60 Going On 16

Will you still need me, will you still feed me . . . ?

I was 19 when the Beatles released this track on the Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, (1 June 1967). I was at the start of all sorts of things in my life, not least of which was motherhood. And the answer to the question you might be asking is that, for a whole host of reasons, I have never had the slightest regret about being - by today's standards - such a young mother.

As for my mothering skills, you'd have to ask my daughter, except that behind the outgoing, sunny exterior is a very private person, so I doubt that we'd be able to persuade her to make a public appearance. You'll just have to take my word for it that she lit up my life when the midwife placed her in my arms and, all these years later, she continues to do so. She is an amazing woman of whom I am immensely proud.

But back to the song. At 19, I was incapable of imagining what it would be like to be 64, let alone whether my then Other Half would still be needing me or feeding me. (To which the answers were, as I soon discovered, 'no' and 'no', so my small daughter and I steered a different course.)  

I tend not to do 'hello, it's my birthday' posts; as I said to Twitter chum @maribeeb, yesterday, 'a bit cheesy, no?' However, today I have a proper excuse because, as of today, I am fully cognisant of what it is to be 64 and I can tell you this. It's just like 19 but with the addition of, hopefully, a soupçon of the wisdom of years and, very probably, a couple of extra inches round the middle. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. And for me, there have been many more valued friendships forged, more books read, more music listened to, more parts of the world travelled to and explored, many hundreds of thousands of words written, many thousands of photographs taken . . .

Lest you think my life has been a bit of a doddle, there have been profound shocks and great sadnesses and betrayals too and, in my late thirties and for a few years thereafter, a string of losses and bereavements that came hurtling out of the blue and so close together that it was like watching powerlessly as a line of dominoes toppled before my eyes. I had no doubt at all, at that time, what it was to be acquainted with grief.

But I prefer, on this blog at least, to stand four-square with Jane Austen and 'let other pens dwell on guilt and misery'. ( I didn't think much of this sentiment when I was studying Mansfield Park for A-level; I was a teenager for goodness sake, I wallowed in guilt and misery. Tsk, tsk.) Besides which, there has always been the joy of animals . . 

Although I didn't read his novels, I remember an interview that the author, Dick Francis, gave towards the end of his life in which he said that the saddest thing about getting older was the number of beloved dogs that he had outlived.

(I do a mental tally: the dogs of my earlier years, Bruno, Rusty, Albert and Rennie, and, latterly, the Squadron Leader, the Rough Diamond, and my daughter's dog, the Divine Miss M. The cats deserve a mention too: Snooky, Fluffy, Tibby, Timothy, Victoria, Sunshine, Tara, Merlin, Tabitha and Muffin and, more recently Mr C's twin brother. Then there was Susan, the tortoise, and the hamster, Deborah . . .  and the horses on which I learned to ride in my middle years. Do not worry, my current companions, Mr C, the cat, and the Edinburgh Boy and Christmas Holly have no literacy skills whatsoever, so cannot read this. Besides, today - as on most days - the dogs have plenty of canine distractions and are happily bounding around with this week's guests: Little Miss P, the Mad Merle and the Seal. Mr C, sensibly, has retired to his dog-free quarters upstairs. )

Anyway, that's enough 'ageing woman looks back at her life and becomes perilously anthropomorphic' waffle. Here's the music:

The one I would have posted on May Day

I wrote this on May Day and intended to post it there and then. But somehow didn't . . .

I've had family guests staying so I gave them my bedroom, which is the largest in the house; meanwhile, I decamped to what we call the summer bedroom. I rather love it, despite the fact that it is the smallest bedroom and north facing; in summer it just about catches the farther reaches of the sunrise, to the east. To the north are hills and grazing sheep and the view is the best from the house.

And there are bookshelves. There are books in every room in the house (and on the stairs) but this room is one of only two that have their own proper, custom-made bookshelves. So I wake looking at books I have yet to read, books I have loved, and books I have almost but not quite forgotten.

This morning I picked up this

a limited edition, published in 1973, the year it was given to me and inscribed three years later, by the person who gave it to me, with the closing lines of the final poem in the collection known as The Passionate Pilgrim (Shakespeare et al). 

On reflection, I could have gone down the maudlin route as I took this book off the shelf on May Day, remembering that poem is set in the month of May and that the person who had inscribed my book all those years ago died on a May Day just 10 years later. And I could, had I allowed myself to do so, have reflected that even things, people, events, love affairs, marriages that somehow go horribly wrong were once - or at least once seemed - wonderfully right. But I decided not to go there and I tried to look at this book, that had once symbolised so much, with fresh eyes and was astonished at what I discovered. I didn't quite fall out of bed but my jaw dropped, visibly.

The book  is The Cry of a Gull, the journals kept by American writer, Alyse Gregory, between 1923 and 1948. It was published by Out of the Ark Press, or 'Out of the ARK PRESS' as it says on the cover.  In 1973, the press was located in Brushford a small village just few miles from here and which I drive past at least once a week on my way to Dulverton. Somehow, I had missed this connection completely since I moved here in 1998.

There is another Ark Press, which was founded in 2009, but I can find no details of what ultimately happened to Out of the Ark Press. It was founded by Michael Adam, known also as Kim Taylor, a self-taught printer who had joined the University of Texas in 1960 as director of its Book Arts Center. 

The journals chart the years of Gregory's life with the English writer, Llewelyn Powys, and after his death in 1939 until 1948. She had met Powys in New York, when she was managing editor of The Dial, then America's foremost literary journal. They married in 1924 and she remained with him for the rest of his life always devoted, immensely supportive of his work, and nursing him through bouts of tuberculosis, despite having to share his affections with his much younger mistress and muse, the poet, Gamel Woolsey.  (So Wild a Thing, also published by Out of the Ark Press, is a collection of Powys's letters to Woolsey and leave the reader in no doubt as to the depth of his passion. Alyse must have been the most unusually tolerant of wives; she and her husband had met Gamel Woolsey in 1927. Alyse, allegedly, encouraged their affair and Powys's last letter to Gamel Woolsey was written just a few days before his death. Hard to imagine the marital and extra-marital tensions, not least because Woolsey's attachment to Powys continued after her marriage to historian, Gerald Brenan, who had once had an affair with Dora Carrington. . .)

But there was something else I had missed too: The Cry of a Gull includes an afterword by Michael Adam, a summary of Alyse's final years. And rereading this earlier today, my jaw dropped again, for these years were spent in Morebath, another village I know well, not least because, like Brushford it is just a few miles from here. I have friends who live there; I went to yoga classes there for years; all those visits and I never knew. It was just like the Rebecca West discovery. Adam records that' 'Apart from Alyse's friends living on at Morebath, nothing remains there to tell of her.'

That was almost 40 years ago; they are probably there no longer but I think the cottage still stands . . .

(If you know what happened to Out of the Ark Press, do tell.)

Reunited

Thank you so much for all those supportive comments and for the emails (which I am gradually answering; apologies if I haven't responded to all of them yet. I will . . . )

I took Easter gently; there were guest dogs here on Friday, Saturday and Monday, but Sunday was free and I drove across Exmoor to have lunch with my Dear Old School Friend, who was staying with her family in Ilfracombe, on the North Devon coast.

The weather was glorious: windy, but glorious. Isn't the sight of the sea on a fine day one of life's great pleasures?

 

The Victorians 'discovered' Ilfracombe and put it firmly on the British holidaymakers' map. In the 21st century, Damien Hirst arrived, opened a restaurant, and Ilfracombe started reinventing itself all over again. Not sure if it's there yet but, heck, a day at the seaside is a day at the seaside.

Time was when we would have thought nothing of running up this cliff to the flagpole at the top: 

 

but we settled instead for an appropriately nostalgic 1960s sort of lunch of risotto, followed by Italian ice cream.

In the course of packing, unpacking, and repacking ad infinitum last year, I'd come across the letter my DOSF wrote to me the day my daughter was born. Ten months later, she became a mother for the first time herself. I took the letter with me and reunited it with its writer for the first time in, well, a very long time.

"We were so young," we sighed. And we were. But there was no doubting the strength of the friendship illustrated by that letter. It was all there, in every line and every word. And, almost 51 years since we first met, on our first day as convent schoolgirls, that bond is just as strong.

The 74-mile round trip may be as much as I can manage in my current crock-like state but seeing my oldest friend was absolutely worth the effort. No question about it.

New year coast

New Year's Day brought sunshine in abundance and blue skies. More freezing weather is forecast for mid-week, so it made sense to make the most of this glorious start to the year and head off to the North Somerset coast 15 miles away . . . .

Those are Welsh snow-covered hills in the distance, across the Bristol Channel.

 

The view is benign on as fine a day as this but the channel has a tragic history. Between 1678 and 1807, those same hills looked down on more than 2000 slave ships that sailed along here, from Bristol, heading for Africa. In the 1730s, when that savage trade was at its height, every second slave ship that set sail left from the city . . .

* * * 

These, thankfully, are happier times (at least in this part of the world) and this handsome chap is the first of this year's canine guests. His arrival a few days ago marked the official start of my brand new post-retirement career. 

 

Frank is 11 years old and also retired - he was a working sheepdog - and I am very, very taken with him. So is the Edinburgh Boy, who behaves beautifully in his presence; he treats Frank with all the respect due to a wise old dog. We'll miss him when his owners return on Sunday but as he lives just a few doors away, the withdrawal symptoms shouldn't be too bad.

 

Coast, blue skies, sunlight on water, dogs. The best possible start to the new year. I hope that yours was as good.

An Irish blessing for your new year

"May your joys be as bright as the morning, and your sorrows merely be shadows that fade in the sunlight of love. May you have enough happiness to keep you sweet, enough trials to keep you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human, enough hope to keep you happy, enough failure to keep you humble, enough success to keep you eager, enough friends to give you comfort, enough faith and courage in yourself to banish sadness, enough wealth to meet your needs and one thing more: enough determination to make each day a more wonderful day than the one before."