There has been a running sore in our lives for much of the last year. (Actually, several – sores, not years – but let’s concentrate on one for the moment.)

As is the wont of running sores, it left me with emotional-Long-Covid for most of the summer. You know: broken sleep; convoluted dreams; dark dawns; unproductive days.

All that nonsense.

Then we got away just before the late autumn lockdown, miles away, far, far away from the source of the infection, and life was pretty jolly bearable.

(The days were still fairly unproductive, tbh… but lovely.)

Then it hit again. Do sores hit? Struck, better. Erupted: that’s it.

That was when I discovered the power of wild winter swimming. 

Now, the thing about an anæsthesising wheeze like that – as you’ll know, if you’ve ever done any of those exercises to get you through labour (which, admittedly, don’t work at all: but let’s imagine for a moment they do) – is that it doesn’t take the pain away. But it ‘takes the edge off it’, as your midwife will lie to you. It enables you to run with it. (Or, in the case of labour, scream your head off and wake all the neighbours with it. Survive, more or less.)

Invigorating cold swims absolutely take the biscuit here. (Wish I could recommend them for labour, but your baby might get washed away in the fast-flowing river. Or freeze to to death, poor little mite.)

So come the late autumn and the next spurt of the sore (a rather disgusting metaphor, this… but I’ve started so I’ll finish) I was only reeling and wobbly-kneed for a week or two. Not months.

Mostly thanks to the swimming.

Next flare-up, week or two ago, toppled me sideways for twenty-four hours. Couldn’t write. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t think of anything else.

After which, somewhat surprisingly perhaps, I emerged blinking into another bracing and beautiful winter’s day.

You do see what’s happening here? My lovely encouraging gentle hypnotherapist friend asked me, when I confessed yet again that I didn’t have Chapter Twelve to share with him at the end of the day.

You were only incapacitated for a day and a night.

Oh yes, I said.

So I was.

Thank your unconscious self that you are in charge, and that next time it will be even shorter.

Ok, I said. I will.

He is very clever, my lovely encouraging gentle and kind hypnotherapist friend. He teaches me how to hypnotise myself. By saying things to my conscious self, which my unconscious self then obligingly makes happen.

Last night the suppurating little volcano spurted and farted and burped again. 

Wham.

Ow.

Ouch.

I can’t write anything today, I told my friend. Hammer-smashing-me-in-the-head time. Sandbag over the back of the cranium.

Again.

And what do you know?

He was right.

Subconscious in charge here.

A couple of gins, half a packet of peanuts (no supper thanks: too churned up), a brief romp through my Bach musette a few times (don’t stop, Shaun says when he comes in the room… but it sounds so awful, I say… well, I enjoy listening to you – a shame Ben doesn’t, but you can’t win ’em all) unsweetened cocoa with double cream, an early night and dawn with birdsong and a longish WhatsApp chat with a friend whose life is a lot more full of hurt than mine and who also wakes at six, and only about fourteen hours later, I feel fantastic.

Comparatively.

Which, I believe, is what’s called a Winning Streak.

*****

And, just in case you thought you’d got away with a short post for once, there is something else going on here, which is called Prayer.

As it happens, I have a lot of issues with the Almighty when it comes to prayer and the Trades Description Act.

He promised always to answer prayer. Was my impression when I signed up anyway.

Hmph.

If you’ve ever tried praying for anything in the slightest specific, you will know what I mean over this. God has, let’s call it, His own very individual and creative way of interpreting what answer exactly means. Members of the jury.

Try praying for someone to bring you a cup of tea first thing tomorrow, just how you like it and just when you want it, the moment you think of it.

Go on. Try it. Now…

Thank you.

Right. Will it happen?

Nope.

Take it from me. That cup of tea ain’t never going to appear early in the am, just because you’ve prayed it into some mythical existence this pm.

Even though there is no caveat in the small print that I am aware of, that His promise to answer prayer only applies to Sensible Prayers.

Prayers He Agrees With. You know.

For a lot of last year I was praying that this running sore would soon heal.

By Christmas, for instance. Last Christmas. The one just gone.

Which seemed more than reasonable, last summer.

I’m sure I specified last Christmas. Not next, or the one after. I’m virtually certain I did.

And even if I didn’t, even if I forgot that itsy little mini detail in the clause, that I was thinking of December 2020 not 2030 or beyond, He surely knew what I meant. On account of He is God.

Omniscience being part of the job description.

Well, now…

As you have correctly surmised, God didn’t “answer” that prayer. Not in the way we mortals would have thought consistent with the Trades Description &c. Nor any normal understanding of the word, answer.

And this is where He can be so Irritatingly Right.

No, the running sore is not gone. Not even the slightest sign on the horizon that this extremely painful Vesuvius in our lives is having any thoughts whatsoever of calling in its retirement clock and having a farewell party with its colleagues and going home to tend its roses.

Not in the tiniest whit.

And yet… and yet…

I admit it.

God has innovative ways of keeping His promises.

I am becoming more robust to deal with it.

So, Running Sore of My Life, you can drag on for years if you like. I expect you will anyway, with or without my say-so.

And next time it will only need twelve and a half hours and one gin.

(As long as it’s a big triple, spread out over a couple of dry Martinis. With roasted cashews on the side.)