writing, not drowning

Bien-être

So, for once in England at Easter, everything was just as it should be - because the sun came out weeks ago and, apart from a brief, wettish interlude, has stayed out ever since. A celestial gift after that long, harsh, ice-bound winter.

My family has been here; friends have visited; dogs have enjoyed long, leisurely walks by the river; hours have been spent outside, making the most of the unexpectedly glorious weather: 

In the garden, a double white lilac planted six years ago burst into bloom for the very first time:

There has been good food, much talk, including a lengthy discussion, with the Dear Daughter, about archteypes; there have been hot cross buns and - cake. I don't really do cake-porn on 60 going on 16 so no photos were taken of the pièce de résistance in its entirety, a lemon drizzle cake from this recipe, adapted for the Aga and definitely not stinting on the lemons, especially for the drizzle. (Not so much lemon drizzle as lemon drench - the scent of the Mediterranean on a plate.) It didn't last long and there's not much left:

The plate is hand-painted Sutherland bone china, possibly 84 years old, if family memories are correct, from the tea service my mother was given as a wedding present in 1927.  Much of it was destroyed in the Blitz and has been painstakingly replaced over the years. That touch of chinoiserie, very 1920s . . . unless someone out there can tell me otherwise. It's pattern number 1113, if that helps.

This evening, when the house was quiet again, the Edinburgh Boy and I walked up the hill to look at the sheep and their Easter lambs:

and to look back down the hill in the soft, spring evening light:

and across the fields to the village:

Home.

On convalescence and Cliftonville

So - the Massive Inconvenience came and went; not quite in the blink of an eye but almost. I had the surgery; I had the radiotherapy and I bounced back. Except that I didn't, not quite. Because the road to recovery is proving to be rather more uphill than I had envisaged. I blame it all on that rotten staphylococcus or its near relative, which seems to have been taking up residence in various parts of my anatomy, one after the other, and then wreaking havoc. As my gentle Polish dentist, Ewelina, explains, anywhere that there's a weak spot. Factor in my notoriously inefficient immune system / pathetically low white blood cell count and I am definitely in a state of festina lente.

Recovery, I now realise, cannot be rushed or forced so nothing for it but to adopt a Taoist approach, namely one of least resistance. Hooray, no feeling guilty about housework and chores undone; I can just stretch out on the sofa, in the manner of Madame Récamier, with a good book, or with a DVD on the laptop and be entertained - which is just as it should be when one has zero energy, a hacking cough, which has been hanging around for weeks, wheezy lungs, root canal related toothache etc etc. And it is raining. And cold and grey. (But in case you are wondering, yes, I still walk the dogs for two hours every day. Because that's what you do when you have dogs.)

On a deeper level, however, it occurs to me that I haven't wanted to venture out much either. I don't want to be with strangers or people with whom I have nothing in common, nor with people who lack sensitivity or compassion. I just want to be with people whom I know and love and trust. The precise feeling is hard to pin down. Breast cancer has left me with a legacy (temporary, I hope) of feeling vulnerable at times and, at others, as if my confidence has packed its bags and left town.

I wondered if this was a common experience and asked my dear friend, M, over at Random Distractions if she too had felt this way 16 years ago, in the early stages of recovery from her own encounter with a Massive Inconvenience. It had, she said, and she urged me to give myself time, plenty of time.

"It's called convalescence," said M.

And that's a word one doesn't hear very often, which was not the case when I was a child. Whenever my granny, who lived with us, had been 'poorly' (I was never quite clear as to the exact nature of the poorliness), she would take herself off for a week's stay in a convalescent home at Clifttonville on the Kent coast.

You see what I mean? When was the last time you heard anyone mention that they were spending a week at a convalescent home?

Granny would return from her sojourns at Cliftonville if not exactly a new woman, then at least a refreshed one. I was pondering this after my conversation with M. What did the guests do all day? Sip cups of nourishing beef tea?  Take light meals selected from the invalid menu - apple snow, that sort of thing? Gather round the wireless of an evening to listen to the latest episode of Dick Barton on the Light programme? Go for gentle strolls along the promenade? 

Granny wasn't much of a one for walking, she far preferred sitting, so I suspect that Cliftonville's Nayland Rock promenade shelter was as far as she would have wanted to go, preferably with another guest, so that they could have a bit of a chat and then wander off to the nearest tearoom for a pot of India's finest and a cake or two. A favourite pastime.

In choosing Cliftonville at which to ease herself back to health, she was in the very best literary company, for this was where, in 1921, T S Eliot came to convalesce after a breakdown. He stayed at the long-since demolished Albemarle Hotel. And it was at the Nayland Rock shelter that he wrote part of The Waste Land.

'On Margate Sands./ I can connect / Nothing with nothing. / The broken fingernails of dirty hands. / My people humble people who expect / Nothing./ La la

To Carthage then I came . . .'

All of which I find rather thrilling, the thought of Granny sitting in the very same shelter as T S Eliot. I think she would have been less impressed, however, being more inclined to light verse of the Patience Strong variety.

Given the significance of the Nayland Rock shelter in the history of 20th century Eng Lit (and in the life of my grandma), it was reassuring to learn that, in 2009, it was given listed status.

John Betjeman, that chronicler of quintessential Englishness, also immortalised Cliftonville in Margate 1940, thoughtfully posted here on the Cliftonville Chronicle blog.

There's clearly a lot to be said for convalescence, especially at Cliftonville. Shame it's on the other side of the country, otherwise I'd be packing my bags right now.

A la recherche du - part two

It was hard to leave Ninebanks and the sense of connection with my ancestors that I had experienced. It had been a familiar sensation: I had felt that same 'tight connection to the heart' at other times, in other places that previous generations of my family had known - in Islington in north London; in Dublin; at Khadki in India or watching South Africa's Table Mountain recede across the ocean. So this was, more or less, what I expected to feel as the Boy and I headed in the direction of a small town close to Hadrian's Wall.

I've often wondered why I've always been drawn to empty places, to moorland and to hillsides (my house sits 700 feet up a hill in Devon, close to the Exmoor boundary) and that day, in Northumberland, I began to understand why. For hundreds of years and possibly for much, much longer, this was the landscape that my ancestors knew:

 

at least until the early 1800s, when the advent of the railway engine and the rapid spread of England's railway system provided them with entirely new opportunities to earn a living wage. Within a few short years, their centuries-old rural roots had been pulled up and severed for good. 

My family's links with Haltwhistle go back - or at least as far as I have traced them - to the 1600s, so my anticipation as we arrived was palpable and my expectations high. But, unfortunately, we'd chosen the wrong day and the wrong time. It was a Friday, at the height of the tourist season, and it was lunchtime. And here, in Haltwhistle, many of the shops shut for lunch. Not that shopping was on the agenda but as one 'CLOSED' sign dissolved into another, it was difficult not to feel a scintilla of disappointment. Years ago, local shops did close for lunch, although even where I live, in the heart of rural Devon, the practice has long since disappeared.

But no matter, the main purpose of the visit was to find the town's 13th-century Holy Cross Church because, I had reasoned, if connections were to be made, this is where they would be made. Holy Cross Church was where, 400 years ago, my ancestors had been brought to be baptised; it was where they had married, and it was where, when their time on earth had run its course, they were laid to rest.

We parked bang in the centre of the town, outside a row of shops and small business premises, one of which was open, so I asked for directions to the church. Shoulders were shrugged, heads shaken, and then one man said he thought it was 'round the corner'. Which it was, about 100 yards away . . . 

The church was closed too. Tight shut. But no explanation; no small notice telling 21st century pilgrims why this should be. (After we left, a local resident said that she thought that there was to be a funeral at the church later in the day and that was why the church doors were firmly locked.)

All that way, I thought, all those miles (362 to be precise) for nothing. Nada. I settled for snapping away outside but even that was not without frustration, thanks to the presence of portaloos:

and plastic sheeting:

But work has to be done and the fabric of old churches repaired; I just happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. A shame really as Holy Cross is oozing with history. I can't, therefore, show you the moment at which I would have reached out to touch the ancient stoup or the font made from parts of the Roman wall, nor can I show you the Christograms in the chancel, nor the Burne Jones stained glass windows. Holy Cross does, however, have a website and if you go to this page, you can click on some of the features (in red) for more details and photos. But I did manage one uncluttered perspective from the north side of the church:

We wandered around the churchyard, as we had in Ninebanks, looking for memorials which bore any of the family names but drew the same result. Had that name been Blenkinsop, we would have fared better:

 

There was nothing for it but to come back at some point in the future and try again.

Still, there is more to Haltwhistle than being shut. It is, depending on how one measures these things, the centre of Britain, which is not the same as being the centre of England, the country's geohistory (or should that be geo-political history?) being ever complicated and utterly confusing to non-Brits. (It's pretty confusing to us at times.)

 

But spotting this sign on a house - so, it's not family but come on, it's history - quite cheered me up:

 

Here are two of the town's Bastle houses. (Does Bastle derive from the same root as Bastille?)

 

 

More about Bastles and Peles (of the kind I saw in Ninebanks) here.

And if we couldn't go into the church, we could at least stand here:

 

This is Edens Lawn, to the west of Holy Cross Church, the name of which may just derive from Aidan (ie from the Celtic Llan Aidan), as in St Aidan of Lindisfarne, who was sent from Iona in the first half of the seventh century, to reconvert the people of Northumbria to Christianity. (And here I am grateful to the church website for a delightful nugget from the ancient past, which tells us that the monk who preceded Aidan 'returned to Iona, complaining that the Northumbrian people were rough, uncivilised barbarians and impossible to teach. . . '  Ah, so this is the well from which I am sprung. But no worse, I think, than coming from a line of pampered aristocrats or robber barons.)

So I stood there for a while, on:  

 

and waited for that sense of tight connection. But it just didn't come.

'Maybe,' I said to the Edinburgh Boy, looking into the distance - because he does, as you will appreciate, understand every word I say - 'they didn't actually live in Haltwhistle; maybe they lived, you know, just outside. Somewhere.'

He gave me one of his old-fashioned looks. A look that said: 'I think that's enough family history for one day. Let's do lunch.'

So we did.

A la recherche du . . . part one

The third day of travels with the Edinburgh Boy had been set aside for an ancestral quest; something I had planned since our last journey to the northlands. Based in Tebay, we were within easy reach of a cluster of Northumbrian towns and villages that had been home to past generations of my family from the 1600s onwards. It turned out to be a day of unexpected discoveries and surprising reactions.

The first discovery came shortly after turning onto the Hexham road, when I spotted signs for:

 

The Village Bakery in Melmerby. I first bought Village Bakery bread almost 30 years ago, when I lived in Notting Hill and shopped at Wild Oats (later a branch of the grumpily-staffed Fresh and Wild, which was subsequently swallowed up by the American retailer, Whole Foods Market, and is now a Planet Organic outlet - a downward spiral at every stage, just proving that things do not always get better). These days I bake my own bread but back then, juggling family life, a demanding career, studying part-time for a degree and so on, home-baked bread didn't figure on the list of things that must be done. But Andrew Whitley, who founded The Village Bakery, was one of pioneers behind the re-introduction of artisan bread-baking in this country and had the good sense to make his excellent range available at shops around the country. We happily chomped our way through most, if not all, of the range, including my favourite - Rossisky rye.

Couldn't resist a visit to where it all started and the delightful lady who served me remembered selling to Wild Oats. It was always a pleasure, she said, when longstanding customers found their way to Melmerby. The Village Bakery now has an award-winning organic café as well as a shop but I bought the makings of lunch on the road: freshly baked multi-grain rolls, unsalted butter from a local farm and Flakebridge cheese from the nearby Appleby Creamery. Simply delicious.

And then we came to Ninebanks . . .

It's a small village in the south west of Northumberland, set in a cleft of the North Pennines. Now almost exclusively agricultural, this area was once studded with lead mines. And it was here, at the village church of St Mark's  in 1797, that my great-great-grandmother Phillis (with an i not a y), a shepherd's daughter, was brought to be baptised. Her name was to be handed down to the next two generations.

Twenty-seven years later, she was married in the same church - to my great-great-grandfather, William, an agricultural labourer from Haltwhistle, a few miles to the north. So, of course, I had to stand exactly where they would have stood in April 1824.

 

St Mark's, which dates from 1764, is a small, rugged and plain, designed to serve the needs of a remote rural community. 

 

So these adjoining densely coloured and ornate stained glass windows commemorating William and Sarah Lee of nearby Corry Hill, who died in 1802 and 1785 respectively, look almost out of place.

 What struck me about St Mark's was the tranquility of its hillside location. 

 

In this it reminded of some of the smaller and more remote moorland and hillside churches here in the South West. No trace, sadly, of any family names on the headstones - but no matter. This did not diminish for me the sense of being in a unique spot that connected me directly to long-dead ancestors, whose DNA I carry in mine. I may not share the faith but I spent a long time in the churchyard at Ninebanks; it felt familiar, it felt like home. 

As I was leaving, I struck up a conversation with someone who now lives at what was once the schoolhouse (to the right of the picture). 

  

Ninebanks is, he confirmed, a very special place. 

"It must have been difficult, " I said, "for my great-great-grandmother to leave such a beautiful spot."

"But life here 200 years ago was very hard indeed," he replied. And he was right. We have to remember the social and historical context of those genealogical ties.

The church and the old schoolhouse (a plaque listing former scholars who fought in World War I has been moved to the church):

 

 and this post box dating from Queen Victoria's reign: 

 

 are a short distance from the rest of the village:

 

This is where you will find an example of one of the ancient buildings for which the English and Scottish borders are famous, a Pele tower, dating from the early 16th century. This was almost certainly a watch tower, designed to give advance warning of impending raids by the notorious Border Reivers.

 

It was hard to leave and I would have stayed longer but my next stop beckoned, which would take my family connections back a further 200 years. Or so I hoped. 

But not before I picked up a card for this, Isaac's Tea Trail, which might just be something to think about for the future and for which one almost certainly needs to be super fit . . .

The extraordinary comfort of aunties and Twix bars

The Edinburgh Boy and I are now back from our travels - to the Midlands, the Lake District and various points north. I would have posted as we travelled but our ultimate destination was a surprise party in East Lothian, so I was not allowed to reveal anything in advance.

But a journey north meant that I could visit my beloved Auntie Rene, whom I write about here, who lives with her daughter in Derbyshire. Rereading that previous post from last November serves as a reminder of what a traumatic year it has been for them. She is now much recovered but the attack on her grandson, Michael, has left its mark.

Michael was 29 at the time, had a good job in the banking industry, and was enjoying a quiet evening out with two female work colleagues when two young men started to harass his companions. He asked them politely, because he is a polite, gentle young man, to stop. Their response was to launch an assault so violent that he suffered a fractured skull and brain haemorrhage and was left for dead. 

As a result Michael was away from work for six months and his head injuries have led to memory loss and reduced concentration; he still has flashbacks and, for the time being, can only work part-time. His life has changed irrevocably. The assault was captured on CCTV and his 19-year-old attackers were arrested shortly afterwards and brought to trial. They were sentenced last week: both received two years' youth custody.

I imagine that most people's reaction to that sentence will be similar to mine.

But if anyone can help Michael's recovery, it will be Auntie Rene, whom I can only describe as one of life's natural Buddhists - calm, kind, gentle, warm and loving. She has that rare ability of making you feel, when you are with her, that there is no-one else she would rather be with and nowhere else she would rather be.

Despite all that had been happening in their lives, Auntie Rene and my cousin Margaret - and their dog Sooty - made us so welcome. We had a proper high tea, straight from childhood, with salad and strawberries and ice cream, and then mugs of steaming hot tea served with Twix bars. The dogs romped in the garden and I felt about eight years old again, until Margaret reminded me of some of our misdemeanours when we were London teenagers in the 1960s. Oh dear. 

And suddenly we're OAPs, walking our dogs together. How did that happen?

*****

It was the first time since I visited India in 2008 that I'd had the opportunity to sit down with Auntie Rene and show her the photos of the army barracks in Kirkee (now Khadki), near Pune, where her grandmother (my great-grandmother), Elizabeth, had been born in 1839 and which had been home to Elizabeth's parents from the early 1820s.

 

And that's when my 91-year-old aunt had her lightbulb moment. 

"I remember now," she said, "I remember, when I was a little girl, the grown-ups used to talk about India. I didn't know why at the time and later on I often wondered but I never thought to ask."

Now, at last, she does know why.

It was such a special visit that I completely forgot to take any photos but here's a favourite, taken a few years ago at one of our family reunions: Auntie Rene with one of my many cousins, her youngest niece, Alison. They were talking about Alison's much-loved late mother and, as always, our aunt had found exactly the right words.

 

A couple of days later the Edinburgh Boy and I were on our umpteenth walk, across the fells in Cumbria, soaked to the skin yet again. I reached in my pocket and found one of the Twix bars that Auntie Rene had insisted I take for the journey. Extraordinarily comforting.