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.

 

 

To buy a fat pig

A hot day in August and I'm still enjoying the sights and sounds of my new environment. The weekly market always provides a bit of local colour and plenty to meditate on...

 

A few persistent stallholders remain. The rest of the stalls are packed up on trucks, the last vestiges of another successful market day piled into the back and the doors slammed shut. “Strawberries, 3 for 2 quid” yells the desperate man on the greengrocery stall. The day has turned warm and sultry. The produce has been standing in the hot sun for hours now and nothing left will survive – best to sell it now at any price.

 

A woman walks past me with a laden shopping bag -  bag for life – and a broom. She is hot and dishevelled but her day’s shopping is done and she is ready to go home for a well-deserved pot of tea. A few women in pretty cotton dresses still linger around the remaining stalls, looking for bargains and enjoying the last of a fine day out. Market day! An old-fashioned mid-week treat. Half past two on this warm afternoon. The clock chimes prettily on the old clock tower in market square as it has done for centuries. The town relaxes again after another busy day and the stall holders count their takings, swelled by the crowds of eager tourists at this time of year.

 

The scene is reminiscent of a Hardy novel. Women drag heavy shopping bags; men loiter on the hot, dusty pavement outside the White Lion, trying to quench their thirst after the exertions of the day. Only the livestock are missing from this familiar scene.

 

“To market, to market, to buy a fat pig...” No pigs on offer today except ready sliced and packaged on the butcher’s stall. But the market stall reflects the ongoing commerce which is still at the heart of this noisy market town – the buying and selling of fresh fruit and vegetables, meat, organic produce and household necessities, from new watch straps to garden twine. No fat pigs but plenty to eat. It seems that every alternate establishment along the busy High Street is offering something to eat or drink. Every cafe table is full, the occupants sitting over their beef stew, fanning themselves in the heat or seeking a spot of shade in the garden of the public house.

 

“Home again, home again, jiggety gig” goes the rhyme. The wheels turn and it will soon be Wednesday again: time to relive yet another market day in the life cycle of this friendly, easy-going community. For now, everyone is content to go home, the stallholders to gather up their belongings, stack their trestle tables, empty pallets and leftover stock and the shoppers to take their produce home, fill their larders and gloat over the pennies they saved once again. Everyone is happy. The stallholders know they got a good price and the shoppers are equally certain of their good fortune. Win-win.

 

And the pig? The pig slips greasily through the crowd to escape for another week, unscathed. It was not always so lucky in times past.

 

Home Alone

Retirement has crept up on us, unnoticed in the busy days and months of relocation. We have become used to our strange new rhythm of life, conducted in harmony, together, one smoothly oiled unit again.

Today is different. Parted for once, to follow diverse pursuits – he to explore the new world of outdoor painting with a newly discovered group of kindred spirits and me at home, armed with pastry, a rolling pin and the best of local Welsh ingredients to try my hand at home baking in my new Welsh kitchen.

The hub of the home! That’s what the kitchen has again become in many people’s minds. A 21^st century ‘back to the country’ phenomenon, reinventing what, for centuries past, has been normal, traditional and so ordinary as not to be noticed. Now, however, it is all the rage.

 

The cottage seems empty today. I saunter about, enjoying my new little ‘kingdom’ – queendom, perhaps. I can do what I please today. Hard to get used to after days, weeks, months with a newly retired husband. I can do nothing... or I can do anything I want to. But I have been shopping in readiness for this day, buying fresh peppers, cheese, mushrooms; I have extracted meat from the freezer, prepared my ground well. So my course is set. It is a strange choice, maybe – a day of baking in the kitchen: in traditional ‘women’s territory’! But it’s my choice and I am relishing the luxury of an uninterrupted day with time to ‘get on’. Today I am safe to be left at home alone; next time, maybe, who knows? I may get up to mischief...

The Gannet

The bird falls out of the heavens, gleaming white, down, down, plummeting into the deep blue ocean, free falling, no parachute, white on blue. Smack, it hits the water, takes a moment’s rest, then up, up again. It soars into the clear, blue sky, a lonely gannet, all alone in the forefront of my view.

 

In the distance a misty haze hovers around the hummocky mountain ridge on the other side of this huge, blue bay. The foreground is in sharp focus, the distant hills less certain, an air of mystery and fathomlessness shrouding them and stealing my attention.

 

The clear, blue sea and my gleaming white gannet are fascinating. They arrest me and hold my attention for some time, as I gaze wonderingly at the spectacle in front of me. A vast expanse of endless blue and a plunging speck of white energy – dazzling white and brilliant blue – take up the foreground. But the mountains are something else. Their misty quality is tantalising, intoxicating and atmospheric. They hold my gaze and fill me with a sense of speculation – what are they?

 

What sheep graze on their grassy hillsides and rocky crags? What whitewashed cottages nestle in their folds? Who lives there and how do they exist in such a remote spot? What streams course down these steep hillsides and trickle unceasingly into brown, bubbling waterways in the valleys? What is unknown and unseen is more captivating, then, for me than what is bright, obvious and initially in my vision. Life’s mysteries have a greater power to capture my mind than her more obvious gifts, it seems. What would be left of life without that innate sense of wonder and curiosity?

The Mixed Border

What could be better than a glorious summer’s day in June? This year you have to make full use of them when they turn up! Add in birdsong, a freshly mown, green velvet croquet lawn in a walled garden of mellow, red brick and a mixed border. That’s even better! I am a lover of mixed borders.

 

Over in the corner a man in a striped T shirt is bent over one of the tall plants, doing what he knows needs doing. He is healthy-looking, wiry and tanned. He is accustomed to the outdoor life and he just knows what to do. He is an expert. You can see it by the results. Now he kneels on the grass, gently pruning off the dead leaves of a magnificent yellow lupin. At this stage in the summer the carefully spaced array of yellow lupins are the most striking plants on display. I love lupins. These are the colour of natural sea lupins but they are prolific, their tall stems overflowing in a profusion of pale yellow blooms, their graceful green fronds shimmering slightly in the tiniest of breezes.

 

I am fascinated by mixed borders and the skill and patience of the wise old gardeners who design them, poring over seed catalogues in winter, researching, planning, propagating, ordering, planting seeds, thinning seedlings, protecting from frost, planting out, watering, feeding, nurturing and just waiting, full of wisdom and patience. Then, somehow, right on schedule, old plants are rejuvenated, clumps of last year’s dead wood yield bright new shoots, new seedlings appear and everything grows, develops, reaches up for the light, blossoms and then, hey presto, as if by magic, a garden appears. The tallest plants are at the back, tiniest plants at the front – all in order: bright, eye-catching daisies, tall clumps of delphiniums, bluer than blue, countless varieties of delicate species of geranium, miniature irises, purple-headed aquilegias, drifts of yellow, nodding poppies and pansies in tiny clumps. My garden does not look like this.

 

How do they do that? The roses, clinging to the wall, spread their graceful foliage along the warm, red brickwork and shower yellow rose petals on the earth beneath them. The gardener advances down the row of lupins, slips a pair of well-worn secateurs into his back pocket and stands back to admire his work. A lucky man! Thrice-blessed with wisdom, patience and this glorious garden! I am grateful for his gifts and happy on this wonderful June day to share with him the magnificent outcome of his superior talents.

 

Powys Castle, Wales