Is that metaphorical?

Because they’re shooting pheasants round home this morning and Ellie hates the noise – she runs back if I try to walk with her – we drive a couple of miles to some National Trust countryside.

As we leave the carpark the river is high. I hope there isn’t a sudden surge and car is washed away.

The river is high as we leave the carpark

There's no sign however of what Frog calls ‘witches’ knickers’ – the pieces of plastic bag draped over trees by flood.

'Witches' knickers' (in May 2012)

There are lots of other people around and the paths are muddy, so I go off piste and head for ‘my’ island.

But it’s gone. All there is to show for the grassy knoll where Ellie and I have spent several happy hours is a band of ripples and some grass-tops.

Grass-tops and a line of ripples: my one-time island

Ellie is as surprised as me.

Ellie wondering where the island has gone

We find another spot to sit and I watch the scudding clouds and the racing river - keeping an eye out for flash floods. The sky is like a friendly giant and I wonder why humanity ever wanted to tame nature.

When we get home I tell Frog what's happened to the island.

'Is that metaphorical?' he asks.

That shiny happy person

As the website My Horrid Parent says, criticising parents is still taboo, and it is especially difficult to do when the abuse is psychological rather than physical. More often than not you can prove the results of physical abuse, whereas psychological abuse is invisible. It’s hard to quantify and hard to explain. After all, if parents clothe and feed you, make sure you have a good education and give you material things, what is there to complain about?

I have touched on the subject in previous posts, not I hope in a spirit of blame but because I need to untangle the situation. As a child you blame yourself and carry on loving your parents. As you get older you make excuses for them. They did their best. They didn't know what they were doing. They had good qualities as well as bad ones. You understand that the abuse was the result of their own pain.  You try and look at the situation from a karmic point of view and be thankful for the chance to learn and grow. None of that however gets to the root of the problem. It misses the point. First and foremost you have to name the actions for what they were.

And a funny thing happens when you do. Your perspective changes. You flip. You stop being a victim. Suddenly you feel free. Suddenly you are that shiny happy person you always knew was inside you but only appeared when you got right away, preferably to Australia the other side of the world.

I’ve been reminded recently of the pictures of the Dutch artist M C Escher. Is the world black or white, convex or concave, going up or going down? That shiny happy person comes and goes. One moment I see her, I am her. The next I’m not.

Those few of us who do dare to criticise parents feel a kinship. We have struggled through the snow and reached the safety of the pub. It’s cold outside but we have each other.

And I hope that soon the shiny happy person will be here to stay.

And here finally are some Christmas rules that Frog has picked up from Facebook (from a liberal American he follows).

1. Do not go into debt trying to show people how much you love them
2. Do not go home to see your family if it damages your mental health
3. If someone criticises your weight, eat them.

Artists and farmers

House-building is like road-building. Demand is never satisfied and at some point one just has to call it a day. Sadly, that day has not yet arrived in Devon.

    A few miles away from us in the middle of the countryside a whole new town has recently appeared. Where the inhabitants come from, what their skills are and where they work I don't know. A farming couple however, displaced from their farm by the development, has recently set up shop on land two fields away from us.

    They started with one barn, then built another, then installed a caravan so that someone could look after the animals in the barns, and now have a house. Before the house was built, I protested strongly about it to the planning department. My protests didn’t have any effect of course and luckily Sue and Jon are charming and have not held them against me.

    This morning, as Ellie and I struggled up the lane through the mud and the puddles, Jon came hurtling down the hill in a vast tractor with lethal prongs sticking out of the front and a vast muddy trailer behind. He slewed to a halt in true Devon fashion next to Ellie and me so that we could have a chat.

    Jon is a sensitive man, deeply upset by his exile and committed to both his animals and the organic way of farming. As he talked I realised that artists (of all kinds, including me) and farmers have a lot in common.

We both spend most of the time on our own

We both wear terrible clothes (Why make an effort if no one is going to appreciate it? Why not just be comfortable?)

We both work for love, not money

We’re both independent to the point of pain

We both feel misunderstood by the world at large.

When Frog and I first moved to rural Devon in the 1970s, the population consisted largely of artists and farmers, with a smattering of complementary therapists and not much else. It was good to be reminded of that time.

As I have no photos of my own of 1970s' Devon, here are three by the wonderful James Ravilious. (Follow the link for more and better quality.)

Mud-wrap and wintry watermeadows

Recently I’ve been very confused, so two days ago I asked the universe for guidance, a small hint about the way forward, some encouragement about my writing perhaps. That night I had a dream.

    I was being given a detoxifying mud-wrap but, hardly had the process started, than the therapist disappeared leaving me in public half undressed with clumps of mud stuck to me.

    What could be clearer?

    I’ve started to open up about sensitive subjects and then, at the first sign of trouble (family disapproval), clammed up again. I’ve started a healing process and then abandoned it.

    But it’s too late to back out. I’ve already got mud on me. The public has already seen me without all my clothes on.

    So my New Year’s Resolution is to Carry On.

And, talking of the New Year, brings me to the festive season and my best wishes to you for Christmas and your own New Year. Thank you for reading this blog. Double thank you if you’ve commented and, even if you don’t comment, I feel your presence.

Here is a photograph I took of some nearby watermeadows one January. It’s what I’m using for my Christmas card this year.

With the turning of the year

From time to time over the last few decades I’ve attended many writing workshops, usually ones run by the wonderful Roselle Angwin. The most recent (in 2009, I discover to my astonishment) was a weekend entitled ‘Stranger than Fiction’ and involved writing our life stories. I disgraced myself in my eyes by sobbing for almost the whole two days but nobody seemed to mind and, as I kept saying, it was such a relief to be in a place where you could be unhappy. Not that I was unhappy, but I’d tapped into a place within myself that didn’t normally find expression.

Over the last few months I’ve found myself in some dark places. This is I suppose partly because of everything that’s been happening, starting with my mother’s death in February. It’s also because of the blog in which I’ve opened up several subjects I normally keep under wraps. And now, with the turning of the year, the world itself is darkening.

December sunset

I suspect that my migraines are the dark places struggling to get out, and for the last two weeks, in advance of the visit of my brother and sister-in-law J and K, I’ve been suffering on and off with the condition. This is not because of J and K, because nobody could be kinder, but because they represent Family and for me the negative connotations of Family outweigh the positive.

Yesterday evening, 36 hours after J and K left, I thought I was better and I celebrated with a glass of wine. Big Mistake. I woke in the night feeling dreadful again. My emotions were in turmoil. Obviously the blog, which was supposed to be a healing exercise, wasn’t working. What’s more, I’d upset another member of the family with some of the things I’d been saying.

    ‘I’m going to stop blogging,’ I said to Frog, ‘and delete everything I’ve written.’

    ‘No,’ he mumbled with admirable perspicacity given that he was at least three-quarters asleep.

    Immediately I felt better.

This blog – at present – is revealing a side of me that I’ve kept hidden for my family’s sake for much of my life. It’s bound to cause trouble. But to be whole and healthy I need to come clean about that side, and this blog is the only place I have at the moment where I can. I just have to keep going. 

January sunrise

Back to fiction?

Creativity takes energy, and since mid-October I’ve had none to spare. Hence the dearth of blog posts.

Now however, with the dog mended, my computer working again (fingers crossed), and a pause in the sorting of stuff and in building work because my lovely brother J and sister-in-law K are coming to stay, life is easing up and I can feel the creative urge returning.

I don’t yet* have anything important to say, however, so here instead are some pictures of, or rather from, ‘my’ semi-island where the dog and I spent another dreamy hour or so at the weekend.

I’ve been transfixed recently by the beauty of the elements – a white sky, a grey river. Sometimes I wish I could paint or make music as those media surely would express that feeling so much better than words, or even photographs.

Maybe I should get back to writing fiction. Maybe that would say what I want to say.


* Whoops. That 'yet' just slipped out but as I read it back it sounds rather conceited. I shall leave it in, notwithstanding.

Synchronicity or what?

I’m a firm believer in synchronicity. By synchronicity I mean that what happens in the external world mirrors what’s going inside us, that we create our future with our intentions and that everything that happens is part of a web of meaning. This has been borne out so many times in my life that I’ve given up doubting it in spite of the majority view that the whole idea is complete boxxocks.

If you’re clever you can use consciously this quality of the universe – you can tap into the web, getting exactly what you want and finding signs everywhere as to what’s going on. Sometimes however – like now, for me – the whole blinking thing is a mystery.

I’ve told you about Ellie and her injury.

I’ve told you about our building work inside and out – the new bathroom, the knocking down of wall, the earth-moving - and I've told you about the sorting out of shed, garage and house.

The new bathroom

I've told you about my mother's death earlier this year and about my mental and emotional clear-outs – the two events from 40 years ago that have haunted me ever since and of which I want to be free.

I haven’t however told you about my email and computer problems. (Skip this bit if you want.)

During the summer I lost all my old emails and destroyed the email programme I was using through my own carelessness. Then, around the time Ellie was injured, I was unable to send or receive messages with the new programme I'd installed. (Not my fault this time.) I'm now unable to keep any records of messages sent, received or deleted and have lost my email address book.

Two weeks ago I got a new computer and as soon as it was plugged in up in my room it started to misbehave. Because our computer expert Ian had had no problems with it in his workshop, Frog and I then tried every possible combination of peripherals (luckily Frog-the-hoarder has a good supply) – screens, keyboards, mice, leads, connectors, sockets, printers, scanners – at the same time running my old computer as a control. The old computer which had appeared to be on its last legs behaved impeccably while the new computer continued to crash. It’s now gone back to Ian for re-testing.

My study looks like computer repair shop. I’m limping along with half an old computer. My files and pictures are all over the place on memory sticks. I'm using four different email programmes. We think we're going to have to try a completely new system of broadband.

The computer repair shop (my study)

Yes, now I come to think about it, there probably is a connection somewhere in all that. But what it means and what the heck I can do about it I don’t yet know.

Colour everywhere

On Saturday,  Frog, Ellie and I go for a walk by the sea.

Even though it’s a grey day and nearly winter, there's colour everywhere.

I think she's feeling better . . .

I’ve received so much kindness and concern about Ellie that I thought I’d better update you about her condition.

She’s off the lead and out of her onesie. Her stitches are gone and the wound’s nearly healed.

Here she is today helping me level an area behind our shed that’s going to be decked and turned into an area for Frog to store stuff out of sight (or at least that’s the idea).

I couldn’t decide which picture to use so I’m afraid you’ve got them all.

A place of magic

It’s a funny thing but good art – whether writing, painting, music or anything else – is inspiring, in the sense that it inspires you (or rather me) to do the same. It makes me feel creative. You’d think it would be the opposite. You’d think it would make you despair of ever reaching those heights. But it doesn’t. I suppose it’s the same with people. Good people are the ones who make you feel better about yourself and the world, and bad people – however beautiful, rich, famous or talented – make you feel worse. Or at least that’s my yardstick.

    Yesterday evening quite by accident I caught a feature on BBC2’s ‘Autumnwatch’. A nature writer (I didn’t catch his name) was talking about a man in the 1950s (I didn’t catch his name either) who wrote about the peregrine falcons of his native Essex. Both the commentary and the extracts read out were fabulous, and while watching I felt those familiar creative stirrings and remembered an incident from earlier in the day that hadn’t seemed important at the time but I now realised was a highlight.

The last nine days since Ellie was injured have been ghastly.

    Because the gash is in her side she hasn’t been allowed to run or jump as this might rip it open, so can’t be let out except on the lead and can only be walked for three ten-minute episodes a day. Because she is on the lead, so am I. Because she can’t run and jump, neither can I. Neither of us is free.

    We have to try and roll up her onesie as much as possible so that the wound gets some air but with her onesie rolled up she has to be watched because if she licks the wound it could get infected. Even worse, she could tear out the stitches. So, if Ellie is to have any fun at all and any fresh air during the day when she’s not walking, I have to be in the garden with her and there’s not much you can do when you have to keep your eyes on a licky dog.

Ellie with her onesie rolled up and her wound exposed

I’ve felt that my life was on hold and plunged into a depression that I hoped had been left behind with my orphaning.

Yesterday because Frog was at home I disappeared into Exeter saying I had to do some errands. He could look after the dog for a change. I needed a break.

    I didn’t enjoy Exeter. It’s always swarming with people but yesterday because of half-term it was even worse. I didn’t find anything I wanted in the shops so decided to buy some lunch and sit somewhere nice to eat it. I had an hour’s parking left and didn’t want to go home.

    In the past I would have gone to the cathedral green but most of it is now fenced off while the Royal Clarence Hotel which burnt down last November is rebuilt. And anyway, the last time I sat on cathedral green a seagull swiped my sandwich out of my hand. (It was a rather nice prawn one too and, as the woman sitting next to me drily remarked, the seagull had good taste: it didn’t want her pasty.)

    As I wandered, sarnies firmly clasped, I passed some ruins. I’d never explored them before so stopped to read the information board. It was all a bit complicated but as far as I could make out they were the remains of a medieval church and almshouses bombed in the war, with Roman remains underneath. They’d been left in the centre of Exeter as a memorial to those who had died in the war.

    I ventured further in, sat on a bit of ruined medieval wall in the sun and wrestled with the sandwich packet. No one else was around. A blackbird fluttered out of a tangle of clematis and hopped further into the ruins to a barred-off place not open to the public where some feeble-looking grass and a handful of wildflowers straggled through the gravel. I could probably squeeze through those bars, I thought. If I were homeless I might pitch my tent in there. The sounds of the city had vanished as if a perspex wall had slid up between me and the crowds that surged past. And, suddenly, I was in a place of magic.

Exeter's ruined medieval almshouses.*

That feeling was what I remembered when I watched the feature on ‘Autumnwatch’.

    Was it the place that created the feeling or is it a part of me that I don’t go to often enough? How long is it since I’ve taken time out – really out – just for myself?

If you want to visit the ruins for yourself, they're behind Wagamama.

* Sadly this isn't my picture as I didn't have my camera with me. It comes from this site.