Moving house in the snow and ice
Fleeting poorly paid but gratefully accepted employment in a very cold office, wearing wool socks
Unemployment - official. Fortnightly and later weekly visits to the dispiriting Jobcentre ('plus' as it is hopefully called...)
Long slow days
Learning the views from the house
Keeping going and more keeping going
Hearing myself say I can't afford to do things again and again
Discovering Edinburgh
Camping in Pembrokeshire and a small spirit of adventure
Poetry refuses to die
Some work some precious work
Self-employment - official
Snow and ice
Thaw
Kind friends and the most loyal partner ever
Goodbye 2010
Friday, 31 December 2010
Wednesday, 29 December 2010
Thaw
Silent ice yields,
dies in phlegmy looking puddles,
the world returns to the colours of earth
and we are shrouded now in cloud,
cannot see two fields away.
A fly in the bathroom refuses to die,
buzzes dark behind the thin curtain.
dies in phlegmy looking puddles,
the world returns to the colours of earth
and we are shrouded now in cloud,
cannot see two fields away.
A fly in the bathroom refuses to die,
buzzes dark behind the thin curtain.
Sunday, 26 December 2010
Boxing
If you keep beating 'round the bush
you lose your push
Listening to dear Captain Beefheart, rest his soul. 69 seems young to die these days. What can I say about the Captain?
Big eyed beans from Venus
don't let anything get in between us
Wild man, loose imagination, wonderful blues voice. Exciting and liberating both then and now to listen to music which tears up every rule book.
And last night we watched the documentary about Eddie Izzard 'Believe'. He too at his best is possessed of a wild imagination, a capacity for surreal flights - following them wheresoever they may go.
Longing for some of this creative freedom. Longing to lose control. Ridiculously anxious at the moment. About snow and ice. About work. About life. What am I doing with it?
I'm now working my way through my Dad's army letters for the second time, attempting to catalogue them in some way as I go. Having read my way through maybe 150 letters it is nigh on impossible without doing so ever to find again the parts that I want to revisit. And there are many. My father at 20/ 21 a trooper in the 40th Royal Tank Regiment, an ex public schoolboy, interrupted in his Oxford undergraduate studies by being called up for the last month of WW2, suddenly must share his life with working class lads whose language and behaviour he finds 'coarse, uncouth and licentious'. Yet he believes passionately in the equality and brotherhood of all men - as an ideal. He struggles to find common ground with his fellow soldiers and sometimes finds it in one to one conversation, though in group situations he is always the outsider, clearly seen as aloof and snobby. He characterises them as interested only in alcohol and sleeping with women, and occupies the high moral ground of a strict Anglican, sounding distinctly prudish at times. Yet he longs to be free of many social conventions he considers hypocritical and empty. He wants 'all men' to be happy, recognises the part played by Capitalism in the misery of the 'masses', and dreams of a kind of Christian Communism, whose ultimate aim would be to allow everyone to work only a few hours a day, giving them plenty of time 'to themselves' (a fantasy that marked his character throughout his life)...
Yet he seems to find it hard to imagine that a 'working class man' could already possess intelligence, integrity or dignity - without the precious (public school) 'education' he has been taught to believe is the only route to becoming a useful citizen, a good person... There is so much to find absurdly snobbish, classist, sexist, naive, and yet... here he is, entirely and inevitably the product of his time and upbringing and education, suddenly thrown into the levelling experience of army life, doing the best he can to be tolerant and helpful, to make sense of a world of which until now he has only seen such a small sheltered corner, and which has just come through a war.
He's also devouring books, dreaming of writing them, making his parents laugh (I hope) at funny stories of this strange army life, wondering what his brother back home is getting up to, sightseeing in Italy and Greece, swimming and sunbathing, playing cricket, and generally wondering what on earth is the purpose of his being there, as the months roll by and still he isn't demobilised.
My young young Dad, just a few years before he met my young young Mum, and the two of them got married and very soon started our family.
Babes in the wood.
you lose your push
Listening to dear Captain Beefheart, rest his soul. 69 seems young to die these days. What can I say about the Captain?
Big eyed beans from Venus
don't let anything get in between us
Wild man, loose imagination, wonderful blues voice. Exciting and liberating both then and now to listen to music which tears up every rule book.
And last night we watched the documentary about Eddie Izzard 'Believe'. He too at his best is possessed of a wild imagination, a capacity for surreal flights - following them wheresoever they may go.
Longing for some of this creative freedom. Longing to lose control. Ridiculously anxious at the moment. About snow and ice. About work. About life. What am I doing with it?
I'm now working my way through my Dad's army letters for the second time, attempting to catalogue them in some way as I go. Having read my way through maybe 150 letters it is nigh on impossible without doing so ever to find again the parts that I want to revisit. And there are many. My father at 20/ 21 a trooper in the 40th Royal Tank Regiment, an ex public schoolboy, interrupted in his Oxford undergraduate studies by being called up for the last month of WW2, suddenly must share his life with working class lads whose language and behaviour he finds 'coarse, uncouth and licentious'. Yet he believes passionately in the equality and brotherhood of all men - as an ideal. He struggles to find common ground with his fellow soldiers and sometimes finds it in one to one conversation, though in group situations he is always the outsider, clearly seen as aloof and snobby. He characterises them as interested only in alcohol and sleeping with women, and occupies the high moral ground of a strict Anglican, sounding distinctly prudish at times. Yet he longs to be free of many social conventions he considers hypocritical and empty. He wants 'all men' to be happy, recognises the part played by Capitalism in the misery of the 'masses', and dreams of a kind of Christian Communism, whose ultimate aim would be to allow everyone to work only a few hours a day, giving them plenty of time 'to themselves' (a fantasy that marked his character throughout his life)...
Yet he seems to find it hard to imagine that a 'working class man' could already possess intelligence, integrity or dignity - without the precious (public school) 'education' he has been taught to believe is the only route to becoming a useful citizen, a good person... There is so much to find absurdly snobbish, classist, sexist, naive, and yet... here he is, entirely and inevitably the product of his time and upbringing and education, suddenly thrown into the levelling experience of army life, doing the best he can to be tolerant and helpful, to make sense of a world of which until now he has only seen such a small sheltered corner, and which has just come through a war.
He's also devouring books, dreaming of writing them, making his parents laugh (I hope) at funny stories of this strange army life, wondering what his brother back home is getting up to, sightseeing in Italy and Greece, swimming and sunbathing, playing cricket, and generally wondering what on earth is the purpose of his being there, as the months roll by and still he isn't demobilised.
My young young Dad, just a few years before he met my young young Mum, and the two of them got married and very soon started our family.
Babes in the wood.
Friday, 24 December 2010
Christmas Eve
The gammon is simmering in a pan with celery, onion, cloves and bay leaves, and L is making cranberry sauce with clementines and port to go with the turkey tomorrow. The turkey is currently residing in the back of the car! The carols on Radio 4 have just finished. In a couple of hours we shall go down to town for the carols in the Square. Hopefully they won't go on longer than half an hour, since the forecast is now for -11C tonight! We'll go for a drink with friend S and then return to glaze, bake and eat the gammon with a nice bottle of red wine.
I am having a strange and moving time reading my father's letters home to his parents from his time in the army from 1945-1947, based in Italy, Greece and Palestine. He was called up and joined the ranks just 28 days before the end of the War, and then had to wait over two years to be demobilized. He was 20 in 1945. I have had these letters for years in a pink cardboard folder, and never read them. I cannot explain why. It's a very intense experience - a meeting across time and beyond death, with a young man I feel I both do and do not know... He is sensitive, thoughtful to a fault, devours books and writes about them, an aspiring writer, wildly idealistic, a Christian with a strict moral code, also a Communist by inclination if not affiliation. He's lonely and anxious and completely out of his social comfort zone as a trooper in the British army. When I have read them all and had time to digest them, I will try to write more about them here.
In the mean time, Merry Christmas everyone! Enjoy peace, feasting and kindness, and I hope 2011 brings us all many blessings.
I am having a strange and moving time reading my father's letters home to his parents from his time in the army from 1945-1947, based in Italy, Greece and Palestine. He was called up and joined the ranks just 28 days before the end of the War, and then had to wait over two years to be demobilized. He was 20 in 1945. I have had these letters for years in a pink cardboard folder, and never read them. I cannot explain why. It's a very intense experience - a meeting across time and beyond death, with a young man I feel I both do and do not know... He is sensitive, thoughtful to a fault, devours books and writes about them, an aspiring writer, wildly idealistic, a Christian with a strict moral code, also a Communist by inclination if not affiliation. He's lonely and anxious and completely out of his social comfort zone as a trooper in the British army. When I have read them all and had time to digest them, I will try to write more about them here.
In the mean time, Merry Christmas everyone! Enjoy peace, feasting and kindness, and I hope 2011 brings us all many blessings.
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
Winter Wonderland
Incredible ice crystals - frost on snow. I've never seen anything like these long feathery structures sitting lightly on top of the powdery snow. Click to enlarge, though even then it may be hard to get the full effect.
Weather as promised.
More or less. Certainly the temperature predictions are correct.
Weather as promised.
More or less. Certainly the temperature predictions are correct.
Tuesday, 21 December 2010
Solstice
Wow!
In fact the five day weather forecast is exactly the same but that won't embed. Gonna be an ice-cold sunny Christmas... Haslingden by the way is about 10 miles away from here in Lancashire, but is obviously the nearest weather monitoring station.
In fact the five day weather forecast is exactly the same but that won't embed. Gonna be an ice-cold sunny Christmas... Haslingden by the way is about 10 miles away from here in Lancashire, but is obviously the nearest weather monitoring station.
Sunday, 19 December 2010
Hatworld
It's back to the land of people who wear hats. In my case a very unbecoming purple fleecy Peter Storm one, that sits like a large pudding on my head. Unbecoming but warm. Sub-zero for several days now, and no sign of a let-up. One big fall of snow on Friday night. The roads are well-gritted as always and getting out and about not a problem. It's beautiful too, with all sorts of different effects of sunlight on snow. Today a strange combination of brightness and foggy clouds so that on our walk this morning we were in bright sunlight, while the valley below had disappeared into a greyish pink mass of cloud. We walked with care, with walking poles, and it was a pleasure, and we remembered to take some old apples for the horses, and one of the special pleasures was the feeling of warm horse-lips on my hand. But it takes about ten minutes to get ready to go out and another ten to remove all the outer layers, boots, hats and so forth when you return. It is hard work living with ice. And it uses up energy like crazy - ours and the planet's. We just had a massive gas bill, the closing one before switching to a (hopefully) cheaper provider. Also hoping that the loft insulation will now begin to make an appreciable difference. It certainly feels warmer, especially upstairs, especially overnight. The heating's off for about nine hours, and yet some appreciable warmth is retained.
I have a work related meeting tomorrow evening and then I'm on holiday for more than two weeks. A strange phenomenon really for me, who works so very little at the moment anyway. I'll put in some time thinking about how I'd like to structure the work at the school - I told them I'd come up with some proposals. And L and I plan to 'brainstorm' about my work situation generally, and other things I might be doing to generate more. Otherwise there will be much time for reflection, writing, resting, reading, cooking, eating, walking, sorting out piles of papers and the enormous backlog in my email inbox. I feel myself drawing in breath, preparing for new beginnings. In the mean time, at times I feel my mind revert to default setting of looking for something to worry about, to dread, or second option on my inner menu - feeling guilty about everything. More meditative pursuits (if that's not an oxymoron) like Feldenkrais help, by nudging me into the experience of the moment, into awareness, out of monkey-mind. Remembering to make that time is always quite a feat.
I have a work related meeting tomorrow evening and then I'm on holiday for more than two weeks. A strange phenomenon really for me, who works so very little at the moment anyway. I'll put in some time thinking about how I'd like to structure the work at the school - I told them I'd come up with some proposals. And L and I plan to 'brainstorm' about my work situation generally, and other things I might be doing to generate more. Otherwise there will be much time for reflection, writing, resting, reading, cooking, eating, walking, sorting out piles of papers and the enormous backlog in my email inbox. I feel myself drawing in breath, preparing for new beginnings. In the mean time, at times I feel my mind revert to default setting of looking for something to worry about, to dread, or second option on my inner menu - feeling guilty about everything. More meditative pursuits (if that's not an oxymoron) like Feldenkrais help, by nudging me into the experience of the moment, into awareness, out of monkey-mind. Remembering to make that time is always quite a feat.
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