A landscape unspoilt by human intervention...

 

 

 

A sedge warbler chatters in the reeds, hard to spot but distinctive, insistent, bringing me to attention. Beyond the river bank a hawk glides over the water meadows, swooping, gliding, alighting on an old fence post, just out of reach. A ewe baas in the distant fields, calling to her lamb, drawing it back closer to her. I sit, back against the river dyke, sheltered from the wind, in the warm embrace of mountains that enfold me on three sides, their circle broken only where the river meanders down to the sea, past sheep. cattle and reedbeds with their tall, white stems held erect over the flat landscape.

 

Below me, on the bank, a butterfly lands, spreads its wings for an instant, moves on, joined by a second - orange, black, delicately outlined. A tortoiseshell, red admiral, painted lady? No, none of these. Just another of the countless varieties, defying labels, confusing to identify but delighting me with its vibrant colour and intricate patterns. All around me, it is colour that lights up this magical landscape: turquoise sky, pale green hills, golden yellow furze bushes, brown tufts of meadow grass, blending together in a rich harmony, a natural symphony of light and shade. The hillsides are illuminated or darkened by a succession of shapes, patterns traced across them by the steady onward march of the clouds above, always changing, never still.

 

In the distance I hear the sound of the steam train, its gentle 'choo ooo', as if in a far off dream, carrying yet another load of contented passengers down, down from the green mountain to the glistening, blue sea.

 

Far away, on the other side of the fields, a solitary white car glitters in the sunshine as it makes its way slowly along the road that is now visible, now hidden, behind the screen of hedging towards  a cluster of houses and farm buildings - the only clear sign in this whole panorama of the existence of the human species. Apart from the chattering of the birds, the sound of distant sheep and the sighing of the wind, it is a silent world, a far cry from the city that I am used to. No concrete, no glass, no metal, only earth, water and vegetable matter, soft, green and natural, the way Mother Earth intended. No human intervention, nothing to spoil it - except me...

 

Menagerie

 

It’s a strange sort of day

And I can’t work it out.

My bed’s full of bears

And my bath’s full of trout.

There’s a pig in the shower,

A giraffe on the path

And I’m sure I just noticed

A bat on the hearth. 

It’s a strange sort of day

And I can’t get it straight.

There’s a herd of white rhino

Just come through my gate.

There’s a flock of grey geese

In the hall by the stairs

And a small troupe of mice

On the dining room chairs. 

It’s a strange sort of day

And I’m feeling quite faint.

If I see one more sheep

I shall make a complaint.

Did I eat too much cheese?

Stay too long in the sun?

But it’s just like the zoo

So perhaps I’ll have fun. 

Well, the bears had some buns

And they shared them with me

And the mice said they’d like

To stay with us for tea.

Then the rhinos got stuck

As they came through the gate.

By the time it was fixed

It was getting quite late. 

Then the pig left the shower

And went back to the mud

But it left the tap running

And now there’s a flood.

When I’d cleaned it all up

I was ready for bed

But guess who was there

Even though they’d been fed! 

But I slipped into bed

And I turned out the light.

Then the bears started growling

And gave me a fright.

It’s been a strange day,

But not quite what it seemed:

I’m so glad I’m in bed

And it’s only a dream.

 

 

Snatching Time

 

 

 

 

I thought I was quite good at taking time for myself. Being an ME sufferer for some years now, I had got used to pacing myself and interspersing periods of activity with time for rest, relaxation, meditation, sitting in my garden watching the flowers grow... I learned to use the hours when my husband was out at work (earning enough for two of us - just - thank God) and I had all that time to fill with leisure activities so that when I ran out of energy I could flop in a chair and do something restful that I grew to love. Writing became one of my first loves. My garden was the other one. Putting those two together was my shortcut to heaven.

 

Gradually things improved and I got a part-time job which I also enjoyed. But the hours at home still gave me plenty of time for myself and I would sit, watch, listen, sense, think and write to my heart's content. I think some of my fit, healthy friends were a touch jealous of my disability!

 

Nowadays we have just moved house and my husband is semi-retired. Two good reasons for being busy. Two? Well, I went to a great workshop the other day and discovered I'm not so good at taking time for myself as I thought I was. Read on! Dr. Julie Leoni, a charming, unassuming, ordinary person, like the rest of us in every way except for the slightly intimidating doctorate, told us a little of her life history, documented in greater detail in her latest book: Love Being Me. From being a busy wife, mother, teacher, trainer and coach she snapped one day and turned into a jelly-like shivering wreck, lying on the floor, howling and scribbling. How did that happen? Basically through a wrongly-motivated sense of priorities which left Julie and her personal needs way at the bottom of the list, only ever receiving attention when all the 'important' things of life were finished - which, of course, they never were. A process of unlearning, learning and re-learning followed until Julie arrived at the point at which she finds herself today - loving herself and taking time out of her busy life to make sure she does more and more of what she loves to do. Life is too short to do anything else.

 

Inspired by her workshop and book, I have come to a realisation. I am not so good any longer at taking time for myself - only snatching it! Snatching it is different and still involves relegating myself and my needs to the bottom of the pile, to be achieved only when the more 'necessary and important' tasks are done. As a result I become tired, I start to 'do' out of a position of drivenness and rushing to meet deadlines and I become duller and less vibrant as a person. Like this I have less to offer the world. In actual fact, Ihave learned that all of us have a lot to offer the world - wisdom, energy, inspiration, creativity - if only we abandon our regime of guilt, 'should', other people's demands and unjustified 'needs'. Of course, it's great to help those around us, lovely to have time for other people we love or just those around us in our wider community, but if we forget ourselves and allow life to squeeze out those moments of self-awareness and just 'being', we're lost.

 

Currently, my ME condition is improving - hooray!! I have had energy for this new phase of my life, for packing and unpacking, for the time-consuming and exhausting activity of house-hunting, for the stresses and strains of being temporarily of no fixed (permanent) abode and the rigours of adjusting to somewhere new. In fact, I am re-energised by all of this! I am delighted to have the love of my life increasingly more present in my everyday life as a consequence of his (almost) retired status. Again, hooray! But I have realised, these past few days, that this has given me two more reasons to cease taking time for myself. I no longer have hours to 'fill'.

 

We are engaged together on the busy and delightful tasks of unpacking and creating our new home. We have endless (it seems) boxes to unpack. We have new friends to make. We have new activities to try out. We have new places to explore. We have each other for company and can plan the days together. But those times of gentle contemplation, those moments for reflection, those hours filled with writing can now only be snatched, not taken. I have to guard against this. I am hearing no judgemental sounds from my husband. None at all. They are only in my head. He is happy for me to take time. He is aware of my still fragile reserves of energy and my need for rest. It's only me, still learning to love myself, to love being me and to indulge myself now and then - or maybe more often than that! I'm on a learning curve again - from snatching to taking - from a sneaky, guilt-ridden activity squashed into moments when my husband is in the shower or I have already done my share of the chores, to a willing, whole-hearted conviction that I am worth it. And so I am! Thank you Julie Leoni! I needed that timely reminder.

 

 

Beam me up, Scottie

11.30 a.m. Sunday morning. I am sitting in a big, brown leather armchair in a hotel lounge with my husband and a pot of rich dark coffee by my side. It's raining, I'm tired and this is the best morning's relaxation I can think of. The Sunday papers were not delivered to the hotel this morning, I heard. It's a remote spot. But the view from the hotel lounge is a panorama of green and brown, a soft, moist, misty, majestic landscape - mountains and lake - Snowdonia's best.

 

This is home now. It's hard to make that sink in. I've never lived in the mountains before. But this is my home. I've been transported, I think - beamed up! I've gone boldly, where I at least have never gone before. From the flatlands of northern Europe I have travelled, been moved on flawlessly, seamlessly, from my old life to this new one - a magic conjuring trick, performed while I was sleeping. In fact, it has been nearly five months since I slept in my big pine bed in my Netherlands home. Such a lot has been accomplished since then: cleaning, packing up, searching for a new home, arriving, cleaning once again and unpacking... But it seems like only yesterday and now the transformation is complete. I am back, like  before, sleeping in my own bed, cooking in my own kitchen, eating off red and while tulip crockery at my big, old, antique pine dining table with the same familiar bumps and scratches etched into the wood, and sleeping once again in my comfy old bed. It's all just the same as before and yet all so totally different.

 

Can this really be me? Can I really be here? Soft, green, misty, moisty mountains - you are my home now.

A Moving Experience

How many people get to write a blog post on the day they are moving house? I have to confess I wasn't expecting to!  But it's a nail-biting time, especially when your removal company have just rung to say they got delayed through traffic in London, drove over night, tried to park outside your new cottage in a tiny village in rural Wales at 1 a.m., got moved on by the police and now have to spend three hours resting until they are legally allowed to drive again! So there will be a small delay in the proceedings...

 

Time enough to write my blog. It's always a moving experience relocating, of course, but this time it has been particularly moving. We arrived here a few days ago, booked into a holiday cottage in the village and wondered what on earth it would be like moving into a small Welsh community as English newcomers. The first thing we noticed is that when people here talk to you they mostly listen to the answers. People look you in the eye, engage you in conversation and seem to really want to communicate. I like that. Life is slower here. I like that too - mostly. So how does the community work? Well, we got the keys to our new home on Tuesday and turned them in the lock full of excitement to see what our tiny cottage would be like without the previous owner's furniture. We're downsizing to come here, so a bit of a squash with all our furniture, but we'll make it work somehow. We're just delighted to be able to call a tiny piece of this beautiful area of the Snowdonia National Park our own. So we'll fit in somehow.

 

First mistake. When we opened the living room door there was a large pine Welsh dresser to greet us. Now, I know this is Wales but I didn't expect a free gift Welsh dresser with every house purchased. We bought a couple of items of furniture and a couple of kitchen appliances from the previous owner but this dresser was definitely not on the list. He offered to sell it to us and we turned him down. He didn't want it - but neither did we. Now what? Furniture arriving in a few days' time. No room for it. How does this sort of thing work here? Should we ring the council to take it away? They'd charge us and it might take weeks. Should we chop it up for firewood? What with? And what would we do with the wood? OK, a secondhand furniture shop then... Only one in the next village. Try that. One visit to the shop, one visit from the owner, a nice white van turns up, no dresser, twenty five quid in the pocket!

 

Time to clean up. Not too bad in the kitchen, but not too good either. Anyway, it's nice to do your own cleaning and know it's really clean and hygienic. So we set to with buckets of nice hot, soapy water. The only problem was that when we emptied out the dirty water down our nice clean sink it ended up in the cupboard below. Whoops! Now what? We fiddled with it and failed to fix it. Where do we find a plumber? Looked for some handy plumber's phone numbers and failed again. Ask the neighbours! Right answer! Next door neighbour told us one of the other neighbours had done a plumbing course. Ask him... So we did. A few hours and ten quid later we were fixed. Could we pay him for his time? No way. Thank you, neighbour! Is this how community works?

 

Our next door neighbour looked at our shed. "The floor's not too good", he pointed out. We knew that. "Needs a new bit of floor and a new joist underneath. I could help with that." Wow! He also let slip that his summer house needed a new roof and the guys were getting together on Sunday to put it on. Sounds like an Amish community project, we thought. So that's how it works... Sunday might be a bit busy for us, having just moved in, but we'll certainly be there to lend a hand if we can. I could get used to this new way of life.

 

Well, that's all for now. I guess our furniture will be here again soon. At least they found us!