Guest Post: In Praise of Pottering

As you may imagine, having recently had the sensation and mobility in my feet and legs melt away precipitately over the course of a few months – I hazard by about 70% since Michaelmas, when I could still haltingly walk my way through a Dashing White Sergeant – has been a bit of a bore. Standing without support, let alone walking, is practically impossible. I lost my balance at a local bus stop a couple of weeks ago after absent-mindedly letting go of my walking frame and landing heavily on my left hip – cracking a small bone in my pelvis – which has hardly helped things along much. There are many things which I took entirely for granted before but which I can no longer do, at least at the moment: chemotherapy and prayer (Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster and Cardinal Mindszenty, since you kindly ask) may, DV, restore some of them in due course. But there is one mundane activity in particular in which I can no longer indulge, the deprivation of which has been surprisingly difficult: pottering. 

It is now poignantly and somewhat absurdly evident to me that a large proportion of my time at home was taken up with casually random but not entirely inconsequential activities: getting up from my chair to adjust an object’s place on a table or straighten a squint picture; popping into the kitchen to wash a glass or fetch a biscuit or lackadaisically cook a meal whilst listening to the radio and glugging a glass of wine; picking up a fallen flower head on the other side of the room; or wandering out into the hallway to open the front door and look out over the garden (whilst glugging a glass of wine). I did them almost mindlessly, unconsciously, and constantly. And, I now realise, I quietly enjoyed doing them (especially whilst glugging). They made up the background fabric of my domestic existence and as such were a constant thread in the unremarkable tapestry of my life. I can still do some of them, with the aid of a little wheelchair lent to us by a kind young friend, but they take much longer and a great deal more effort – and risk. Consequently, they involve a substantial amount of mental energy even to scope out, and I’m pricked with anxiety that I’m going to come a cropper – drop a plate or scald myself or fall over. As a result, they largely remain undone, even if technically doable. And, it turns out, I miss doing them terribly. 

 

The burden of this loss has of course not been mine alone. Mrs McLean’s devotion, considerable extra physical efforts and patience have been quietly heroic, but I can tell that it all takes a heavy toll upon her [Ed. --I quite enjoy the meal-planning and cooking, though.] If in my perished potential to potter I have lost the quiet pleasure of being cheerfully and moderately active and the feeling that I’m being useful, she has lost a cheerful and moderately useful husband. She is left instead with a husband whose requests for her assistance with a million tiny things he used to do for himself without even thinking – however politely and appreciatively they are meant to come across – are inevitably grating and wearisome. This is on top of her having to assume almost all the other domestic chores we used to share between us. We are both penalised by the passing of my pottering.

 

I pray (do thou likewise) much of this will improve when my fracture heals, the twinges stop buckling my leg, I can build back more strength and lose some of the dull terror that I’m going to injure myself again. It’ll get better to some degree even if things don’t change or improve immediately or drastically with my general mobility – at worst, I’ll just get better at coping with it, so long as I’m spared any further deterioration. But if I were asked what activity I would most like to be restored to me it wouldn’t be popping down on a whim to the pub with pals, or taking long country walks in the spring, or picking my way through crumbling castle ruins: it’d be the simple freedom of peacefully pottering.

Benedict Ambrose