For the sake of auld lang syne...

It’s the end of the year again and we all have our funny ways! Nations are no different. Back where I come from, we all send each other sentimental greetings at Christmas or New Year, with bits of updated news about our children, our grandchildren and this year’s holidays. At the end of the year many of us party, linking hands at midnight and singing (drunkenly) a rather peculiar centuries-old song, remembering and honouring old friendships in old-fashioned words nobody really understands. It’s a tradition.

This year, writing the annual Christmas cards got me thinking. Each year the list is subtly changed. A few names are added; a few are crossed off. Life has become very mobile and new acquaintances are many. The list becomes too long and unwieldy and difficult choices must be made. My parents’ Christmas card list seemed to stay the same until the day they died and I still send cards to one or two of those old family friends who seemed to have become almost as close as blood relations. We have a few of those on our list too, friends who were at our wedding or whose children were early friends with ours. But the rest are fluctuating. Some years I feel ruthless. Names are crossed off, because they never get in touch. More names go because we fell out: their children behaved badly in our home; we disagreed about politics or religion; they never even rang us after we moved away but dropped us because we no longer lived round the corner…

This year I am looking at things from a different perspective. I must be getting old! Life is too short, it seems, for those kinds of disagreements to matter. I am busy putting names back on the list. Surely, in view of our common humanity, there are more things to agree on than to dispute? Friends are precious. I am slowly learning that and would like, if it were possible, to retrieve the addresses of former friends, probably long moved on, who we have lost, through differing opinions or just neglect although, realistically, I can’t send cards to them all! Looking back, we’ve had some fun. Some of those friendships were very special, some of those families had children who watched the same firework displays with ours on Bonfire Night and shared the same tricycles in the back garden at weekends; with some of them we spent long nights, with a glass of wine in hand, discussing the nature of God and the universe and putting the world to rights. Of course we fell out – it happens all the time! But they were friends.

Nowadays we live in a temporary community. We are expats. Life is ‘temporary’; we live amongst people who are on temporary contracts, living in temporary houses and, worst of all, sharing temporary friendships. At least, that’s how life could be if we let it. I’m not keen to leave it that way! I have another growing list of friends – we email, we send photos, we forward jokes and thought-provoking anecdotes and one day, hopefully, will meet up again, in England, Turkey or Australia or who knows where? ‘Lest old acquaintance be forgot’, I must look forward to another new year of emails and phone calls, photos and maybe visits one day and I must remember to value those close-at-hand family and friends whilst I have them, ‘for the sake of auld lang syne’.

A very happy blogging New Year to you all!

As pleased as punch

It's one of those phrases! We trot them out, heedlessly, and then sometimes, in reflective mood, we think "Why did I say that? What did it mean?" Where do these sayings originate? Who was the first person to be as pleased as punch - and why?

Back in the days of our youth (not long ago really)... we were famous for the odd lovers' tiff. These we executed with passion and panache, with cries of "what about the neighbours?", followed by "s.. the neighbours!" It was colourful, it was dramatic and then it was over. Making up was fun. Back in those heady days we were once christened 'Punch and Judy' by a group of delightful young people we helped to escort on a youth camp. Hilarious, eh? Well, not at the time...

So am I as pleased as Mr. Punch? Am I happy, like Punch, to entertain the children on seaside proms along with the wife, the dog and Mr. Plod? Was Punch pleased? Did it make him deliriously happy to wield a policeman's truncheon and terrorise the wife, the dog and the policeman and then threaten the audience? And, anyway, whoever allowed a tale of domestic violence, grievious bodily harm and cruelty to animals, let alone acts of aggression against the police force, to become holiday viewing for kids? They seem to have found it good, harmless fun for more than a century - the precursor to 'Home Alone', I guess.

Maybe it has something to do with the current festivities and that innocent little cocktail brewed up with an indeterminate number of bottles of stuff, of varying potency, together with deceptively healthy-looking pieces of fruit floating in it? Pleased as punch? Drunk with punch? Punchdrunk? Drunk as a skunk, perhaps? Now, there's another one...

Tongue-tied again at Christmas!

It's happened again! All through the year we writers sit, poised, bristling with ideas, ready to astonish the world with our tantalising, creative and imaginative outpourings, lovingly crafted, sensitively drawn, painstakingly revised and polished. Our blogging blossoms, our poems pulsate with life and poignancy. Our audience applauds. We blush modestly and inwardly glow with pride. Then comes Christmas. The blog is up to date, house clean (well, clean-ish), presents tastefully wrapped, decorations lavishly and extravagantly executed, brandy butter chilling in the fridge, turkey in the freezer... time for those Christmas greetings.

The man in my life, my lover, super-hero, friend, mopper-up-in-times-of-trouble, love of my life, husband and fellow-sufferer of 35 years' standing. Who deserves, more than anyone, to be the recipient of loving, sensitive, caring, gentle words of appreciation this Christmas, gently laced with wit and humour? Why, my husband! Why, then, at this crucial moment, does all creativity desert me? What shall I write? "To my beloved - a happy blogging Christmas to you"? "Thank you for putting up with me all year!"? "Did you remember to buy the mistletoe so we could be romantic?"? "Happy Christmas - please could you clean the oven after dinner"?

I am full of shame. I have saved the best till last - the most important task of them all - and, as usual, I'm knackered! Only the dregs and dog-ends are left. My mind's a blank, the creative juices all run down. The river is dry. I've said it before, darling, and I'll say it again: "I love you - lots! I love you - Merry Christmas - and a happy blogging New Year!"

Last Day of Term!

What is it that makes the last day of term so special? As a parent and teacher's wife I am well used to the way life is split up into terms and holidays, coming one after another in a rhythmic pattern throughout the year. It's a way of life and has been so for as many years as I can remember. We had a brief interlude when no-one was at school or college and no-one was teaching in our family and it was actually bliss! We took holidays when we needed them, not when the requisite number of weeks of term had been completed. We took off to the sun in May, just when the weather was perfect - not too hot and not too cold. We paid reasonable prices for flights and hotel accommodation because it was out of school holiday time.

Not so anymore. Now our world is again punctuated by those half term pauses, two week holidays for Christmas or Easter and, finally, that wonderful last day of the summer term, when teachers and pupils tumble out of school together to rapturously embrace six weeks of glorious well-deserved holiday! Not that I'm complaining about the holidays, just the exploitation by holiday companies!!

However, there's something good about that sense of rhythm that comes with the academic year that is satisfying and carries you through the year with a feeling of a well-ordered existence: a progression of periods of labour followed by well-earned rewards. Friday was the last day of term: cold and snowy, making it hard to get to work and harder still to get home, but still bringing with it that wonderful sense of anticipation that it has always had. Magic! In addition to the Christmas lights, festive decorations and mouthwatering food, visits to family, carols and candlelight and all the mysterious romance that this season holds, it's holiday again and we can put our feet up!

Last day of term - it still feels like something from an Enid Blyton story or the tales of Narnia. I'm still a child at heart! I may prefer to sit by the fire these days rather than to go toboganning or throw snowballs, but there's nothing like the anticipation of a couple of weeks free of work to lift the spirits and warm the heart. Merry Christmas one and all!

Fragments

There is a talent which I lack which some other people have, it seems. It is a gift which involves the threading of one’s stories, like a string of beads, onto a credible chain or sequence – making a life history that is valid, secure and satisfying and forming a chain whose links are safe and robust. Life must be formed of more than a random selection of isolated incidents and chance happenings.

Instead, when I look back at my life, I see scattered fragments, like beads in a box, odd shapes and colours which can never be fitted together. I can find no way now to make something that is whole, structured and cohesive. I have moved on too many times, done too many things and forged and lost too many friendships.

I have been a shape-shifter. To begin with I was restless, easily bored, often searching for new experiences, new friends, new jobs and homes. Little by little, the restlessness has grown into a habit and now, it seems, my life has become an ever-revolving merry-go-round from which I cannot easily alight. Life is temporary. I have long ago lost those strong and lasting ties that held me fast to other people and other places that gave me a history and a sense of belonging. My roots are pitifully undernourished. A strong wind will topple me.

A book I have been reading lately has interacted with these jumbled thoughts and engendered in me a wistfulness, a sense of longing to find a way to assemble the fragments of my past in a new and creative way. Howard’s End, written with such a vision of hope by E.M. Forster, its innovative and thought-provoking author, encourages me to try again to ‘see things steadily and see them whole’. “Only connect” says Forster. Like the enigmatic and other-worldly Mrs Wilcox, I need a new vision that will make sense of the fragments and cause them to hang together to be the link, the connecting factor, of a life that is whole, integrated and fruitful. I am on a journey, searching for a meaning onto which I can thread both past events, people and happenings and the rest of my life. I must find it in the thread of ongoing personal identity and developing relationships with those around me which run through my life, moulding it and providing its meaning and value.

There is always more than one way of looking at things. From one point of view the fragments of my life are so varied, so different, so separate from each other that they defy any attempts to hold them together. However, on close examination, there is a pattern and there are links in the chain. Those links are myself, my family and the personality that has grown and developed, together with the values, the likes and dislikes and traditions that have formed themselves around me and permeated all my various doings. I will choose to look at life in this way and I will look for those connections that make sense of life and gather rather than scatter. As the psalmist once said (and Pete Seeger and The Byrds agreed!), “there is a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together.”

Cover your tracks

I woke up this morning,
Suddenly the world was white.
A strange light flooded through the window
And the sky was heavy.

Outside everything sags under a blanket
Of white - pure white.
Not a footprint, not a mark,
Just pure, white silence.

The world looks so beautiful today:
Country lane, rubbish tip, factory,
- All the same,
Under a covering of pure, clean white.

Not so yesterday – or tomorrow.
This soft white blanket covers
A multitude of sins,
Ugliness – our ugliness.

We can whitewash our pain,
Hide our wounds under a blanket of pride.
But, thank God, with time, healing goes deep –
Not just icing on the cake.

Memory stick

What an amazing thing – a memory stick! Today it is just a part of our everyday computer jargon but, viewed apart from its ICT connotations, it is an intriguing concept. It conjures up so many possibilities for us humans.

My mother was never officially diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, but from quite early on in middle age, I remember she had problems with memory. Later she suffered mini strokes and got worse. In time she learned to laugh at herself and at her misfortune and then life improved for her, but it took a long, long time. I wonder now and then if I might one day have similar problems. Are these things hereditary? Already I lose concentration easily, get lost, oh, so easily and turn the wrong way coming out of shops and resuming my way down the high street. So a memory stick would be really useful.

I often feel like a computer that has lost access to some of its discs. ‘Wrong disc’ I say sometimes, when I open my mouth on holiday in France and out of my mouth comes the correct word – in Dutch – when I was searching for a French one. I wish I could just plug in the right disc. Living in different cultures makes it worse, or just moving house or location in the same country. Each time we move on I need a new disc for new cultures, new language, or new places to shop, new names for neighbours, work colleagues, friends … Then the old discs fade away into oblivion and all the names, places, phone numbers and even some of the precious memories fade and then they’re lost.

Memory is a funny thing – if you manage to dig up one name that is on an old disc, or a smell – even more powerful – or a remembered long-lost friend – the rest of the disc comes flooding back. Perhaps we really are like computers … what a soul-less, awful thought … but quite useful if that memory stick worked. If I could just pop it into my poor overworked brain and suddenly all the memories would come flooding back …

I'm bored, Mum!

Don’t you remember those days when, as a child, you kicked around the house, moping and getting in everyone’s way because you just couldn’t think what to do? I soon learned not to express those particular sentiments to my mum – she had a habit of finding me something to do that wasn’t quite what I had in mind! “Nothing to do?” she would say. “I’ve got too much to do – I can soon find you something…” Then I would end up helping her with the cleaning or popping down to the local shops for a loaf of bread and somehow that didn’t help.

It’s a bit the same as an adult. It’s not that I don’t have anything to do but usually these down turns in mood and inclination follow a particularly busy period when tiredness sets in, positive feelings evaporate and the adrenaline starts to fail me. Normally, I would be out of the house at my temporary job or one of my many and varied volunteering exploits, but nobody needs my services today! I could, of course, write the Christmas cards; I could finish turning up that troublesome pair of bedroom curtains which are made of two flimsy layers and look great but are so, so difficult to sew; I could make a real effort and go down to the shed in search of paint brushes and a tin of Peach Blossom and carry on with the interminable job of painting the woodwork in our hall, stairs and landing: eight doors, door frames, skirting boards and banisters! But not today. Today I can’t summon up the energy or the inclination for any of that. I think I’m feeling lonely.

I think back to a period of my life when I lived in England – on a small island, in fact. The pace of life was slower then and it was in the delightful days when bringing up children was considered to be a worthwhile form of employment in its own right (whoops, I’m showing my age – oh well, why not? I am who I am!). I found it easy to make friends in those days. Waiting outside the school gates to pick up the kids, we struck up conversations and made friends. I had a number of good ones, all sharing the ups and downs of that particular lifestyle: life at home, to-ing and fro-ing with the children to school and to part-time jobs. There was plenty of time to socialise, as well as time to be ‘useful’. When that feeling of boredom struck there was a simple answer for me – go and see Jean!

Jean lived a ten minute walk away. She was a lovely simple soul – or at least that was how it seemed. She had a husband, five children and a gloriously messy house. I am not a messy person but I secretly envy people who are! I long to be able to begin a new task without clearing up after the first; to go to bed with my clothes strewn all over the floor instead of hung up neatly in the wardrobe; to smile happily at my unexpected guests even though I am in the middle of a frenzy of baking, whilst the dirt has been gathering in steadily growing dust balls under the dining room table, because I would always prefer to be cooking than cleaning. But I have been too well brought up! Jean worked hard but had a knack of being welcoming even when she was frantically busy. In addition to bringing up five children, one of them disabled, and the others at varying stages of adolescent exploration or childish tantrums, she made ends meet by baking and icing wedding cakes. On my days of boredom I would slope round to Jean’s house, simply for the pleasure of slouching in her kitchen, with my feet up and a mug of coffee in my hand and just ‘wasting time’! She baked; I made the coffee. She constructed fantastically complicated flowers, made out of icing sugar, and I watched. Eventually I got up and did something useful – like the washing up! But I loved going round to Jean’s home, just to do nothing except wile away a couple of hours nattering. We talked about everything: the weather, the children, the local schools, the local gossip, the other children’s mothers, plus all the spicier ‘taboo’ subjects such as sex, religion and money.

Wasting time is a crime nowadays. Everyone is busy. Job applications require you to fill in details of your past job history meticulously , ‘leaving no gaps’, and interview panels seem more likely today to ask you about what you didn’t do than what you did. I’m bored today. I’ve had enough of being busy. I’ve emailed all my friends and suggested getting together for coffee but they’re all busy. Today would be a good day for turning the clock back, I think, and going to visit Jean!

Maybe I’ll write her a Christmas card…

Happiness Points

The British government is currently planning a survey of the happiness of the British people in the light of the economic crisis, spending cuts and general austerity measures. Viewers of the BBC’s Breakfast TV programme were this week asked to participate in a similar unofficial survey, pre-empting the government’s research. 11,000 participants sent SMS messages to the programme indicating their estimated happiness score on a scale of 1 – 10. The results showed that the average scored was 5.9, slightly higher than a similar survey of Dutch citizens earlier in the year. How should we estimate ‘happiness’ and how important is it anyway?

In the early days of marriage, living in the sprawling suburbs of London, we learned to like board games. At heart, we were really outdoors people and homesick for the country lanes and seaside, but we tried to adapt. At the outset of our life together our thoughts often turned to the future. We wondered how life would turn out, what ups and downs we would face, how work and home, family and friends would pan out and whether or not we would achieve that elusive quality of happiness.

Accordingly, one of our favourite board games to play on a winter’s evening was entitled ‘Careers’. In common with the best board games it involved making certain choices and collecting points to achieve the goal one had chosen. The choices in ‘Careers’ were between Fame, Money and Happiness. The goal was to collect points, in precisely the ratio previously decided upon and to be the first to fulfil the pre-arranged ‘contract’.

Moving around the board, one encountered various life experiences, accidents and opportunities, such as ‘spotting a yellow-bellied sapsucker’ which might prove useful if you were intent on building a career as a zoologist. In addition, you might gain various degrees, become a success on the stage or acquire large sums of money through career advances or inheritance. Alternatively, you might pick up a card which offered you the girl of your dreams, you might win a romantic holiday to the Bahamas or escape a serious accident, which could dramatically boost your score of happiness points. For me, and indeed, for us as a couple, there was never any serious question over which of the three kinds were most desirable. Happiness points always came out top.

It is no secret in life, or in board games, that what you decide upon and set your heart upon, is not necessarily what you will end up with. We were no exception to the rule. However, as we look back, we can identify in our lives, if not in our board game successes, a good share of happiness and contentment, together with a relatively lower score in the other two commodities! So perhaps we succeeded relatively well in our goal. It is a mute point how far the possession of ‘comfortable’ sums of money may contribute to happiness but, leaving that aside, we can be moderately satisfied with the results. Family and friendships have brought us joy, together with a modest share of sorrows. Work has given us some satisfaction – not many outstanding successes but, there again, a few. As for fame, we never made it. Any successes we have had have remained private affairs and neither of us have had a flair for marketing them. Who knows in the end how life might have turned out with a different balance in our goals? Life is probably as uncertain as any board game.

Our environment has been important to us. Strongly motivated by a sense of place, we have been sometimes charmed, sometimes bored or frustrated by the places we have settled in. But over the years we have enjoyed many delights and pleasures in a whole array of holiday locations and, in some cases, in our more long-term dwelling places. Generally speaking, to the best of our ability, we have headed for happiness points and have, it seems, achieved quite a few. Where we have headed for fame or success the road has often been rocky and stressful and, in many cases, disappointing. The race for money has not, frankly, often interested us and the results we have achieved there have probably reflected this! We have enough on the whole, but not an abundance, at least by the standards of those we mix with.

After many years, we have changed little. We no longer have the board game but, faced with it once more, would make the same choices all over again. As with board games, so with life! We don’t seem to have learned much over the years. Should we be sorry?

Colours of My Mind

Last weekend we went shopping for colours. I love colour. I always have. A black and white world would be a kind of hell. Colour is what it makes it live.

The colour we found at the weekend came in boxes: 36, 24, 12 colours in a box. We saw colour in tubes, too: fat, squashy tubes of vivid colours, waiting to be squeezed out like toothpaste, blended, merged, mixed, brushed, scraped, textured and slapped on the canvas in 101 tantalising shades. There were small packets of moulding clay in a variety of colours. They are bright and temptingly tactile. They look inviting. I am a child – I want to play!

I am jealous of the artist. I admit it. He sits there mixing, blending, stirring, absorbed in his art, applying personalised colour schemes to his personal creation, recreating life in glowing shades of colour. The results are bold, striking and immediate, jolting me into his personal view of life, showing me what he has seen. He is a lucky man. He has the tools for the job. With just four tubes of paint, he tells me, he can create any colour he needs. We have purchased them from the dark recesses of an artists’ paradise – a treasure trove of pastels and paint boxes, easels and canvases, oils and watercolours. They beckon to us, inviting exploration and experiment, indulging the artist’s own fantasies and dreams. We have chosen carefully: Burnt Umber (not Burnt Sienna), Cadmium Yellow (not Lemon), and a special kind of Crimson. Ultramarine has been discarded in favour of a deep Prussian Blue. It is important to get the details right. The rest will follow.

For me, too, detail is important. But I have no tubes, no boxes, no colour. Yes, there is colour in my imagination – my head is full of it; the brown/yellow/golds of autumn fill my head right now. Leaf shapes and leaf colours, earth textures and earth colour fill my daydreams. But I have only one tool. I can draw simple lines only with my pen. Words are my only medium and the words must tell my story of colour and shape, with textures and shades of meaning, moods and emotions. My words alone must tell the whole story, paint the whole picture, squeeze out the truth and apply it to the page in a multi-coloured spectrum rivalling the artist’s.

Language cannot be mixed in a palette, but careful choices must be made from a vast treasure store, as tantalising to me as the artists’ shops we have visited. My Word Store, as the Anglo-Saxons would have named it, is a huge chamber with dark recesses filled with treasure. It is only important to be accurate. I must learn to choose my words and phrases with infinite care.

Where language fails I must use my imagination, invent, embellish, like a James Joyce or an Edward Lear and add to my personal word store a Jabberwock, a gyre or a gimble. Where words fail me or laborious descriptions produce a ‘dead frog’, faithfully observed and accurately depicted, but lifeless, I will become an Impressionist. I will abandon detail for a while and try to evoke an impression, capture essence or express a feeling or mood. I will approach my subject from every angle and build my meaning layer upon layer like a Cubist. I will dissect my subject and reconstruct it, describing its multi-faceted being from a unique point of view and shedding new light on its objective reality. Braque and Picasso will be proud of me.

I will use my art to its best advantage and transfer the colours of my mind to the limits of the page. I will not be beaten! The artist has inspired in me fresh determination to push the boundaries of my own art. This little pen of mine will yet dispense the glories of the spectrum and pour forth a torrent of literary delights from the Aladdin’s cave of my word store, not that I wish in any sense to be competitive, you understand...

Bridge of Sighs

“One spade.” “Two hearts.” “Two no trumps.” Pause. “Three hearts.” Pause. “Why did you do that?” said the plump, rather soft-spoken woman to her partner. “Well, I couldn’t leave you in no trumps,” he protested.

The game proceeded with the usual hesitation, exclamations, groans and sighs until it was finally done and the little group around the table paused to do the inevitable post-mortem and drink their sherry.

Across the hotel lounge another couple sat in companionable silence in a secluded corner. The elderly woman under the reading lamp reached for her Word Search from the little table next to her and scrabbled in her handbag for a pen, whilst her husband dozed in the armchair opposite her, a half-empty cup of coffee beside him. “Don’t let your coffee get cold, Donald” murmured the woman, leaning across and nudging his knee so that he stirred, came to with a start and blinked, looking around him as if not sure where he was.

The scene took me back to thoughts of my parents and their habitual jaunts to the Scottish Highlands or the Lakes on a series of ’55-plusser’ coach holidays. On their return their tales would be full of wonderful rides through glorious scenery, games of bridge played in hotel lounges and early morning starts, after hurriedly packing their minimal luggage, Mum washing out the undies and her one pair of ‘slacks’ and hanging them to dry over the bedroom radiator ready for the next day’s adventure. There were innumerable stops at motorway services, queuing for the toilets during ‘comfort breaks’ and visits to touristic beauty spots, with never enough time to walk there from the coach before it was time to board again and be whisked off to the next stop. Mum walked with a stick and tried hard not to complain about the perpetual trouble she had with her feet. The holiday itineraries, designed by enthusiastic, able-bodied people, never seemed to take age or disabilities into account in their packed schedules. Still, they all did the best they could and the little company of fellow-travellers banded together to help one another out during their short sojourn together. “Dorothy’s just coming” one of them would say when they returned to the coach. “Don’t go without her.”

Whether the verdict was good or bad on their return from these short holidays – and they were often disappointed – they came home with new friends, new bridge partners and happy memories. Then followed little weekend breaks to look forward to, staying with ‘George and Doris from Worthing’, whom they met on the Yorkshire Dales trip, or Eileen and Frank, who sat at their table every night in the hotel dining room at Barnstaple.

Sitting in luxury in our armchairs in the Wentworth Hotel, we had entered their world and their generation and I began belatedly to gather a picture of what their lives must have been like during those last few precious years together. Sadly, my father’s last days were spent in one such hotel on a trip to Torquay. With some sense of the painful irony of the situation, I remember that they were there taking a little trip away to celebrate because he had just received the all-clear from the hospital where he had been undergoing treatment for lung cancer. However, the strain had clearly been too much and one peaceful afternoon, resting in their hotel room, he suffered a final heart attack and Mum, turning to ask him the answer to a crossword clue, as she so often did, discovered that she was alone and Stephen would never again provide the answers.

But they were good years. Those last few years of retirement were filled with leisure pursuits, new surroundings to explore, favourite ones to revisit and congenial company. Like all good coach trippers, they enjoyed their share of enthusiastic sightseeing, gossiping and complaining, wining and dining, sharing jokes with newfound friends and, of course, playing bridge…

The bridge party is over now. They are gathering up their belongings, uttering thanks and appreciation all round, making sure of the arrangements for next week’s repeat performance and shuffling off home. It matters little in the end who won. A good time was had by all.

Crossing the Line

A name, a face from the past - from my other life - or one of them! How can this be? I have buried that life in a box, hermetically sealed, a life that once belonged to someone else. I am a different person now. I exist in another world. I have 'moved on'. How then can this apparition return to haunt me from the life that was someone else's?

He is different too. Older, more stable, more solid, thickset. He has married - settled? Perhaps he has children. He was young and arrogant, disturbing, when I knew him before. Now, I don't know. We are from different worlds and I do not want to go back, to cross the line, to open up old wounds.

No, he was not a lover, not even a friend. He is merely a representative, a reminder, of that other existence, that other life that I lived and wish to live no more. He is simply the youngest son of my contemporaries who were once colleagues, almost friends. Now the friendship is no more because we no longer agree. We have drifted apart. They do not keep in touch; neither do we, but there is no animosity.

It is strange how life has evolved, but worrying to realise that I keep my life in compartments. Maybe we all do. The old life is sealed off to prevent 'contamination', seepage, to guard against negative thoughts, pain and a creeping self-doubt. I am a new woman now, but not without flaws. The makeover is incomplete and the past is a vista I cannot afford to dwell upon. Life must go on. The past is past.

A new morning has broken, but not quite like the first one. But I must press forward into the light lest something more should become broken and be lost in the shadows that threaten to emerge from that box. I must press on... Still, his sudden appearance from those shadows is disturbing.

If pigs had wings...

If pigs had wings
Then other things
Might very different be.
Then money (please),
Might grow on trees
And beggars win the lottery.

If pigs could fly
Then you and I
Might watch our dreams come true.
Then rainy days
And misty greys
Would turn to skies so blue.

If little porkers,
One-time walkers,
Start to fill the air,
Romantic dreams
Fulfilled, it seems,
Would not be quite so rare.

Then all our notions,
Magic potions,
Would come to be at last,
And cynics see,
(Like you and me),
That time for doubt has passed.

So let us strain
Our eyes (in vain?)
To see a piggy fly
And hope and pray
That soon, one day,
It may come floating by.

Snug as a Bug

Last winter was a harsh one. I hate being cold and, in extreme circumstances, am forced to abandon all thoughts of elegance and take avoidance action. My daughter, who lives close to the mountains in Switzerland, once gave me some wise advice: “It’s all about layers, Mum” she said. Last winter I discovered the truth of what she said, as I piled layer upon layer of clothing on my poor, shivering, ill-adapted body until I felt like the old blow-up ‘Michelin man’ who used to adorn delivery lorries for the Michelin rubber company. I re-discovered all about wearing leggings under jeans, piling on vests, T-shirts, sweaters, thermal gloves, snow boots and finally, my piece de résistance, my furry body-warmer. Everyone over the age of 40 needs one of these!

My mother had a gloriously shabby, sheepskin body-warmer which, increasingly, as she got older, she wore almost daily to keep her warm in the small of her back where she complained of feeling the cold. Later, in the nursing home, I grew accustomed to seeing her warmly dressed and tucked up in a blue tartan rug just to make sure and keep out draughts. My body-warmer is rather more fashionable, I like to think, but it does the same job admirably. I have a fine pair of sheepskin-lined slippers too, again reminiscent of what my mother wore in old age, but neatly shaped and threaded with a pretty, pink ribbon to make them a little more suitable to my time of life. My daughter bought them for me for Christmas and as I climbed out of my nice warm bath this morning and slid my feet into them I thought grateful thoughts in her direction and felt, yes, ‘snug as a bug in a rug’ as my old mum would have said.

So why a bug? And why wrapped up in a rug, apart from the obvious rhyming advantages? I try to imagine some shiny little black beetle snugly wrapped up in a blanket, but the blanket is too big and the beetle gets lost. Probably he would get lost in a rug too. I’m not keen on it when bugs get lost – they make me nervous and I like to keep track of them so they don’t disappear and end up climbing up my trouser leg or worse. My husband is well used to climbing on chairs armed with a cup and a piece of card to rescue me from some bug or spider which has crawled up the wall and onto the bedroom ceiling so I can’t rest easy, lying in bed in the dark, without first being rescued from the intruder.

My thoughts trundle on… why do bugs need to feel snug? Aren’t they cold-blooded or do they feel the cold like the rest of us. Perhaps they do, like the mice that find their way into our shed in the winter and end up cuddled up to the back of our freezer to keep warm. Again, not a comforting thought and another strange one because, of course, a freezer is not where you would expect to find a warm place for overwintering.

Still, so many of these sayings we know from childhood run off the tongue without us pausing for thought and then when we do we find it impossible to explain them or their origins. I may have to pursue this train of thought at a later date…

Irresistible force meets immovable object

I have never been very good with shapes. As a child, faced with the ‘Eleven Plus’ examination, which sifted children according to ability and intelligence in order to decide on the school they should attend, I floundered. I wrote an admirable story in the literacy component of the exam. I submitted pages of neat, mostly correct arithmetic. However, the third part, the so-called ‘intelligence test’, was a foreign language to me, especially the parts which required visual abilities, shape sorting and sequences. I did not have that kind of mind – and still don’t.

My daughter’s toys left me bemused. Posting a variety of shapes into similarly shaped posting holes was a real trial, but my small daughter seemed to manage OK. Banging wooden pegs into round holes was easier – only brute force was required.

In life, I have often felt like one of those pegs – but a square one heading for a round hole – an uncomfortable experience when someone with a hammer is going to work on you, trying to make you fit. Filling in forms has been a nightmare. I never fit the boxes. Even trying to answer those multiple choice quiz questions in magazines is a puzzle, because when faced with a choice of a), b) or c), I always want to invent d).

I am often out of step, it seems. I currently live in the city. Although I was born in London, at heart I am a country girl, for some reason and, whenever possible, escape to the country. At weekends we drive an hour plus up the crowded motorway to escape our busy home town and ‘chill out’ in rural north Holland. In the holidays we head for green hills and country lanes, deserted beaches or rocky headlands, back in Britain where we come from.

Often, it seems, I appear to have been born in the wrong century. Technology leaves me cold. Over the years I have acquired a modest amount of technical know-how. I send and receive emails. I send files as attachments. I answer job adverts on-line. But I hate mobile phones. I like too much the feeling of freedom that I get when I go out without one and I value those empty spaces in the day when I know that I am out of range and at nobody’s beck and call. Better than emails I like letters, written on crisp, white notepaper, preferably in elegant italics, or on old-fashioned flowery paper. I like face-to-face contact. I like to spend leisurely amounts of time with people, with tasks, with everything. I am the tortoise, not the hare, but I get there in the end and I like to enjoy the scenery as I go.

As for those wooden pegs, my one comfort is that, try as you may, a square peg will never fit in a round hole. My head may pound from the effects of the constant hammering but I am invincible. I will never fit, but am destined to be one of those awkward, mind-of-their-own quirky shapes that defy all attempts to make them conform. I am content and proud to be so! Be warned, those who know me!

Lonely Vigil

It’s the end of a season! Summer is long gone but traces of it linger on in the beach cafes and pavilions of Scheveningen. These are a Dutch tradition and something that is looked forward to each year with eager anticipation. A last visit before their annual demise, ready for the winter, gave me the idea for this fanciful, rather wistful look at the seaside and its visitors… Now the pavilions are all demolished and the sands swept clean and we must look forward instead to brisk walks along the icy, windswept boulevard, followed by a glass of frothy, cream-topped hot chocolate in one of its cosy, candlelit restaurants, with a fine view of the cold, grey North Sea.

Lonely Vigil

Lonely flower
Beside the sea
In your dimpled jar
I see.

Tell your tale
Of stormy seas,
Balmy days,
Oh, tell me, please.

Tourists come
And tourists go
From your table
To and fro.

Kites a-flying
On the sand,
Hold them tight,
Gripped in your hand.

Sailboats tossing
In the foam,
Bobbing, dipping,
Heading home.

Lonely flower,
Blown in the gale,
Tall and sturdy,
Not so frail.

Tell us
What you daily see.
Paint a picture
Just for me.

Blue and green should never be seen

We had an interesting discussion the other day in the office about redheads. (No, not Red Ed!) When I was younger I wore a lot of green. Two factors were responsible for this – my mother and my hair colour! I was blessed as a child with a warm, caring mother (but one with strong views about most things). I also possessed a rather striking hair colour.

At school I had the misfortune to be labelled ‘ginger’, which wasn’t nearly as fashionable or desirable as it currently is. At home, my mother insisted proudly that it was ‘auburn’ and so it probably was. Less prejudiced, less culturally-conditioned adults admired it. However, I probably suffered just as much, as a rather shy child, from their compliments as I did from my schoolmates’ teasing. My mother’s friends and total strangers, in the shops or even on the bus, would stop my mother and say admiringly, above my head, “Hasn’t she got lovely hair?” I would shrink away behind my mother, blushing a deeper colour even than my hair, but at least able to privately cherish the compliments later.

Not all colours match well with red hair! Red, for one, purple, pink and so on, do not. “Green” my mother said firmly, “green is your colour.” As a child, my school uniform was always navy blue, but away from school, the favourite colour (my mother’s favourite) was green. I was fortunate there are so many different shades of green.

I loved dancing and attended ballet and tap dancing classes every week in the London suburb where we lived. For the dance show one year we all wore pixie outfits in various colours – a little tutu and a pixie hat with petals and a stalk on top. Mine? Brilliant emerald green, of course. Actually, I loved it!

Colours have moods and atmospheres and as I grew up I shied away from blue. It was enough to wear it for school each day and I didn’t like school that much. Later on, of course, I had to wear the regulation blue denim jeans that all my friends wore, but that was different. They made me feel good - at one with my generation and a bit of a rebel. But my primary colours were drawn from an autumnal palette – oranges, browns, yellows and, of course, greens. When you have ginger (auburn) hair, you wear green… and whatever colours go with it.

Over the years, my tastes have changed. In my thirties I had a good friend, some years older than me, who wore beautiful, flowing ‘arty’ clothes and jewellery that I much admired. Cherrie wore shades of turquoise, Wedgewood blue, aqua-marine and purple. Her home furnishings followed the same pattern and gradually my tastes began to change. I began to sense new possibilities.

In later life, nature has given me another fashion hint! No longer is my hair that vibrant colour that clashes so violently with pinks and purples. Over the years it has faded, first of all to a rather enviable pale gold (I liked that stage), followed by one that gives the impression of deliberate highlights (although I’ve never paid for any!). Finally, most of the extravagant colour is gone and I am on my way to light grey. Whilst still adjusting to this fact, I met a friend of a friend I had known in London in my twenties and was insulted and hurt when she commented “I don’t remember … did you maybe have ginger hair once?” I was outraged that I had remained so tenuously in her memory that she couldn’t even remember my hair colour! But, more than that, I had to come to terms with the fact that my present head of hair gave her very few clues.

However, every cloud has a silver lining and mine was no exception. My new grey hair (could I maybe call it silver?) opened the door to a whole new adventure in colour! I love colour and now I could experiment with the whole spectrum. Nearly every colour was permissible. My wardrobe is now full of a whole rainbow of soft greens, subtle browns and beiges, peach, purple, shocking red, gorgeous turquoises and cherry pink and I can mix and match to my heart’s content.

One more thing – the popular adage of my youth, often quoted by my mother and her generation: “blue and green should never be seen” has been proved to be a myth. I regularly mix blues, turquoises, sea greens, emerald and other such delights in both clothing and home decorating – and it works! The seaside is one of my great loves. The countryside is another. Nature has, it seems, designed itself to include both sides of the colour spectrum – blues and greens – in its own mix and match scheme, defying any rules we may think appropriate.

Colours for every season and mood: some encouraging relaxation, some vibrant with energy and motivating us to decisive action. These days, interior designers, fashion experts, counsellors and psychologists, as well as New Age therapists, know how to exploit these and I am enjoying the results to the full.

Under the Sun

Such beautiful sunshine in October! Such a surprise! I'm used to bright, cold mornings in October but not this lazy, sleepy sunshine that feels like summer. It reminds me so much of a late autumn holiday we had in Soller, Majorca where the temperatures soared and we looked up at brilliant blue skies through autumn leaves and imagined ourselves back in the height of summer.

Some years later we tried the same trick and were rewarded by autumn gales, swaying palm trees and torrential rain. Oh well, that's autumn for you! Here's what I wrote about the first dreamy holiday:

Under the Sun

Colours:
Evocative of a place;
A time.
Memories ...
Blue sky,
Wispy white clouds
Drifting over the mountains
To a pine-green shore.
Pine cones,
Pine-needles under foot
On grey rocky pathways,
Leading down
To a forgotten cove,
A silent ravine
Or gushing white torrent.

Dreaming
Of lazy pedaloes,
Sunbeds.
Lazily soaking up
The golden sun.
Brilliant blue,
A cloudless sky ...
Warmth and well-being.
Nothing to do;
Nothing to think!
Plans
Suspended in time.
To everything
A season and a purpose
Under heaven.

Summer
Gone, soon gone.
The sun
Dying in a reddened sky.
Leaves:
Brown and golden,
Yellow and red,
Stirring under my feet.
Trees rustling
In the autumn breeze.
A time for laughter,
Time for healing,
For re-creation
And a time
For sweet reflection ....

Birthday Blog!

It's a lovely sunny Sunday. The sun is streaming in through the windows and the world is slowly getting up. Looking out through the front window, I am arrested by a new phenomenon: a large, purple, plastic, blow-up 2 in the neighbour's window opposite. Above it hang a cluster of coloured balloons. Easy to deduce the reason: the little girl that lives over the road is celebrating her second birthday and will be expecting a day filled with excitement, presents, visits from family and friends and cake!

Used to feeling like a 'newcomer' in the country because of my 'expat' status in the Netherlands, I am surprised to be faced with the realisation that we are in fact quite old-timers! Over the few years we have lived here we have watched houses go up for sale, neighbours come and go. The neighbours in question, over the road from us, came here quite some time after we moved in ourselves. Since then we watched them move their furniture in, we saw them decorate their house and plant flowers outside their front door and we viewed the development of a large bump which in turn became the little girl that now entertains us from a distance with her antics. We saw the large orange stork go up on the front window (a Dutch custom for newborns). A year later, a large 1 appeared in the window, and now it is her second birthday!

Today, by coincidence I am attending another birthday party! Kathy is a little older than my friend over the road, in fact she is enjoying, like me, the middle years of her life in exuberant fashion. Kathy is full of life and a colourful person. She loves food, flowers and stories. Apparently she also loves soup! We have been invited for a 'soup and stories' party. We've been instructed to bring offerings of homemade soup or a story or poem, but no presents... Well, we'll see about that!

For Kathy, cake is important. She is a real 'foodie' with excellent taste in such things! Of course there will be cake! No birthday party could be complete without the cake. I still remember the importance of cake in my own daughter's yearly celebrations and the agonising that went on the day before the party to produce some butter-icing-covered miracle to delight the children who had been invited. Boats with funnels, bunnies in bed, fairy-tale castles topped with ice-cream cone turrets, Sylvanian houses for woodland creatures, Rupert, 'best dog in the world!' and many more lovingly designed masterpieces were churned out for the occasion. The most ambitious was probably a model of the Isle of Wight in green icing (because we had just moved from her childhood home on the island), complete with island attractions, including the St. Catherine's lighthouse (named after our daughter!) and the dinosaur park, with a blue coconut-frosted sea with little jam tart boats with white sails. That was a birthday to remember!

My own best childhood birthday party memory was in fact a friend's party where I spent the entire time shunning all the games and even the birthday tea in order to cradle a tiny kitten in my arms. My best party frock had claw marks down one shoulder ever after to prove it. Olwyn's cat had recently produced an entrancing litter of gorgeous kittens and I had fallen in love with a tiny little black and white one with a black head and white striped nose. I wanted, of course, more than anything, to take it home. On this occasion my wildest dreams turned to ecstatic joy when my mother was bamboozled into finally agreeing to come back and take possession of this wonderful scrap of warm furriness in a few weeks' time when it was weaned. Badger, as he became known, turned out to be the most delightful feline character imaginable and kept our whole family entertained and at his beck and call for many a year to come.

But parties are all the same, it seems, no matter how old you are. We all love to have that yearly affirmation that we are loved, not forgotten and still the centre of attention at least once in the year! Balloons, gifts and even cake are just the trappings. We all want to feel special.

Chewing the Cud

Our daughter had a very fine teacher in her primary school. Dedicated to her small charges, she applied herself diligently every day to the task of instructing, listening and encouraging and, for herself, simply surviving. Day after day she would care for her class, make herself acquainted with each child’s strengths and weaknesses, idiosyncrasies and giftings and strive to urge them on, to take steps forward in life, in learning, in the achievement of personal goals and towards greater maturity.

But sometimes, as happens to us all, it all got too much. She was nearing retirement and sometimes, after a particularly tiresome morning’s teaching, was more in need of an afternoon nap than an afternoon of arithmetic with a class who preferred to look out of the window and really wanted to go out to play. Mrs. Luscombe’s classroom was on the ground floor of a modern, purpose-built school and opened out through a glass door onto the playground – a tempting prospect for her less motivated children and for their weary teacher. On particularly difficult days she would set tasks for her children, check to make sure that everyone was gainfully employed and then slip quietly out of the door into the play area outside. “I just go and look at a tree” she confided to us once, in an unguarded moment at a parents’ evening. “There are just times when it all gets too much and the only thing to do is go and look at a tree.” As far as I know she was not a tree-hugger, but the tree in the playground was certainly a friend and a source of valuable therapy and there existed a long-lasting bond between them.

As for me, years later, I understand how she felt. It’s been a hard week: a week of adjusting to a new job, new people, new tasks, new stresses and strains and another week in the city. Now I’ve escaped from the busy ‘Randstad’ – that urban expanse of stress-filled living that is comprised of a conglomeration of busy Dutch cities, all running into one another. In the north of Holland the pace of life is less frenetic, the values and lifestyle more relaxed and a sense of calm and well-being hovers in the air.

So here I am, surrounded by trees – grey-green willows, glowing golden-leaved chestnuts and graceful lindens. But the trees are not my choice today. No, I have other sights in view. Sitting here, beside the water, I am looking at a cow! Graceful she is not, nor glowing, but somehow comforting. Square, massive, brown and white and immovable, she stands gently, placidly staring into space, her soft brown eyes full of wisdom. She is also chewing the cud, which is exactly what I’m doing – figuratively speaking – going over the week’s events until they slip into place, questions resolved, worries quashed and I can file them away in my mind in a box marked ‘sorted’. My role model, my therapist, is ruminating, masticating, deliberating (or so it seems), chewing in a knowing, superior manner in front of me. Nothing interrupts her reverie or her purpose. I follow suit: half an hour, sitting on a bench, watching the cow and chewing over the events of the week.

After a while, her placidity and apparent wisdom rub off on me and I find I can proceed, like Mrs. Luscombe, with my world back in order and my spirits renewed. The cow is too big to hug but I silently flash her a smile of grateful thanks as I continue on my way. Maybe they’re not so dumb as they look.

Why don't the trees get bored?

It's autumn - time for a bit of reflection on the seasons.

Late in the summer, the leaves dry out and turn colour. They fall to the ground, making a rich multi-coloured carpet of golds, reds and browns. In the city streets, they are swept up by armies of municipal workers, armed with brooms, shovels and little trucks or by means of noisy, leaf-blowing or wood-crunching monsters. In the countryside, the leaves gather in corners and under hedges, blown into drifts by the autumn gales, where they provide a home for hedgehogs, field mice, beetles and spiders. Finally, they rot down into a fine, nutritious mulch of dense, rich vegetable matter, nurturing the growth of next year’s plants.

All through winter, the trees stand bare: tall and proud and unashamed of their perennial nakedness. The trees enter their period of rest, of trance, of recuperation: not a winter of discontent but a winter of hibernation. They wait patiently, while the winds blow and the soft rain produces a damp atmosphere that fosters a covering of damp, dark green moss. At times the snow covers their branches with a sprinkling of pure white.

At last, every year, unseen and unheard, the sap begins to rise. Then, all of a sudden, ‘pop’ – a bud bursts forth, covered in sticky sap – then another and another and, as a reward for their patience it seems, tiny buds begin to unfurl; their protective coverings drop to the ground and are borne away on the breeze. Another spring is born. These tiny leaves develop into glorious, brand new, fresh green foliage. They mature and grow, turn a deeper, darker shade of green and stretch up towards the light, basking in the rays of the summer sun.

The woodlands thicken, become dense and overgrown. They provide shelter for nesting birds and shade for weary passers-by. A vast array of fruits, nuts, vegetables and grain appear in our fields and orchards. They ripen in the sunshine and the summer rain. We share them, willingly or otherwise, with birds, mice, wasps, butterflies and a host of other creatures and, every year, we gather in the harvest.

Over and over, again and again, nature repeats its cycle. Never bored, never hungry for change or looking for some new novelty or fresh challenge, nature follows its appointed course with mind-blowing steadiness and reliability. Why should I, then, in my 21st century humanity, as a part of this natural cycle, be fashioned so differently? After only a couple of repetitions of a simple task or at the outset of another yearly cycle, I grow weary and bored and retire defeated, exhibiting signs of repetitive strain injury! I am destined, it seems, to be eternally caught in the tension between that soothing sense of security achieved by performing a familiar task well and with ease and the brain-dead boredom of a task repeated one time too many.

Enough has been said on the subject of dealing with constant change – a subject that is much highlighted in these changing times. But when boredom sets in and we are powerless to change our lot, how should we learn to rest contented when nothing changes? How can we learn to flow with the seasonal rhythms of nature and continue to be productive and motivated day in, day out, with those same old things?

Where would we be if the trees felt the same? How would life go on if the birds and animals tired so easily of their seasonal tasks of nest-building, reproduction and foraging endlessly for food to feed the next generation? What if the spring decided to do something different next March? There are lessons to be learned from the wise old trees!

Go with the Flow

Today I’m trying to go with the flow. Holiday time is over. Summer is all but gone. I’m alone again – with my thoughts and my work. But it’s not all bad. Life goes on. Yesterday it rained – all day – on and on. ‘Rain in the morning; showers in the afternoon’ they said on the weather forecast. It was all the same to me. So I cleaned the house, worked on some articles, watched the garden grow.

Today the sun is shining – you see! ‘After the rain the sun’ the song goes! It’s market day today and the bells on the clock tower are ringing out a merry tune. I’ve done my shopping; stopped at the market place to buy some shocking pink dahlias; now it’s time for a cappuccino. I notice that the little doyley under my coffee cup tells me I’m drinking Fairtrade coffee and saving the rainforest. That’s good. Yesterday I cleaned the house while the rain fell and the garden grew. Today I’m sitting in the sunshine, drinking coffee and saving the rainforest. Multi-tasking again! Maybe work’s not so bad. I’m trying to go with the flow, as I said. No more complaining. No more holding out for the last moments of summer or the remnant of that good old holiday feeling. No more shirking of work and responsibilities…

There is a gentle but persistent buzz in the background that seems to confirm my resolution: the sounds of everyday. I stop to analyse it: the hum of conversation, a plane flying low overhead, the jangling bells, a motorbike on the other side of the square, a van starting up its engine – the unstoppable cycle of life and the rumblings of my fellow human beings, intent on enjoying this beautiful autumn morning, no matter what.

‘After the rain the sun… after the sun the rain’ the song goes on. Well, tomorrow it may rain again. Tomorrow there will be more work to do. But the garden will grow – and after all, how can you have a rainforest without rain? Maybe I’ll stop wingeing and try to take each day as it comes…