Sanctuaries

I’m fascinated by the minutiae of people’s lives and particularly so at the moment when we’re all thrown back on our own resources. I’m shy however of revealing my own (who on earth would want to know about them?).

    Yesterday morning however I read lovely post on my new discovery ‘I live, I love, I craft, I am me’ (actually, the blogger discovered me, which is a fillip), in which she gave us a tour of her greenhouse. It was so vivid I could almost hear the birds chirruping.

    This greenhouse is her sanctuary at the moment, and at the end of the post she asked her readers to share their sanctuaries. ‘How do you cope?’ she asked. ‘What is your strategy to survive? Do share, it might help others who are struggling.’

    So I thought I might do just that, or at least show how the lockdown affects everything and how I'm adapting, by describing in detail one of my days.

Thursday 16 April

Breakfast is always a moveable feast. Frog and I take it back to bed with us and spend a long time having what we call our ‘morning meeting’ – long discussions about life, the universe and everything, and also what our plans are for the day. It's an important part of our routine, especially so now you would have thought when so many routines have gone, but I'm restless. I leave Frog dozing and take the dog out.
    I stop off first at the gate of a neighbour, C. We're swapping books because I didn’t have time to get to the library before lockdown and because C and her husband are self-isolating. I’ve introduced her to one of my favourite series . . .

The first of  Elly Griffiths' books about Ruth Galloway, a forensic archaeologist in Norfolk, one of my favourite series

. . . and she’s introduced me to one of hers.

Books 4 and 3 of Jacqueline Winspear's series of books about Maisie Dobbs, a 1930s' sleuth. I'm finding them comforting and absorbing in an old-fashioned way and just what I need at the moment

C and I stand talking at a safe distance either side of the gate, while C's husband stays in his wheelchair the other side of their courtyard explaining that he’s taking the infection threat more seriously now than he did. It must be very hard for him. He never complains however, and neither does C. Last time I dropped by - a few days ago - he came up close and joined in the conversation and we all saw a swallow – the first of the year. I haven’t seen one since.

I set off on the track that leads uphill from C's house but soon turn off because I don’t want to meet anybody. A lot of people use the track, especially so now, and it makes me sad that we have to avoid each other and that I have to put Ellie on a lead in case people are worried about picking up infection from her.

    Bullocks as well as cows with calves have appeared in the grass fields, and the wheat fields are being sprayed this morning according to C, so I cross where I can and duck into my favourite place, a Y-shaped wood along steep valleys formed by converging streams.

Only C, her sister and I venture into the wood and it’s a jungle – unmanaged and almost unfootpathed.

It occurs to me that I could explore the wood more easily by walking up the stream beds. Another time. I have a slight headache and flop down in a patch of dappled shade under an oak tree while Ellie hurtles up and down the precipitous valley-sides and into the streams where she noisily slurps water. She loves it here too.

    My head is busy so I don’t do anything very profound with it. Instead I rest and gaze at the first bluebells. 

I treasure the way this place is wild, that nature is more important here than humans are. Strangely, I have the sense that something similar is happening to the countryside as a whole as a result of the lockdown.

    A couple of days ago I surprised a red deer in a paddock close to home. I see deer on the hill but I’ve never seen any down near the houses before, and never red ones anywhere in the area as they usually live on the moors and wilder places. It looked at me as if to say ‘What are you doing here?’
    A friend from the village emailed me earlier with pictures she’s taken near where I live of a fox with its prey. She's amazed, she says, that it stopped long enough for her to do so. I too have seen a fox recently – the first for years – and I wonder if it's the same animal.

Fox photos taken by Trish Currie. See her blog 'What's Cooking'. 

Is it simply the lack of traffic bringing the animals out or are they identifying some change in us humans? If the latter, that's an exciting thought. 

I have lunch and try to plan my afternoon. I've been working on and off for ten years on my novel The Banker’s Niece but now I'm thinking of putting it aside. It's writing that makes me feel calmest, safest, most like me, and now just when I need it most I'm abandoning a large chunk. Ironically, it's the lockdown, the loss of so much that's familiar as well as the sense that we're all on Pause, that's given me the time and space to see that I might need to give up the novel. I wrote it to heal my life, and it may be that constantly reworking it is not helping. It's blocking the flow.
    What am I now, I wonder. Where am I going?
    To be continued

A better world?

Easter Saturday

I'm finding it difficult to blog at the moment as in some ways and for some people so much is happening and in/for others nothing. I know that so many people are fighting to survive or working long hours to keep the country afloat, and I'm scared of hitting the wrong note, of saying something crass.

Frog’s amazing niece K for instance, who lives in Manchester, lost all her income when the country locked down, and lived off piecemeal work for several weeks (stacking supermarket shelves, sorting online orders, guarding empty hotels at night), has just landed a job supervising hostels for the homeless set up by the city council in all the empty hotels. This is dangerous and difficult work and she reminds me of those women who enlisted as nurses during the First World War.

    ‘You must record what’s going on,’ I said to her on the phone yesterday. ‘These are historic times. You’re in the front line. Keep a diary. Take photographs.’

    ‘Mmm,’ she said sounding interested. ‘I could start a blog.’

    ‘I can’t wait to read it,’ I said.

For Frog and me, on the other hand, not much has changed. We work on the house and garden. I sew and walk the dog and try to write. We speak to neighbours over garden gates and when we meet on roads and paths. We have enough money to live on and we have each other.

    Except that everything’s changed.

    Because there's no knowing how long the lockdown will last, I’ve lost all sense of urgency. Time and the days of the week no longer matter. Without aeroplanes and road traffic, absolute silence prevails (apart from the birds and their glorious spring songs). I have that rest, that pause, I’ve longed for for so long.

    And somehow, I have the sense that when this is over (if it ever is), we will all wake up to a completely different world.

    A better one, I hope.

   

    

. . . and Dog

I realised recently that it’s been a while since I wrote about Ellie even though she’s an important part of this blog, not only because of its name, but also because she arrived to live with us at about the same time I started it.

Ellie at 10 weeks old, shortly after she came to live with us

She looked like an angel, but actually she was a devil, the most difficult of the three dogs we’ve welcomed into the family. She’s a mixture of border collie and springer spaniel, both super-intelligent, hyper-active and crazy breeds. We didn’t choose her that way but we were looking for a dog as it had been about six months since our last dog (Penny) had died and when a friend said that the sister of a colleague had an accidental litter looking for homes we decided to go and have a look.

We’d been to the rescue centre but they no longer allowed you to meet the dogs in person because they felt it was disturbing to the dogs. Instead you had to look through a folder with pictures and descriptions which meant that you chose your dog with your head not your heart and that didn’t work for us. With Penny for instance, Frog and I went to the rescue centre looking for a Staffordshire bull terrier cross but saw a lurcher with her feet on the fence looking at us and fell in love, both convinced she was asking us to take her home.

Penny, shortly before she died of a brain tumour, aged only 9. She melted our hearts from the moment we saw her.

Neither of us is however sentimental about puppies. We know how appallingly difficult they can be. (‘Worse than a child,’ says our neighbour, who’s had both.) So we didn’t ooh and ah over the outrageously pretty litter. Instead, we bonded with Ellie’s mother, a large placid spaniel who came over to inspect us and pronounced us fit to take over the care of one of her offspring (or so both Frog and I felt).

After a few months of hell with puppy Ellie, we sought professional one-to-one help. ‘She’s a control freak,’ said Leanne the trainer. ‘She’s a PhD dog, not a GCSE one.’ And I could tell she didn’t think we were up to it. Nevertheless we muddled through, refusing to admit defeat, and after about two years Ellie became just about bearable.

Ellie at one year old, still trying for upper hand at every moment of every day

Now she’s nearly ten which in dog years makes her roughly the same age as me. This is a great relief as, much as I love walking, a good two hours every day for the past nine years has played hell with one of my knees and in the last year or so I’ve been able to cut that walking down and my knee has started to recover. Soon she’ll be older than me though and I’ll be the one dragging her further than she wants to go.

She’s still a control freak however – not with us but with strangers. Unlike Frog and me, she’s very gregarious, and greets everyone she meets. She doesn’t just greet them however; she tries to make them her slave. She lets them pet her, rolling on her back to let them rub her stomach, pretending she’s submissive, but when they stop she grabs their hand in her mouth – which for obvious reasons can be a bit of a problem. She always spots the people who will fall for her wiles (usually non-dog owners). ‘Oh what a pretty dog,’ they say, catching her eye. We call them her victims. We’re contemplating buying her a harness with the words, ‘Please ignore. In training.’

Ellie in the courtyard of the Rainbow's End cafe in Glastonbury on Thursday, looking relaxed.

Oh dear, she's spotted a victim (who succumbed to Ellie's charms, as they all do) 

Another of her quirks – or should I say vices – is reverting to wolf. I have written about this and how terrifying it was. Now I can deal with it, but it still makes me jump to be ambushed by a snarling snapping creature with wild eyes. Because it happens so rarely now I forget and don’t heed the warning signs – wide open spaces, wind and Ellie getting more and more excited.

On the Somerset Levels on Thursday and Ellie a speck in the distance, wildly excited by the combination of wide open space and wind. Luckily floods forced us to turn back before she went 'wolf'.

I love her dearly of course in spite of everything, and she’s a wonderful – obedient – companion on our long wild walks. I wouldn’t be able to do them without her. She makes me feel safe, and when I sit down in some forgotten patch of woodland or on top of a hill, to meditate/affirm/visualise or just be, as I try to do every day, she sits next to me, leans into me and keeps me warm.

In a forgotten patch of woodland: Ellie turning meditative in her old(er) age, like her human companion

Sewing Bee*

I’m fighting blackness at the moment, for lots of reasons: finishing (the current draft of) The Novel and waiting for professional report on it before I can go any further; winter and this bloody rain which seems to have been going on forever; the dreaded coronavirus and the threat it brings of not being able to go out or travel; as well as the usual – the state of the environment and the state of me. And one of the ways I’m distracting myself is sewing.

I’ve always sewn, even when I was a child. I don’t remember playing with dolls but I do remember making them clothes and lining them up proudly in their new outfits. I made everything in an ancient book I found on the shelves at home called One Hundred Things a Girl can Make and every 'Blue Peter' project. Then, when I was a teenager and already way above average height as well as anorexic, I started making my own clothes and altering those few I found in the shops that vaguely fitted. And I’ve done the same ever since, in part now in reaction to Frog who’s always in the shed or garage or his music room busy on some practical project or other.

Last time Frog’s niece K came to stay she gave me a pair of her jeans. I thought she was chucking them out so I took them to pieces, intending to turn them into a bag. I’d told K about my fondness for customising clothes and keeping old clothes so as to use them to alter new ones so I wanted to show her that I was putting her old jeans to good use. Before I did so however, I emailed her to check that she was OK with my plans.

    ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I thought you could turn them into shorts for me or trim them with leather or lace.’

    Bother, I thought. Why didn’t she say that before? And what am I? Some sort of servant? Her mother?  I did feel a bit guilty though. She’d admired a green dress I was wearing in the summer and asked if I could make her one to the same pattern, but when she tried it on the shape didn’t suit her, and anyway I was busy writing so didn’t want to embark on such a long project, especially for someone else, and how I was I going to fit it to her shape when she wasn’t there? So I demurred.

The (much-faded) green dress

Perhaps, I thought now, I could turn The Jeans into a dress for her.

I have a beloved 2004 pattern that I’ve used for summer dresses many many times (including for the green dress), in many different fabrics and lengths.

I’ve made a version for a neighbour and most years I make a new version for myself.

Last year's version - in purple batik

A blue linen version I made in January this year

I’ll adapt the pattern for her, I thought. It’ll be a challenge.
    I told her of my plan and asked her for her measurements.

    ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Can we review this later? I've not been training for 2 weeks due to an injury and I didn't behave on my diet and relaxed . . . ’

    I remember the feeling well – buying/making clothes that would fit ‘when I lost weight’, wearing the same thing over and over again because it was the only thing that did fit, not having any clothes at all. (My anorexia having metamorphosed into compulsive eating.)

    Too bad, I thought. I need to do some sewing now. I’ll guess the sizing. That'll make the project even more of a challenge.

And here is the result so far. I’m pretty proud of it.

Especially the red topstitching, courtesy of my new sewing machine which replaced the 45-year-old one I had to abandon with much sorrow last year.

I plan to put the jeans’ back pockets over the bust and use the jeans’ waistband (with its loops) as a belt to cinch the loose waist of the dress (which is what didn’t suit K). All with more of the red topstitching.

And to use the skirt material to face (line) the top.

And I’ll probably put more topstitching around the neck and armholes and down the front button-panel.

I haven’t yet decided on the colour of the buttons – probably black, as red (or purple) might be a step too far.

Whether K will like it and whether it will fit her, I’ve no idea. I hope so.

* 'Bee/B' is my nickname but the title of this post is also a homage to that excellent TV programme 'The Great British Sewing Bee'. I hope they do another series.

   I wrote another post on this subject seven years ago (help!). Click here to read it. You'll also find posts by clicking on 'sewing' in the category list to the right.

A good day out: Glastonbury and the Somerset Levels

We started in Glastonbury where we had a delicious, wholesome, generously portioned and reasonably priced meal at our favourite Rainbows End Café. It’s always full of interesting people, as is the town itself which is a delightful mixture of locals and ageing hippies (in varying degrees of sanity). Everyone is friendly and no one minds what you look like and dogs are always welcome. Ellie adores the place and leads the way to the café, tail high, with the assurance of a regular. Today however because it was cold we were able to leave her in the car and have some time off.

    After lunch we wandered round the town. In summer it’s buzzing but today there was hardly anyone around, perhaps in part because of the biting wind. Two vaping locals sat outside a cafe and watched us.
    We’ve done the touristy bits such as the ruined Abbey and the Chalice Well Gardens, and climbed the Tor many times, so today we explored the shops, which are mostly New Agey, outside one of which we saw this board. I took a snap for one of Frog’s nieces who’s having a tough time at the moment, realising as I did so that all the good advice I give her is exactly what I should be telling myself . . .

I’d seen on the map a marshy area surrounded by public footpaths a few miles outside Glastonbury. There was no way they could stop us walking there with the dog, I thought, so we set off. The roads got rougher and rougher until at last we were wobbling along a track more pothole than tarmac with deep ditches either side. The sat nav lady had given up and showed us falling off the edge of the world. Next to some woods a little way off I could see an encampment of caravans. I felt as if we were venturing into a lawless, wild place. This is more like it, I thought (better than our most recent experience of walking on the Levels).

When we arrived at the parking area I’d earmarked we discovered that this was a nature reserve. What’s more, a national nature reserve. Oh dear, we thought. Will we be turned away like we were before?

When we pulled into the carpark however two women with dogs were getting out of cars and both species greeted us effusively. I rushed over to the information boards and they said nothing about dogs being banned. They didn’t even say that dogs had to be on leads. Hooray. (Having a dog on a lead means that I’m on a lead too.)

Westhay Moor National Nature Reserve

As this was our first time in the area, and because Frog had a slightly iffy foot (from wearing steel-toe-capped boots at a day learning how to lay hedges), and because the signs did ask that you kept dogs out of undergrowth and water so as not to scare wildlife, we kept to the main path.

The countryside was a mixture of pools, reeds and scrubby woodland. It had been reclaimed, the boards said, from old peat-workings and restored to what it would have been in the Stone Age. Rare creatures lived here, including otters, bitterns and Cetti’s warblers.

The day was quiet and wintry and we didn't see or hear any of the rare species listed (not that we were trying very hard) but we saw some birds (a red-beaked heron (?)*, a white egret, geese, ducks). We met only one other person and the views were lovely. I thought again of my vision last summer of joined-up reserves covering the country, so that wild nature was the norm.

We arrived at a small road, passed another enclave of what looked like people living semi-wild in caravans and then turned on to what we hoped was another footpath to take us back. We did begin to have our doubts however as it became muddier and muddier and we had to climb through a smallholding with very friendly goats. 

A smelly and noisy diesel pump spewed out water - presumably from the land to a 'drain' (drainage ditch). A white kid squeezed through the fence and followed us so Frog took it back. Luckily the route was his choice so he couldn’t complain.

Deep peaty holes (which we were careful not to fall into) appeared in the track . . .

. . . and then we arrived at this.

This was the peat-workings before restoration, we realised.

Work was obviously taking place to make banks and I wondered how any human, let alone a digger, could survive in such a morass. (Frog said that they would use wooden boards.)

Back at the carpark, vehicles were piling in and a man asked me if we'd seen the starlings, by which I presumed he meant the roosting displays. Again we were in the right place and now - unlike before - we could have stayed to watch, but we had an hour's drive home and didn't want to do it in the dark, and anyway I'd had my own private display a couple of weeks earlier.

As we drove along the road, we passed a man walking towards the reserve laden with camera equipment. That confirmed our decision. Who wants to do the same as everyone else? (Not Frog and me, anyway.)

Back home, I did some research. According to my 1980 bird book, the bittern had almost ceased to breed in Britain and Cetti’s warblers were occasional visitors. On the internet (I can't remember where) I read that large-scale restoration at Westhay started in 1990 when Fisons donated their peat-works to the Somerset Wildlife Trust, and according to Wikipedia it’s part of a 2009 scheme to create a network of reserves and join them join up, 'one of an increasing number of landscape scale conservation projects in the UK'.

How quickly nature can recover, given the chance, and how good to know that others share my vision and that it might one day come true. (It might have to.)

* A knowledgeable neighbour says this could have been a stork. Apparently a few have have turned up on the Levels of their own accord, which I find incredibly exciting.  Unfortunately ( for me) it was Frog who saw it, not me.