At the start of autumn

The wispy fruits of old man’s beard, a wild clematis.

    This used to grow all over the chalky soils of Kent’s North Downs where I lived as a child, but is not so common in Devon. Another name for it is travellers’ joy, perhaps because the young leaves used to be made into a poultice for tired feet and lotion for saddle sores.

    Most of the plant is poisonous (except the leaves, I think).

Blackberries, yum, at their best now before the flies find them or they start to rot (although with the recent rain they're already going soggy). To me, their taste is the essence of autumn, but at the moment I have to remember to keep my right hand for dog-treats and dog-lick and my left hand for me and the blackberries.

Hips, the fruit of the wild rose.

    According to Richard Mabey in Food for Free, rosehips contain twenty times more vitamin C than oranges. They were gathered in the War, when there was little imported fruit, to make syrup. This was then available from welfare clinics for mothers and children, as well as for sale. I remember it from my childhood in the 1950s, still being distributed for children along with the dreaded (disgusting) cod liver oil, spoonsful of which we were fed regularly.

    If you have a lot of time (for all the straining), you can make jelly with rosehips, combining them with either apples or haws.

Haws, the fruit of the hawthorn tree.

    These and other wild fruit and nuts help to feed birds during the winter, so never cut hedges at this time of year (although, sadly, many farmers do). The best time to cut hedges is in January or February after the fruit has gone but before the trees and bushes start to sprout and the birds to nest.



What I'm reading/watching

In my teens and early twenties I was consumed with travel fever. After a year spent working my way round Australia, however, the fever abated. I realised that it wasn’t so much travel fever that had afflicted me as the need to get away from my family and establish myself as independent. Australia obviously did that (up to a point). One place I would still love to go though is Iceland.

    According to Frog’s book about flags, Iceland is almost half the size of the UK but has a population of only 280 thousand (whereas the UK has a population of nearly 60 million). According to Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridason the lakes in Iceland ice over in the autumn and if you fall into one you die within minutes. In the countryside, a blizzard can arise from nowhere and take a child out seeing to the animals with his father. The men have names that sound as if they belong to Tolkien heroes, sheeps' heads pickled in sour milk are a traditional delicacy, and the prospect of winter casts a blight over everyone’s souls. What more could a girl want?

    Indridason’s most famous book is Jar City (I love that title), also published as Tainted Black, but I haven’t managed to find it in the library yet. Hypothermia is a later title in the same series, which is about a police detective called Erlendur. It is beautifully translated and as near as I’ve managed to get so far to that country.

Last night, while Frog was doing archery, I watched a film called Julie and Julia, recommended by a niece. It was about blogging, the love of good food, a tall woman and wanting to be a writer. I wonder why she thought of me.

    It was nothing ground-breaking but a pleasant way to spend an evening, with Meryl Streep in fine form, and was apparently adapted from a book of the same name.

A book which kept me awake most of Monday night and which is also to be made into a film is The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Set in Mississippi in the early 1960s, it tells the story of that stultifying, not to say atrocious, place and time through the eyes of two black maids and a young rich white woman. Riveting, heartbreaking, funny. I only hope the film does it justice.

Yesterday I drew up a list of strategies to help my writing. One of them was to stop reading for a while. I am a compulsive reader, and I know that filling my head with other people’s words is not conducive to producing my own. (Stopping reading is also recommended by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way, a book I mentioned earlier, in March (‘Artists’ dates’).)

    This afternoon, when I got back from rushing around Exeter doing errands, I just had to lie down and rest. (It’s probably an age thing.) I put the new regime into practice immediately and didn’t pick up a book as I usually would. This post was the result. Let’s hope I can extend the effects to novel-writing.

Jiminy cricket

All my life I’ve walked in wellies. I was brought up with them, I liked the thought that no animal had died to make them, they were cheap, and I found them perfectly comfortable. I had tried occasionally to buy proper walking boots but had never managed to find any to fit, given that my feet are too long for women’s boots but too narrow for men’s.

    Recently however, perhaps as a result of age or maybe because of the amount I’m having to walk to keep Ellie at least halfway bearable, my feet have started to ache, and the outside edge of my right foot has started to swell. Oh dear.

    Today, I steeled myself and headed for Exeter.
    As I drove off I noticed a big bright green cricket on my windscreen so I stopped and tried to scoop him off. I didn’t want him to be damaged when I got up speed. He took matters into his own hands (feet) however and leapt for the hedgerow.

    Another omen I thought, like all unexpected occurrences, and another omen that I’m unable to interpret.

As I trudged to the third shop I felt rather discouraged and all set to go home again empty handed (footed). No one had seemed very keen to help me, only bringing me a couple of boots to try, and none of those had fitted. At Moorland Rambler however (in Fore Street) I found an assistant who spoke my language.

    ‘These are the boots that would suit your requirements,’ he said, pointing to the row halfway up the wall. He didn't bore me with long-winded or scientific explanations; he made the decision for me. ‘I’ll bring them all out to you.’

    I slipped them all on quickly and knew straight away that only one of the dozen felt OK, and then only sort-of OK.

    ‘I’ll bring them all in a different size,’ he said.

    I then spent three-quarters of an hour, lacing, unlacing, and traipsing up and down the trial ramp, with the assistant in attendance, helping me get the boots on and off and answering all my queries.

    Eureka. I found two comfortable pairs. I wanted them both.

    ‘Do you walk?’ I asked the assistant, feeling embarrassed at hogging the limelight for so long and wanting to give myself time to make a decision.

    His face sprang alive.

    ‘Only in winter,’ he said. ‘I get too hot in the summer.’

   ‘D’you walk fast then?’ I said.

    He laughed and nodded. ‘I like climbing too,’ he continued. ‘I’ve just been to the Alps.’

    I decided to take the more flexible pair as they felt less alien to my wellie-accustomed feet and to maybe come back for the more supportive pair in due course.

As I planned this post, I suddenly realised what the cricket portended. He was me, leaping from crag to crag in my new boots (probably in pursuit of errant Dog).



My feet in their new boots



Chakras

In ‘Where I was last week’ (April) I touched on the subject of yogic chakras. Yoga, which has been around for at least five thousand years, is the practical part of Hinduism and encompasses all sorts of mental, emotional and spiritual exercises as well as the physical ones we in the West call ‘yoga’. Chakras (pronounced ‘shark-rerz’) are points on the body where life energy is taken in, processed and given out, much as our lungs do with air. ‘Chakra’ means wheel, and the chakras, if you can see them, look like cone-shaped vortices.

    There are seven main chakras and each feeds a different area of our experience as well as being related to different parts of the body, elements, colours, musical notes and so on. They also reflect our development, in that we learn about each area of experience in turn as we go through life.

    Knowing about the chakras has been enormously helpful to me over the years, both in dealing with ups and downs and in choosing what directions to take. With that in mind, I thought I might tell you some more about them.

    (You will find differing interpretations of the subject. What follows is my own.)



The seven main chakras or energy points on the human body.
The base (red) and crown (violet) chakras extend up and down.
The other five are positioned front and back, passing right through the body



Root or base chakra

Colour: red

Food: protein

At this level we are concerned with survival and the physical world. Violence and insecurity are two of its negative aspects.

Sacral or navel chakra

Colour: orange

Food: liquids

This is the social phase, when we learn about family and connection to others. When we get it wrong, we can become jealous or clinging, or take too much or give too much.

Solar plexus chakra

Colour: yellow

Food: starches, grains

Self-control and ideas are the main functions here. Addictions and excess, two downsides.

Heart chakra

Colour: green

Food: vegetables

Here we are learning about emotions. As Cheryl used to say, emotions should flow like water. Lack of harmony in ourselves and in our dealings with others results when emotions are blocked or allowed to dominate.

Throat chakra

Colour: blue

Food: fruit

At this level we are concerned with responsibility and organisation. The past and tradition now loom large. Bigotry and repression are the dangers.

Brow or third eye chakra

Colour: indigo

Food: air (breathing)

This energy fuels our intuition and is connected with clairvoyance and other psychic skills. At this level we also learn to reconcile apparent contradictions (eg science’s ideas about evolution versus the creation story from the Bible). The future is the focus here, and excessive inaction the temptation.

Crown chakra

Colour: violet

Food: fasting, light

Creativity, spirituality and selfless service are our crowning glories. Here we are concerned only with the present moment. When this energy is blocked we feel disconnected and depressed; when there is more than we can handle, we become manic. Interestingly, senility is another sign of problems in this area.

Eventually of course, as I’ve said before, we are able to function on all levels – if not in this lifetime, then another. The ‘colour model’ (as I call it) can be related to societies as well as individuals and, as I see it, British society is making an uncomfortable transition from ‘blue’ to ‘indigo’. In other words, we don’t need to panic as institutions break down and we become more individualistic and spontaneous – that’s as it should be!

    I don’t meditate as often as I used to because I now try to carry out my whole life in a meditative way, but when I did meditate I used to like to concentrate on the chakras and their colours – with some unexpected results. I’ve gone on more than enough here but in another post I could perhaps pass on some chakra meditations/visualisations.

    This is just a brief look at the chakras – I haven’t touched on their connections to different organs in the body and to physical symptoms for example. Nor do I want to appear too hung up on the subject. I’m not saying it’s all true. It’s just a tool, a metaphor. Do with it what you like.

Coming alive again

Coming alive again,

finding beauty in the details.

A lorry slewing through a gateway:

graceful mammoth.