Like a Breath of Fresh Air

Inspiration! Such a fragile commodity. Where does it come from and where does it go? As a trainee writer (for when is a writer not in training?) I find the question intriguing, frustrating, fascinating and impossible. That age-old affliction of writer's block infests my foggy mind, paralysing my best intentions. No matter how hard or long my pen wanders over the page it produces nothing I can be truly proud of. I write, yes, I form the words in my mind and transfer them laboriously to the page and at the end - I find nothing original, nothing really worth the label of creativity or freshness. Where has it all gone?

A breath of fresh air! A visit to old friends. Bliss! The familiarity, the camaraderie, the knowledge that I belong (even though I have gone away), that I am appreciated and in some measure understood brings a breakthrough. 'Luminosity' - the word hangs in the air. Ten minutes of 'speedwriting', unpremeditated, unpolished, careless but gloriously free! 'Luminosity' I write. 'Already I am captivated by the thought and I will write and see where the word leads me.' And so I put my pen fearlessly to the paper and write, serene, confident, poised, knowing that this time the words will come, they will arrange themselves oh so gracefully on the page and at the end I shall read them out, not falteringly but proudly, knowing that once again the writers' circle has worked its magic. Inspiration! The muse that had left me has taken me gently by the hand and led me back into its sweet influence. I wonder, will it last?

Inspiration. Maybe this is a mis-spelling. Maybe all the time we should have spelled it 'friendship'. Is this the missing key? To know I am loved. To be secure in the knowledge that I am approved, whether I write well or badly, whether my brain is foggy or clear as a bell. We all need this kind of inspiration and I am resolved to go where I can find it. We must leave behind the stagnant pools and head for fresh, sweet water that wells up out of new springs, wherever we may find them. My visit was temporary - a rich but narrow slice of my old life which cannot be sustained - but it has inspired me to redouble my efforts to search for fresh wells of life which encourage and sustain personal growth. They have dangled the prize in front of me again and I will press on in search of that glow, that luminescence that transforms life from frustration to success. Thank you old friends. The world needs people like you.

 

The World May Have Slipped On Its Axis

In my garden there are blue delphiniums. There are fresh batches of roses, white, pink and a gorgeous variegated red and white two-for-the-price-of-one rose. Their blooms enhance the tiny garden and their petals shower the dark earth beneath and drift across the newly-mown grass. The vivid pink penstemmon are in full flower, their rows of brightly coloured bell-shaped flowers standing erect on tall stems in the sunshine. To one side of them, profuse multi-coloured sweet-peas climb up the shed; to the other the dahlias are in full bloom. The poppies continue to surprise us with their multi-coloured blooms; we are never quite sure which colour or variety will pop up next as they never stay where you plant them.

 

 

Nothing too strange in this. Just another ordinary, but picturesque cottage garden. But today is the 7th October. In the country lanes the blackberries are almost over; hawthorn berries and rosehips adorn the hedges in bright profusion. Summer and autumn run side by side in my garden and it is hard to tell the difference.

Earlier in the year we saw a similar phenomenon. Spring came so late and the bitter winter cold lingered on into June until we wondered if summer would ever come. Spring flowers were late. Daffodils, when they eventually came, dallied in our gardens until the summer roses had caught them up and bloomed side by side with the spring flowers. In June I battled with bitter, icy winds, wearing my winter coat, scarf, hat and gloves and complaining just as bitterly. Now in October my summer wardrobe has been given a reprieve and I can stroll along country lanes in summer dress and sandals. The seasons have slipped. The world is tilted on its axis.

How does this make me feel - as my counsellor might phrase the question? Should I be happy? Should I be distressed? Should I be alarmed? Is the climate of our world out of control or is this just a 'blip', a tiny, unexplained hiccup in the world's steady onward march, according to prescribed patterns and default settings?

The truth is that none of us know. The subject is ripe for discussion around dinner tables and at politicians' summits, scientific forums and academic battlegrounds. But none of us really know. We have not lived long enough. Are we heading for another Ice Age? Are we heading for meltdown? Will the polar ice caps re-freeze when someone turns the power back on or are we on a long-term, irreversible defrost programme?

At a recent family occasion we shared the celebrations of a member of the family who has just turned 100! One hundred years old! Who can imagine that? In former years, the phenomenon was unthinkable, although in Biblical times we understand that the patriarchs achieved unbelievable scores of seven hundred plus years! Perhaps it's a good thing that in those days  pensions had not been invented. Still Auntie Mabel is to be congratulated on her achievement. No-one else in her family has achieved such a thing. Imagine living for that long! Imagine having lived through both the first and second world wars! Imagine dating from the time of the earliest motor cars and before anyone had dared to dream of even the possibility of walking on the moon!

But these spectacular achievements are by no means so rare as once they were. Perhaps Auntie Mabel and the growing number of centegenarians like her might be able to pass judgement on the climate question at least with a few more years of experience than the rest of us. It's an interesting thought. Perhaps at the next G8 summit a selection of them should be invited to submit their views and share their accumulated wisdom on such tricksy questions that have the rest of us defeated.

When Life Stands Still

I'm reading a fascinating novel at present. It must be written by an expat like me! Actually, I'm not really an expat any more. After 15 years in the Netherlands, separated from family and family home by a strip of grey water that makes everything surprisingly different, I have been repatriated - well, almost. On the way home, like Ulysses, I got slightly diverted and ended up too far west, on the Welsh coastal strip, instead of home in the south of England where I belong.

It's hard to go home. There always seems to be one more adventure waiting to be lived out just round the corner so I suppose it is no surprise that I ended up here. I am still a distance from family and roots but strangely reassured by the sense of having reached British shores and a language and culture that are at least partly familiar: a 'halfway house', as a friend described it. Whether, like Ulysses, I ever finally return home fully is a chapter in the book I have not yet had the chance to read. However, in my current novel, the storyteller is a traveller who is temporarily home for a visit from the other side of the world. She is constantly tormented by the feeling that everyone at home has moved on and she has somehow got stuck in the time frame that existed when she left home all those years ago. When she returns everything has changed. Shops have closed. New ones have opened. Land has been sold and developed. Old feuds have been swept under the carpet. Relationships have moved on.

For me too, it sometimes seems as if life has stood still for me. Going to the local health centre for a regular screening test I was confronted by a puzzled nurse who asked why I had my last test in 2004. I explained as patiently as I could that I had lived abroad and had had numerous tests whilst there, but under a different health system. She accepted what I said but continued to look unconvinced. Did life really continue to happen when once you crossed the border?

Financially, I am only just coming up to speed again. Having moved from the pound to the Dutch guilder, then on to the transformation to life (and prices!) that was brought about by conversion to the euro, and back again to the index-linked pound, I have suffered utter confusion. Currency has lost all sense of value and left me floundering so for a long while I had no innate sense of its worth and what things should cost at all. After a year 'back home' a sense of proportion is beginning to creep in and I no longer feel indignant every time I have to pay for a cup of coffee, expecting it to be served to me at its 1990s price. The sense of disorientation is receding and my feet are back on solid ground.

As for my family, they have moved on without me, growing up, marrying, changing jobs, giving birth and even dying without my permission. Whilst my daughter still regularly attends weddings, I have taken to considering whether I should include a set of black funereal clothing in my luggage every time I leave home - just in case. Yes, life moves on.

So I am left with a question. Did life happen to me too? Did I really see all those exotic places, make all those friends, see my daughter's graduation, wedding and subsequent move to another country too, receive news of my first grandson's birth, experience working life in the Netherlands, buy and sell houses and go for bracing seaside walks on the 'wrong side' of the great divide, that grey, forbidding North Sea? Or was it all a dream? Did I have a life too? Back here it sometimes seems as if there is no space left for it all - it is a black hole in the constellations of my life. New friends are initially fascinated, then puzzled by my expat stories and quickly tire of listening before dragging conversation back on to more familiar ground. But I had a life too! I know it. It is just a little buried in my subconscious and in my photo albums these days. Am I maybe not only a traveller to foreign shores but a time traveller too from the land that time forgot?