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.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
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…
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…
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
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!
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!
Thursday, October 14, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, October 11, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
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 ....
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 ....
Sunday, October 3, 2010
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.
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.
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