writing, not drowning

Packing Case Central

So . . . as many boxes as can be hidden away in a storage unit have been stuffed to the brim and tightly sealed. There has not been enough time to go through every single item in this house and say 'yes', 'no' or 'recycle' but a great deal has already gone, never to return, and, in due course, I will liberate one box at a time from the storage unit. And will then be ruthless; at least that is the plan.

    Meanwhile, the primary plan, to move to the smaller house that means so much to me, is moving on. Slowly but most definitely moving on. My offer to buy the house has been accepted and the house is off the market. The vendor has yet to find the house that they want to buy and my Dear Old House is about to go on the market. So, in terms of pressure, we are just about equally balanced.

    I was doing very, very well until about 10 days ago, after the visit of the first estate agent, who came highly recommended by a good friend who lives nearby and has moved as many times in the past couple of decades as I have in my entire life.  I had worked very hard indeed to get the house looking as I understand a house for sale must look these days - very streamlined and as if no-one actually lives here ie fit to appear on Location, Location, Location. It's quite hard to do that to a 300-year-old house that welcomes many guests, human and canine, and has always had resident dogs and cats, but I was determined to do my best. Said agent has been doing his job for over 40 years, still enjoys what he does, and was a fount of knowledge and valuable information - but was in no doubt that 'a great deal more needed to be done' on the decluttering front.

    And then, the second half of what turned out to be a double whammy, the valuation was rather less than I had hoped, and would not, after purchasing the smaller house, leave quite such a comfortable financial cushion for me to see out my days. (In case anyone thinks that all we baby boomers are having a life of Riley on our great big fat private pensions, I have news for you: if you were a self-employed baby boomer like me for much of your working life, putting absolutely every last penny you could afford into a pension, you may well have ended up with very little to show for it indeed. Or at least very little by the time the pension companies, pension advisers, and various sundry interested parties had all dipped their mitts into your hard-earned pension pot. I think there are regulations in place to stop this happening now; too late for my modest pension though. Lesson learned, at least for the next generation.)

    I went into a bit of a downward spiral; I was exhausted and disappointed and all the packing and lifting and whizzing backwards and forwards to the storage depot and checking on the builders and running up and down the stairs many, many times a day, meant that the sciatica had returned, with a vengeance. And, of course, I do love my home and my garden and the views, and leaving it, after 20 years, almost all of which have been very happy ones, will be a wrench. There were tears. By the time I got to my yoga class, I was a wreck. Please don't anyone say anything nice to me, I thought, or I will start to sob and won't be able to stop. I just about made it through to a very welcome yoga nidra at the end of the class, by which time I barely noticed and no longer cared about the tears flowing onto my yoga mat.

    But, 24 hours later, I bounced back and just Got On With The Stuff and even managed to get quite gung-ho about it, with the words of my Friend in Portugal ringing in my ears: 'There will be another garden, other views.' She is right. And, yesterday, after the very last box had been stored away, I was all prepared when agent number two arrived. He loved the house, said I had done a great job of 'preparing it to go on the market' and that the terrace, with its old wooden table and chairs and the bright pink parasol - all bathed in sunshine, with views of the surrounding countryside - reminded him of France . . . and then gave me an even lower valuation than agent number one. (But I have already forgiven him because half way through going round the house, he remarked, 'How wonderful to see so many books. I LOVE books.' And it was not said in irony, which would have been understandable because there are, in fact, far too many in almost every room, but was quite spontaneous - and genuine. At least, I think it was . . . after all, he didn't suggest that I put them all, or even some of them, in storage. And, anyway, who wants to look at empty bookshelves?)

    Thank goodness, therefore, that I happened to read Corrie Corfield's recent blogpost about selling up and leaving a much loved home. For those of you unfamiliar with BBC Radio 4, Corrie is one of its best newscasters. She also writes an occasional but always excellent blog. This post says it all and it helped to remind me why I am doing this and how much I am looking forward to life in the smaller house - or another smaller house if things don't quite work out (because we all need a Plan B or even a Plan C or D).

    I also needed a reminder of another reason for wanting, needing to move: more time to write - and, ergo, more time to think - as I had almost forgotten how very much I loved writing . . . and all the thinking and reflecting that accompanies the creative process. (Chronic pain for months on end isn't the best stimulus for creativity; well, not for me.) This interview with one of the writers I admire most, Marilynne Robinson, which appeared in Friday's Guardian, was more than timely.

    All this has been going on against a backdrop of the best English summer for years; the thrilling performance of the best English soccer team for years - accompanied by a series of hilarious online exchanges with my Dear Old School Friend (one of the funniest people I know and who has only just embraced social media); a long overdue reunion with a very dear friend - and another, equally special, reunion with a close friend to come - and the prospect of going to the Frida Kahlo exhibition at the V&A before the month is out. Unforgettable, all of it, and every moment to be relished. So, if this does turn out to be the last summer at the Dear Old House, it will have been the very best of summers, unlikely to be surpassed - and the provider of enough good memories to see me through whatever lies ahead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back . . .

Our Madeiran spot by day:

and by night (courtesy of a Loved One):

We had the happiest and most relaxing of weeks; it is more than five years since I last had a proper holiday and many more since I had a holiday where I simply let go. (For the record, I relished every moment of my three weeks in India in 2008 and long to return but my Friend on the Road and I covered many hundreds of miles and I was, on that particular trip, a woman with a specific mission . . .)

Madeira was good to us: the sun was as generous as I hoped that it would be and, for a few days at least, our world was a warmer place. (Flying back into gales-force winds and cold, biting rain was most unwelcome.)

On our last evening we took a taxi to a hillside overlooking Funchal to eat at Z'Arcos, a restaurant that the Loved Ones had discovered on a previous visit. We ate outside on a wide verandah, surrounded by deep troughs of herbs - fat bushes of fragrant basil, rosemary, fennel and oregano. And we talked, among other things, of politics - national, European and international - as we often do and how we feel and see ourselves as Europeans and have done for as long as we can remember. (The UK faces the prospect of a referendum about our continued membership of the European Union; we agree that the community has many faults but faults can be put right. Better, surely, to make things better rather than to turn and walk away, without a clue of where we might be heading? We have no desire for the clock to be turned back. A Loved One remarks that, if the vote goes the wrong way - that is, to leave the EU - he will leave the country. We nod in agreement.)

Looking out across the pantiled roofs, with the Bay of Funchal just catching the last of the soft, evening light, we had a sense of being part of what we saw, not simply visitors. Something that none of us would wish to lose.

Back on track - and back on the road

My poor blog - a distinct sense of having gone AWOL hovers. Sometimes, however, life just gets in the way and one simply has to get on with it. All things must pass . . . there have been tedious interruptions; minor surgery, for example, (nothing serious but I did have to wait nine dreary months). But there have been welcome and exciting (well, exciting for me) developments, not least the writing workshops I have been running in June and July, which have taken off in a way that I could hardly have dared imagine and of which more in another post. 

For now, however, I am officially on my hols. Not away from home, per se, but with a most welcome guest staying: my Dear Friend in . . . well, what must we call her now, as she is leading a fairly peripatetic existence? I think, for the moment, she must be my Friend On The Road (to which we could legitimately add the words Less Travelled By). We travel well together and have taken lengthy road trips in the past, in India and South Africa, and, while she is here, we slip back easily into On the Road mode. This is England, however, so road trips are inevitably shorter, although Devon's winding lanes make distances and travelling times seem longer. Our destination, yesterday, was only 50 miles away but it felt as if we had driven much further. And we made a point of heading for places that neither of us had visited before.

We were somewhat underwhelmed by our first stopping point, which I won't name because times are hard and visitor income hard won and I'm sure that they'll get it right eventually, but we did see a fine herd of Devon Ruby Red cattle (latest additions to the herd here):

and some enormous roses:

We had been tempted by a website that made the place look welcoming and interesting, which it could have been, but somehow wasn't. A staff member we eventually found (we had to go looking for someone/anyone on arrival) didn't seem to have a clue as to why we might be there or what we should see - as enticingly promoted by the website - and it was only when we were leaving, and spotted a leaflet that would have been handy to have been given on arrival, that we discovered what we had missed. 

Heigh ho. (Oh and, a plea to cafe propietors: a few shreds of lettuce, a sliver of apple - ditto orange, cucumber, onion, and tomato - a single green grape, and no dressing whatsoever do not constitute an enticing or appetising salad garnish. Why do people do this? Why the fruit? Just how long does it take to whip up a vinaigrette or mix some olive oil and lemon juice? Is it a British thing or does it happen in other parts of the world?) 

The moral of this tale is, as my Friend On The Road observed: don't believe everything you read and see on a website. Photos and text can be misleading.

But, enough of the whingeing. It was a glorious day and we still had time on our hands.

'Let's go down to Hartland Point,' I suggested. So we went and were not disappointed, despite the unmistakeable deep fat fried odour of chips, wafting from the nearby hotel. (It is a truth universally acknowledged that an English person on holiday must be in want of chips. Or not.) A dramatic outcrop of rocks jutting into the sea where the Bristol Channel ends and the Atlantic Ocean begins and, its bulk rising from a shimmering horizon where the sky dissolves into the sea, Lundy Island. General all-round, breathtaking Nature at her finest.

And an unspoilt beach that makes you feel as if you had stepped back to the 1950s and into the pages of a book by Enid Blyton:

The day did not end here but what we found next was rather special - and worth a post all of its own.  

Back soon.

Brief encounter

Back in December 2010, when I was coming to the end of radiotherapy sessions to deal with the Massive Inconvenience, I wrote this post about a sublime moment on the riverbank. I wrote about the white house on the hill and the haunting notes of Bach's Goldberg Variations (played, I felt sure, by Glenn Gould) resonating across the river. That moment has remained with me ever since and I have always thought of it as one of the significant points in my journey to recovery, when I knew with absolute certainty that I was free of cancer.

The dogs and I have walked along the riverbank many times since then; occasionally there was music and I would pause and listen and remember. And then the music stopped. There has been no music for many months.

We were there again today, in very different weather (sunshine, yes, real, proper sunshine); we walked along the river to the weir and then stopped beside a calm point in the river -  Miss P's favourite swimming spot, where she does her best Tom Daly impersonations - and then turned to head back. The Edinburgh Boy takes things at a gentler pace these days; he has just been diagnosed with arthritis, for which he is about to start a course of treatment, so no running around for him. But even if he can't romp with Miss P,  there are always other dogs for her to chase and be chased by and, it being a convivial sort of riverbank, other dog owners for company.

Miss P soon spotted a friendly-looking Jack Russell and, while they had a bit of a run-around, I fell into conversation with his owner. As sometimes happens, it turned into one of those profound conversations that one can have with a stranger; we covered some deepish stuff in a very short space of time.  And then she mentioned that, a few months ago, she and her husband had moved to a nearby town and how different it was walking along this side of the river when, for 30 years, she had watched dogs and their owners - from the other side. I asked her where she had lived.

'The white house, up on the hill. I am afraid that we used to play very loud music . . . I always wondered if it was too loud but I've spoken to people on this side since and most seemed to like it.'

So I told her about the sublime moment and Bach and Glenn Gould and recovery from the Massive Inconvenience. And thanked her. Cue: another profound moment.

Our conversation turned to the small town just a few miles away where she now lives and I mentioned that this is where I hold my writing workshops.

'Oh, that's you! A great friend of ours, X, has just enrolled; she's so looking forward to it.' She mentioned a name I recognised.

We thought this was something of a sign and agreed how good it would be to repeat the walk. However, since we were both geared up for dog-walking and nothing else, we had no pen or paper to write down phone numbers.

'But you can contact me through X,' I said.

'Of course.' she replied. I do hope she will.

Just before we reached the gate, on the other side of which our cars were parked, we caught up wth her husband and their other Jack Russell. Introductions completed, another conversation about music and Bach and Glenn Gould ensued. 

'I used to play music when I was working in the garden,' he said.

I was, I told him, very glad indeed that he had.

One never really knows how or why these things happen. Chance, fate, serendipity . . . ? But how good it is when they do.

Out of the labyrinth

After two months of spending part of each day thinking that I was going to fall over, I am pleased to report that the labyrinthitis has been sent packing. (Thanks, in no small part, to homeopathy, which came to the rescue; I like to give credit where it is due.) Whenever I mentioned to friends or acquaintances that I had been diagnosed with this frustrating condition, I heard alarming stories - people confined to bed for weeks on end, work and studies interrupted, complete inability to carry out normal everyday tasks. 'Ye gods!', I thought, 'How will I manage?' Well, when you live alone, you manage all sorts of things.

I even managed to drive to Surrey for my youngest niece's wedding, a wonderful day, that I would not have missed for anything. My niece is one of the sunniest, kindest people I know but I had never seen her looking happier or more gorgeous than she did in her dream dress . . .

standing alongside the man she loves.

Her husband and his family are from Dublin and I shared a table at the wedding feast with his uncles and aunts and my sister's closest friend and her partner. The craic was very good indeed and I did allow myself a glass of champagne to toast the happy couple. (In these post-Massive Inconvenience days, alcohol is normally a no-no for me.) 

Sláinte to two very special people.

* * * * *

Now that I am out of the labyrinth, I have been able to put the finishing touches to some pop-up writing workshops that I am running this summer, here in Mid-Devon. If you'd like to know more, just email me via the link over in the right-hand sidebar. I'm quite ridiculously excited about these; they have been in the pipeline for a while, having originally been planned to start in the autumn of 2010. At the time, I had no idea what life was about to chuck at me. Still, that was then and this is very much now. Not only that, after many, many months of vile weather, daily rain and no sun (apart from March) and having had no spring to speak of, it appears to be summer and, suddenly, everything is quite transformed.