In response to my last blog — on rivers, my friend Steve sent me a copy of his favourite river scene…
It set me thinking… As we look out at the world, what we see depends not so much on where we are standing but who we are.
When the children of our reconstituted family were young, I noticed that if they witnessed an event, an altercation in the street, for instance, when they each told me about it they often interpreted it quite differently. It was startling.
My 15 year old step-son came back from town one day and reported, ‘We were going down the Headlands and this hoity-toity lady had a go at a man who was trying to park his car but he wasn’t going to be bossed about by her, he told her where to get off and no mistake!’
Later my daughter described the same incident, ‘We saw this lady, she was a bit like Gran, and when she asked a man to move his car because it was blocking her drive, he went bananas! He was really rude.
Both perfectly nice kids with eyes and ears that worked, heard the same words but what differed was the way they each saw the world — different genders, different characters, different formative experiences, different viewpoint — they saw it from a different angle.
I think we all have an idea of the world and as we look about we mould what we see and hear to fit this view — it is our nature to want to confirm our preconceptions.
So, is this a river, a train, somewhere to fish or a health and safety issue? Steve says it’s 92 Squadron, a Battle of Britain Class locomotive, built in 1948 to a Southern Railway design at Brighton works. Now at the Nene Valley Railway where it is lovingly tended and where you can visit it.
The name commemorates 92 Squadron which flew Spitfires very successfully in the WW2 Battle of Britain, financed from the East India Spitfire Fund.Card sold in aid of East India Spitfire Fund and salvaged from wreck of SS Gairsoppa which was torpedoed off Galway on a voyage from India to Britain in Feb 1941 — Salvaged because it went down with £150 million in silver bullion!Spitfire overhead!
I read somewhere that time accelerates as you age. This is my impression and may be because as you get older you do fewer new, memorable things. Memorable things that you do for the first time populate the time-scape and as you look back, if there aren’t many it seems as if the time has flown by. I don’t suppose it matters much as it’s all just a trick of the memory but it’s good to have things to look back on and one of the reasons I blog.
There was a time I did something new almost every day but that’s not so easy now with all the restrictions. Last week I bought Saville oranges for the first time and yesterday I made marmalade for the first time and got my first sugar burn!
When we are next in Peterborough I am going to have a go on my daughter’s new adult scooter (she uses it to get to work at the hospital avoiding parking and public transport) — it’s manual like the ones we had as kids but bigger — I used to love my scooter! This will require the manufacture of padded knickers — the only proved way to avoid fractured femurs (I should have had them years ago) and I will certainly need them in Kettering when I try the new grown-up motorized scooters that whizz up and down the Headlands with some of the youngest 17 year olds (with driver’s licenses) that I’ve ever seen. Before I can do that I’ll have to get my first i-phone (that’s how you mobilize the scooter) and waylay a school-boy to help me (I’ve done that before).
A friend of mine (I won’t identify him any more specifically — you’ll see why) likes to go to work each day using a different mode of transport, it was easy to begin with, especially as they live on a waterway (that narrows identification down a bit). Car, bicycle, skate board, paddle board, kayak, walking, running along the beach… As time goes on finding new ways gets harder — swimming, sailing… Running over the dunes? (But that’s really just running). Running over the dunes naked! He could do them all again naked even if it does mean going early when it is quiet. So if you knew who it was and where to go you could see him at 5:30 am riding a child’s peddle-cycle, stark naked, along the sea-wall.
Electric Scooters for Rent by Wuestenigel (CC BY 2.0) Object of my desire!
When you see me streaking down the Headlands in nothing but my padded knickers you will know that I too am running out of new things to do.
In the Spring Bill and I were locked down in Wales which was bliss. The winter finds us in urban Northamptonshire — locked down and out of Wales. I miss the hills, the cool rain, the conviviality of all the socially distanced nods and waves and yelled greetings from passing quad bikes.
Memory of home
But there are compensations here — my bad back and gammy knee have improved. We have sorted out lots of things (had a new bathroom fitted), I have been writing a lot about my medical student days, ‘A Testicle on a plate,’ and the Christmas wine delivery has just arrived.
Once the school traffic has gone the streets are empty and the robins are in full throttle and the shrubs are full of berries.
Today I donned my new FFFP3 mask (by order of offspring) and walked in to the centre of this old shoe town to get my boots mended — it was very quiet and, apart from a few food shops, the cobbler was the only other place awake — in Northampton cobbling is essential (even the football team is called the ‘Cobblers’).
The new book is to be the first of a trilogy — the prequel to Iolo’s Revenge (published a couple of years ago) — I am tempted to entitle it ‘The Badass Trilogy’ as in ‘what turns a nice girl into the woman I have become (according to my daughter)?’ Of course the answer is ‘Life!’
“The more certain someone is about covid-19, the less you should trust them.” This is the conclusion of an excellent article by Smith G.D., Blastland M. and Munafo M. in this week’s British Medical Journal freely available on their website.
They are not discussing loonies or even those with reputational or political agendas but the serious science — that knowledge that is evolving every day in the fields of epidemiology, behavioural science, immunology and (I add) economics. This is a new pandemic at a unique time — there is no certainty, we are feeling our way. It is not a battle of philosophies — nothing is that simple. We have to listen and try to understand what is going on, and next week we may learn something new that will change our understanding and that is good — not bad!
A magic place, soon after dawn (which isn’t very early) on the Fowey estuary in January. Lapwings cluster on the sandbanks and the eerie calls of the curlew heralds the progress of the seasons.
Snow drops are under the bare oak in St Winnow’s churchyard, primroses blooming and campion in the hedgerow under the golden gorse. All in the cool moist air that reminds us of our amazing good fortune as family and friends in Australia (who used to tease us about our rain) suffer unimaginable heat and anxiety. They are living with the threat of loosing everything they hold dear in a biblical inferno.
I wish I could send them all a little while in the cool of St Winnow’s churchyard.
Cameras are a constant source of disappointment to me because they rarely see what I see.
When I see the three dimensional majesty of the mountain peaks that surround me as I stand in wonder on the plain, the camera sees only the actual sky-line which is surprisingly flat.
Eyes are much better — they inject emotion. They integrate with the other senses to capture the euphoria of a landscape — the freshness of the breeze, the perfume of honeysuckle and hay, the buzzing of the bees and the birdsong. The vibrant greens of a valley re-awaken ancestral stirrings that draw us still to fertility and shelter.
Yesterday I drove to Rhyd in Snowdonia, it was a wonderful spring day — such a shame that the photos could not capture my mood (even if I had remembered the UV filter). These are the best of a bad lot.
from the Library of Congress photographed by Stuart Rankin(CC BY-NC 2.0) Flickr
Life has chapters but someone else is turning the pages — here’s a brief index!
1 – the bit you can’t remember but you’ve seen it in photographs.
2 – Idyllic childhood gradually eroded by the realization that all is not 100% even in your Garden of Eden. Adults not always all they are cracked up to be! Actually — the sooner you learn this the better.
3 – Teens — driven by so many peculiar drives and preoccupations: BOYS/ girls/ secretions and changes/ dandruff/ dancing/ BOYS/ men/ exams/ driving lessons/ BOYS/ getting drunk/ stoned(not me!)/ paranoid/ poetical/ no money/ weight gain/ weight loss. Generally not very mindful of the bigger picture but navigating that choppy sea with friends in the same boat.
Teenagers by Kamyar Adl (CC BY 2.0) Flickr
4 – (Optional) Suddenly serious about relationships, politics and career (not necessarily in that order). Get qualified/ get married/ read the papers/ vote etc.
5 – Motherhood and child rearing (Optional) — struggling to keep head above water, multitasking, juggling multiple balls in the air (marriage/ finances/ clean socks/ hair cuts/ children/ job/ MOT/ tax returns/ cleaning out the rabbit/ walking the dog/ visiting Granny) feeling guilty about whichever one is about to drop. “Mummy, the cat’s had kittens and they are in my bed! Why’s my bed wet?”
6 — Dropping a ball (inevitable) — Divorce/ Burn out/ Son sets fire to the house/ teenage daughter pregnant (not ours)/ serious illness in the family/ menopause (that was quite a relief actually). Pretty well anything that can go wrong will go wrong and not just for bad people!
7 – Decline — coasting towards retirement with 2nd husband (if you are lucky) — is the work more demanding or are you just getting older? Science, technology and systems generally are starting to evolve more quickly than you seem to adapt. Spend a lot of time shouting at computers, often scratch the car and find it’s always later than you think!
An angry woman: 16th C. misericord, the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame (Collégiale Notre-Dame), Le Puy-Notre-Dame, Anjou, France
8 — Retirement — Yippee! However did you find time to go to work. Do new things and find you are not as stupid as you thought.
9 — Grandparent and Health Service User — endless peer group discussions about eyesight/ teeth/ bowel screening/ breast screening (Ouch!)/ stents/ knee replacements/ erectile dysfunction/ prostate surgery and how you can’t do anything with your hair since your last chemo! All this is rather unwelcome but is punctuated by delightful visits from little kids that remind you of yourself (and sometimes of your X-husband) and of what a wonderful life it really is.
10 — Widowhood — sudden, though always half-expected because no-one can expect to be happy forever and you did know he was ill although he pretended not to be. Now your children (who are suddenly definitely grown-up) worry (and probably moan) about you at least as much as you do about them. You keep wondering why people are being so nice to you, then you remember. Suddenly you can do whatever you want although you don’t really want but you do it anyway — yesterday I climbed a mountain with a group to look at historical sites, one of those Welsh mountains that are really a huge hill. I was interested in the archeology, the others seemed to be serious, serial walkers — there was talk of Kilimanjaro! It was very cold and steep and I got extremely short of breath (probably not the altitude) and hobbled a good deal on the way down but I walked 8 miles and didn’t die. I’ll tell you about it another day.
Last night was very quiet — I went to listen for owls and nightjars at 4 am but all I could hear was the occasional high pitched bip of a bat passing overhead, looking for the last of the midges.
Night Sky by gaigegarza966 (CC BY-NC 2.0)
I leaned against the field gate and listened very hard — faintly there was the white noise of the stream, fifty yards below, a billion splashes and glugs of millions of different, asynchronous frequencies vibrating the air. But above that there was another sound. Above, because it seemed to come from above, but below in pitch — a celestial hum. There was no wind, no traffic for fifty miles, not a plane in the sky — only drifting cloud over a hazy moon and this strange brown noise (or maybe it was purple). Infinite sound from an infinite number of sources — jet planes in Cardiff, a generator in Machynlleth, the creaking of the trees, dogs in far off farms barking at the moon (too far away to distinguish individually and too many), thunder on the coast and the sea lapping on the shore, back doors opening (to let out cats), snoring from upstairs windows and sheep (millions of them) eructating — burping in the moon shadows.
All these sounds bounce over the Earth, off the sides of houses, resonating in tin sheds and ricocheting off cliffs and bouncing off the underside of the clouds. They can be muffled by the mist and absorbed by the moss and the snow but they all combine to make the hum of our planet.
We value the darkness of our nights (the lack of light polution) that allows us to see the brightness of the firmament. Last night I appreciated the stillness of the night that allowed me to hear beyond the silence!
Whatever is happening in your personal life the world goes on turning.
The clouds roll over the hills and sometimes they part and the sun comes out.
After a long winter it is all happening again — everything is moving! Even the lazy oak trees are greening. The cuckoo is calling, the cock pheasant strutting and glinting in the sunlight with a double squawk and a percussive thrill of wings. The woodpecker answers with his own drumming from up on the hill. There are bumble bees over head and the first orange tip butterfly flutters over the carpet of white flowering shamrocks on the shallow water of the unfinished pond.
There is a scuffle of illicit nesting beneath the soffits of our roof. Two squirrels, normally too busy to play, are cavorting amorously in the lane as, all around them, life springs anew.
We live in a place that is forever asserting itself, whether via its climate or its wildlife, or by knocking over trees or blocking culverts. The place has its own agenda, its own friends and relations (they often arrive unannounced for tea) and it is quite possessive.
Recently we were celebrating a sacrament (coffee and biscuits) with a friend on Sunday morning when there was a knock at the door. Outside, in the drizzle was a young woman we had never seen before. She was waving a long cardboard tube.
‘You don’t know me but I’ve come on an adventure!’
She wasn’t after out souls or even trying to sell us something.
She was just another one of the people that our cottage-holding had sent for (it’s happened before!)
Deborah is an artist, and buys strange things at auctions that inspire her — she cuts them up and stitches them. She had bought the map of our place — 1901 Ordinance Survey, at a sale in Leek, Staffordshire. She’d bought it years ago but could never quite bring herself to cut it up. It was personal to the house, you see; it had all the field names pencilled in, in Welsh, and even had the new well marked (circa 1980).
She couldn’t use it, and was passing within ten miles, so had brought the map home. She couldn’t explain it and felt it was rather an odd thing to want to do but we didn’t — we know our home. It doesn’t like to let go of things or people. So we will hang the map, once framed, next to the horse brasses, the dresser, the polished pump-nozzle, the wooden rake and the photographs of past residents and their New-World descendants, who have visited — all things that this sentimental old homestead has collected or reassembled since its original scant contents were dispersed at a farm sale in 2005.
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