Volendam Parking Lot

Recession? Spending cuts? Economic crisis? Have you been down to Volendam harbour lately? It's buzzing. In the early autumn sunshine the rich are enjoying the last of the year's sailing opportunities and making hay whilst the sun shines.

The harbour is dripping money! It's a show and the boat owners are milking it for all they're worth (which is evidently a considerable sum). Eating and drinking al fresco are the favourite fashion accessories - wining and dining at leisure on board their designer yachts, while the groupies gape and fulfil their purpose in life by loitering, admiring, inflating egos and standing in awe, whilst routine tasks are performed with panache - tying knots, adjusting floats, polishing brass and tinkering with engines, ropes, rigging and anything that's not tied down.

Out there on the ocean it's a serious business; it's a life and death sport with rigorous rules that must be observed in the battle against the elements. In port it's a different story. It's apparently one big game, requiring only a chilled glass of Chardonnay, a few nibbles, a ton of money and a cool, cool attitude. There have been winners and losers in this recession - it's the same in every game.

Holiday Romance

During the summer holiday I fell in love! I got it bad and now, a month later, I am still showing all the danger signs. I can’t stop thinking back to the events of those few short weeks and running it all through my mind. I picture myself walking along the narrow road behind the boatyards, with glimpses of the harbour, on the day it all began and continuing on, never dreaming of what was about to unfold and the happy memories it would leave in its wake.

Before you wonder, I am talking about a place, not a person. My holiday romance occurred during my holiday in Wales this summer. I am still happily married and have not been engaging in flights of fancy or a mid-life crisis! The romantic interlude to which I am referring was indeed a holiday romance and an unexpected one, but it was not what you think.

The road in question led from Porthmadog harbour where we had parked the car, up a steep hill, past cottages and gardens. On the brow of the hill we stopped, wondering if we were wasting our time. There was still no real view of the sea or mountains, as we had been hoping. Maybe we had wasted our efforts and should have tried a different path. On impulse, we stopped a passerby walking her dog and asked her where the road led. It turned out to be one of her favourite walks, leading down to the pretty bay of Borth-y-Gest, only minutes away.

Sure enough, from the top of the hill an idyllic little bay awaited us, complete with wooded hillsides, an array of coloured boats on the sand, a stone harbour wall and, oh joy, a tearoom! I fell in love! The cove opened out onto an enormous vista of sandy estuary and a breathtaking backdrop of misty mountains. All around the cove seaside cottages nestled against the hillside, each of them with a stunning view out over the bay. What a place to live – a small slice of seaside heaven! The smell of seaweed, the scream of gulls and a view to die for right outside your front door.

There is an old Donovan song which I occasionally find myself humming during times of extreme, carefree happiness. It is a simple song, with a gentle melody, and it embedded itself firmly in my mind and heart on the day, back in the ‘70s, when I first heard it. “Happy I am” it begins. “All on the new day… People and flowers, Are one and the same” (a burst of subtle ‘flower power’ lyrics!)…”All in a chain, At the beginning of a new world.“ “Someone’s singing and I think it’s me” it goes on, “Someone’s singing and, oh gosh, it’s me!” There are many times in life when you anticipate happiness in the future: ‘I am so looking forward to our night out – I shall be very happy’ or reminisce about happy times in the past: ‘It was so wonderful being there’. But the times when we are conscious of being happy in the present are few and far between. We are less adept at stopping the clock in a moment of happiness and reflecting on it, it seems. But it happens. For me, our time in Borth-y-Gest was one of those rare times when I found myself humming Donovan’s tune and only a song of the heart, Donovan style, can record it:


Song for Borth-y-Gest

Smooth as can be
Slatey-grey rock,
Green-browney-green
Velvety moss.

Yellow bright flowers,
Hummocky hill,
Clover and plantain
Grow where they will.

Shoreline below
A vista of mud,
Gold-coloured lichen
And rock pools in flood.

Wait for the tide
Like the boats on the sand.
Tide’s in no hurry,
Got nothing planned.

Find myself humming;
A song’s in the air.
Find myself whisper
A thankfulness prayer.


The best thing about a holiday romance is the way it stays with you, lighting up those dark corners and turning up unexpectedly in your thoughts, allowing a smile to form on your lips, a lightness in your step and a moment of joy to brighten up your day before it fades away into the mists of time. Love is like that.

One of those golden, autumnal days...

Autumn! The very thought of it is enough to bring out the writer in anyone! As I turn over in my mind those evocative autumn words, the creative juices start to flow. It’s like a brainstorming session for Year 5’s creative writing assignment. The words and phrases, those perennial words especially reserved for this time of year, bubble up to the surface of my mind and hover there: russet red, bronze, amber, burnished gold, rustling leaves, ripening fruit… smoky bonfires, deep drifts of dry, crackling leaves and a range of special colours – red, gold, brown, yellow and crimson. They fire my imagination and make me long to pick up my pen.

I am seated in my garden on one of those golden autumnal days, just soaking it up, enjoying the peace and calm and the last rays of sunshine before winter sets in. The past week we have had storms: dark, threatening clouds, heavy downpours, gusting winds – real ‘autumnal’ weather. But today we have seen the other side of autumn – the roaring lion has vanished and the lamb has appeared: mild, soft and full of balm.

I look around me and am once again surprised by nature’s knack of colour coding. The creeper on the wall is already turning colour. The big three-pronged leaves that cover it are beginning to curl slightly as they dry out and lose the sap that has kept them green and vigorous through spring and summer. The edges are turning crimson and then vivid red and it’s spreading. The show has begun. The pyrocanthus we have so tenderly cared for and encouraged these past two years is showing (at last) a huge crop of bright tangerine-coloured berries. We have tied a criss-cross of garden twine across the pergola to prevent the pigeons from landing on the shrub and systematically gobbling its berries. As time goes on and winter sets in in earnest we may take down our makeshift ‘net’ and allow the birds to plunder them – but not yet. I want to enjoy their rich colour for a little longer.

There are rust-coloured chrysanthemums in a pot, with glowing yellow middles. The oregano is turning to shades of pinky-red. The begonias, in full flower ever since late May, are still a glorious scarlet and the two fuchsia bushes dangle their graceful fronds of crimson/purple blooms over the edges of the flower beds. The hydrangea in the corner is in tune with the theme too, showing off its huge, faded, red flower heads, which must stay there till February before they can be pruned. Even the oleander is struggling to give us a few late blooms, although it is getting far too chilly for this Mediterranean plant which has so tempted us. It stands by the wall, basking in the late summer’s reflected heat, and offers up its handful of deep red blossoms. It is not suited to our north European climate but we cannot resist its charms.

I think back to the spring, when the garden was filled with another of nature’s colour schemes: yellow for forsythia, polyanthus, primrose and daffodil; blue for ceanothus and grape hyacinth. Pansies, iris and crocus seem to come in both shades. But the seasons have their special colours, it seems. Autumn is the colour of sunsets, which seems appropriate somehow. The fire is being extinguished from the year and also from the skies.

Metaphors abound for this time of year. The ‘season of mellow fruitfulness’ applies equally to the year’s end and to the more whimsical ‘autumn of our lives’. However, autumn, so glorious in its display, turns slowly to winter; vivid sunsets fade into the dark, dark night; and the autumn of our lives turns inescapably to death and decay. Such is life; such is its end. Soon, in the garden, we shall be looking at bare twigs, piles of dead leaves and an empty grey wall, relieved only by whatever berries the pigeons have left us.

Have I depressed you with this talk of death and decay? It happens. Autumn cannot help but run into winter. But, in the meantime, I will enjoy autumn’s beauty and colour: its own special richness and vitality, and I will take care to remind myself that, after winter, comes, once more, the re-incarnation of spring in that ever-turning circle of life.

Chicken!

Yesterday, walking down the road, as large as life, I saw a man with a chicken on his head! I was driving past in the car through a housing estate, on my way home from a walk in the local nature area. We had been to a small café in the course of our walk and stopped to look at the small kinderboerderij, as they call them in the Netherlands – a little enclosure with a few goats, a pony and some chickens where the children go in and stroke them or feed them handfuls of grass or grain. There were some exotic-looking chickens, with half a dozen young ones, all pecking in the grass and running about in the undergrowth. They had feathers everywhere and huge ruffles of pretty feathers about their legs. However, that was a nature reserve and this was a housing estate!

I turned my head as we drove past and looked again, just to make sure. Sure enough, the man was strolling coolly along the street, together with a woman with a shopping bag. They evidently hadn’t noticed anything wrong! He was wearing a jaunty hat on top of his head and perched on top of that was a brown hen. “Did you see that?” I asked my husband. “What?” he asked, manoeuvring along the narrow street with cars parked on either side. I explained, but had to repeat it a second time before he got it. “Are you sure?” he said… “a chicken? Was it a real one?” “Yes” I assured him – it was a real one. He tried again: “Was it alive?” “Yes” I said “a real, live brown chicken – sitting on top of his head.” Unbelievable!

I’m reading a book at the moment – I’m always reading a book! My current one is called Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult. Faith turns out to be, not a religious dogma, but a little girl who, following the divorce of her parents, acquires a new friend she calls her ‘guard’. Faith develops a relationship with this ‘friend’ who seems to take have characteristics of a divine, female guardian (God – ‘oh my guard!’ – get it?) and she is the instigator of a string of miracles apparently performed by seven year old Faith. As a result, Faith and her family attract the attention of a number of psychiatrists, Catholic priests, Jewish rabbis, religious fanatics and newspaper reporters, together with a struggling author, celebrity and ‘teleatheist’, who is trying to kickstart his waning career by inventing a road show which travels around America, investigating the claims made by religious believers concerning a variety of miracles, healings and visions and attempting to ruthlessly disprove them by scientific means. Ian is the ultimate cynic, with a history which he keeps well hidden. There are reasons for his vehement denial of faith. The story hinges on the theme of belief versus cynicism and the fight, by Faith’s mother, to protect this little girl from becoming a vulnerable child celebrity on an insensitive, intrusive and cruel world stage.

The road show host challenges his audience: “Name one thing – other than the existence of God – that we take on blind faith.” But there are hundreds every day! We believe in the existence of far-off exotic places, even though we have heard of them only by hearsay, or through TV programmes with photos of a place we are only told is what it purports to be. We sit on the sofa, watching the TV, believing that this particular sofa will hold us up when we sit down, but only because other people’s sofas have done this okay so far. But will ours? Where is our proof? We still go to enormous expense and effort to marry after a brief interlude of romance, despite the statistics which tell us that this will probably end in tears. Many of us simply believe that for us it will be different. But will it? On what do we base our faith? So the list goes on. We use electrical appliances, computers, lifts, airplanes, knowing very little about the technology which goes to make them work, keeps us safe, keep us in the air, and so on. We have no real proof that we can put our trust in them. But we do. Without this basic faith our lives would fall apart.

Those who suffer from anxiety – and many do – are only exhibiting a loss of some of that very necessary faith (often unwarranted) in the reliability of things, the friendliness of dogs, the innate trustworthiness of our neighbours, our animals, our appliances… But it is not so unreasonable to believe otherwise – there is plenty of proof that when we go out thieves will break in; plenty of proof that our marriage may fail; plenty of proof that our car may break down or that next door’s dog may bite. But we choose to believe (hope?) otherwise. That is what makes the world go round.

Keeping Faith? Believing in acrobatic chickens? Trusting each other? Can we do it? It’s an interesting question. Did my husband believe me? Should we have faith? Are we being hoodwinked by politicians, salesmen, priests, partners? Should we keep faith – or is that just counting our chickens before they are hatched? Still, the chicken was real…

Retreat!

It’s been a while since I blogged! If you want to know why, read my profile! It says I’m a “quiet, reflective thinker and writer… lover of sunshine, colour, flowers, countryside, the sea, holidays, family and friends, beautiful things, the great outdoors...”

It’s in my genes – I’m an escape artist! Every now and then I have to get away and escape to my natural habitat. What’s that? Well, look closely at my profile photo! Everyone has a natural habitat and for me it’s the big outdoors – the sea, with rocks to clamber on, the cliffs and the sound of screeching gulls, winding country lanes and bubbling streams… I found a lot of those things these last few weeks.

When I escape I revert to type! I’m a peace-loving person. I’m slow; I can’t be hurried. I’m a meandering stream; I never go anywhere without making detours. And I’m not contactable except in emergencies. Infuriating! But if you want to escape you have to do it properly. We have Wi-Fi at home. It’s very useful, both for us and for our guests. We have a cordless phone too. But when I escape the range is far too small to reach either of them where I left them – at home!

I wrote a lot on my holiday – a way of maximising my enjoyment of what I observe. I live it and I relive it and I take it home with me along with my photos. I love nature and I love people-watching. I hate crowds but my ideal habitat is never totally deserted. I need company. ‘Holiday Snippets’ records my enjoyment of that habitat and my appreciation (mostly) of that company:


A couple of Holiday Snippets!

1. When you just have to get away!

One of the things I crave more than anything else on holiday is peace and quiet. A beach, a few fishing boats or a view of he mountains plus a quiet spot to sit is bliss. Add to that a peaceful tea room with a terrace overlooking it all and I’m in heaven! Today we found all of that! We were just settling down contentedly to choose what we wanted from the menu and congratulating ourselves on our find when the trouble started…

We were on a tiny terrace with only a few tables and in the front row with nothing to block our view. What could possibly go wrong? And then she started! “I’m just down by the beach” she yelled. “I just had to get away” she said. “You know how it is when you just have to get away – I just had to be by the sea.” Not for the peace and quiet, I thought. I knew instinctively that she was on the phone. No-one yells that loud at the person sitting next to them. What is it about mobile phones that make people shout? Perhaps it would only be a quick call and peace would be restored soon, I thought. No chance! “I just had to be by the sea” she said again. Me too, I thought. “I just had to get away.”

By this time getting away was looking like the only solution. We shifted restlessly and discussed our options. Finally, we got to our feet, gathered our belongings and decided to admit defeat. “I’m just going” said the voice behind us. “Really – don’t go. I’m very sorry.” Now I was really embarrassed. Had she heard us? “I’m sorry” I said. “It’s our fault. We’re just a bit hyped at the moment and needed some peace.” She brushed my apology away and repeated her own. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be so loud.” In the end we decided between us to blame mobile phones and parted on amicable terms, she to her seaside quest (with mobile phone) and we to our peace and quiet (without one).


2. Dietary delicacies

Eavesdropping again – I just can’t help it! Sat in the same picturesque little café overlooking an idyllic seaside cove and munching my tuna melt baguette, I overheard the order on the neighbouring table. A large woman sat close by, perusing the menu, whilst the waitress waited patiently, notepad at the ready. She chose with care: “scones, jam, cream, hot chocolate with whipped cream, no, maybe with the marshmallows, no cream… well, alright then, with both… and” (as an afterthought) “oh, and a diet coke.”

We looked at each other silently, smirking, and looked away again quickly in case the helpless giggles that were developing should break out and embarrass us all. A diet coke after all that? Why bother?!