A benevolent tonal Buddha*

From 1977 to 2019 Frog (my late husband) was connected with Exeter University’s student radio station. He looked after the equipment and gave continuity and advice to the ever-changing student members. He also presented his own programme, The Frog Prog, on which he played his unique choice of music, both popular and classical, from all eras, and passed on his encyclopaedic knowledge of all things musical.

Last June, past members of the radio station put together a tribute programme for Frog

https://www.mixcloud.com/XpressionShowcase/john-frog-whitworth-memorial-show/

and I’ve been crying my way through it. Sometimes they really catch his character and talents and it’s given me a whole new appreciation of him.

I’ve been doing a lot of crying lately. Since November in fact when I acquired a bad back. The pain then went to my legs where it has stuck ever since. It’s terrified me because, now I’m on my own, I have to manage. I can’t be ill or incapacitated. I have a dog to mind.

Ellie at one year old. She's now twelve and a half.

But what I realised this morning is that the pain has made me get in touch with my feelings. It’s lowered my defences and let the grief come to the surface. It’s given me time. I haven’t been able to rush around clearing Frog’s stuff, forging a ‘new life’ and being brave. I’ve spent a lot of time alone, in my dressing-gown, writing in my Notebooks (a sort of diary), using up tissues.

In a funny sort of way, I think that realisation may help me to throw off the pain. It may be a sort of turning point. I hope so, anyway.

And at the risk of sounding crass, I thought I might link all that to the slow emergence of spring, another turning point, as evidenced by the following pictures.

Rooks' nests by the canal

The weeping willow over the lane below the house, always the first tree to burst into leaf

Ivy berries, like bunches of grapes, important food for birds at this time of year

Beech flowers

I've never noticed beech flowers before (in all my 70 years), which shocks me. How much else is there that I just don't see? Putting that in a more positive way (and I do try to be positive in everything), it shows that nature is always there to surprise and delight us - if we keep open to the possibility.

*This is how one ex-student described Frog in the tribute programme (at least, I think that's what he said)

Lifelines

At times, the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks and months since Frog’s death have felt like one long nightmare, a black tunnel without an exit. Three things have kept me from going under.

The first, and perhaps the most important, is my connection – however shaky ‒ to a spiritual world. In particular, my affirmations. I won’t tell you what these are as that might reduce their power, but I can say that I first learnt about them from Louise Hay’s wonderful book You Can Heal Your Life.

My edition of the book

The edition on Amazon at the moment

I bought the book, which came out in 1984, many years ago, but only started using it seriously about 4 years ago in an effort to cure my migraines. Well, the migraines have virtually gone, and I wonder now whether I was also working through the book in unconscious preparation for the times I’m going through now. It’s a mad thought, but the world is stranger than we can ever imagine. I know that now because I never expected Frog to drop down dead in front of me at the age of 69. Perversely, that unexpectedness is another comfort: who knows what my future holds?

My gateway to the spiritual world is nature, to which I'm led every day by my beloved Ellie, and in particular my secret wood, which I’ve mentioned many times before in this blog.

My secret wood, in a steep valley carved by two small streams

My secret wood, with Ellie and bluebells

Thankfully, it’s spring at the moment and, even though spring doesn’t seem quite as glorious as usual and half the time I’m stuck in my own desperate inner world, it has its moments.

The wild cherry tree in my garden a few weeks ago

My third lifeline is people: family, neighbours, friends, counsellor. I never realised before how much I needed people. Because of what happened 44 years ago when Frog and I wanted to marry, we retreated. We kept ourselves to ourselves and I dreamt of the two of us living somewhere really remote like an uninhabited island in the Pacific, instead of the Devon countryside, however beautiful. Now, people seem to have forgiven me my unsociability and flocked to my aid.

I’ve mentioned my lovely sisters and brother and how much they've been helping me, but I've not mentioned my counsellor before. I see her once a week in the village and she’s amazing. I can say anything to her and cry all I like. I leave each session feeling like a new person. At the moment we’re working on emotions, using a wheel.

The version of the Wheel of Emotions that I'm using at the moment.
There are many others, some with better words. 

It’s as if my emotions have been frozen for decades (which of course didn’t help Frog and me. I’ll do better next time – if I get a chance. Please, God) and now my heart has burst open. I have no experience of dealing with such a tumult and my counsellor is helping me to learn.

Two days ago a former sister-in-law (she used to be married to an in-law of mine) dropped in with her now-husband on their way to Cornwall. They left me these flowers . . .

. . . and sent me this stunning picture from their holiday.

Cornwall, yesterday

Every kindness, like that, does something to fill the hole left by Frog’s death.

Writing this blog helps too.

Thirteen weeks and two days

It’s now thirteen weeks and two days since Frog died. If anything, I feel worse than I did three months ago. I’m worn down by sleepless nights and my rapidly falling weight. I can’t believe that my body keeps going.

I try to hold on to my beliefs. I do my breathing exercises and make positive affirmations. I pray and go for long walks and sit in my secret wood with Ellie for hours, bathed in the healing power of nature. Neighbours, friends and family rally round. But the grief doesn’t go away. It frightens me.

Meanwhile, spring advances in fits and starts.

Ellie keeping me company in my secret wood. The carpet of bluebell leaves hints at the glory to come

Greater Stitchwort masses along the footpath

Pussy Willow is bursting into bloom. Already the flowers smell unbelievably sweet and soon the tree will be buzzing with bees.

Golden Saxifrage clusters on the banks of streams

The first Cuckoo Flower (Lady’s Smock) yesterday in the damp meadow behind the house. An insect has found it too.

Why do I have to be so desperately unhappy? Why can’t I simply be grateful for the near half-century that Frog and I spent together? Why can’t I simply remember that time with joy? Why can’t I simply rejoice in my new-found closeness to my brothers and sisters and the kindness that greets me at every turn? Why can’t I hold on to my belief that Frog and I will meet again?

Why does the grief outweigh everything?

PS You can now sign up (again) to receive an email when I publish a new post. See under the picture at the top of the column on the right. Let me know (if you can) if it doesn't work.

Three days in the life

Since Frog died (10 weeks ago) my two sisters and two brothers have been taking it in turn to come and stay, keeping me company and helping with the myriad practical tasks that have now come my way. Each brings their own brand of support. Last week it was the turn of J, who is the admin expert and also, since retired, turning out to be a pretty handy sort of person all round.

On Friday, in driving rain, we filled a skip with all the debris that had been collecting around the back door for decades.

I had no idea what most of it was (other than mysterious electronic boxes, wires, lumps of metal, lumps of plastic) and I had tried to sort it into piles for recycling at the tip but I then decided, bu- - er it (as Frog would say). I have a bad back at the moment, I didn’t have the strength to load and unload the car and anyway I couldn’t work out how to put the car’s back seat down.

It was very satisfying.

We then moved to the carport all the boxes and bags that had been cluttering up the conservatory.

The boxes were the result of a preliminary clearing of Frog’s debris in kitchen and sitting-room, mostly stuff that, again, he hadn’t used for decades (pens, badges, frog ornaments, puppets and, again, numerous unidentifiable wires and connectors).

The bags contained clothes and shoes. At the suggestion of my sister E, I had kept my favourites of both, and Frog’s favourites, and all the clothes that I had made for him. It wasn’t a question of getting rid of everything; it was a question of keeping a selection to remember him by.

Frog was a hoarder and for 44 years I had lived in his shadow, keeping small areas clear for myself and ignoring the rest of the house. Now, in order to move on, I had to make space for myself. It was heart-rending but vital. Frog didn’t need the stuff any more, he’d left it behind, and in order to join him – as, when and wherever ‒ I had to leave it behind as well.

These boxes and bags we covered in a tarpaulin and left for a charity to collect.

The next day, we tackled some of the dreaded admin (transferring savings and investments into my name, informing utility and insurance companies, contacting the Land Registry about ownership of the house etc etc). This again is heart-rending task, not made any easier by the unpleasantness of some of the institutions who seem to go out of their way not to help one, and by the fact that I couldn’t contact anyone by phone because it made cry. J is a godsend.

Then we turned to the Tilley lamp which I’d found in the shed and tried to use during Storm Eunice when I was without power for 8 hours.

We had some experience of Tilley lamps from sailing holidays when we were children and I'd watched a video on YouTube and printed out some instructions. 

However, after – with great difficulty – installing a new ‘mantle’ (a sort of net that soaks up the paraffin and burns), spilling paraffin all over the kitchen, and two abortive attempts to light the darn thing, we decided that the pumping lever (which creates pressure in the paraffin well and sends the paraffin up the tube to the mantle) was caput, and gave up. Watch this space for the next instalment.

The next day, we went to the sea. We left home in wind and rain and arrived on the coast in beautiful sunshine. It was spring at last and wildflowers were starting to burgeon.

The first Alexanders, only found by the sea

The first violets

Ivy berries, one of the few things birds have to eat at this time of year

In spite of the weather, we had the beach almost to ourselves

Ellie has found something interesting under the pebbles.
(I had to alter the picture because the sea was flowing downhill and unfortunately in the process I lost my brother's top half

Celandines, glowing in the sun

That night, perhaps because that part of the coast was somewhere Frog and I had loved visiting together, and perhaps because I knew J was leaving the next day, I had one of my meltdowns.

The counsellor I’m seeing says that they’re a symptom of shock, the result of sudden traumatic loss. They make me feel as if I have nothing inside me but panic and that I’m trapped in a small black box by myself for ever and ever.

I went outside to look at the stars and J stood by.

Some small good things

As I struggle with winter darkness, a family in Kent and London thrown into disarray by the latest restrictions, and a bad back which arrived mysteriously on 23 December as I relaxed for Christmas, I thought I’d share with you some small good things which have come into my life recently.
 

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve we went for a walk along our nearby canal. On the way we passed this solar farm . . .

Solar farm, glimpsed through trees from the canal towpath

. . . and I noticed that sheep were grazing among the panels (but unfortunately didn’t take a picture of them). That’s interesting I thought: making double use of the land frees up space which could perhaps be filled with wildness.

And then I noticed that a biggish area of land outside the perimeter fence of the solar farm but within the old field boundary had been left to go wild.

Around the solar farm: an area of scrub and rough grass

It looked as if the wildness was accidental – through neglect rather than by design – but none the worse for that. Better, perhaps. It was just my sort of place.

And then I noticed underneath a distant tree the figures of some deer.

Deer colonising the wilderness 

It was a magical moment. It showed that as soon as there’s space, nature moves in. It takes no time at all.

An hour later we came back the same way and the deer were still there, comfortable and unafraid.

An hour later, the deer are still there, in exactly the same place

Christmas Day

Christmas Day arrived cold and frosty. Perfect seasonal weather, with a glorious sunrise which felt like an omen. I snapped a picture quickly through the landing window.

Christmas Day sunrise from the landing window

A few minutes later I went outside and took another picture, but I think the one from the landing is better.

Christmas Day sunrise from the garden

May every cage be open

Two years ago, I renewed my acquaintance with Norway, the land of my mother’s mother (see right), and one of the many things I loved about that beautiful land was its wildness. And not just wildness: I discovered that the whole of the mountainous, wooded, laked interior is common land, where you are free to roam, camp, ski, picnic, swim.
 
Britain used to be like that too, until the thirteenth century when powerful people began to appropriate the countryside for themselves, ‘enclosing’ and fencing it and excluding everyone else. And the process continues, in ways both big (like roads and housing estates) and small.
 
When we first came to live in our current house over forty years ago, two farmers owned most of the land around and – with amazing kindness - let me wander where I liked. Now the land is broken up, with hedges fenced (instead of patched with old bedsteads, pallets and cattle feeders that I could climb over) and gates padlocked and the areas where I can walk reducing every day. What’s more, I get shouted at for walking on the road.
 
The poet John Clare went mad when the Northamptonshire countryside where he was born and brought up was cleared for intensive farming and shut off to the common people. George Monbiot in a superb article (in the Guardian in 2012) likens this process to the way indigenous peoples are torn from their land and culture, and their souls destroyed.
 
I feel the same sometimes and, before I get into one of my rants, I thought I’d share with you my collection of pictures on the subject. At the end of which, I will try to produce a happy ending. Promise. 

My current hope for the future is rewilding – allowing large areas of land to revert to their natural state, bringing back flora and fauna once extinct in this country like beavers and storks, removing fences, letting rivers take their own course, letting drained marshlands flood again. Returning the countryside to a richness and diversity we can hardly imagine now. And then joining up these areas, so that richness and diversity are the norm.

I can only hope that we humans are allowed back too to these wild lands.

And here to finish is a picture of a van I saw in Glastonbury - that bastion of human diversity.

It's worth following the link to mobiusloop.co.uk. Is this their van? The small print (bottom right) reads 'Mortimer Sparrow' and 'the vanishing green art'. It's worth following this as well. As far as I can gather, Mortimer is a 'vegan tattoo artist' who also paints pictures. She has a facebook page, I think (but I don't, so I couldn't check properly).

Turning something old into something new: a to-do list for October

I am a workaholic. I was brought up to think that the day must be filled with ‘useful’ activities. This of course is anathema to creativity as the best ideas come (to me) when I’m doing something ‘useless’, like lying on the bed resting, walking aimlessly, sitting in the car, watching television.

Recently however I’ve run out of ‘useful’ things to do. I think I might have created this situation deliberately, in an attempt to leave space for new things. That doesn’t however make it any less painful and, as I said to Frog yesterday morning, I feel like I’m stumbling round a dark house.

‘Life’s catching up with you,’ he said.

I liked that. It made sense.

In the meantime, before I regain my sense of direction, I have to fill my days somehow. (Don’t I?) So when I read Kate’s ‘To-do list for October’ (see her blog 'I live, I love, I craft, I am me' ) I thought I’d compile one of my own. I didn’t intend to publish it, but Kate – who’s done so much to keep us all going, through the lockdown - suggested I did ‘so that we can all support each other as we go along’.

So here it is.

Garden/pool

I started off by listing all the jobs that needed doing (eg clear and clean the greenhouse, fetch manure, put winter cover on pool, put garden furniture away) and then I decided that was against the whole spirit of the exercise and nothing like Kate’s inspiring list. So I decided instead to say:

Bed garden and pool down for the winter – lovingly.

Sewing

By now I was better at the exercise so, instead of listing jobs, I decided that for me the purpose of sewing was to have fun. 

Even though I do occasionally follow patterns, like this new one that I’m turning into a purple shirt for Frog . . .

. . . they’re only starting points. I need to remember my first love – making do and mending – turning something old into something new.

I’m also at the moment craving a sewing room – something light and spacious, instead of a darkish corner of my study. Even though I can’t imagine where we’d put one or when we’ll ever be able to afford to build one, there’s no harm in starting to plan what I’d like.

 

Writing

Here, I listed my aims, which are:

-To change the direction of this blog. As I have mentioned in earlier posts, I want to dig deeper.

-To continue with my Secret Blog. This is something I’m writing just for me. At the moment it’s what you could call a ‘stream of negative consciousness’ but I’m letting it go where it will in the hope that it turns into something.

-To keep alert to stories, so that I can start a New Novel.

In my experience stories come to you; you can’t go looking for them. As Stephen King says in his hilarious On Writing which I’m reading at the moment (more about that another time, perhaps):

‘There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun.’

-To build my confidence. Confidence creates ideas. Lack of confidence kills them.

For the last two years I’ve been working hard with affirmations, under the guidance of the wonderful Louise Hay and her book You Can Heal Your Life.

But, as Frog pointed out recently, affirmations are just a starting point. You have to then put them into practice as this makes them real and proves them and gives you confidence in them, and creates a benign circle so that you carry on healing. So between us we decided that I could do something every day that’s new or scares me. Hence this post, I suppose!

 

Dog-walking

Because I do the main dog-walk mid-morning, I’m usually hungry and longing to get back for my lunch. Consequently I don’t always walk as far as both Ellie and I might like. I could change this routine.

Even though Frog and I have been adventurous recently, trying new walks when we go out, at home (when it’s just me and Ellie) I’m limited, but perhaps I could make small changes, such as doing walks backwards.

In other words, I can turn dogwalking from a chore to something new and confidence-boosting.

 

Cooking

I used to enjoy cooking supper because I combined it with my daily glass of wine. Since early August however I’ve cut alcohol out of my life, partly because it just wasn’t agreeing with me (however little I had) and I was feeling slightly jaded all the time (not to mention getting far too many migraines) and partly because I decided that blurring the edges of my life wasn’t helpful at the moment. I was following the ethos of my parents – work hard, drink hard and don’t think too much – but it wasn’t mine.

Now, I have to enjoy cooking for itself which I don’t particularly but I do enjoy eating and creating healthy food for Frog and me, so I decided to see cooking as time filled with something productive (I’m trying not to say ‘useful’) instead of time wasted. Another chore that I can turn into a pleasure.

 

Sorry about all this woffle. This post is something new for me, and I’ve let my thoughts and feelings run instead of marshalling them with my usual rigour. Thank you for reading it, and I hope that in some tiny way it might have helped you, or at least echoed something you feel yourself.

I realise too that I haven’t mentioned anything about autumn or the Lockdown (which featured in Kate’s list). But they do come into it. Another time perhaps.

The birds

I’ve been feeling ashamed of the previous post (‘Anger management’) and wanting to remove it, but Frog insists I keep it there. Instead therefore I’ve written this sequel.

The debris

On Monday I passed again the debris from the fencing business that’s piled on a nearby public footpath. I’ve been waiting recently to see if I could catch the man concerned and have a word with him, but I haven’t had so much as a glimpse of him, not even in one of the outsize vehicles of his that hurtle around the narrow lanes endangering Ellie and me as we walk. I’ve had enough, I thought. I’m going to report him to the council.

I decided to ring rather than filling out an online form as the behaviour didn’t fit into a ready-made category such as fly-tipping as the material's been there for ten years or so ever since the business arrived. I got through immediately. The woman I spoke to was utterly charming and professional. She took me seriously. She listened to everything I said and promised that the council would investigate, and as soon as I put the phone down I received an email acknowledgement of the call with an incident-report number.

I felt light-headed with relief. I was a real person after all. I did matter. I might even be able to have a small influence on the world. I didn't feel angry any more. I felt powerful.

The novel

It’s been a wonderful experience serialising my novel on the blog. I don’t know who you are, but I know you’re there in that I get a daily report on the number of page views and the posts that people read. Knowing that people – in quantity - are out there reading the novel has improved my writing a hundredfold and given purpose to my life. But I baulk at the thought of taking the novel further and publishing it as a book.

Do I really want to enter the commercial world? I’ve been there and I didn’t like it. I fear rejection and criticism. I don't want to be taken over by some publicity machine. I've seen (from my parents) how damaging success can be and I fear that success will spoil the life that Frog and I have together. I've seen the pressure that my sister, a successful children's novelist, is under, and I hate pressure of any kind with a vengeance. It makes me ill. (Yes, I know. I'm jumping forward a bit here.) 

But I have to take the novel further, I thought on Tuesday. I have something to say and, as yesterday’s experiences proved, I need to be heard. Or at least, for my own sanity and physical health, I need to try.

So I spent the morning preparing material for agents and sent some off. Then Frog and I went out in the car to do some errands (Frog to B&Q for wood, me to the sewing shop for thread and buttons). On the way home I started to feel sick. I thought it was Frog’s driving but when we got back the feeling didn’t go away. I had to sit down quietly for an hour or so and do the ‘trackword’ in our new Radio Times. ‘D’you think this is the result of contacting an agent?’ I asked Frog. ‘Very likely,’ he said.

The birds

The sun was setting and I hadn’t been out all day because it was the dog’s day at the dogminder. I wanted to take some photographs of the debris in case evidence was needed. In spite of how I felt I put my coat on and hurried up the field behind the house – pasture and vineyard, cared for organically.

Even the debris had its charm in the evening light.

And as I walked back down the field a huge flock of birds swished and swooped over the field in beautiful free-form waves. I wonder what they are, I thought. (I know about wildflowers, but birds are a bit of a mystery to me.) I didn’t photograph the waves: I didn’t think either my camera or I were up to it and I wanted to concentrate on watching. But then the birds went to roost in trees in the hedgerow and I managed to get some pictures. I’ll zoom in on these when I get home, I thought, and try and identify the birds.

Roosting birds. (Note the elm saplings. Soon the Dutch elm disease beetle will infect them and they'll die and resprout - like phoenixes.)

More roosting birds

The birds sat in the trees chattering. The noise was extraordinary and I had another of those moments of joy. Even in mid-winter and in spite of everything we’re doing to the environment, here was so much life.

The drain and the nature reserve

You might remember from the previous post how angry I was that the week before last Frog, Dog and I were barred from a nature reserve on the Somerset Levels that we’d hoped to visit. On that day however we did find a walk up a nearby ‘drain’ (drainage ditch) and it wasn’t at all bad.

It was a beautiful afternoon and we had the path almost to ourselves.

On the opposite bank we could see my favourite habitat, scrub.

We could even see some reserve-y bits (old peat-working pools) through the trees.

As we walked back along the road a woman stopped in a car to speak to us.

    ‘Are the starlings here tonight?’ she asked excitedly. ‘Only I do an online update, and for the last few nights they’ve been here, at the reserve.’

    We shook our heads. ‘We don’t know,’ we said. ‘We’re not allowed on the reserve.’

    Cars were piling up on the verges and crowds of people were filing through the gates of the reserve.

    I knew about the starlings on the Levels, about their breath-taking displays as they came in to roost at sunset. I knew people came from miles around to watch them and I’d always looked out for the flocks as we drove home after days out but had never seen any myself.

    ‘I wouldn’t have wanted to see the starlings like that anyway,’ I said to Frog as I stomped up the road towards the carpark. ‘I hate crowds and I never want to do what everyone else is doing. And, anyway, I don’t think we should have to drive to see nature. We shouldn't have to keep nature in 'reserves'. Nature should be there for all of us, all the time.’ (I was getting into one of my rewilding rants.)

The sign

Sitting at my computer after my walk up the field, I zoomed in on the birds and started to feel a trickle of excitement. Judging by their shape, size and colour as well as the 'murmuration' I'd heard, there was only one thing they could be.

We don’t normally see starlings where we live, but according the bird book I was reading huge flocks of foreign birds arrive from the east in winter. This was obviously what these were, brought perhaps by the cold weather. And it was only by chance that I was in the right place at the right time as normally, when I have the dog, I walk in the morning.

So I’d seen starlings after all. I’d had my own private display. 

It seemed like a sign, a reward.