A mangled thought was straightened at the sink, pressed through the rollers of the past, after a pitying self was dubbed and scrubbed, a foul mouth full of soap.
Spangles, small squares of colour no longer sold, sucked into antiquity, and the penny chew pulls at sugar dipped rhubarb crunching teeth.
Lasting memories in the mind of some, but not the young.
Our minors, the rays spearing the clouds, the sun indoors, the innocents, are saved from flying punishment, the blackboard dusters, the duster busters. They will never hear or feel the crack of leather against their hand, will never need to scratch out words with chalk on slate, or sweep a chimney.
I’ll be round soon gran, I’m going on zoom, the text message says, then three smiley face emojis. Will she ever groan like her grandmother does, on rising, or dance around the lavender polished piano, chopsticks beating time, or iron her towels and pants. All fingers and thumbs granny texts back, a simple Ok no full stop. She can’t find the full stop.
If a child’s circulatory system is pressed out on a table, capillaries, veins, arteries and all, there would be a throbbing line 60,000 miles long, so says the Franklin Institute. Her grandmother’s circulatory system is longer, stretched with age. Does her grandmother’s heart still flutter like a butterfly or is it just angina?
Are landlines becoming a thing of the past, like outside toilets, Ceefax, smoking on aeroplanes, punctuation, steam trains, benevolence, lucky tatties?
She has the luck of the spiced coated lump contained in her grandmother’s lucky bag. She has a heart that flutters with excitement, lips pouring laughter into the air, and a Woman’s Realm granny.
She’s never seen a typewriter, a Dictaphone, an adding machine, a dummy waiter, never worn a real fox stole, or climbed a tree.
Her grandmother must eat her dinner at 5 o’clock every night, wear a shower cap in the bath, change her corn pads regularly, wear her tights with bunion shaped sandals. Bones don’t stretch with age, but they harden, the density of which is difficult to take.
She learns that Sudan has more pyramids than Egypt. 255 to 138. Her mummy won’t have it. She experiences a pandemic. Not the Spanish Flu, but a 21st century bug. A killer, like war. She should never experience war, but she sees the world is skating close to the edge of it.
Her grandmother’s lined cheeks are pink with the heat, the heat of the busy mother of her mother. The doorstep is wet, and soapy, the brass door knob shines, a sparkling letter box awaits correspondence. A letter from America. Communicating with others is optional, but talking soothes. Her grandmother knows war, she knows sadness, death, and loneliness.
Can a washing machine be a twin tub, a hosing in and a hosing out, a whirl and a twirl, all squeezed dry? The pulley parries surfaces, dangles long-johns and corsets, secret clothing bared in the good clean air.
Mangled thoughts pressed out, rollers curl toes, rows and rows and rows of idiosyncrasies, the old and the young, ancestral sharing, energising, resurrecting, listening, caring.
The sky is a thick grey blue, the sun shining through it from the east. A blanket waiting to be thrown off, as the rays strengthen. Birds, the little ones, have been murmuring for two hours now, maybe more, my eyes wishing to stay closed, not to risk awakening my mind. The tree outside the window is still bare, thick arms, reducing to twiggy fingers the higher they rise. Birds are hidden, by their colour, the same washed-out camel colour of their arbours. One bird rattles out notes, like rapid machine fire, another two-toned tweets. Is there danger around. A cat perhaps, out for its morning institutional.
All the little birds flit from branch to telephone wire, to guttering, back to tree. Their energy is boundless, their movements fast. Whereas the pigeon, plods around, low, keeping to the ground mostly, occasionally flapping those wings and rising to a higher level. The shrub which homes flying fairies and a bird feeder. The little birds can clip their claws between the wire mesh of the holder, but the pigeon is not so agile. She has a feather, at her wing side, which hangs lower than the rest. She’s been damaged I’m guessing, suddenly remembering the pigeon that flew into the bedroom window last year, falling to the garden room roof, dazed, but alive.
Nature is beautiful. I’ve always loved living creatures, from mice, to hairy dogs, to the broadside of the fiercest looking bull. The world holds a gigantic array of living beings and this time of year, it is springtime, more and more are born. Lambs will appear soon, if they’re not already frolicking in the fields with their mother, birds line nests, beaks agape, accepting worms and grubs from mother, human babies as well are being born, the daily statistic of which escapes me.
My mother, she was born on this day ninety-one years ago, in the year of ’31. A beautiful little girl, feisty and independent, growing up into a beautiful woman with a mind of her own. My mother, our mother, there are three children born of this woman, was small in stature, but she had the largest curiosity for life. If there be a question needing asked, she asked, and asked, and asked. She wanted to know everything. Where were you last night, who with, how did you get home, did you have on clean underwear, in the early years, to where are they going, do you think he’s living in there, what are they getting done in the house, is she buried under the patio?
They speak of the circle of life, and it is true. We come from seed, are born, grow and are nurtured. Those that are born, and are grown, go on to have their own young, and as their young grow, age descends in a puff of white. The elderly community is snuck aside, cared for, pitied, until death takes them and they join the nature from where they came, at the same time as more and more beings and creatures are born.
The lucky ones, the ones with the largest curiosities, the feisty ones, as well as the indifferent, the timid, all will be remembered, and their circle of life will go on, round and round, with the chirping birds, the foresting squirrels, the neighbour’s cat and the lambs, who are on their way.
I’ve written this on the back of a lesson on Mindfullness and Wellbeing. My take on how to cope with the lows and the highs. The worries and the woes.
Every day now since the beginning of the pandemic, I’ve felt moments of dread, I’ve been loath to rise from my warm bed, my place of safety, even if it’s not always my place of slumber, nightmares and bad dreams swilling inside my skull. I open my eyes, look out at the daylight and I shut my eyes again. Relax. I hear the murmur of the traffic and I try to imagine a running river, feel the spray from the current touch my cheek.
The clock ticks, and I’m a child again, restrained into quiet time on the living room sofa, mindfulness and wellbeing recognised even back then. The quiet time being for my mother’s benefit of course, but it paid off. She stayed sane. The dawning sunlight warms the right side of my face as I check out the insides of my eyelids, where a lone eyeball expands and contracts, checks me out. My shoulders feel tense, and I realise my teeth are clenched, the taste of my night terrors on my lips, and a constant buzzing perforates my ears. This sound, a lone piper playing, a skirling, birling squeal, is unfixable. It’s my buzzing and I have to embrace it.
Like I’ve been trying to embrace my other condition. Germ phobia. Outwardly I don’t fear contracting diseases, but inwardly, I can’t get rid of the fear that was driven into us at the height of the pandemic. It’s been plunged so deep I can’t expel it. I cannot cough it up, splash it unceremoniously into the spittoon. It’s rooted. A defiant residue of my fear for my mother.
I still dodge dragon vapour breaths and cuddly people. I step back from close proximity. My hands are dry and prunish from too much washing or sanitising. And buses are fun. I can brave a bus journey but when forced to sit next to another body I’m like a poker with a slight lean towards the aisle, avoiding body contact. It doesn’t matter that it could be the puffer mad Mitchellin man I’m sitting next to, touching only layers of padded material, STILL, please do not touch me. Eye contact too, I avoid. I’m masked, cloaked and daggered. When I pause for a moment and think about it, I may always have been like this, the pandemic the ideal excuse to play it out to full effect.
Throughout it all I’ve written and this has helped. I’ve written down my innermost thoughts. Thoughts I couldn’t say out loud for fear of opposition or alienation. But writing is a solitary aid. I’ve walked amongst the trees also, another solitary pastime. I’m attracted towards the trees when suffering throws out its clouts. Being amongst the trees I’m alone, but solitude is my emollient, only the tiny little beasties to hear me rage, sending them scurrying with all their little legs under bark strips, leaves, rocks.
So, this morning after a slow start, I have a word with myself. I look to the left shoulder and I say, ‘self, you really must do something about this behaviour.’ Then I look to my right shoulder and say ‘You’re damn right I do.’ After one hundred squats and fifty press ups, showering, cleaning my teeth for three minutes, laying the toothbrush in the cupboard out of toilet spray contact, dress, dry my hair, moisturise, dress, I’m ready to go.
I drive to Dobies. It’s a Garden Centre not too far from my home. The shop is stocked with lovely little gifts which will take me out of myself. I look around at the landscape, to ease some tension, the landscape I passed many times with my mum. We came here a lot. I’m soon there and I cannot help but look across at the disable bays where latterly I used to park. I step out the car and walk towards the entrance. The house plants, ceramic pots, bamboo chairs, baskets, cushions, scented reeds, books, floral wellies, food store, and cafe. That’s where we sat with our tea and our scone, and our unhinged chat. It hits me like a punch in the gut. Everywhere I look, I’m reminded of the woman who introduced me to quiet time. My eyes fill. I will them back as I often do.
Let’s have a look at the summer houses we never managed to reach, too far for my mum to walk. They are tempting, but one a bit further afield than my back garden would be preferable. Say a beach hut, or a mountain lodge, a chalet by the loch. Alone. Beyond the summer houses there’s a pond with ducks. Three of them, peacefully paddling in their own ripples, comfortable in a two’s company, three is a crowd scenario. They swim backwards and forwards, nothing too urgent calling them. Beyond the pond fields upon fields, crawling with nature.
I leave empty handed and make for the car where the tears eventually show face, pooling up inside my sun specs. Sometimes that’s all you need to do. Cry. I drive home. I give in, forget my busy life, forget the busy, crazy world around me, forget madmen and dour men, illness, death and dying and I lie down, alone with my thoughts. Sometimes, it’s as simple as putting on that it’s all about me blindfold, breathing deep lavender snuffles, and spilling the heavy load.
International Women’s Day is today, the 8th March, the year of 2022. Every year has a theme, and this year’s theme is gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow. I don’t have a theme as I write and this is not an examination of the whys and wherefores or the politics of IWD, but merely the reflections of a woman.
I’ve always liked being a woman, and have never suffered any serious inequality. There’s a word being used frequently today, a word I’m not a fan of, which is the word misogyny. It tires the jowls too much. Well, I haven’t suffered too seriously under this either. Now, chauvinistic tendencies are a different story. This is a word which was bandied about a lot in my era. Shhht. Pretend you didn’t read that. Of course, I’m not of this era. Let’s just say I’ve heard tell of it being the in word in the sixties and seventies. Yeah, bring it on Margaret Thatcher, I’d have shouted, if this had been my era. ‘I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end,’ said she. Good for her. Patience has never been my virtue.
Imagination is one of my good points, depending on the place my imagination takes me. Here and now, I wonder about being a suffragette, in another life. Crying out with my colours of green, white and purple, asking only for the vote. That’s all. Hanging from railings, marching with banners, being beaten down by the bobbies and the courts. I can’t really say I would have done any of that and I don’t even have the excuse of not being the marching type, as I’ve marched down my town’s high street, many a time, in time to the beat of a drum. Perhaps I’m just too shy, a don’t cause a scene girl. And yet, I would stand on the highest of podiums to applaud these women from years gone by.
In my mind’s eye I’m back at school, when things were a bit segregated. Boys got woodwork and metalwork and girls got cookery and needlework. I must say I’d have preferred woodwork, even although my lentil soup was pretty awesome, as was the nightie, made in sewing class. A crinkle cotton white with tiny blue flying birds, kept me decent at bedtime, shall we say. I’d never make another nightie again in my adult life however, but there have been pots and pots of lentil soup, so it’s not all bad. My favourite subjects thankfully were open to both sexes. Music and English. Have I made a living from them? English, I’d say so. I had to speak it in an interview and write it to apply. I got the job. I’ve yet to make the big-time playing trumpet.
It’s only in the autumn of my life that I’ve begun writing prolifically, having always written from a young age. Shall I make a living from it? I keep trying. Perhaps I’m more patient than I thought. ‘For most of history Anonymous was a woman,’ said Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) a writer of the 20th century. An avantgarde writer and member of the Bloomsbury Group. She started up Thursday evening meetings in her home, with her sister Vanessa who was an artist, their brother Thoby joining them, bringing along some of his Cambridge University champions. The result a coalescence of artists writers and intellectuals, talking, debating, putting the world to right. How romantic a thought and wildly interesting? I can see how this would be a garner of inspiration. Men and women working together.
‘I am no bird and no net ensares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.’ Charlotte Brontё, English novelist and poet (1816-55). This is a quote said by her character Jane, in her novel Jane Ayre, some may say an early example of the feminist novel. I’ve never been an active feminist but I hold feminist values. I believe in women, as I believe in men. All equal. Women should not be held back by their sex. A woman doing the same job as a man should be on the same level of remuneration, any such pay rises or bonuses being attributed to their skills and competences in the job. I always felt the company I worked for were fair in this way, but I left to have a baby, and on returning some years later, didn’t dwell on equality. I was busy parenting, as well as earning some money and I was happy.
We’ve come a long way from the times of Charlotte Brontё and Virginia Woolf, from our great grandparents, grandparents and mothers, and even from when I was a young mother, leaving the workplace to watch my babies, but still there are improvements to be made. For everything in life there is the possibility of improvement. If we don’t have balance we topple. Here’s to women and the ecological advancement of equality. Here’s to green and purple and to white.
Winter has stretched its icy fingers far into February, but has eased for now, hardy snowdrops popping up through the grass. The ground is soft as there’s been a lot of rain and daffodil stems appear. A fenced garden homes a mass of purple and yellow crocuses in a cheerful floral chorus, and sparrows etch footprints in the earth.
On the way out of town, it’s uneven, hilly, flat, and sprawling, the fields spreading their tentacles of greenery across the landscape, mellowing the mind. Sheep graze in the pastures, crows call from the fringe of trees. Squirrels are disturbed by my dainty thudding, the swish of my arms swinging against my jacket, my heavy breath, as I trudge up the slight rise in the land, and they scurry to the nearest tree, their feet clinging on to the wispiest of branches, as they jump from one tree to another, higher and higher.
The scent of pine crisps the air, clears the nasal passages, their fallen needles soft underfoot. As I walk, I’m in a passageway of tall pines, a green den, dry and secretive, all worry and anxiety combed from my hair as I go. It’s another world. A tree world, the home of foxes, rabbits, field mice and the squirrels. I’m alone, but I don’t feel lonely. It’s deafeningly quiet, my ears buzzing with life like the teddy bear squeak of the buzzard as it chases the cackling magpies, the rushing burn, constant in the background.
A stile stands on ceremony at the end of the wooded walk and I climb over it into a field. As I reach the top of a ridge and look back down towards the trees, I see the perfect portrait. A deer stands, nose in the air, sniffing for humans. If the wind is blowing her way, she will catch scent of me. I stand as still as the deer and I look. That’s all I want to do, to look at this illusive animal of the wild. But then I capture her in my lens and click.
My heart slows then races as the deer senses me and hops across the field, over the bordering fence and out of sight into its life in the trees. Calmed and rejuvenated I walk back to my life, more able to face and dispel worry.
So, I’ve not written in my writer’s journal for some time, I’ve been somewhat disillusioned with my composition skills. You know that way when you think, wow, that’s great writing, so witty and clever, and then you realise you’ve been on the fantasy juice. Like while working on negative traits, I chose melodramatic as a negative characteristic trait? I mean how do you portray melodrama? Have you ever tried it? I regretted choosing it immediately. Then I thought I know how to do it, but all I did was internalise some dramatic thoughts. I hate this. It’s rubbish. Ok, so if that’s an example of melodrama, I need to go away and think on it some more. I’m a little like Primo Levi – I need to ‘let it pass through the filter of reflection’ first. It can be a sloooowww process.
Quickly on the back of negative traits I’m having to overcome the unreliable narrator. I mean, sounds bad, does it not. No one wants to be unreliable, unworthy, wrong. The thing is, we come across these unreliable narrators in every day chit chat, for example – the two men passing at the paper shop. ‘How are you today, Bob?’ ‘I’m marvellous Tam,’ says Bob, eyes red tinged, dark shadows under his eyes, his face a pallid white. The guy is obviously in need of some medical treatment. Or, the man to his wife. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ ‘Nothing,’ she says, the decree nisi hidden underneath her magazine. The dog walker with the barging, snarled tooth Rottweiler. ‘He won’t touch you,’ he says in a wee fairy voice, the dog at your throat. I’d like to add a caveat here for Rottweiler lovers. It’s not the dog but the owner at fault.
You see what I mean? It’s not easy trying to be a writer, trying to put all this in to a novel or a short story in the right way. Done wrong and an editor will say unreliable author, never mind any such unreliable narrators. ‘It’s crap,’ they’ll say. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. How the hell can her laptop respond by locking her out of Microsoft just because she’s typed the word Stalin in a word document, followed by the phrase The Great Escape and German War camp. Have you ever heard the likes?’
So, you see my dilemma? Next step Mindfullness. Now there’s a theme I could get to grips with. How about I delve into the pluses of going back to the simpleness of childhood, and a chapter on How to Climb a Tree Without Breaking Your Neck. Or Yoga Wine Parties. Walking in the Woods with your Vigilante 130 and some pepper spray. How exciting.
Ok, enough of writing for now, my favourite programme is coming on. Would I Lie to You? Now here are six prime examples of unreliable narrators. I must take stock. I might even get s story out of it. Right, I’m out of my doldrums and I’m back on track. Watch this space.
Ochre curtains drape themselves upon the scene, a fire burns in the grate. There, she stands, hand out in greeting, head at least twelve inches lower than the chiefs she welcomes, gold braid and lapels singing on ceremony. I’m stiff, her actions say, while sporting a coiffure of grace. She wears a dress and shoes, pearls at her throat, taking the eye from her skin, no one noticing the paper wrinkles.
Chairs are placed beside her, formulated for speech and recognition. Tea and biscuits will arrive, and the threesome will thrive on words of culture. There’s a camera crew taking photos. This must be logged. A life recorded. Headliners, no matter you only want peace. That’s not to be. Commitment is hers and that commitment must be cut in lasting images. A smile is required. Always a smile, except when it’s not. Some situations demand solemnity and then is it perhaps easier? Is it easier to frown than smile? Her eyes display show, not tell treaties. Light is in them but the soul remains locked apart, for her interpretation only. And yet one doesn’t look unapproachable. One may approach dignity with dignity, with permission granted. Only ever then.
Hear, hear says the new defence services secretary. It’s an honour. Only those present know what’s said, but it will be noted in the history manuals. Those will scribe discourse. They will allow future people, people still to be born, people who wish to look back to realise the nature of this era, to know how it was. Is it so that time brings clarity? Hindsight brings vision. What will we learn from this? I think we will learn about commitment, patience, strength of will, steadfastness, duty. May we also learn of scarcity? Scarcity of public solidarity. Distance must prevail.
I begin with a quote from Felix Mendelssohn – ‘Though everything else may appear shallow and repulsive, even the smallest task in music is so absorbing, and carries us so far away from town, country, earth, and all worldly things, that it is truly a blessed gift of God.’ This quotation can also be linked, in my eyes, to art and writing, or to anything really which a perceiver or player is passionate about. Here’s another quotation – ‘A jack of all trades is a master of none.’ This has the possibility of making one feel inferior. One who has a hobby rather than a vocation. One who has more than one hobby, who’s skills and time is split between pastimes. However, if you read out aloud the full quotation, which is – ‘A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.’ In other words, we can’t all be masters, but this doesn’t bring disadvantage.
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Is your grown-up persona sprung from schooldays? A trickling brook of ideas and passions widening as it flows? In school, I was in the netball team, the hockey team, the cross-country team, the school orchestra, the choir, the gymnastic team, the swimming team. I jumped from one to another with boundless energy, becoming master of none. What I did become, was outgoing, a team player, could play an instrument, could sing, (not now, whoaaa, no way would you want to hear me sing now), built up stamina, kept out of mischief.
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The house is at its best when it is full of life. I live in a three-bedroom house, with floored attic, which sags with shelves upon shelves of books, pages and pages of words, fictional, factional, educational, romantical, crying out to me, in the night, when I wake with ideas, or dreams, the latest one a phone call with my mum. ‘Oh, and just before I go,’ she says, ‘your grandad had blue eyes.’ That I had been toying with the idea of emailing my uncle, to ask if he could remember what colour of eyes my grandad had, coming immediately to me. My grandsons come to stay or visit from time to time, and it’s then the house really comes alive. It’s when I move. Otherwise, I’m attached to a laptop, in whatever corner of the house is the warmest, while the dishes soak, the washing in the machine lies crumpled, cold, whining to get out, to be hung and dried.
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There’s a bird feeder in my garden, hanging from my Red Robin shrub. The birds aren’t around right now. The winter days here in my town have been bleak. Out the front I see gulls, or wood pigeons, and a magpie who’s stolen the wood pigeon’s nest. It’s in the beech hedge belonging to my neighbour, and I see it brushing through the branches. I haven’t noticed my blackbird yet. I await patiently to greet it.
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Looking back historical references to my town, I see numerous references to the Silver Band. It appears to have been entertaining the residents since around 1835. I have a photo in mind of the band marching past St Mungo’s Church, and people gathering to listen. In those days there were no speed bumps or horse shit to avoid, while marching through the town.
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Once upon a time I regretted my traits. I was a social but competitive butterfly, chasing the blackbird, never succeeding in being the best. My head was filled with the sweet scent of romance, the budding friendships, the growing stem of learning and the petals of participation. As a youngster, apart from all the sporting activities, I had an affinity for music and writing. I was in the school band, and wrote diary entries and stories. The writing came as a result of reading. I loved to read, to be carried out of my mediocre self to another world, where I was the heroine, and after each good book I thought, I wish I’d written that. Work and motherhood kept me away from both these things, although I did write when I was troubled. After I had my first child, I may have suffered slightly from post-natal depression, and then my dad died. I dipped my heart into jotters at those times.
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Mid-seventies an office job was considered a good job. Not being confident enough to grab a job in The Scotsman offices I began in the Financial Industry, a job I stayed in until recent retirement (early) except for the odd stray into cleaning, bar, shop assistant, reception duties, after becoming a mother. Independence was important to me, and ordinary jobs, not being the master of anything, still provided me with money. It’s funny how life pulls you down, birls you around, and then flings you up again, into a companionable mistral, landing you back on the flower head you once adorned.
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A boat trip with my most accommodating mother sees me making my way to Staffa, in The Hebrides. We boarded a Caledonian MacBrayne ferry to Mull, travelled by bus to a small bay where we climbed onto a small boat, seats up each side. We could almost touch the sea with our hands. The waves were rough, so a caveat was reeled off. We hummed along with the gulls, before deciding we would risk it. All fine if you like watery undulations, small boats, and cold salty sea spray peppered over you. All this because I’d learnt about Felix Mendelssohn in school while studying music. I remember finding out how he was inspired to compose his concert overture named The Hebrides, also coming to be known as Fingal’s Cave, on one of his trips to the British Isles, in 1829, visiting the Island of Staffa. He was said to have started writing the opening theme at first sight of the Island’s dramatic formation. I wonder if the geography of the land made him gasp? I did. I flapped internally with emotion, my heart leapt, and dipped with the waves as we headed to shore. How could my eighty-year-old mother manage this? It’s fine if you’re fit for getting off in Staffa, if you can manage the climb over large slabs of layered rock, then balance on the narrow rock path, to the mouth of the cave. There are ropes to hang onto in the event of a sudden loss of equilibrium, but you need to think quick, grab on in time, or it’s a cold dip in the sea, a swim with the seals, or a broken hip on the rocks, at low tide. To some it’s just a cave. To me it’s a cavern of emotions, the memory of a young romantic girl, studying music. A lonely class, only she and two others. Was it this trip which sent me back to the band? Or was it simply an urge to recreate my happy schooldays?
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There is a room where I leave out my trumpet and my cornet, in sight, bell to the floor, to remind me to practice. If I want to improve, I must oil the tubes with my spit, I must rumble the keys, blow air through and play to my heart’s content. Once I begin, I’m off the scale. I hear or see nothing but my music and my sounds. Writing or music, what do I perfect? I’m trying as best as I can with both. I’m forever the butterfly chasing the blackbird.
The sunlight filters through the arch of bare branches, and I worship their knotted and gnarled beings. They are the lucky ones, the ones not to have tumbled in the storms. A blanket of moss moulds itself under my favoured feet, as surely, they are privileged to be able to walk in this dell, the flavour and the scent of pine crisply pointing out a cluster of ever greens. A goldfinch whistles then trills high above me, his call to friends echoing far off, lingering around the shivering leaves of a rhododendron.
Winter is fading, slowly, icy fingers tapping knowledgably. Is winter knowledgeable? Does it have insight into when and where it goes? I don’t suppose it does, but for now, in my head, winter is shaking a finger, saying, don’t throw off your padded jackets, your hats and scarves just yet. I am not done with you. The trees grumble and creak, their roots gripping in for dear life. It’s during these wanderings I see a tree with a red cross on it. Is this an old tree, diseased tree, dodgy unstable tree? Is this tree for the chop? It’s a process known only to the landowner, forester and logger. If I pay attention, however, while out and about, I may discover which colours mean what to this particular landowner. One day I’ll pass and this red painted tree will be gone.
I move on from the archway of trees, the tangled, broken and strewn branches littering the ground and I come upon the church. A truncated square plan Rogue Gothic Church built in the late 1800’s, short columns, tall pointed arches, a tower, rugged stones. At the front of the church there are two high archways, within which there is an outside space, perhaps to shelter in the rain, somewhat like the external arched corridors found in ancient university buildings. Above the arched area there are three Celtic designed windows and above those are large arched stained-glass windows and then another array of Celtic designs. Its power is notable. It’s a fairy tale church, setting my mind to flutter.
I see an apparition under the arches. A beautiful bride, alone, looking miserable, on this, her wedding day, her pure white dress covered in lace, revealing a slender waist, her veil not quite hiding her nose. Is she jilted? She looks lost within the thick columns, the solid stonework, the bricks. Her nose is red with the cold. It is still winter, winter told us. Don’t be fooled by the sun. Is she in her right mind, getting married in winter? Perhaps that’s it. The girl isn’t in her right mind. Is it the spot demoralising her chin? A spot on a maiden, not plagued by spots. Nerves must have pushed this one to the surface, postulating tension. Love, honour and obeyance is no light task. The vision in white fades into the cracks and pores of the bricks, chased by a fan of dog’s breath.
Heel, I hear someone shout, and a woman and her dog approach. It’s a collie. A beautiful black dog with a white breast, and intelligent eyes. It knows to obey, but it does so in its own time, after circling a hedge once or twice, then sniffing the dampened leaves. I say hello to the woman and then with a little more emphasis on the o ending, I say hellooo to the dog. I often greet dogs. Dogs that deserve to be greeted of course. Not all do. Like wise with humans. Talk about arched? The arched backs, of some you come across is laughable. Is it, IS laughable, or ARE laughable? IS laughable looks ok, doesn’t it?
The church is on the main road into the town and I turn up the hill over the bridge crossing the river. I look over the parapet. This is a frequent occurrence for me. I like to see the river from this vantage point. That I can see into the gardens of some of the dwellings below is neither here nor there. I am not a nosy person. Is that a wood burning stove, and a wood pile? That’s new since I was last down this way. Their fence looks a bit worse for wear. Another casualty of the storms. Is this another brewing? My hair is whipping my face, my unzipped jacket acting like arched wings. I take-off, fly home.
Slept well. Rose. Left the house to meet my friend for coffee. It was a lovely morning, and the sun was out. Once in the car, and on my way, my peripheral vision was sparked by a black car, sidling up at my driver’s side. I was approaching traffic lights, on a road which only had one lane leading up to the junction, and I was thrown by this. He was flapping his hands, his passenger window down. I switched the button to roll down my window, looking in my mirror, conscious of the obstruction. He informed me one of my tyres looked wobbly, didn’t seem sure which one. ‘Oh,’ I said, my mind working overtime. ‘I’ll stop at Sainsbury,’ I said. ‘Just thought I should let you know,’ he said back, his forehead lined, his chin stubbled and his eyes bleary. I drove on, slowly, making no sudden turns, looking in my wing mirrors, listening for clanking, or grinding or something to indicate I was about to lose a tyre. I drove another five hundred yards before turning in at the Golf Course, worried about his reckoning. I kicked both the front and the back tyres, which were solid, kicked them again before continuing on my way. It was all pretty strange. Maybe it was his eye sight which was wobbly I thought, but continually checking my wing mirror and my rear-view mirror, checking, checking that my car wasn’t cracking up. Watch that bump in the road. Easy around that corner.
Once on the straight and narrow, and walking with my friend, it was pointed out that there were people about, waving cars down and committing crimes, stealing cars, handbags, or worse, kidnap. It was broad daylight. Surely not. This didn’t stop my mind throwing up visions of the guy with the bleary eyes sitting in the carpark at Sainsbury waiting for me. Yikes. Lucky escape.
After talk of the corrupt nature of people, various other subjects were discussed at my coffee morning, some with a high level of hilarity, subjects unfit even for the most secret of journals, so I’ll say no more. The world has gone crazy, and me with it, my only source of survival to laugh in the face of it. A big huge ha ha ha to the world and its craziness. Our laughter made a dog bark. We were at once charmed by a wagging tail and loose tongue. No kisses for me, don’t save your kisses for me. ‘Come on Fido, please keep your tongue to yourself. It might be good enough to disinfect your sore bits, but I’ll pass, thanks. It’s bad enough trying to avoid Covid, without contracting a zoonotic disease.’ What? I love dogs, they are so much simpler than us. And they’re not kidnappers. They don’t steel your handbag. ‘Hey, get your nose out of there.’ Would you believe it, Fido just stole my gloves?
The current news is discussed. The political pages. I go through all the MP’s and political people I don’t like. I’m not political, don’t have the back knowledge, the history of politics, don’t have the patience to read through everything written. No, my process is to look at a face, listen to their words, their mannerisms, and from there I make up my mind about them. I’ve never met them, but I dislike them, at least a handful of them, their arrogant, smarmy, bumptious faces looking up at me from one newspaper or another. I do the same with dogs. I look at their faces, I see their bared teeth, their glaring eyes, the raised hair on their backs, threatening pose and I think…run. No, I’m joking. I learnt young, from experience, never to run from a dog as it will chase you and bite you. It was a dwarf Pekinese, if I’m allowed to say that, with a big bite.
I watched a documentary recently. It was called The Center Will Not Hold. A profile of Joan Didion, directed by her nephew Griffe Dunne. Joan Didion was an American Writer. She died on the 23rd December last year, aged eighty-seven, so the documentary, for me, was like a farewell to Joan. She was awarded The National Medal of Arts and National Humanities in 2012 by President Obama. Joan mentioned during the documentary that she’d never considered herself into politics and yet, for example, she wrote about the US press coverage of Salvador’s internal war and then went there, to this dangerous country, to see for herself. Joan was a small woman, 5 feet tall, sitting out of the limelight, but came over as a blinding light in her writing. New journalism. She wrote for the papers and for magazines, made it personal, in the I voice, and her voice was loud.
I was truly inspired. I may not be particularly political, but perhaps I can still write about what I see and hear. I’ll study Joan Didion’s work, I say before another kick of my tyres. I leave for home.
Night falls. I relax into Question Time, knowing that the next day I’ll have forgotten all the pertinent points amongst the whimsical whirling of my mind, the thoughts of loose rolling tyres, of sociopathic decoys, of simply puzzling human behaviour.
Jimjan's Journal 