Sunday, January 29, 2012

WWW dot

SMS text, DVD,
I-pad, I-pod,
Skype and see.

Mobile, Digi, Blackberry,
Twitter, Facebook,
Call hands-free.

Call my cell phone,
Send a text,
Email me if no-one’s home.

Send a message, be my friend,
Post a photo,
Just press ‘send’.

Friendship’s easy,
Sign-up’s free,
Global virtuality.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Making up Stories

We have lived in our house a few years now. We see people come and go. They all have their stories to tell, no doubt, but mostly we can only guess. There are young families, maybe a young couple who move in with great enthusiasm, helped by family and friends. They work hard on their property: a new coat of gleaming white paint on the front door, a few plants in a pot, carefully tended and very neat, all the blooms regularly dead-headed to make room for fresh flowers.




A baby is born and we watch proud grandparents come and go and all kinds of paraphernalia begin to clutter up their lives and their hallway - a large buggy complete with a plastic rain shield for wet days and a parasol for sunny ones. Time passes by and the buggy disappears, to be replaced by a little tricycle, then the little girl's first bicycle, all pink and girlie with a little pink basket on the front and a noisy bell. Signs begin to appear of a new addition to the family and suddenly, without waiting for us to find out whether it's a new brother or a little sister, they are off, belongings on the pavement, just like when they arrived. In no time at all everything is neatly stowed away in the removal van, the cleaning is finished to their satisfaction, ready for the new tenants, and they are locking the door, fastening their little girl into her car seat and gone from our lives forever.



We have seen other departures too, some less positive. An elderly couple, living opposite, lived out their lives in front of our eyes for a while. We watched as they crossed the line from healthy, active lives to frail old age. At first there were weekly trips by bike to the market, coming home with bicycle panniers laden with fresh fruit and vegetables and a bunch of chrysanthemums or roses for the table. We waved and smiled from our window or sometimes exchanged a few words in the street.



Later on the man grew weak and no longer accompanied his wife to market. She cycled home alone, muffled up against the cold wind with a thick scarf and hat, and trudged up the stairs to their upstairs flat with her bags of shopping. When spring came the elderly gentleman reappeared and took a turn around the local park, admiring the spring bulbs and feeling the warm sun on his back, whilst his wife helped him along, her arm firmly locked in his. Once or twice that year the ambulance came, blue lights flashing. A stretcher was carried into the house and came back out again, heaved down the narrow stairs, bearing our elderly friend, followed by his anxious wife. After a few days he came home again. Then one day the ambulance disappeared with him once more and returned no more. Worried looking sons and daughters appeared at the house, letting themselves in and out and piling bags and cases of belongings into the car. The old man's wife disappeared with them.



Did he die in hospital? Did he get moved to a nursing home? Did they move away to live with their children? We never knew. But one day we looked out of our window and watched as a big waste disposal lorry came to take away their furniture. There it sat on the street outside their flat - a few old sticks of shabby furniture: an old bedstead and a sagging mattress, a chest of drawers, a scratched table and four dilapidated chairs, some grubby pieces of shelving and a few bags and boxes. Was this all? Was this the sum total of a life? I was shocked. The men threw it all into the lorry and it was crunched up in the machinery. One minute these things were the lovingly collected trappings of a family's lifelong history, the next they were abandoned, thrown out on the street for the neighbours to gawp at and crunched up in the impersonal and uncaring jaws of a home-devouring monster. Week after week the old man had toiled at his job to pay for these precious items; week after week his wife had lovingly scrubbed and polished them to make a home.



The other day I gazed out of our window at a small pile of our own belongings, stacked on the pavement waiting for the lorry to come. A table and chairs, scratched and well-used, which I remember buying in Habitat a long time ago. I was so proud of it until our cleaning lady covered it in furniture polish (despite my express instructions) and ruined all the lacquer. The clumsy old microwave oven was a relic from my inlaws' bungalow, abandoned when they moved together into a nursing home, but bringing back memories of their cosy, old-fashioned kitchen. The battered, yellowing plastic garden chairs were donated by the previous owners of our current home, already worn out and now replaced.



But each item represented something of our lives, a 'happening', a memory, a moment of happiness and satisfaction, another step on the way to making a home that we could be proud of and happy to live in. They gave rise to special memories that only we could access: our family history. But belongings wear out in the end so regretfully we had replaced them. So there was our 'stuff' on the pavement for all the neighbours to see. No doubt the people over the road were already busy guessing - making up stories about us, the neighbours on the other side of the street - and wondering what our new dining table looked like. Neighbours are like that.






Saturday, January 21, 2012

The World Turns

The world turns
And I am enchanted,
Bewitched by its busyness,
Dazed by diversity.
Cavorting and capering,
It dallies and dances,
Never-ending procession:
A modern-day pageant.

Potent with purpose,
Bristling with business,
Strutting their strategy,
An army marches by.
But now, intermingled,
Timeless, disordered,
Are daring dissenters,
Breaking the mould.

Glorious pageant,
Bruegel-like vista,
Twisting and turning,
In riotous dance.
Twirling kaleidoscope,
Momentary patterns,
Unfolding before me -
Dramatic displays.

They hover a moment,
Held fast in my view,
Then on with the dance:
All at once they are gone.
Fragments of city life,
Passions and promises,
Momentary episodes
In lives quite unknown.

Like a static display
At the heart of revolving doors,
I sit, in my silence,
At the hub of it all,
Whilst the world all around me
Beats out its tune:
A frenetic fantasia -
Of rhythm and blues.

Earth around Sun,
Moon around Earth,
Earth turns on its axis,
I revolve in my chair.
I open my eyes and
Life overwhelms me,
Stare into space,
Starry-eyed at the view.

Lingering to watch
I sit behind glass,
Cocooned in my thoughts,
Invisible, dumb.
Skateboarders, businessmen,
Shoppers and loafers,
A mingling myriad
Of flotsam and jetsam

Thrown up before me –
Oblivious throng –
They dance past like shadows
But a child intervenes:
Breaks free from his mother’s grasp,
Smiles through the window,
Invitation unspoken
To join in the dance.

The world turns
And I am enchanted,
Cavorting and capering,
Not dallying, but dancing,
I run to the window
Returning his smile,
The glass all transparent -
A barrier no more.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Is it Spring yet?

Guess what! It's been ten degrees, mild and balmy, and the flowers are blooming. Twice as many varieties of wild flower in bloom in England right now, we're told, as is usual for this time of year. I saw a stork investigating last year's nest the other day. Time to breed? Blackbirds are starting to chase each other around the garden, tuning up for the spring mating season. Crazy!

It's all wrong and at the first frost the flowers will die and be wasted, having to wait another whole year until they can perform their annual miracle and burst into bloom. But I'm finding it hard to be sorry. I would like it to be spring! Just when I thought we were condemned to grey skies, a cold, hard winter and January, February and March to get through before we can relax in the sunshine again, nature has decided differently. The bulbs are flourishing in the garden and the trees are in bud. I love it! I get so impatient at this time of year and find it hard to just sit myself down and wait patiently for it all to start happening again after the winter pause.

Patience doesn't seem to be our strong point anymore, does it? Why wait? Fruit and veg in the shops the whole year round, regardless of the proper season; strawberries in January; oranges in August! Already in the market they are selling daffodils; but outside my front door there is a pot of yellow chrysanthemums in their second flush of bloom! In Victorian times there was a fashion for painting still life displays of fruits and flowers, butterflies, insects and so on that were a logical impossibility to find together in the same season. It was a kind of trademark of the Victorian era in art. Not so now! We can have anything we want whenever we want it, it seems.

Is this a good idea? We have lost the art of anticipation and the capacity for waiting. We want it now! We want to buy the house of our dreams on a mortgage we can't afford to pay for; we want to start a business on credit, instead of saving the capital to invest first before we begin. We already know what the consequences are for that... Live now, pay later! Maybe the current economic crisis will turn things around a bit. If we start to 'grow our own' as is currently in vogue we may have to eat strawberries in June after all. But maybe, with climate change, we can have them all year round anyway. Who knows. Nothing is very certain these days...

Anyway, now finally the weather has turned, at least for a few days. Bright, cold sunshine and blue skies - a least a bit more like winter but the flowers are still hanging on. I wonder how long we can get away with it...





Monday, January 2, 2012

Whatever Next?

Greetings, fellow-bloggers and blog-devourers! It's only Day Two of this brand new year and already I'm flagging, wondering if I can ask a favour of you. It's a bit early in the year really to be admitting defeat in this way and I am somewhat ashamed, but there it is. New Year is a concept that is all about new beginnings, fresh resolve, renewed motivation and a sense of excitement at new possibilities - for achievement, for enjoyment and for improvement. 'Doing the right thing' is a goal recently made fashionable, desirable and unarguably correct - unthinkable, in fact, not to! Like bendy buses, at great cost, we have done away with all other outmoded and unpopular models and ushered in the new, how-could-any-generous-man (or woman)-think-otherwise? principle. Doing the Right Thing - our collective New Year's Resolution! A very positive stance and highly commendable.



But already I'm falling down on the job! The run-up to Christmas, all through the month of December, was pretty much the same this year as ever, except for the performing of one or two additional financial magic tricks, pulling turkeys out of the hat like white rabbits and trimming one or two things (not with holly this time) in order to manage the annual round of visiting, present buying and other festivities. The run-up to New Year required a little more wizardry and a good pair of ear plugs. The Netherlands at New Year is an experience never to be forgotten. This year it was around 4 a.m. before the last of the bangs evaporated into the night air. Not long after I awoke to greet the New Year, feeling as if I was paying once more for the privilege of partying all night - only I hadn't!



Now it's all over. January 1st dawns once again with us all safe and sound (amazing), our house and car intact, no limbs blown off, both eyes still safely in their sockets and a deluge of grey, depressing rain to wash away the debris of last night's wild party and bring everyone back to their senses. A gloomy, weary-looking news reader informs us that we are still in a financial crisis - now more than ever - and that 2012 is not going to be better than 2011. I think we knew that already. Then he wishes us all a happy New Year. Thanks!



The rain continues, grey, unrelenting, miserable. So I am left having to ask you that favour. I need a short sabbatical - just a moment or two's respite from my appointed role. My blog is still meditative - you may rest assured. I'm still here and I'm still thinking - I think therefore I am. But what am I thinking? Can I still play the court jester? Am I still 'gently humorous and entertaining'? Post party, post presents, post eat, drink and be merry, post bangers and crackers, post Christmas and New Year... what is filling my thoughts and can I entertain you with it? Just for today, sadly, the skies are grey, the budget is stretched and the future is a little blank. What comes next? For we have crossed the line from December - that month of feasting and merriment where even good old Scrooge is reformed and festive - to bleak old January, grey skies and the return to work and... what else? Give me a day or two and I'll be sure to remember. In the meantime, Happy New Year everyone!