from the fact that it’s back to work tomorrow…
That’s what I texted the husband earlier, accompanied by a photo:
I have treated myself by investing in the Zoe experience. It’s very expensive, so although I’ve been following Tim Spector for a while, and wanting to take part, I couldn’t justify the cost. This year, however, I have been really struggling with fatigue. I eat healthily, I exercise regularly, and I’ve even started HRT in the hope that it’s early menopause – but so far, nothing is working. I’m sick of feeling tired all the time when there’s so much I want to do! So Zoe finally seemed like a worthwhile investment in my health rather than a frivolous and unnecessary science experiment.
In a nutshell, it’s a programme designed to help you find out how your body responds to what you eat, when you eat, and how you eat. The first step is “test day”, which is how I spent my Saturday! I attached my CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitor) yesterday, and for two weeks it will monitor my insulin levels to let me see when I have blood sugar spikes and crashes. Then today I had my test meals to measure my body’s reaction to sugary, carby, fatty food. Two cookies for breakfast, two cookies for lunch. They weren’t horrible, but there were moments when they tasted a bit like PlayDoh. Oh, and the lunch ones were bright blue.
This is to measure my “gut transit time”, as I have to look out for their – ahem – next appearance. There was also a gut health test involving taking a sample that I’d rather not talk about ever again because I just don’t have the stomach for such things. And finally, the finger prick blood test.
The app was very concerned that I made every effort to warm up before doing the blood test, to help the blood flow. I was jumping around, wrapped in blankets, soaking my hand in far-too-hot water, convinced that it wasn’t going to come out fast enough. Then I pricked my finger and panicked when it seemed to erupt like a geyser, flooding the test card as I tried desperately to stop the flow and avoid getting it all over the sofa.
Anyway, samples have now been posted, and I eagerly await my results! And for the next two weeks, I use my sensor to experiment with all my favourite foods and see how they’re affecting me – and learn how to make tweaks so that the blood sugar levels become steadier and the afternoon fatigue, in theory, stops.
Fingers crossed! But not the middle left one, because it still hurts.
Last day of the holidays today. I used my precious time off wisely, by taking a trip to Asia Supermarket in Belfast to restock my Korean supplies.
It’s over 10 years since I left Korea, but my love for the food has remained strong and devoted – all the more so because I rarely get to eat any! There is precisely one Korean restaurant – well, café really – in Northern Ireland, and it’s in Belfast, somewhere I don’t go very often. So, if I want Korean food regularly (and I do!), I have to make it myself.
Since it’s impossible to get the majority of the ingredients I need in Ballymena, I make occasional trips to Asia Supermarket to stock up on the essentials. And because I don’t go that often and hate driving in Belfast, I really do stock up!
This was today’s haul:
Most of the kimchi will be frozen and rationed over the coming months. It costs about five times more what I paid for it in Daejeon, so it has to last for a while!
I’ve been going through some serious nostalgia, reading back through the years of my blog. So tonight, there was only one dish on my mind, and I made yukgaejang. It was nowhere near as good as the one the cooking lady used to make, but it will have to do. I wish I could have her recipe!
I took up watercolour painting several years ago, discovered I really enjoyed it, and then just gradually stopped during all the chaos of the pandemic years.
A couple of weeks ago, however, I picked up my brushes again to help me with my grief at losing one of my wee guinea pigs. I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it – I’m out of practice and a bit stuck at this point! It’s been a comforting process though, even if the painting never gets completed.
Poor Oscar was ill for a while, and although we did take him to the vet a few times, they weren’t very helpful. I don’t think many vets know what to do with guinea pigs, and you get the feeling that if it’s not a dog or cat, they don’t really care. By the Friday night of his last week, I was in tears as I brought him to the vets, thinking I was bringing him to be put to sleep. The nurse looked at him briefly while we waited for the vet to be available, and actually seemed a bit annoyed with me, saying “I thought he was dying, from the way you described him on the phone” – implying that I had been melodramatic by begging for someone to look at him. “Isn’t he dying?” I asked, hardly daring to hope.
Both nurse and vet dismissed my concerns, and booked him in for an operation first thing on Monday. The operation that he couldn’t have out of hours (i.e. that night) as it “wasn’t an emergency procedure”. The operation he could have had much earlier, if they had spotted the problem at previous visits. Instead, he got worse and worse, eventually hardly eating anything, and fading away to nothing.
He died that Sunday, probably in pain, and starving. It absolutely broke my heart. I know he was just a guinea pig, but he was a wee family member to us, and we loved him. And I don’t think it would have been so horrible if he had just passed away suddenly in his sleep, as most guinea pigs do. Or even if they’d agreed to put him to sleep on the Friday. It’s the fact that he suffered, and I couldn’t help him, that devastated me.
Thankfully I’m one of those pet owners who takes hundreds of photos and videos, so I have plenty of memories to make me smile! On the night he died, I sobbed that I would never get any more pets after the piggies are all gone (we have 3 others – I became Crazy Guinea Pig Lady instead of Crazy Cat Lady in the end!), as it’s too painful to lose them. I didn’t mean it. Losing a pet is hard, and it’s a guarantee because of their short little life spans, but it’s worth the heartache to experience all the moments of fun and affection they bring.
If this blog is ever visited by any readers from back in the day, they might get a bit of a shock to see how I’ve turned out. In the past couple of days I’ve been reading back over old posts, and marvelling at how much I’ve changed. I used to be quite the party animal, didn’t I?! Mind you, I was in my twenties for much of it. I’m in my forties now, so maybe I’d better do a quick update to bridge the quite substantial gap between Hails Abroad and Hails at Home.
No, I don’t go out partying much any more. I don’t even really drink alcohol very often these days! A cup of fruit tea in front of the fire with a jigsaw puzzle is more my style. 2011 Korea Hails’ brain would explode at the very thought.
After depression got a hold of me during my failed attempts to live in Prague and Istanbul, I moved home and focused on getting well again. It was a long journey, with lots of ups and downs, but eventually I learned how to manage my mental health well enough through self care that I haven’t needed medication for several years now. Fairly early on in the process, in 2015, I met the man who is now my husband. He has been a very calming, steadying influence in my life, helping me to take better care of myself (and doing it for me when I just wasn’t able).
My weight – always an issue, throughout my whole adult life of crash dieting and bingeing – had continued to increase for years, and my unhealthy lifestyle of alcohol, junk food, and immobility was one of the major players in my struggle with my mental health. And so, a few years ago, I decided that enough was enough. I ditched the diet/binge cycle for sustainable healthy eating and exercise. I went from walking to swimming to joining a gym, open water swimming, kayaking, paddle boarding, and even eventually running! I now list hiking as one of my favourite activities. Can you believe it?!
Today, exercising and cooking healthy meals form as big a part of my life as drinking at The Local used to back in my Korea days. I get up at 6am to go to a gym class most mornings before work, even earlier if I decide to go for a swim in the lough instead. Becoming an early riser is another thing that Past Hails would have laughed at the very thought of! I work in a local college back in my home town of Ballymena, teaching personal development and employability skills to students with learning disabilities. In my free time, I still like trying new things – at the moment I’m attempting to learn to play the ukulele! I joined a Rock Choir, and love going to the weekly singing sessions. I taught myself to paint and discovered I quite enjoyed doing watercolours of animals and scenery, though I haven’t been painting much for a couple of years now. Oh yes – and I still love to travel, of course! I try to get away abroad at least once a year with Clarke, and we go on as many adventures closer to home as we can manage.
No doubt I will elaborate at some point on some of the things I’ve mentioned, as I relearn the blogging habit and try to remember how to write. But for now, here’s a photo from today’s walk on the shore of Lough Neagh, which is where I do most of my cold water swimming with a group of like-minded loons.
Coffee Helps: The Decaf Years 