Escape to the Country

I asked a friend the other day “What would you do if you could start another career now – all over again – without any of the limitations you feel would stand in your way if you were really to try and do that?” We discussed the way doing that might mean abandoning restrictions like age, training, qualifications, mindset, but not the real essence of personality that is non-negotiable, the character and temperament that makes a person who he is. He thought for a long while and then said, to my great surprise, “I would probably be a TV or radio presenter or a chat show host!” It was such a complete change from what he does now that it took me a while to take it in. But, strangely, when I pushed aside pre-conceived ideas, I realised that it was a brilliant choice – one which was not at all unreasonable, but which would use many of his talents and free him from some of the incompatible elements of his present job. Why not?

Imagination is a wonderful thing. It frees us from our present reality, the humdrum routine of our everyday lives, and sets us on another course, even if just for a short while. In our early married life, living in a London suburb, we spent a lot of time imagining. We would imagine where we might live one day when we had the opportunity to move somewhere more to our taste – our ‘escape to the country’. After a few years we achieved the house move of our dreams. It was doubtless not what everyone would want but, to us, it was the fulfilment of a lot of planning and dreaming. The prize? – a three bedroom semi on the Isle of Wight, with a beautiful garden and a ‘sea glimpse’ from the back bedroom. In our terms we had ‘made it’!

On the island we quickly settled in, started a family, acquired a cat and made friends. The nature of the island and the lack of employment opportunities there meant that the population contained a higher percentage than normal of dreamers and ‘entrepreneurs’. Self-employed businessmen and women abounded, setting up tea rooms, guest houses and sailing centres, fishing or painting and decorating. Seasonal employment in the tourist trade was the only form of career for many. We will never forget one particular couple of idealistic schemers with whom we spent many hilarious hours, inventing crazy money-making ventures like motorised prams and coffin-shaped wardrobes (‘lasts a lifetime and never wasted’)! None of us had the practical know-how or business sense to turn any of our imaginings into reality but we had a lot of fun.

Nowadays I do most of my dreaming on holiday. Holidays are the times when I can indulge my romantic ideas of being someone else ‘just for a while’. Like the participants on TV shows who try out other people’s dream houses in the countryside, experience what it is like to be a ballroom dance champion or a master chef, or try out the lifestyle ‘down under’, my holidays give me the chance to try out life in another setting. I can be wined and dined on a balmy Mediterranean hotel terrace, as the sun sets over the bay, I can experience life in a tiny country cottage with oak beams and no dishwasher, I can try out a narrow boat on the waterways and drift lazily through locks, or imagine what it might be like to live in another country way outside my comfort zone.

Usually when we dream we look forward to it with great anticipation, throw ourselves into it for a few days or weeks and then go home, breathing a sigh of relief that home in fact means a comfy bed, a dishwasher and no crocodiles. However, occasionally, maybe once in a lifetime, we dream ourselves into reality! Coming home, we have a revelation and decide that what we tried out for fun suited us better than what we have back home! Our move from London to the Isle of Wight had its source in one of those ‘imaginings’, which quickly turned from a holiday dream to reality, with no regrets. Who knows, maybe my friend will end up presenting the BBC Breakfast Show after all!

Meditations on a Sunny Day

The sunlight pours in through my freshly cleaned windows… yes, I am showing off!! It happens so rarely that I need to boast about it. I worked hard on them yesterday and I need to revel in the fact that I won’t need to do it again for a long time! I need to bask (just this once) in the knowledge that my windows are cleaner than yours! Aside from the fact that the bright sunshine now shows up smears on the windows that I missed yesterday, I am happy! I can see through the windows now, instead of having my attention always arrested by the ugly spatters of dust, mud and other unidentified flying objects that have appeared on them over time (quite a lot of time). Living in a busy city with a major building project just down the road is a recipe for disaster. All day long the diggers and trucks come and go, churning up the mud and spraying grit and sand as they go. Living in a country that is built on sand makes for an awful lot of dust.

The sunshine shows up the dust that has dared to return to the polished surfaces I cleaned yesterday (yes, I’m boasting again!). Actually I hate cleaning. Like many people, I find it mind-numbingly boring, infinitely tedious, and everything in me rebels against the sheer pointlessness of doing something so time-consuming and unfulfilling when, in just a couple of days, it will have returned to its natural state, despite all my best efforts. So my only reward is the warm glow that I get from the sense of achievement (short-lived, it’s true, but good at the time) and the chance to boast.

Already today, the sunshine is showing up the places where, in one day alone, dust has gathered once again, just fallen out of the atmosphere onto our poor old house that we paint and patch up, propping it up with endless renovations so that it will keep on going for another few decades. I can see the motes of dust now, suspended in the shafts of sunshine. There they hang, taunting me with their invincibility and their never-to-be-conquered presence. Some lucky mortals actually revel in these futile domestic tasks, enjoying their skirmishes with the enemy, crowing over their achievements: their temporary triumph over the army of dust mites, oblivious to the steady, ongoing decay of their environment. For decaying it is. From ‘dust to dust’ and from ‘ashes to ashes’ we go and we can do little to stop the rot, no matter how hard we try.

In the church-going days of my youth I understood that this miserable process was all, in some mysterious way, part of ‘The Fall’ – a choice that was made one fateful day in history that set us on our way towards sin and sickness, death and decay - and dust! Modern technology seems to have done little to rescue us from the last of these ills, as well as from life’s ultimate conclusion. Apparently, just to add insult to injury, a large number of these annoying grains of dust are made up of my own (and your) decaying body cells! We ourselves help to make up the wretched dust that surrounds us and are daily cleaning up the consequences of our own mortality! There’s food for thought on a sunny day!

It’s time to go out to play! Enough of these morbid thoughts! I will leave my decaying house behind, in the knowledge that, for better or worse, my chores are done. With a clear conscience and lightness of heart, I can take my decaying body on a well-earned jaunt, going in search of warm sunshine and more pleasurable pursuits!

H2O

A baby is 78% water. A man’s body is about 60% water and a woman’s about 55% - more fatty tissue! A fat man has a smaller percentage of water in his body than a thin man. About 83% of our blood is water. 70% of our brains are water! Every day human beings must replace around 2.4 litres of water. Water is crucial to the human race. We’re full of it. We need it to live.

We never seem to have the right quantity of water. Half the world suffers from a shortage of it. On the other hand, many places in the world suffer from a terrifying surfeit: floods, tidal waves, avalanches. Either way, problems with water bring disaster in their wake. The rest of us, unthreatened by disaster and more blessed than the rest, just complain anyway!

“It’s raining (again)” we moan. That grey, dreary, inconvenient wet stuff keeps on pouring down out of a dark, cloud-filled sky that looks as if it will never clear. Water features strongly in my life. It always has. One of my earliest childhood memories concerns being bored on a rainy day. (I still have a very low threshold for boredom!) I remember as a small child, standing on the red tiled floor in our kitchen, aimlessly staring out of the window. While my mother busied herself with the household chores, I watched the raindrops settling on the windowpane, dripping down and down, collecting in little rivulets, joining and dividing and forming intricate patterns on the glass. It seemed like time stood still and it would carry on raining forever. I just wanted to go out to play. The weather still affects me strongly and I am at the mercy of conflicting emotions, dependent on the sunshine or the rain, the azure blue skies or the depressing grey.

I love to live near the sea. Growing up in London, I never dreamed that the sea could be for every day. The excitement of the approach to the seaside, the first glorious view of the distant sea, the taste of salt on my lips was, for me, reserved for those special holiday times. When, soon after our marriage, we first moved to the seaside to live high on a hill above Brighton, I was captivated. When I hung out the washing in the little yard at the back of our terraced house, sniffed the salty air and listened to the raucous seagulls screaming overhead I was hooked. Never again could I live far from the sea. It was a part of me and a part of my ‘everyday’. I had fallen in love.

Ever since, in all my travels, I have stayed close to the sea. Ten years on the Isle of Wight, that tiny diamond-shaped isle off the south coast of England, sealed my fate as a seaside addict. Years later, living on the mainland of Europe, I have stayed close to my beloved seaside. Whether it sparkles blue with gentle, cream-tinged wavelets, or boils ferociously with storm-driven grey/green rollers, I love it and am a prisoner to its charms.

If I can’t have the sea, give me a broad, deep river. Let me sit by the Rhine and watch the heavy barges pounding up and down the waterways. Or let me stroll beside a bubbling brook, a meandering stream, a muddy estuary, full of the sounds of curlews and oyster catchers. But give me water!

Without waterways to charm me, seaside to lift my spirits or a brook to cheer me I dwindle and fade. I pine. I shed a few salty tears when I left the island all those years ago. I shed a few more nowadays when I think of the quaint country villages and windswept seashores I have left in order to take up residence in a strange city in a foreign land. My city home is still close to the sea, but this seaside is lined with concrete, Casinos and commerce. The seaside I crave is one of cliffs, rock pools, sea pinks and the cries of gulls. My tears remind me once more of the watery element that plays such an important role in my life and in all our lives. We all cry our share of tears. It makes us human. It binds us together in our common humanity and reminds us of what is important to us.

Water makes me cry. Water makes me smile. Water brings disaster. Water keeps me alive. As important as the air we breathe, water is a crucial element of our lives. Another rainy day comes and goes. Like it or not (and I don’t!), we cannot live without it. H2O – simple, yet profound.

Winter Parade

It may be winter but I am too much of an outdoor person to stay inside by the fire for long. I just have to get out! Wandering along the Dutch canals in a tiny pocket of countryside hidden between the motorways and the noisy bustle of everyday life and accompanied only by the sounds of blue tits and warblers cheeping in the willow trees, I began to be able to hear myself think and this was the result!

Winter Parade

Reeds, standing tall beside the water’s edge,
Pale golden in the winter sunlight,
Standing guard, waiting,
For the changing of the seasons.

Pollarded willows, patterned and regimented,
In serried ranks along the bank,
Tall upright stems, pushing upward,
Against the pale winter sky.

Two dark figures on the distant towpath,
March on, muffled against the bitter cold,
A small black mongrel
Trotting happily behind them.

Cold and crisp, the winter’s icy stillness,
But already a faint hint of spring
Hesitating in the wings,
Awaiting its proper cue.

Rare glint of sunshine on oily water,
Casting its golden glow,
Forecasting the winter’s end
And another new beginning.

Snow, snow, quick, quick, snow...

I awoke this morning to the dance of the snowflakes. Small, hard, white crystals of snow fluttered down into my sleepy, Sunday morning world, reminding me of the month of snow and ice we experienced in the final month of last year. December made us wonder what on earth the rest of the winter had in store for us, but in early January the weather turned and the longed-for thaw came. Early spring bulbs began to appear all over the garden, even the tubs of tulips looked promising, the yellow shoots of forsythia on the fence started to show their bright colour and the sun shone out of an almost balmy atmosphere.

Then this! Winter again, returning like it usually does to destroy our thoughts of an early spring! A salutory reminder that, in reality, it is only February. The weather has been leading us a dance.

It made me reflect that so much of our imagery and indeed our lives have to do with rhythm. We are attuned to the rhythm of the seasons. Our lives are punctuated by music and by rhythm. Our moments of joy have us humming merrily or breaking out into joyful song. Our moments of tragedy bring out more music in a minor key, to mesh with our mood.

I ponder on a phrase that has popped into my mind - the waltz of the flowers. Long ago, as a child living in London, my mother used to take us children to the ballet! I was addicted to my ballet classes as a child and dreamed of one day becoming a prima ballerina. Fanning the embers of this dream were the regular visits to Covent Garden where I watched, spellbound, as Margot Fonteyn and her contemporaries moved across the stage, captivating me with their grace and elegance. The Nutcracker Suite, with its series of dreamlike dances, included The Waltz of the Flowers - a romantic name for an enchanting dance I have never forgotten.

It takes two to Tango! Another of those phrases we use unthinkingly, proving again how far the idea of dance is woven into our thoughts. We can't survive alone - we need a partner, a friend, others to share life with. A while ago, living in a new home in an unfamiliar area of the country, we started ballroom dancing lessons as a way of getting to know some new people. It turned out to be magic. Tango, quickstep, waltz, cha-cha- cha - we tried them all and quickly became jack-of-all-dance and master of none! We still struggle to find our way round the dance floor doing any of these dances, but we had such fun trying! Richard Gere's performance in the film 'Shall we Dance?' fired our imaginations but we never reached the dizzy heights of his achievements.

Still, life has its rhythms and so do the seasons. Winter has had a little dance and then spring. Now it is the turn of the snowflakes again. On a more serious note, in Queensland in Australia, on the other side of the world, the rivers have overflowed in a horrifying, nightmare dance, causing misery and heartache. In the south of that same continent friends write that they are waiting to see which way the winds will blow and whether they will fan into life the terrifying dance of bush fire that is progressing across their locality. What next? The dance goes on and we humans must do the best we can.

Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow... life falls into a pattern of reflection and activity, like the diligently memorised pattern for the Quickstep. One without the other would leave us the poorer. Too much of one or the other will spoil the dance. This Sunday is a time for reflection, before the activity of the week is once more upon us. The snow is just another way of slowing us down. Spring will soon be here and the sleep of winter will be over for another year.

Box of Delights

I feast my eyes on the polished wood, with the rounded edges. I run my fingers over its smoothness. I contemplate it and try to imagine the shape and the size of what might be hidden inside. The phrases in my head: ‘box of treasures’, ‘box of delights’, conjure up romantic dreams, stories of Arabian Nights, or something unknown and delightful.

At a meeting of our writers circle we were asked to write about one of several objects on the table in front of us. The small wooden box caught my eye immediately and I started to think of John Masefield’s wonderful story of the Box of Delights. The wonderful thing about a closed box is the idea of something tempting and tantalising, holding a mystery that you cannot see from the outside. Like opening presents, it’s best to keep the suspense for as long as possible – to keep the secret hidden inside: to admire the wrappings, the bows, the accompanying message, to shake, to smell, to turn upside down (gently) and examine before opening it.

When I finally slide open the box, twisting the two polished halves from each other, and peer inside, I am not wrong. It was worth savouring the moment. I am captivated first by the colour and then by its iridescence, by the blend of softly shining blues, turquoises, greens and colours for which I do not have a name. The intricate patterns of the shell embedded in the wood and their soft sheen and pearly quality fascinate me. A real treasure.

I love surprises. I often dream of creating a garden with winding pathways and hidden surprises. A garden where you can take a walk down the path and find a hidden glade of bluebells, or some glorious white lilies of the valley, giving away their hiding place by their scent wafting on the breeze. In my garden you would stumble over a lily pond or a rambling rose, a honeysuckle entwined in the branches of an old tree …

Recently I celebrated a birthday and I spent the day tantalised by the sight of a large purple box, light as a feather but enormous, that had arrived a day or two earlier from a family member living abroad and been spirited away by my husband to be produced on the big day. I gasped as I saw it sitting there on the breakfast table, wondering what on earth it contained. No time to open it before my husband rushed out of the door to his place of work. No fun opening presents on your own so there it sat, purple on my red tablecloth, awaiting the end of the day when I could sit down, together with husband and pot of tea, ready to uncover the surprise.

I pondered on the purple box. A fragment of a poem flitted into my head – ‘purple with a red hat’- yes, that’s what I am supposed to wear when I am old! ‘When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, With a red hat which doesn’t go.’*! Perhaps this huge purple box, light as a feather, but concealing surprises, contains my red hat! Perhaps it’s time to get ready for that day when I add the red-hatted eccentricity of age to my life’s experiences. I already wear plenty of purple…

However, the best birthdays are full of surprises and this was no exception. Another present lay on the table, which I had earlier opened, as I sipped my early morning cup of tea. Carefully, I slid the cover off the long, narrow box. There inside lay 24 sticks of pure colour! As you will know by now, I love colour and there it was – pure, unadulterated colour in 24 glorious shades: oil pastels, just waiting for me to experiment. This box promised hours of absorbing, creative fun – another box of delights!

So, leaving my purple box where it lay, and thoughts of old age behind, I decided to rediscover my childhood instead and played with my new box of delights, crayoning to my heart’s content with my glowing colours to see what youthful creativity could concoct. The other box would have to wait and so would growing old!


* poem entitled ‘Warning’, by Jenny Joseph

Power thoughts!

Browsing in a bookshop the other day I came across a bold little book by a well-known female American author, gruesomely entitled Power Thoughts. The title stood out in bold type on the cover, announcing that here was a serious work, written in earnest – not to be trifled with. I shuddered and left it where it was on the shelf.

Power thoughts… power dressing… power shower… power struggles… power politics… “power corrupts – and absolute power corrupts absolutely!”. A familiar phrase and one often quoted, it’s true, by those who enjoy little of it.

Women, men, politicians, religious hierarchies, bankers, unions, students, NGO’s – we’re all part of life’s power struggle – the survival of the fittest. We’re all at it, just like the animal kingdom, jostling for power, negotiating for limited resources, pitting our wits and sometimes our physical prowess against each other: our partners, our siblings, our children and our workmates. Darwin only described the tip of the iceberg! It’s a cruel world out there. He should have waited to see the 21st century boardroom and the cut and thrust of Parliamentary Question Time. He should have witnessed road rage on the M5 at rush hour.

More and more of us today are searching for answers to our internal and external power struggles. Stress relief is big business. Eastern meditation techniques and new age alternatives of every kind have never been so popular. They are almost ‘mainstream’. It’s no surprise. Life winds us up daily and we rely on meditation, aromatherapy, relaxation colour and furnishing schemes at home, corporate reiki-rich business training courses at work and pre- and post-natal yoga. It’s all about power: power over ourselves and power over each other, but somehow we have to find a way to divert these primeval urges, aggravated out of control by our stressful lives, down appropriate channels. Maybe the law of the jungle can be suppressed if not superseded. Sooner or later our obsession with power will kill us if we cannot find a way to control it and we shall be locked into an ugly fight-to-the-death that will wipe out humanity, or at the very least, every shred of our personal peace of mind together with the harmonious well-being of our communities.

Power thoughts focus us on rights – a worthy topic at first sight: women’s rights, gay rights, children’s rights, the rights of the unborn child, human rights. However, our self-appointed rights frequently conflict and we are back in a power struggle. Something has to give. You first or me? Power – food for thought…