Enter Owen

The Capacity for Love

It’s not an original experience, I know, but I did spend some time feeling bewildered about whether or not I would be able to love a second grandchild as much as the first. Bewilderment is now in the past, faded to nothing, evaporated into a faraway haze. Reader, it is a truth universally acknowledged that the chambers of the heart expand mightily when love comes a-knocking.

Hello there, Owen Thomas                                                      

Fortune has smiled upon this baby. He arrived and we learned his name, second son to Harriet & Chris, brother to Samuel Miles, nephew to Emily, grandchild to Sally & Tony. Plus he has another family of cousins, an auntie and a grandma in the Midlands. And there’ll be a whole tribe of neighbours and friends around to create “Owen’s village.”

The basics

It’s easy to forget how, for a good number of weeks, it’s all about the food, the poo, the wee, the comfort, the sleep. Oh, the sleep, please Grant Them Sleep! And this time around there’s a 2-year-old to care for, keep entertained, and integrate into the newly fresh routines.

The future – the hope and the promise

Eleanor Roosevelt said “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” I know I can be irrationally sentimental, but it is hard not to see Hope and Promise in the presence of a little baby – no cynicism, no worries, no knowledge of evil, no pressures from social media or society – just survival and growth. Potential.

Two brothers

Sam has already shown tenderness to his younger brother, talking to him, reading to him. What kind of relationship will Sam and Owen develop as they live together in the same house for at least sixteen more years? So much potential for silliness, skirmishes, support and love.

Reach for Shakespeare

Sam can already identify the image of Shakespeare and he has a couple of books with characters from the plays. So far he has enjoyed Extracts from The Sonnets, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet (minus the stabbings.) What came into my heart when I held Owen for the first time was Ophelia’s line from Hamlet:

"We know what we are but know not what we may be."

2022 Advent

Spot the Differences

It's been a goodly strange few years and there are many differences between now and any point in the past: one week, one month, one year, or two or three or four weeks, months and years ago. And in some ways it seems like the world in going to hell in a hand cart. And in other ways it seems that life is a bowl of cherries. Whatever that means. But December comes round again and, although there have certainly been some profound things happening on a personal level over the last year, the leaves have just about fallen, the frost's beginning to pinch, the winter fog is creeping through the country and the Advent stockings are in place. Hello December.

 

Vaccinated Diamond Birthday

Six Months Later

So, six months after I was born in Wakefield, Sally Anne Allard was born on St Patrick’s Day in Bradford. March 2021 marked Sally’s Diamond Birthday. It wasn’t “normal” in that there was no meal out and no trip to the cinema or theatre…. But it was normal in keeping up the tradition of getting together with our daughters (even if we were walking two by two) and eating and drinking (a picnic in the open air, socially distanced.) Last March we began locking down before the government asked us to and this year we look forward to restrictions being lifted. So in the weeks and months to come I hope we’ll have a series of further birthday-style events….

St Patrick’s Day over the previous five years

• 2016 – Anomaleesa at The Everyman Cinema in Leeds
• 2017 – Gardening course and the live action Beauty and the Beast at The Everyman
• 2018 – Icy walk, wintry views and meal at home with (Sally’s choice of) Minority Report on the TV
• 2019 – The RSC touring production of Matilda at Bradford Alhambra and Green Book at Showcase
• 2020 – Almost UK-wide Lockdown, hikes (on different days) to the Druid’s Altar and Top Withins

No cinema, no theatre, but plenty still to enjoy

In the bullet-points above, I’ve mentioned cultural events that made 2016-19 distinctive, but all years have still included cards, a cake and presents revolving around themes of gardening, glamour, reading, flowers, food and drink. This year a parade of visitors passed by the garden gate to wish Many Happy Returns and delivery folk turned up at a steady pace…. Unusual gifts this year included a phone call from Australia, a home-knitted cardigan and a kit from Dishoom to make Naan-Bacon-Rolls. (After nearly 35 years of marriage we are learning to be cooperative in the kitchen!)

Birthday Talents

It’s easy to celebrate birthdays with Sally (or spend Christmas, or go on holiday, or do Bonfire Night, or do anything really….) All that’s needed are messages of love from family and friends and some time together making human connections. All the Lockdowns in the world can’t squash Sally’s talents for being generous and open-hearted to whatever can be achieved with whatever resources are at hand….

Spring in the air

The birds are nest-building, the daffodils are out, the buds are budding, the daylight hours are longer – these are all signifiers of Sally’s birthday every year – the Spring of the year. And in 2021, the Covid vaccine rollout continues apace…. A Spring-like birthday present from the scientific and medical community. What will St Patrick’s Day in March 2022 bring? We’ll be a year older. Will we still be socially distancing? Wearing masks? Time will tell.

A Birthday

by Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;

My heart is like an apple-tree

Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;

My heart is like a rainbow shell

That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these

Because my love is come to me. 

Raise me a dais of silk and down;

Hang it with vair and purple dyes;

Carve it in doves and pomegranates,

And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

Work it in gold and silver grapes,

In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;

Because the birthday of my life

Is come, my love is come to me.

Snowdrops and Pancakes

Raindrops on roses

If I were to rank order Maria von Trapp’s list from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s My Favourite Things I would place at the top:

Silver white Winters that melt into Springs

….which is why it has been lovely this past week to to see snowdrops on our walks – appearing, like magic, in the week when I also discovered a new way to make pancakes. Yes, Shrove Tuesday, it must be the start of Lent:

“And every man and maide doe take their turne,

And tosse their Pancakes up for feare they burne.”

(proverb from 1619)

Well, this year, no Pancake Bell summoned me to be “shriven” (absolved of my sins through confession) but I still appreciated the symbols:

• Eggs (creation, fertility, eternity, the world itself)
• Salt (purification, seasoning and wholesomeness)
• Flour (the staff of life, domestic frugality and hard work)
• Milk (purity, abundance, the primal food)

and tried a new thing (actually a medieval trick) of gradually making a paste with everything except the egg whites and then folding the whisked egg whites gently into the paste…. Reader, I made them. Fluffy, or what? The collage above includes a picture of one of the more well-done ones (As I Like It) and includes a dollop of stewed rhubarb (cos I is from Yorkshire) and some coconut yoghurt (cos I is a bit tropical.) Oh, and look, there’s the latest completed puzzle. Oh, and there’s me having had my first Covid-19 vaccination…. And after all these months (the first recorded Covid cases in the UK were identified in York on January 31st 2020) I reflect that I have spent the greatest part of the year in the company of one person, so under the collage is one of My Favourite Poems in tribute….

A Marriage

by Michael Blumenthal 

You are holding up a ceiling

with both arms. It is very heavy,

but you must hold it up, or else

it will fall down on you. Your arms                                           are tired, terribly tired,

and, as the day goes on, it feels

as if either your arms or the ceiling

will soon collapse.

But then

unexpectedly,

something wonderful happens:

Someone,

a man or a woman,

walks into the room

and holds their arms up

to the ceiling beside you.

So you finally get

to take down your arms.

You feel the relief of respite,

the blood flowing back

to your fingers and arms.

And when your partner’s arms tire,

you hold up your own

to relieve him again.

And it can go on like this

for many years

without the house falling.

Top left, Michael Blumenthal

Delifresh Valentine

Give and take, prod and pull

Anne McClain (astronaut) has given good tips on living in (quarantined) close quarters:

• Communication. Listen attentively, respond, identify non-verbal signals, question, reflect, repeat….
• Leadership/followership. Accept responsibility whether you’re leading or following and present solutions not problems (Anne points out that a follower is actually a subordinate leader, contributing to the leader’s direction – and on the international space station everyone both leads and follows, a good tip for relationships – give and take, prod and pull)
• Self Care. No-one knows how to take care of yourself better than your very own self (as long as you take time to check what works for you: check regularly hygiene, sleep, fuel, body, mind and mood – and change if necessary.) Optimise strengths. Be open about weaknesses and feelings.
• Team Care. Demonstrate patience and respect. Encourage. Monitor stress, fatigue, sickness, supplies, resources, workload. Volunteer. Share credit. Take blame.
• Group Living. Cooperate, don’t compete. Keep calm in conflict. Take accountability and give praise freely.

Walk. Love. Limit the News.

In my first post this year, I set myself the three resolutions in the subheading above. I will now add a fourth. For 34 years of marriage Sally and I have shared “KP” (as we call it, from White Christmas…. Kitchen patrol….) and had our own particular dishes but cooked independently for 99.9% of the time because we (me, to be honest) didn’t follow Anne McClain’s advice and I like total control when I am Chief Chef. But in honour of 2021’s Valentine’s Day we invested in a box of fresh local produce from Delifresh with recipe cards (and online video training) to cook a 3-course Valentine’s dinner together. Together! Cooperating, like Anne McClain recommends for astronauts on the international space station.... And it worked – restaurant-quality ingredients and techniques resulted in hearty portions, including leftovers for the next day. For the first time in 60 years I helped make fondant potatoes! So…. Walk. Love, Limit the News. And…. Cooperate in the kitchen. Never too old to learn new tricks.

Changing Landscapes

More and more people I know are being vaccinated against Covid-19. I’m hoping to be jabbed before the end of March at the latest. I wonder what will change when we are living with Covid in a vaccinated world? I don’t think walking will stop. I’d never have guessed that the same series of walks over and over again could remain interesting but the changing mist and low cloud, changing frost and icy conditions, changing skies and winter light seem endlessly fascinating. A perfect ingredient in our astronaut Self Care.

Sighing after swallows flown

La Rue, Saltaire, posh takeaway

Lockdown 2.0

Another week, another jigsaw. This time, a birthday jigsaw featuring “The Harry Potter Film Club” named because we started the club to watch the Harry Potter films one after the other and have since graduated to Oscar-winners, foreign language films, strange comedies, cheesy romances, macabre crime movies and everything in between. The week has also seen the successful ordering and whole-stomached consuming of a posh takeaway from local British/French bistro La Rue – a new way for businesses to try and keep afloat in these challenging times. I’m assuming the UK Prime Minister has an excellent plan for dealing with the 2020 pandemic; I can only hope that upwards of a million infections and over 50,000 deaths were part of his vision. Otherwise, why would he keep trying to tell me it was all looking promising (me, with the rose-tinted spectacles)? To be honest, I wouldn’t want to be a member of the cabinet at the moment; though next week might feel better without Dominic Cummings who many government insiders describe as malignant and mendacious. Just saying.

Sever from my lot your lot

I can usually conjure something from Shakespeare or poetry to fit the times and Lockdown 2.0 brought to mind the Autumnal poem below. It is by one of my top ten poets: Christina Rossetti, author of the soulful In the Bleak Midwinter and the wild Goblin Market. The voice of the poem “live(s) alone, (and) look(s) to die alone” having ordered all her friends to stay away and “sever” themselves from her. “I have hedged me with a thorny hedge.” There are many interpretations of the identity of the character inside this Petrarchan sonnet, and why exactly she is in her own personal lockdown. But, in November 2020, the last four lines catch my mood during the latest Covid-19 national restrictions. (Incidentally that mysterious last line is a gift for teachers trying to demonstrate the technique and effects of assonance (on the “u”) and alliteration (on the “s” and the “t”….) God and Gaia bless you, Christina Rossetti. I thank you for your gifts.

Hirst Wood, La Rue Puddings, My homemade Chicken&Mushroom Pie, Christina Rossetti - all good things....

From Sunset to Star Rise

By Christina Rossetti

Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not:
I am no summer friend, but wintry cold,
A silly sheep benighted from the fold,
A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot.
Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot,
Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold;
Lest you with me should shiver on the wold,
Athirst and hungering on a barren spot.
For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge,
I live alone, I look to die alone:
Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge,
Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back,
My heart goes sighing after swallows flown
On sometime summer’s unreturning track.

From Sunset to Star Rise

"Difference is an accident of birth"

Respect for difference
Every human is unique. Every life is different. Every person makes a mark. In recent weeks there has been a video clip doing the social media rounds playing a shortened variation of the longer Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech of the late, great Catholic, John Hume, former leader of the SDLP. He led a party whose policies often dishearten me, but there is no doubt that Hume will be remembered for his tireless work on the Northern Ireland peace process. He remained categorically opposed to violence and promoted cross-community outreach. We have “more in common” than our biases and prejudices suggest. Here are the words from the clip of one of his key philosophies:

Difference is of the essence of humanity
All conflict is about the same thing
No matter where it is
It’s about difference
Whether difference is your religion
Or your race
Or your nationality
And the message that we have to get across
And that we have learned in our part of the world
Is that difference is an accident of birth
None of us chose to be born
And we certainly didn’t choose to be born into any particular community
There’s not two people in this hall who are the same
There’s not two people in the whole world who are the same

Difference is of the essence of humanity
And therefore respect for difference
Should be very very normal and very common
But it is the first and deepest principle
Of real peace.

Rose-briar and holly-tree

Garden meets, afternoon tea, Hardwick Hall
Our back yard, with its acer tree and pots of paradise, has been a godsend during 2020 on days when it’s been possible to sit with family and friends, like Sue and Brian, on hot afternoons or warm evenings. As cafés opened, we booked our local afternoon tea (a birthday present for Sally) at the charming 1920s-themed Interlude Tea Room. And we drove down the motorway (first time in six months) to reconnect with our Badby second-family, the Thompsons, at Hardwick Hall – for a picnic and walks round the grounds at any rate.

Venturing Out and Locking Down Again
The Living-With-Covid world is a volatile experience, especially if, like me, you live in a place which experiences a sudden local lockdown. The news arrived that Bradford was experiencing “a spike” right in the middle of a soon-to-be-illegal gathering (if I fully understood the details right of what can happen in which setting and with how many bubbles of people….) Seven months ago, this kind of language and thought would have seemed to be straight out of Alice in Wonderland. But here we are, trying to make sense of international, national, local, family and personal responses to the 2020 pandemic.

Every rose has a thorn, holly stays evergreen
Reading poetry has been a perfect activity in lockdown: many poems are short and they distill an aspect of human existence in an intense package of imaginative sound. Recently I revisited Emily Brontë’s 1846 riff on the fickle nature of love (in the first flush of love we often neglect our friends) and the enduring nature of friendship (still shiny in the depths of winter when love has faded.) I’m lucky that I married someone after three years of friendship so I feel the poem contains a truth – that we should not take our friends for granted – that I hope I’ve not abused over the years.

Love and Friendship by Emily Brontë

Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree –
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom most constantly?

The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again
And who will call the wild-briar fair?

Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly’s sheen,
That when December blights thy brow
He still may leave thy garland green.

The Railway Children

“Charming, simply charming”

Thus said William Mervyn as The Old Gentleman in Lionel Jefferies’ film of The Railway Children. And on this Valentine’s Day in 2020, as Storm Dennis raged round the UK bringing floods and transport chaos, traditional English afternoon tea was given a spin for Yorkshire’s Railway Enthusiasts. Starting in Oxenhope (ticket office featuring coal fire), the Keighley and Worth Valley line ran wouldja believe? a Prosecco-tasting Valentine’s Day Special. Who knew there was so much to learn about Prosecco? As the rain battered the old-fashioned carriages, it was certainly an unusual and atmospheric way to celebrate almost 34 years of married life…. 

Won't You Be My Neighbour?

The significance of the feet washing is explained in the documentary....

Interview to Article to Documentary to Movie

It’s hard to spell neighbour without a letter u but as this post is about an American documentary and movie, I will do so (apart from in the post’s title!) Daughter Emily introduced me first to the documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor?. The documentary was partly prompted by a November 1998 article in Esquire magazine entitled Can You Say...'Hero'? by Tom Junod. Two screenwriters (Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster) then fictionalised the encounters between Tom Junod and his subject and recruited Tom Hanks to play the interviewee and Matthew Rhys to play the interviewer (renamed Lloyd Vogel for the movie.) It’s a bit complicated to explain but both the documentary and the movie are bigger than the sum of their parts, in my opinion, and have profound things to say about both society and education. The subject in question is Mr Rogers. I’d not heard of him or his seminal children’s TV programmes before watching the documentary.

UK equivalents - including some I didn't mention in the text - can you identify them?

UK equivalents?

I think the nearest in the UK we have to Mr Rogers might be people like Floella Benjamin, Carol Chell, Chloe Ashcroft, Johnny Ball or Brian Cant on Play School or Play Away and maybe, for Mr Rodgers’ Neigborhood, The Magic Roundabout for a weird alternative world – or Hector’s House or Mr Benn or…. If you are of a certain age, you’ll get the references…. But if you don’t know the world of Mr Rogers and his Neighborhood, or Daniel Tiger, Lady Aberlin, Mr McFeely, Officer Clemmons, King Friday the Thirteenth and more, then I can recommend you watch the documentary (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?) or the movie directed by Marielle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.)

Characters from Mr Rogers' Neighborhood

I like you just the way you are

I can imagine spoofs of Mr Rogers (indeed some feature in the documentary), but somehow the genuine article seems to mean every word when he addresses a vulnerable child with the words:

I hope you know that you made today a very special day by just your being you. There's no one in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are.

And when he speaks to a graduation class and

From the time you were very little,

You’ve had people who have smiled you into smiling,

People who have talked you into talking,

Sung you into singing,

Loved you into loving.

So, on this extra special day,

Let’s take some time to

Think of those extra special people.

Some of them might be right here,

Some may be far away,

Some may even be in Heaven.

No matter where they are,

Deep down you know they’ve

Always wanted what was best for you.

They’ve always cared about you beyond measure

And have encouraged you

To be true to the best within you.

Let’s just take a minute of silence to

Think about those people now.

I'm glad I’ve learned about Mr Rogers.

Loving Vincent

What is done in love

It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done. (Vincent Van Gogh)

York St Mary’s

The life, letters and artworks of Vincent Van Gogh were the subject of an “Immersive Experience” at York St Mary’s Church not far from the Jorkvik Centre. The exhibition arrived in York on its world tour from Naples and Brussels and will next touch down in Leicester. As well as digital projections, animations, lights, displays and audio components, there was a Virtual Reality experience which gave an impression of walking through the streets of Arles seeing inspirations for paintings: the wheat fields, the meadow, the forest, the village, Vincent’s room and a starry night over the Rhône River.

Seeing the stars

I don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream. (Vincent Van Gogh)

Life in brief

Van Gogh was born in March 1853 in the Dutch village of Groot-Zundert and worked as an art dealer before taking up painting in his twenties. He produced over 2,000 artworks including around 850 oil paintings. He died in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise in July 1890, two days after receiving a gunshot wound to the abdomen.

Death may not be the most difficult thing

In the life of the painter, death may perhaps not be the most difficult thing. For myself, I declare I don't know anything about it. But the sight of the stars always makes me dream. Why I say to myself should those spots of light in the firmament be inaccessible to us? (Vincent Van Gogh)

Letter writer and artistic philosopher

An exploration of Van Gogh is enriched by reading the letters he wrote, many to his younger brother, Theo. In the letters he often commented on his own work, his ideas about colour and materials, art in general, his personal situation and his own life.

Life’s treasures

Close friends are truly life's treasures. Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves. With gentle honesty, they are there to guide and support us, to share our laughter and our tears. Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone. (Vincent Van Gogh)

Nature’s resistance

Nature always begins by resisting the artist, but he who takes it seriously will not be put off by that opposition. (Vincent Van Gogh)

The language of colour

Colour itself speaks its own language, you cannot live without it. (Vincent Van Gogh)

Pure harmony and music

What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum. (Vincent Van Gogh)

Loving Vincent

In 2017, the world’s first fully painted animated feature, Loving Vincent, gave a fictionalised account of a conflicting story about the death of Van Gogh in July 1890. He certainly died of a gunshot wound but why the wound was not treated in a hospital and whether or not it was self-inflicted, or a grotesque accident, are mysteries that are unlikely to ever be solved and which the film explores using words of all the main protagonists. 

Courage

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? (Vincent Van Gogh)

Painting dreams

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream. (Vincent Van Gogh)