Did you think I had given up? well, nearly.

 Is there any place on this, our one and only home planet, where the inhabitants are not dreading each new day's weather? And if you are a climate change denier don't bother to tell me, the science and the poor blighters who fear for their continued existence are against you. As are the young, your children and grandchildren, whose protests are drowned out by the fossil fuel industry, run by fat cats who will all long be dead when Earth becomes uninhabitable.

I am so tired of it all. Even my garden gives me less and less pleasure. The plants that didn't die during last winter's unusual week of hard frost gave up when the temperature climbed to unseasonable heights and prolonged drought in late spring. For six weeks I worked like a maniac to get it all done, at least on the surface, for the Open Gardens weekend. And ended up with a wilderness of volunteer plants and weeds instead of a finely graded display of colourful perennials and flowering shrubs. The people who traipse round the gardens don't look too closely, luckily, but simply stroll through and throw a vague "very nice, thank you" at the owners. I don't really care all that much anymore. I will chat with the few knowledgeable ones who ask intelligent questions or praise a particular arrangement, the others can come and go with as much attention as they pay the space I have worked so hard on.

So, May and June were almost completely taken up with outdoor work. And when I wasn't working outdoors I was inside, out of the heat, my feet up and devouring books. Mostly rubbish, but there were two which I really liked, a Louise Penny Inspector Gamache thriller and a delightful book from an author hitherto unknown to me, namely Stephanie Butland's 'Found In A Bookshop'. It deals with the lives and misfortunes of a group of people during Covid lockdown, mostly unknown to each other, some sad, some uplifting, all very human. And all connected to each other via a bookshop struggling to keep afloat during this most unhappy time. 'A perfect summer read', says the blurb and I agree, although it would have pleased me just as much during any other season. I must warn you it really is for true book lovers only. At the end of each chapter you even get a list of books suitable to cure the particular heartache the chapter deals with. It will not be the last of her novels I read.

And Louise Penny? I just love Chief Inspector Gamache, a man after my own heart. The characters, mostly the inhabitants of the hamlet of 'Three Pines', are people with whom I would love to be friends. 

Apart from physical work and eye strain from reading I have been utterly lazy. There are piles of correspondence gathering dust on my desk, even my solicitor felt it incumbent upon her to threaten me with the imminent "closure of my file" if I didn't reply to her last letter within two weeks. Sad to say she has reason. This is still about my new will and provisions for such time as I am no longer able to take care of myself. Do we ever seriously consider a time when we aren't master of our fate? I hate the thought. My problem is that, for one reason or another, I feel there is really no one who deserves a share of the spoils. I am not rich but my house is worth a fair bit. I can't actually see my daughter being willing to take an inheritance from me, she quite clearly wants nothing to do with me. Or is inheriting money a different matter? My son would gladly take as much as I am willing to leave him, he is the only one in the combined family who needs it. In his case the problem is our differing philosophy and the fact that I have little sympathy for his way of life. I think I am being unreasonable to some extent, his way of life is entirely his own decision. However, seeing that God will get all the credit for whatever I do for him irks me. Beloved's lot will get a just percentage, not that I have any close contact with any of them but fair's fair. As for the rest, there's the charities which have seen me  and my pets through some hard times.

It really shouldn't be as difficult as all that to make a final decision, should it? I think that I am using this post to gain clarity in my own mind; also to get some things off my chest that have been bothering me for ages. It is six years since Beloved up and died on me, the rotter. I hate that I am entirely on my own and have no one to consult; the thought of a long dark lonesome winter frightens me. I have an acquaintance, also a German, who lost her husband only at Easter time. She has already booked herself a cruise for this autumn and people tell me she is never at home, always on the trot. After more than fifty years of marriage. It really takes all sorts to make a world and all of us react differently to the vicissitudes of life.

What was it someone said? At the end of life we regret the things we didn't do more than the things we did.  Ah yes, that wise old bird Mark Twain.

New Hope

 
After a mild period where lots of brave little souls have pushed their first cautious heralds above ground we have now been promised another cold spell with night frosts. Ah well, we may all be looking forward to Spring here in the northern hemisphere but February and March are often the coldest months of the year around here. Still, aren't they pretty, my aconites and snowdrops?

The pure gold of aconites

Snowdrops to gladden the heart

I saw the GP about my night terrors. There is nothing much she can do, there are no easy medications which would see them off.  The subconscious will throw up all sorts of detritus from a long life which has most certainly had its shadows and dark sides, and still has. What she suggested I do is to see a counsellor if the terrors don't end. In the meantime, I am to calm my mind as much as possible before bed and try to discard anything, people, activities, thoughts, that endanger my equilibrium. 

She is quite right, of course, now, at the end of my years, I really do not need to accommodate the toxicity of unwanted intrusion by whatever, whomever, whenever. That includes people like Freda. I slowly came to understand over the last few weeks that people like Freda are bad for me and that I am under no obligation to put up with them.

I went to a very interesting lecture and slide show on compost the other night. Yes, you read that right, a lecture on compost! Those who have read my burblings for some years may remember that I love compost and am quite a whizz at producing quantities of the stuff which then, with the help of the handsome hulk, get spread inches deep on my flower beds, there to await worms and other crawlies to pull the brown and crumbly treasure into the soil beneath. 

However, this is not really what I wanted to say. The lecturer was a German who had been a physician in civilian life (pre garden lecturing) and owns an ancient farmhouse with land attached to it, which he has turned, over 35 years, into a splendid show garden and woodland. During a break I asked what he thought of the UK, the dreaded Brexit and the political turmoil of the last few years and was he ever tempted to return to Germany. He smiled very nicely and calmly explained that he lives on his land, tends his garden, enjoys his labours and pays little attention to the machinations of the great and not-so-good. He said : "I have my settled status, I have my garden, my hobbies and some good friends". 

In other words, he lives in a comfortable bubble and cares little for the ills the great and not-so-good visit upon us. I too have my settled status (it means we can stay in the UK after Brexit), my garden, my books, a few good friends, what more is there?  

And yet, I find it hard to turn my back on the world and ignore the state of it. Perhaps I must turn my attention more often back to my great love, poetry. Poetry to soothe the troubled spirit and calm the unhappy mind.

This short poem by the Welsh poet Edward Thomas conveys a message of optimism about the approach of Spring:

Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed

The speculating rooks at their nests cawed

And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flower of grass,

What we below could not see, Winter pass.

 

Thoughts and What Have Yous

Still reading old diaries off and on; more off than on now because my trials and tribulations of long ago follow me into unquiet dreams as well as causing me embarrassment at reminding myself what an unhappy idiot I was, endlessly regurgitating, in great detail, all the reasons why I should have brought that period in my life to an end but never quite having the courage to do so. There were times, there still are, when concentrating very hard I can find myself not altogether unintelligent. Maybe I just wasn't concentrating hard enough.

However, it was all a long time ago. The entry which made me exclaim that nothing ever changes is from the days between Christmas and New Year 1980/81 and runs as follows:

"I'm reading JB Priestley's 'Festival at Farbridge' and some of Louisa Casey's (a character in the novel) reading of the state of people's minds really resonates with me. She says "what's wrong... is just that we don't feel enough. There isn't enough richness and joy and glory in our lives. We're all living this flat sort of existence... if you were glad, you'd light up. Hardly anybody does. How much gladness is there about? Life ought to be wonderful...  instead mountains of misery ... Even all their betting and boozing and sex are dreary, just another kind of routine."

Well, it resonated with me then and it resonates with me now. Priestley's character speaks about the 1950s. Has much changed? I don't think so. Sure, we can blame a lot on the pandemic, even so, it's been a long time since I saw anybody light up. Me included. Is it age which turns the world grey?  What causes us to light up? Falling in love? Winning the lottery? How do we get 'enough richness and joy and glory' into our lives? How do we enjoy ourselves during a period of mingled unhappiness, anxiety and boredom?

I seem to have devoted much of my life to wishful thinking. It was Ellery Queen of all people (yes, yes, I know it's not a real name) who said "No-one outside the realm of fairy tales ever scaled a mountain by standing at its foot and wishing himself over its crest. This is a hard world, and in it achievement requires effort."

Not bad for a whodunnit and how true - wish I could get that bit into my head and live up to it.

This post incorporates a question I have asked in some form or other many times before; I suppose I have reached the age when one doesn’t realise how often one says the same thing and doesn’t really care. One of the many compensations of growing older.

So, anyone, how do we get the joy back into our lives? What works for you?

Are you sure you are living the life you always wanted to live?

If you found out, right now, that these are the last few days of your life, could you say, tonight, that today you did exactly what you wanted to do?

For the moment, forget about pestilence, politics, war, famine; forget about smouldering fights with family and friends; forget about anything you have no control over, focus on yourself and what you can control, here and now, in your own life. 

Has today been deeply satisfying? Have you sailed through? Did you take the time to smell the flowers, savour a fragrant cup of coffee, do a kindness, to yourself or someone else? Yesterday was Sunday, was it the same day as every other or did it hold a special moment? Are you at peace with yourself?

I don’t know where any of this has come from. Like for so many of us older folk, the pestilence has brought me a lot of thinking time and observing time. The nights are drawing in, they are also getting cooler; I noticed that some leaves on my ornamental Japanese cherry tree are turning red, always the first sign of autumn in my garden. For several weeks I have been thinking how come I cope with solitude as well as I do, why am I not missing daily contact with people. And then I remember that daily contact with people has never been a priority for me and that some contact has actually been against my better judgement.

Vaguely I have been wondering why I continue to feel that I must make an effort when I don’t miss some people or activities at all. Indeed, why have I never realised that there are positively toxic people and toxic activities I’d do well to shed. Does it matter that some people’s feelings might be hurt if I don’t jump when they whistle?

My needs are modest, I aim for modest pleasures in life. There isn’t a great deal of time left, I must make sure that how ever many last days there are, I enjoy them at my own pace.

Good Intentions

Under the huge weight of the pink rambling rose stretched along the middle halfway up the picture are a brick wall, a wooden trellis and a garden door. The trellis is broken, the wall is cracked and the gate is held shut with string. HH (handsome hunk, how could you forget) will come and mend, as soon as the rose has finished flowering. The rose will be chopped and chopped and chopped, until there is little more than it’s thick trunk. That beauty is more than twenty five years old  and still going strong.

I feel like time is standing still. Time was when things just happened, then they were over. Time just passed. We always come to the end of things, it’s a kind of relief to know that. Is that true still?

Urspo, in a slightly pensive post, reminded me of Beckett's ‘Waiting For Godot’, a play exclusively about waiting, waiting for an event that never happens. Is that what happens to us? Will there ever be a vaccine and a solution for Covid19?  Or will we sit, like Vladimir and Estragon, in this desert of humanity’s own making for evermore? Will it help if I turn a blind eye and do what Voltaire suggests in Candide :”Il faut cultiver notre jardin.” I want to take this line literally, without looking for Voltaire’s social criticism. Candide exposes the failings of his society but at the end of the novel, Candide and his companions find happiness in raising vegetables in their garden.  The garden represents the cultivation and propagation of life, which, despite all their misery, the characters choose to embrace.

A lesson to be learned, all the way from the 18th Century. Tending one’s garden (whichever way you read that) is the only way to live.

I have said before that in these uncertain times I turn to either non fiction or novelists who amuse me. Nora Ephron is one such, she can cheer me up during the darkest days. In Heartburn she has a paragraph which seems to be written for 2020:

What I love about cooking is that after a hard day, there is something comforting about the fact that if you melt butter and add flour and then hot stock, it will get thick! It’s a sure thing! It’s a sure thing in a world where nothing is sure; it has a mathematical certainty in a world where those of us who long for some kind of certainty are forced to settle for crossword puzzles.

Tired of Covid, tired of this Vale of Tears we find ourselves in, I will turn my attention to happier thoughts. Will you?

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.

Looking back , looking forward

My darling Millie has died. In her last days she could barely make it to the lawn and often poo'd on the flags of the terrace. She deteriorated quite quickly and I finally had to make the decision to call the vet to the house. Lovely Marzena, my Polish cleaner, was here. She too loves dogs and she sat with Millie, cuddling her and scratching her neck while we were waiting for the vet to arrive. I gave her her afternoon feed hours early, which she ate with visible enjoyment in spite of her wobbly legs. Without Marzena I could not have done it; as it was, I cried and cried and was ready to change my mind again.  The vet knows me for the wimp I am and she and her nurse came within the hour. So that’s that.

I’ve not been terribly happy since then, in fact, I’ve not been at ease with myself ever since Beloved died. Millie was the last living link with him, she was my companion, a creature I talked to and petted, who followed me around and gave me a reason to get up in the morning, to go out in all weathers, to feed and water, to keep as happy as she was making me. With all of them gone, Beloved and Millie, before them my parents, the goodwill of one child gone for good and only a loose connection with the other, I am truly alone in any meaningful sense. The house is empty and quiet. I have no family here or in Germany.

So now it’s time to come to terms with the remainder of my life. A peaceful existence is what I am aiming for. This should be my time for being, not doing. No more struggle, no more achievement, no more passion. All passion spent. A time for being only myself, in kindness and forbearance rather than trying to make changes, in my life or  that of anyone else.

Old age brings calm, if we are lucky. With so much experience, a lifetime of ups-and-downs, of miserable times as well as deliriously happy times, of ill-health and good health, much like any other human being, why do I still feel that I must be doing, actively go forward, get involved, be part of movements, experience new horizons?

Tuesday evening I went to a restaurant with a friend who is madly active, who has just spent a week in London as a First-Aider during the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations. Once again I felt ashamed that I seem to have lost all fight, all passion. That I feel disinclined to climb on barricades, take up new studies, a new cause, an all consuming hobby. Soon people are going to suggest that I must be bored at home, that I must lack much needed stimulation, that I ought to go on exciting holidays. Etc.

Basically, if I am truthful, I must say that I am rather lazy now. There is a battle going on inside me, a battle between letting go on the one hand and feeling that I must not be seen to have stepped off the treadmill on the other; that my own little bubble, now much shrunk, is where I would like to live without shame or guilt. Being lazy makes me want for the desire for disappearing into my bubble to win. There are so many things right here at home which please me, books, talking to friends, my garden, modest social occasions, tv and visits to see plays or listen to concerts. Instead I seem to be recycling the same thoughts, the same questions, the same uncertainties, over and over again, without ever coming to a decision. I would be happy and contented if I could come to no more than simply a workable resolution that doesn’t particularly lead anywhere except to an acceptance of the status quo.

My friend Jay called this afternoon to help me with my Application for Settled Status in the UK post Brexit. About time too that I got down to that. Having prevaricated for ages is just another sign of my current state of mind. The Home Office still can’t cope with iPhones; my friend uses Android so she very kindly made the application for me on that. Afterwards we came to chat and I told her about my current lack of motivation. I speculated if I should go and see a therapist to rid me of the feelings of guilt and shame at my idleness. I have an inkling where these feelings come from: years and years of being responsible for the smooth running of my life and that of first, my parents, and then my children. My friend said, fine, now we know why you are feeling useless, but, and this is the big but: whose rules are these? Who says you must be doing, achieving? You are no longer responsible for anyone but yourself. Jay became quite heated. “If you want to sit all day picking your nose, you can.” She is right, of course, but how do you change the conditioning of a lifetime overnight?

This is getting to be a long post, I’d better stop now. No doubt I will be pondering these existential questions for some time yet, like many others have done before me. And many who come after me will do. And also no doubt, I will be rehashing them here. For now writing this down is helping.
 

Room to Think

Rain, rain, nothing but rain.

Yesterday, when I saw the weather forecast, I was pleased. A whole day to myself with nobody to disturb my peace. It’s been a busy  couple of weeks, with gardening, a shopping trip, a family visit, a couple of luncheon engagements with friends, nothing arduous or stressful, but enough to make me look forward to solitude.  It was the American poet Marianne Moore who said "the cure for loneliness is solitude” and I must admit that seeing too much of people often leaves me feeling lonely.

Today, I feel differently. This rain is too depressing and I’d love a bit of company. So, in the absence of ‘live’ companions, I am turning to you.

One of solitude’s gifts is room to think. Not that thinking leads to much in my case on a day like today, but when I sit doing nothing else thinking stray thoughts is a natural consequence. Normally I’d sit and read but, unlike my natural hedonistic attitude to life, I felt a bit guilty for doing nothing all day. So I sat and thought. Mainly about people and my perception of them as relating to me. And that is, of course, where things get complicated. I do tend to overanalyse.

I may have mentioned it before: do you enjoy a good argument or do you go with ‘anything for a quiet life’? When meeting groups of acquaintances and friends do you prefer like-minded people or are you happy to leave your comfort zone and listen to opinions you don’t share? Do you bite your tongue when someone expresses themselves in a forceful manner on subjects which you find yourself diametrically opposed to? Do you allow them to have and hold opinions in the spirit of free speech or do you fight your corner, always realising that that might lead to a fight? Or do you say ’there is no arguing with some people’ and leave it at that? Some of the ladies I meet read newspapers I wouldn’t keep for toilet paper and they do insist on repeating the viewpoint, angle and stance such papers espouse. Sometimes it’s just gossip, for instance the permanent negative bias towards Meghan Markle or ridicule of the environmentalist teenager Greta Thunberg, at other times it's the vicious anti immigrant, anti gay, racist mindset. Bearing in mind that these subjects do not come up every time you meet and that these ladies are actually friendly and helpful in many other respects do you continue to meet with them? Or is meeting with them just not worth the hassle?

Tell me what you think.

I’m puzzled,

what is it

   with environmentalists who make a huge thing out of plastic bags (yes, agreed, nasty things, as are plastic straws, both totally unnecessary) but fly many times each year for pleasure, on short haul  trips lasting no more than a long weekend and long haul trips to far flung places for a ten day holiday?

  with feminists who shout down anyone else who dares to open their mouth (who may not even have such a very different opinion from theirs) as loudly and insistently as any self important male?

  with busybodies who, no sooner having taken up residence in a place, try to mould it to their idea of a village, setting the tone, and running it vociferously and self righteously, although the village has been doing perfectly fine for decades without their input?

  with people who pillorize you for having groceries delivered or not eating exclusively home grown or organic when they themselves chuck a lot of their organically grown produce away because it rots before they can get round to eating it or it just isn’t up to accepted norms?

  with all those women who jumped on the MeToo etc. bandwagon (yes, yes I know, I too have been very uncomfortable about male intrusion into my personal space, have been propositioned and inappropriately touched) and then appear barely dressed, boobs falling out of their tops and skirts slit to the hips. If that’s not selling sex what is? There was this picture advertising a new film, I think, showing a line up of three men and one woman; the men dressed warmly for winter on a very cold and grey day and the woman in an evening gown slit from hip to toe with her bare leg aggressively thrust forward.

What’s an angry girl to do? Bite her lip to keep the peace? Or let rip?

Mood Swings

From hopeful to hopeless, from dark to light, from cheerful to miserable. Sometimes all of these emotions overcome me in one day. Whatever is the matter with me!

The first few days of solitude, when the last of the carers said “Well, I suppose I’m redundant now” because I had had the temerity to take a shower without supervision, and she left, possibly in a huff because I had made a decision for myself, I felt free. And hopeful. I was still very slow - as I am now to a lesser extent - but I knew that, with care, things would improve from that day onwards, and the time would come when I could return all aids and equipment. So it was, two walkers, one crutch and one commode were duly collected last week; I have kept hold of a set of crutches which I have had for years, ever since I broke a leg a long time ago. I am still using at least one crutch for rough patches outside and when I am in a hurry to get somewhere inside the house. I have gradually added a detour here and there to lengthen my walkabouts. I may soon be able to get to the village shop, although walking with an aid, having a dog pull on a lead and carrying a shopping bag doesn't seem a sensible way of perambulating. We’ll see.

So, really, I should be happy, shouldn’t I. I can feed myself and Millie again, do small jobs around the house; with the help of a driver friend I've been to have my hair cut, taken Millie to the vet, seen the podiatrist for a treatment, and yesterday this friend took me to a supermarket  to buy some early Christmas treats. German specialities disappear quickly from the shelves although the feeble pound makes them very expensive for the average shopper. I’ve been to a couple of concerts and a live streaming of a National Theatre play, again with the help of friends. I am making progress, albeit my walk resembles that of a penguin.

Is it that the dark days of winter are with us? Is it that I am beginning to think of the holidays on my own? Who knows? I was out in the field with Millie just now for a final walk before the light goes and I was thinking how nice it will be to get back inside, lock all the doors, turn on the lamps, pour a glass of wine and get comfortable. What’s not to like?

In 1634 Henry Peacham wrote in 'The Compleat Gentleman': “Keep up your spirits with healthy exercise. Leaping being an exercise very commendable and healthful to the body, especially if you use it in the morning. But upon a full stomach and bedward it is very dangerous, and in no wise to be used”. Best not start leaping then.

Can’t stay away

in spite of feeling that I have nothing to say. I am feeling a little sheepish about having been away for so long.

It’s been up and down, mostly up, the past two months. In fact, most of the time it feels like I’ve turned the corner; you may not understand when I say that I am coming back into myself, that I am not on the outside looking at the strange ‘me’ I was for more than a year, but that that ‘me’  and the ‘I--myself’ I have always been are closing in on each other. Of course I am often sad but being solitary is not in itself a dreadful thing. Having decided to stay not only in Valley’s End but in my house until such time as I either must, or wish to move, has taken one major decision out of the equation. Sure, there are several other decisions to be made but they are not as life changing as a move. Which means that I can take my time over anything else. And if I don’t want to do anything, well, I won’t. In any case, perhaps the decision will be made for me when the idiots who call themselves ‘our government’ back themselves into such a corner that they take revenge on EU citizens living here without British passports and expel the lot of us.

I still follow the news obsessively and what sad reading it makes. Is humankind really turning into a nasty, mean, hateful, selfish, greedy, unkind mass? Sometimes I’m glad my years are numbered except that I feel guilty for leaving a huge mess behind for the next generation to clean up. Does every generation feel like that? Statistically things are getting better, poverty, disease and wars are decreasing, it just doesn’t feel like that. Perhaps the current older generation is the first without first hand experience of war, wide spread hunger and lack of basic necessities. We have food, clean water, shelter; we brought up our children to expect the same for themselves and their children, we live in peace and security. And still the world feels like a hostile place and far too many are viciously opposed to grant these blessings to those human beings who lack them.

What do I do? Stop reading and watching the media or get involved? My quiet little backwater allows me little personal involvement other than perhaps make donations to organisations that try to make a difference.

Organisations that deal with the continued existence of our planet are close to my heart and hand. When I look at my garden I could weep. This being  the first year that gardening has featured on my pleasure list for several years, when old gardener and I have worked hard on at least two days a week, it’s been all for nothing. Or nearly nothing. Clumps of herbaceous perennials have dried up, shrubs are drooping and even trees are shedding leaves from the stress of coping with temperatures way beyond our experience. From Algeria in the west, to the Arctic Circle in the north and the Baltic States in the east a huge swathe of land is sweltering in unnatural temperatures. Similar conditions are devastating Japan, Africa, Canada, North America, Australia. Sweden, country of snow and ice for months on end has asked for help with huge forest fires. The global forecast is for more rainstorms in winter and heatwaves in summer. Here in the UK the effects are relatively mild, although we have hardly any rain this summer and scorching temperatures, the heath fires have been put out and we have so far only reached the lower 30sC. Too hot for me, at any rate. I hardly move between midday and 5 o’clock. I have read an awful lot and also watched quite a bit of afternoon TV. Of course, I am lucky, there’s no need for me to move if I don’t want to. I go to the air conditioned gym to cool off.

For the first time in a thirty year marriage I am marrying our books. We always had his and her shelves before, now I am sorting through both, discarding some and reorganising the rest. Boxes and boxes go to charity shops, some antiquarian books I hope to sell, novels are shelved in alphabetical order, others arranged according to subject matter. Any of the novels I will never want to read again go into the give-away piles. I seem to have chosen to read  many more non-fiction books than fiction recently, have also started to buy new ones which is possibly rather stupid of me. Out with the old - in with the new.

For everything there is a season and not just a season but a whole new chapter of life. This is my fifth chapter: childhood and youth, a first very miserable marriage, a period of hard work and child rearing, and a second very happy marriage. I am settling into this latest, and probably last chapter of my life with renewed hope and the realisation that even now, and on my own, there are joys to be had.

Change

One minute I am sitting staring into the void, the next I get up and the perspective on life changes.
The winds of change blow indiscriminately, sending you hither and thither without conscious volition. It might be a good thing for those like me who find it difficult to move into one direction or another deliberately. Times change and we change with them.

Or, as Dr Samuel Johnson had it (in his Drury-lane Prologue Spoken by Mr. Garrick at the Opening of the Theatre in Drury-Lane, 1747)

When Learning’s triumph o’er her barb’rous foes 

First rear’d the stage, immortal Shakespear rose; 

Each change of many-colour’d life he drew, 

Exhausted worlds, and then imagin’d new: 

I love the phrase “each change of many-coloured life he drew”. I should hold on to that thought, accept that change is inevitable and maybe even welcome it. Taking baby-steps. Life is for living and 'for the living’ and living it means being part of it in all its many-coloured facets. Death and grief are part of life.

The Syrian satirist and philosopher Lucian, whose works (written in ancient Greek) were wildly popular in antiquity has several very suitable quotations:

The world is fleeting; all things pass away;

Or is it we that pass and they that stay?

***

Realise that true happiness lies within you.

***

Not every story has a happy ending, 

but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth telling.

Beloved’s son and daughter in law came for a flying visit all the way from the US; as you know I live way off the beaten track, far from motorways and airports, and I would have understood if they had chosen to save themselves the extra two days’ travel to spend time with a relative-by-marriage only. But they came and I am both grateful and very appreciative; I had a great time with them, we talked about everything under the sun: politics, literature, music, travel, family news and, of course, Beloved. I handed over old photographs, family documents, music Beloved had written during the course of his life, even his school reports and records of prizes he’d won during his studies. I still have a large box of poems and diaries and other writings; in due course, after reading everything myself first, I will pass them over too. Beloved’s son is very like his father, in looks, bearing and intelligence; having him was almost like having Beloved again. It was a good visit.

My step-daughter-in-law was most encouraging, she told me that I must get a decent hair cut, find a colouring product that doesn’t provoke an allergic reaction, look after myself and get out from under the cloud of sadness. She also told me the story of an old aunt of her’s, who lost her husband in her early seventies and lived for another 20 years, apparently enjoying every minute of it, going travelling, making new friends and indulging her every whim. 

Very well, I will try.

Yet More Rumaninations

An old acquaintance's funeral was held today and although I promised the person who told me of the death that I would present myself punctually at 2pm at St George’s I failed miserably to keep my promise. At 96 the friend was old indeed, his wife died several years ago and he had been in a nursing home for some time. I have yet to formulate a reasonably valid excuse; suffice it to say that it’s been a cold and miserably wet day, with snow and rain, the church itself is bitterly cold, there are always people in the congregation who are nursing winter chills and flu, apt to pass them on, funerals rarely do the deceased justice, and they are no longer on my list of must-attend occasions, particularly the formulaic Church dos, except in the case of people who matter to me. Call me what you like, weak-kneed, lazy, mean, selfish, all of those could apply.

Nowadays I find it hard to force myself to do things I don’t want to do. Perhaps I don’t try very hard? And I really, truly, definitely, do not mind if nobody comes to my funeral, which is going to be a very basic, simple and quiet affair.

In Victorian times things were very different; they shrouded grief in elaborate and complex rituals.

“The depth of the band on a man’s hat and  the width of a black border on a piece of writing paper indicated to the world the precise stage that mourning had reached. Whether this made sorrow any easier to bear is debatable. Perhaps all that can be said of these fashions in mourning is that their intricacy kept people occupied when they most needed to be and provided an elaborate facade behind which to conceal their sorrow.” (Debrett’s Etiquette)

Lately I have started to think of the future. It’s still very hazy and rather than making plans for what I might want to do, I have clearer ideas on what I certainly don’t want to happen: having lost the most important person in my life I do not want to replace him; there will never be an unconditionally welcoming space within friendly arms again, all I can hope for is a companionable hug from a male or female friend to say ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’. There are advantages to living on one’s own, i.e. without a co-habitee, house sharer or lodger. We cannot know what the future holds but I prefer not to have my space invaded, I prefer to be without a dependent being, or someone who tries to look into my mind and soul. I do not want to be disturbed or disarranged, and I do not want to be a caregiver again. I have brought up two children, taken care of my parents in their final years in different ways and looked after and cared for Beloved’s every need in his last year. I tell myself that I would love to be able to take care of him still, but I am not sure how keen I would be as his illness and confusion progressed into total disability. As it would have done had he lived. I miss him dreadfully, but maybe ten months later I see him more as the man he was before he fell ill.

Today I can make up my mind about what I want to do and when and how and why I want to do it. I don’t need to make compromises, I can arrange every day as I want it. Not an unalloyed pleasure, of course, it is a privilege which could easily bring loneliness and boredom and a descent into self-absorption. One can have too much of a good thing, as they say. I expect with time will come a way of finding activities that will fill the empty space.

I am not done with mourning. Strangely, grieving for Beloved has stirred up the pain of old losses. I find myself missing my parents all over again, thinking of them and their way of departing this world; I am even mourning the loss of my home country, something I have only ever done in the shape of temporary Heimweh. (Home sickness is not entirely the same) I also mourn the loss of my daughter who is alive and well, but lost to me all the same. I mourn my callow youth, the loss of friends here and in the old country and I mourn opportunities I missed and roads I have not taken.

Perhaps, with grief not as deadening and all-encompassing as it was, with finally accepting Beloved’s death and learning to come to terms with it, a period of calm reflection will bring relief and renewed hope for a bearable future. Darkest winter must turn to spring eventually.

More Ruminations

Goodness gracious, how lovely to see so many of you return to this tardy blog; it made me feel all warm and wanted. Thank you so much. I shall pick myself up and start visiting and commenting too; what a community we are!

One thing I’m glad about is that I stayed in our house, now just mine. At first I felt that I should move as soon as possible, telling myself that the house is too big, the garden is too big, it’s too empty, too lonely, too isolated. When your partner or anyone else you love dearly falls terminally ill and dies you feel helpless, hopeless. There is nothing you can do to regain control. So you grab at anything that makes you feel in control; moving home being one such undertaking. Rearrange the externals and you’re back in charge. Except you’re not. Less than ever, because now you have upped anchor and lost everything that gives you a grounding, the comfort of the familiar. In my case common sense prevailed, or perhaps it was just lethargy, cowardice, fear of the unknown. Anyway, I am still here and likely to stay here, who knows for how long. Somehow, Beloved is all around me, literally so, of course. I have made a small memorial garden for him with a bench, where I can sit and talk to him. It’s snowdrop time, his long drawn out dying time, has been since Christmas, when the first little bells poked their heads out of the muddy, at times snowy, then again frozen, ground. Once they have faded I shall dig up a clump and plant them in ‘his’ patch, awaiting all future anniversaries of his death.

The problem is that there is work to be done to the house, nothing major, just some painting and maybe rearranging rooms, deciding whether to live downstairs and upstairs or just downstairs, changing a downstairs room into a bedroom. This makes it sound rather grand but it isn’t, it’s just that the original owner of this house, who built it to suit her needs, more or less built two bungalows on top of each other, making it easy to divide the house.

So, what to do? When I asked a friend, idly speculating that perhaps I am too old to go in for great redecorating schemes - the usual thing: is it worth it? will I have the time to enjoy it? how long will I be able to stay? - he recalled an anecdote. ‘Two clergymen met. One of them was wearing a suit which had clearly seen better days, looking rather frayed round the edges. “Thing is, do I bother to buy a new one at my age,” the wearer asked his friend. “Buy a new suit?” his friend replied. “I don’t even buy green bananas.”

The story cheered me up no end. I used to tell Mum to go ahead and treat herself to anything she fancied, no matter how short the time to enjoy it. Now I myself am the kind of ditherer who can’t make up her mind because it might not be ‘cost-effective’. (Sorry about the word, I don’t really speak in such terms, just couldn’t think of anything more apt for our mercenary times.)

Talking of cheering myself up: I have seen a bereavement counsellor who let me talk for an hour, singing Beloved’s praises and going back over the wonderful thirty years we had together. Although close to tears at times it made me realise how very fortunate we were and what wonderful memories I  have. A whole treasure chest of them. I will see her again. Talking really is the best cure for me. My step-daughter recommended that I write to Beloved, a kind of daily diary, I may yet do that too, although I prefer to talk to him.

Another coping mechanism is increasing physical activity, releasing endorphins, happy hormones. "any of a group of hormones secreted within the brain and nervous system and having a number of physiological functions. They are peptides which activate the body's opiate receptors, causing an analgesic effect.” My doctor came up with that one when I consulted her about depression. So now I go to the gym and enjoy it greatly. I do exercises, pound (or rather went from shamble via amble to walk) the treadmill, cycle on a beautiful stand bike  and will be doing weights and other infernal machines by and by, as soon as my personal instructor gives the green light. I have to be careful because of the heart condition which is otherwise fully under control.

Eating chocolate and/or falling in love also produce endorphins; I’ve tried the chocolate cure with great enthusiasm but that had rather sad side effects for my hips. And unless you can show me a sweet kitten or puppy I shall probably never fall in love again.  

Ruminations

15th November to 15th January - a long break from blogging. Only five followers have decided that this blog isn’t worth following now, so thanks to all of you who have stayed. This whole following stuff is a bit silly, I suppose, but there you go, silly is as silly does. Or is that silly too?

The year wasn’t even 12 hours old before I had the first accident: I broke a glass and caused a long, thin cut in my hand which bled a bit but has healed nicely. At least it wasn’t a mirror; anticipating seven years bad luck on top of the disastrous 2017 might have caused me to swoon and thus made burying the shards underground, by moonlight, hard to do.

I don’t do resolutions, but I did, sort of, this year. I was planning to stop being obsessed with the news, to leave Brexit and Trump to get on with things and concentrate on more pleasant aspects. There aren’t any. Brexit is a catastrophe, getting more so by the week, because our government hasn’t the faintest idea how to go about saving our cake, never mind eating it too. And Trump? I thought if I can stop myself reading about him and he presses the nuclear button, at least I won’t know in advance that I am going to be annihilated. So far I haven’t had much luck, the stupidity and hatefulness of those lording it over us remains fascinating.

What a world we live in. Interesting times indeed.

How was your Christmas and New Year? Good? Glad to hear it. Contrary to expectations mine wasn’t too bad either. Friends rallied round and gave me meals, drinks and a cosy place by their fire. There were a few modest parties, some good conversations, good food, plenty of books, schlock TV
and candlelight. Christmas day was a delight. Dinner, decent wine, poetry and Paddington Bear, the same kind of Christmas Beloved and I used to have.

There was something else which was good. My son came some ten days before Christmas, just for an over-nighter with a sufficiency of hours on each of the two days either side for us to have a comfortable and unrushed visit. He comes to ‘do jobs’. This time I didn’t have much in the way of ‘jobs’, he fixed a sticking music cabinet drawer and maybe something else minor which I have forgotten. There was, however, a pile of Christmas cards ready for distribution and we walked around Valley’s End, my son holding Millie’s lead and me popping up lanes and into courtyards to push them into letterboxes, introducing him to villagers out on similar errands every few yards. The great thing about the visit was that we reconnected; I had ordered a Nordmann fir, the first Christmas tree for several years, which was still sitting outside, undressed and unloved. Together we brought it in and dressed it with all the old family baubles, some of them dating back to my childhood, with coloured lights and all the usual kind of kitsch decorations. We had a wonderful time, listening to ancient carols and plainchant, eating Stollen and spiced biscuits and having a turkey dinner by candlelight and incense sticks perfuming the air. We talked comfortably. I haven’t felt as close to him for many years.

Both of us felt good, both of us hoped that this might become our own, private, tradition. We might even use the same tree. I am going to ask gardener to pot it on into a bigger container in the spring and then it can come back in next year, a foot or so taller.

My darling Millie is getting old, thirteen next month, according to her inoculation record card. I had thought she was ‘only’ twelve. She is doddery on her hind legs and she had a cancer operation just before Christmas. The wound has healed well and the current cancer has been removed completely. Unfortunately it is one of those that recur. Dogs are wonderful, she never turned a hair. Surely it must’ve hurt? Just a bit? She went in in the morning and the vet said to come back for her before nightfall. At three they rang: could I come and collect her, she had woken from the anaesthetic and wanted to get out of her cage. “She would be better off recovering at home and not to worry if she didn’t want to eat.” The first thing she did when she came into the house was to stagger to her empty dish and beseech me with big brown eyes: “where’s my dinner, I haven’t had a single crumb since yesterday evening!” She is still happy and keen on her food, so maybe she has a while yet. It will be hard when I lose her too.

More ruminations to follow, so don’t bother commenting just yet. That is if there’s still somebody reading.

Nemesis Day

How utterly exhausting it is to get tangled up in politics for weeks on end; it’s draining, physically and mentally. True, we need to get angry when we, our lives and our Earth are threatened; we should act on that anger if there is the smallest chance that our action matters, but for far too many of us there is little we can do to change things in the short term; we might as well continue with our day to day life and make what we can of it. Dreary, dark November is a joyless month anyway, looking for added misery only exacerbates the gloom.

I would love to believe in the truth of this quote by Lord (George Gordon) Byron 1788-1824, that most notorious and flamboyant Anglo-Scottish poet. :

“Time and Nemesis will do that which I would not, were it in my power remote or immediate. You will smile at this piece of prophecy - do so, but recollect it: it is justified by all human experience. No one was ever even the involuntary cause of great evils to others, without a requital: I have paid and am paying for mine - so will you.”

Were he living now he might vulgarly call it Payback Time.

In ancient Greek religion, Nemesis was the goddess who enacted retribution against those who succumb to hubris (arrogance before the gods). Another name was Adrasteia, meaning "the inescapable”. The Romans knew her as Invidia.

Alfred Rethel “Nemesis"

The ancient Greeks knew a thing or two about retribution, in the shape of the Goddess Nemesis it was a recurrent theme of many Greek tragedies. Nemesis was to be feared and a sure and inevitable reward for arrogance and conceit, self-importance and egotism.

I came across Nemesis in a very much more modern setting, in one of the short stories by Saki (HH Munro). Clovis complains that there are remembrance days throughout the year which persistently harp on one aspect of human nature and entirely ignore the other: we have Christmas and New Year, Easter, Birthdays and Anniversaries, when we are encouraged by convention to send gushing messages to all and sundry; to pretend optimistic goodwill and servile affection to people whom we can scarcely abide in reality.

Clovis continues:” There is no outlet for demonstrating your feelings towards people whom you simply loathe.”

Does he perhaps have a point?

Would a recognised Nemesis Day be such a terrible idea? Would we all wait for it impatiently and look forward to taking much pleasure in the settling of old scores and grudges being “gracefully vindictive to a carefully treasured list of people who must not be let off” ?

Or do we turn the other cheek by responding to injury without taking revenge?

Questions questions, problems, problems. I am not one for turning the other cheek, but neither am I a great one for openly seeking revenge, openly being the operative word. Besides, nurturing grudges is such a waste of precious time. I only learned that lesson in the second half of my life and have thereby saved myself a lot of heartache.

There may be a third way of coping with a world we find hard to understand and that is to take to heart the words of Wendell Berry, a poet whom I love and admire more and more:

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Nine Lives

So here we are, almost back to normal. A bit thinner, a bit greyer, a bit chastened, a bit the worse for wear, but alive and thinking of making elderberry wine. Beloved and Millie, carefully and slowly, went down to the big elder tree in the field to check on this year’s berries and yes, there’s an abundant crop waiting to be picked. With lots left for the birds. Best get on with it then.

One lifetime is not enough. We spend the first years learning to pick ourselves up after a tumble, doing our sums and letters, making best friends today and pulling each other’s hair out the next. When we stop crying and running to mum because the world does not turn at our command new problems arise. We fall in love. First love is always painful. Exhilarating, exciting, deeply disturbing, and always painful. Once we get the hang of this strange emotion, and love follows love, we settle down. Sometimes just for a stretch, or sometimes for life. Now problems come in tiny packages which, by and by, grow larger, bringing bigger problems. This is the long and arduous period when we are wholly preoccupied with earning a crust, raising the next generation and looking after the previous one.

There’s little time to sit back and think who we are and what we might have been put on this earth for.

Then we reach sixty. It has taken us all this time to grow up, to see sense, to stop being foolish, to choose peace over the endless treadmill of duties, obligations, commitments; actually, sixty might be a little optimistic, many of us are still running on the hamster’s wheel well beyond sixty.

The first health niggles appear, joints are not as flexible as they once were and we become familiar with the doctor’s surgery; we are on first name terms with the receptionist, and the aches and pains we used to take to mum we now take to the practice nurse.

Soon enough we’re old, in second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.*

And before this happens is where I’d ask for another lifetime. Not to start again from the beginning. Certainly not. Have all that hassle over again? No thank you. But building on the experiences of a lifetime, having learned from mistakes and gained peace of mind and serenity in daily dealings, that’s what I want. No ailments, either; let them stay away. At a stroke short-termism would be done away with. We (and that includes politicians who only ever plan for the short period they find themselves in office) could finally get down to  fulfilling our dreams; there’s time to achieve everything we once strove for, everything that got buried in busyness. We could lie in the grass on a summer’s night, look up to the stars, remember the early promises and make them come true. After all, there’s world enough and time, finally. ** And because we have done our duty and are done with it, we can do what we always wanted to do: Make A Difference. 


*'The seven ages of man’  Shakespeare
** “To his coy mistress’  Andrew Marvell

the table

The kitchen was always the centre of the house, in fact, we had what was called a living kitchen then, one large room with a table and chairs in the middle, a cast iron range to one side and a dresser to the other. If the kitchen was the centre, the table was the heart of our home. We had our meals at it, father read the paper there and I did my homework. Any family discussions were held here, fists banging the table for emphasis when the talk became heated. The few visitors we had were invited to take a seat, and uncles and aunts had their own regular places. I took my books here, colouring books to start, later picture books, then reading books. In the evenings mum and dad and I played cards or board games, likeBlack Peter (Schwarzer Peter)and Mensch Aergere Dich Nicht.

Let’s Stop Minding Our Own Business

when it comes to suspected child abuse.

Another week, another horror story about a child somewhere, in a perfectly ordinary street, in a house just down the road or in the next village, the next town, being ill treated, beaten, starved to death. We hear of it when the child is found dead, when dramatic headlines make us shudder, when the parents or childminders end up in court, justifying their miserable existence. And we stare at the angelic faces of toddlers smiling at us from the TV screen and ask ourselves how it is possible that somebody has slammed their fist into that innocent face.

How is it possible that nobody noticed before it was too late? I am not talking about professionals, the child protection services, police, social workers et al. Each time it happens they trot out the same excuses and explanations: too many cases, pressure of work, lack of funding, manipulative and sly parents pulling the wool over their eyes, lack of co-ordinated working methods, working under impossible conditions.

Be that as it may, we have to accept that the professionals do their best, although their best is often just not good enough. And always, after each new inquiry into another catastrophe: “LESSONS MUST BE LEARNED” is the mantra everyone is agreed upon.

What I want to know is: where are the neighbours, the Nosy Parker women down the road? the curtain twitchers? the women who used to make it their business to know what goes on in the block of flats? the terraced road? Everybody's  auntie Ada, who knew the name of every kid, always had a nosy question, a dusty sweet, or a quick clip round the earhole if you’d done something naughty or dangerous. You ran from her mad cackle, but you also ran to her if you were in trouble.

Where is that woman now?

Keeping Herself To Herself, Minding Her Own Business, like all the others of her ilk? 

I want them back, one in every street, in  every block of flats. They’d know what goes on behind closed doors. They’d hear the screams of helpless children, they’d see the bruises and thin little bodies.  We’d curse them for busy-bodying, we’d ridicule them for interfering in matters that don’t concern them. Instead, we should praise their vigilance and willingness to help when needed. If they saved just one of these little mites from terror and abuse, I’d gladly put up with them.

Come on, auntie Ada, do your stuff. You know you want to.

Where was I . . . . .

Anyone for Hopscotch?

Make sure you don’t step on the cracks.

The crops are in, the hay is in, the fields round about look

smooth and neat and tidy, ready for winter sowing.

o-o-o-

Apparently Egypt is a very cheap holiday destination at the moment. I wonder why? 

I had my face scraped and plastered and de-fuzzed this morning and the delightful beautician lady was all in a flutter. “We’re off on holiday”, she said, - dramatic pause - “to Egypt.” As I was recumbent on her treatment couch, my jaw didn’t have far to drop.

“Bryn decided he needed a holiday, right now, somewhere warm and cheap; I haven’t slept ever since he told me.” Helen giggled manically. “A lot of my clients have just come back from Egypt - is the Knighton estate agent getting commission ? - and they’re all saying how wonderful it is at the moment. We’re going nowhere near Cairo, of course. The tourist industry is desperate to get going again and hotels can’t do enough to attract guests.”  Yes, they are taking the kids.

Happy holidays, Helen; tell me about it when you get back. 

o-o-o

Next stop back in England, (Knighton is over the border in Wales) to the little town down the road and the hairdresser’s salon. Once I’ve decided that refurbishment of the outer Friko can no longer be avoided I cram it all into the same day.  I used to have a massage as well, but the resulting palpitations put an end to that. Justine was waiting for me. “You’ve got an IPad”, she trilled after I’d sat down and dug it out of my bag. I usually read while I’m at the hairdresser’s but today we discovered our mutual fascination with all things Apple. Once that subject was exhausted, we talked about dogs; we both love them and like all dog lovers we competed madly and trumped each other’s stories about the intelligence and all-round superiority of “dogs we have owned".  (I know that cat lovers are no different).

o-o-o

And finally:

At the risk of my US readers hating me for ever: hasn’t Downton Abbey gone stupid? or rather, how stupid do the programme makers think we are? Every new strand of story line is hinted at, set up and executed with all the grace and subtlety of a duck dancing Swan Lake.