Better than Snow

Better than snow.

I was due a snow day. 

I had planned it very carefully. 

Tuesday night snow was forecast. 

There should have been several centimeters, all nicely frozen and turning the whole world into an ice rink. 

Wednesday was my day for teaching in a school which is dependent on buses and cars to transport its pupils in, and hence vulnerable to bad weather. 

Not only that, but I am one session ahead there, so if snow had closed the school, I would not even have had to catch up on work.

Yes sireee, Wednesday morning, I was planning to be returning to my warm bed with a mug of steaming coffee.

Imagine my desolation when, in my town, snow failed.  I looked out of my window and found myself hating the colour green.

 And not only did I have to go to school, but to add insult to injury, my exercise class too!

This Thursday, I am at home, so I didn’t care about the weather forecast.

Except when I looked out, there was a magical hoar frost, outlining every leaf and twig with white crystals.

I pulled on my boots and went for a walk. 

The zing of cold air and the gleaming transformation of the frosted countryside lifted my spirits.

By the pond, I spotted bullfinches and a rare water rail.

I could even get over missing my snow day.  Almost.

Winter’s Tales

I have this Winter fantasy of hibernation.  To sleep with the depth and twelve-hour commitment of a teenager in a soft, warm bed, lulled by the pattering of sleet on the window pane.

I do believe that once as a school girl, I spent an entire half term of relentless rain reading in bed. If only I could have known at the time what a rare and unparalleled privilege that was.

Ever since then there has always been Something To Do.

And my powers of slumber have also weakened. Given an eight-hour sleep opportunity I find myself only half submerged in shallow dreams.

So if I can’t doze the long winter nights away, I shall have to while them away with stories, as was once the tradition before TV.  Already this winter, I have read so many, including, inappropriately, The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson.

And this weekend, I shall take it a step further.  Together with my writers’ group, BeauSandVer Writers, we are gathering at nightfall and reading aloud eight tales in an hour at our wonderful local Oxfam Bookshop.  

Organising this event has been enough to wake even me up!

Please come along if you’re in the St Albans area.

Needlework for Intellectual Women

Newnham Iris Cafe

Last week, I was privileged to accompany my old friend Annabel O Docherty as she delivered her replica suffragist banner to Newnham College.  A welcoming committee of Henrietta, Lucilla, Laura and Harriet were there to receive it.

The original banner, once carried by our fore-mothers in suffragist marches a hundred years ago is now fragile and hangs in a hushed and climate-controlled case in the foyer of Newnham. Since it can no longer come out to play, Newnham commissioned a replica. 

However, it was women from BOTH the original Cambridge Women’s Colleges who stitched and carried the banner.  Like me, Annabel is an alumna of Girton College where the original banner is much missed and she had already used her considerable skills as a theatrical-costume-maker to create a stunning replica for them too (click through for story).

The approach that Annabel used in producing the replica banners demonstrates the benefits that women now gain from a Cambridge education, thanks to the pioneering efforts of those early students who fought not only for the vote, but also for degrees for women. 

Annabel had the research skills to re-discover lost stencilling methods, to identify, source and dye exactly the right fabrics and to piece together the technique for replicating the huge, ornate tassels which helped the suffragists to hold the banner steady on a windy day.

And in case you are wondering, her stitches were perhaps even more precise than those of a hundred years ago.

Girton Library

Newnham website: https://www.newn.cam.ac.uk/newnham-news/suffragists-banner-flies-again/?fbclid=IwAR1wOBg4l4Q5pz4Fl_O2e2W0AXIgd-GrE3QSfQKaRbC5H79i0_0k8HH_ZQQ

Girton website: https://www.girton.cam.ac.uk/news/1908-cambridge-alumnae-suffrage-banner-on-display-at-girton-college/?fbclid=IwAR2ViF7odlDCGl6r7I93LPXp211zD9FDB0TXyg0wV7S3hLJRAwcOT8UQ-AY

BBC News Cambridge Online: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-46862175?fbclid=IwAR0vSHbaPxvwJE-0R82f8rCertP0oMCwZghabddoxicOzUiFPOhebsnKtxg

BBC Radio Cambridgeshire (my bit is at the 1:40 mark, so scroll along the play bar) : https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06w10t7?fbclid=IwAR3gitxas481ydFEoaui7dg_qoRAnz-rH361UcoVrp7dk2KT23EfDBYryJ4 

Life after Christmas

I am now more than a week into 2019 and only finally today admitting that Christmas is over.

It is understandable – Christmas paraphernalia is lingering:

Drying in the porch, there are still the baubles we hung on the tree outside.

The last slab of Christmas cake is still crouching in the larder with an air of permanence.

So why is it today that Christmas is over?

It is because until yesterday, there was still one child at home, Pascoe.

And I realise too that I am timing the start of Christmas from Wednesday 19^th December when Pascoe arrived just in time for carols at the Swains.  Carenza and Perran followed soon after.

For me then, Christmas is defined by family – a chance to recreate both that first Holy Family, and also our own family, us and our three children.

We went for country walks, played charades, cooked together and even did a jigsaw. We watched telly in a row on the sofa. We drove in the overcrowded car to visit Grandma in Northumberland.

But now be we will be back to Skyping Pascoe in Edinburgh and the odd snatched meal with the twins in London.  And unlike the nativity scene that I have packed away in its box, our family will keep changing.

It may well be that, as partners and other families become interlinked with ours, we can no longer rely on Christmas for our annual family reunion.

But I’m thankful for the time we have just had. And grateful that I have children who, just by being there, were able to make it feel like Christmas, even when it wasn’t any more.

The Holly and the Ivy and the Echinacea

It’s dark and cold and we middle-aged women are run ragged by gift-buying, gift-wrapping, card-sending, and the purchase and preparation of food – while feeling guilty that we are not enjoying Christmas more.

Opportunist viruses patrol, eager to invade. 

As a teacher I can take my pick of virulent illnesses.  They are handed to me on exercise books, they await me on doorhandles.  Sometimes, they are sneezed right in my face.

So my favourite seasonal plant is not the holly, not the ivy, not the Christmas rose nor poinsettia.  It is a plant which blooms not in December, but in summer - echinacea.

It is extract of echinacea which boosts my immune system and wards off the seasonal colds.

Pascoe informs me this is stuff and nonsense.

But I am clinging to my beliefs.

Especially as Christmas is here and I don’t have a cold yet this year.

Obviously it meant that at Evensong at the Cathedral, I was unable to participate fully in “the annual festival of coughing”.

It also means that the impressive stocks of lemsip and cough sweets that I laid down are redundant.

Worst of all, it means I have to find a new excuse for the shortcomings of Christmas dinner.

But, otherwise, it’s a great improvement. 

So next year I shall be sending Christmas cards with an echinacea motif, weaving an echinacea door wreath and decking an echinacea Christmas tree.

Happy Christmas.

Advent – awe and wonder

This is the season of “spend! spend! spend!”, of ear-worm Christmas songs, of glitter and parties.  How can it also be Advent, a time of spiritual preparation, of meditation and fasting?

Personally, I have always suspected the early Christian fathers (NB Fathers, not Mothers) of making a planning error.

In midwinter we desperately need a festival of family and feasting.  In the short, dark days, we crave sparkle.

But the Christian forefathers scheduled our celebration of the birth of Christ in the same time slot as the ancient Roman mid-winter knees-up of Saturnalia, inheriting a tradition of excess.

Perhaps the holy day to contemplate the incarnation of the living God would have been better on a separate occasion.  After all, the few indications we have are that the birth of Christ did not take place in mid-winter – the shepherds would not have been out in the fields with their flocks then.

Each year I strive to provide ideal gifts and a delicious Christmas meal and to reassert our network of kinship and friendship by sending cards.  Each year it knocks my spiritual life sideways, just when it should be peaking.

However, this is the year when I had foot surgery and could not get out and about as I longed to.  So instead, I prepared a little Christmas gift for myself.  In the summer, secretively so as not to seem deranged, I began to make cards and accumulate gifts.

And now, just for once, I can see the stillness of Advent gleaming in the midst of the Christmas glitter storm.

“doing” family

Pascoe left for his PhD in Edinburgh four years ago.  Perran and Carenza moved out to rent together in London ten months ago.
We are having to figure out how we “do” family now, and it is getting complicated. 

We all work, so weekends are the available time slot.  But that is also when the social life happens (the kids’, not ours).  Weekends is also when we travel great distances to see our ageing parents at the farthest extremes of the country.

Plus there are church commitments (ours, not the kids’).

Nigel and I never wanted to be the kind of parents who issue a three-line whip and demand the attendance of our children at frequent events.

But last weekend, it was Nigel’s birthday and we asked Perran and Carenza to spend it with us.  
We did not invite Pascoe.

We had a great time, taking a barge trip from Little Venice to Camden and going to a comedy club there. 

We thought about Pascoe, but decided not to Skype him.

Why didn’t we include Pascoe?

Because some things are even more important that a parent’s birthday.  The deadline for handing in his PhD thesis was roaring towards him like an express train.  We did not want to interrupt.

And then yesterday we got the message that he had met the deadline with several hours to spare.

Hooray!

When at last we all get together for family Christmas, it will make it all the sweeter.

The thesis-writing hat Pascoe's  friends made for him.

Pascoe hands in his thesis BEFORE the deadline.

The Emoji Mystery

Emojis give me an insight into how it feels to be autistic.

I don’t usually have trouble reading people’s expressions. But confronted with a bank of emojis I can never find one that reflects the way I’m feeling.

In fact, I cannot at all fathom the emotions they are supposed to represent.

I feel like an autistic child asked to identify the expressions of faces in photos.

I’m mystified.

Thinking this disability marked me out as abnormal, I never mentioned it.  I played safe with a colon, dash and bracket   :-  )

Then Ann admitted she didn’t get it either.

Worse – she revealed that emojis have secondary meanings which we poor middle-aged folks will never ever be able to stay abreast of.

When she was at the cinema with her daughter, during an advert, an emoji of an aubergine was shown.  People giggled. Ann’s daughter explained that an aubergine refers to an excited man.

Ann was horrified – she had been using it to signify grocery shopping at Waitrose.

A mutual friend whatsapped a smiley face to her kids.  They mocked her mercilessly.  Apparently she had sent them “the paedophile face”.

I have no idea which one “the paedophile face” is, and am now terrified of using it by accident.

So inevitably it seems that I am doomed forever to hand-craft my smileys from elements of punctuation ; - )

The Very Helpful Spider

The Daddy Long Legs Spider ( Pholcus phalangioides) is a thin, wispy creature, but do not underestimate it: it forms a lasso from its silk and traps large, scary house spiders by the leg. Then it eats them.

It is for this reason that I have been allowing Daddy Long Legs Spiders to remain in our house as non-paying lodgers.

However, recently I have hired some help with the cleaning and my little eight-legged pals have been decimated.

And now it is the autumn and the annual parade of large male house spiders is under way. They are strutting their (very long and hairy) legs in search of females.

This year they are so big I can hear them before I see them, scuttling across the floor. And there are a lot of them.

As I say I like to think there is an increase in numbers because of the diligence of my cleaning lady in killing their predators.

But this is because I don't want to contemplate the alternative - Are the males in fact being drawn to our house for a specific reason. Is there perhaps, under a sofa or behind a wardrobe, an incredibly attractive, very large female spider...Just waiting for the right guy to turn up so she can lay hundreds of eggs, which in turn will become hundreds of house spiders?

Leaving Home

Since our children have left home, there have just been the two of us in the house.  It’s been quiet.  Then we hit on the idea of keeping doves. (See previous posts 1 & 2.)

So that the doves would recognise our dovecote at home, we took them through a process known (appropriately) as “homing”.  We used a net to keep them cooped up for six weeks in the dovecote.

The moment for their freedom had arrived at last. Perran, Carenza and Will joined us for the occasion and our neighbours came across. 

Uncertainly, our six snowy doves teetered on the perches of the dovecote not sure what was expected of them. At last, one or two at a time, they fluttered up to the roof where the golden afternoon light caught them, then on into the wild blue yonder, flapping like learners, unaccustomed to the air.

We knew that they should be “homed” by now and come back to roost at nightfall. But as they departed I found myself wondering “What if they don't?”

I realised that I had recreated for myself a reenactment of the traumatic moment when the children flew the nest.  Old emotions rushed back to the surface.

With the pigeons vanished into the sky, Perran, Carenza and Will left for their homes.

At nightfall I was able to text them “Four have come back.”

We were both relieved that some had come back and disappointed of course that not all had returned . 

The following day, only three returned.

Nigel and I kept going out anxiously, but however many times we counted, it only amounted to three doves in the cote.

Finally, on the third evening, a magnificent total of five arrived home, and it has been five ever since.

Possibly our local sparrowhawk got number six, but I’m not complaining. 

They came back.

Getting off Crutches

The specialist said, “Your foot has fused properly now. You’ll need to use the crutches just for a little bit longer.” 

“How much longer?”

“Days.”

I had my op back in July.  I was prepared for a long haul.  I adapted my house, figured out ways of doing things.

I also learned to take it easy and say Yes to help.

My friends Caroline, Christine and Kathryn supported me by giving me lifts when I started back to work. 

Nigel did the washing and many other household tasks.

Guests brought food when they joined us for a meal.

Strangers opened doors for me and gave up their seats on the tube, shop assistants offered to carry my purchases.

Of course, I missed my independence, but frankly, there was an up-side. Not that I appreciated it properly until now.

The first time I went shopping without crutches, I was irritated when people did not open the door for me, move courteously out of my way and allow me to jump the pay-queue. 

I could scarcely believe my own mind-set – I am going to find it hard to relinquish the privileges of being temporarily disabled.

However, just for the moment, that problem is academic, since I quickly overdid it and am now using the crutches again to allow my painful, puffy foot to recover.

Chestnuts not Pumpkins

I haven’t been able to take country walks for a few months now, owing to my faulty foot. 

It has made me feel disorientated. 

Every year I monitor the seasons closely, marking the time of year by what is coming into bloom, what going to seed.

I am delighted when a sunny weekend summons a cloud of butterflies from their pupae, or when a wistful breeze in late summer has the swallows congregating on the telegraph lines. 

I’m even happy when oncoming Autumn means all the blades of grass are hung with spiders’ silk hammocks.

But this year, deprived of the usual signs of the turning seasons, I feel stranded back in the early summer.

“Wait, it can’t be Autumn yet – I haven’t had my summer.”

Thanks to the buses, I have been better at getting to the town centre than to the country.

But in the shops, the seasons are weirdly distorted.

In the shops, seasons start and end long before the weather and daylength mark the actual season.

In the shops, a season only exists AT ALL if it presents a merchandising opportunity.

Now, for several weeks, it has been orange pumpkins and tinsel - Halloween with Christmas trimmings. No mention of Autumn.

I was desperate to find some reality and begged Nigel, Carenza and Will to take me gathering chestnuts in the woods, something I do most years. 

We had missed most of the sleek brown nuts in their prickly cases, but gathered just enough to put by for the chestnut stuffing to serve with Christmas dinner in a couple of months’ time.

More than that, it was a relief to see sun shining through the yellow and bronze leaves of the wood and to encounter Autumn in her considerable beauty.

This Cornish hairdresser was celebrating Halloween,
but I'm not sure it would make me want to get my hair cut there.

People’s Vote

I had plans for Saturday.  Perran and Carenza were joining us and we had tickets for the Space Shifters exhibition at the Hayward Gallery.

But there was something else going on that day – something that hadn’t been part of the plan, but that we all really cared about.

The train up to London was bulging with people dressed in blue, trimmed with yellow stars.  One small boy was carrying a blue banner saying “I missed football for this.”

It was the march for a people’s vote on the final deal for BREXIT – a chance to vote when we really knew what we were voting for.

“But we couldn’t march anyway, Clare, because you’re still on crutches,” said Nigel.

The Space Shifters exhibition was excellent, playing with our senses, the sculptures making us feel unbalanced, as if we might float away or trip over into an abyss.

Thing is, since the votes for BREXIT and Trump, I have felt like that anyway, disorientated and stumbling on shifting ground.

As we came out into the sunshine, I said “We could still get to Parliament Square in time for the rally.”

So we did – I clunked along the South Bank and Westminster Bridge and found a sunny wall to lean on outside the Houses of Parliament as the marchers surged in.

I spotted at least three people in wheelchairs, one breathing through a tube. Made crutches seem a pretty minor problem.

Carenza kept winding me up that we were going to get “kettled” but there was no sign of that and the fact that in the UK we can still demonstrate peacefully against government policy began to help me feel I was standing on solid ground again.

Votes for Women – Triumphant Banner

A thread running through my year has been Annabel O’ Docherty making a suffragist banner to hang in our old college, Girton.  It is a replica of the hundred-year-old original, carried in marches for women’s votes and shared by Girton and Newnham, the Cambridge women’s colleges. 

Newnham has the original, but thanks to Annabel, Girton now has a stunning and extremely accurate replica. 

In April Annabel took me on the initial trip to Newnham to measure the banner (click through for story).  She also had me along in July to the Women's Library at the LSE, where Gillian Murphy showed us some similar banners. I was never quite sure why she was kind enough to include me but thought that perhaps it was because I was good at research.

But best of all, even though I was on crutches, and a complete liability, she included me as her “plus one” when invited to the Founders’ and Benefactors’ dinner at Girton. 

We were excited to discover that we were seated at the High Table and a little overwhelmed by the extraordinary women who surrounded us, their CVs glittering with public honours and with “first”s (e.g. Baroness Higgins, first female president of the International Court of Justice).

After scary ladder work,
Annabel with Jeff from Mantenance

But to my delight, I was opposite my long-ago tutor, Marilyn Strathern, whose tremendous career I had watched from afar.  It was great to catch up.

The banner looked stunning and both The Mistress, Susan Black, and Baroness Hale made speeches in front of it.

It is also a concrete representation of our college friendship group which has lasted thirty-five years and many of whom contributed to the cost of making the banner, and a commemoration of the three of our friends who died young – Malcolm, Steve and Hugh.

So why, when so many were involved, did Annabel take me along? Was it, as I had supposed, for my prowess in research?

In fact she revealed the true reason in an email to our friends afterwards:

“Clare was my emotional support person (like those tortoises, peacocks and Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs that some people have started taking on board aeroplanes).”

Vietnamese pot-bellied pig?!?