Afternoon all,

how are you doing? Getting a bit fed up? A bit bored with your own company? I am. Not madly depressed or sad, just a bit bored. Mind you, would I be any better off if I had a family now, maybe a few brothers and sisters, an aunt or uncle tucked away somewhere? Kids closer by, kids that actually liked me enough to want to live close by? Who knows. But then I was the one who moved far away from everybody.

A time like this concentrates the mind, come the rainy day and there’s not much else but dandelions around - it’s dandelion time in the garden and the hedgerows and verges - and all the family you’ve ever had is either dead or they’ve forgotten about you and live a life that's neither more nor less happy and contented than the life you yourself live. Once I had a lovely aunt, she’s the one I remember with affection; she was poor, with a husband who cut hair for a living in a tiny rural hamlet. Not much money to be made there. Auntie loved life, laughed a lot, celebrated every birthday, every occasion that lent itself to celebration and some that didn’t, and always had a plate of Dutch cheese open sandwiches ready to share. Auntie is long gone, I wonder what she would have made of it all now? Laughed, raised her shoulders 'what do I know’, and said, "it is what it is”. I know what Mum’s sister, my other auntie, would have done. She was the one much given to bursting into tears at the least opportunity, everything that ever happened was chosen by ill fate and aimed directly at her. Both of them are dead now but I know which one I’d rather sit with round the kitchen table.

They are all gone now, Mum and Dad, the aunties and uncles, even some of the cousins, not that I ever had many. Two kids max. per household was the going rate in the family, at least the side of the family I knew. And some only had the one, like my Mum and Dad. All of that generation had a hard time of it, two world wars, hungry childhoods and not much prosperity until much later when things generally got better. But they never experienced a pandemic, Spanish flu, avian, swine, HIV/aids, sars, mers, all scourges of the last 100 years, passed them by. Would they have borne them as stoically as they lived through their own times?

I miss them and, most of all, I miss Beloved. Not that I would want him as he was at the end, but the way he was when we sat opposite each other in the kitchen, when one of us would ask a question and so a conversation would start about a wide range of subjects, subjects which would need exploring in detail, whether we knew the answer or not.

I miss the old people and I miss Beloved. Often now my thoughts turn to the past and I want to ask what they think about this and that, do they have any advice to give or do they know as little as I do. The latter probably, but it would be good to find out.

And Back Again To Simple Permutations

Definition of Permutation: "Each of several possible ways in which a set or number of things can be arranged.”
as in “Friko’s thoughts ranged in a dozen different directions of what she could do or would like to do.”

Nostalgia has been the basis for these posts; persistent rain and the pressure of nose against window pane while the owner of said nose stares out at a sodden and gloomy world, lend themselves to equally gloomy thoughts. Nostalgia was invented in 1688 by a Swiss medical student, Johannes Hofer, who described it as a “neurological disease of an essentially demonic cause.” The German word ‘Heimweh’ was eventually translated into the nationally unspecific ‘homesickness’, which means anybody can catch it, of whatever nationality.  In the 19th century, due to vast numbers of immigrants, America was the most openly homesick society known.

'Home is where the heart is’ or some such drivel. Platitudes don’t help. I am not sure if the feeling of displacement ever leaves a first generation immigrant. Nowadays we call them ex-pats; the word implies an eventual return to the mother country, a temporary sojourn in a country other than the country of origin, for whatever reason.

In London I knew lots of immigrants to the UK who said they would go ‘home’ again some time in the future; people of many nationalities who had lived here for decades, like me. In Valleys End there are just a few of us, less than a handful, all residents to the end of life. Probably.

Going ‘home’ is a fantasy. In any case, it is far too late for me. In spite of watching German thrillers, documentaries and clever talk shows on TV, I wouldn’t know my way around, wouldn’t know modern life, wouldn’t be able to conform anymore. Worse than that, I have got into English habits. I am no longer used to excellent workmanship, efficiency and cleanliness. I have no better way of describing it than saying that I have got into the habit of sitting down on a bench in the open without wiping it  first.

Also, I no longer have any close family there.

So, here I am, and here I’ll stay.

But there is one thing I can do. I have made arrangements with those in my family who still speak to me that I want my ashes to be chucked into the nearest river that flows into La Manche/Nordsee/The Channel. However diluted, I will eventually wash up on home ground. 

There’s a thought for a rainy day!

Permutations Squared

Having stirred the hornet’s nest so late at night, naturally I couldn’t sleep. Busy minds are a sure way to keep the sleep angels away, you know the ones I mean, the four that stand at the corners of your bed and softly rock you to sleep, bestrewing your covers with rose petals and fragrant cloves; surely you know Brahm’s Lullaby? No? Your loss.

Try it, this is only a short excerpt. I sang it when I was small; I can’t recollect my mum singing it to me, although I remember her singing, a lot, once times were normal again. I, in my turn, sang it to the youngest child of an English family, usually in the rose garden, just before her bedtime. I spent less than two months with them and long after I’d gone again, every female voice she heard singing on the radio, she’d stop what she was doing and say:”that’s U.”

Anyway, I decided to get up and make for the drawer with the sleeping pills and promptly got side-tracked by the computer. The next time I looked it was 3.30 in the morning. Still raining outside.

Talking about singing: I had been feeling particularly happy the  previous afternoon, because I’d managed to grapple with downloading some of my old CDs on to my iphone via the mac desktop. I also bought, via the ipad, a few CDs of German folk music and Lieder, stuff I hadn’t heard in decades. Going through my CD shelves I found a collection of Mittel-European music, songs my mum used to listen to on the radio and hum or sing along to. Operettas,  Kaffeehaus songs, Chansons,Viennese songs. Not being a techno whizz and working with three different digital gadgets, I could feel myself getting more and more excited when it all came together. I was also looking forward to getting stuck in with the earphones. Excitement and happiness are not good for me, a visit to the medicine drawer was indicated,  for a tranquilizer to take me back down a bit.

Music can be a little problematic in our house. ( I shall have to explain about that tomorrow.) Music via earphones is fine, I can listen undisturbed, even when I’m in the same room as Beloved. There I was, stretched out on the sofa in the living room, stupid smile on my face, positively swooning. The perfect occupation for a wet afternoon. Beloved reading, Millie dreaming by the fire, Not such a bad life after all!

Except that, by the time Marlene Dietrich oozed nostalgia and the heartbreaking strains of ‘Lili Marleen' into my ears, I was bawling, tears streaming down my face, more homesick than ever.

This version is in English.

                                                                               

I want to wallow in peace, so no comments. Yet.

Permutations

“Do you mind being old? Having lived your life?” We’ve just finished watching ‘The Bridge’, one of these gloomy Scandinavian thrillers. It’s half past eleven at night.

"What do you mean? Your question makes no sense. I am not old, I am me. Whatever age that happens to be at any given time”. Beloved has taken Millie out for a last pee and isn’t really attuned to my Weltschmerz.”

"Yes, sure, but knowing that there is a lot less left than you’ve already had. Have you no regrets?”

"Oh, plenty of regrets. But they’re the past. This is now".

"Sometimes I feel that I haven’t had any life at all and that’s it too late to have one; that it’s over already."

"Poor thing, maybe you haven’t. But you have now. You have NOW. Not yesterday, not tomorrow. That’s the way I look at it."

Earlier today I said that I am probably never going to get off this island now. There are many reasons, excuses mainly. If I really wanted to, I could.  But it would be difficult. There’s Beloved’s unwillingness to shift himself, there’s my fear that the excitement of getting organised would kill me, there’s the knowledge that there’s nobody waiting for me across the channel.

On the other hand, staying here, without the relief of spending time in Europe or anywhere else for a time, is a pretty miserable outlook. The island mentality of the Brits is getting me down, their endless bickering about anything ‘bloody foreign’, their need to be in competition with other nations and whistling in the wind of their imagined, natural, inborn superiority. You should see their surprise when you tell them that exactly that attitude applies to all nationalities.

It feels like it’s been raining for weeks. I need to blame somebody.



There’s more
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