In my last post I talked about the slow life, and I’ve been pondering the concept of changes ever since. I hope you’ll excuse me if I indulge myself a bit more. There’ll be garden and house and Highlands stuff soon, I promise!

This is my first Monday ever of neither being a student nor gainfully employed. I am, at the grand old age of 35, medically retired. My condition is somewhat controversial, and – infuriatingly and unfortunately – not seen as grounds for retirement by my pension scheme. Most days my body thinks it’s 80-odd: my joints hurt, my muscles spasm randomly, my vision is poor, I can’t process what I hear properly, I repeat myself, my memory plays tricks on me, I grumble about the neighbours playing music outside and kids running and shouting and babies screaming. Get off my lawn, you noisy young folks! I have the accoutrements of old age – a walking stick, a rollator, a wheelchair; dark glasses and hats; a slow, unsteady, shuffly walk; the inability to follow conversations about most aspects of contemporary culture.

As I pootled about the garden earlier, enjoying the warmth of the sun but resenting its glare, I thought about how despite all of the above I’m decidedly content. Part of this is to do with being cheerful and positive – I’m a wholehearted optimist. But it’s also circumstantial. It’s partially about being here, in Scotland, in the Highlands, in our cottage and garden. It’s also about being with Seamus – he is my people, in a way that no one ever has been. But most of all it is to do with allowing myself to reinvent myself – to no longer be defined by what I do, or where I work, what I’ve achieved, but instead to focus on how I contribute to my communities.

The most important step in this process has been changing my name to go with this new persona. I used to go by my middle name and my professional last name, a hyphenated amalgamation of my maiden name and my first married name. This has served me well over the years, but because it was linked so closely with work, and writing, and publishing, it felt no longer relevant to my new life. So at Christmas I decided to go by my actual first name and my married name, and it was announcing this change to the world that made me feel able to let go of the past and get excited about the future. Today I received bank cards in my new name, as well as the official letter from work dismissing me on ‘the grounds of capability due to long term ill-health’. When I thought about this day back in spring I was very worried about how I’d cope, but as it turns out I’m actually ok with it: the letter is about person with my former name, and that is no longer me.

To me, nothing heralds the arrival of summer quite like borage. It transforms the garden from a place of potential to one of overflowing bounty. It’s a fitting symbol for my reinvention.

(Lulu the Dalmatian is an expert at taking things slowly).

These days it takes me ages to come to after I’ve been asleep. I often lie there for a good half an hour, awake but unable to move or open my eyes. This used to frustrate me to no end, but I’ve come to view it as the first instalment of the resting that gets me through the day. Whether in the morning or after my 3-hour afternoon naps, that time of forced inactivity has come to be quite dear to me. Just lying there, listening to the world, slowly swimming towards consciousness.

I’ve become a big fan of taking things slowly. I used to be active all the time – always on my feet, always thinking, always doing stuff. I wouldn’t really stop much at work, and I loved the energy I got from being switched on all the time. I used to get a million and one ideas, and I was always imagineering exciting projects. My enthusiasm and energy were always at 110%. I found it impossible to slow down.

All that changed when I became unwell with Myalgic Encephalomyelities (ME, also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). For me, having ME feels like being constantly hung over and spaced out, with no energy to think let alone move. I’ve learnt to take things slowly. These days a good day involves getting out to the garden for a few minutes, or petting the cats in the kitchen, or doing a bit of sewing. Resting after any kind of activity has become so ingrained that I sometimes surprise myself by doing two things in a row – say, going to the garden and petting the cats. Rest for me involves silence, closed curtains, and lying down or sitting in a comfy chair resting my head; as I write this sitting up in bed my heart rate is fluctuating between 90 and 120, just because I’m sitting up, typing and thinking. Thinking takes a surprising amount of energy, particularly when you can’t remember things well, and thus inevitably think the same thing twice (or eleventy-billion times).

So I take things slowly. I take pleasure in small things – watching my cats yawn, hugging my dogs, having a chicken on my lap. Listening to the birds singing at 4am. Hearing the rain pound onto our skylights. The way your body warms and relaxes in the bath. The heaviness of a blanket on top of a duvet. The smell of roses after the rain. The first ripe strawberry of the season. I notice things that I didn’t used to pay attention to, and I’m happier for it. Content. Relaxed.

Instagram has been an excellent companion for this. I struggle with reading more than a paragraph at a time, and even twitter is becoming tricky these days, but instagram, with its cheerful pictures and short captions, suits me well. I love scrolling through my feed and seeing what people’s post – it’s become such an important part of my day, and I’ve made a number of lovely friends there. What I used to think of as wasting time – scrolling through social media and getting lost in that world – now strikes me as another way of taking things slowly. Looking at pictures, reading captions, and liking or commenting on posts is such a cheerful thing to do – it doesn’t take much energy (even for me!), but is such a comfort. It’s about noticing the small things again – that picture in a background of an interior shot. The way that cat’s stripes are almost but not quite symmetrical. The beautiful flowers that someone has arranged. There is so much beauty in small things, and I for one am glad to take things slowly.

‘What’s this?’, I hear you ask. ‘Why are you starting your blog with a picture of a colander full of greens, on top of a dishevelled garden chair?’

Because it sums up what we are about. Grow Your Own, Make Do and Mend, DIY. We are homesteaders. Smallholders. Permaculturists. Home brewers. All at 57 degrees north, in Easter Ross in the Highlands of Scotland, on 3/4 acre of garden, on the edge of a quiet village, near the sea.

We are Marie and Seamus. We have been drifting towards the slow life for some time now, but life changed quite dramatically for us over the past 18 months, when Marie became unwell and had to give up work. It has really focused our minds on what is important, and that is resoundingly Us, Home, our Pets. Home is a very happy place, full of colour, laughter and whimsy, where we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

We share our cottage with 4 cats and 2 dogs, and the garden with a rabbit and 3 chickens. We spend rather too much time making up songs about them. 3 of the cats are tiger-and-whites: Penny, Nigel and Xoron; 1 of them, Grabthar, is a tortie. Archie is a bearded collie, and Lulu is a Dalmatian. George is a lop-eared gingerish bunny. Harriet is a white chicken, Herodotus is black, and Hoarce is black with flecks of gray. They all contribute to our cottage economy: the chickens and George provide fertiliser and eat leftovers; the girls’ eggs are a welcome addition to our larder; the cats are good mousers (and ratters). Archie and Lulu are excellent companions, and take their roles as security officer (Archie) and chief snozzler (Lulu) very seriously. They also enjoy eating the vegetables we grow – broccoli is their favourite.

So welcome – we hope you’ll stick around. Every day is bunting day here!