Fish Finger Butties

Back in Yorkshire
After a week on Anglesey it was good to touch down in time to catch the final afternoon of the Saltaire Festival. The beaches, castles, walks and bridges of north Wales will appear in a future blog but, for now, I’m commemorating the joys of tucking in to a Fish Finger Butty (with a glass of prosecco!), listening to the music and soaking up the atmosphere of my adopted “village”, Saltaire. (I noticed I was not alone in gravitating towards the Fish Finger Heaven stand….)

A sense of place; images of Saltaire including the day of the Tour de Yorkshire

Sense of place
I’ve written elsewhere about the concept of “home” (having felt roots in Wakefield, Manchester, Stratford-upon-Avon, Helsinki, Sheffield, Leek, Bingley, Badby, Dorking and even in Sorrento, Italy and Wengen, Switzerland….) One good thing about Saltaire, though, is that it has risen to a sense of itself through a series of cultural and entrepreneurial decisions. When Jonathan Silver invested in the purchasing of Salt’s Mill in 1987 he boosted the local economy, leisure and work opportunities and promoted David Hockney’s work through gallery space in the converted mill. Regular events like the Advent Windows or the Open Gardens ensure there are often reasons to walk around the World Heritage site. So it’s always good to come “home.”

2017 Saltaire Festival - band at top = the excellent Backyard Burners

Let old wrinkles come

Another October 15th another birthday

Two years ago I was just getting used to returning to Yorkshire from our temporary sojourn in Dorking. One year ago I was celebrating the removal of a cyst from my back. Time continues. Another birthday arrives – this time I’m 56. Thank you to family and friends for cards and Facebook messages. How different is my life from any other year? Older? Yes. Wiser? Debatable.

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come (The Merchant of Venice)

Rhenium Tales

Heaven knows whether or not the saga I’m writing as my retirement hobby will be called Rhenium Tales by the time I’m prepared to show someone the chapters. But that’s what it's called at the moment. So that’s what’s mainly different about Me, Myself and I in 2016. Three days a week (at the moment) I’m locking myself away and aiming to churn out 1000 words each day. During some writing spurts I feel like an award-winning writer of unquestionable genius; and at other times (sometimes on the same day) I feel like a writer of turgid cliché who can only write unwieldy passages of ham-handed incompetence. Hey, ho – is this the promised end?

Is this the promised end? (King Lear)

What A Difference A Year Makes

Fragility of health

In January 2004 I had a mini-wake-up heart attack.  A million and more historical events prove to us that a heart-beat of time can change lives, from freak accidents to man-made evil crimes (in peace and war), to unexpected natural disasters or virulent diseases.  But, more mundanely and frequently, the wear and tear of modern life on one’s own body and mind can contribute to life-changing reassessments of priorities.  My own parents and my mother-in-law died over relatively short periods (see blog below.)  Ray my father-in-law’s long slow decline from Alzheimer’s was not an ending anyone would hope for.

Questions, questions

Should I have worked less hard during my career?  Would that have prevented my heart attack in 2004?  Should I have changed my working life more profoundly after the heart attack in order to reflect what I knew about my unhealthy working habits?  

Giving Attention  

All the above questions are of course pointless.  Pointless, I tell you.  The past is a country you cannot revisit; only the present and future can command attention.  And thus, in my newly-retired and philosophical state, I look back on the maelstrom of Christmas 2013 and thank goodness for the impending arrival of 2015.  I’m looking forward to Giving Attention to things I want to give attention to.

So Goodbye to the elements of 2014 – in an order that makes sense to me….

Kitchen transformed....

Game of Life, Dorking/Dorking Halls, Old Tiles,

Hello Dorking.... Farewell Dorking....

Polesden Lacey, Blake Ward, Elgar Ward, Retirement, Box Tree Dinner, Bistro Pierre, Farewell Raymondo, Top Withins, Zaara’s, Ghosts, Johnson Over Jordan, Wolf Hall, Bring Up The Bodies, King Lear, The Likes of Us,

Hailsham, Pevensey Castle, Battle, Sissinghurst, Monks House, Chawton, Paris, Denbie’s, Pericles, University Reunion, Goodbye Work, Recipes, Cooking, Menus, Walking, Northcliffe, Hirst Woods, Canal, Salt’s Mill, Macmillan Cancer Support, Kerry Madden-Lunsford and Norah, the Bronte Parsonage,

The Lancelot-Barr Crew and The Unicorn's Ruin at Saltaire Festival...

Lancelots, Brown-Shelton, Thompsons, Tuffnells, Hickey-Howsons, Boyhood (my film of the year), Houses, Gardens and Abbeys, Hampton Court, Kew Gardens, Wandsworth Common, Tower of London, Wicked, North-South Divide, Margaret Atwood, Owen Jones, Flaxby and RR Donnelly.

Images of New Year's Eve at Bolton Abbey

Many of the above elements will return

More Shakespeare, of course.  And blogging and starting to learn how Facebook works....  Many of the above elements will return and a welcome return they will be.  Family, friends and beautiful places – may there be many more of those memories.  But there are a few nuggets amongst the list that I hope will never return…. Here’s to 2015!

Happy New Year One And All

Out on the winding, windy moors

Rocks and scrubby heather

There are plenty of local walks near where I live in Saltaire. Returning North from Dorking it was only a matter of time before I trod the rocks and scrubby heather above Haworth. Back in May, following a university reunion, I came up here with a dear friend, Kerry Madden, and her high-spirited daughter, Nora. Thank you to Kerry and Norah for permission to use a few of their photographs of one of my favourite places on Earth. They say pictures tell a thousand words…..

Visiting Haworth with Kerry and Norah

Blowing away the cobwebs

The ruin of Top Withins has been subjected to parliamentary conversations and, although there are other candidates for the inspiration for the building, (notably one in the village of Haworth itself….) the setting of Top Withins is certainly a great place to blow away the cobwebs of life and contemplate one’s metaphorical navel. Making a round trip from Haworth and/or going via the picturesque Brontë falls – especially with a picnic in a rucksack – makes for an excellent day out.

Norah salutes the sky and dreams by the falls

Extraordinary family

I am of the opinion that the Brontë family were extraordinary and the three published writers were indeed geniuses for producing such works in the place and in the era that they did. I think Mrs Gaskell’s portrait of them in her excellent but romanticised Life of Charlotte Brontë definitely does them a dis-service; they were not recluses. They were women ahead of their time and though styles of writing in literature have changed, there are passages, situations and imaginative landscapes in their works that still hook me and bedazzle my soul – and the souls of millions of other readers around the world.

Wuthering Heights and Villette

Wuthering Heights is undoubtedly a masterpiece – an experimental book of audacious structuring and narrative complexity with characters that transcend their original home. Hareton is the one that breaks my heart and fulfils everything I love about novels in making the arc of the story redemptive. In Charlotte’s works I am an advocate of Villette, though recognising the mythical qualities of Jane Eyre and completely understanding anyone who rates it as the archetypal Brontë novel.  Villette, though, like Wuthering Heights, contains moments that are bonkers, brilliant and completely original: the ghost nun, dream-like scenes, set pieces like the theatre fire and, most of all, the self-deceiving Lucy Snowe, arch narrator and as reliable as Haworth’s early-Victorian sanitation.

Out on the winding, windy moors
We’d roll and fall in green
You had a temper like my jealousy
Too hot, too greedy
How could you leave me
When I needed to possess you?
I hated you, I loved you too

Bad dreams in the night
You told me I was going to lose the fight
Leave behind my wuthering, wuthering
Wuthering Heights
Heathcliff, it’s me, Oh Cathy
I’ve come home, I’m so cold!
Let me in-a-your window

Ooh, it gets dark!  It gets lonely
On the other side from you
I pine a lot.  I find the lot
Falls through without you
I’m coming back, love
Cruel Heathcliff, my one dream
My only master

Too long I roam in the night
I’m coming back to his side, to put it right
I’m coming home to wuthering, wuthering
Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff, it’s me, Oh Cathy
I’ve come home, I’m so cold!
Let me in-a-your window

Ooh, let me have it
Let me grab your soul away
Ooh, let me have it
Let me grab your soul away
You know it’s me Cathy!

Heathcliff, it’s me, Oh Cathy
I’ve come home, I’m so cold!
Let me in-a-your window
Songwriter: Kate Bush
Wuthering Heights lyrics © EMI Music Publishing

And from Wuthering Heights itself…. (chapter 1)

Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling. 'Wuthering' being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun. Happily, the architect had foresight to build it strong: the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended with large jutting stones.

Chapter 15….

Gimmerton chapel bells were still ringing; and the full, mellow flow of the beck in the valley came soothingly on the ear. It was a sweet substitute for the yet absent murmur of the summer foliage, which drowned that music about the Grange when the trees were in leaf. At Wuthering Heights it always sounded on quiet days following a great thaw or a season of steady rain.
Thank you, Emily....

England, Scotland, Yorkshire, Surrey

Geographical Identity….

Living in England has always been a source of pride to me. Shakespeare was born here and worked here. I've loved visiting Scotland, Wales and Ireland (I've yet to visit Northern Ireland) and have no problems identifying with the UK, Great Britain, Europe or the Globe. But I speak English. I think in English. I dream in English. Watching a film like Wadjda at the National Media Museum in Bradford reconfirmed for me that humans in every country share the same hopes and troubles. But, if I dig deep and deeper, and tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, my true geographical identity, first and foremost, now and forever, is not English in my heart and soul. I am a Yorkshireman.

Yorkshire

After the bloody fray at Wakefield fought
Where your brave father breathed his latest gasp

and where your brothers and sister live and your cousins and some childhood friends and where your brave mother also breathed her last and where your schools were and your first ventures into earning money and playing sport and acting on the stage and canoodling with other humans.... What does it mean to be from Yorkshire?

• A sense that the outdoors is better than indoors?
• That dry stone walls mean that boundaries are not rigid but the boundaries are there and can be helpful?
• That you say what you mean and you don't say much if you don't have much to say?
• That a Yorkshireman is a Scotsman with all the generosity squeezed out of him?
• That you are stubborn?
• Dour?
• Strong?
• Loyal to the point of death?
• That you would defend the land – the north first, of course, then the north-east, then Scotland and then across the Pennines and the Midlands and everywhere beneath Birmingham after that?

If I joined the army I would want to be in a Yorkshire Regiment.

Images of Yorkshire

Surrey

Since retiring I've been living in Surrey spending time with close family. Yorkshire tugs me back but I know it will wait patiently for my return.... could I ever learn to love Surrey as much as I love Yorkshire? It is interesting that the more you spend time in a place the more you see its strengths. At first I could see only impolite Southerners with invasive driving habits, insanely chintzy shops with inflated prices and towns whose souls were being slowly sucked out by the monolithic monster juggernaut named London. But gradually I've begun to appreciate Surrey’s ancient woodlands, the hills and downs, the people who are people being people wherever they live, the resistant strain of old-world market fairs doggedly refusing to dance attendance on London. There is regional identity here too.

Surrey countryside and Dorking High Street

Scottish Independence

In a few weeks Scotland will be voting whether or not to remain part of the UK. Either result (Yes or No) will be fascinating. I know enough history to know that nothing needs to be forever and for most of our island history the UK was not a recognisable concept. Family-based tribes were the norm for centuries before the Normans invaded. Globalisation makes many places in the world seem indistinguishable. Costa Coffee in Dorking feels the same as Costa Coffee in Bradford.

Not in Kansas

My instinct is that differences should be preserved and celebrated, as long as they are not threatening any other group. So does that mean I am in favour of Scottish independence? If Scotland votes to become independent, shouldn’t Yorkshire do the same? When holidaying in Scotland (Skye, Mull) I felt more kinship in Scotland as a Yorkshireman than I felt when I first arrived in Surrey.... though, now, after a few months, Surrey is also starting to feel a bit like “home” too. I’m not in Kansas, Toto, but Kansas is in me…. Are we all ultimately adaptable? Chameleons in fact?

Polesden Lacey in Surrey

Looking for a new retirement identity

As I begin retirement I suppose I’m having all those thoughts about who I am, where I belong, where I’m going and what it’s all about….. regional and national identity have emerged as a part of that. But I think I’ve concluded that home is where the heart is – but the heart migrates to wherever your loved ones are, so home migrates too.

I to the world am like a drop of water
That in the ocean seeks another drop
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself….

England? Scotland? Yorkshire? Surrey? The readiness is all. Let be.

Ribblehead Viaduct and a drop of water....

I Will Survive

Relief, Fear, Uncertainty

A grim start to a new blog? But Relief, Fear and Uncertainty are my initial feelings now that I’m retired.

At first I was afraid
I was petrified

How can I survive without a full-time job? Particularly such a busy, all-consuming job? Teaching for the best part of 32 years…. In Manchester, in London, in Winchester, in Helsinki, in Stratford-upon-Avon, in Retford, in Sheffield, in Leek, in Keighley, in Wakefield, in Leeds, in Bingley and for the last 14 years at Bradford Grammar School, a large coeducational independent school, where I was Head of English and Drama.

The Likes Of Us, my final "big" school production

Retirement

    ….tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we

Unburdened crawl towards lie-ins, reading and going to the cinema in the afternoon, writing for fun, puzzling over jigsaws, walking on canal towpaths, the Yorkshire moors and dales on weekdays, focusing on health, booking holidays in school term times…. Working at living instead of living at work.

Ripeness Is All

Was it the right time to leave?

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which,
Taken at the flood, leads on to fortune….

Was this the right time? This blog may partially answer that question. Life is in an unusual place at the moment. I’ve been commuting most weekends from Bradford to Dorking where my family is temporarily renting a flat.

The Temple on the Nower in Dorking

Life In A School

I will miss the working life in school: the buzz, the buildings, the banter – but most of all the people. Working in a collegiate atmosphere with people who, by and large, have the same values and aims - colleagues who have compassion, enjoy a sense of absurdity and teach their specialist subjects with depth and detail. Colleagues whose goal is to inspire teenagers, those infuriating, bizarre semi-adult beasts, creatures full of the future, full of unpredictable fun, full of hormonal bullshit.

Rat Trap an original musical I directed at Leek Westwood High School in my first teaching job

Life As A Teacher

Every day contained dozens - probably hundreds - of interactions; some interactions were like performances, some quick and intense, some combative and unsettling, some giddyingly silly; but all were involving and immediate. Will I Survive without timetables, schemes of work, planning, delivering, evaluating, monitoring, assessing, reviewing, planning, delivering, evaluating, monitoring, assessing, reviewing, planning…. And so it goes on, deadline after deadline, day after day, week after week, term after term…. But never the same in my subjects (English and Drama) and never the same because of the endless parade of humans…. Teachers, Support Staff, Students…. A cavalcade of teeming humanity.

Mikey Lord leading These are the days of our lives at Bradford Grammar School We Will Rock You

What Next?

So the aims of this blog are for me to reflect on retirement, practise writing skills and comment on whatever crops up in the moment of writing.  The only binding constant will be the words of William Shakespeare, which I expect to crop up frequently; the Complete Works of Shakespeare (and everything that surrounds those Works) are my hobby and have been for a very long time. Anyone who enjoys spotting quotations (the clues are in the labels below each blog), feel free to reveal which words belong to which play. I expect there will be no obvious “narrative arc” – just a diary of whatever crops up in my retired life. My dream is to live in retirement as a “writer” and my first step is to begin this blog and aim for five posts a month by August 2016 (I’m giving myself two years to get into the swing of it….) As the Marvel-lous Stan Lee often says…. Excelsior!