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.
That's Arnold Bennett in How to Live on 24 Hours a Day. The quotation continues: 'We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.' The Zen-ness of this notion appeals.
I shall print Mr Bennett's words and pin them above my desk or write them, by hand, on a small piece of paper, then fold the paper and slip it into my wallet, which is what I used to do, years ago, with quotations that made me stop and think.
So, I am at last easing my way back into blogging, which I have missed but which I could not do - because every time I thought of something to write about, I then dismissed the subject matter as trivial. I knew why and there was more than one reason. I knew that the feelings would pass, in time, and they have. I just had to let time do its work, and it did. I knew that I would see or hear something that would make me think, 'Ah yes, that is the something.'
It turned out to be the sound of bleating, on a visit to my Smallholder Friend last week. She has six Castlemilk Morit ewes and all but one of them had just lambed.
Violet - still waiting:
Abigail, the boldest of the ewes, has already given birth; she is a very protective mama:
Abigail is just as watchful of the other lambs - and of me trying to taking photographs without disturbing the flock. She's just checking . . .
These moments with Violet and Abigail, and with the other ewes and the lambs, remind me that I must get myself back to the here and now and stay there. So I do. Back is good.
Trafalgar Square, London, Coronation Day, 2 June 1953; life in black and white and the crowd watches the passing parade through periscopes:
Trafalgar Square, London, 10 September 2012; life in digital times and the crowd watches and records another parade - through the display screens of their cameras and mobile phones. As do those they are watching . . .
I'm not quite sure how or why I lost the blogging habit. Perhaps the clue lies in the word 'habit'; five and and a half years into blogging and I had become too used to the sound of my own words. It did not explain, however, the fact that I seemed to have lost track of other people's blogs, blogs that I enjoyed, blogs that opened windows onto different lives, different worlds, blogs that connected like-minded people across time and space.
Perhaps, to paraphrase Salieri, there have just been too many words (except that it wasn't Salieri, was it? My niggling inner editor reminds me that it was Emperor 'too many notes' Joseph II.) For those of us in the UK, there has been a plethora of words in the past couple of months. We have been almost smothered by layer upon layer of news coverage, scaremongering features and opinion columns as the country has been engulfed by first one scandal, then another, until - inevitably, perhaps - the lid blew off the whole thing and urban pockets of the country erupted. We had still not recovered from the actions of profligate and greedy bankers, nor from the shock that many of our democratically-elected politicians had been lining their pockets with expenses fiddled from the public purse, before we were confronted by the grisly spectacle of phone-hacking journalists and all-powerful editors so devoid of sensitivity and decency that they were prepared to sanction anything that might boost circulation figures.
And then the rioting and the looting.
From the wealthiest and most influential to those who barely clung to the margins, there were individuals and groups who seemed to have slipped through or cast off the net of what we like to believe are our shared morality and values. The threads that held us together seemed to be unravelling.
In my head, Yeats's words on things falling apart and the centre not holding were surfacing yet again, as they tend to in times of strife and uncertainty. Except that they weren't falling apart and compassionate people made good things happen; as George Malone said in the final episode of Boys from the Blackstuff - in the wake of all the conspicuous consumption triggered by the greedy 'there is no such thing as society' 1980s: 'I can't believe that there's no hope.' George was speaking specifically of his own class, the urban working class, but his words (or, more correctly, writer Alan Bleasdale's words) have a resonance that now crosses class and social boundaries. There is hope and it could be seen on the streets of our cities after the looting.
Against this backdrop, it seemed almost futile to be writing about small, everyday things, although it is the small, everyday things that root us, that keep us sane. My canine-care life continued, with four-legged guests coming and going. Loved ones, family and friends came to stay, places were explored, books read, music and films enjoyed. My professional writing and editing life continued; it was the more personal, reflective writing that languished.
Reflecting, however, is precisely what I was doing. It is exactly a year since I was diagnosed with breast cancer and just under a year since the Massive Inconvenience was vanquished. Only a small scar remains and that is fading. To be truthful, I don't think about it too often. The Massive Inconvenience has become, like the past, another country. I have, however, learned more than I could have imagined possible and one of my more surprising discoveries is that I am - or at least, I have become - a far more positive person than I realised I was or could be. I say surprising as I had more than a few dark nights of the soul when I was a young woman and not just dark nights but dark days too, days that could spill into weeks and months. And sometimes did.
Maybe it's because, although I cannot afford to retire, I now earn my living doing two things I love: caring for animals and writing. Or maybe it's an age thing. In today's Observer Magazine, Miranda Sawyer, 45, discusses her own experience of, and thoughts on, the mid-life crisis and reaches an encouraging conclusion (of which, more later). She mentions her friend Sam, 'who is in his early 60s, and . . . is happier now than he has ever been, but that people who don't know him think he can't be, and treat him accordingly.' When it comes to the 60-something happiness factor, I'm with Sam. It is hard to imagine, when one is in one's 20s, 30s or 40s and, especially for me, the tedious 50s, which I experienced as a strange, no-woman's limbo between the end of being young and the beginning of being old (I think it's called menopause . . . ) that the 60s can bring such joy and delight and that one can actually wake up happy, for whole days at a stretch. There are, inevitably, the flatter, greyer days (which I attribute in part to the English weather) and the occasional down day but these are, thankfully, the exception.
So, emerging out of what I will probably come to see as my Quiet Period, I have resurrected everything I had planned to do last autumn, before the Massive Inconvenience got in the way.
After seven years of being a member of a writing group, I realised that it was time for a change, and I now work individually with my writing mentor, Briony Goffin. We get together for a couple of sessions each term and It has proved to be exactly the right decision, at the right time, and I am enjoying every minute of it. (Thank you, Briony.)
In September, I am starting a photography course, something I have wanted to do for years, learning about what goes on inside a camera because I love photography with a passion and I know that it is about so much more than looking through a viewfinder or looking at an LCD screen and framing a passable shot.
In September, and because I love music with an equal passion, I am starting piano lessons, hoping that the musical gene that runs through the family (professional pianist grandfather, piano-playing and singing mother, piano and violin-playing brother) has not passed me by completely. I can still read music and just about pick out a basic tune on the beautiful Victorian piano I was given last year but I know that I learn best when I'm studying with an inspirational teacher. (And I think I've found one.)
Then, last week, I took out, dusted down and oiled my late grandma's 100-year-old 27K Singer sewing machine for the first time in 35 years. It worked perfectly and has already been put to work - with plenty more to come.
This is just for starters.
As Miranda Sawyer says: 'Midlife or not, in the end, or in the middle, these are the days of my life. These are the days of your life. And the thing to do is live them.'
Which all chimed in, rather, with a song I heard on the car radio as I drove home from a great morning, spent with my Salad Days Friend, at a vintage textile fair in Honiton. There is a high point en route, on the A373 between Honiton and Cullompton, at which all Devon is spread out before you, its hills, its rolling fields, hedgerows, trees and meadows and I had just reached that point when the song started playing. Written by the Bee Gees, sung by Esther and Abi Ofarim (in 1967, for goodness sake). It still makes me moist-eyed but in a good way.
So, we have waited patiently and, at last, our English summer seems to have arrived. (When my sister and her granddaughter were staying two weeks ago, it was cold, grey, wet and miserable.) I walked this afternoon with friends whose Patterdale terriers are regular guests here, together with my Labrador, the Edinburgh Boy, and the current guest dog, a blue merle collie.
My friends took me on a walk that, despite being just three miles from home, was completely new to me. It reminded me (because sometimes we all need reminding why we have made the choices that we have) just why I moved here thirteen years ago.
We walked, talked, played with the dogs, and breathed in our surroundings.
Then we went back for tea and chocolate brownies and ice cream and talked some more . . .
