writing, not drowning

A writing prompt

It was the first day of term this week; at least it was for the delightful group of women who gathered on Wednesday morning for the opening session of my 10-week writing course here in Mid Devon. They had all attended at least one introductory workshop in the summer, so had some idea of what to expect, at least in terms of approach, although they don't know, until each session starts, quite what they will be writing. So, anticipation  is always tinged with a little apprehension. And, given that this is the first extended course that I have led, I too was balancing these twin feelings.

But, as the morning unfolds, pens begin to speed across the page, pages are filled and writing shared, and we begin to sense that growing satisfaction of a passion shared. I am already feeling immensely proud of them for their energy and commitment and, if this first session is anything to go by, we have a term of inspirational writing ahead.

Although I have already mapped out each session plan, I'm conscious that every member of the group will have their own writing aspirations, so there is some flexibility in the structure. And it turns out that what several members would welcome is - a session on blogging. 

Well, how could I presume to guide people through the whys and wherefores of blogging, when my own blog had lain fallow for such extended periods of time? It was a silent prod; each week I send a writing prompt to my students, those in the group and those whom I mentor individually, via Skype. Now, here, in the room where we gather each week, I was receiving a writing prompt for myself.

So that's it. Must try harder. Must return to regular blogging and responding to thoughtful comments and and to blog visiting, because that it what a polite, conscientious blogger does. Must remember why I started writing this blog almost seven years ago and consider what, if anything, had changed in that time. Quite a lot, as it happens, but not, I think, the desire to communicate. It's just that life, including the challenging and potentially scary stuff, has a habit of getting in the way at times . . . which is what I tell myself until I remember that habits are simply learned behaviour and can therefore be changed.

A few years ago, when I was working on one of my last professional contracts, before I threw in the towel to concentrate on other things (ie writing for myself rather than for other people), I was attending an education awards evening at the Science Museum and chatting to a colleague. He had commissioned work from me when he had been a vice-principal of one of London's leading further education colleges and subseqently principal at two others. Somehow the phrase 'a passion for education' or maybe it was 'a passion for learning' came into the conversation and it turned out to be a thorny subject for him. 'I can't bear that phrase,' he said. It was, in fact, the word 'passion' to which he objected. I can't remember why, although I'm sure - given his impressive intellect - that he had a sound reason for this but I do remember feeling rather puzzled and a little sad about it at the time.

I don't think there is anything wrong in having a passion for something, well, certainly not something as worthwhile as learning. Because, if you do have a specific passion, it frequently goes hand in hand with wanting to share that passion and this is how I feel about writing. It's what I do and what I love and although writing this blog is just one of the outlets I have for that passion, it has always had a particular significance for me as it has enabled me to write anything I wish about anything I wish, from the personal to the political, from the seemingly inconsequential to the rather bigger stuff.

Meanwhile, I had one of those demi-milestone birthdays last weekend and, while I don't exactly leap up and down with unalloyed joy as yet another year is added to the tally, I do tend to take stock on my birthday. And, if appropriate, I make a quiet resolution, and sometimes several, for the coming year. As it happens, my birthday also coincides with having undergone that first, surgical step to vanquishing breast cancer (AKA on this blog as the Massive Inconvenience) two years ago.

As far as I know - because I haven't yet had my second annual check-up as the hospital is behind with appointments again - I remain happily cancer-free, fit and well, which pushes concerns, such as a much diminished income in my third age, into the shade. I learned a good deal on my journey to recovery and one of the things I have learned and now understand more fully, having always just nodded in its direction, is the importance of doing what you love and loving what you do. So I had better get on with it, the writing that is, and the blogging and, above all, encouraging others to write.

Come on in, the water is lovely.

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.

Blessings

I'm not usually lost for words but found myself struggling to find anything to write about this Christmas. As a family, the usual midwinter celebrations were overshadowed by the loss of one of my nephews a fortnight ago and his funeral a week later. He would have been 50 today, Christmas Eve. I was in my brother's home the day my nephew was born - in his parents' bedroom - and held him in my arms when he was less than an hour old.

Many tears were shed at his funeral, not least by his two stunningly beautiful teenage daughters, but afterwards, when friends and family gathered to celebrate his life, there were smiles and laughter. There were tales of one escapade after another and how he had made us laugh, often. His oldest friend sent a wonderful tribute from the USA, where he now lives - a string of hilarious anecdotes from their growing-up years. 'He was,' said the friend, 'the funniest man I ever knew.'

And that, I thought, was quite a legacy.  

* * * * *

Festive preparations were, inevitably, sidetracked. I was already planning to spend Christmas with my family in the Chilterns but had to bring my departure date forward by four days to attend the funeral. Only when I unpacked did I realise how distracted I had been, with lists, presents, addresses, suitable clothes and much else besides left behind in Devon. Heigh-ho. It was not the end of the world. And at least I managed to remember to put the Mr C, the cat, and the Edinburgh Boy in the car.

My daughter and son-in-law worked right up until Friday evening, so I have spent the past week being mamma in the kitchen, cooking hearty meals for the returning workers. Tomorrow my son-in-law takes over at the stove, apart from pudding, which is down to me. But, as we are not keen on traditional fare like Christmas pudding, Christmas cake or mince pies - and as a non-meat eater turkey is also off the menu for me - I'm making  triple chocolate brownies from Isidora Popovic's Popina Book of Baking. They are utterly scrumptious but very rich so best saved for special occasions. There will be a touch of nostalgia for too, as Isidora's recipes take me back to our old home territory of Portobello Road, where she set up her first market stall ten years ago.

And then we will try very hard to unwind for a couple of days, before a round of visits to other members of the family and to friends.

Meanwhile, back in Devon, one of my canine guests, will be sporting the fruits of my crafting labours on Christmas Day, because, yes, I do make things - I knit and sew but tend not to write about my efforts because this isn't, by any stretch of the imagination, a domestic arts blog, of which there are very many - and a good many excellent ones. Anyway, I hope Little Miss P appreciates her present. For a small item, it was a bit of a pig to knit and I had to check on Ravelry to see if any other member had made it and whether they had also encountered problems. To which the answers were yes and yes - but one or two had posted useful tips and I just managed to finish the coat in time to gift wrap it and leave it under her owners' tree before I left for Christmas.

So here is Little Miss P having a final fitting and, could she speak,  I am sure that she, together with the Ednburgh Boy, would want to join me in wishing you the blessings of the season, wherever you are and whatever and however you are celebrating.  

Thank you for being such loyal readers during what has been something of an stop-start year for 60 going on 16. Next year, I hope to get back into my stride, thanks to the yoga and the choir and all . . . and the fact that at my (much-delayed) first annual post-Massive Inconvenience check-up, the consultant was delighted to tell me that I remain cancer free. Tomorrow, we might just be raising a glass to that.

Earlier today, I watched - as I do every year - the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College, Cambridge, and this year's festival included BC: AD by the late poet, U A Fanthorpe, read by a young undergraduate. Fanthorpe was a Quaker and this clever, thoughtful poem reflects her particular and quiet faith. Even though I do not follow the same path, I was drawn to its deceptive simplicity. As with all good poems, it presents us with the familiar in an unfamiliar way and is absolutely to the point. If Fanthorpe's poem is new to you, think of it as a virtual gift from me.

BC : AD

This was the moment when Before 

Turned into After, and the future's

Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

 

This was the moment when nothing

Happened. Only dull peace

Sprawled boringly over the earth.

 

This was the moment when even energetic Romans

Could find nothing better to do

Than counting heads in remote provinces.

 

And this was the moment

When a few farm workers and three

Members of an obscure Persian sect

Walked haphazard by starlight straight

Into the kingdom of heaven.

U A Fanthorpe 

November - and what I did about it

You can tell from the fact that I managed only one pathetic blogpost in November that it is not my finest month. In fact I wrote hardly anything of any description at all at all and stopped taking photographs. Oh dear. I could quite happily see November cast out of the calendar, except that three of my close friends have birthdays during the month, which go some way towards redeeming it.

I won't go into the reasons for November tending towards the grim and grey for me, you'll just have to take my word for it although, in recent years, it had become a little easier. Apart from the personal associations, the closing in of the days and winter on the horizon do not help. Well, they don't help if you are a 100 per cent summer person, who thrives on sunshine and light and warmth . . .

So, given that we had an unseasonably mild - and sometimes sunny - November, this year should have been better, right? Wrong. November 2011 hit me in the solar plexus like a champion heavyweight. For no apparent reason. Then, when I had just about reached my nadir, a much younger friend suffered a calamitous blow. She is the same age as my daughter, has a daughter herself, who is currently studying at one of the UK's leading veterinary colleges and, until 13 November, she had a husband to whom she had been married for a few days shy of 24 years. On 13 November, her much-loved husband suffered a massive cardiac arrest and died instantly. He was just 46.

We had become friends over the past couple of years through walking our dogs and she had sent me a text. Could we meet? She could do with a chat. So we met and she told me and we stood in the field, as the dogs raced around, clung onto each other and cried our eyes out.

'You know what it's like, don't you? she said. And I did. I do. 

Now, November is past; her husband has been laid to rest and we are staring the festive season in the face. We both agree that November might be a very good time to take a long holiday in the future.

So, that was the worst thing that happened in our here and now in November and, after that, I knew I had to take steps . . .

Which meant that I could have kissed the neighbour who asked me if I'd like to join the yoga class (with new teacher) at the village hall. My sort of yoga, hatha yoga, with an emphasis on breath and pausing between postures and relaxation and yoga nidra. I'd missed my class so much; it had folded about four years previously and the nearest (packed) class was eight miles away - and when the weather was at its most harsh, pretty well inaccessible. And then the Massive Inconvenience got in the way. Now I could walk to my yoga class. I went along and it was like coming home after a long, long time away.

The other thing I did to send a sort of 'yah boo sucks' message to November was to roll up for a taster evening with our local community choir, Exe Valley Voices. I could sit and watch and listen or, said the choir leader, Claire, if I was feeling brave, I could join in. Much to my surprise, I was up on my feet in no time, belting out Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah etc etc  - hovering somewhere between the basses (which had equal numbers of male and female singers) and the all-female altos. I'd always known, instinctively, that this was the correct pitch for me and, after more than 50 years of simmering resentment about my ghastly music teacher plonking me down, at the age of 12, with the sopranos - where I couldn't bring myself to sing a note - I finally felt vindicated. I love singing. Very much indeed.

Despite the joy of yoga and singing, which had helped enormously, I was still extremely glad when November was over. As we moved into December, the grey lid disappeared and I felt quite chipper and started noticing things again.

And these things have already included, yesterday, what has to be one of my best 'only in Devon' moments of the past 14 years. I was in our local post office at lunchtime; there wasn't a queue, it was fairly quiet and one of the counter assistants (whom we shall call Janice for the purposes of this post), was insisting that her colleague take her lunch break. I was having a forage through the greetings cards when a elderly lady stepped ino the post office, looked around rather furtively and then whispered at me 'Is Janice on her own? I need to see her about - er -something.' I said that I thought that she was.

A minute or so later, I turned back toward the counter where Janice was placing some tissues on the post office scales. The elderly lady had put a large brown holdall on the floor, from which she produced - a tortoise. And then carefully lifted the tortoise on the parcel scales.

'She brings him in to make sure that he's the correct weight,' said Janice, sotto voce.

I was quite entranced, having fond memories of my own childhood tortoise, Susan.

'What's his name,' I asked the owner.

'Sparky,' she replied, breaking into a shy smile.

Sparky was an exceptionally fine specimen of tortoisehood and was very alert and agile. I asked how old he was.

'Over 100', said his proud owner.

It was all I could do to tear myself away but, in any event, as soon as Sparky's weigh-in was over, he went straight back into the holdall. I didn't like to ask about hibernation . . .

I had better not mention the location of the post office as I suspect that Sparky's weighing sessions are a private arrangement between his owner and Janice and are probably in contravention of all sorts of health and safety regulations. Hence no happy snapping on my part.

Not Sparky, but Timothy who lived from 1839-2004, ending her (yes, her) days at Powderham Catle, here in Devon

December? Bring it on . . .