Away day.

Stand-ins came to help in the shop yesterday whilst I used my rail card to take what must be one of the most beautiful railway journeys in Britain, through mountains, lochs and glens to Ross-shire, the western seaboard, and the unfortunately named community of Plockton. Once fishing and crofting was its reason for existing but, though in its heyday it boasted 500 inhabitants, the numbers dropped to a handful when the fish changed their migratory patterns and the potato famine took its toll. In recent years it has reinvented itself as a tourist attraction and has an artists colony - so I'm told, but I didn't see much evidence of that. The series about the Scottish bobby fresh down from Glasgow, finding it hard adjusting to the West Coast ways - 'Hamish Macbeth' - played by Robert Carlyle - was located there. Also some of the Inspector Alleyn Mysteries. Nothing of this possible notoriety is visible in the village - no plaques or mementos, no signed photies of local lad RC... nothing.

It sits in a sheltered sweep of hills on the shores of Loch Carron. The Gulf Stream warms the waters and palm trees grow along the shoreline. It wasn't a sunny day but it was rather magnificent with cloud and patches of sun hitting here and there on the far shores.

What they're not good at is signposts. I jumped from the train (the platform is a long way beneath the trains'step) the train drew out and I was left in the middle of pretty much no-where. There was a school opposite but it didn't look approachable and no-one to be seen and - no sign posts. Which way to start walking? I chose downhill. Luckily that was the right choice because it was nearly a mile to the village and I'm not much of walker.

After a wander I felt like lunch. It's a longish, 2 hour journey from Inverness, maybe because it has to be taken slowly which is fine by me, especially as the train practically overhangs the edges of the land in a few places and all the passenger can see looking down are sharp black basalt rocks on the beaches below. I found lunch in a hotel served by a portly American and a young English student. Times are changing evidently. The fish cake was nouvelle cuisine, sparse and rather cold but freshly made and tasty.

Forgive all the details - I get out so little I have to make the most of everything when I do. Once I'd had my meal I went back into the village to look for a taxi to take me to Eileen Donan castle which proved unexpectedly hard. I'd asked i the hotel for a number that turned out to be wrong. I tried a craft shop and got another number. There is one taxi in Plockton and he was away to Skye. The lady on the end of the phone couldn't understand me, reception not great I suppose, and most of the natives are Gaelic speakers, but she also had a machine whirring in the background, sounded elderly - possibly as old as me - and unused to mobiles. She told me to 'ring the Kyle man, he'll do it' then she rang off. I didn't have the Kyle man's number and when I turned round to go back into the craft shop it had closed for lunch - and so had all the other shops. As if a gong had sounded. I rang back the first number and screeched into her ear that I wanted to be picked up when her man returned.

Vis a vis the craft shops, artists' colony it might have, but that wasn't evident in the shops. It was all the same stuff that shows up in every 'craft' shop in Scotland and probably England too. Very disappointing.

Whilst I waited for the taxi to get back from its expedition to Skye I mooched around and watched various tour buses disgorge elderly folk. The busload I was closest to was organised by an extremely well-spoken, well-dressed Englishman, tall, slim, greying and distinguished. None of these attributes was cutting any ice with his charges who were told they could go 'anywhere they liked' but should reassemble in half an hour. Good lord! They all looked as if they needed the toilet (none on the coach) and I didn't hold out much hope of them getting a meal served and downed in that time, let alone seeing anything of the pretty village. There were murmurs of discontent. Memo to self - no saga tours for me.

Whilst I was watching this play out, a big red people-carrier arrived and sat placidly in front of the bus. The driver was evidently waiting for something - or someone. He looked at me and I looked at him. Several times we exchanged looks. Finally, when he saw I wasn't with the tour, he stuck his head out of the window: 'Taxi?' 'You are the taxi?' I asked. He nodded, satisfied. I got in.

As I said, they aren't good at signs.

Eileen Donan was fun and the most castle-like castle I've come across in the north of Scotland, where they tend to be more like fortified houses. It felt much more business-like stuck out on what's an island for part of the day. It is peopled with waxworks disconcertingly realistically going about their business. I skipped the usual bloody history rapidly (though noting that our own Bonny Earl of Moray, a man renouned for his love of discipline, was honoured by 50 severed heads on the walls when he visited. Yeurk!) The recontructed kitchen was fun with such realistic stews and stockpots that I could almost smell them. The jellies and moulds were a bit dusty though. I wrote down a recipe for 'Scottish trifle' which involves a pint of raspberry jam, half a pint of medium sherry, 5 eggs, sugar, a quart of cream, and ratafia biscuits, which I haven't seen for years.

Then the taxi driver picked me up and I got back on the train. 'Maintenance work' meant getting bussed between Dingwall and Inverness. Public Transport is such a chancy affair. The first train, Forres to Inverness, was cramped and uncomfortable ( sadists designed those seats that came out where they need to go in and vice versa). The bus was a nightmare - seats so close my knees were round my ears. The train to Plockton was bliss and luckily the return from Kyle of Lochalsh to Inverness also bliss. The bus from Dingwall was luxurious with a TV we didn't need, and the train from Inverness to Forres was comfortable.

It's a lottery.

Hunter-Gatherer

My vegetarian/ piscetarian g'son helped catch 200+ mackerel in the Moray Firth today. Two hours after their demise a brace or two were in my frying pan. Happily g'son doesn't mind gutting and beheading them! He even supervised the cooking, as every hunter must.

Very very tasty and well worth having the kitchen looking like an abbatoir. Some will be soused to eat cold.

For Tigger

Whilst I was at the gallery I bought postcards (I have to! It's part of the Art Exhibition Experience.) These cheetahs are by followers of Giovannino de' Grassi. c.1400

Nameless.

Sometimes I forget why I chose to come to this part of the world and start getting ungrateful about the scenery, wide skies, deserted beaches, hills, and the horizon to horizon wilderness on my doorstep. Sometimes I long for a greater access to the arts, music, cinema, a theatre I don't have to drive 25 miles to get to that has a better quality of production when I get there, and so on. Then I look in the paper and see that it is all here within 4 miles - if I care to use it. For years now I've been refusing to use what's available because I fell out of patience with the community down the road that has brought much of this creative life to the area. I got sniffy about the community and therefore didn't want to support it.I think that's called cutting off ones nose to spite ones face. Recently a neighbouring town 8 miles away has begun to add to the rich mix of possibilities with a steady programme of concerts and an annual Book & Arts festival which this year drew Carol Ann Duffy, amongst others. I suspect that although that town has had regional funding there has been plenty of input from their resident film star, Tilda Swinton who seems to be very supportive of her chosen home.

I thought about all these life-enhancing opportunities I've been ignoring today especially when I went to cast an eye over the Art Centre begun by one enthusiastic and dedicated individual who for many years held a vision. Unlike most of us who have a good idea and wish it would happen, he set out to make it happen and raised over half a million from grants, lottery funding and donations to get the beautiful building which now houses his vision. He has - and this is probably even more significant because others have managed to raise huge sums of money for projects in the area but they aren't always so good at actually running them ones they have them - he continues to amaze by bring together notable exhibitions.

I read in the blog (that he hasn't updated for a long time so come on Randy) that at some moment in New York he realised he wanted to create a place for beauty to flourish. It's the word 'beauty' that is remarkable here. Considering the most acclaimed works of recent art he does seem to be in a minority. My sister-in-law has a real sister who is an artist and sculptor. I wouldn't say her work was merely pretty or without meaningful impact but she was almost denied entrance into an exhibition in Brussels which, rather like the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, is open to almost everyone who calls themselves an artist. The reason given was very vague, but what it amounted to was that her work is too representational - not shocking, or ugly, or impossible to see the point of without a verbal explanation as a side dish.

The pendulum has to swing I suppose and when art broke free from the patronage of the churches and the rich that had confined it to religious subjects and portraits, still life and hunting scenes to hang on noble walls, it started to go a little wild. We haven't reached the end of the swing yet.

The recent exhibition in the Arts Centre is of a few of the hundreds of works by artists that lie in the vaults of the great galleries and museums of the world, unseen by anyone most - probably all - of the time. Randy has persuaded the British Museum, the Courtauld gallery and the National Galleries of Scotland to send over samples of 15th & 16th century Italian works by unknown artists. That's quite a feat and the logistics involved make my heart quail - all that insurance and shipping costs and keeping them at the right temperature and so on and so on.. I am terrifically impressed.

I was impressed by the works too. Rather small, tinged by age and oxidisation in less careful, or technically advanced environments over the centuries they have to be peered at to be marveled at for their tiny intricate detail and liveliness of line.

I learned a new word in the art context too - anamorphic. The strangely shaped painting that doesn't show up too well in a photo of a photo is just as difficult to view on the wall. It has to be viewed from one side or the other when the horse and rider (terrifying enough to be one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) become visible. So even the old masters where playing with possibilities!

I could only photograph the photos in the catalogue and then only the ones that were large or clear enough. Some of my favourites were very small, almost sketches but still very details.

The young men are rather beautiful though!

Siege Perilous

I read a report about the dangers of the in-car screen-spray facility (their words not mine). A high number of sufferers from Legionnaires Disease were drivers who spent long hours in their cars and tended to spray their windscreens with naked water. The dreaded bacteria breeds in the nice warm environment causing all the horrible, hard-to-get-rid of symptoms of LD.

My son, once free as a bird to go ski-ing and windsurfing, now a twice-times dad with heavy responsibilities, spends the greater part of his days behind the wheel of a van driving between watersports centres in Cornwall, keeping the dishes spinning at each of them. I felt he should have this information, so sent him the newspaper report. His reply was: ‘Thanks mum. That it Explains It All. I’ve been feeling a bit c**p lately but a dose of screen cleaner in the mornings will soon fix that.’

I suppose he could gargle it.

A brief history of chapbooks

I love chapbooks. If I had enough money I would start collecting, looking for the really old ones. By their nature they don't survive well so it wouldn't be too easy. I bought some for the shop in 2009, 11 out of a set of 16 children's rhymes and stories, and gave them to a friend to try round the book fairs but by strange serendipity they haven't sold yet and I'm hoping to get them back this weekend.

The lazy way to explain the history of the chapbook is to quote Wikkipedia:

Chapbook is a generic term to cover a particular genre of pocket-sized booklet, popular from the sixteenth through to the later part of the nineteenth century. No exact definition can be applied.

The term chap-book was formalized by bibliophiles of the 19th century, as a variety of ephemera (disposable printed material), popular or folk literature. It includes many kinds of printed material such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales, children's literature and almanacs. Where there were illustrations, they would be popular prints. The term is derived from chapmen, a variety of peddler, who circulated such literature as part of their stock.

Chapbooks are mostly small paper-covered booklets, usually printed on a single sheet folded into books of 8, 12, 16 and 24 pages, often illustrated with crude woodcuts, which sometimes bear no relation to the text. They were produced cheaply. One collector, Harry Weiss, wrote: "the printing in many cases was execrable, the paper even worse, and the woodcut illustrations, some of which did duty for various tales regardless of their fitness, were sometimes worse than the paper and presswork combined". However, the category has no real limits: some chapbooks were long, some well produced, and some even historically accurate.

Chapbooks were an important medium for the dissemination of popular culture to the common people, especially in rural areas. They were a medium of entertainment, information and (generally unreliable) history. They are now valued as a record of popular culture, preserving cultural artifacts that may not survive in any other form.

Chapbooks were priced for sales to workers, although their market was not limited to the working classes. Broadside ballads were sold for a halfpenny, or a few pence. Prices of chapbooks were from 2d. to 6d., when agricultural labourers wages were 12d. per day. It needs to be remembered that in early modern England literacy was not uncommon, and in Scotland probably more so.

Modern times:

Chapbook is also a term currently used to denote publications of up to about 40 pages, usually poetry bound with some form of saddle stitch, though many are perfect bound, folded, or wrapped.

The genre has been revitalized in the past 40 years by the widespread availability of first mimeograph technology, then low-cost copy centers and digital printing, and by the cultural revolutions spurred by both zines and poetry slams, the latter generating hundreds upon hundreds of self-published chapbooks that are used to fund tours.

With the recent popularity of blogs, online literary journals, and other online publishers, short collections of poetry published online are frequently referred to as "online chapbooks."

The publisher that is publishing Sophie's poems will have them bound by Lulu (which is available to all for vanity publishing) but their publishing house name will be on the finished product. The copyright will still be Soph's.

Proud day.

Poet daughter Sophie has been asked to submit a small collection of poems to be bound into a chapbook by an American publisher - obviously a discerning one and I give full marks to them for their excellent taste!

I'm bursting with pride and "I told you so's" here.

Better not duffer be.

I'm sitting here hoping that my grandson is somewhere in the midst of this scenery in a tent just waking up to cook his breakfast. He has trouble sleeping when not at home and went off for the three day expedition canoeing down the Great Glen looking a bit white and worried but fingers crossed he will have been tired enough to zone out. His mum and I are nervously quoting and requoting that telegram from the father in 'Swallows and Amazons': "Better drowned if duffers: if not duffers won't drown.' He isn't a duffer so...

Between the acts.

My reading is always a bit behind the times (unless it’s the new Phil Rickman). This week my Red Cross trawl got me Damon Galgut ‘Small Circle of Beings’ a collection of short stories and one novelette published in 2005, and Kenneth Steven ‘A Highland Trilogy.’ Both took me out of my comfort zone (jolly, cosy, English crime like Agatha C, Agatha Raisin and Midsummer Murders) and both made me rather grumpy , for different reasons, but maybe also for the same reasons because by some bizarre coincidence the first story in Galgut’s collection and the first of the Highland Trilogy were stories of boys existing through the intensity of family life.

Calgut’s tale is narrated by the mother and is ostensibly her story, but the feelings of the boy are clearly audible . He’s quite undeniably an excellent writer. His style is sparse, distilled, like the very best cask strength single malt whisky (watch it - you’re on your way to Pseuds Corner here Carol!) Quite against my natural inclinations I was held from the first page. I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy the story because the very thought of my own childhood in family gives me asthma; I had to go on reading anyway . By the end I was wrung out, but satisfied.

The grump with Kenneth Steven was different. Firstly I was irritated by its publishing history. It was undertaken by the Scottish Cultural Press, presumably because his stories ‘preserve a lost way of life.’ This made me uncomfortable even before I started to read. If the limit of the remit of the Scottish Arts Council is, as it seems to be, to choose books reflecting the old ways of life in Scotland, their field is far too narrow and many good writers are going to be overlooked by them. We already have acclaimed authors preserving the old ways of life: George Mackay Brown, Jessie Kesson, Neil Gunn, George Macdonald, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Hugh Macdiarmid, to rush off a few obvious ones.

I wasn’t surprised therefore to experience the prose as naive and bumpy after the elegance of Damon Galgut, who could also be seen to be recording the old ways of life in South Africa, but his novel is so much more universal than that.

Perhaps I’m unfair. Stevens writes well enough, and for Scottish readers who are more comfortable with a novel solidly set in a Scottish landscape or cityscape then he’s probably a welcome addition to the fold. My views on the content of his novels are driven by my own dislike of maudlin longings for disappearing ways of life. Much of his experience resonates with my own upbringing, though that happened 700 miles away in the south of England. The predominance of religion is the worst thing I remember about my own childhood, The stagnating self-righteousness, and mindlessness of a church with a terror-inflicting message darkened my days too. I was luckier than Dan, the hero of the first novel, for though I had to go to Sunday School and to an evening service I was spared the dreadful Sabbaths spent indoors in a stuffy parlour, unused any other day of the week with only a Bible or Pilgrim’s Progress for company. I was at least allowed to read my own books and play outside in between these Chapel visits.

My childhood wasn’t quite so dreadful but still enough like this to make me gasp for air. The repressive, marrow-minded rectitude of these isolated people, evolved over generations, must have been well nigh unbearable, yet there was no possibility but bear it if you were born into the close-knit little communities. For example, Dan’s paternal grandparents disapproved of his mother because she painted - an unheard of frivolity in a wife. The days of a crofter’s wife were strictly delineated and any deviation to this routine would be seen as almost blasphemous. Is the passing of this circumscription of the spirit to be mourned? The men were rough and unable to show affection. It would be their habit to show pent-up emotion through their fists when they could hold it in no longer. Dan’s father was so unable to communicate that he had no close friends and could make no connection with his small son. Is this emotional stuntedness to be mourned?

The hatred of farmers for the creatures of the wild, their only ambition being to kill them and never mind how painfully, is this to be mourned?

I can’t believe Stevens truly regrets the passing of this way of life. He gives himself away time and time again with words that belie the superficial sentimentality.

The tale, once Dan leaves home, could be the tale of any young man born during the Great War , growing up in the Depression then being called up to fight in the 2nd World War, after which he has to deal - and his kinsfolk have to deal - with his nightmares and rages. Stevens catalogues more than the Scottish way of life; he details life at it was at a time of huge change . Agonising as the process proved to be for those living through it, it brought about a sort of cleansing which has lead to greater perspective, clearer sight, a freeing and recognising of emotions and, most important of all, a breaking down of inbred, religion-based superstition.

It's impolite to ask....

One of the downsides of being a shop assistant is the vulnerability of the position. It’s impossible to hide from folk you'd rather not have to talk to, and some people think they have the inalienable right to cross-question you about personal matters.

I’m generally very open with my highs and lows, but I do like to be able to choose who (when face-to-face) I share my stuff with, and I also like to have some control over what it is I divulge.

Into the store on Saturday strolled a women I met once socially and have been carefully avoiding on the High Street ever since. She was, before retirement, a district nurse or midwife I think, anyway, she still is a person who is feels she has a right to delve into people’s private lives. She’s also one of those bulldozer women who holds you with an intense stare until she has got what she wants.

She came in, stood in the doorway and gasped in horror: ‘Is that YOU Carol? what have you done to yourself.”

Now I know I’m not looking my best at the moment. The asthma has needed lots of cortisone to get it under control and that makes my face swell. I have black rings under my eyes from broken nights. I don’t like this. It isn’t my face that looks back to me from the mirror and I go out as little as possible so I don’t get the sort of reaction I was facing at that moment.

I scowled at her: ‘I have no idea what I ‘ve done to myself. Can I help you? ‘ Undeterred, she asked me if I had given up the bookshop ‘because it got too much?’ ‘Yes - and for other reasons,’ I snapped. ‘Can I help you. ‘ Reluctantly she turned to look at the shelves and a pretext for coming in. Another customer arrived, someone I know well, and we started a conversation. She melted away, eventually, promising to return.

I’ll have to hone my repelling skills!
..

I just knew someone would pick up on this eventually..

Wiltshire vicar revives ancient archery law

Saturday, 12 June 2010 16:05 UK


Mike Cox Residents were rewarded for attending archery practice with a barbecue

A vicar has revived an ancient law to call members of her parish together for archery practice.

The Reverend Mary Edwards, of Collingbourne Ducis, near Marlborough, called residents to the village recreation ground on Friday.

Residents were rewarded for complying with the law with a bar, a barbecue and live music.

Church warden Mike Cox said: "It seems she's still entitled to do that."

"I've been checking on the web and most archery experts and clergy seem to agree she is," Mr Cox added.

"Though a lot of the laws were repealed, that particular one still stands so she's entitled to call the men of the village, and presumably the women and children too, to archery practice.

"Mary's always wanted to do it ever since she found out she could. It's been one of those hankering ambitions. It's sufficiently bizarre that you want to have a go at it."

Mrs Edwards said: "It's an unrepealed law from some time in the middle ages and I can call all the men - but I've extended it to all people - in the parish to archery practice.

"We are celebrating the building of a new loo in the church. After all these years we have at long last brought running water to the church.

Important Advances in Science

Last year I discovered the wonders of Compeed ‘Invisible relief for blisters’ - surely a modern miracle? This year I have experienced the amazing properties of ‘nail hardener.’ If ever a product description deserved an award for accuracy this is it. My nails were a bit on the flaky side and the split in one (think I’ve told that tale somewhere) was refusing ever to let the two halves unite so with some scepticism I bought a bottle of this wonder worker stuff. Three months of applications later and I suddenly awaken to the need to buy heavy-duty sandpaper rather than a polite emery board to keep the talons to a length that won’t scare young children. I have the impression my nails would soon rival any Chinese Emperor, that were I strong enough in other ways they could pick up a tractor, and certainly no amount of gardening is going to even bend them. If things continue in this way I shall need a rasp, or perhaps a blacksmith.

Apropos the last post...

Thanks to Eileen for using this quote from Kahlil Gibran at the beginning of her book:

“Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder,
with a dash of the dictionary.’

And one I found all by myself (i.e. Googled...)

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” ~Leonard Cohen

A happy interlude.

I went to a poetry reading last Tuesday. A friend of mine, Eileen Carney Hulme, has just had her second book of poetry published (and not by herself - by a proper publisher, quite a feat these days!) 'The Space Between Rain.' She brought me a copy into the shop one morning and happily it was a quiet time because I read the poems almost in one gulp. I don’t often read poetry. Of course I'm a fan of T.S.Eliot; occasionally someone else hits the right note or amuses me, but generally I just I like to write my own, thinking of it as a therapy for me rather than a creative art form. That said, it’s quite amazing to me how much Eileen’s poems move, excite and lift my spirits, possibly because they are not unlike the ones I would write myself were I able to pull myself out of the need to express gloom and despondancy! Mine would drag folk down into the slurry with me I fear.

Hers are full of the northern skies, the special light of the Scottish coastal plains, of beautiful imagery that stays with me as surely as any painting. They also have what seems to be termed by the critics as 'musicality’ (surely a newly-minted word?) Even when the tone is sad (and she inevitably speaks of love and loss and death) they are never maudlin or depressing. Short, compact, close-grained, they are each a moment of heightened consciousness.

She was sharing the stage with another local poet, Donald Macarthur Ker, whose most recent collection was brought out in 2009 'The Differences Between Women and Men at Funerals in Lethen' Donald was born and bred in Lethen just up the road from here. At question time someone asked him how, after all the sadness in his life, he could have made us laugh so loudly ( a belly laugh isn’t often to be heard from Scottish audiences In my experience.) He didn’t have an answer really. I think he’s just that sort of man, born to make a good story out of every event, be it tragedy or daily nonsense, lightening the mood without obscuring the feelings or experiencing it less himself, only rendering events more poignant. He interspersed his readings with anecdotes, each of which would make (have made?) highly enjoyable short stories peopled with memorably eccentric characters and daftness. I’ve put in my order to Amazon for a collection of short stories: ‘Horses, Stones, Wrecked cars.’ hoping I’ll be able to relive them through it. Above all I’m glad to have met Donald, even for a moment. He’s one of life’s natural flavour enhancers.

Eileen, knowing her own strength for creating mood, read hers straight through with only short introductions or interjections. I enjoyed hearing both poets reading their work very much, but - and this is my experience - I get far more pleasure reading their poems by myself, to myself, watching the spacing chosen by them, each poem like a visual work of art hanging in the white space of the page, bringing space and silence to my own mind.

Maybe poets are embarrassed by their own words; maybe they know them too well. I think they are better presented by another voice (provided it’s a sympathetic one.) But best of all they are to be read straight from the page, by the single ‘listener.’

I told Eileen afterwards that her poems cry out to be set to music before they go on stage. Not as songs, though that might work too, but just set against a background of light sound, almost-music, just something a bit atmospheric (and it will take a sensitive ear to know how to do it) to make the images stand individually s they do when read by the inner eye.

I wish I could post some here but am cowed by copyright.

Comment moderation

Does anyone else check their 'comment moderation' place? I just found two comments berating me (or rather 'you cruel people') for holding an ugly pets competition. Eh? What??!

I've been accused of being a bit oblique and obscure and 'unavailable' in my attempts at poetry, but I didn't think my prose style was so obfuscated as to have given the impression I'm handing out awards for ugly pet photos.

Very odd.

Therapy.

We’ve all lightened up a bit momentarily, chiefly because the g’son returned to school quite normally Monday and is only grumbling in normal fashion about the exams they are being subjected to this week. H even asked his mum why she and I where so worried, which caused her to splutter rather. ‘But It’s over now for another three weeks,’ he said, reasonably enough. Forgive us, child, for being afraid of the subterranean rumblings in his unconscious - the sort that have caused psychosomatic illnesses over the passed two years.

Maybe he really is learning to cope. Apologies to the tiny counsellor in that case - now could she come and help us two poor raddled ‘grown-ups.’

To survive the horrors I’ve been reading a raft of girly pool-side books. Starting with Joanna Trollope’s “Friday Nights,’ which I hear on her site (my isn’t she a plummy Brit?) was inspired by her vision of the new importance of friendship between women in a fractured society where friends replace family. I moved to a similar, but more souffléd, theme in Carole Matthews’ ‘The Chocolate Lovers’ Club’ which caused me to eat a whole bar of Green & Black’s dark choc with cherry in one morning, so possibly should come with a health warning. I romped through Fay Weldon’s: ‘she my not leave’ (lower case for title because it’s written thus on the cover) which as often with her novels gives the initial impression of being predictable but has a scorpions’ sting in it’s neatly furled tail.

Finally I am just finishing something I never thought to read, Lauren Weisberger’s ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ which I’m finding more satisfying than the film. But that’s usually the way.

There may have been others, taken off now by my daughter for her own therapeutic binge, but I can’t remember them.

Between the marshmallows I’ve digested Karin Slaughter (what a name for a crime-horror writer!) ‘genesis’ (again the lower case title. It must be designer chic with the publishers at present.) That was a lot more readable than Patricia Cornwall’s ‘The Scarpetta Factor’ (upper case... should have known.. ) which I found almost impossible. maybe the timing in my life was wrong but it seemed to me to be full of the minutiae of legal, forensic, political, crime work, which slowed any story to a crawl and lost me completely. Hardly a single italian dish was prepared by the eponymous heroine in all 536 pages. I have come to expect at least a drizzle of extra virgin and some parmigiano reggiano from Scarpetta..

Nightmare

The events of the last week would have been disturbing enough but they came just three weeks after my grandson returned home deeply distressed after a visit to his father and was finally coaxed into revealing the reason for his distress: His father had threatened to shoot his mother and her partner.


The child is forced, when visiting this charmer, to call his mother (and all of the rest of us) by obscene names. The charmer’s partner, who seems to be a hot-headed and jealous woman (we already suspect her of hitting S once in the past) helps by prompting S if he fails to speak of us in the required terms. S was shown a pocket full of marbles and a catapult and told these are to be used to smash the windows of my daughter’s car and the house. The death threat will be carried out if the father hears he has three days left to live. What a thoughtful parent to envisage killing his son’s mum just as his son is hypothetically about to lose his other parent! As G is 55 and his health isn’t great, (angina, stents , dodgy heart, etc.) This isn’t so distant a possibility as it might sound, especially to his young son. Dad is always telling him that he might die at any time. Playing the guilt/sympathy card. He’s really good at that.

My daughter was persuaded by two retired policemen to report the threat to the police. She was reluctant to do this because S had told her of the threats in confidence and she is always afraid he will stop confiding in her if she betrays these confidences. S doesn’t want to stop seeing his dad. That’s just about understandable - we all want our fathers to love us, be an OK person, and so on; at least at that age.

The police agreed not to speak to S . One officer was particularly sympathetic because he had been in the same position himself as a child , having to sell one or other parent ‘down the river’ every time the police called after an incident. He remembers how bad that made him feel.

After several long interviews with C & I they uplifted the guns and G’s licence has been revoked until the situation is reviewed. The police told my daughter that they had received similar reports from a source who overheard G sounding off in Tesco! Unfortunately that source was ‘too specific’ to be used in evidence. We don’t understand this.

There’s a lot we don’t understand and a lot that is driving me wild with frustration. It feels as if no-one can or will help. Because there is a legally binding agreement in place, made at the time of the divorce and custody proceedings, S has to see his father every third weekend or his mother is in contempt of court. The visit fell this weekend. He doesn’t stay overnight (that happens only at the mother’s discretion) so I saw him yesterday eve. He told me everything was fine. As soon as he got home to his mum he was frenetic, acting wildly and with extreme jollity, pretending to be OK, whilst we tried to enjoy a barbecue. Bits came out gradually to his mum and her partner. It seems, unsurprisingly, that dad is very angry and has made that anger quite clear. He was sworn to secrecy again so, in effect, must lie to us. A child of 11 really can’t keep that sort of thing to himself and shouldn’t be asked to. This man is evil.

S goes to a counsellor who claims she can do nothing unless he asks her to so would be no help if C did have to withhold visits and was taken to court. The father has legal aid so can go to a solicitor as often as he likes whereas C would have to pay thousands again to defend herself.

I don’t care about the threats. The man is a coward anyway. I do care about the poison he is dripping into my grandson’s ear and the terrible patterns he is building up in him of lying and deceiving, of fear and mistrust... to name but a few. I will also be very surprised if S manages to get to the end of term with all this going around in his head. It separates him from his peers because he feels he’s the only one with so many troubles. The school aren’t much help. I will bet money that he can’t go away with his class on the canoeing expedition because he’ll be too worried about what’s going on at home and if everyone is safe.

I write this in the hope of getting some of it out of my own system. I’m finding it very hard to breath at the moment! Also - if anyone out there has any ideas or views I’d be extremely grateful to hear them. We think we’ve covered all bases and are stuck with the situation,but a fresh eye might see something we’ve missed.

Baroque catharsis

For one wallowing in the Slough of Despond it seemed appropriate to go to a performance of ‘Tears of St. Peter’ verses of Luigi Tansillo set to music by Orlando Lassus in 1595, his last work. It was billed as ‘An emotionally charged sequence of twenty sacred madrigals in seven parts.’ The words of each are agonisingly painful as St. Peter wallows in - self pity? Self castigation and bitterness at ‘life’ which he feels has engulfed him and led him to the final terrible betrayal.

Happily the lyrics were in Italian and the music itself didn’t really seem to reflect this agony of mind. It was a long programme, we arrived early to bag a good spot, (so early we caught the rehearsal which is when I took the photos) the chairs we were sitting on were horribly uncomfortable, but after a while the voices started to flood over me and I got quite lost in it. Nearly three hours passed I believe, and I came away feeling refreshed.

The setting was the wonderful Abbey of Pluscarden, about four miles away. Set in a deep green valley, once very isolated, with a long history that began in 1230 when it was founded by King Alexander of Scotland and housed the Valliscaulins, a strict order akin to the Benedictines. It flourished for a while until it attracted the unwonted attention of local badboy, Alexander Stuart, known now as the Wolf of Badenoch, who, in anger at an unfavourable decision on his marital status by the Bishop of Moray, fired it along with Elgin Cathedral and Forres in 1390. There are still marks of this fire to be seen on the old walls left standing.

Despite this the Priory survived throughout the Reformation struggling on for over a century until it fell into ruin and was almost abandoned around 1662 apart from local worship. In 1948 the work of restoration began and is ongoing to this day with the monks themselves still working on replacing plain glass with gloriously coloured stained glass windows, of which I am an avid fan.