Sorrow at Sills Bend: Medicine

Obviously it's very boring to be subjected to accounts of other people's illnesses. Our neighbour A, for instance, has over the years told me several times that the backyard tomatoes she grows every summer are direct descendants of seeds she brought with her when she emigrated from Greece in 1978 - clearly the best imaginable beginning to any across-the-fence conversation - but if I'm incautious enough to betray the slightest interest in the events of her life, immediately she moves on to enumerating and describing the many operations she has undergone, to the instant annihilation of any other subject matter. In fact the dullness of narratives of other people's sickness is such a cliché that I suspect it might be one of those tropes that's ripe for a surprise reinvigoration – the best metaphors are the long dead ones brought suddenly and unexpectedly back to life.

However it will not be me that performs this act of linguistic galvanism, noooo I'm just going to be ordinarily boring - classically boring, let's say - about my own sickness, which was short but incredibly brutal and which drags on, or more specifically about how I am trying to get better, which is a thing that has taken the fancy of the part of myself that sits somewhere back there, in the shadows, seizing breathlessly on any little fragment of unremarkable everyday business and going 'oh this is interesting isn't it? isn't this interesting?' (I guess A next door has her own one of these; we should try to get them together.)

When I went back to work prematurely last Friday I stopped off at the supermarket in Swanston St to buy some paracetamol and ibuprofen. I still felt like absolute shit. I got my drugs of choice off the shelf and stood there at the mouth of the delta of the aisles, gathering my strength for the run downstream to the self-checkout machines. In front of me was a rack of blocks of Lindt chocolate, on special it was. Into my head came the thought, realised and distinct in actual words rather than in the subverbal fragments usual for inner talk, 'this is medicine.' So I also bought a block of dark chocolate, and when I got to work I put it in my desk drawer with the pills, and I ate pieces of it throughout that day and when Monday came I ate it then too, and the whole time I retained the serene feeling that I was eating Medicine.

That feeling has worn off now, more's the pity? - perhaps? I don't know. The fantasy of returning to the supermarket and buying seven or eight more blocks of Medicinchocolat, which would stand lined up on my desk like a uniform edition of In Search of Lost Time until my health levels drop to where I need to administer myself a small piece of deliciously dark, pungent, bitter healing, has now lost its power and appeal and the idea of spending all day nibbling on stockpiled chocolate just seems sort of gross. But, truly, for a while there it was firmly fixed in my mind as an unremarkable fact that chocolate = Medicine and it would not just help, but actively it would make me get better.

Jesus soup

The same reasoning has been applied, with maybe a little less illogicality, to the spending of excessively long periods of time submerged in very hot and bubbly baths and to the lunchtime consumption of a kind of very holy vegetable soup of which I cooked a big pot on Sunday afternoon.

I don't find it at all easy to come up with things I feel embarrassed about these days, post the first day back at work from maternity leave episode which is a watershed moment that had better not ever be surpassed, but you know, I really am just the tiniest bit embarrassed to note that for the last three days I have gone about my professional duties with a fluffy red beanie topped with a blue and black pompom worn upon my head and I have done this not for the only reason that is acceptable to me, namely to act out my feelings about the workplace Hat Policy,* but because it will 'make me get better.' All these things have felt highly medicinal, and perhaps because of that very feeling they might perhaps have alleviated some symptoms in a minor way, but truly what's probably causing the sensation of health slowly returning is the dishwashing-liquid-like 'gel capsules' of ibuprofen of which I have swallowed nearly twenty since Friday morning.

Now that I begin to feel less horrible bodily I feel the need of an absorbing, technically interesting, constructive and pleasantly tactile project. This also feels like a medicinally oriented urge, in its own way. Just thinking about what I might do actually feels kind of healing, at this stage. Although the rosy skirt was a bit of a fail I really enjoyed making it and so I am cautiously contemplating embarking on the construction of an elaborate jacket such as I have done three or four times before. The very best of these garments have combined adventurous high-stakes tailoring with an unembarrassed celebration of the handmade effects only achievable in a studio sewing context. I have a couple of books, published by the V&A, of closeups of garments in their collection and looking through these, the ones that I pause over and imagine touching and wearing are the ones where the maker hasn't tried to conceal the organicism and humanity of her or his own stitches.

The museum where I work collects utilitarian garments that are only incidentally beautiful and therefore, thankfully, it is largely free of temptations to get sucked into ridiculous sewing although there are one or two small provocations.

This Australian Women's Army Service uniform is an object of fascination for me although my yearnings mostly centre upon the hat, which isn't seen to its best advantage at this angle, but oh my it is a lovely hat. I'd wear it.