How I lost the battle of Mother's Day

Each year I become Mumzilla and insist on a Mother's day outing featuring at least two of my three children. (Use this link for outing ten years ago)

Last year we visited Sissinghurst  and this year we planned to build on the Vita Sackville-West theme.  Carenza and I had watched Orlando - both the current West End play and the Tilda Swinton film adapted from the Virginia Woolf novella in which she made clear her adoration of Vita.  Our Mother’s Day outing would be to Knole, the great Tudor pile which inspired Orlando.

Perran had a plausible alibi for Mother’s Day itself, so we went a week early.  Allowable slippage I thought. 

However, it turned out to be just the beginning of the rot setting in.

One of the purposes of having a Mother’s Day outing is to avoid the church service where all women are given a brightly coloured polyanthus.  (Something really annoys me about it, but I can’t put my finger on what.)   This year I had to contract an actual cold to get out of it.  Made me miserable for a few days, but worth it.

Then Pascoe’s Mother’s Day card arrived, adding a new layer of weirdness.  He had given a photo of me to an AI program and asked it to make me into a Roman lady (as I am a Classics teacher).  Unfortunately, he had selected a picture where I was holding a hedgehog (why?), which then rather dominated – see pic.

Maybe I should give Mother’s Day a rest.  After all, apart from grumbling and sending the occasional WhatsApp, I’m doing very little mothering nowadays – except of course, when I find an orphaned hedgehog.

 

 

I wanna thank you

On Saturday, Nigel and I listened to R4’s Saturday Live.  We particularly enjoy the ‘Thank you’ spot. This time it was about somebody who had slipped and broken their leg on a cliff path.  A passing hiker had stopped, rung for help and waited with them until the paramedics arrived. ‘At the time, I was just so relieved to be taken to hospital, I forgot to even ask your name.  But whoever you were, thank you.’

Later, we were walking in some quiet woods when we heard a piercing cry.  The gut-wrenching screaming went on and on.  It wasn’t quite human, but what on earth was it?  Whatever it was, it was in great distress, so we pushed our fear aside and hurried towards it.

At a fork in the path, a woman was holding tight to a labrador, restraining it.  Close by, a man was struggling with a large-mesh fence.  Stuck half way through the fence was a muntjac deer, a buck from his pronged antlers.  The dog had startled the deer into the fence and the animal was trapped and fighting with extraordinary strength and making that blood-curdling sound. 

Nigel helped in attempting to dislodge the terrified muntjac.  It was quite a wrestling match and as it finally came free, its antler caught Nigel’s hand causing three nasty gashes.  It bounded off into the undergrowth at top speed. 

The other couple thanked us profusely, but we wondered if we might ever hear from the deer – perhaps one day on Saturday Live…

‘I was in quite a hurry to get going, and I’m afraid I didn’t thank you properly.  And I’m so sorry - I think I may have accidentally caught your hand with one of my antlers.  Anyway, my freedom today is all down to you, and I just want to say Thank you.’

Cross-dressing drama

 I was to meet Pascoe in Liverpool for a mother/son weekend.  I checked out the theatres.  Most were between shows.  Pascoe found some great stand-up, but it was fully booked.  Eventually we settled for The Everyman Playhouse – Death Drop 2 – back in the habit – a show featuring several well-known drag queens and set in a nunnery.  This didn’t really sound like high culture and I worried it might be so rude it made my hair stand on end.  However, I told myself it would be a new experience.

I was much more confident about the outing I had booked for Nigel and I just the evening before in London.  This was high-brow –a dramatisation of Plato’s Symposium at the Bloomsbury Theatre, put on by students of University College, London.  This was to be a philosophical dialogue about the nature of love.

However, when we got there, the cast of male philosophers was played entirely by young women who acted with gusto and humorous asides to engage the audience. 

Looking back, I think I laughed more at the cross-dressing Plato, but only because so many of the drag-queen references in Death Drop 2 whistled straight over my head.

And which was more educational?  Well, I learned quite a lot at each.  But in VERY different ways.

Valentine's Day treat.

Private jets are one of the most flagrant emitters of massive amounts of carbon.  The busiest day for taking a private jet is Valentine's Day. This refutes the claim that VIPs are using them only for trips vital for business and politics. 

Frankly, they are happy for the rest of us to drown as sea levels rise or to scorch in heatwaves. They are rich enough to have insulated mansions on high ground with guards to protect their food stores. 

So for our Valentine's Day, Nigel and I and around forty friends carried out an act of love for the planet and demonstrated outside the two most-used private jet terminals in the country, at Luton.

Faced with the problem of cutting free people who had locked themselves to a boat and to oil drums, the police made no arrests. 

We were among friends and when the Samba band arrived and the sun came out, and a member of airport security brought us some chocolate biscuits, it was really rather lovely. 

I certainly enjoyed it more than an overpriced dinner in a crowded restaurant and a dozen wilting roses.

Whatever happened to Twinnyness?

We celebrated Perran and Carenza's birthday by going to the Making Modernism exhibition at the RA. (Thanks to MaryBeeArt for the recommendation.) Four women artists made extraordinary work at a time when to be called a great artist you had to have a pair of testacles.

Two of the paintings were of twins, but as babies. It's true that now Perran and Carenza are very much adults, people rarely congratulate me on my multiple birth, or say , 'You've got your hands full.'

Even in the cafe where we went for lunch afterwards, the waitress heard us discussing 'the birthday' and brought a single scoop of tiramisu with a candle....and set it in front of Carenza. Perran (who actually made the booking) said, 'And it's my birthday too,' only to have the waitress smile non-comitally, as if he were some kind of dessert fraudster.

So does twinnyness really diminish in adulthood? 

Not at all.

The twins arrived at the RA from different parts of London - although they hadn't seen each other that day, they were nattily dressed to match, both in baggy black trousers and outsize jackets.

Twinergy.

Murmuration-ed

Murmurations are when starlings miraculously fly together in a flock tens of thousands strong. As they swirl, group and regroup they create a liquid geometry of patterns in the sky.

 

The time to see this is December or January, just before sunset, since it is pre-roosting behaviour.

Nick and Jackie reported good views of a murmuration from just outside their village Spar.  I asked if we could please visit, and as the day dimmed we arrived to join several dozen of their neighbours.

 

Over twenty thousand starlings created their stunning formations against the backdrop of a flaming sunset.  People oohed as if they were watching fireworks.

But then as the sun sank, the starlings began to funnel down into a small stand of hedgerow.

Between us and the hedgerow was a tiny cottage.

 

‘Are all those thousands of birds landing in that person’s back garden?’

‘How can there possibly be space for them?’

‘I expect they make quite a mess too.’

 

As we were conjecturing, a delivery van drew up outside the little house.  The driver was hesitant – the number of spectators made it look as there had been an incident.

 

Finally he got out and knocked.  The luckless homeowner appeared, only to be faced by around fifty of her neighbours brandishing binoculars and phone cams, like being papped. 

 

She accepted a large box from the courier and disappeared swiftly back inside.

‘What do you think was in the box?’

Speculation raged.

The most positive suggestion was ‘starling food’ (Jackie), the most negative, ‘a peregrine falcon’ (me).

Either way, I did feel a little sorry for the woman.  Much as I love starlings, I don’t think I would ever wish to be ‘murmurated’.

video courtesy of Nigel

 

A flock of one's own

For years I have met my friends every two to three weeks for a walk.  We have it in common that we like to tramp along a footpath and spot interesting features of nature, geology or archaeology.  One of the tenets of our friendship is that we hugely prefer this to shopping or meeting for coffee in the town centre.

Over the Covid period, we would travel in separate cars rather than risk infecting one another, so it was greener to stay close to home.  Our adventures were curtailed, and we beat the same dull muddy bounds again and again.

Over the last few months, however, we’ve started to bundle into one car and go a little further and see a little more.

Recent highlights include a spectacular sunset murmuration of jackdaws, rooks and crows near Wimpole Hall, and a flock of hundreds of fieldfares and redwing devouring ivy berries in a hedgerow near Hitchin.  We also stood in slow-breathing silence as a goldcrest hunted insects on hazel twigs just in front of our noses. 

Last Friday, we spent some time simply puzzling over the curious ice structures which had formed in puddles on a track.  Now that’s my kind of girls’ day out!

A Midwinter Night’s Dream

Each year, our old university friends meet to catch up with one another and also to commemorate our friends who died young – Malcolm, Steve and Hugh.

This year, we struggled to reach a consensus. 

Proposals included:

A starling murmuration in Brighton – too far to travel for some,

Hieroglyphics at the BM – out of bounds to those of us who disapprove of oil company BP greenwashing themselves by sponsoring exhibitions.

Cezanne at the Tate Modern – popular, but already seen by some.

Avatar II at Leicester Square – other audience members seem not to like it when we chat.

Magdalena Abakanowicz – Tate Modern -  a major artist of the 20^th century (and beyond) whom we all should have heard of, but never had.

 

In the end, we split between Cezanne, Hieroglyphics and Abakanowicz.

Although we meet in midwinter, it often feels like a Midsummer Night ‘s Dream, with people at cross purposes, popping up in odd corners of galleries and narrowly missing one another.  A bunch of us were at the Tate when somebody spotted the contingent from the BM arriving just outside.  Several people rushed out to meet them, but since it was nearly closing time, were not allowed back in.  Meanwhile another group of us waited fruitlessly in the Turbine Hall beneath a massive arrangement of hanging white fabric, lace and nets said to represent the knot language of South American indigenous peoples.

However, finally we regrouped fully for dinner.  And reassuringly, we reenacted the ritual of many years when, as usual, despite some of us having impressive credentials in mathematics, we were unable to match our payments to the bill. 

Photo shows Annabel, Stephen and an Abakan (one of the monumental textile sculptures of Magdalena Abakanowicz).

Blowing away the cobwebs

 

My post-Christmas blog last year was rather melancholy – reluctantly waving goodbyes to my children and hauling down the decs the moment they were gone.  I expected to feel the same this year and had been strategising some midwinter cheer for myself.  However, this year I don’t feel so wistful and gloomy.

After three disrupted Christmases I was expecting Covid, flu, snow or strikes to scupper our modest domestic plans once more, but somehow they didn’t. The fact is, Pascoe, Perran and Carenza all arrived and at last we spent Christmas Day together and even several days either side of the festival itself.  Decorating the tree, roast dinner (veggie of course!), muddy walks and parlour games all happened.

I know myself to have been thoroughly Christmased, and the result is that I feel more buoyant, even despite the annual festival of sheet washing after the offspring have gone.  And best of all, the two none-work days after New Year have allowed Nigel and I to get out and blow away the cobwebs.

In the low, slanting sunlight I can already sense the days lengthening once more…

Courtroom Drama

Last Thursday – Friday Nigel was in court.  He and colleagues Sue and Phil had super-glued themselves to Barclays’ window to protest against the fact that Barclays is Europe’s largest funder of new fossil fuel extraction, a massive driver of the global rise in temperatures and sea levels.

These court cases are quite frustrating – the audio-visual equipment for viewing evidence usually doesn’t work and a lawyer has to show everybody on their little laptop.  On this occasion the judge’s microphone also didn’t work and the defendants hadn’t been sent all the necessary paperwork, again, quite usual.

To stave off the boredom, I took some embroidery.  Supporters of climate protesters get an extra thorough search on the way in, so I’d already had my embroidery scissors confiscated, but was still stitching away at the back when, during a lull, I caught the judge’s eye.

‘Somebody has brought a dangerous implement into the court!’  she announced.  I looked around me in surprise before realising she was referring to my embroidery needle.  As the court usher marched towards me, I zipped it into my bag and tried to look innocent. He let me keep it.

Nigel, Sue and Phil, however, were not so lucky - they were found guilty of criminal damage because the police’s de-bonding agent temporarily left some smeary marks on the glass when mixed with the super glue (now all nicely cleaned up).

The whole experience leads me to the question, who is more dangerous – a woman embroidering, three non-violent protesters glued to a window, or a vast multinational bent on profiteering from causing irreparable damage to the planet?

For much greener banks, try Nationwide or Triodos.

A Haven of Welcome

  
There is something very special about the house of friends – a haven where you know you are welcome.  Carolyn and David’s house in Gateshead has been that to us ever since we met when sharing the experience of new parenthood thirty years ago.

For twenty-four years however, we have been living in different regions, hundreds of miles apart.

Over that time, the generations have rolled over and the families have developed through different phases in their life cycle.

We have met the changes in our own family by moving from one house to another, whereas David and Carolyn have extended and adapted the same house in an inventive manner. This time when we visited, a room that I remember was a bathroom thirty years ago had become a bathroom once more, whereas the bathroom which long ago replaced it had morphed into the dining room.

I wished for a time lapse film that tracked the expansion of both family and house.

However, when we visited recently, the person who recalled most to us the first days of our friendship was somebody we had never met before - Lydia, one of their young grandchildren, busied herself with toys that once Hannah and Pascoe had played with and over her head we smiled at one another

Advent - a blessing

 

In the past, Advent was a time of fasting and contemplation, allowing people to prepare themselves spiritually for the Christmas celebration to follow, rather as Lent is a time to prepare for Easter.

Now, lights and baubles surround us even before Advent starts and many Christmas parties are over by the second week in December. 

In CS Lewis' much loved children's book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Narnia was under a curse whereby it was always winter and never Christmas.

Nowadays we seem to be under a spell where it is always Christmas and never Advent.

No wonder that when Christmas Day arrives, we are often frazzled - instead of a sense of wonder, I have a sense of disappointment - somehow I have cheated myself of the 'true meaning of Christmas'.

This year, I'm going to try to take the bustle and preparations with a pinch of salt.  Whatever I manage to do, it will have to be good enough.  And actually, because my friends and family are kind and forgiving people, it WILL be good enough.

So in 2022, I am making a pre-New Year's resolution to find some space and stillness in Advent.

Photo shows Nigel & our friend Carolyn with a giant robin at Gibside.

The pleasures of giving blood

Today was really rushed, with a thousand small-yet-important errands and tasks jostling my brain, and on top of everything else, I had made an appointment to give blood. 

However, once there, my hectic day slowed right down – the first task was to have a long, cool drink of squash while glancing at a list of activities to avoid in case they made you faint.  After filling in a form with a smug long list of ‘No’s (no intravenous drug use, recent tattoos, sex with intravenous drug users), I was settled into a reclining seat and a line attached to my arm, tethering me to the spot.

Whatever tasks beckoned, I could now do none of them.  Hits of the eighties played gently, and I scrolled casually through the book I am reading on my phone.  Apart from remembering to squeeze my fist, I was relieved of all duties for a number of precious minutes.  It was not unlike being at the hairdressers, although without the glossy mags.

And afterwards, I was commanded to sit still for a bit and have another lovely drink of squash and a cheering bag of crisps. 

The only thing that nearly ruined this period of me-time was when I saw that the snack selected by the woman next to me was a delicious chocolatey waggon-wheel. 

‘Nobody told me there were waggon-wheels!’ I wanted to shout. 

However, I took a deep breath and resumed my calmness.  After all, I wouldn’t want to faint, would I? 

Poppies

I wore a white poppy this year – given me by my friend Davina. At the green heart of the paper bloom, it says PEACE.

It is an anti-war, pacifist poppy.

But isn’t that disrespectful to the many thousands who gave their lives for this country in the First and Second World Wars and more recent conflicts? 

I don’t think so.  For me, remembering those who died makes it even more imperative there should be no more wars.  No more husbands, sons and brothers, no more wives, daughters and sisters should be lost. I suspect very few of the casualties, if able to have their say now, would clamour for more war.

When we walk on Coombe Hill in the Chilterns, we pass a memorial from the Boer War (pictured above), a conflict in South Africa where the British as a colonial power tried to oust the Dutch, their rivals. This is not a glorious moment in our history and is little talked of today, but even those Boer War soldiers died for their country in what they believed was a good cause and should be respected accordingly.

If the red poppy symbolises remembrance, then maybe the white poppy represents learning from our mistakes.  Maybe next year I shall wear both together.

Turning Sixty

 Earlier this month I turned sixty. 

Several weeks have elapsed and I now feel familiar enough with sixty to submit a review.

I’m not sure how many stars to give it, so I’ll work through the factors.

Pro’s

I never thought I’d still feel so young at sixty.

Learning to pace myself and to take better care of my diet, exercise and sleep – these are new skills I am acquiring and wish I’d learned earlier.

I enjoy my work, and with retirement on the horizon, much of the stress has vanished.

I have accepted who I am and have learned to be kinder to myself.

My values have crystallised, meaning I am not torn between different worlds.

Free prescriptions!

Con's

My body sometimes creaks even when I don’t know what I’ve done to cause it.

I go to more funerals now and even look forward to the tiny sandwiches.

I often do not recognise the music of current top ten artists.

 

Over all I’d probably give sixty a rating of four stars

So I’ll just submit my review now – but where to?

I shall go away and look for the metaphysical version of Trip Adviser.

What Integrity Looks Like

 

I recently attended the funeral of my 97 year old friend John.  There are pleasures to be found in the funeral of somebody who lived as long and well as he did - most especially hearing the life story of the departed person.

John’s story, told by his children, was remarkable in being entirely consistent.  His strong Christian faith led him to uphold the rights of others and to defend the underdog.

World War Two found him a pacifist.

Worthwhile work as a missionary led him to Uganda.

Marriage showed him a feminist, supporting his wife in continuing with her work as a doctor.

Fatherhood was a role he shouldered fully.

 

It is this consistency in John’s values and behaviour which adds up to the precious quality of integrity.

 

When, eleven years ago, John became confined to a wheelchair, I questioned how such an active man could bear it. Problems with eyesight meant he lacked even the consolation of reading. 

But his mental furniture came to the rescue. He knew many works of literature almost by heart and even on his death bed introduced me to a Robert Frost poem I had not read. 

He would say that he was re-reading a certain book but in fact he was going over it in his mind.

Others might grumble at being wheelchair bound, but not John.  To a man of such integrity, the long stretch of stillness each day was an opportunity.  He prayed – for his family and friends and for our church, but also for the many parts of the country and of the world afflicted by troubles.

Much missed, John is now a torch for me, lighting the way into old age.

Hag Stones

 

We just had a family weekend in Norfolk.

 

On the beach were a huge number of flints, rolled and tumbled by the tide, some smoothed into spheres, others fractured to reveal their ochre hearts. It was flints like this which influenced sculptors Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.

 

My friend Carol collects flints with holes running through them - she threads them on twine and hangs them from her fence. These perforated stones were once considered magical. Said to ward off witches, they were called hag stones.

That day in Norfolk, I asked my family to comb the beach for very tiny hag stones – hag pebbles.

A long time ago when Pascoe was little and the twins mere toddlers we were all together, wrapped up against the cold wind, paddling on the beach below Kilimantringen

 

Lighthouse in Galloway, when Nigel handed me just such a pebble. Ever since, it has been my key fob.

 

Twenty-six years, however, have worn the hole broad and the stone thin, and someday soon it will wear through. Before that happens, I would like to have its successor lined up, and if possible, I would like it also to have been gleaned on a day when we were all together once more. 

Lucky then that we found one – another precious memory I can turn over in my pocket through the years ahead.

 

(Thank you so much, Andrew and Liz, for lending us your barn).

 

Show Your Scars

At Girton College, Cambridge there is a unique permanent exhibition called People’s Portraits.  The artists are members of the hallowed Royal Society of Portrait Painters, but the sitters who are the subjects of the paintings are ‘ordinary people’ insofar as anybody may be said to be ordinary.

A couple of weeks ago, I went with Nigel and my old friend, artist Mary Fraser @artbymarybee, to see the unveiling of the portrait of Sylvia Mac, founder of the organisation Love_Disfigure.

Having suffered severe childhood burns to her back and received a number of painful skin grafts, she grew into adulthood self-conscious of her scarring.  However, as a mature woman, she decided she could no longer live a life of concealment and began defiantly to display her body, scars and all, on social media.  She has opened up a conversation, changed hearts and minds and lent confidence to others with similar body-issues.

In this bold portrait, Alastair Adams, the artist, had worked closely with Sylvia to convey the image by which she is known – a woman who has defied her scars to become a proud and capable person. 

It has to be said, Sylvia is not only an artist’s model, but also a role model and very far from being ‘an ordinary person’.

Tree of Hope

I’ve found it difficult to muster the spirit to blog recently.

This has been an odd time, muted as we mourn the Queen’s death, then waking up to a terrifying budget.  Underlying it all has been the War in Ukraine and the oncoming climate and biodiversity disaster, not to mention a winter of privations. Closer to home, a number of friends (including our Ukrainian guests) have been suffering bereavement.

However, today I was filing away the year’s photos and I found something which had interested me in February.  Following a gale, I saw how wind-thrown trees still succeeded in bringing forth blossom.  Then I began to spot trees which had endured some trauma in the past but had continued to grow and thrive, forming new and different shapes.

A couple of weeks ago, Nigel and I went to a seminar by a wonderful organisation called HEART on deep adaptation – how we can best be resilient in the face of the Climate Crisis.  They shared many ideas about forming communities where people learn to help one another.  It sounded not so much like a survival mechanism as a richer and more fulfilling way of life.

I hope then that we shall be like the trees and bring forth beautiful new forms in the face of adversity.

Dancing in Fields

Over this summer, I often found myself dancing in fields under the stars.  A couple of these were festivals we had booked, others were just occasions on which I happened.  Some of the bands were big names, some of them were local people with a day job, but loads of talent and verve.

The most unusual was at the Greenbelt Festival, where the poet laureate, Simon Armitage, DJed a set late at night in an open-sided tent.  His choice of hits spanned the decades and had everybody bopping in a friendly crush.  I was wearing a skirt stitched with mirrors and became a human glitter ball. 

Since Covid, it is plain to see that dancing with other people, friends and strangers, is a privilege.

The school term has started now, the nights are drawing in and the news is very gloomy.  I face this winter with more than usual trepidation.  The question is, in bleak November, will I be able once more to take out those memories of whirling under moonlit skies and use them to fuel me through the short sombre days?

With green/renewable electricity, provided by wind turbines or solar panels, the greatest challenge is to develop a way of storing the energy for days when the wind does not blow or the sun doesn’t shine.  I fear the human memory is also deficient in this way. 

Therefore, in my kitchen, I shall have to replay the tracks and shut my eyes and pretend I am in a hay-scented paddock somewhere, and dance.

Photos are from the Greenbelt Festival

The Party at the End of the World

We went to stay with Pascoe in Edinburgh.  The Fringe festival would be on but following two years of Covid, it was impossible to imagine packing together with strangers in tiny pub rooms.

We planned to walk in the Pentlands.  We took an extra big case to accommodate walking boots and walking poles and massive woolly socks.

But when we arrived, the lure of fresh live entertainment was strong.

‘And Covid levels are dropping’ said Pascoe.

The limpid summer light across Edinburgh reproached us, but still we allowed ourselves to be funnelled into backrooms, to have our flabby laughing muscles tickled back into life.

A fusillade of puns and one-liners was a great hors doeuvre for the more substantial imaginative humour of Foil, Arms and Hog, and Flo and Joan.  We marvelled at people of extraordinary skill, such as the Australian acrobats of Humans 2.0 and the almost-telepathic ventriloquist Nina Conti – to appreciate performers like these, live performance was so important. 

This year, there seemed to be more festival-goers than ever before.  There was little mention in any of the acts of Covid, Ukraine, Climate catastrophe.  People just wanted to forget for a few days.  With the streets full of fire-eaters and stilt-walkers, it was like the Party at the End of the World.

However, after two days, heads whirling and ribs aching from laughter, we needed a palate cleanser – going for a walk along the tranquil coast at Musselburgh and taking stock, before returning to the realities of our daily lives and the grim news reports.

So we did use those boots after all.

Get my Goat

At the weekend, Perran and I went to camp near Avebury, Europe’s largest stone circle.  We planned to explore the surrounding landscape, rich in prehistoric monuments like Silbury Hill and West Kennet Long Barrow. 

But we reckoned without the livestock.

We set off from the stone circle towards the Western Ridgeway intending to walk to see the Cherhill white horse.  At first we set up a thousand butterflies, a hundred birds and a couple of hares and it was all very magical and charming.

Then I spotted a problem – at least it was a problem for me – a large cluster of big white park cattle with calves.  I know cows with calves can be aggressive (understandably) and am becoming less and less willing to walk through such a herd.

Luckily the path veered round that field.

‘But,’ I said to Perran, ‘I can see more in the next field where the path goes.’

‘Well I can’t!’

‘They’re in that dip.’

As we got closer, he too spotted white backs. ‘But they’re too short for cows, Mum – must be sheep.’

‘Oh great, I’m fine with sheep.  But sheep aren’t tan are they? I can see some tan.’

As we passed through the kissing gate into the field, a whole herd of very lively goats raised their horned heads and cantered enthusiastically towards us en masse. 

‘It’s okay, Mum, they probably just want to see if we have any food.’  But too late – I had done a vertical take off over a gate into a nearby field full of brush and thistles. 

‘Safe!’ But then the first goat managed to squeeze between the gate bars and join me.  Suddenly I was charging uphill fast with Perran just behind, chuckling.  Now off the path, we had to squeeze under one barbed wire fence and climb over another in order finally to attain the Ridgeway.  If I looked a long way back down the path, I could just make out, lying in the dirt where I had left it, my lost dignity.

When finally we found ourselves on the bank above the Cherhill chalk figure, I was about to go through the kissing gate to get a better look, when Perran said.

‘Are you sure you want to go into that field, Mum?’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’

‘I think you’ll find there’s a white horse in there.’

Gran at Hemmick Beach

 

We have been staying in Cornwall, paying visits to my parents and going cliff walking.

Being high season, it was difficult to find accommodation.  By chance, we ended up in Charlestown, close to where both of my father’s parents came from, and near to Holmbush Cemetery where they are buried.  I would have liked to visit their graves, but my parents do not recall the location of their plots.

Instead, I pursued remembrance in a more active way. My gran, Winifred, grew up at Gorran where her father was headmaster at the little school which lies between Gorran Church Town and Gorran Haven.

Cornish author, Ann Treneer named it ‘The Schoolhouse in the Wind’ and we visited it.   The original building burnt down in 1967 but the current school is thriving with an ‘outstanding’ from Ofsted and its own swimming pool.  We walked the tall-hedged, butterfly-fluttering lanes that my grandmother once walked.  I wondered what she would have thought of the dense crowd of tourists at Gorran Haven, making the harbour into some sort of human soup.

When I saw Dad again, he said that Gran told him her favourite beach was Hemmick, near the Dodman Point.  He himself had never been there, and I hadn’t either.

The next day, Nigel and I walked to Hemmick. It turned out to be lovely, with tongues of slatey rock running into a shallow sea, excellent for bathing.  On the sand were broken sea-smoothed shards of Venus shell and dog cockle which had a sculptural quality.  While Nigel swam, I did a water colour where, once again, I failed to capture the Cornish rocks.

I don’t know what Gran used to enjoy doing at Hemmick – I don’t believe she could swim, although one of the scant photos does show her paddling.  Perhaps it was somewhere her family went for a picnic.  Perhaps she just enjoyed the view of the distant Lizard, and the regular hush of the sea. 

However, for me, a pilgrimage to Hemmick was a way to stand for a moment in her shoes, or at least in her bare feet.

Hadrian's Wall - A Cast of Thousands

When we set off to walk Hadrian’s Wall, one of the things we were looking forward to was conversations with strangers.

As a Celt and a Christian, encounters where two people who do not know one another pause and talk to one another feel sacred to me. 

We were blessed to meet Fenella, on the day we arrived.  She helped us find the bus to Bowness and gave us a wealth of information.  If not for her, we might never have heard how mighty Edward I, Hammer of the Scots, died and lay in state in the little church at Burgh by Sands while his voracious court ate the local community out of house and home, biding time until Edward II was finally located and brought there.

As we left Carlisle, by way of a large park, a Swedish man carrying binoculars told us that close by that spot had been the Roman fort of Stanwix. Although nothing now remained, it had been the largest fort on the Wall, manned by a massive cavalry regiment called the Ala Petriana, ready to ride out and quell the tribes of the troublesome West.

We also met various other walkers, although exchanges were often superficial – how far we had come and the weather outlook.  One young couple we encountered several times.  Good-looking, tall and tanned, their accents were Southern European. We met them first when they were waiting at a gate, hoping for company to help them cross a field of over-friendly horses.  Whenever we saw them again, they always seemed to be just ahead of us, admirable as the woman was walking Hadrian’s Wall in flip-flops.

The hosts at our Bed and Breakfast stops also had tales to tell. One couple even had the story of how a Mr and Mrs Johnson had booked in for a weekend and they found themselves unexpectedly playing host to Boris and Marina.  It was interesting to hear about how their businesses worked and at St Marys Vale, Lanercost, we particularly enjoyed meeting both Deborah (pictured) and her extraordinary coloured Ryeland sheep. 

One of the most memorable stops was with Les at The Old Repeater Station, near Housesteads.  After the toughest day, we felt welcome in his book-lined home, alone in many miles of wild pastureland. (The Repeater Station was originally built to relay telephone signals.)  

And it was Les we met again on our very last day.  Pascoe had joined us in Newcastle for the end of our walk, and we were in the Hancock Museum, just looking at the very long scale model of Hadrian’s Wall and congratulating ourselves on our achievement.  As we pointed out the Old Repeater Station, Les himself appeared.  ‘I’m having a day off and I’ve brought my grandson to the museum!’

Were we somehow living through a Hollywood movie where all the significant characters contrive to reappear for a heart-warming last scene?  We looked about us, half-expecting to see Fenella and the Swedish guy.

But no, it was just Les.  Nice to see him again though.

 

 

Hadrian's Wall in full colour

View from the Old Repeater Station

When I blog, I have to decide what I think about something.  Writing helps me pick out the stories that have happened during my week.

I also like to paint as it helps me see what is around me better.  I probably never would sit and simply stare at the view for a whole hour if I didn't have a sketch pad on my knee.  When we were packing for our long hike, we had to minimise.  I left out my shampoo and hairbrush, put I couldn't leave behind paints and paintbrush.

I didn't paint Hadrian's Wall itself.  There was too much walking to be done.

But when we got to the B&B each night, I had a chance to capture an impression of the landscape.

St Mary Vale, near Lanercost

North Tyne from the George at Chollerford

North Tyne from the George at Chollerford

From the Robin Hood at East Wallhouses

Scotland and the Solway from Drumburgh, painted in the rain.