Lonely Hearts

The Lonely Heart

A friend of a friend of a friend is looking for a partner.

How would you go about finding male/female company when you are in your 50s? Or 60s? The need for companionship doesn't get any less in the second half of your existence; the older person falls in love as easily/disastrously/happily/ temporarily/permanently as any one of us at any age. The ability to hold hands and make a fool of ourselves in public is a talent we retain for life. 

I remember that it was easy enough to team up when I was young and not quite so young, but what do you do in middle age? Discos? Evening classes?  Adult education? Singles holidays? Dating Agencies? Lonely Hearts ads? Cyberspace Chat rooms?

I am in the fortunate position of being in a comfortable and hopefully lasting relationship. Beloved and I suit each other well and although the first, second and third flushes of love's young dream have long departed and we very rarely surprise each other with unexplored pockets of wit or depth of intellect, and patience in the face of stereotypical male/female behaviour diminishes progressively with the length of service, we rub along tolerably well.

The friend of a friend of a friend envies us and wants to achieve this blissful state too. What to do?

I know very little about Dating Agencies, virtual or physical, but I have had a look at Lonely Hearts ads. 

The applicant has to sell her/himself, make the reader positively drool with anticipation at the riches on offer, the beauty, the great sense of humour, the intelligence, the many interests and talents ranging from sports to sociability, culture to country pursuits to food and drink.

The fact that most of the advertisers and readers are in reality lonely and shy, a bit needy and lost at best or weirdos looking to make a quick hit at worst, never gets mentioned. This f-o-a-f-o-a-f has come across a very mixed bag in her/his exploration of the field.

This is what I would say:

Female,

single, 

could do with a friend,

likes gardening.

The following need not  apply:

jokers, posers, fools and inadequates.

Time-wasters will be weeded out mercilessly.

P.S.

Applicant must have own trowel.

Gleaning - Another Way of Harvesting.

The Gleaners
Jean-Francois Millet
1817-1875


And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make
clean riddence of the corners of thy field when thou reapest,
neither shalt thou gather any gleaning of thy harvest;
thou shalt leave them unto the poor and the stranger.
Leviticus

The villagers knew which field would be harvested on a particular day. Adults and children turned up long before the last horse-drawn cart had left, lined up along the field edge, awaiting the signal to start, which was usually just a wave of the arm as the farmer and his helpers followed the carts off the field at the other end.

My parents lined up with the rest of the villagers, with me beside them. In retrospect, I feel that I enjoyed these "outings", particularly in the potato fields. The days were hot, the atmosphere was not exactly jolly but calm and friendly; everyone was in the same boat, intent on gathering as many stray potatoes as they could find. You stayed in your row, hoed and grubbed in the freshly turned soil and dragged a basket or potato sack behind you. As with stealing coal later on in the winter, the rule was that you did not help yourself to another person's loot.

On rare occasions only half the potato field had been harvested before the farmer gave the signal freeing the cleared half for gleaning. I was very small, to keep me safe and keep an eye on me while slowly traversing the field on their knees, my parents had me crawling between them and the edge of the field which was to be harvested the next day, a field still full of large, healthy potato plants, some of them taller than me. In my eagerness to help, my little hands strayed more than once into the lush growth next to me, coming up with clumps of potatoes.

"Look", I shouted, "I have found plenty here". "Come away from there"; my father was angry with me and I didn't understand why, after all, we were there to gather potatoes and I had just found a large supply of them.

It had happened before, somebody getting too close to a row of plants had been barred from gleaning. Father did not want this to happen to us. Farmers were very suspicious, they gave nothing away unless you had goods in exchange for food.

It was much harder to collect grain. The stubble was sharp and painful and you could easily tear and scratch your knees until they bled. Being very small, I managed to stay in the gap between two rows, but even then I often cried out when a vicious stalk dug into my leg. I can see puddles of grain lying between the rows of stubble even now, neat little heaps, or sometimes little streams of grain, ready to be scooped up with bare hands.

Gleaning was backbreaking work for the adults, for whom it would have been a matter of survival. The gravity of the situation went straight over the head of a child; for me it would have been a game, a game of hunting for food, being in a competition to see who could gather the most.




This is part of a post previously published in July 2009.
Few people read this blog then, as it is once again harvest time,
it might bear repeating.

Stream Of Consciousness

It’s all so very different from what I'd expected.
Funny really, not funny ha-ha, more funny peculiar.
But there you are,

you just never can tell in advance.

The beginning was quite ordinary.

A small family, mum, dad, and me, plus the regulation number of aunts and uncles, an assortment of cousins, two grandpas. Both grannies deceased.

I wonder why the grannies were in such a hurry to shuffle off this mortal coil before they’d had a chance to sample the easy life? Their photos show them to be a bit care-and-work-worn; they had large families, a war, and the old-fashioned type of husband, the law-giver sort, to contend with; perhaps the prospect of more of the same just didn’t appeal. Poor grannies, I wish I’d known you.

The grandpas hung around for years; cranky old men, perhaps the lack of women in their life had made them so. Sex outside marriage was not then the indoor sport it is now. One took up politics, the other religion; anything to keep the juices flowing.

You’d think such ordinary beginnings would predispose me to a life constrained by custom.

It did, to begin with, and the road ahead in my little world was straight and narrow, as the roads generally tend to be in that part of the North European plain where I come from. Ancient Roman roads, built by legionaries, for marching armies up and down on, armies meant to subdue the barbarian Germanic tribes who preferred to stick with their heathen ways deep in the forests and only came out for a spot of raping and pillaging when the mood took them.

Anyway, in spite of the straight and narrow road ahead, the good little girl turned rebellious, and a stroppy teenager emerged. Which is where the trouble started. Stroppy teenagers should be discouraged, they should  be towed out to sea and deposited on a deserted island until the steaming tide of their hormones settles down. (Hormones in teenagers are a totally disruptive force : a substance produced within the body of an animal or plant and carried in the blood or sap  to an organ which it stimulates).

Says it all, really, doesn’t it.

Couldn’t get out fast enough. Couldn’t get into trouble fast enough. Caused all sorts of ructions, gnashings of teeth, recriminations, accusations. The teenage drama queen had her way.

The parents wrung their hands, asking “where did we go wrong?” They always knew that all that reading under the bedclothes, by torchlight, wasn’t healthy; if only they’d put a stop to it! Parents do that sort of thing, they realize the error of their ways long after the damage has been done; anybody could have told them that book-reading would lead to no good in the end.

Which is why I ended up on this island long after my raging hormones had settled down and I am still here.

Too late to get off now.

Easy Pickings

Willow's Magpie no. 29

All was quiet in the lane. Large gardens enclosed the pretty cottages, none of great size, but all of them well-kept and attractive. Cottages bought by commuters to the nearby city, retired couples or even second-homers, who only came during the holidays.


A green van, neither shabby nor shining new drove along the lane, at a steady but slow speed; neither slow  nor fast enough to be noticeable, had anybody  been looking. What was unusual was that the same van returned fifteen minutes later, driving in the other direction, a little slower this time.


Two men could be seen in the cab, apparently very interested in a pink cottage nestling in its garden, which very effectively hid three sides of it from the lane; the windows that were visible were shut. As it was a warm day, this in itself was unusual, the wrought iron gate was also firmly shut, a sign that nobody had driven through it recently.


The van drove on. This time it turned off the lane not far from the cottage, where a track  leading to a picnic spot  could just be seen. It can't have been a very busy spot, perhaps it was a little late in the summer; in any case, the van was the only car there. The driver came to a halt a little deeper in the trees than was absolutely necessary, the dark green of the van blended into the background and it became almost invisible. 


The men got out, one of them carrying a small holdall. They strolled up the track and into the lane, in the direction of the pink cottage. Once abreast of it, one of the men found that he had a stone in his shoe, he leant on the wrought-iron gate, banged the shoe hard against it, making quite a noise. His friend casually opened the gate; it creaked, like wrought-iron gates that haven't been oiled for a while often do.


No answering sound from anywhere, no barking dog, no scrap of music, no laughter, just the peaceful silence of a late summer afternoon. Soon, people would come home from the city, the retired couple would wake from its nap, car doors would slam, radios and TVs be switched on, ordinary life would recommence.


But for now all was silent.


It took the men two minutes to get into the house.


The older man said:


"Remember what I told you. Don't get greedy; a quick once-over for small valuables, maybe a laptop if you see one without searching, but nothing big. Ten minutes max and we're out of here. Touch nothing, disturb nothing. In and out, ok."


The younger man nodded.

Togetherness

When I moved this Hypericum, also known as Rose of Sharon, from one place to another in the garden, I was unaware that a handful of crocosmia corms had hidden themselves in the clump of earth surrounding the shrub's roots. 

The result was a ready-made bouquet of flowers, the plain, daisy-shaped, lemon yellow/egg yoke yellow of the hypericum's flowers and the dramatic, orangey yellow shapes of the crocosmia flowers go beautifully together.

Both plants are very common and on their own hardly worth a second look.

Hypericum and Crocosmia

I love it when things come together.

Don't you?

Alone, we are nothing,

We are ordinary, everyday clay,

 not "the stuff that dreams are made on".

But put us together,

and we are twice as strong,

twice as beautiful, 

we give and take twice as much pleasure in 

simply being alive.

Side by side,

hand in hand,

a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved,

but

a pleasure shared is a pleasure doubled.

Summer Storm

Stormclouds

As we leave home by the garden gate,  not a breath of air brushes my skin,  not a leaf stirs.  An upturned bowl of heat sits low on the valley, making every step I take an effort.

Swallows and martins whip overhead, pheasants screech in the nearby fields. The river runs sluggish and even the ducks prefer to stick their heads under a wing, squatting on their haunches on the pebble bank in the middle of the depleted stream.

Perhaps going for our usual afternoon walk was not a good idea.

As we reach the path which will lead us uphill into the pine forest straddling the cone-shaped hill with its iron age fort on the top, the sun beats down on us, pricking my skin and hurting my eyes. I keep my eyes lowered, away from the piercing rays of the sun.

Halfway up through a cutting in the plantation I see distant summer lightning tear the sky momentarily in two. Dark clouds gather in the West.

Benno is panting, the heat is getting to him too; his thick black coat is a most inappropriate garment on a day like today.

It is too late to turn back and go home, we might as well press on. Benno stays close, he has given up running ahead or exploring the undergrowth on both sides of the path. Very soon I know why: I can hear the distant rumble of thunder and more streaks of gold flash across the sky.

Benno is afraid of thunderstorms.

As he is afraid, I had better be brave. I talk to him quietly as we struggle uphill.  We are trying to walk faster, but I am soon out of breath.

A small wind comes up, creating little eddies of dust on the path; the bracken sways and there’s an ominous creaking in the tops of the pines. The light above is dimmed,  mountains of black thundercloud arrive out of nowhere. Benno almost trips me up in his eagerness to get closer.

We walk right into a swarm of midges and flies,  disturbed into boldness by the  approaching storm. I flap and beat my arms about in vain,  the furious swarm stays with us until we reach the copse, the last bit of the climb,  before we get out into the open fields, along a hedge and through a sunken lane which will eventually take us back into the village.

The storm reaches us at the same time as we step from the path through the copse into the open fields. The mountainous clouds open, the rain comes down in a sheet of blinding fury; instantly we are drenched. There is no shelter.

The wind pushes me downhill with an iron fist in my back,  suddenly I am running, stumbling; blindly I crash into any obstacle on the way, Benno streaking ahead, terrified, himself now a flash of lightning, albeit black.

The storm stops as abruptly as it started.  We come to a halt, me bent double, both of us panting,  clothes and coat sticking to us, water running off in rivulets. The sunken lane has turned into a shallow but fast flowing stream. No matter, it is the only way forward; at any rate, we could hardly get any wetter.

By the time we reach the metalled lane into the village the sun is out again. The sky has turned a brilliant blue,  the odd rumble of thunder and feeble flash of lightning gently disappearing over the hills.

The road is steaming, there is a wonderful smell of freshly washed meadow in the air and as we draw level with the first houses we hear the happy gurgle of water running off roofs into water butts.

All is well.

The Old Apple Tree

A young apple tree

Stretching bare arms toward heaven in supplication

For the gift of youth recalled,

The strength for one more summer’s crop,

We know your time has come.

Still I granted you life,

Reprieve from saw and axe,

for one more season.

And the fruit weighing down your tired old branches

being fit for the birds only,

I patiently collect,

Before the creatures of the soil

can claim it for their own.

Thrush and blackbird drunk on rotting fruit,

sing in gratitude,

and  my heart rejoices

U. S-W.

alias Friko

Indecision

Ah, this is lovely.

Just a few minutes more, there's nothing sweeter than a nice long, hot, soak.

There's plenty of time, won't matter if I'm a bit late.

I'll be dressed in no time, I've done my nails, the dress is lying on the bed, I'll rough-dry my hair, everything is under control.

But this is so nice.

Almost wouldn't mind if I didn't have to go.

It's a pity I have to go out, it's a filthy night and there'll be a lot of boring people there;

I bet the Cholmondely-Browns will be there, can't stand her; she's such a cow. She's bound to have some new piece of jewellery to flash. Oh bother, Jay said that Andrew will be there too; since I've dumped him he keeps on making sheep's eyes at me, how am I going to avoid him all evening. God, and the food, the Smythe's always have such awful food, all hot and spicy and dry. And after the first bottle they'll start serving cheap plonk. I'm bound to have a headache tomorrow.

Hm, water's getting a bit cool, I'll just let in a bit more hot.

Nice.

Do I really have to go?

Do I want to go?

Wouldn't be polite, not to go.

Will they notice?

Does it matter?

I'd better go, I suppose. I won't be invited again if I don't go.

Where did I put the bathrobe?

Ah, this is cosy,

Oh, sod it all, I'm not going, I'm staying home. It's wet and windy, the heels hurt my feet, I'm all crinkly and wrinkly from lying in the water for so long. They won't even notice that I'm not there. And if they do, I'll tell them I had a last minute emergency.

Desperate Housewives is on the box and there's a glass or two left in the bottle in the fridge.

Ah, this is cosy.



 Willow's Magpie Tales no. 28

False Start

Eva's Tale

For those who haven't met Eva before, here is a short introduction:-

Eva was a little girl growing up in post-war Germany in a small village on the left bank of the Lower Rhine. Previous adventures can be found under the label 'Eva's Tale' in the side bar. Each story stands on its own. Sometimes Eva writes the story herself, at other times she asks me to do it.

This is one of those that I tell for her.


o-o-o-o-o

The area where Eva grew up was predominantly Catholic;  an important lesson at the village school she attended was religious instruction; Eva, together with most of the school - there were very few Protestant children then -  had to go to Mass on  Sundays. Each year was allocated its own pew. Eva rather enjoyed the Latin services, she liked the plain chant and hearty communal singing; the sounds and sights and smells appealed to her nature. Eva was always one for a dramatic spectacle.

Religious observance played very little part in her family as a whole,  in fact, to add to the confusion, there were those who saw it as 'the devil's work'; but that is another story.

It so happened that on one particular Sunday she was very late arriving at Church. The service had started and she didn't feel comfortable to make her way to the front where her class mates were piously kneeling in their pew; she slipped into an empty seat in the set behind,  joining children several years older.

One of the initiation rites in the Catholic Church is the First Communion when the child has reached 'the age of reason'.  It was the custom in those days that a whole year would be deemed to have reached this stage; with all children receiving the necessary preparation at the same time.

When all the children in the pews Eva had joined got up and shuffled to the communion rail, Eva dutifully followed, making sure she did exactly as they did. This had never happened before and she was worried that she might get it wrong; she noticed that the priest hesitated when her turn came, but he carried on and when the others got up she again followed them back to the pew.

Within  minutes a murmuring and whispering like the first breath of a playful wind rustling a handful of  leaves arose all around her, there was a faint disturbance in the air, a shifting on seats and
shuffling of feet. The murmurs and whispers grew louder, Eva instinctively knew that she had done wrong and was therefore not surprised when a black-clad arm grabbed hers and dragged her out of the pew and to the back of the church.

The woman hissed, "you are not ready to take communion, don't you know what you did is a sin!"

Eva knew that a sin was a terrible thing,  although she had only a very vague idea what kind of deed might be involved; she was badly frightened and burst into tears, making for the big church doors to escape from the angry woman.

She ran home;  even so, the news had reached her Dad before she got there. Other children had run even faster to be first with the grim tidings;  no doubt anticipating dire retribution to befall the sinner.

Eva saw her father hurrying towards her in the middle of the road, in shirtsleeves and braces, without tie and coat, an unheard of state of affairs on a Sunday. She herself was hotly pursued by two of the village women who had been at the service, a tall, scrawny pair, both in black hats and long coats, flapping and cawing like crows about to fall on carrion.

Eva wailed, "Papa";  her Dad scooped her up, his arms lifting her high,  turning on the women with a stream of furious invective. Eva's Dad was a strong man, tall and imposing physically, with a very hot temper to match. He was also one of the members of the family with no time for organised religion.

The women stopped shrieking. Eva's Dad threatened them with unspeakable acts of violence should he hear of any further persecution of his precious girl. The women were not to know that this was an empty threat, violence simply not  being part of his nature. They fled.

At school on Monday morning, Eva was taken to one side and firmly but kindly told that she must never do this again. Two years later it was her turn to learn her catechism and in due course became officially eligible to take communion.

A Beautiful Day For A Walk

The weather forecasters have promised rain again from tomorrow onwards but we are granted one gorgeously soft and delicate day before the grey mists and lowering clouds engulf us.

Staying indoors on a day like today would be sacrilege.

As Benno and I leave the house I notice a Peacock butterfly on the path 

leading from the garden to the  lane which is also basking 

in the warm sunshine.

Make the most of it, it isn't going to last.

Even the gravestones in the Churchyard are feeling kindly 

 disposed towards each other on a day like this.

I wonder if the occupants were friends during their life times?

The stones appear to be of a similar age.

Children are playing by the river, under the watchful eye of parents.

In spite of the lack of sunshine since June we have had very 

little rain and there's hardly enough water in the river to drown 

a gnat.

We are now leaving the village itself and climbing up the hill 

into the field where the new foal doesn't seem to know quite 

what to do with all this big beautiful world.

The harvest is by no means all in. A week of rain will delay it further

and cause problems for the farmers.

Valley's End is surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills, 

it almost gathers you in.  It is possible to circle the village from above, 

looking down on it's roofs. Gravity alone will get you back to the centre 

where the ancient packhorse bridge crosses the river, 

which runs through the middle.  

Followers

Let me say here and now that I love having followers.

It makes me feel all warm and wanted, important too. Every time a new follower signs in I do a little gurgle of pleasure, and every time somebody unfollows me, I sigh deeply, unhappily, and question my reason for being – for being a blogger, that is, not the general sort of being on this earth.

In the greater scheme of things, I am the most unnecessary invention, a totally irrelevant speck of dust on the sole of creation’s boot. My continued presence hardly even merits a footnote in the annals of my own family, much less in anybody else’s. Beloved would probably miss me – there’d be nobody to ask “what are we doing for dinner today?”  The kids are too busy to bother, they are the centre of their own universe, as is the way of the world; the ancient crone known as Mum is surplus to requirements. I bet they already dread the day when they are faced with the task of putting me away somewhere suitable, where I can drool and dribble, click and suck my teeth and have incontinence problems. I am planning to pretend not to know them anymore when that happens, or, at the very least, I’ll get all their names wrong.

The above does not mean that I am depressed, no more than on a good day anyway; no, I see it as a pretty accurate description of the human condition generally.

But, I digress, the point of this post is to address my followers. So, where was I?

First of all, dear people, thank you very much for being my followers. I really appreciate it, That goes for those of you who only want to sell me something too; I am not proud.

Obviously, the followers I like best are those who leave their name and calling card, i.e. blogging address, and if you are amongst those who comment too, you have earned my undying gratitude. Besides, I probably follow you too and the whole thing is a bit like a mutual admiration society. Everybody's happy, at least I hope so.

Then there are followers who leave an address, but never comment. To begin with, I visit your blogs, introduce myself and leave a comment wherever possible.  If there is no feedback, I will eventually stop visiting.

Next come the followers who leave their name, but no forwarding address.

Your blogs are barred to me unless I sign in and apply for membership. Well, how do I know I can? You might be an axe murderer, or worse, the Smith Family blog, detailing every burp and belch, every tooth and cute new lock of hair in  little Johnny's life, which makes your blog such a riveting read.

As you by and large never leave a comment, I have no means of getting back to you, and as I am curious enough to visit every follower, every blogger who leaves a comment, and everyone who gets in touch, at least once after the initial contact, we might both miss out.

Last, and most certainly least, come the anonymous followers. There are, of course, exceptions, where somebody is with a different blog host and can only follow anonymously. To those of you my special thanks, it must be quite a palaver to do that. I consider your presence  a great compliment.

But the genuinely anonymous followers I simply don't understand. Do you actually read the blog? A blog name flashes up when I point the cursor at you but that is all there is. Are you blogging at work and can't afford to be traced? Are you blogging against the wishes of your nearest and dearest? Do you actually not have a blog at all but would still like to be part of blogland? Are you spies?

Do tell, one or two of you, if you can, curiosity is a weakness I prefer not to overcome.

What I really hope will not happen is that I will now see a spate of unfollowings - that's what blogger calls it - . You really wouldn't want to break my heart, would you? Just when we are beginning to get to know each other.

Iron Deficiency

WILLOW'S MAGPIE No. 27

Mrs. Babcock’s hydrangeas had all turned pink

In despair and fury she wept;

For several nights she didn’t sleep a wink

No iron her gardener kept.

Her much preferred hue

For hydrangeas was blue,

Whatever was she to do?

And then she saw them, at the back of the shed,

Some rusty pipes, quite flaky and red;

She scraped off the rust,

Collected the dust,

Which round the plants she spread.

Her hydrangeas all flourished,

With iron flakes nourished,

I will not be flouted, she said.