The River

Three days every year, the river is empty.

The first happens in February. It's a cold Sunday morning, and the river is quiet. In town, college rowers are waking up, nursing hangovers or maybe still celebrating blades and drinking spoons into oblivion. BCDs are over, and now all that is left is the cold. Some of the town clubs may venture out, in singles or doubles, but for the most part, the river is calm. This might be the quietest of the three days: it's still very cold, and it doesn't get light until almost 7:30. Who would want to be on the river anyway?

The second happens in June, and it is bittersweet. The sun is shining, it's been a hot week. The Plough has punters sitting on the garden, having Sunday roasts. The cygnets have hatched, and if you look closely at the bushes you will notice where leaves have been ripped out for laurels. Locals walk up and down the tow path enjoying the weather and the closeness to the water. But it's also the day after an ending. For many, the previous day is the last time they will race in a boat. The glories of Easter Term rowing, with never ending evenings, are over. For many, this is the last Cambridge thing they will do before they leave the university for good. But it's still a beautiful day, and the quietness of the river is just the calm after four days of joy and excitement.

The last day happens in July. The students have left Cambridge for the summer, and this is the only day when the river is truly empty. Or is it? If you woke up early enough, you might have caught a naked 8+, or a quad, showing off their hard work for the season. But if you come later in the day, you will feel the end of something. On the Cam, it's the end of the rowing season. Most people will be taking a few days off from training. Some will be leaving. The river is stunning, and nothing appeals more than a cold beer drank on the bank, but the thought that Bumps is over, that there is no more beer tree, no more crews to shout at, or friends to say hello to, is too hard to stomach. Not to mention too many rowers are sleeping off the excesses of the night before. Which club got shut down for playing music too loud after 1AM? Who slept in the boathouse?

Yesterday the river was empty too. But there was no sense of joys past. It was just quiet. No coxes talking firmly to their crews. No strong finishes with a satisfying clunk as the blade settles in the gate. No blades cutting into the water cleanly, or splashing into it. No coaches shouting at their crews, no crews racing up and down, trying to shave off a few seconds off the 2.6K course. It was a warm May evening, it was light until well over nine, and yet. The clubs are shut. The students have gone home. The river is at a standstill. There are still people walking on either bank. Dogs splashing into the water to fetch balls. The swans have confidently taken over the emptiness, their cygnets enjoying the safety from blades and boats. But it's not the same.

We'll be back, of course. The clubs will reopen, at first for singles and doubles, then for more, and we'll be back on the river. We'll drink beer after races, and wake up early to get a long session in. We'll row again. But we will have lost a glorious season. Many will have lost a last chance to row in Cambridge. Many may never be back. So I mourn for a lost summer. For the boats I won't get to cox. For the bumps I won't get to celebrate (and the ones I won't get to award). For the summer mornings sitting on the boathouse balcony chatting about nothing in particular. For the debriefs, the races, the training. Yes, we will be back. But for now, I don't think I'll be going back down to the river.

Pencil and paper

Sometimes happiness is knowing that I can write about anything. That I can't work, but I can write.

I could write about the girl who was playing with her skateboard outside my house the other day and who grinned manically at me when her mother screamed at her to get off my front garden. Her skateboard was pink, and she wasn't wearing a helmet or any sort of protective gear. I thought she was pretty good, but I don't know much about skateboarding. It was obvious she was faster than her mum though. She did get off my lawn, though, and when I told her it was ok she screamed at me that we had to stay 6 feet apart because of the cornvirus (her words, not mine) and that that was why her mum was shouting at her. "Chain of screaming then?" I asked her. She just grinned again and rolled away down the road.

There were four dogs on my run yesterday. Unfortunately, I can't stop and pet them these days (it's one of the perks of running and a great excuse to take a break as often as possible) but I can have a chat with the owners and watch the dogs for a bit. Two goldens, one collie and a gorgeous black and brown mutt that must have been about 7 months old. He's gonna be a big, big boy. He seemed a bit too warm, with his shaggy coat, but he was happily pulling his owner along, who was calmly telling him to heel and offering treats everytime he did. I said hi, and the owner said hi back, and I asked about the pup, and got told his name was Oli, and that he was indeed a very big pup, the son of a Great Dane and St Bernard. That's gonna be a hell of a big dog. I was wrong about his age, only just turned 6 months old. I kept running.

But if I can write about anything I want, why am I writing about myself and right now? I'm finding it hard to imagine things. Or not so much that, but I'm finding it hard to imagine things with spark. The usual inhabitants of my stories – clichéd for sure – are strong, young women looking for something, trying to get something back, or yearning to understand themselves. And right now I feel like life is on pause, and there's very little to do in any direction. That affects my writing. Traveling is out of the question, I can't see friends or family, and it feels like I'm passing every day not to build something but just in waiting for this to be over, and that translates into what I write. So what could help?

There are suggestions everywhere: learn a language! Take up a new hobby! Start a project! These are all great ideas, with one single central failure. I'd only be doing them because of isolation. For many, that won't be a problem (in fact, I could argue that it's a great thing!), but for me, the fact that I did something simply because I couldn't do something else is frustrating and sad. Learn to knit? Sure, but I would never learn to knit in other circumstances. Study Italian? Of course, but come on, I hadn't looked at an Italian text in years. Teach myself maths? OK, yeah, but again, I wouldn't be doing it otherwise. And for some reason the thought of simply picking a hobby because I'm bored seems wasteful. I'll drop it once things get back to normal (if they ever do), and then what's the point? Of course, this is self-defeating. I can do something for now because it's fun and interesting and it makes me happy for the timebeing. The problem is that most of what I'm doing doesn't make me happy, it just passes the time. It's like reading magazines in a waiting room waiting for the doctor to call you in: sure, it's better than the alternative, but I'd much rather be doing something else entirely.

So I write. Even without spark, I write. I've been writing an average of 1000 words per day (not counting any writing I do for my job). I don't like what I write, and it's no good, but it's better than not writing. And at the very least it's not just a quarantine hobby. I enjoyed writing before, and I enjoy writing now. My dad asked me what I was working on the other day. I didn't give a detailed answer but I guess the answer would be a fantasy novel about a brother and a sister, and their mum, and the brother's daughter. Or maybe that's not the answer at all: it's a novel about a city called Ísmeta, blessed by the gods, the city of the six temples (it used to be seven but ugh, that was too much of a pain, they may get reduced further). It's also about revenge, and love, and betrayal. About being true to oneself. And I've been working on it for years and it's honestly going nowhere. But I'm having more fun with it than with anything else that I've tried to pick up since quarantine started.

When I get bored of that I write about being trapped in space and being unable to breathe. I like the image, a human just floating, possibly in their last moments? Or maybe just before they're picked up by a ship. Cold, but still alive for a bit longer.

But sometimes I just write about myself. About what I'm thinking and feeling right now. Because it's a form of therapy, a bit like keeping a diary. And it feels more authentic for some reason, like it has a little bit of spark at least. It's tethered, it feels real. So I guess I'll keep writing, even when it's no good. As procrastination and as practice. Or just because I enjoy the physical act of typing, or the feel of a pencil on the page.

Dreams

The sky is red. She’s running, but as usual, the landscape doesn’t change. She only knows she’s moving because she can feel the earth falling behind her as she pushes off it. She doesn’t know what she’s escaping from. The landscape is familiar: dry, red earth, a few trees (but not very large, and they’re also tinted red, almost as if a red light is subsuming everything), and then there’s the rock formations. She knows, as you can only know in a dream, that she’s somewhere between Extremadura and Monument Valley. But she can’t see the Mittens, or any of the other shapes that should make her certain of her whereabouts, she just knows. Just like she knows that somewhere close, someone is running with her. They are both escaping. Is it a friend?

She finds herself at the top of one of the rock formations, a very small platform that overlooks the flat plains below. She can see further than she has ever seen in her life. She doesn’t know how she got up there, just that if she’s not careful, she’ll fall. Should she climb down? Even in dreams she’s afraid of heights, but she loves climbing. Should she just jump? The jump is always safer than the climb, and if she jumps, and she dies, there’s a good chance she’ll wake up.

The sky has now turned blue, but it still looks red. There’s no water anywhere. Her running companion has disappeared (but did she ever see him?), but she’s still being chased. She wants to rest, but if she hides they will find her. Who? She knows, she is certain she knows, but she doesn’t know.

Night comes. Maybe it’s time to sleep? But she’s already asleep. After all, this is a dream. She looks around again. Somehow she is still in the same place, now at the base of the stony platform that she’d seen the plains from. But she knows that she has moved, made good progress for the day. But she shouldn’t rest. Is that a house in the distance? Better to avoid it. It’s white and has welcoming windows, and a red roof, and it looks incongruous in this Martian landscape. She knows someone is calling her, but she cannot hear things in dreams.

Her friends are sitting around a fire, and they are getting angry because they can’t understand her. She knows why: the dream is in English and they’re speaking Spanish, even though to her it sounds like English. “What language do you dream in?”, they scream.

The huge tree looks like a baobab but it has maple leaves. It rests, stretching its boughs towards the sky, breathing. She respects it. Her friends have gone, but they haven’t left her. They stopped being angry when she was able to understand. The fires are getting closer, but she knows she won’t burn. She picks an olive from a tree next to her, and eats it. It’s hard and bitter. She remembers she could just wake up. And then she remembers the time, years ago, when she woke up in the same bed, in the same house, with the same parents and the same dog, but they were all different and the world had changed. Maybe dreaming is better.

"What's in a name?

That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." W. Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.

I've lost count of how many times I've been asked how to pronounce my name. The question is usually asked by well-meaning Brits, or Americans, who realise that being Spanish, I probably wouldn't pronounce Helena the way they do. And I never know how to answer.

Partly, it's because no matter how hard they try most English-speaking people will never pronounce my name quite right the way it's meant to be pronounced in Spanish. Partly, it's because I know that even if they did, they would sooner or late revert to calling me either he-LAY-na or (my preferred) HE-lena. It's easier. I even call myself HE-lena when I say my name in English. It's easier for me than to switch to Spanish vowels for a single word. 

But mostly it's because the way that English-speakers pronounce my name are also the right way to say my name. I learnt English when I was three, and have been using it regularly since I was 7. People have been pronouncing my name in a non-Spanish way pretty much my whole life. It's my name too. Do I love it whena Spanish person calls me Helena (I am not transcribing the Spanish pronunciation here, but for anyone who would like to know, the H is silent and the vowels are all open, what I would call flat vowels: e-LE-na. The first e and the second e are pronounced exactly the same)? Yes. It makes me feel at home. But I do not feel any less identified with my name when someone calls me HE-lena or when one of my uni friends calls me he-LAY-na (yeah guys, I fucking hate how you pronounce my name, even if it's familiar and all). It would be downright weird if some people I know started calling me Helena the Spanish way.

And then there's the other, funny part. I identify a lot more with the spelling of my name than I do with the sound. This is partly because I was named after Helen of Troy (Helena de Troya in Spanish), and the H is significant but silent in Spanish. The typical spelling of "my" name in Spanish is Elena (but almost no Spanish classicist would call Helen of Troy Elena de Troya in an essay). Elena is not my name. And whenever I go to the doctor, or make a reservation, or do anything that requires someone who doesn't know me to write my name in Spain, they write it wrong. They miss the H. And honestly, this bothers me so much more than the pronunciation. It's like you're taking part of my identity when you take away that H. And in English, I don't have that problem. Sure, in e-mails people will (surprisingly often) refer to me as Helen (at least in one occasion the person concerned thought I'd made a mistake when signing my e-mail!), but the H is never missing, and for that I'm grateful.

I wonder how universal this feeling of identifying with the written version of your name rather than the sound is. I suspect not particularly, and I suspect that a lot of people who suffer from this often don't get their name mispronounced (or not in a significant enough way that they mind). What is fascinating to see is that with the rise of people asking to have their names correctly pronounced (and what a great development this is) I'm getting asked more and more how to pronounce my name right. And honestly? I am grateful. It's wonderful that people are more aware that they may be getting names wrong, and trying to make sure they're pronouncing their friends and colleagues names right. But it's fucking annoying when I say it's fine and people insist. Listen to the person you're talking to. When I say I don't mind I usually explain why I don't care. Believe me. Believe people when they tell you things. It makes everyone's lives so much easier.

Sex Education (Season 2)

Before we start, a quick note that although there are no major spoilers below for Season 2 of Sex Education (except for the first episode), I would recommend not reading this post until you've watched the show.











Sex Education season 2 starts with an extended montage of Otis jerking off everywhere. In the shower. At school. In bed. The montage ends when his mum catches him as he cums in the front seat of her car, which leads to a rather awkward conversation about boundaries. It sets the tone for season 2.

In season 1 of Sex Education Otis, the son of a successful sex therapist (played extraordinarily by Gillian Anderson), was a teenager who knew a lot about sex (despite being extremely inexperienced) and about communication, and monetized his knowledge by getting his peers to pay him for advice. The second season of the show has the courage to move away from this recipe and admit that Otis, while still a smart, sex-positive kid who wants to help his peers, is still no more than a teenager himself, not an expert, and that he does not always have all the answers (even when he does his research). In a different show, this change of pace might have spelled trouble, turning the show into a run of the mill teenage comedy/drama. Instead, this becomes one of the strengths of season 2.

The role played by Otis in the first season (giving good advice about sex and open communication in relationships) is now played by... well, by everyone. Sometimes Otis does give some good advice (although more often than not he is an entitled teenager who thinks only of himself). Sometimes his mum, who spends a lot of this season in the school, is the one to solve an issue. And sometimes, when this show is at its strongest, a couple (or more) of the characters band together and help each other out. It is in these scenarios when the show really shines, when the teenagers figure things out together, in ways that are more or less healthy, and learn (as we all do) that they are more alike than different.

The first season of Sex Education was about us getting to know the characters and understand them. The second season is about the characters growing up and learning some hard lessons. One theme in this season of the show is learning to love and accept yourself. It runs through the arcs of two of the main characters (and it's also part of the plot of one of the sex issues in one of the episodes). But a lot of the season is about learning to love others, and knowing what you will and will not accept in your relationships. It is about forgiveness and how far forgiveness goes. It is about telling others who you are, yes, and teaching them to accept you, but also about learning that sometimes that acceptance is not possible. There is a lot of boundary-setting in this season, and a lot of working hard to accept others' boundaries. But for me, a lot of this season is about hurt. About hurting others and being hurt, and living with it. About learning that not every problem can be resolved, and that sometimes things just don't work out. About getting over being hurt, and accepting that sometimes hurt changes people. And about the relationships that come out of being hurt together, forgiving each other for being hurt and helping others survive.

In some ways, the subjects addressed in this season are similar to the previous installment of the show: STDs, communication issues, confidence issues, sexuality issues. But there is a lot more. This time around the show tackles so much more than sex (the first season did too, but not as obviously). This reflects how the show has become more messy, how the characters are growing out of being archetypes and becoming people, flawed people who make mistakes and have victories. The second season also deals a lot more with the adults in the show, demonstrating what I've always suspected: that deep down we're all just overgrown teenagers.

I was worried that the second season of Sex Education would not live up to the first. In fact, I think, as a show, it's not as consistently good. But it's trying something different, and it's making it work. I'm hoping for a third season, and maybe, if I'm lucky, a fourth.

A sunny day in Miami

Part I

We'd just killed a man. I don't know who 'we' was, just that there were several of us in the room. The flat, I should say, or maybe the apartment. Perhaps we hadn't killed him, but the body was there, and he had definitely been the victim of foul play. The flat, or maybe the apartment, was small and dark. The only room I was ever in was the living room, with a kitchenette. I knew the kitchenette was there, even though I never saw it. All I knew was that we had to get rid of the body. At the far end of the living room, there was a balcony, you might even call it a small terrace. It was a bright day, the sort of sunny brightness that permeates crime shows set in Miami. The balcony overlooked a swimming pool, a gigantic swimming pool. Or maybe it wasn't even a swimming pool to start with, just the sea, or a huge lake, because the decision was made to get rid of the body by crucifying it and throwing it off the balcony into the water. The dead man was white, bald and large. I couldn't have told you his weight, I've always been shit at estimating that sort of thing, but he was definitely heavy: it took the three or four of us in the room to lift him. I don't know who suggested crucifixion, but the idea to throw him in the water was definitely mine.


Part II

Did we call the police? Did they just knock on the door? They were there, talking to us. Had the body been found? Maybe? They needed us for something, but it wasn't for the body. For some reason, I was to go diving with them. I can't remember not wanting to go, just wanting to help.

We were diving into the pool (it was definitely a pool now), and once we were underwater I noticed that the bottom of the pool was divided into sections. Someone on the surface was talking to us, through headsets that were set up in the diving equipment, and telling us to go to J7. And then they told us, in no uncertain terms, not to look at J8. We swam to J7, a small square at the bottom of the pool, and there, sitting in the square, just in the centre, as though they'd been carefully placed there, were my keys. My actual keys, the ones I use to unlock my house and my bike every day. I picked them up. And then, I couldn't resist looking at J8.

All I know is that there were three things in J8, and that one of them was a small toy penguin, the sort of tiny figure you might put on a keychain. Come to think of it, it wasn't actually a penguin, not if you looked closely, but it represented a penguin. I grabbed it (the police with me tried to stop me), realising with sudden horror that these were the keepsakes of a serial killer who'd been taking little girls. The police knew about them.

We made it back to the surface, but for some reason I wasn't questioned about my keys or made to hand in the penguin. In fact, the police seemed unaware that I'd taken the penguin, and did not seem to find it suspicious that my keys had been found in the pool. Had I been awake, I would have made the immediate connection between dropping the body in the pool and finding my keys there (they must have fallen out of my pocket when we were throwing the body off the balcony, my non-dream brain thinks), but in the dream this connection carried less weight than the fact that I'd found the keys next to the serial killer's keepsakes.

The last thing I remember is looking at the quasi-penguin in my hand, thinking about the little girl who had loved it (maybe I'd seen her in television, in a homevideo shared by her parents to gain public sympathy?).

Part III

I wake up in my bed, in Cambridge. It's not bright nor sunny, and the things stressing me out have nothing to do with serial killers. My heart's still going faster than it should though. Was it a nightmare?

I haven't had nightmares for a long time, probably since I woke up sweating with fear as a kid. As I got older the nightmares went away, or maybe I used them all up in stories I told or wrote down. Then came the stress dreams, but these were different. When I had an exam coming up, or an important event, I would dream about it and wake up with my heart pounding and my mouth dry. But I wasn't scared. They were stressful, but firmly tied to reality, and easily explained away. Now that I think about it, I haven't had a stress dream since my undergraduate days.

I analyse this dream. I wasn't scared during the dream. All I really felt was dread. Anxiety, a pressure in my chest, and an overwhelming sense of something bad about to happen that I couldn't completely control. A stress dream then. But all my stress dreams have been obvious, grounded in reality. This is different. If I believed that dreams can be decoded, that they are our subconscious trying to tell us something, I would likely pick up Freud's 'The interpretation of Dreams' and try to figure it out. But I'm not sure that I would find sunny Miami in the book, and I have little faith in Freud. So for now the dream will remain a mystery, just something to write about.

Fear of failure

The fact is, deep down, and even if I don't like it, I'm the most bog-standard person you can find. I might claim that I don't do New Year's resolutions, but that's just because I know I'll break them. And I might say I don't think New Year's Eve is special, but deep down I do. In fact, it's probably one of my favourite nights of the year. I spend the evening with my mum and dad; sometimes someone else from the family joins, but we keep it small. My mum and I drink too much bubbly. We have a lovely dinner, sometimes we even dress up. My dad does the countdown to midnight with a gong (don't even ask). And afterwards, we play Scrabble (and I lose epically every time). Then I go out. I don't know why I like going out on NYE. It might be because of how much I miss going out in Spain generally. Feeling like the night really doesn't have to end until I want it to. Even in a small city, you can stay out as late as you want, and because my hometown is a small city I know everyone. It helps (at least it helps me) that the people I go out with tend to go to bars, not clubs, until pretty late, so I can drink, and chat; maybe play darts, generally have a really good time.

I've always loved the Christmas holidays. I don't really know why. I guess it started off as a kid because of the presents, but now it's somethign else. I like the quiet and the stillness. I like the food. I like seeing people. I like that I can stay warm inside, or go out running in the cold. I like that it's two whole weeks where I'm properly on holiday, even if I'm home. I like that I get to spend it with my parents and that a lot of the rest of the family is there too. I guess part of me loving Christmas is that I haven't ever missed one. Living away from home (even if it's technically just about five hours away) means that I miss out on a lot. Day to day things. I missed out on my dog dying. I miss out on birthdays, and evenings out for dinner. I miss out on celebrating with my family when something good happens, and I sometimes even miss out on bad news because my family want to spare me. But it's also the small things. I miss out on movie nights at home, on the couch in the basement. I miss out on coffee with my mum in the morning, with the radio on, listening to la SER, which is just our least hated radio station. I miss out on conversations with my dad about... pretty much anything. I miss out on my house, which slowly changes without me being there. And yes, I miss out, but I also just miss my family, and my childhood home, and Salamanca, and Spain.

I'm going back tonight, and for a while, I wasn't really looking forward to it, and I was pissed off that I wasn't. But this morning I woke up excited. I get to go home and see everyone. I'm gonna see my cousin! I'm gonna get to play music with him, and it's gonna be a blast. There's gonna be food (all of the food) and drink (just bubbly for me at Christmas, except for on NYE). There's also probably going to be a lot of reading (which I'm really looking forward to) and movie-going. It's going to be amazing. Not the least, because it has been a long year.

And it has been a long year. I started the year unemployed, doing a shed-load of coxing and coaching, making new friends, finding new hobbies (DnD has been quite the rediscovery) and being more irresponsible than I should have been. I've ended the year with a permanent job I love, doing less rowing, fucking up with old friends (and new), and still being irresponsible. I think the irresponsible bit is that I don't really want to accept that I'm no longer a student, or that I'm in my late twenties. Call it a quarter-life crisis. The rest of it is just life. But all in all, if I think about it, it's been a tough year, but a good one. I can't deny I've had fun. And I think I've learnt a lot about being a grown up. Hell, I negotiated a raise in my starting salary by pitching two offers against each other, got a pet, got insurance for the first time and even made an effort to understand how my taxes work. I've also learnt a bit about being lonely, and about being a good friend. All good lessons I thought I'd finished learning years ago.

And yes, I'm still pretty bog-standard. I'd rather listen to trashy pop cos it's easy; sometimes it's funner to read a bad book with a good hook than 'actual literature', and I've watched more romcoms in the last month or so than I would like to admit. I am a gossip and I like to bitch about people more than anyone I know. But fortunately, I'm surrounded by pretty amazing people who do extraordinary things, and sometimes (I hope) a little bit of that rubs off.

I have friends who make communities around them, and who include me in them, even when I try to stay out. I have colleagues who build me up, even when I think that I'm just not good enough. I have friends who put up with me when I'm in a bad mood, and celebrate with me when I'm in a good one. But it's more than that. I am lucky enough to know people so committed to what they love that they push themselves hard every day, encouraging the rest of us to do the same (rowers, that goes for all of you). People with class, who despite having had a pretty tough year, still smile and push through it and get on with things, and even have the time to listen to a rant and give you a hug at the end of it. I have made friends this year with people this year who have more endurance, resilience and heart than I could ever hope to. People who write whole worlds for their friends to enjoy. People who organise parties, or outings, or runs, so that others can enjoy with them. I have been surrounded this year by so many people who make the world, or their corner of the world, a better place. How lucky am I?

I don't do New Year's resolutions, but that's just because I know I'll break them. But for 2020, I'm hoping the highs can be as high, and the friends can be as good. As for me, I'll try to make my bit of the world a little bit better, because the people in it sure deserve it.