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?

 

Like A Pig in Clover

Do you remember? Can you recall all those trips to ballet classes, violin lessons, tap dancing and  aerobics for kids? "Just try it, darling and see how you like it". We watched, waited, transported and paid the bill as they tried it out. Eventually all the experiments ceased in favour of the remaining few hobbies that had really passed the test and subsequently became a part of their ongoing lives. As a child I craved ballet lessons. I still don't know where the craving came from but it was there. Maybe I wanted to twirl and pirouette; maybe I just wanted a pair of pink ballet shoes, a frothy net tutu and a fluffy bolero. I don't know. I nagged, pestered, cajoled and persuaded until my mother gave in. Thereafter the craving grew, rather than diminished, until the weekly ballet lesson turned into ballet twice a week, stage dancing once, tap dance another day and finally, 'advanced ballet' too. Our trips (on the bus) to North Chingford where I attended Eileen Langman's School of Dancing became a regular part of the after-school routine. My mother sat with the other mothers in the draughty entrance hall of the big house where we practised, night after night, knitting endless jumpers and fluffy pink boleros. Her long-suffering deserved recognition with a medal or probably a knighthood.

My daughter dutifully tried it out too, just to humour her mother ("Just try it, darling.."). The experiment was an unmitigated disaster. She was not a natural dancer. To give her her due, she stuck it out for a while, whilst her proud mother tried to relive her own childhood pleasures. She even participated in the annual dance show - with her very own white, fluffy tutu, pink tights and pink ballet shoes - and went stiffly through the routine - practised to perfection - to please her mother and satisfy her own high standards. But to no avail. The magic just did not work for her like it had for her mother.

No, riding was the thing. Riding was the dream, the aspiration and the goal. So, regretfully, I adjusted my own dreams, checked them out against reality and signed her up for a course of riding lessons at the local, messy, smelly stables. For what seemed like years we dutifully staggered out of bed early on Saturday mornings to clean the ice from the car windscreen and take her to the icy stables for her longed for day of mucking out, grooming, feeding and watering, attacking the ever-growing muck-heap in the yard with great enthusiasm, and the reward - a free riding lesson! We bundled her up in mountains of jumpers, gloves and a black riding hat and watched proudly whilst she walked, trotted and cantered (eventually) round the huge barn and balanced precariously on the top of enormous, bad-tempered nags whilst they leapt - at the very last minute, it seemed - over bars that seemed to have been raised to ridiculous heights. Oh for a pair of pink ballet shoes and a few harmless pirouettes! But our daughters have ideas of their own.

However, the years have passed and my turn has come round again, it seems! Our daughter is grown up and about to sample the delights of taking her own son to football practice on cold winter's days in a few short years. We ourselves have finished the endless journeys to such a variety of activities and settled down to retirement. Ah, retirement! Time again to sample the delights of the world of hobbies. Recently moved to a new location and at the same time released from the obligations and deadlines of the working life, we are ourselves ready for a bit of experimentation. So it's happening all over again - the experiments, the dabbling in this and that, the trying out new things that we never dreamed of doing. He can dabble in oils and gouache to his heart's content. I can join writing groups, write blogs and experiment with new genres. We can stumble down muddy footpaths with rucksacks and picnic lunches. I can join choirs and warble happily with my reedy voice and poor sight-reading and no-one minds. We can sample amateur dramatics and audition for our local Christmas pantomime or daub paint on stage scenery, sell raffle tickets or greet the audience at the theatre door. We can even sign up for a course to learn to be volunteer train drivers at our local steam railway station if the fancy takes us.

 

The world is our oyster! We are like pigs in clover! We can even indulge ourselves in hours of internet research concerning the fascinating origins of such colourful expressions - oyster? clover? But a pink tutu? Maybe not. Perhaps those days are over.

 

My Mountain

We're newcomers in our village here in Wales but it's surprising how soon one takes ownership of a new location. After only a few months I'm beginning to feel at home and to be proud of this tiny community, its glorious scenery, welcoming heart and sturdy, cheerful resilience in the face of adverse weather and economic conditions. The village has quickly become 'my village' and the mountain outside my back window 'my mountain'. It also reminds me of another small 'mountain' which formed an important part of my childhood holidays in Somerset. Apologies to the many longstanding residents who have far greater ownership rights - my presumption is merely a sign of my growing affection for this corner of the British Isles.

 

My mountain is round and green.

The sunlight hovers over it,

Trimming the edges with yellow,

Casting shadows on the green hollows

Where bushes huddle together

And the sheep take shelter.

 

My mountain is hummocky,

Uneven, ridged and knobbly.

I am learning every twist and turn

Of its comforting presence:

Irregular fields at its base,

Enclosed by low green hedges,

And the craggy outline

Of its upper reaches.

 

Once I knew another mountain,

In my childhood long ago,

Rolling down its grassy slopes,

My father looking on, watchful,

Of my progress downwards,

Another comforting presence.

 

“Tomorrow we will climb the Mount” –

A treat for childish holidays –

“Explore its hawthorn bushes,

Berries, wild flowers and secret pathways”.

I stumble falteringly to the top

To tumble down again, laughing,

Never knowing how the memories

Would last us down the years.

 

My mountain is round and green.

It is ever changing as I sit at my window,

Watching for spring to turn to summer,

The autumn colours to tinge the leaves,

The snow to gather along the hedgerows

And the new lambs to be re-born.

 

My mountain is watching over me,

Offers grazing for the livestock,

Shelter from the fierce winds

That howl around our village,

Its yellow gorse brings brightness

On cold, clear days in spring.

My mountain is mine forever,

Living out my time beneath its gaze.

 

 

 

Under the Sun

Is there nothing new? We have existed, one way or another, on this planet, for centuries, for millennia, for countless ages. We have plumbed the depths of our creativity over and over again, it seems. We have drunk the well of our God-given communal heritage dry and, more recently, drained the dregs of our proud, individualistic creative talents. Is there nothing new under the sun?

 

Here we sit, in our shady nook, with a pint of Snowdonia’s best local brew and a half of London Pride. We gaze contentedly at the estuary and its muddy sand flats. Each to his own. We are no longer limited to the restricted menu of a solely local choice. The world is our oyster. A small flotilla of ducks drifts lazily by. The steep sides of the estuary are thickly covered with dark green mixed woodland, traditional oaks that have supported a prosperous ship-building industry in times past and a spread of tall, dark conifers. It is somehow reminiscent of a Canadian lake scene, the high peaks towering above us and the shore lined with trees. All that is lacking is a grizzly bear, teaching its young to go fishing for breakfast. Everywhere reminds us of somewhere else. Everywhere is a little like this, a little like that, a little like ... so many other places I have been, scenes I remember, locations I have cherished and stored away in my memory for posterity.

 

We were discussing copyright the other day. What makes something copyright? Is it just an original idea? Is it a new technical specification? Is it a chunk of written material, crafted yesterday – or so many years ago – and now appearing in some word-hungry student’s course work, plagiarised word for word with total disregard for the author’s moral right? What if I take a chunk of this and add it to a chunk of that, then add a twist, a turn of my own? Is that plagiarism or is it a fresh new piece of original thought – ‘all my own work’? What percentage must be new? Can I take 50%, 70%, 95% of the old, provided I can just find a missing ingredient to transform it? Is this what newness consists of nowadays? Have all the old original thoughts been taken?

If I take the broken fragments of a thousand original utterances and place them together as a freshly crafted mosaic is this newness of thought? Is this a new creation – a mini ‘big bang’ produced with the aid of the ‘god particle’? A favourite quotation of mine seems to cover the case: twentieth century novelist, Virginia Woolf, wrote that: “truth is only to be had by laying together many varieties of error”*. ‘The truth’ – that surely would be a novel discovery! After all our searchings, all our posturing, all our pride and prejudice, if one were to discover the truth in a mosaic of broken fragments of error, how original would that be? No case for plagiarism here. The whole truth has escaped us all thus far and would be singled out by its total originality.

 

In the meantime, in the absence of such an awesome discovery, I will enjoy the last sips of my London Pride and continue to savour this glorious look-alike scene before me. Who cares if it is totally original? Actually, I would love to see a grizzly... Maybe life can be viewed as a kind of collage these days, a fresh compilation of numerous assorted pieces, collated in a variety of new and original ways? After all, my blog, in its turn, is informed by selected fragments of an inaccurately remembered and casually reported radio chat show the other morning, plus a few 'original' thoughts of my own! Nothing new there, except my own thoughts on the subject. Or is there?

 

*Virginal Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, pub. 1929

Solar Paradox

Another Thursday evening and time for my regular Writers Forum session. What will be the theme this time? A while ago we wrote on the topical theme of 'The Sun' . It is always topical - either not enough of it or too much. The summer came late this year, accompanied by justifiable complaints. Then the sunshine arrived in full force. There was possibly too much for some of us.There were people dying this summer, deaths induced by the destructive power of the sun. We were urged to keep cool, drink fluids, use sun cream, wear hats. All very necessary advice. Yet, paradoxically, without the life-giving power of this same sun our planet will expire. We were given keywords and concepts to include in our writing. We let our imaginations run riot...
 

I am encouraged! There is energy, life, a source of life for the whole planet. I need energy. There is a creative process that is ongoing through the year’s cycle. Each part of the cycle is a part of this life-giving productivity. Even the dark, dormant days are a part of that silent, energetic process where life stirs beneath the ground even though it is unseen. When it bursts forth there is colour – golden, yellow, white hot colour. Solar flares blind me. I am dazzled by the exuberance and the life-giving energy of this star.

 

 

The sun is at the centre of all. It is life engendering, heart-warming, encouraging, protective, almost caring. It is generous, outgoing and exuberant. I am comforted by its warmth.

 

 

But wait! It is a fireball. It dazzles, glows, burns and destroys. It is on the move, out of control even. It can be dangerous and I am halted in my tracks, my enthusiasm waning.

 

 

The sun is a moving fire. It turns. It is at the centre of our universe. But I am glad it is a star. It threatens to destroy. It appears out of control, but it is a star, ordered in a scientific universe, a servant of the cosmic cycles of the heavens. In my mind there is a sense of coolness and order induced by that word ‘star’. It comforts my fears. We are under control again. We can breathe again. This burning, radiating, pulsating mass of fireball is not tame, no, not tame, but it is ordered. There is a cycle. There are equinoxes – places of balance, places of harmony. I have respect for this sun. There is benign, warm, yellow sunshine. There is red, there is white hot fire. Shining, dazzling, blinding, destroying. It is written in the stars. I must have respect for this sun.

 

 

And when the sun is gone, marginalised by rain and winter chills, grey skies overhead and crisp whiteness beneath my feet, I will remember this fireball with affection and longing. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. As with the seasons of romance, the seasons of nature are like this. We forget so soon and long for more.

Visiting Time

The living room of our tiny cottage is festooned with washing. The washing machine has been busy and the rain has so far prevented it from drying. A few soft building blocks lie abandoned in the corner. The travel cot upstairs is packed up and waiting to be returned to the kind parent who loaned it to us. The house seems strangely silent.

 

Visiting time is over. It was exciting, intensive, busy and surprisingly short. Now all our visitors are gone and the house returns to its peaceful, but rather predictable routine. Living in one of the U.K.’s best-kept-secret scenic locations, we are used to seeing a few visitors. The village where we live is busy with campers and caravanners, swelling the numbers in the village shop and making the weekend road traffic totals soar. It’s summer and we are no longer alone in our rural paradise. Down the road, the nearby seaside town bustles with life; the fish and chip shop is doing a good trade and the car parks are almost full. This is not a place for peak tourism but there’s quite an increase in numbers here even so and a sense of excitement in the air.

 

As for us, our duty is done. Our guests have been fed and watered. The new bed settee has been pronounced a comfortable success (thank goodness for that!) and has justified the not inconsiderable expenditure to acquire it. The baby has slept at least for part of the long nights in its colourful travel cot. Dozens of meals have been consumed and the freezer needs a refill. Alone at home, we are experiencing a mix of emotions: a sense of achievement because our organising skills have been sufficient to ensure the happiness of our holidaymaking family, a certain amount of pride that we have achieved another successful stint of tour guide activity and  holiday information service, and a sense of relief that we no longer have to tiptoe round the house, avoiding creaky floorboards, using shaver and hairdryer downstairs to avoid waking the baby and spending long car journeys in silence for the benefit of the tiny tot sleeping in the baby carrier on the back seat. No more games now of peek-a-boo; no more ‘changing time at Buckingham Palace; Christopher Robin went down with Alice’ (thank goodness it wasn’t measles!); no more of those silly games and nonsensical rubbish with which we entertain babies.

 

Our ‘duty’ was a pleasant one and now we are left with a feeling of loss and we wonder what we should do next. Strange how all the tasks and hobbies of past weeks suddenly pale into insignificance in comparison to the infinitely more worthwhile pastime of spending valuable time with loved ones. Isn’t that good? It is with a pleasant sense of loss that we realise that our family has once again brought us joy. Can loss be pleasant? Well, yes. In the same way that the permanent loss of a loved family member brings first grief and then mellows eventually into pleasant remembrance, these small temporary losses bring both grief and pleasure.

 

Thank you family for the joy you brought us, for the business, fun and sense of purpose. And thank you too for the pleasant remembrances that will last us hopefully through the winter months until it is visiting time again. Please come again.