I have spoken

Experimenting with a Father Christmas look, gorgeous flowers, yummy fajitas

“I don’t know if you heard but the Empire is gone.”

Thus says Mando….

“When one chooses to walk the Way of the Mandalore, you are both hunter and prey….” (Hunter, prey; Yin, yang; Chicken, egg; Jedi, Sith; Innocence, experience.) This week I have mostly been watching The Mandalorian with asides for Pan’s Labyrinth (whilst ironing) and Independence Day (with the Harry Potter Film Club.) In other words, I have spent very little time on Planet Earth as it is, and when not escaping to fantastic Other Worlds (which, let’s face it, are all about Planet Earth’s deepest darkest What Ifs) I have been writing about the history of My Own Invented Other World, Rhenium. Creative writing and fictional fantasies can be powerful distractions but inevitably crash into reality when the parallels with Here and Now lurch into view:

family, fascism, identity, gender, loyalty, love, fear, courage, oppression, freedom, hatred, migration, the “outsider,” prejudice….

Are these the themes for Pan’s Labyrinth or The Mandalorian or Independence Day or Rhenium Tales….? Or do they exist in them all? Old history, repeated history; old tales, freshly-minted tales; Yin, yang; the same thing can be both comforting and depressing. As William Blake would have it, the struggle between contrary forces is necessary to human existence. The prose and the passion. Only connect. "I have spoken."

Pan's Labyrinth, The Mandalorian, Independence Day  - Fantasy or (Subconscious) Reality?

Three Households One Day

Three households….

…. All alike in dignity

In fair Saltaire where we lay our scene

In troubled times break to new jollity

Neath patio heaters, waiting for a vaccine….

Advent gives way to Christmas Eve.... Stocking One to Stocking TwentyFour…. Christmas is Go!

Tier Three Walks

Thankfully, walking in the open air is not yet prohibited so it is still a joy to tramp around the woods and dales and moors and fields of West Yorkshire on the days leading up to Christmas.

A mince pie in the forest, anyone?

I think, on average, I must have walked more miles in 2020 than in any previous year of my life. If I decide on any Resolutions in the New Year, I think it will be to Keep Walking amongst the local trees and alongside the canals and rivers and up and down the hills, mountains and dales of Yorkshire.

White Christmas Eve

A crisp and frosty (and at times blizzardy) walk on Christmas Eve above the town of Oxenhope brought Yorkshire horizons of every type: black pendulous clouds, misty snowscapes, bright blue expanses and boiling pink sunsets – the sky was as mad and varied as 2020 has been.

Al fresco

Although the latest rules allowed us to be inside on Christmas Day, bearing in mind Emily’s work in the NHS, we summoned our inner Carry On Campers with patio heaters and fairy lights to feast outside.

Penultimate post of 2020

My 50th post of the year will be on New Year’s Eve so between now and then I’ll scour my memory banks to see if there’s such a thing as a clear summary of the last year. I know we won’t be doing what we usually do on New Year’s Eve.…

Clear and simple

What’s true now – and it always has been and always will be – is that Connecting with loved ones is the most important human impulse of all…. whether that’s by card, letter, phone, text, a friendly wave, a doorstep chat, friendly small talk in the woods, WhatsApp, Email, Zoom, Skype, Teams – or, if you’re lucky, sitting down with others to share festive food and drink…. only connect.

Advent 2020

Countdown to Christmas

So muddy walks with family, jigsaw puzzles and posh takeaways continue to distract from Tier Three Restrictions. As do creative ways to meet up with longtime friends to catch up and Only Connect. It was easier this year to follow my instinct that Christmas fol-de-rol can only manifest on December 1st because lockdown meant that most shops were out of bounds and I’ve fine-tuned my ability to block out Christmas music in October and November…. Over the years, certain “traditions” mean that the Christmas countdown can begin: the Blue Peter Advent Crown (tinsel and wire coat hangers, anyone?), the decision about what day to choose (and who will decorate) a Christmas tree, the flutter of (fewer and fewer) Christmas cards through the letterbox (who will be first off the mark?), the slowing down of Autumn as Winter approaches and the military-style lists of “Things To Do” get gradually crossed off and, naturally, some form of Advent Calendar. Last Christmas Sue (in collage above) gifted us Advent Stockings and this year Sally secretly filled the Evens and I’m (naturally) Odd.

Out with the Old, In with the New

As Advent began, global miracles were occurring – yes, there’s the familiar….

• the rising Star of Bethlehem/Comet
• the approaching of the Three Wise Men/Kings/Astronomers
• the glimpse of Shepherds counting their socks and heralding Angels
• the longed-for arrival of a beloved baby in a Manger

But in the present-day, Advent 2020 heralds the start of a new world order with a few concrete miracles, in ascending order of importance….

• a new Christmas special episode of Call The Midwife
• the departure of some toxic staff from 10 Downing Street
• the very-nearly-complete dismissal of the TanToxic TwitterChundering US President
• the beginning of humanity’s vaccination FightBack against the Coronavirus – a triumph of international scientific collaboration 

– a sign of what the world can do with Wit, Wisdom, Will and Wherewithall....

Travelling East

The travellers depart

Sally left me (for a while)
In February 2019 Sally set off to travel almost 2,000 miles away from Saltaire to Saint Petersburg in Russia. Then she’ll go a further 440 miles to Moscow, not to mention a further 3,790 milles to Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia and finally a further 725 miles to Beijing in China. Almost 5,000 miles in total….mostly by train…. All being well she’ll fly back home after her adventure of a lifetime, inspired by her pal Maggie’s dream to travel on the Trans-Siberian railway. Sometimes dreams come true. I’m holding the fort and experiencing the adventure by proxy via WhatsApp and texts.

To the East and back.... Amy's Japanese adventure, savoured by proxy

Big world, small world
In some ways the world is a small place, given that pictures and voices can travel almost instantaneously via cyber-routes. But in other ways, the distances between countries are still very great and geographical features still have to be traversed by foot, bicycle, car, train, boat, plane…. Maggie’s daughter, Amy, recently worked in Japan and brought back recipes (and prezzies) to expand my palate and tell tales that illuminated Japanese culture. The last time I experienced Sally leaving me for so many nights was when she completed her medical elective in Mysore, South India – that was about 5,000 miles away, as well….

Carpe Diem
But seizing the day is what it’s all about, I suppose. Birthdays, Easter, Bonfire Night, Armistice Day, Christmas, New Year, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, St George’s Day (aka Shakespeare’s birthday….) If an opportunity presents itself, as E M Forster declared in A Room with a View:

By the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes – a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes.

Memories are made of this.

The everlasting Yes
Sally said Yes to Maggie’s madcap dream and there they are, on the banks of the River Neva, visiting St Isaac’s cathedral and the Nevsky Prospect, attending the ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre and downing several shots of vodka….

One element of this year's "birthday season" for Amy.... carpe diem! Declare the Everlasting YES!

Here at the palace I will rest awhile

Afternoon tea and a shock for George III
En route to Salisbury Cathedral (see previous blog) and before the ecstasy of Stonehenge (following blog) we rested for afternoon tea at Blenheim Palace. As you do. Apart from the glory of the treat, we had a guided tour round the State Rooms, a virtual tour round a weird “Untold Story” with ghostly projections giving a flavour of Blenheim’s history (and in fact on the return journey we stopped again to peer into the Duke’s rooms.) At times like these, I usually feel like Heathcliff must have felt staring into the windows of Thrushcross Grange, expecting at any moment to be thrashed and sent back to Wuthering Heights. At Blenheim the guides were in fact very welcoming, impressively knowledgeable and were able to motormouth through the chequered history of battles, wars, loveless marriages, tragic events, bitter legal disputes and architect tiffs that went into the creating of the only building in England called a Palace that’s neither royal nor connected to the church. Although the construction began during Queen Anne’s time, it was George III who cemented Blenheim’s reputation as being too big for its non-royal boots by gasping “We have nothing to equal this!”

"Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail"
In John Donne’s poem of witty poetical advice To Sir Henry Wotton he remarks that “Life is a voyage,” “Cities are sepulchres,” “Courts are theatres” and “The country is a desert” unless you can look within and “Be then thine own home.” No amount of luxury or power will satisfy your soul if you fail “to thine own self be true” as Shakespeare had Polonius say in Hamlet. Donne admires the snail who carries “his own house still, still is at home” and the fish who glide by “leaving no print where they pass.” Seeking fame or fortune means nothing without loved ones. I’m sometimes puzzled by my own politics of liking big houses and estates (and supporting the Monarchy as an institution 100%) – when I’m instinctively liberal and hate entitlement and the unfair distribution/hoarding of wealth by the few. Could it be that my “view within” (as E M Forster put it in A Room With A View) recognises that the “gorgeous palaces” can be seen as prisons, trapping those inside whose souls can never truly be free?

Dove descending breaks the air

Mompesson House, a National Trust property in Salisbury's Cathedral Close

Mompesson House
In Salisbury’s Cathedral Close, a National Trust Queen Anne townhouse is accessible and imaginatively presented. The plasterwork inside Mompesson House is exquisite and I became obsessed with a set of Mezzotints by Thomas Frye – the faces seemed to be real people with real lives and real things to say about Eighteenth Century living. The house has been inhabited since 1701 (until 1975) and the walled garden is tranquil and welcoming.

Into the medieval period
It took nearly 38 years to build, it has the tallest spire in Britain, Constable’s famous painting of it is worth millions and we went there. Salisbury Cathedral, begun in 1220, five years after the sealing of the Magna Carta, and rising from a grassy estate in the town of Salisbury. It’s currently home to a soaring installation by artist Michael Pendry; this depicts a flight of doves (Les Colombes) made from individually folded doves, the majority by local community groups. As a symbol of peace, hope and new beginnings it was truly breathtaking.

Interior Salisbury Cathedral - spot the flight of doves.... Michael Pendry's Les Colombes

Highlights
The extraordinary internal walls, the bowed columns, the decorated ceilings, the infinity font, the lovely cloisters, the weird medieval clock, the Prisoners of Conscience window, the intricate quire stalls, the tiny sculptures of Vices and Virtues, the medieval friezes in the Chapter House, the Magna Carta exhibition (yes, one of the surviving copies is there), the model with masons, blacksmiths and artisans at work building the cathedral (with nary a harness or hard hat in sight!) Proper Ken Follett Pillars of the Earth stuff (and, yes, Kingsbridge in the novels was inspired by Salisbury.)

Little Gidding panels, the infinity font and Les Colombes

Little Gidding
The title of this post comes from Little Gidding, T S Eliot’s final poem in The Four Quartets, a masterpiece of yearning. In my (tentative) reading the poem speaks of love; pilgrimage and travelling, real and metaphorical; escaping earth-bound concerns for a better self; confronting regrets, fears and doubt and striving for hope, renewal and authenticity. Only Connect. We need to reflect on who we were, examine who we are and believe who we can be. Somehow the glass panels in Salisbury Cathedral and the soaring doves of Michael Pendry (and the ridiculous optimism of the Magna Carta – what it was, what it is and what it may yet be – somehow synthesised for me on our visit.
We die with the dying: 
See, they depart, and we go with them. 
We are born with the dead: 
See, they return, and bring us with them. 
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration…..
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring 
Will be to arrive where we started 
And know the place for the first time.

Athens of the North

Drizzly in Saltaire, cold in Edinburgh
“Cast ne’er a clout, till May be out….” my Mum used to say. And a feature of Retirement seems to be paying closer attention to the weather than I ever have before. Is Spring over? Have we jumped Summer? Is the Jekyll & Hyde weather connected to global warming? Be still, my beating heart, because another aspect of Retirement is taking a mid-week (term-time) break in Edinburgh, Scotland’s fine capital.

New Town, Old Town, Princes Street, the Athens of the North

Food, drink and a room with a view
The gargantuan dark edifices of Old Town and the benevolent strand of Princes Street Gardens anchor the city for all eternity, but we also spent time parading round New Town’s Georgian elegance, visiting the squares and churches built to lift the volcanic city out of its Burke&Hare reputation. As ever, food and drink were on the menu and I can recommend Veeno’s (where we had a lovely lunch on Day One) and Wedgewood (where we had a fancy dinner on Day Two) but, better than both, was eating in the home of old friends from university, one of whom was the subject of a book launch (mine in 2022?)

Literary Edinburgh: Dorward, Spark, Boswell & Johnson....

The Human Kind
was the book, launched in Edinburgh at Waterstone’s on Princes Street. The author was Edinburgh GP, Dr Peter Dorward, and the subtitle says it all: A Doctor’s Stories from the Heart of Medicine. I always felt Peter, like Sally, was a cultured and literary medic, a man who discussed patients not conditions and who, back in the heady days of learning at the University of Manchester in the 1980s, didn’t fit into the debauched world of medical training (I’m sure it’s all much more civilised these days.) His book is part-memoir, part-reflection on a career dealing with ethical, moral, economic and humanitarian issues whilst simultaneously attempting to keep in mind the individual human consulting about their…. disease…. injury…. distress…. ShitLifeSyndrome…. A masterpiece of philosophical rumination on the current state of the NHS – very personal, highly recommended.

Hotel Indigo on Princes Street, the lovely room 203....

Literary Edinburgh
The Athens of the North is a fitting place to think about books with monuments to Burns, Scott and Stevenson everywhere, including in our hotel where our room was plastered with facsimiles of the original edition of Kenneth Graham’s Wind in the Willows. Happily our literary experience was not all male as we stumbled into the Library of Scotland where there was an entertaining exhibition about the comically sinister and waspishly poetic Muriel Spark whose words in her most famous book are an apt place to end:

Be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur.

A Room with a View and, among highlights, Gladstone's Land with its secret-filled ceiling....

New Year, New Routine

 

Epiphany
And so the Twelfth Day of Christmas comes around again and all the trimmings come down. Baubles go back in the cupboard for another year and pine needles are vacuumed up…. I enjoyed the annual treat of walking round the atmospheric streets of Saltaire to see the creative Advent Windows (see previous years here and here.) I’m enjoying getting hungry again and not feeling so permanently kaylied (drunk….) I’ve vowed to write only a maximum of 3 blogs a months in 2018 so, despite having the material, I’m saving up my blogs on the New Year’s Eve Murder Mystery, a winter walk at Bolton Abbey, thoughts about EM Forster, Anglesey, Norway, Bletchley Park, Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece…. and no doubt many other things that bounce into my brain.

Resolutions
What have I resolved? In common with every other year in living memory I hope to get fitter, declutter and avoid procrastination. But this year, 2018, fresh off the boat, I resolve to get my novel, Raydan Wakes, ready for submission to an agent (or six.) The edit of Book One is coming along in fits and starts with radical cuts and restructuring; the first draft of Book Two seems plain sailing in comparison; events are unfolding as I expected them to. No surprises so far in Book Two, but Book One is proving to be discombobulating, like a wild animal nipping, clawing, scratching and biting chunks out of what I thought it was. Ah, the life of a writer….

Reasons to be cheerful

Glass half full
After three blogs about reasons to be fearful and fake news, it’s time to cheer up. Most of my life I’ve been a glass half full kinda person. I admit it can be annoying but I can’t stop myself trying to look on the bright side. Maybe it’s because I’m a Libran, I can usually find another way of looking a problem. Seeing it from the alternative point of view…. On the other hand.  My two favourite mottos are carpe diem and only connect.

Carpe diem
Seize the day is a popular aphorism, attributed in its earliest form to the Roman poet Horace in his Odes (23 BC.) I used to write on the inside cover of my notebooks when a teenager: plan as if you are going to live forever, live as if you are going to die tomorrow. Seizing the day is a tough ask when annoying and frustrating bits of living get in the way. It’s hard to seize the day when you have to buy onions at the supermarket; or hoover the carpet. But I try…. My biggest weapon for seizing the day is my imagination. When on a bus or train, if I don’t have a book with me I can’t stop myself travelling back in time and imagining myself in another place in a different period of history. The Tags list on the right will reveal which eras are the ones I flutter away to….

Only connect!
Live in fragments no longer. I used to think it was my Mum who invented the motto: Every day in every way I’m getting better and better until I learned it was Émile Coué, a French psychologist from the early part of the Twentieth Century. Deep down I think if I haven’t read something new or experienced something new every day I’m not exercising my brain or heart and I think that’s what E M Forster’s quotation from Howard’s End is all about. Focusing on brain and heart without thinking about how my body might benefit from exercise has, of course, been a significant weakness of mine. Who would guess that I was a rugby player between the ages of 11 and 18 and between 16 and 18 I played both union and league? If only I’d made the connection then with being physically fit and living a longer life…. but then again, the connections I’ve made with my brain have given me plenty to enjoy in life. We just have to connect the beast and the monk, the prose and the passion, the body with the brain and heart – see the interlinks between us all and everything else. Live in fragments no longer.

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.

Merchant Ivory's film of E M Forster's Howard's End, the source of "Only Connect!" 

Anthony Hopkins as Henry Wilcox, Vanessa Redgrave as Ruth Wilcox, Emma Thompson as Margaret Schlegel, Helena Bonham Carter as Helen Schlegel, Samuel West as Leonard Bast, Nicola Duffett as Jacky Bast, James Wilby as Charles Wilcox and Adrian Ross Magenty as Tibby Schlegel

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Sweet though in sadness

I’ve already recorded that I love Autumn (birthday, sense of new start with the new school year, colours of nature.) Of course I also love Winter, Spring and Summer – each season generates distinctive features that I appreciate but I feel unfeasibly cockle-warmed when walking through the “Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red” of Autumn woodland. The quotation is from Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind, one of the most famous poems about Autumn, a hymn to the wind, “thou breath of Autumn’s being.”

Only Connect

In the poem Shelley imagines all the seeds buried beneath the earth like corpses now, waiting to burst into life again and break through the soil in a few months’ time. He imagines the dead leaves blowing and falling like thoughts, carrying messages across the world. The West Wind is “Destroyer and preserver.” Currently he feels earth bound, trapped in Autumn, but witnessing the maelstrom of nature preparing for its next phase and wishing his words could travel through the air like leaves. Only connect cries the poem, as EM Forster was to write in Howard’s End. Listen! Hear the voices! Hear the spring of human consciousness! Winter is coming…. And then…?

Stanza V from Ode to the West Wind

by Percy Bysshe Shelley (published 1820) – written in a wood near the River Arno in Florence

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Iron Tree

If this be magic, let it be an art/Lawful as eating

“Art” is a curious thing. When teaching General Studies I remember asking students to identify as many different branches of the arts as they could. We usually came up with a list that included painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, photography, film production, architecture, literature (poetry, drama and prose), music, dance, performance art and multi-media art. Do computer games count as art? Software programmes? Interior design? Furniture-making? Where does “craft” end and “art” begin? The Arts and Crafts movement (c1880 – c1920) suggested the distinction was unhelpful and I currently agree. If there is an aesthetic quality to something that has been made by a human, then I think it can be considered art if there is someone willing to look at it with some level of concentration.

The art itself is nature

The Yorkshire Sculpture Park is a wonderful place to see works of art, surrounded by nature, sometimes pretending to be nature. It is easy to walk past everything there passively seeing but not thinking. But I love to engage my brain with questions. What does it remind me of? What does it make me think? What does it make me feel? What did the artist intend? How precise is it in construction, shape or colour? What are the proportions of the object or the space around it? What are the textures of the piece? What is its mood? How was it made? How long will it last? Will everyone feel the same about it? Will its meaning change over time?

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei’s Iron Tree is one of my favourite sculptures at the park. The prominent nuts and bolts suggest (to me) industry and history. I like to think the interconnected pieces relate to world harmony, working together and my favourite motto (from EM Forster’s Howard’s End) – Only Connect. I’ve read that Weiwei was inspired to creat the sculpture by the street vendors who sold wood in southern China. But at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park I can’t help feel that the setting of the Iron Tree inside a chapel garden reflects spiritual rather than commercial ideas. It reminds me of the Stark’s Godswood in Game of Thrones.

Game-changing Novels

So my daughter was asked to name her Top Ten Most Influential Books -  not the BEST, nor the GREATEST, nor the ones you've READ RECENTLY, nor the ones you think SHOULD BE on a top ten list.

What are the ten novels that have been MOST INFLUENTIAL on your life?  The ones that CHANGED THE GAME for you?  The ones that, after reading, your life was forever different?

Harriet's list

Harriet’s list was (in alphabetical order of title):

Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Dai Sijie
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
The Far Cry - Emma Smith
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern
Sum: Tales from the Afterlives - David Eagleman
The Tiger's Wife - Tea Obreht
A Town like Alice - Nevil Shute
Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys

My list

Here are mine (in order of the age, roughly, when I first read them):

Lord of the Flies – William Golding (read aged 14)
The Once And Future King – TH White (read aged 15)
Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë (read aged 17)
To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee (read aged 17)
Great Expectations  - Charles Dickens (read aged 20)
Dragonflight – Anne McCaffrey (read aged 24)
The Sea The Sea – Iris Murdoch (read aged 28)
A Man of his Word/A Handful of Men – Dave Duncan (read aged 38)
The Sunne in Splendour – Sharon Penman (read aged 40)
Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood (read aged 48)

What do I notice about the books that changed things for me forever?  History, myth, fantasy, love and violent actions are common threads.  Six of the ten works are written by women.  Should I have worked harder to include books by writers I admire like Alice Hoffmann or Anne Tyler, Philip Pullman or CS Lewis?  What about my childhood obsession, Enid Blyton?

What was I heartbroken to miss out?

Close misses from the list include (alphabetical by surname of writer) I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, Emma by Jane Austen, Villette by Charlotte Brontë, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Bleak House, Hard Times and Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens, Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, Howards End and A Passage to India by EM Forster, Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Rainbow by DH Lawrence, The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing, Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Treasure Island by RL Stevenson, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.

If anyone knows me well, and wants to prompt me with anything I’ve forgotten – or provide their own list, please do so.  I might attempt a future blog about poets/poems/plays – but might have to exclude Shakespeare because of the impossibility of choosing between his creations….