Limits

Yesterday Gail took me to see Niagara Falls - they did not disappoint and neither did the butterfly sanctuary we went to next. It was an extraordinary contrast from the sheer force of nature to its most delicate creation. I took too many pictures and had to start getting ruthless, "No Gail, not another blue one - I have three", but it was so tempting.

On the way back we got onto a skyway (so much more romantic that a bridge), I confessed I loathed Pink Floyd and was almost decarred. Luckily Van the man came on with Brown Eyed Girl and we settled into happy tuneless harmonies and head banging.

I remember the feeling in Wisconsin of the USA being a place without limitations and I get the same sense here. It is those giant skies, endless highways and the constant 'can do' attitude of everyone I meet. I think I have made of chain of limits for self recently and I need to snap it and start believing again.

Talking of believing - Gail's husband Jess is a real life cowboy. He grew up in the West of Canada and nightly tells me stories of riding the range, the Calgary stampede and a life that seems so exotic and strange that I sit open mouthed. He also has an evil sense of humour and occasionally drops in a tall tale or joke, which he tells with  a deadpan face, only the quick flick of his eyes giving away that it might not be true.

Though I would share one of the tales with you.

Jesse had a prize bull and the Mother Superior of the local convent came and asked if they could use him to cover their two milk cows. Being a nice man Jesse said of course and Mother Superior said she would send two nuns to collect the bull when the cows came into season.

There had been a spate of rustling and Jesse checked off all his forty heifers but couldn't find the bull. Then he remembered the nuns and headed of to the abbey. When he got there he found four nuns covered in cow dung, wimples awry and in a terrible state. Mother Superior came out and started berating Jesse, "Your bull is no good! Take him away. He is useless."

Jesse said,"Hold on a minute. He is prize bull and knows what he is doing."

"No he doesn't. Three times we laid the cow down and he just walked away!"

love and light

xxx

It's a new world

So here I am on the other side of the world and I haven't fallen off, the plane didn't crash and my darling Gail is still just the same only even better. She has sent me in here to write this in case my 'loyal' readers think I have been kidnapped. I tried to explain that for many of you it might be a measure of relief not to have to put up with the blog from hell but no - she seemed to think it needed to be written so here I am.

New medication is working well: I didn't even have a conniption (all queries on that word to Peter Piggot please) when we took off, slept for most of the  journey and had plenty of room for my legs. This bit of Canada is lovely, vast open spaces and those endless skies that I so love. We drove today through Beaver Valley and along one side of the Niagara Escarpment to a bay on the end of Lake Huron, Georgian Bay. Quaint towns followed on from one another and then Gail took me to where she summered as a child on the lake front. It felt a little like going back in time as we stood on the longest strand of freshwater beach in the world.

I do so love to travel that I begin to think the depression came about as result of staying too long in the same place - even with the homeless bit I remained in a very small geographic location. My soul feels unburdened and even when the grey looms (and sadly, it still does) the sheer momentum of travel pushes it back and away.

So, I am better than fine - have travelled hopefully and arrived joyously and the hug at the airport was every bit  as great as expected. More in couple of days but for now xxxx

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Still hopeful

I am writing this at Gatwick surrounded by a low hum of activity, some anxiety and the growing need for a large coffee followed by a fag - oh well, one out of the two isn't bad.

I don't what it is about airports and stations that I find so romantic - but I think it has something to with the need I have for stories - all around me here there are hundreds: couples fighting - well,bickering,the lost and the lonely keeping their heads down in case they make eye contact and groups of the young lost in themselves and their exciting worlds. Was I like that once I wonder?

It is the anonymity I like: for these few hours I can be an international woman of mystery waiting to meet  my Ukrainian lover before heading to Holland with thirty priceless diamonds secreted about my person. I could be a ballerina, in pain and broken with the evils that life has thrown at me, still beautiful but fading fast as I skip from job to job, each one a little less well paid, each one in a slightly dowdier theatre. Or I could be... but no, "enough no more, tis not so sweet now as it was before" (Shakespeare again)

So next contact in Toronto - can't wait
xxxx

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Last minute thoughts

Have I packed, got clean underwear and generally prepared myself for the next rew weeks? Going to try  and get some sleep before the rush in the wee small hours.

I am hoping that in taking the laptop with me I will able to blog as normal and post some holiday snaps to my captive audience - there is some kind of method in my madness.

What I want to see

• Toronto
• Niagara Falls
• And this road trip to Montreal
• GAIL

Anxiety still litters my dreams and grumbles through the day. Thank you some meuch for all the kind wishes and love that you sent.

Hope the blog keeps us in touch and you enjoy it.
xxx

Love you all 

xxxxx

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Travelling Hopefully

Oh, the joy of setting off on a long journey again. In two days time I shall be on a plane heading for Canada. My Facebook miracle means that on Friday I shall be winging my way to a reunion with Gail. I do so love to travel and with a destination as happy as this one both the journey and the arrival are truly joyous.

I feel like I have been in some sort of road test to see if I deserve this wonderful gift: the getting of the passport, the sorting of clothes and the general getting ready have pushed my fragile abilities and confidence. But – I have a passport, have almost finished the washing and ironing and my sister will help me with the last hurdle by taking me to Gatwick early on Friday morning.

All of my best memories are of journeys – to Calcutta as a small baba, to Puri, across India to Jammu with Dubby and the mountain journeys – to Bhutan, Sikkim, Kalimpong and Nepal. This will be rather gentle compared to those but nonetheless, exciting and thrilling. A new country, new surroundings, the promise of a road trip to Montreal and all with my darling Gail.

I always used to wonder why my grandmother, who had an acid tongue, used to speak so lovingly of her neighbour or companion of the day. She seemed in latter years to have become treacle tongued, amazingly affectionate and bound closely to her friends. Then my mother in her last years did the same thing; she had her ‘darling Peggy’, her ‘sweet Joan’ and, although I liked them both, seemed almost too fond.

Well, now I have ‘darling Gail’, ‘dearest Annabel” and my ‘lovely Kathryn”. I think this overt affection is something we arrive at with age – we no longer have our parents but still need that sense of love and purpose in our lives so we make our friends the object of all.

Wish me luck on Friday – I’ll keep you posted, as this will become, briefly, a travel blog. Love and light to all of you.

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Fires

It is so weird how the mind works - you are just chatting to someone (in this instance, me to Peter) and suddenly a random remark evokes a rush of memories. As we chatted about gilets, red boots and Land's End Clothing he said something that reminded me of the mountains and Kalimpong. Fires in bedrooms. You see we always had a fire in the bedrooms in the mountains so one slept with the gentle glow of embers, the scent of pine resin and gentle crackling of the wood as the fire slowly burned through the night.

And then the memories came flooding back, whisky and brandy bottles filled with hot water, snuggled into a crocheted cosy and pushed down so the bed was warm. Kancha bringing up pails of boiling water to fill the tin bath so we bathed in the morning in a bath, that had probably been to Gyantse and back in its lifetime, in front of a newly rekindled fire.

This may sound as if I have confused my memories with those of someone older and from another time but I promise this is true. At 4500 feet Kalimpong got cold at night. As a small child I would be tucked into bed, kissed and left to drowse in the firelight as downstairs I could hear the chatter and laughter that now seem such a hallmark of my childhood. As it got later sometimes the sounds got louder, the laughter more manic and Auntie Annie could be heard singing some ditty from the music halls of her youth. If I judged it correctly I could then creep down, hide under a table and watch entranced as the dancing started.

If you have never seen Nepalese dancing it is hard to imagine, it is both graceful and life enhancing: the beat of the tabla and the sweet sound of a flute join the voices as they sing of the love of a boy for a girl, of how the girl invites and then repels. The dancer or dancers reenact the song with the gentlest of hand gestures, use of the eyes and a constant circling and twirling as the story reaches it end. Then suddenly the mood would change, the drum was beaten faster, handkerchiefs pulled out and the men using the drum and our clapping as rhythm performed fast and furious gymnastics to the song Nainitala - Desmond excelled at this and the boys who sang always made him dance this at least once. I would get too carried away and clap loudly from my hiding place, get caught and sent back to bed.

One night Auntie Annie called us all out to the porch - once a year a flower bloomed and it was this night. We looked in awe at the purple blossom and then out across the valley to the far away snows, the spirit lights and above a huge and pendulous moon hanging in a sky studded with stars so close you could touch them if you stretched.

All this from one comment about having a fire in one's bedroom. That Marcel Proust knew a thing or two.

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Anthem for a Doomed Youth

ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH by WILFRED OWEN

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? ---Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,--- The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Right little, tight little island

As a child I was always, understandably, enchanted by the miniature. Tiny models of the inside of a Boeing 707 in the BOAC office would have me happily entranced as my mother and father arranged flight and stop offs with the pretty lady. Just next door was a shop aptly named "Good Companions" and they had a dolls hospital. I knew that it must be splendid because on the counter, for sale, was a filigree four poster bed, just the right size for my Barbie doll, and if they knew that then the dollies they took in had to be very well cared for.

I was traumatised at 14 to find out that the doll's hospital was, in fact, a large room filled with kapok and glue, baskets of dismembered hands, legs and heads, switches of horse tails being glued piece by piece on some poor creature whose mother had obviously been left alone too long with the scissors.

Cover of Miss Happiness and Miss Flower

One of my favourite books, both then and now, was The Borrowers. An enchanted but never sickly tale of little people who 'borrow' from the 'big'uns (us) to furnish their houses and feed themselves. Another delight was Rumer Godden's Miss Happiness and Miss Flower: two Japanese dolls who had a very special house made for them. I remember vividly the use of a certain kind of pencil case, using the same mechanism as a roll top desk. I made my mother's life a misery as we searched high and low for just such a case - finally  finding them in a Kashmiri shop at the back of the New Market,

Even as I outgrew dolls still found the small microcosmic items irresistible; thus my mother could happily spend a morning in Hamilton's the jewellers looking the Cooch Behar emeralds as they were prepared for their transport to Paris and Cartier whilst I looked at the exquisite jaguars, tigers, owls and snakes made of enamel and precious stones. Back opal crabs, turqousie parrots with diamond eyes and golden snake with emerald eys a flick of a ruby tongue

I went to the Cotswold's today a microcosm of an England that has gone, a sepia image of days gone by where the  market halls was not overlaid with a keen eye on the tourist trade. But it did remind me again of how the small can enchant and delight. I coudn't live there - too small, but I still loved it the way it made feel about an England that does still exist - where the church clock stands and ten to three and there still is honey for tea.

So - my perfect house built in 1560 of honey coloured Cotswold stone, just outside Calcutta with views to the sea on ones side and the mountains on the other. And of course, a collection of doll's houses. I just hope the borrowers can find me.

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Battle fatigue

 I m so tired. tired of living , scared of dying to paraphrase Ol' Man River. I have been trying so hard with the new medication - trying to convince everyone it is all OK but it is so not!.

I played some silly Q&;A game to see how old I would be when I die- 2050 in LA undergoing surgery. To little to late for me.

I have to spend the day with the mad sister tomorrow - her treat to a fabulous Christmas fair on an old US airbase. Great but I have no money. Not completely true - I have £4.75. I suspect the coffee will come to that. Then on Thursday up to London to get the new passport - cost £127 - which I haven't got unless I sell this. And then Canada thanks to darling Gail.

Why oh why is it all so bloody hard - it is like walking through treacle in wellie boots. sticky and gummy with every pace.

I've gone on too long and I'm boring you . God knows I am boring myself.

Back to more of the nostalgia and less of the neurosis tomorrow - bet your bottom dollar. I'm thinking purple at a hundred and five will be very, very cool.

Warning - When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple

By Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple

with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

and satin candles, and say we've no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired

and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

and run my stick along the public railings

and make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

and pick the flowers in other people's gardens

and learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

and eat three pounds of sausages at a go

or only bread and pickles for a week

and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

and pay our rent and not swear in the street

and set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

A little light reading - truly

No blog today - tired and listless and in need of poetry so I thought I'd share.

He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven



Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread upon my dreams.





When You are Old
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
 
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
 
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.


The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
 
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
 
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
WB Yeats                                                                                              

Pickled

I seem to have caused confusion, 'let that me my masterpiece".

I was at no time used  as a lavender cover for my  friend - if I had felt like that  should said so years ago. He loved Christopher, the young man/boy and wanted me to tell you that he was a sweet and generous soul, capable of great kindness and fun. And he has spent the last thirty years trying to fins him and repay for his generosity of spirit.,

He is my friend and I still love him so there it is - make of it what you will - his absolution for my part was complete so let it be - the past is another country.

My darling Peter, pigs to friends phoned tonight and had me screeching with laughter. He has a generous heart and a gift of making you feel capable of being better than you are in reality. He also bought me a pair of red boots for the Canadian snow - only true friends do that. I think he needs a blog of his own.

Wasn't that Basingstoke blog mind numbingly boring? That's what living here for any length of time does to you.  I do apologise.

Anyway thought I would try something new - moving images and sound - let me know what you think?

And yes I know it is a political broadcast but the message and the music sync beautifully.

Please Joanna, what is a Baisingstoke?

Was the question asked after a particularly bileful blog after a day's shopping in the mall of hell. It made me think and then, talking to my darling Dubs on the phone this morning I was making him laugh about the horrors of it and he said,"Write it." So here it is.

Some basic history first - Basiingstoke was a sleepy Hampshire town whose main claim to fame lay in the Kennet and Avon Canal that ran right through the middle. It made for a bustling market as cattle barges bound for London would also bring prime cows for the weekly cattle market. To commemorate this there some rather neo - Stalinist statues of bargess and farmers straddling the roadside by the station and the entrance to the mall of hell.

In the 1960s London's bomb damage in the East End was still not cleared and it was decided to move whole communities to New Towns as overspill. Basingstoke was one of these - the canal long gone it had slowly become a sleepy Hampshire town again with few pretensions and even fewer aspirations

Enter the Eastenders - I know for a fact that for one of the Kray's funerals the school I taught at was half empty - asked where they had been, "To show our respect Miss, they looked after their own."

The town grew madly, new estates with the worst of the seventies ugly buildings sprang up over green fields and leafy lanes became dual carriageways linking roundabout after roundabout to Reading, Newbury and Oxford and of course, London. It became known as the Dallas of the South with its high rise super office blocks and its shiny newness.

The trouble was that Basingstoke was in the midst of an identity crisis - old Hampshire country folk who wanted their market and a few comfortable shops and an ever growing population of young Londoners who wanted more. And somewhere in between the doughty middle classes holding out for the town to become better known for better reasons. Twinning with Alencon allowed some cultural exchange. There was already a, not very good repertory theatre and a slightly flea bitten cinema so the race was on to re culture the town.

It is a truth universally acknowledged (sorry Jane) that a town in need of culture must build a concert hall - so they did; the Anvil - a nod to the agricultural past. Now I love the Anvil - great acoustics, superb artistic director and team. All very well for the aspirant middle class but what about the thousands still in their Hampshire East End enclaves. What did the Anvil do for them?

The thing is, Basingstoke was like a lost child seeking to find her identity - nest stop leisure parks with bowling , skating, ice hockey, flume rides and swimming pools and McDonald's.  Big success - huge. They went one step further and built a transport museum - biggish success.

So now the town had Culture, Fun and Education. The next and most obvious of all was to worship at the alter of the 90s gods of shopping. Hence Festival Place the mall from hell.  All under one roof, over heated by the press of unwashed bodies, shop after shop selling the same thing in different colours - a food court, another cinema, another pool and a slightly dingy area for the pounsdshops and the food shops and the smokers!.

But you can build things to your hearts content but you cannot design or build a soul for a town. One of the great Cromwellian sieges took place here and that puritan mentality is hard to shake. I took my drama students to a dress rehearsal of the The Good Woman of Szechuan - it was the RSC and it was amazing,unsettling and totally altered their understanding of theatre and how it integrated with its audience to question and to doubt. On the first night of the play half the audience walked out. That is Basinstoke.

And now a great joke - someone somewhere decided a little controversy was needed and commissioned a piece of art ( hate that expression - art is not something you buy like a sack of potatoes, paint and mud and stone are not art even they cost millions to some poor sucker). And it is joyous and misunderstood, for the people of Basingstoke stop and look, giggle and walk on slightly shocked. I don't know what the artist meant but I know what I see - a giant phallus, a Shiva lingum, an erect fertile giver at last of some soul of this lost town.

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