21 May 2012

Wisdom in small things.

Exciting interlude for me on Saturday when I overcame my feather phobia to hold a tawny owl - and stroke him. The above image isn't of the hero who clambered willingly onto my rather nervous hand but obviously could be a cousin. I didn't have my camera with me and the photo they took of me and Woo was on an Instamatic of very poor quality. Sad, but I have my memories!  I'm dotty about owls. Not sure why, but if I really were a witch I would definitely choose one to be my familiar.


Woo is owned by the rescue centre who took the display of birds to the Steiner May Fair. He was born in captivity and is very tame, loving the attention. I think they are the same people who had charge of Hedwig last year.I'm sorry I missed meeting her.


A symbol of wisdom and sacred to Pallas Athene. They have an impressive folklorist tradition in countries across the globe and are one of the oldest species of vertebrate, fossils of them dating back 60 million years have been found and the physical appearance has changed very little since those times. they are one of the few birds to have made an appearance in cave paintings.  


Huge eyes and that Exorcist trick they do with their heads does give them a spooky presence.

19 May 2012

Driving nostalgia.



Toward the end of my marriage I had dreams of trying to drive from the back seat of the car. Not hard to interpret! Sometimes the steering failed, or the brakes and sometimes I lost the car altogether, parking it in some desolate wasteland like a corporation rubbish tip, or an endless suburbia of privet hedges and cheap housing, then unable to find it again. Once we separated  the dream didn’t occur, although it probably should have because, although I had charge of the wheel and the gear stick I hadn’t, to push the metaphor, learned the functions of some of the controls - the brakes for example. 
I can’t remember if there was anyone in the car with me in the dreams. If my husband was in the front seat he wasn’t helping to protect me from myself. At the time I thought the imagery was quite clear - that I needed to gain total control. Now as I write this (twenty odd years too late) I suspect that the message my subconscious was trying to get across was a warning. I was going to be useless on my own!
Cars in dreams are very significant. Cars in Real Life are also very significant. I’ve always loved driving (less now maybe because I don’t like to go so fast and am conscious of annoying the younger, speedier, souls behind me). I’ve driven many thousands of miles in my life-time. From London to Athens via Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and what was then Yugoslavia. When we lived in Brussels we made the same journey, once accompanied by thousands of Turks on their way home for the summer holiday. They filled the hotels and guest houses so we slept in the car night, in a lay-bye on the side of a mountain, spent the next night in a Yugoslav motel between wet sheets which hadn’t had time to dry.  Once we took in Germany on the way home and I was petrified by Mercedes passing us at 160kph and lorries furious with us for pootling at 100kph.
I wasn’t on my own then but far from being a back-seat driver I did all the driving because I was such a very bad, mistrustful, passenger. It was far more stressful to sit by the side of my husband than to be doing it myself and he was happy to relinquish the wheel, giving the lie to my nightmares.
There were journey’s to France, to the Ardennes, Lot et Garonne, Languedoc, Pyrenees, Aquitaine, Normandy, Brittany. There were trips backwards and forwards to Britain, first England to visit parents, then Scotland. Once we had properly discovered Scotland I was up and down Britain on the way from Brussels to Scotland frequently, usually with one overnight stop at Scotch Corner. Later in my life the journeys were shorter, from Scotland to Carlisle where my daughter was at  the College of Art, then from Scotland to Oxford when she moved to find work; her sister also found herself in Oxford for her Osteopathy degree so I saw a lot of the beautiful little town. Our son settled in Cornwall and I drove to Liskeard, and more recently to almost the farthest tip of Cornwall, Hayle, 750 miles from here, almost as far as Brussels but with no ferry ride.
Whereas driving for most people causes back pain and cramps I have never been physically more comfortable than when behind the wheel. It’s especially good driving alone, perhaps because until the last few years it didn’t happen often and was a luxury. Throughout the years the children were growing up  I liked to get into the car whilst they were at school and drive somewhere - anywhere, it didn’t much matter, but the moors or forests where best. This far north in Scotland it is easy to find a road across the moors and be the only human being visible from one horizon to the next.  I have never been a hill-walker but would like to have been, to find myself at the ridge of a hill looking down into small lochs surrounded by acres of bog-cotton, with only birds, rabbits and the occasional sheep moving. Real space that for a moment is mine. 
Even better at night when the chill clear air, bringing with it loneliness and emptiness, seeps into the car, the headlights picking out the mesmeric swoop downward and upward of the grey line ahead that pulls me on; my own reflection watching me from the windows either side, isolating me, protecting me from the wilderness. 
Occasionally I have stopped in a passing place, turned off the engine and the lights and got out to allow myself to be part of it. I’ve even slept in the car once, on my way home from a tiring expedition south. I would probably not have the courage to sleep in the open without my car to reassure me I could escape because the moors are not in the business of caring for humans. Humans haven’t cared for them, tearing down their forests to build ships, or create grazing for sheep, the money-raising commodity of the time. The habitat for grouse has been destroyed, pheasants have to be raised to be shot, bewildered creatures hand-fed one day, beaten into the air the next week to amuse the guns. I feel anger from this landscape. At best it’s neutral but without a car, or possibly and horse and dog, I would never visit it alone for long.
I get back into the car regretfully but also thankful for the warmth waiting for me. I turn on the engine, send a beam out into the night again, frightening a hare who lopes hastily off into the heather, and I return to my illusions, become a space capsule hurtling through galaxies, always a tourist.

16 May 2012


The weather is dreary and uninspiring so I switched into intense reading mode. Four books arrived Monday from Amazon. I expected them to last me for at least a week but I got through three of them in two days. they were all by Peter May, my latest obsession.The second of his trilogy set on and around the island of Lewis ‘Lewis Man’ is out in hardback so I treated myself and felt justified because I did enjoy it as much, if not more, than the first ‘The Blackhouse.’ It was slightly less grim though the harshness of life on the islands and the bleak windblasted landscape doesn’t make for a cosy story. I felt cold, damp and uncomfortable for the entire reading of both novels.
I wanted to find out what his writing was like when he wasn’t setting the action in his homeland. He wrote a series that I think were televised called the Enzo files, so I bought the first of those, ‘Dry Bones’ and also his recent venture into cyberspace called ‘Virtually Dead.’ What he is very good at is creating a sense of place. The Enzo files are set in France where May lives and he succeeded in taking me back to some holiday in France and visits to Paris, which has to be counted asa worthwhile investment and much less trouble than actual travel. 
What I’m less impressed by are his characters. It’s all in the dialogue when authors create characters. Some do it so well that I feel I’ve met them and they become personal friends, enemies, or at least people I serve regularly in the shop. PM has the old gardener speaking in much the same voice as the educated professor. It’s not the dialect, no amount of ooh’aarring is going to create the person, it’s the length and rhythm of the sentences and the choice of words. 

‘Virtually Dead’ was very different to the previous three, being played out mostly in SL - Second Life, a complex alternative computer generated reality, a ‘virtual world’ which, (and this is an odd thing to say) really exists. it must have been an entertaining challenge for him.
I think he follows all the serious ground rules for the good detective story which means I can get a buzz out of guessing the baddie, so I give PM top marks for plot (although I do have a grievance about the twist/untwist/and twist again at the denouement of The Blackhouse. All too many twists within a short space of time.)  
PM gets a high score for Pace, Plot and Place. 

                                                  **

I’m easily seduced by novels. I conspire with authors to magic me away into their world and I’m not usually disposed to look out for faults in their technique because I want to be transported; that’s what I’m there for. Maybe this flush of critical observation is a result of reading so much in such a short space of time. I've become  hypersensitive to differences of style and to the conclusion that some writers are natural adepts at their craft, whereas some work hard to become adept. The latter write skillfully and yet (not quite ‘but’) their characters don’t walk out of the page into the reader's world; I wouldn’t know them if I bumped into them at an airport or railway station; they don’t come home with me or follow me into the kitchen once I’ve put the book back on the shelf. I might remember their history, the events in their lives and their given eccentricities but they themselves have no form or substance. It’s difficult to see exactly how that happens. I think it’s all in the dialogue.
Reading some novels is almost a Zen experience (perhaps I’m getting a bit Pseud’s Corner here but who cares!) When I read those by naturally gifted writers the words fall away and I’m no longer observing, I’m there.



I went to a funeral on Monday which, in the way of these things, left me with persistent niggling thoughts about death. This time it was about the rituals surrounding death and what they should be like, or how I would like them to be. I’ve always thought they are more for the bereaved than the dead (though opinions on that are divided) so I hope that the people who were expressing their love and grief on Monday were comforted by the gathering, and by the form of remembrance they had themselves created. There was singing by a choir Karin had belonged to and a long eulogy about her life, written by the young women who I believe felt closer to her than to her own mother. This was read by an Interfaith Minister. There had been talk of an open coffin, favoured by some at the Foundation and quite traditional in Scotland in times gone by, but I was rather relieved to hear it hadn’t been appropriate. More touching were the photos of Karin at various stages of her life and as I was in direct line with these I spent most of my time looking at them, admiring her strong intelligent features  and imagining her in her younger days before we met.
I wouldn’t be writing this if the occasion hadn’t left me feeling faintly disappointed. I’m trying to understand why. I hope very much I was the only one.
Death can’t, or perhaps shouldn’t, be made cosy in my opinion. It is huge, whatever one’s beliefs. Even if death is just the end of a complex illusion, or if there is no survival of the essential being who has spent time among us, it is a solemn event and deserves more than tinkly music and sentiment (I’m not saying that was the problem on Monday.) I’ve been to a variety of funerals; one taken by a school chaplain for a man who committed suicide leaving a shocked wife, ex-wife and three children. It must have been a difficult service for the chaplain to face and I thought he did well. He spoke about Richard with a compassion and comforting strength that would have been soothing for the family, and offended no-one, neither theist nor atheist nor any shades in between.  Two other church services I’ve attended have also impressed me. What they had to offer were rituals and ceremonies with all the dignity and power accrued through the ages of use, giving believers the assurance of continuance. Churches in this part of the world are usually small and often very simple but they are still dedicated to levels of thought beyond the mundane. They attempt to bring significance and reverence to life. It’s hard to create those without the backdrop of established religion.
For my mother’s funeral we had a gathering in our house with the people who had known her in Belgium, rather fewer than her friends in the UK. The Salvation Army held a memorial service later in the place where she had worshipped and my father had played in the band for many years. In our house it was informal, impromptu, very warm, and I was grateful for the surprising number of people who spoke up to tell us how she had touched their lives. Our eldest daughter sang a French song she had learned at school. I opted not to have the coffin brought to the house; for me once someone has died their body is irrelevant. At the crematorium I had chosen a piece from Revelations 21, the King James Bible, which my husband read. I chose it because it is full of promise and sonorous, beginning with “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away,” I chose to end the reading with words: “Behold I make all things new!”
Probably because I enjoy the drama of it!
Afterwards we had a feast with a whole poached salmon because my mum prepared great food herself and would have liked to be honoured that way.
Looking back I think we did well by her and if she was still conscious of us all she would have been pleased. It helped us, and that was what mattered.

12 May 2012

Dimensions


Went to the movies last night at the Ogstoun Theatre Gordonstoun (great theatre, wish they had designed it with more comfortable seats.. I had forgotten the agony.) 
Lots of noisy meeting and greeting first, with champagne and cheese straws to celebrate the Scottish premier of a film made by a young couple who sold their house to finance it. Even after that sacrifice, by film standards it was made on a micro budget and had to cost ‘less than Batman’s cape,’ to quote Ant. They’ve both worked on big budget movies as art director and set designer (Sloane U’ren) and script writer/composer (Ant Neely) but wanted to do something of their own
’Dimensions’ premiered at the Cambridge Film festival in 2011 and won an award, then went on to win Best Film at the London Independent Film Festival 2012. Ant wrote the script and composed music to accompany it which I think went a long way toward creating the success of the piece. It wasn’t obtrusive, but it was always present, carrying the desired atmosphere, haunting, and wistful.  Sloane U’ren, his partner, directed and produced. Altogether it comes across (I’m no cinema critic) as a very professional work. Ant and Sloane are now house-sitting locally and hoping for their next break so they can start saving up for a house again!
They managed to find actors from the general release world,
 Camilla Rutherford (Gosford Park, Rome) and Henry Lloyd-Hughes (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Inbetweeners) and others who have been in TV series, or played at the Old Vic. This helps with the distribution I imagine.
The reason I got off my butt to go was the promise of time travel; I’m always fascinated by the idea of time travel. I think the first time I realised it wasn’t just a subject for B movies and comics was when I read ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’ by Mark Twain. Wikipedia tells me that time travel features in the Talmud, in Hindu mythology and a Japanese tale written in 720AD, just for a start, so there is nothing new in the theme but the fact that it has endured indicates there is something in us humans that would love to straddle the centuries. Perhaps, more poignantly, we would love to be able to right wrongs we have committed, be reunited with people who have vanished from our lives, or see what the future will be like for our children. Our personal story enthralls us; the story of creation enthralls us. We want to know the beginning and the end as we would if we were reading a great novel.
Although time travel is the obsession of the young scientist  in the drama, it’s also the possibility of ‘many dimensions’ that he has in mind, as he reaches for a dimension in which his childhood love did not fall down a well and drown.
Quantum physics seems to me, the lay person, to have taken us  so much closer to the possibility of touching other dimensions that it’s hard to believe that we can’t. It sounds as if it should be a formula or two away. Human ingenuity will get us there, I’ll bet (safe enough because there’ll never be a moment when someone taking me up on that bet can claim their winnings, scientists will go on striving until our race becomes extinct!) I read yesterday that it is, or will very soon be possible to be ‘beamed up’ and down again into another country; so far the beaming will only get us into a robot or ‘avatar’ but one that can see and feel, (perhaps smell?) 
That’s going to create some interesting legal problems, so more work for the lawyers among other excitements.
It’s a Brave New World every day. 

6 May 2012

Gloomy Sunday.



May Day passed, the weather celebrated by getting even older with snow on the hills, frost and hailstones down here. I started a disgusting cold; the wet, sneezy, dripping, hot-flushing sort, the like of which I haven’t had for a year or so. Today I’m making myself a big pan of chicken soup with a whole corn-fed chuck, leeks, onions, celery, lots of garlic, and, from my herb garden, sage and thyme, natural antibiotics. Hope that fixes me.
The fennel was feathering up prettily until a couple of hard frosts got it, along with the fuschias and a shrub the name of which I have completely forgotten. It’s a hard life up here for plants.
Sophie (daughter living in London) has just landed herself a job in Oxford, the necessary get-out card for her flight from the smoke. It was the first she applied for which says a lot about her (motherly pride alert here!), jobs being less easy to come by these days. Sadly her celebratory mood has been dampened by the feeling of letting people down, which of course she isn’t but she’s a very caring soul. When her supervisor heard the news she tried to be pleased for Soph’s but looked as if she was going to cry. This company, an imprint of Penguin, has been pleasant to work for until recently when the management, who obviously have no idea what it’s like at the pit face, began to ignore working conditions (and reason) in order to make cutbacks; basically to get blood out of stones. Sophie has wanted to move to Oxford for some time, since London began to lose it’s shine and the incessant noise of advertising and service announcements, traffic and sirens, along with foul air and a press of tense, miserable, humanity got through to her. Until some moment last year when things began to get difficult she enjoyed her work, now she will miss her colleagues and is beset with guilt at leaving them struggling to meet deadlines, but for her own sanity she has to go.  
The same circumstances have made our son sole manager of an area of Devon and Cornwall that used to have three or four managers.  Fortunately he still enjoys his work but  his day often starts at 5am and ends at 9pm when he has to travel to the further water sports centres. Even when he gets home earlier he works once the children are in bed. He has always been a well-balanced, laid back, conscientious, sort of chap with a very good sense of humour, but it puts a strain on family life and his pay in no way reflects the amount of work he does. 
I read the paper every day but it’sonly when the situation actually affects me and mine that it becomes real. My gas bill has gone up by almost 100% in a year. I can’t believe things have got so bad.