today's the day - sara's musings

Crazy quilting.....

2011-12-01T21:13:00.000Z

Well, its crazy ok, and I realise now that with such heavily patterned fabrics the embroidery cannot be too subtle. Thats ok - I have lots of bright and heavy threads that have needed using, as well as trim, and this quilt will use them up.

And underneath a photo of a very heavily used and untidy study/studio where I do my philosophy work and sew and write etc. Nothing to look at, but a haven when I'm in the mood to be creative.

Pictures of Abergenolwyn

2011-12-01T21:05:00.000Z

It wasn't the height of summer!! But the hills around this area of mid Wales are so beautiful and the little village just snuggled in amongst them.

Whilst we were on holiday there were ferocious storms and this is a photo from the promenade at Twyn. It was fantasic to walk along in the wind, see the waves pounding in, and just laugh...

Fresh Start...??

2011-12-01T20:55:00.001Z

And here I am again, after yet another hiatus.
I have been trying to learn how to write philosophy essays - thats my excuse anyway! This has been a strange year - but enjoyable for the most part. We had a lovely week in Abergenolwyn in Wales, J had a huge abscess on his arm which meant that we spent every day at the doctors or A&E or the nurse- with a final and disgusting end to it all at the LGI where the damn thing was finally evicted - poor J!

In the new year I have decided to take on a crazy quilt square a month challenge as well as the TAST (take a stitch tuedays) in order to learn enough stitches to get me through it all. My crazy quilt square are CRAZY!!

I have found a new musician whose music I really like - I had never heard of John Scofield before Cris gave me music for my ipod and now I love the stuff he does, a strange kind of jazz/blues/funk etc etc on the albums I have heard. I'm looking forward to getting to know the rest of his stuff.

I seem to have mislaid a couple of friends along the way this year which is sad. I spent quite a lot of time worrying about my 90 year old downstairs neighbour Lily who had a couple of falls which required blood mopping up and hospital visits...sigh. And then lots of days out, visits to Chester Zoo (we are friends for this year) and a travelodge in the lowlands of Scotland.

J has taken longer to get used to being retired than he thought he would and much time has been spent talking around this issue.

And soon I will be 60 - thats another post!

Clouds over Norfolk

2011-06-24T01:38:00.000+01:00

These are just a few of the amazing skies we saw on holiday in Norfolk - a lovely county which I had never been to before.

I really loved the huge skies, the poppy fields, and the Broads. The coast was really interesting as well. I hope we get back there soon!

5th wedding anniversary

2011-06-24T01:22:00.000+01:00

These photos were taken on the happy occassion of our 5th wedding anniversary and I hope we are as happy as we were on that day! I hope the joy and fun come across. The photos below were taken in Ilkley where we spent a lovely afternoon.

Bits

2011-05-30T23:48:00.000+01:00

A poor photo but something to remind me of walking around the open houses event at Saltaire and talking to lots of artists and makers. Truly inspirational.

And here is my second piece of peg loom weaving in more spring like colours - I will get a better photo at some point. Fun to do and giving me lots of ideas for future projects. If I ever get time.

Temple Newsam

2011-05-28T22:05:00.000+01:00

These are a few of the photos I took on a recent visit to Temple Newsam. I have been there fairly often, but never in time to see all the Azaleas out in full bloom and also the Rhododendrons. It was a beautiful sight and I just wanted to record here on this blog.

Nature has absolutely no fear in putting together all manner of different colours. She hasn't heard of the colour wheel! And they all work beautifully and harmoniously as well.

I wish I could somehow embroider these but its beyond my ability, and now that my poor hands are getting so clumsy that dream is further away than ever. But I still love to look and get ideas, and thats just as important to me. As ever - the journey is more important than the destination!

Peg Loom

2011-05-11T22:45:00.000+01:00

I bought my peg loom and this was my first attempt at peg loom weaving!

This is the wrong side of the work with all threads hanging down - I may attach beads and findings to this and make it the right side!

And this is the right side - much smoother and so so soft. I have done another little piece and am looking forward to making a really large hanging one day.

Spring and a new start.

2011-04-08T00:05:00.000+01:00

It seems that winter is finally really over. The gardens are full of daffodils, tulips,grape hyacinths and camellias, and blossom is on the trees. We even managed to sit out for a coffee today - shivering a little in the wind and then sweating when that wind dropped, but it was the first time we did so and without coats as well. I hope that spring is a new start in all sorts of ways.
Firstly I have a new electronic keyboard that is all singing and dancing and I am enjoying playing on it and hope to do some composition as well.
Secondly I am hoping to start stitching again at some point soon. I have been away from it for too long and I need to feel fabric and thread in my hand - and beads of course.
Thirdly I am still progressing with my philosophy course at Philosophy Pathways. It seems to have taken over from everything lately, but then thats fine - it's a new venture, and if I hadn't started with this passion I might not have enjoyed it so much or have got so much from it. Much of what I study leaves me with contradictory ideas but thats part of the fun for now!
Fourthly I am here online at this blog again so with a bit of luck this is a new start as well - another new start! And perhaps I can get back to my own writing now that its over a year since Mum died and all the nastiness with my family kicked off and I can put that into perspective and use it as well. I hope so.

I met up with an old friend on Wednesday. Bill came up from London and it was an interesting if exhausting day as he talked non-stop about his life and his conversion to religious Judaism. I had no idea he was quite so Orthodox and quite so bigoted until he got here - I might not have invited him had I known! I didn't even realise how extreme some of his opinions were until I read the booklet he left me about his art exhibitions. A Jewish artist as opposed to an artist? Why not just be an artist who happens to be Jewish? He has found his theme in his religion so maybe he is correct, but it is self limiting in the extreme. I have a lot more to say about all of this so I will come back to it.

We have started 2 discussion groups here in Leeds and they seem to be going quite well. They are tiring and the discussions end up in all manner of unexpected places! I think we had hoped to make new friends through them, but that hasn't really happened yet. Still time.

Another snowy day.....

2011-01-08T01:01:00.000Z

This winter seems to have gone on forever - and it's only January 8th! First of all snow and ice, then Joseph having shingles and flu, and Cris coming and going and coming and going all in the space of three weeks, and now snow again. I am fighting against feeling ill myself - not entirely sure whether I am coming down with something or not, but just generally under the weather.

I think I need to set myself a project that I can actually start and finish quickly. I have several things ongoing but want to get to the end of something. Perhaps painting fabric and embroidering trees would be do-able? I need a break from all the heavy reading I have set myself. Philosophy takes no prisoners..the reading is tough, the ideas totally contradictory so that in one minute I can think one thing and in the next a totally opposite thought, equally convincing. But I am enjoying it, just tired for the moment and needing to refresh myself with something slightly easier - a silly film, an easy book, a trip to the shops (craft shop??) or something similar.

We are off to Nerja in three weeks. The temperature there was 17degrees today. And sunshine...It will be cold at nights and in the mountains but I am looking forward to my holiday. Even a retired person needs a holiday - and we are so fortunate to be able to do this. I am painfully aware of the many people struggling to live let alone go on holidays. I wasn;t able to do so when Glyn was alive and the kids were small.

My son is on the Aurora and has sailed from Lisbon today. Next stop - Tripoli. Alright for some. I would love to see the places he is seeing - even photos would do. But, somehow, he never quite got round to sharing those with us this holiday. It was a strange and tense time and spoilt Christmas. Never mind - better next year I hope.

I spotted this book at Salts Mill yesterday and liked the look of it. I might have a look on Amazon to see if they have a copy. I also saw a book about mixed media dollshouses made in boxes - cigar boxes, shoe boxes etc. They were like altered books mixed up with assemblage. Great fun but not for now.

New Year photos.

2011-01-06T22:24:00.001Z

I took this photo through the car window - I have some more of the wonderful winter sky and bare trees outlined against it. I want to pain some fabric and embroider black trees onto it. Thats my next project - when I have finished the UFOs I am dealing with at present!!

This is my son enjoying(!) having lunch with me. Nothing more to say really.....

I have learnt to crochet - and I have finished my scarf - I need to finish the ends, and I think I will give it some tassels. Its lovely and warm. And its my first attempt!! I am quite proud of myself for learning to do this so late in the day.

Got this from son for my birthday present - a blue and white bonsai lamp - and I love it. Place of honour......

Here comes 2011!

2011-01-06T22:04:00.001Z

Well, I am 59 now and next December I will have my big birthday. I want this to be a year of achievement. I do not want to spend the time peering over my shoulder at what might have been, what should or could have been, whats been lost or what I might lose. I have enough problems dealing with health issues and I want to try to be positive. Its not easy. Blood tests, pain, medication, more pain...

Add to that my kids, and their uncompromisingly awkward relationship with me and with Joseph who they cannot accept as my husband, and sometimes my world feels quite hostile. I am not asking them to think of Joseph as their Dad - he is dead and gone and cannot be replaced, but Joseph is my most beloved husband now, and I might have hoped that they would be grateful that he was there for me. I do not understand the substance of their reaction, especially as they have not lived with me for years. I haven't understood them since I was first married in 2006 and things have not improved.

I need to turn my face fully to my husband, and our future, and my two will have to work things out for themselves. Its time! They are after all 31 and 26 now.

And now to my personal hopes and resolutions for 2011.

1. I want to work at my philosophy course and try to learn the vocabulary and really get to grips with the topics.

2. I want to eat less, walk more, lose a little weight to help my back and hips, and try to stabilise my health a little. I would like to keep my kidney function from dropping into kidney failure.

3. I want to keep my reading diary this year. I started well last year and forgot!

4. I would like to try and keep creating beautiful things and I don't want to buy any more stuff. I want to use what I have and enjoy it.

5. I would like to get back to playing the piano and finish writing my books of music for kids that I have started. (I am looking forward to getting a keyboard!!)

6. I want to drive again without being frightened.

7. I want to write - every day, somewhere, something
.
8. I want to try to be optimistic, cheerful, friends with those who need a friend without being desperate for a close friend if none is forthcoming. I do have people who care about me and that is enough.

I think thats enough!! I hope so anyway.

post Xmas blues....

2010-12-26T23:42:00.000Z

I seem have no words left to speak today. I have spent them in an agony of remembrance. They have resonated around people who may not have understood them, and now I have returned home, tired, disillusioned, and disappointed.

As I grow older this appears to be my default experience. Where I think I might find people with whom to connect, I frequently wish I had remained silent so that I am now in the position of renegotiating my relationship not only with the people I speak to, but also with the words I use between us. If I make a gesture or move my face in a certain way, more often than not, I can make myself understood. If I talk to total strangers – for instance others in supermarket queues, I can communicate on a superficial level. After all, it isn’t difficult to laugh about what it’s like to stand waiting, discuss what we have bought or what the children at the front of the queue are doing.

When, however, I try to describe my pain, my fear, my lonliness to those I know and trust, when I try to express disillusionment to those who should know why I am so burdened, then the task become almost impossible. A chasm opens. They cannot hear me, I cannot hear them. They do not understand and I appear to have lost the ability to make myself either heard or understood. I do not know when or how that happened, whether it is a consequence of growing older in a young world, whether it is a personal loss of confidence, or whether it is a growing sense of fear on my part of being totally misunderstood, which, in fact, makes it easier for others to misunderstand me.

So, too, when I sit down to write.

I am overwhelmed by the stories I have to tell, the memories that will not be silenced but need me to give them language to bring them to life. I take out the photographs of my family and know that they are waiting for me to begin. So I sit and wait with them in hope of a better tomorrow.

Philosophy Pathways

2010-12-06T23:03:00.001Z

I took my courage in both hands and enrolled on a Philosophy Pathways course last week and have had fun reading around the subject since. The first problem, or dialogue, is about the possibility of there being other worlds and how we can definitely know that there are or are not other worlds, and how we can be certain of what we actually know about this world. Also, how can we be sure that we don't exist in someone else's dream? Or lab? I think the answer to that might be that we can't know for sure, and strangely enough that doesn't bother me. On balance I think that the answer is probably not as it is only a "maybe" and if "maybe"s ruled the world then rules might not? There are lots of new ideas, new definitions, a lot of new vocabulary and late nights to come!!

I have had to learn quickly and order a few books. I like the way that the course is structured around science fiction and wonder why we love that genre when we are young and stop loving it quite so much when we are old. I always thought it was something to do with the longing for exploration of other realities and possibilities, and daydreams, which seem to go as we get older and wiser and have more responsibilities which anchor us, as it were, to earth.

I might start a seperate blog to follow some of the reading I am doing for this course and keep this for photos and crafts.

Speaking of which - my crocheted scarf is coming along but I have (alas) spotted a HOLE!! no problem - I will stitch it together. Photo tomorrow.

winter wonderland ...........

2010-12-06T22:52:00.000Z

We have had the most amazing quantity of snow here and this is a photo of Martha up to her haunches in it!

I quite like taking photos out of the car window as we are travelling along - a sort of photo diary of a day out and here is a picture coming down the Harrogate by pass and looking up at Almscliffe Cragg. This vtiew was only opened up when the by-pass itself was opened and is always breathtaking in clear light. I liked this snowy picture.
We went for a drink at the pub in Rigton called the Square Compass - it looked nice outside but inside totally lacked intimacy or charm and it did have a fire - but a small mean one, not a nice big fire that warms you!

Before we got home we stopped at Golden Acre Park and I took this photo of the setting sun as seen through the trees. Quite beautiful but very very cold.....

And here are Joseph and Martha making their way back to the car, with the last of the light playing on the trees in the distance.

Its been so cold in the UK this week and although it was fun at first, now it is a nightmare, as the wet surfaces have turned to ice and it is so dangerous underfoot. I am waiting for a medicalert necklace to arrive which will give details of my medical conditions and ask that if anything happens to my arm it is left alone, because my worst fear is that I have an accident, lose consciousness, and find myself with my arm in plaster and with metal rods in it or something similar which would be absolutely awful. So pretty as these are - I hate walking in snow.

Snowed in.....

2010-12-03T23:47:00.000Z

It has snowed all this week and we have been caught in the flat, without having been able to venture out. Joseph has contracted some sort of stomach pain and I am just hoping it isn;t anything too serious. He looks gray and tired but the doctor put him on some "prazole" tablets and perhaps they will do the trick.

I signed on this week for a Philosophy Pathways course - the material is intriguing and allows me to go and read around the subject and find the questions and answers that I want to find. Very clever. Geoffrey Klempner who wrote the course is my mentor and is a nice Jewish boy - his sister is Rabbi although he is an atheist. Fun. If only I could talk to MY birth family about religion without animosity but thats a total pipe dream.

In the news there has been a leaking of cables via a website called Wikileaks. All sorts of gossipy bits of tittle tattle between diplomats in the US etc. I don't think they will leave Assange free for much longer - he must have a huge price on his head. And in this country the government had nothing better to spend its money on than a bid for the world cup. It makes me so angry that this is seen as important when hospitals and homeless and old and unemployed etc are being undercut.

Thinking about a kindle..I might buy one tomorrow. Oooooo!!!

An expensive trip to Harrogate!!

2010-11-29T21:50:00.000Z

It was the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching show this weekend. This is the highlight of the year for all stitchers in the North - and elsewhere apparently as I saw a coach that had come up from Shropshire! - so although there was snow on the ground J and I decided to have an afternoon out - after all, it is only 15 miles or so between Leeds and Harrogate. What could possibly go wrong? The forecast was quite clear - there would be snow but only late in the day and we would easily be home by then.

The photo above is the Exhibition Hall in glorious sunshine as I arrived. J and I agreed to meet outside the hall at around 4 for tea at Bettys (here) and I went off to have a wander around the exhibition and sales stands while he went for a wander round Harrogate itself.

There was a wonderful display of the late Julia Caprara's work which I had only seen in books before and the real work was moving especially her hangings embroidered on scrim - so I had to go and buy some. Then I talked to Jean Greenhow and admired her lovely sampler, and decided to buy a metre of linen so that I could try to do something similar. And finally I found a kit I had been wanting for a few years at a reasonable price. At that point I found myself near an external door and could hear other women talking about the SNOW (what snow??) and when I looked out, sure enough - it was snowing. I called J in a panic and he came to pick me up and we set off home.....

At this point it doesn't look bad - but within about five minutes the snow started falling heavily, the light started failing, and the traffic built up very suddenly - people panicking and leaving Harrogate in a hurry as we were doing.

This is a photo of one of the trees on the Stray wearing its blue lights, with the snow blurring the trees behind . It took us two hours to travel two miles - we crawled onto Leeds Road, struggled to find the road leading to the by-pass and then I said "Let's go back to Harrogate..." and we did. That took another half hour or so. We pulled in to park, and found ourselves outside a hotel (the Cedar Court) and decided there and then to book in for the night. After a consultation with the desk clerks (and the offer of a bed for the night for MarthaDog at the home of the chef, which was not needed as we were allowed to keep her in our room!) we settled in for the night, had a bar meal, took Martha for a walk, talked to others who were stranded there and finally went to bed.
Strangely enough one of the people I spoke to was a woman who had been at school with my brother Yossi and who knew his wife Sarah before she became an Orthodox Jewess as Yossi's wife.

I had no medication with me so I didn't sleep at all, but the alternative would have been a three or four hour wait in a freezing car....we were very relieved to be off the road last night.

So here is the result of my shopping trip - a metre of scrim, a metre of linen, and a kit......What an expensive day out!!

Early Winter

2010-11-27T23:26:00.001Z

Well, I am sitting here warm and contented, and outside the world is covered in a layer of ice. And the date is 27th November! Apparently the jet stream has gone north and is now feeding us snow and cold weather. It promises to be a long winter this year. On the upside, the sun shone today and there was a glorious sunset, so perhaps its not all bad news.

I am wondering about taking a Philisophy Pathways course. I am intrigued by the idea of studying philosophy in a more formal way - rather than my reading around the subject and enjoying what I understand without necessarily having to try and argue my way out of tight corners. On the other hand, I would like to excercise my mind and can think of no better way. Also, doing the course, having to set my thoughts down and send them off, might serve as a catalyst for other writing. I do suffer from commitment phobia - the fear of having do have something to do for a specific time and date, and this might be a way of dealing with this, or realising that it is permanent and uncurable! Oh dear.....shall I shan;t I? And this isn;t even a philosophical arguement.

I had a phone call today from Cris who was in Istanbul, in short sleeved shirt and shorts. Hmm. He was phoning from a tram! What can I say? His calls are from the ship as it sails from England, from cafes, from bus stops, and are all time constrained! He will be in the UK from Dec 14th for a short while.

Nothing more to write today. It has been cold and I am tired and in pain.

2010-11-26T22:27:00.000Z

Admiral J at the tiller!! Just an extra photo that didn;t get picked up by Blogger.

Writing.

2010-11-26T22:21:00.001Z

I have been wondering why it has been so difficult to write as of late. Partly it has been a reluctance to write about things in a superficial way, when profound changes have actually been going on. Abigail's marriage, J's voluntary redundancy, having two places to live in (that sounds so awful when there is so much terrible poverty, but as I sold my marital home in another city and had a life there, it seems sensible to acquire a small flat there), and the inability just to settle to the task. I am a homebody although we are out a great deal - I have no complaints about being out mind, as I love being out when the sun is out and taking photos of wherever we are - but it is hard to settle down when we have been out or away or we are moving between locations. I just get comfortable and warm and it seems we are off again.

There has been the small matter of the wedding itself, and trying not to let it upset me too much.

There is always wondering where my son is in the world, and hoping he is solvent and safe. I know he is 26 but going on 18! Oh yes - and he had appendicitis this summer when he was staying with me and that took away my summer in worry, and then trying to contain a situation where he became passive aggressive for some unknown (unknown to me anyway) reason,

Also, the summer blood tests worried me and I began to think that there was not much point in carrying on with anything at all, but then the last results were, miraculously, much better. Living with kidney disease hovering on the borders of kidney failure is not conducive to creative thinking.

Fingers crossed that 2011 will be better on a personal level, in spite of what is happening politically. That also took some adjusting to - having a Tory government again! And feeling helpless in the face of the huge changes they are making, but also the changes that are happening around the world. And this week, there is a threat of war in Korea, there have been police charges at student (shades of the miner's strike) and I have a horrible feeling of dread.

Learning to steer a boat and making a film - at the same time!

2010-11-26T22:07:00.000Z

J had an invitation to help make a waterways programme - and why not when he is the leading expert on the history of Britain's waterways? - and so we turned up at Nantwich basin one cold morning to meet the film makers - Ian and his trusty team of two, a cameraman and a sound recordist. This is Ian and J standing by the basin on that Thursday morning.

Here is J looking relaxed and "to the manor born." He enjoyed taking the boat out, said it gave him a feeling of being part of the landscape rather something imposed on it as it sometimes can feel when one is motoring.

Poor MarthaDog. She hated the day - it was full of strange and scarey noises and she spent the whole time in fear and trepidation. I had no idea that that was how she would react. Probably the proximity of bonfire night didn't help her.

I had a long and cold day, and decided to teach myself how to crochet.....this must have been my tenth attempt to "cast on." Maybe I should stick to two needles? But, I have learnt and am now part way through a scarf.

I wonder how the film will turn out, what will have edited out, what retained? It will be interesting to see...

October in the Lake District

2010-11-26T21:53:00.000Z

These are just a handful of photos taken during our holiday in the Lake District. We had a wonderful fortnight - the weather wasn't always kind, but we did have a lot of sunshine towards the end. The theme that emerged was Wordsworth and we visited all the places associated with him, including Rydal Mount (shown here), Dove Cottage, his birthplace in Cockermouth and their gardens.

A friendly passer by took this photo of both of us sitting in the sun, getting our Vitamin D fix!

This was an example of the colours that this autumn brought us. It is good to be able to look at beauty in nature and remember that amidst all the doom and gloom of the recent news with its endless predictions of the end of society as we know it, that the world is still beautiful. We do have to look carefully but looking will reward us.

This was the view from the front of the cottage we were staying in. I photographed it every morning, regardless of the weather as I walked MarthaDog down the lane and allowed its beauty and changing nature to inspire me.

Abigail and Eric's wedding in Mauritius.....

2010-11-26T21:35:00.000Z

The setting is so beautiful, Abigail looks beautiful and Eric very smart and they both look so happy.

I wonder, I really wonder, just who is supposed to be looking at these photos apart from Abigail and Eric themselves? I look at these photos and grieve, silently and endlessly deeply. I cannot believe I was not asked to my own, my only daughter's wedding and I will mourn that in the way that I mourn the loss of her dad - lost chances, missed opportunities, just something else to suffer wordlessly.

They do look happy though and very much in love for which I am really happy, and I am glad that she has found the man who I think is her soulmate - love of music, travel, language, food, and a life together. She's done well and I really hope they are very very happy. He has, of course, done brilliantly!

A nice moment at the wedding ceremony.....

And finally a photo of the bride herself, looking radiant. I do wish I had been there to see them off.

Poetic writing

2010-09-05T00:42:00.000+01:00

I always read Nina Bagley's blog and love her beautiful poetic words and also her use of photos. When someone one day comes to look at my computer they will find - flower photos...lots and lots of them and I want to put them in!

I want to write beautiful luminous prose about the views I see, the places I visit, I want to know how to write from the heart as she does so often. But maybe I have to write the way I do, and perhaps the poetry will come in due course. For now its enough to be writing here again, to feel the words beginning to flow, to hope that soon, very soon, I can start doing the work I want to do.

This summer..........

2010-09-05T00:03:00.000+01:00

I had all manner of plans for this summer which disappeard the moment that Cris was hospitalised with appendicitis. I am glad he recovered quickly and am sorry for him that he had to go through the pain.

The weather throughout August was fairly desultory, warm and wet for the most part, so the countryside and gardens have been full of colour and foliage. Then, just as Cris left the UK the weather changed and since then we have had many magical days out in various parts of Yorkshire visiting relatives, historic houses, national trust houses, some gardens, and always enveloped by the huge scenery of this county.

My favourite day out was to a reunion with Glyn's relatives high up on the moors above Kirbymoorside. This came about purely by chance. I have not met this part of the family since I remarried and always intended to go back but never did so. I don;t think there was any reason for this - just one of those things as they also said when we all met up. J and I had been out to visit Nunnington Hall which was delightful and holds a special place in my heart because it contains an attic FULL of dollshouses and little rooms furnished as shops or greenhouses or with period furniture. I really really want to do up a dollshouse before I get much older!

Anyway - we came out and I decided on a whim that we ought to go and see either Vickie or Karen (my nieces by marriage, almost as old as I am) as neither of them lived particularly far away. Vicke's home near Kirbymoorside was the nearest so we decided to drive there and then up to Gillamoor which is a tiny village further up the hill.

Vickie herself was out but Pete was home and showed us all round the farm and took us to his claypigeon shooting range so high up on the North Yorkshire Moors that we could see most of the county of Yorkshire from there. The sun was shining, the corn was ripe in the fields and purple heather was out on the moors so the world glowed golden and purple. Pete told us who owned the land and farms around - it was amazing that so much was owned by so few people - this country is still so dominated by class! We had waited so long that it was getting dark and still Vickie hadn't arrived home, so we decided to leave without seeing her. As we drove away a car went past us and I knew instinctively that it had to be Vickie and her daughter Helen returning home so we turned back and sure enough - there she was and we just hugged each other tightly . So many emotions, so few words to describe them!

Later, Vickie told us that there was actually a family party up at Gillamoor the following week and we said we would try to be there. We finally left at around nine thirty and were lucky enough to be served at an Indian resteraunt in Kirbymoorside (we were their last customer and ate as they were actually shutting up shop) before the drive back to Leeds in the dark.

Although we had booked to go to Cambridge before Cris was taken ill, we decided to go to see all the family up at Kirbymoorside instead.

So J, Cris Me and Martha Dog set off for Kirbymoorside at around eleven in the morning. The sun was shining and it was actually hot. We drove up the A1 turning to climb up Sutton Bank with its huge view over the Vale of York. We stopped at Riveaux Abbey (photos to come later) which is one of my favourite places, the Abbey itself set in a deep wooded valley, its white stone gleaming against the green of the background. I still remember the first time I visited the place and how moved I was and how thrilled by its beauty.

We arrived up at Gillamoor at around three - just as everyone else was arriving too. It took a while to sort everyone out. My late sister in law had 6 children Ruth had her 3, Glyn and Sandy had their 5 (?!) Linda was there with her new husband and then my erstwhile brother in law arrived with his new wife, their children including new ones of his wifes but also of his wife's daughter.....it all became incredibly confusing, trying to match people with parents and so on. There was a mountain of food, there was a river of conversation, people grouping, regrouping. At one point I wandered into the kitchen and found Vickie Karen and Ruth in a huddle - I wondered if there was something wrong but they just said, tears in their eyes, that Cris reminded them very much of his father (their uncle). They also commented on the fact that J and I openly talk about our late partners and both of us wear two wedding rings - well neither of us got divorced so why should we?

The afternoon just glimmered in the sunshine. The fields and the moors were so beautiful, the air so clear, the views so enormous and I just loved it up there, it felt as though we were in heaven almost literally.

Just before we left I thought we had lost Martha - but no - she was just locked in someones bedroom silly dog. She had been playing with the other dogs (Vickie and Pete have 4 lovely labradors) and we thought that she had followed them down to the field where they had gone with Pete to do some work. But no...she was in a bedroom. Typical. Mind - it took half an hour to actually find her.

I had a wonderful day there - it was the highlight of my summer really. We drove back via Pickering and visited my first mother in law's grave there. The sunset that night was spectacular and I took lots of photos which I will post later - in fact it was so beautiful that we stopped in a layby so that I could get some pictures and someone else was there doing the same thing.

I have spent all this summer in Yorkshire although we had intended to make Wallasey our summer base. I thought I would miss the sea more, but maybe because I know we can get back the urge to go the seaside has largely died down. Strange because I used to just want to be at the coast. Now I know it is the open countryside, the high wild places, the big views that give me my sense of wellbeing.

Unfortunately, having Cris here somehow stopped me from all my creative endeavours! I don't know why that happened, something to do with having ones adult children around and also the shock of getting his phone call saying he was going into hospital. I need to get back to work now as the evenings begin to draw in, and maybe that has also been a part of not somehow getting going. I have felt the need to be outside as often as possible, to enjoy the warmth and worship the sun whenever it popped its head out. Maybe autumn and winter are the better times to huddle indoors, keep warm and create - for me anyway.

I have made some new friends as well over the past few weeks and hopefully they will also prove inspirational. H used to teach City and Guilds embroidery and machine knitting, her work (mixed media but with a lot of stitch) is just amazing and I am going to spend a day with her in a weeks time where she has promised - quite literally - to kick ass and make me produce something. I also met M a lovely woman around my age, also with health issues, who knits, reads, gardens, and thinks....now there's something! A thinker! We should have lots to talk about hopefully.

This week we also went up to Haworth with J's nephew and his new, dramatic and very sudden love of 3 weeks! It was all very intense, and funny as they seemed so vulnerable. Haworth was too busy for me - there were so many tourists it was hard to get a feel for the place and the weather was too nice - it has to be cold and "wuthering" to have any true meaning to me.

We have been to lots of houses, driven down many country lanes behind tractors, we have walked up Almscliffe Crag, explored the few miles around where we live and found places that I never knew existed. But summer is turning slowly to autumn, the trees are putting on their autumn finery, golds, ruby reds, purples, pale yellows and deep browns...all my favourite colours, deep rich and mysterious. I would love a wardrobe of clothes to match! I hope I don't get depressed this winter as it gets colder and darker. I need to remember that summer does come bringing warmth and light and long days. I want to have a holiday in the longest days next year to celebrate them. And I will try my best not to give in this winter, I promise I will try.....

Reading Beethoven's biography.....

2010-09-03T23:01:00.000+01:00

I have just spent an enjoyable reading week - I have read all three volumes of John Suchet's "fictionalised biography" of the Beethoven, and although I knew most of the story really well, I had never before put it into chronological order, and I had not realised that he moved in such high society. The sheer tenacity of the man is remarkable. Everything that could have happened to make life harder - did. A brutal father and uncaring mother, the few chances Beethoven had to better himself quickly were lost through unfortunate circumstances; his health once it deteriorated became unremittingly bad once he passed his youth, and of course his hearing loss was not only awful and painful in itself, but greatly affected the way he was able to communicate and interact with others and needless to say it destroyed also ability to perform in public although by all accounts he was a remarkable pianist.
Nevertheless, Beethoven persisted and was somehow able to "hear" enough of what he was writing either at the piano or in his head and poured out an astonishing amount of very intense work, all highly individualistic. Beethoven would not and could not be a conformist and he strove to break the rules of the musical forms he had inherited from Haydn and Mozart. Throughout his life he believed that it was his job to be an "artist" - that he was a creator who would communicate his ideas not just for his immediate audience but for posterity. He endured a string of disastrous permiere performances and the stories surrounding them are painful reading
.
Equally painful reading is Suchet's account of Beethoven's attempt to adopt and educate his nephew, and also the account of his attempts to find a woman to love, ending finally with his letter to the Immortal Beloved which Suchet weaves a story around.

I am not ultimately sure that it is possible to write a totally convincing fictional biography sticking as closely as possible to the facts simply because one is always painfully aware of the authors voice - in this case Suchet who obviously admires, pities, is critical of or supportive of his subject. I enjoyed the books very much, and hope that they will lead me on to do more research into the life of Beethoven myself, and also into the study of the structure of his music.

Sometimes I find that fiction can awaken an interest much more quickly than academic study - well thats how I find I work anyway!

the date

2010-08-13T02:08:00.000+01:00

Just noticed the date.....Friday 13th......

desert island discs.......

2010-08-13T02:06:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago I was listening to Dame Fanny Waterman who teaches piano here in Leeds talking about her desert island discs.

I have listened to these programmes for years, and it is interesting that people choose items to reflect the people they have known or to remind them of events in their lives. Sometimes the programmes are just a vehicle for people's egos - a who's who of people they have known and who are also famous. Whatever the criteria, I don;t know where or how I could begin to choose eight discs to come on a desert island with me.

Would I choose music that reminded me of people or places or times in my life?
Would I choose my favourite classical composers, or my favourite pop pieces that I grew up with?
What criteria would I choose? And would they make a convincing programme? I would love them to do this with people who are not in the public eye so that we could see what ordinary people who don;t know the composer or his wife etc etc might choose. Somedays I would choose Beethoven and Mahler, somedays I might choose Micheal Jackson, somedays I might say that the music I am listening to this minute on Chillfm is the best - I choose it to write to, as it blocks out my critical voice and enables me to type away with no inhibitions. Something about right and left side of the brain apparently.

My son sorted my Ipod out today - I have had it for years and never knew how to make it work, and he has finally given me a tutorial, so I have a great source of music now for travelling with and will surely use it. Why should the kids have all the fun!! So it is nice to reacquaint myself with some of the music I thought I had lost on my old laptop. Most of that is rubbish but it has resonances and the tracks come with their attendant memories..so we are back to desert island discs.

I think that because it would be so hard I would take nothing with me and live in silence and listen to the music of the waves. How could I value one thing over another? Some days I want Bach, other days pop music.

I used to think we could use music to bring peace into the world. How naive I was when I was young. How very naive but what a lovely idealistic thought. Now I just want it to bring peace into my world.

By the way - I can strongly recommend Chillfm to anyone who reads this blog for a very different kind of musical experience. I think its available on DAB as well.

today's the day

2010-08-13T01:47:00.000+01:00

I have had so many thoughts about possible blog postings over the last few weeks - months - and I am not sure why I have not posted them. A feeling of hopelessness seems to have overcome me. There are many many reasons for this.
1. Politics.....the state of the nation and all of that. I can't believe we are in such a financial mess and from what I read the world is going to look very very different soon as we in the west watch our sphere of influence decline and we see another set of peoples with their very different cultures, ideas, values take over. I don;t mind that. Its just the uncertainty - the not knowing. I read tonight about how the US is $4trillion dollars in debt - that is its financial black hole, so when it loses its power, then what will happen in the Middle East and everywhere else for that matter. The rise of fantaticism means that all rational thinking people might not have a voice in the future and those of us who have wanted nothing more than a place to live out our lives in relative peace will be squeezed out - or forced into making decisions against our wills.

2. Global warming issues. This summer has proved beyond doubt that whatever this is, we are in a period of climate change and we are doing nothing to stop it. Consumption is now the name of the game, more, sooner, better, more and more......the floods in Pakistan, the fires raging around Moscow, the floods and landslides in China....even the weather here has been warm and wet and muggy. I love this kind of weather as it leaves me relatively pain free, any slight breeze being warm and the temperature generally above 19 degrees so I am comfortable. But that proves what a selfish person I am - I am thinking about myself when so many people are starving in Pakistan. I think there is compassion fatigue - when will all of this end, and when will governments and companies start a fund for dealing properly for global emergencies. I noted with interest that Tesco had donated £20,000 to the Flood Appeal. Thats like me giving 1p. Shame on them.

3. Family issues. Trying to get my head round my kids and allowing them to cause trouble between myself and J which has almost - at times - felt as though our relationship will not survive. But I love him and he loves me and we have worked it through so hopefully we have sorted things out between us, so that we can get on with our marriage at last! And of course losing my mum earlier this year was awful and brought up a lot of bad memories, and I have had to put all the skeletons behind their door again. If I write a memoir as I want to do, it means taking them out, but at least I can do a little at a time and walk away if its too much.

4. Medical stuff. YUCK! I had a nice time not going to the doctors, but they finally caught up with me a couple of months ago and called me in to get my BP checked. It had bounced very high and the kidney function tests had gone down rather too fast so I am now back in harness - more bloods, more doctors appointments, more worry. Its not fun when the GP does his little trick online to find out how likely you are to have a stroke or heart attack within 10 years and it flashes up red.......my blood ran cold. I don;t mind dying if its quick, but I dread - I so dread - a stroke, and will do what it takes to avoid one. I am hoping that this kidney function test will be better or I will ask to see a nephrologist. Its hard to deal with all the neuropathic pain and have this as well. Just keeping moving takes a lot of energy some days. It is so hard to try and do anything when you feel as though you are running on an empty battery.

5. I want to do some good writing and feel as though it is beyond my capacity to do so. I don;t know why I lost so much confidence. I would love to belong to a supportive small female writing group but whether I will find one is questionable. I might look for an Adult Ed course here in Leeds for September. I just need a kick start.

6. I have read a lot lately - I need to update my reading blog. It is so depressing as a wannabe writer to go to shops selling remaindered books, see second hand copies of books everywhere - even this is now a throwaway commodity and I find it depressing and downright daunting to think that even if I managed to get a book out of myself it would never be read - and I could not bear to do so much work for nothing. I have little to show for all the hours I put into practicing the piano and to do something again that requires so much input and be left with so very little at the end would be heartbreaking.

So thats why the long gap. Lots of reasons and they don;t feel like excuses.

todays the day..............

2010-06-24T23:08:00.000+01:00

for what is today the day though?

Life seems to be going round and round in endless circles, I do not seem to be able to push myself into doing anything creative, intellectual, useful, domestic...anything. I don't understand this inertia. It isn;t that I feel that it is useless to do anything of these things - on the contrary. I want so much to achieve a lot of things. Maybe I want to achieve too many things and that is actually putting me off? Perhaps I should start a little more slowly this time and just aim to do a posting every other day, an hours writing ditto, and something artistic in between? Or perhaps its time to sit and stare at the summer sky, watch the clouds, and wait for what life will throw up next?

I feel that every time I have tried to get moving over the six years since Glyn died, I have ended up with egg on my face, further back than where I started. It is really dispiriting.

I will try and post something properly plus photos tomorrow.

PainOnline Home Page

2010-05-14T00:17:00.000+01:00

I haven't posted here for a while because although I have had a good few weeks, and have done some lovely things including seeing my daughter Abigail play in a concert, and also seeing King Lear at Stratford which was a really special occasion for me, I have been in a great deal of pain and somehow this has just meant that I have been incapable of just sitting and writing. Living in this level of pain is exhausting and just robs me of my joy in life sometimes. Mostly I do deal with it well - I think I do anyway - but lately I have been running out of steam and so I am including a link to a site which explains all the symptoms and what they mean etc. The pain and the cramps and the electrical shortcuts that fizz through my system are so hard to deal with, and I have managed to live creatively but now, as I get older and more worn out, the constant battle is slowly grinding me down.

Nevertheless I will get on top again. But for now - here is the link PainOnline Home Page.

Thursday night/Firday morning.

2010-04-16T02:10:00.000+01:00

Oh dear. More dramas for my daughter.

Now I am reconciled with the idea of the wedding in Mauritius, it may be that Abigail and Eric won't get there as the whole of Europe has an airtravel restriction because of volcanic ash in the atmosphere causing danger to the aircraft. The airports are shut for now and they are due to travel on Saturday morning. I have suggested they contact their travel agents and try to get away from Germany tomorrow but I haven;t been able to get in touch with them tonight.

In the same vein, I bought Cris a rail ticket to get him back to Southampton tomorrow. He had a flight booked from Manchester but there is no way he would have got on that, so I am glad I insisted on buying a ticket this afternoon so he had a guaranteed seat to Birmingham at least. So that was money I wasn;t expecting to pay....!

I am at the flat in Leeds at the moment, where the electrician has just put some new plugs in, so no more trailing wires -at last. And I can have light where I need it rather than where its possible.

I need to upload my photos. I have over a thousand waiting to be processed! Silly me.

Then I can show my new beading skills. I have learnt how to do Ndebele or Herringbone stitch and am trying to do an Ndebele rope now - its a hollow tube. Once I can do that, I can go on to making a solid one. So now I can do - ladder stitch, brick stitch, square stitch, ndebele, I know how to make simple ropes, and I need to remind myself of how to do right angle weave. I can follow netting patterns. What I need to learn now is peyote stitch and I will do that when I have finished this rope. I will put a photo up of that asap.

I have been sorting a huge number of beads that a friend gave me. She bought necklaces years ago in charity shops and chopped them up and I have been given a big box of them, and she told me that this was a small sample of what she had in her loft! She does tend to get obsessed with things - but its my gain. I have a lot of wooden beads and I want to learn to make beaded beads with them. I also have a lot of pearls in various colours and spacers and beadcaps, as well as.......I will photograph some of this collection. Its a shame some of them were cut up - they might have been nice pieces.

I bought a tourmaline chip necklace in a charity shop last week for next to nothing. I am going to cut that up and make something special with it - I have a plan....I have also spotted some beautiful necklaces in the window of a local charity shop and might go and buy one of them tomorrow as it has gorgeous beads on it - and I will wear it as it is!

I have loved the look of steampunk for ages without knowing its name, and lo and behold, now I know about it - there is so much online information and lots of photographs. I thought I could do something unusual...but as ever am too late.

What I would like to do is to set myself a challenge. I want to make a body of work that is nice enough to put in the display cabinet of our local library. I don;t want to sell it, just to make it and show people that I can do this. Then - I don't know what I would do with it. But thats then. First thing is to get good enough and get the stuff made.

I am starting to feel like writing again. I was writing a memoir and then life caught up with me in a strange way and I wondered whether I had a right to write about my childhood, or even to write fiction based around it. I have decided to go for it after all. Now I am beading and stitching, my creativity in other fields is beginning to shift and I realise that I really need space and time and quiet to let it develop. Its hard to find that sometimes, and when I do have the time, sometimes I have no quiet in my head!!

And to finish this post, a little tale to remind myself to put the lid securely on a tube of seed beads or it takes a long long time to pick them up again......and I managed to drop the tube twice, the second time just as I had finished picking the silly little things up from the first time. I put it into my left hand which is unreliable anway - it twitched, and ....oops.....green seed beads in the carpet and rug for weeks I think......

Moving On

2010-04-12T23:59:00.000+01:00

Last night I was listening to Radio 4 and a lovely thoughtful programme came on, presented by Mark Tully entitled Moving On. He was talking about leaving a flat he had lived in for 30 years in India, and he presented poetry and music on the theme of moving home and what that might mean to each of us. I found it so moving. Memories of moving from Norton Road came flooding back, and what it had meant to me to leave what had been a home, a business premises, a place where dreams and hopes came to fruition or faded, and the space in which I brought up my two children and a generation of music students.

I remember going to see the property for the first time and being totally unimpressed with it - it was almost too much to take on, but fortunately Glyn saw the potential in the house from the first and with a little gentle persuasion I came on board and we bought the house. We moved in during September. The house had been empty all summer - and probably longer - and the lawns were thigh high, the hedge obscured the drive, and everywhere weeds were flourishing in the gardens. We hired a box van, moved our furniture in - now looking rather puny in the large rooms - and the first thing that Glyn and his Dad did was to cut the hedge. The clippings filled the box van and when we drove to the tip later that day the man on the gate thought we were professional gardeners and wanted to charge us a professional rate.

Abigail was only nine months old when we moved. She crawled on dirty carpets, on floors covered in plaster dust, on floors that I had only just swept free of the debris from a demolished fireplace. She lived in the mess of no kitchen, no hot water for a week as the central heating was put in, as we turned the house into a habitable home. The kitchen was horrendous and needed doing as soon as we moved in, cheaply but cheerfully.

Cris was born four years later. By that time the house had been decorated throughout, we had new carpets, and I was working as a piano teacher in one of the rooms downstairs. It was incredibly difficult trying to look after a baby, take care of Abigail who had just started school, all my students, as well as the housework and trying to improve my own playing. We eventually extended the house to build on a music studio, and up into the loft to put in a proper bedroom for Cris. Home felt like a palace - lots of space, two huge lawns which gave us a degree of privacy especially in the back where we spent long afternoons in the sun which shone there through long afternoons and evenings.

Leaving home after Glyn died was one of the most difficult things I have had to do. It took two tries - the first was impossible, and the second I managed, but it hurt me deeply for a long time. I don't know what I missed most. I can still walk around the house in my mind look out of its windows, see my children in their rooms, see Glyn sitting in his favourite place in the front room, smoking, reading, and watching tv. I do know that after he died in the house - I could not live there on my own. I felt as if I was treading on a grave when I walked through the hall and I could not manage those huge lawns on my own.

But so much has been lost. So much.

I threw away ("decluttered."....sigh) things I should have kept, and I know that even had I held onto them - they would have lost meaning by now, or would have had to be disposed of or put into long term storeage, but the memory of clearing the house, trying not to grieve over the loss of things when the loss of Glyn was so much more than that, the memory is not easy to live with.

Moving on is - as the song says - hard to do. Maybe when one has spent a quarter of a century in one place it is not really possible to get that place out of oneself, of ones truest being.

Abigail's visit to Leeds

2010-03-27T21:56:00.000Z

Abigail came to stay for 3 short days - all I will have before she is married.

She arrived on Monday, and we went to Harrogate where we had coffee and cake in a most excellent shop. Then we went to Knaresborough and finally drove back to the flat. On Monday afternoon we walked up to Moortown, went into the charity shops where Abigail bought a coat and in the evening I treated her, Orysia and Ron and Sue along with Joseph and me to a meal at the Flying Pizza. It was a good evening and I enjoyed the company and occassion.
On Tuesday we went shopping for a wedding outfit. I wish I had had my camera - Abigail bought a truly 50s outfit, a deep pink dress (pleated) with a black shrug, fascinator and gorgeous high heels and bag plus necklace all from Monsoon. She also bought another outfit in green which was also beautiful. We bought beads at Yum Yum beads and then fabric and patterns from Samuel Taylor so that Abigail can start learning to use her sewing machine. I gave her a charm bracelet that I had made and I am really pleased that she loved it and that I could make it. In the evening, after we had eaten, we went to Orysia to get Cris' ipod back from Izzy's handbag - he would leave his head behind ....
On Wednesday we went to visit Jackie and her two boys in Otley before dropping Abigail off at Leeds Bradford Airport so that she could go back to Amsterdam. We cleared up the flat and came back across to Wallasey.

I could have gone to a crop to go scrapbooking this morning, but I didn't want the company. I need some time to myself at the moment. Time to think, to read, to just be and rest.

I think that there is still so much going on. Cris is coming back in April, we are going to Shropshire for the period of Abigail's wedding, and then we are going to hear her play in the UK - another few days away. Then there is a lot going on in May - Joseph is away a couple of times, it is our wedding anniversary and I might be seeing cousins, and in July we have the trip to France.

The year is clogged up with commitments and I hate being committed to things these days, even pleasurable things. I like clear space on the calendar. Clear space on the calendar means clear space in my head. I know people must think I am antisocial but I am not. I just need time to myself after a lifetime of teaching and being at other people's beck and call, always on the end of the phone at all hours of the day and night.

Joseph has hurt HIS back. He was doing some gardening in Leeds and over-reached and has hurt himself. I hope he heals quickly. We don;t have a good back between us at the moment!!

"Howards End is on the Landing"

2010-03-27T21:31:00.000Z

I love the title of this book - although the actual book, by Susan Hill, is a bit of a let down. The idea behind the book was that the author, looking for a particular book, went searching through her bookshelves for it and discovered multitudes of books that she had not read, and decided not to go and buy a book for a year, but rather, read what she already had in her possession. A noble notion! The book is a memoir built around Hill's reading and writing life, and peppered with names casually dropped into the text - she met E M Forster in a library, TS Elliot on a doorstep and so on and so forth. She lives in a farmhouse in Gloucester. I don;t know whether the writing irritates me - or whether I am just plain old jealous of her literary life!!

I wish I could write as easily and fluently as Hill. She has given back as well, and publishes books as well. I have just been listening to a book of hers on the radio called Beacon Farm which was well nigh perfectly adapted. So why don;t I write? I am held in the grip of a huge procastrination, making me depressed, or is it the other way round? That I am depressed and therefore am procrastinating. I do not know. I can't always understand myself.

Wed 17th March 2004

2010-03-18T00:57:00.000Z

Six years since Glyn died of a heart attack so suddenly. The memories of that raw time, that almost unbearable grief, when to remember to breathe for another minute, was almost impossible.

We spent the day in Llandudno - a favourite place for both Joseph and me, and Glyn as well, which makes it appropriate to visit on this day. We walked Martha on the Great Orme and from the top could see the remains of the last of the snow (I hope!) on the top of Snowdonia. Joseph and Martha went to investigate some sheep....I had to remind Joseph that sheep don;t have curly horns and beards. They were scaring the herd of goats that live on the Orme, which is a magical place to me, a place of mystery and magic, and where the light is incredible every time we go. As happened last year - almost to the moment of Glyn's death, the sun suddenly came out and bathed the coutryside in light. I hope it IS his way of saying that everything is ok.

I have had a strong feeling of his presence since Mum passed away. After Jonathon had created the unpleasant scene just after the funeral, I went to bed very upset. I suddenly saw him in the corner of the bedroom - I might of course just have been falling asleep. He was wearing a suit and looked very tall all of a sudden and much slimmer and younger. He said, and this was the first time I can remember recalling his voice - "Don;t bother with them - tell them to F*** off!!" - which is just what he would have said, and then - he disappeared. I have had the strongest sense of him that I have had for a long time, have actually called Cris and Joseph by his name on occassion, and maybe he is here, also affronted at the insult of being shouted at by my brother in law just after Mum died.

Later in the evening we went to Chester and to a talk given by Matthew Hyde, an architectural history lecturer about the new edition of Pevsner that he is involved in working on. I didn;t expect to enjoy the evening as much as I did - but I do love old buildings, and even the new ones that he showed us were interesting in that he explained something of their construction and how planning permission could sometimes be obtained. I love brick buildings - yes, timber frame are lovely and I love to see black and white houses in this country, but I love brick as a material - it is honest and can be used so creatively. It also makes a change from the stone of Yorkshire as we drive through Cheshire.

I haven;t done anything creative this week. But - I have bought some picture frames for some little pictures for the flat in Leeds, and I have found a stash of beads to play with - including lots of findings - so I am going to have fun.

Knaresborough

2010-03-16T00:37:00.000Z

Plumpton Rocks

2010-03-16T00:34:00.000Z

Meeting my cousins............

2010-03-16T00:30:00.000Z

WIP - love doing this piece...

2010-03-10T20:08:00.001Z

I have been playing with some fabrics and pieces of doily and a few old beads to make a little hanging. I have an idea all of a sudden for a series of little hangings - with a theme. Inspiration - at last..........!!

In Leeds with Cris

2010-03-10T19:57:00.001Z

Here is Cris wearing a poncho he bought in Mexico. Looks ok.....

And here is this evening's sunset - beautiful.

Martha with a duck I "won" as a raffle prize in a charity shop on Saturday.....its as big as she is, and she love it!!

And here are Cris and Martha together as we go out for a walk. Happy picture....

Looking at myself....

2010-03-08T00:36:00.001Z

I decided to take a leaf out of Nina Bagley's excellent blog Ornamental which has had such an influence on the way I think about things lately. She suggested that we look at ourselves and she published photos of herself and I have never considered doing that.

I look - well -unkempt for one. My hair is a mess and needs cutting.

I think I look tired.
But I still don;t think I look as though I will be 60 at the end of next year. So thats one good thing. And I don;t think I look as though I often feel defeated by life either, so that shows that either I am not, or that appearances can be deceptive!!

How does it feel to look at myself? Strange. Sad. But not as bad as I thought it might be. And - I look as though I haven;t quite forgotten how to laugh at myself yet either. Which aint no bad thing.

Creative days at last

2010-03-07T23:46:00.000Z

Well, here are my pliers and a cutter and the little chacha bracelet I am making. I think I have wasted more headpins trying to make tidy loops than I dare admit to..but, its coming, slowly but surely, and next time the process will be easier, and my hands are getting used to useing the pliers. I have read in a book that it is better to take the springs out, but I am not sure about doing that. I have a spare pair of pliers and will take the spring out of that pair, and will try it. This little set is a new-buy from Hobbicraft and I am really pleased with them - they are comfortable in the hand and I just need to stop being so clumsy.

This is the little piece of embroidery I am working on - it hasn;t photographed too well against the lacy tablecloth but I like the feel of it, and have found some nice handdyed thread (handdyed by ME! - one of my dyeing days with procion a few years ago) and gold beads etc. Then I will have to make some sort of background - matting and layering to use card making language.

I would like to have it ready to hang on the wall in our stairway to prove I am still capable of making pretty things even if they have no message as yet.

Very quiet evening. Cris slept most of the evening, woke to eat, watch football, and has gone back to bed. I can;t say I am surprised. He had been travelling for over 24 hours and the cruise he was on finished with late night parties as well. Coming back to Europe from the Carribean must be such a culture shock! Well, I assume it is, as we haven;t really spoken about it yet.

I haven;t heard from my daughter this week at all. Maybe that is because I dared to say I was not happy about the wedding. But I'm not and I don;t see why I should tell lies about it. Come April 23rd, she will be on a beach somewhere and I will be trying to forget and in trying will remember even more clearly just why it is that I can be treated this way - that is - that her dad has died and I am remarried and she would never have treated her dad like this but I can be.

Shame.

Cris arrived today......

2010-03-07T19:09:00.000Z

Cris got back today - it was nice to see him for all of about twenty minutes before he crashed out with jet lag and fatigue - he had been travelling for over 24 hours. And I bet there will have been some partying before he came ashore!!

I decided late last night that I had to do some stitching. I have been looking at a lot of work online with a vintage feel so I gathered together some materials...

Then some threads and a few more bits.

And a few more bits and pieces....

So I hope that by the end of the next few days there will be a piece that I am ok with - not satisfied, because I have so much to learn about design and stitching but maybe it will be alright for here and now.

And here is MarthaDog - taken last week when we were out walking near Harewood, on a bright clear day but very very cold.....!!This is the view - there was sun, but snow on the top of the hill!!

Here is hoping that winter is over and that the warmer days are coming. Long overdue for me!!

3rd March.........

2010-03-03T00:22:00.000Z

Where did the last month disappear? One minute it was New Year and now it is the beginning of March. I am waiting to hear from Cris as to when he is getting back to the UK but as yet have heard nothing. I assume he will be here this weekend, but have no clue as to when or really how long. I hope he has organised somewhere in Amsterdam for a few weeks, but I would like to see him before he goes off again.

Abigail is coming to Leeds March 22-24th.

I am seeing my cousin Annie on March 13th or thereabouts.

I heard from my friend from the Royal Academy of Music, Neville Baird via facebook. What an amazing device for keeping in touch with people, but also - what an intrusive device if misused. But - never mind.

I don't know why I feel so depressed at the moment. The sun is shining - even though there is still snow around. There are signs of spring everywhere - lambs, bulbs pushing flowers up, longer days at last and so on and so forth. But still, I feel an overwhelming sadness that is to do with a feeling of wasted opportunities.
I am trying to evaluate them.
Parents - wasted years and especially the past 5 years which have been truly wasted because my sister Hannah didn;t put us in touch. I should have tried harder. I wish I had seen Mum before she became so ill. I wish I had had time to talk to her, ask her questions. And I wonder if I will get the chance to get to know my dad or whether that will be yet another waste.
Kids. Wasted opportunities here as well. Abs - its her wedding on April 23rd and I don't know how to even start thinking about it. About the waste of love and care. And my son. And their unkindness to Joseph who has only ever been kindness to me and love. Unkind is the correct word to use. They have been singularly unkind and ungracious. I know it is a difficult relationship to get used to, when mum remarries in mid life, but surely, after 5 years, they might have started to learn to live in this new world?
Wasted time with music. My hands are so bad now, and I can't play anymore.
Wasted time teaching as there is nothing left of a big teaching practice.
Wasting time now as I can't settle to do anything at the moment.
Waste of time hoping for a relationship with my sister.

It just seems that I am in a depression - again - and am going to have to fight my way out of it - again. It was started because of Miller and his nastiness on my father's doorstep, and I will not forget or forgive him.

I was once asked what depression did for me. I thought it was a strange question but then I realised that, in blanketing everything out, it gave me a chance to be emotionally safe and acted as a buttress against the unkindess in the world. Maybe I should just allow the depression its reign, and then come out of it when the sun warms the earth up a little more.

Thank heavens for Joseph. At least he understands and he is there for me. I couldn;t ask for more at this time.

glyn richards obituary leeds university - Google Search

2010-02-28T21:24:00.001Z

I decided to put this here on this blog because it took me so long to find the link and I thought the obit had been taken down.

It is approaching the 6th anniversary since Glyn died and I wanted it here to mark the passing.
Losing Mum just brought back the other losses in my life and sometimes it can feel overwhelming. Everything feels transient and its hard to know what is and what is not important.

But keeping track of this IS.

glyn richards obituary leeds university - Google Search: "campus.leeds.ac.uk/newsincludes/newsitem1879.htm"

Been fishing on Facebook

2010-02-25T13:18:00.002Z

I have found people online! I have found my cousin Annie who is now a grandma, and also Roland Rance who lived in the house Glyn and I lived in when we first "ran away" to London. There were three couples; Annie and Brian (who married and divorced ), Roland and Tammi (who also got divorced) and Glyn and me, the only couple at the time to have a "mixed" marriage, and whose marriage lasted through many thicks and thins for 29 years. I think our secret was that we were such good friends. It pulled us through what should and would have been catastrophic for other couples.

I am not sure why I am looking. I should write what I remember, how I remember it, and that should be enough. But, if there is anything I have forgotten, if there is anyone who can shed some light in dark corners, maybe it is important to look after all.

I don;t know. Maybe it will lead to more hurt and I don't know if I can handle much more this year.

We go to Leeds tomorrow. I hope the weather is ok - snow on the way again. Yet again. We are going to eat with Judy Plaut tomorrow evening, and then Rabbi Morris has offered to say Kaddish for my mother on Saturday and I shall take him up on that offer, and we are seeing him next Tuesday. I don;t know what good it will do but I am so annoyed with my brother in law. I can;t even begin to say what effect his behaviour has had on me. It has made me depressed and bitter in a way I haven't been in a long time.

I need to go and get some photos off my camera so that I can blog them.

7am

2010-02-23T07:37:00.002Z

Yet another sleepless night.
The lights go off, and my brain starts whirling.
I think of all the things I would dearly like to say to so many people.
I write letters in my head that I will never send.
I invent scenarios that will never play out.
I write letters to papers, write introductions to books, all in my head.

Then come the day, I am paralysed and can get nothing down. I do not understand this at all, and am wondering whether I need to go and talk to a counsellor about this strange phase I am going through.

I am dreading seeing Cris.
I am hoping the visit with Abigail goes well.
I don't know how I will feel when she gets married in April and I am not with her.
I do know how I will feel.

I want to go to a bead show.
I don;t want to go as I have too many beads.
I want to go to the craft show in Birmingham.
I don;t want to go as I have enough stuff and need to use it.
I want to go on a course.
I don;t want to go on a course because I don;t want the hassle of it.

I am in such a muddle at the moment.
J says I am agaraphobic and sociophobic. I probably am. I can;t seem to get anywhere on my own. I hadn;t noticed my world gradually shrinking. I walk Martha locally even if I have the car. In Leeds I can get to Moortown, but haven;t been into Leeds centre on my own yet. I went to Amsterdam and didn;t manage to get anywhere on my own last time.
What has happened to me? And why? And when? I didn't even notice it happening again. It was probably the result of my back injury two years ago and the subsequent debacle at the Pain Management Programme at the Walton Centre which I also want to write about.

I feel ill in myself. For years I have dealt with the neuropathy in my hand as it being just a pain in my hand. But somedays its like a river of fire down my arm with pins and needles in the rest of my body. I can;t just say its my hand anymore.

I feel my age at last.

I don;t think I am nice to live with. I am not loving enough.

I just don;t do enough, achieve enough, Brenda would be horrified at the state of this house.
All the kitchen cupboards need cleaning and washing out and sorting.
All the curtains need to come down this summer to be cleaned.
All the windows and sills need painting and cleaning.
The bathroom needs sorting - there is mould on the grout and I don't know how to get rid of it.
The dressing room is a mess and I need to sort it out.

The downstairs front room is ....well I can;t do anything about that. I peer through other windows of other homes, and long for something similar but it won;t work for J and me.

The scullery needs tidying - I do it so often and it just runs away so quickly, with stuff waiting to go for recycling or to the shed. It has become the dumping ground. And there is damp on the walls, that is surely behind the kitchen cupboards in the kitchen as well that needs attention.

I am overfaced. This house is too big, too far gone, it has escaped and I can't begin to get it back. I spent three hours doing housework yesterday - the porch, the hall, the kitchen, and there was nothing - nothing at all - to show for my having done it.

And I go to bed, and turn the light off and I start writing letters again. To people I know. People I don;t know. Conversations I should have/could have/might have had. I wonder about my sister and her husband. I wonder about my brother Yossi Babad and his wife Sara Babad!! Funny there should be another Sara Babad. (I now have a new blog BabadHolderblog to order things).

I wonder what my sister Hannah Babad thinks......

or my brother Dovid Babad.

I wonder about whether they think I have abandoned them and then remember I sent a text and got back a message with two words on it - thank you - and that has been that for over a fortnight. And no reply from a message to Yossi.

I am just full of loss and pain and it is my own fault. It is of my own making.

I went looking after I left and I should have left well alone. I left because of family issues and they are still there. I could never ever live as an Orthodox Jew. I could never live as an orthodox Jewish woman with all the prejudice that remains against women. I don;t believe in the bible as sent down by heaven via a man named Moses and I don;t believe in the God that they set before me who needs animal sacrifices as a way of our proving our devotion to him!!
I should not have gone looking.

I must begin to write my memoir or I will go mad.
J says if I write the first three chapters and a synopsis he will help me find someone to publish it. I am going to set myself a deadline as I think it is the only way to do this.
I want the draft finished by the end of the March.
The rewrite done by the end of April.
The synopsis and photo etc by May. So my anniversary present to us will be something ready to go out into the world.

Maybe - just maybe - that will get me moving.

BUT.......

I am going to hurt a lot of people if this gets published. But then again, why not? Why not show the community/cult for what it is - hypocritical under the warm friendly exterior. Its nice - but you step out of line and you are OUT. Forever it seems.

Nevertheless - there is a period of time between then and now for my family to get in touch, to start a healing process and if they do, then maybe I will leave things.
But if I don;t then there will be a book and it will be unpleasant and I will make more enemies.
Do I need them?
Could I live in Leeds if I wrote what I want to write?

I don;t know if I am brave enough. Maybe that is what is stopping me. In fact - it probably is. I am prevaricating, hoping that something or someone will persuade me that they weren't so bad, that childhood wasn;t so bad, that there is redemption. I am hoping. I am giving them a window of opportunity.

Visit to Llangollen

2010-02-20T22:14:00.000Z

The sun was out today so we drove into Wales and visited the little town of Llangollen. It always offers more than it provides somehow, and today Thomas Tank Engine was in town so the place was full of children and their parents making it busier than ever.

Nevertheless it was a good afternoon. The hills around were covered in powdery snow, making the world beautiful without any danger as the roads were clear. I had a look in a couple of little craft shops, watched Martha running around looking like a mad March hare rather than a dog. She amused everyone who watched her chasing her tail around the little park by the river, rushing up and down the mill race as if possessed. We drove home via the Horseshoe Pass, stopping to admire the view from the top, and making a detour via Hawarden because I had mentioned a wish I have to go into retreat and there is a library there offering scholars the chance to research and write without having to look after things like washing and cooking. Oh, if only.....

Then we walked along the prom and Liverpool glittered across the Mersey. I said to Joseph that I had expected to spend a lot of time visiting the city and getting to know it, but that I had lost confidence. And I know I have done so. There has just been a catalogue of nastiness over the past few years and I am beginning to lose heart. Apart from anything else, I feel a sense of agaraphobia when I am away from familiar surroundings and that is truly dispiriting. I fear pushing into places that are dangerous or into groups who are unfriendly, and my experience lately is that my fears are justified. I tried to explain this to Joseph - it isn't a matter of being shown round, or being taken to different places, its just a need to be safe within a familiar space and within that I am content.

I need to be with Joseph to go out and that frustrates me so much. I need to regain my independence and my strength and my confidence.

The question is - how?

I have had a lot of online support from people. Someone from the Reform Shul in Leeds who also has a bookshop in Headingley (this we must have a look at!), Jane, David, Orysia, a Rabbi Shoshana, my cousin Sidney (a true happenstance getting back in touch with him at my mother's funeral meal when he phoned from Canada and I managed to persuade my sister to give me the phone to speak to him). Nobody at all here in Wallasey has put a foot over the doorstep. Nobody. Not Joseph's mother, not his sister, I haven;t had a call from Hilarie, I haven;t had a card from anyone, and I am totally alone in this town apart from Joseph. I don;t mind living here, but I won;t care when we leave. I have no wish to be here anymore. I have tried to love it, but since I finished the Pain Mismanagement Programme at Walton Hospital, I have had little contact with anyone. The friends I made disappeared. The person I was began to dissolve and only began to reappear a little when we bought the flat in Leeds.

I love living on this coast. I love being able to see Snowdonia. I love sunsets here. But I am so alone in this town. I have never felt so bitterly lonely, apart from the months after Glyn died. I cannot believe that nobody has sent me a card, made a call (other than Christine at Joseph's instruction) or anything else. I know that if I behave like this if Christine and Hilarie lose their mum, god forbid, then I will be the devil incarnate. But its ok in their world, because I don't really count for anything. The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating.

I haven't heard anything from my son since I told him that he couldn't come to stay with me for six weeks and challenged him about his bank statement. It is up to him. I can;t carry on carrying his financial burden through the rest of our lives. He puts all our future plans at risk if he can;t get his act together and keeps expecting me to pay for him. I can;t do anymore. That has to be over.

I have lots more to write but I need to download some photos and get them up to date. I saw a huge drift of snowdrops today, and four yellow crocuses that had battled into the sunshine. And Joseph and I managed to have a cuppa out of doors for the first time this year which was lovely. There is blossom coming on the trees, and the daffodils are struggling out but there is still sleet and snow, and today a flood has decimated Maderia in Portugal. The weather has been so strange this year, and then to add to it all, the huge catastrophe of Haiti and its earthquake.

Meanwhile in the papers - lots about the assassination of a Hamas leader by Mossad. They are running very close to the wind. Zionism is becoming a danger to European Jewry and it should take responsibility for Jewish safety in the Diaspora.

My mother's death

2010-02-18T23:21:00.003Z

My mother passed away on Sunday 7th March.

Joseph and I were over in Leeds and had been out for the afternoon - the day was filthy, grey, cold, wet, and I felt a general malaise come over me. I thought that if I were to get a phone call to say Mum had passed away I would not be surprised.

We had just got back to the flat when the phone went and it was my sister in law ringing to tell me that Mum had died. She had been taken into hospital, not her usual hospital and for once without my sister in attendance, and she died when there. They did try to resuciate her - 86 years old, mute, and fed solely through a tube into her stomach! - but thankfully for her sake they did not succeed this time and she was allowed to go to her maker. Peace at last.

I did not know what to do. Whether to go and see my father or whether to stay in Leeds. I had not met my brothers or my brother in law, but nevertheless Joseph and I went over to Manchester to see my father. I was glad we went. There was nobody to sit with him, and hold his hands whilst he cried. Once the heavy mob (the Charedis) arrived, I began to feel uncomfortable. Nevertheless Joseph and I agreed to go and sit with Dad whilst the funeral was held in Leeds the following morning and so we arrived home at about midnight and set off back to Manchester at 8.15 in the snow and got to Dad's house for about 11.

Mum's coffin arrived at around midday. A tribe of bearded men arrived to speak over Mum's coffin then it began its journey back over the Pennines and I stayed with Dad along with my sister in law, Sara Babad (my maiden name ironically!) - who I thought - thought - was friendly. Then the men and my sister arrived back and we took Dad to my sister in laws house. We were obviously in the way although I didn;t pick up any bad vibes and neither did Joseph. My brother Yossi Babad was there as was my brother David, and all Yossi's lovely children. I was pleased to at least have seen them - even once in my life.

On Tuesday I had a phone call from my brother in law Jonathon Miller. He said and this is what he said exacly:
"I have been asked to tell you three things. One, can you see your father tomorrow, two, we would prefer it if you didn;t go to your brother;s house for shiva (the jewish mourning) as their feelings are too intense (intense??) and three, can you go and see your father next week." I put the phone down on him.

Joseph rang him back and gave him a piece of his mind. We were going back across the Pennines on the Wednesday so we did go and see my father. Miller was there and I asked for a word with him. He started to back out of the kitchen saying he was busy and then lost his temper and said he didnt want to talk to me as it wasn;t the time or place so I followed him out and told him what I thought of him and left him talking to himself. He was agressive rude and started pointing and stabbing his finger at me and I wonder what he is like as a headmaster or teacher. And I hate the idea that he is a member of the school that tells other Jews who is and isn;t a kosher enough Jew to have a child at the JFS.

I haven;t heard from anyone since and I really do not want to get in touch with any of my so called family member ever again as they are just trouble to my emotions. I have felt ill since. Can't get a grip on anything at all. And I just feel worthless which isn;t true. I think I will make a start on writing my memoirs and I have held back on writing and getting them published for fear of hurting members of my family. If I had told the police about my childhood, my dad would have had the other kids taken away, and he would never have seen his grandchildren. Now I wish I had told. I wish I had had my day in court and destroyed the whole lot of them.

I wanted to mourn my mother. To mourn the years I lost with her. To mourn the loss of the grandmother to my children. To mourn the fact she didn;t really take care of me as a child. But instead the grief has been turned to anger and that isn;t fair.

I wish I could turn the clock back. I would just not have bothered finding my mum and dad. I could have wondered but wouldn;t have been so hurt. I just don;t know what to do now.

I need to grieve. I need to do the mourning. And I need some quiet and peace and allow time to just sort it all out.

I don;t know what else to write about this. I feel so old. I never felt my age until this year. I feel all of 58 now and time is slipping by.

Intermarriage.

2010-02-04T00:31:00.002Z

A couple of weeks ago, when we were at a Reform Synagogue service, I noticed an advert for an event that was intended to deal with some of the issues raised by so called mixed marriages - ie of different faiths. Glyn always said that our mixed marriage was a mixed sex marriage!

I am not sure what I thought I would find, or how being in such a huge roomful of people with so many viewpoints would make me feel but almost as soon as the event began I felt uneasy, disorientated, wondering why I had chosen to attend. Yes I married out of faith, but I did so many years ago, knowing why I was doing so, and never having the right to tell anyone why I made the decisions I made. Yes, of course, love was part of it, but so were so many other things that had happened in my childhood years, and they, of course, will remain buried in my heart unless I ever write the memoir I want to write.

I doubt I have the ability to write it, but that is another posting.

There were all sorts of people there. A man who was on his way to becoming Jewish - his father is a vicar and his wife C of E and who just felt a pull towards Jewish life. A man whose wife passed away last year - she was Jewish and so are her children, and they attended the Reform Synagogue and he was very welcome there. But at his wife's funeral, he was, as a non Jew, unable to say the mourners prayer or take part as others in the congretation would have done, in the service. He seemed quite comfortable with that - I would have been angry but he found it all very comfortable and comforting. I didn;t see how he could. Maybe that speaks about my condition rather than his condition!

Then there was a beautiful woman who had been married to a prominent member of the Jewish community but who had left him for a non Jewish man, and who was having problems adjusting, more, I think, to her loss of status, than her loss of religion. She blamed the religion and her poor partner just wanted, in his words, to wake up Jewish and be accepted. She was even uneasy about the fact her son had a non Jewish girlfriend. I couldn;t believe what I see as her hypocricy and I felt incredibly sorry for her partner. I could easily imagine them split up by now - and it is only Wednesday evening after all.

I don't really know what I expected from the afternoon but my overall feeling was that - yes, ok, as Jews, we live in a non Jewish society and all the experiences, all the influences are taken from that world and we have to work harder to preserve some sense of Jewish identity. So far so good. But then the whole thing began to come unstuck for me. It seemed that in every case it was the Jewish family/community/partner who was making life difficult, and that for most people where there was a problem, it could only be solved by the non Jewish partner making sacrifices for the Jewish partner.

And therein lies the rub. It is always going to be that way because we are "chosen." My father once sent me a cutting from the Jewish Chronicle - it arrived in an envelope with nothing else in it, just a cutting with the heading "We aren't racist - we're just different." It went on about the awful lives that people in mixed marriages led, the problems bringing the children up, the problems when they started interdating (interdating??) and so on and so forth. And then - the usual emotional blackmail. "And what have parents done for their children to cause them so much aggravation?" I so wish I still had the article. I kept it safe for years. It gave me a lot of pleasure when I read it and a lot of laughter. It might have been meant seriously, but quite honestly, one man's "difference" is another man's "racism."

I was approached by someone who knew of my background and who said he would try and get me in touch with other people who had escaped from extremist households. I wonder if he will manage to do so - the offer was kind though. He mentioned an organisation in the US who helps kids get out and that led me to a blog that I found horribly fascinating and it is

http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/

Some of the stories I read were nbelievable. I had no idea that the ultra right Orthodoxy had become so Talibanised. I actually felt ashamed.

And I do feel ashamed. If a non Jew wants to become involved in such an exluding and punitive religion - then they should be honoured and not be made to feel an outsider. I do not know what the answers to these questions are. There is apparently a marker genetically that identifies Jews - information here.

So ;

Are we a race or a religion? And does it matter. I don't even know if I believe in God. So what does that make me???

The meeting was held in the Masonic Lodge in Leeds - an interesting building built in the 1930s (? I need to verify this) but looked like a Georgian mansion.

After the meeting we went to eat at a kosher resteraunt with D and A and Jane. The food was - well, it was plentiful. The starters were as big as main courses in most normal restaurants!! But it was good and very enjoyable. And it was very very good to be with true friends.

Back in Leeds......

2010-02-03T22:51:00.000Z

We arrived back at our little flat in Leeds on Thursday evening - very late. It didn't take long to unpack all the stuff I had brought (its always my stuff!) and settle into the place, and get it feeling warm and homely. I always worry though about leaving home in Wallasey - it feels as though I am abandoning it, and then when I go from here I feel as though I am abandoning this place. Presumably at some point the novelty of having two places will become the norm - that is if there aren;t staff cuts where J works. He seems to feel his job is safe enough. I don't know. It might be that the part time staff are more vulnerable than full time staff where jobs are concerned, because employers can pile work onto fulltimers that they can't onto part time staff. We shall see. I think there has been a high degree of natural wasteage in his department, so I will keep my fingers crossed for the meantime.

The past two or three weeks have been difficult. I think I might buy a lamp to use against SADS. Abs and Eric have bought one and it appears to be working - she is remarkably cheerful and upbeat and if it works for her maybe it will work for me. I had a long weekend last week - full of pain and just a down time. Neuropathic pain takes no prisoners and when it gets really bad there is nowhere to hide from it. The weather had been terrible, the conditions on the pavements and roads ridiculously dangerous so I stayed in the house. I decided that it was better to be safe than sorry - if I were to damage my left hand, how, with the neuropathy in it, could I have it repaired? I would not be able to tolerate surgery or even a plaster cast. The thought made me quite sick and so I decided that I would just stay in until it was really safe enough to walk out again.

Anyway - onto more cheerful things.

On Friday we went shopping locally and stocked up on fresh food, took Martha for a run on the playing fields at Roundhay Park and had a quiet day. On Saturday I went to the meeting of the Yorkshire Embroiderers Guild and was made very welcome there - I was even recognised by someone who remembered me from 20 years ago when I did a couple of years of city and guilds....that is some memory, or I made some impression! The talk was given by a woman who has written about and teaches courses on fabric decoration. I had done some of the techniques she described and immediately wanted to go and buy some more velvet and get my procion dyes out and have a dyeing day! More "stuff."

I really have to call time on buying things to make and do and just make and do instead. I think its a form of procrastination really.

I enjoyed the meeting - it felt - maybe wrongly - as though it was not full of cliques and as though one would be a welcome addition to the group. It has shrunk though. I remember a big hall full of women. This was a smallish room. I guess the attempted move north has taken its toll of Guild membership.

I need to get some stitching done for the Wirral Group. We have been given squares to interpret and then Erica will put them together to make a picture. Mine is all brown with gold bits, so I have some brown fabric, organza, some gold threads and beads, and some brown velvet. That should be enough for something about 3" square I think.

Today......

2010-01-23T00:30:00.000Z

There was grim - very grim - news about two boys who had tortured and abused two other boys - children all. I cannot imagine how the two boys who were so badly beaten will recover. There has been a lot on the news about the boys who were the perpetrators and about what will happen to them - but I think that is typical in this country, which never seems to deal with the victims. The victims in this case will be not only the children themselves - poor poor boys - but their parents who will feel that they should have kept their boys safe and failed.

Meanwhile in Haiti, a surgeon was interviewed on the news, and he actually broke down and cried, saying how hard this had been but that it was the only place he COULD be. I wish I were younger and I would also have wanted to go out and do something there to help. I gave money to medecins sans frontier and hope their cargoes are now getting through - apparently they didn;t, as the US military places were given priority.

I ordered a couple of books from Amazon.

One was by Sharylin Miller about beading, and another by an author called Bartov about surviving relics of the Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust. I have never heard of this man so it will be interesting.
I also decided to download some mixed media workshops so that I can - perhaps - be inspired into making some art at some point soon. I know I will feel better if I do. Too much holocaust literature lately. I must read some more cheerful literature.

Joseph and I went out this afternoon to look at a small exhibition of Edwardian photos at the Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight. The photos were fascinating and as usual, I had mixed reactions to the actual gallery. They have some wonderful pieces and paintings there, but the place is so gloomy - it feels overfurnished (I know it is a museum of Lord Lever's collections including furniture) and just rather Victorian. It is of its period but I find the whole thing overwhelmingly dark. Nonetheless - a lovely Turner painting, a Millais, some Rosseti, and a few stumpwork embroidered items make the visit worthwhile every time we do go. The weather was grey again.

I woke up disgustingly late, but I find that helps the pain in my arm so I have decided not to fight with myself over my sleeping habits. It didn;t help that I fell asleep very late reading, and woke at around 4am with my glasses still on my nose and the book I was reading still propped up. I fell asleep after that, and woke again at 6 to go to the loo, and thats when I fell into my deep sleep. I must try and get into better sleep habits - but as I look at the clock I see it is 12.20am and my brain is buzzing. If I ever do get to write my novel/memoir it will be during the night. That is just how I am.

I am waiting for flowers in the gardens again. Meanwhile.....a photo from last year!!

this evening

2010-01-22T00:28:00.000Z

This evening I went to the Embroiderers Guild meeting here on the Wirral.

It was a lovely meeting organised by Janet Vance with members as the speakers showing their own range of work which was interesting - the best pieces by far were by Janet herself although she is a relative beginner - but not in the world of art.

I really want to start making more - being more creative. I have had a little collage sitting on my work table for 2 weeks waiting to be stuck down and embellished, but I have been reading, and struggling with pain, and the latter has had a dire effect during these cold weeks.
I am also - sad to say - waiting for something to happen as regards my mum. It is so hard to live and work with this overshadowing all of us.

Meanwhile......

A little inspiration!!

I will get on with it I promise!!!!

I am going to download a couple of craft videos from Quilting Arts/ClothPaperScissors and try some of their techniques. There are several which look really good and I am going to choose tomorrow.

I am also going to buy myself a beading book by Sharylin Miller which Abigail recommended - there is a bracelet on the illustration on amazon which looks just wonderful and exactly the kind of thing I have been longing to learn to make. I haven;t spent any money on myself at all lately, so this will be my New Year Treat!!( Abigail bought it and Eric has been busy making wire jewellery which I think is quite amusing.)

I am sure it will cheer me up to have some goodies to look forward to.

And spring isn't far away .....is it?? Some sunshine, some flowers, a little blue sky.....I love the colours of winter but I long for some warmth.

Neuropathic pain

2010-01-21T18:44:00.000Z

This link takes you to the grim reality that I am trying to come to terms with about neuropathic pain. I have had such a bad time, trying at first to get some sort of diagnosis, and more recently having to deal with a doctor who had never heard of this condition, and who could not read my MRI scan (the same scan was rejected by the neurology department as being unclear.....) telling me that my pain was "psychosocial!"

I have such a horror of dementia. I have such a horror of growing old, and worrying that I will not be able to deal with the pain if I am not totally compos mentis. This is a dark dark posting but I need to place on record that when I can no longer cope, I am going to go to Switzerland and end my days with dignity. There is no way I am going to go screaming into that dark night - sorry Dylan Thomas.

Finding this online has just knocked the wind out of my sails. I just am having to think that I must, I MUST, live for the present and do as much as I can, thus keeping mind and brain ticking over all the time. And I must enjoy myself more. I have had such a static month this month, having seen noone, having had few real conversations. I haven;t been creative. I have read a lot, which is ok, but is my displacement activity of choice! Not a bad activity but I need to push myself out a lot more often. Mind you - it has been difficult in the ice, and if I were to fall and damage my left hand even more - how could I even get it treated? I can't stand needles in it, couldn;t abide to have it in a bandage or plaster cast, so I am neurotic about keeping myself safe.

I saw my parents yesterday. My mother is still the same, being fed through a tube in her stomach, not speaking not able to communicate, struggling to breathe because of the fluid in her system, but still here, still alive. My dad still tries to have a go at me for marrying Glyn in 1975....that is a lifetime ago. I cannot believe that he has no humility in him, that he is the one who needs the visits, and yet he still blames me for everything that has happened to him and my mother in Manchester. I don;t think so. I really don't think I was the one who told them to move in their 80s, the one who caused my mother to break her arms, or the one who gave him a bad back. He might have hurt his back hitting me of course....

I intend to get back to doing something worthwhile and creative over the next few days. I need to sort out what I can keep here and what I need to take across to Leeds when we go next week. We have such a busy weekend when we get there and I am looking forward to ALL of it.

It is so cold today. I took Martha for a walk and the wind was bitingly cold. The sea was grey today, the cold relentless. Not an enjoyable walk at all, but I think Martha didn;t mind at all! She ran and jumped and skittered around as usual, ate her dinner when we came in, and fell fast asleep at my feet where she is now.

I think I am going to take the article above and go and see my doctor and ask him for some information and help in interpreting what it might mean. Then I might not be so worried.

Monday blues

2010-01-18T21:46:00.000Z

I don't know why, but I am in the middle of a "down" time at the moment. I know its cyclical, that it will go away as it usually does, but whilst I am in the midst of a period of depression I never know when it will lift and am always petrified in case it doesn't this time.

What has brought it on?
I have not seen anyone since we arrived back in Wallasey and all the people I thought were friends appear to have vanished totally. I know the weather has been bad, but not even an email or phone call. I could have fallen off the face of the earth. So that, and not being able to get out last week because of the ice on the pavements here has given me an attack of cabin fever.
I found an old diary entry from around the time that Glyn died and that upset me. I had forgotten how poor we were, how we struggled from week to week to pay bills, whilst sending our kids abroad.
The neuropathy that I suffer from has become almost unendurable of late giving me very very dark and bleak thoughts. Neuropathic pain is indescribable to anyone who does not struggle with it. It eats away ones very soul.....

I am sure I will pick up as the weather improves. But for now - life feels like a brick wall.

Barbara Cherish - reflections on a radio interview

2010-01-14T01:11:00.004Z

I listened to a programme broadcast on Radio 4 in which Fergal Keane interviewed the daughter of one of the commandants hanged for war crimes after the second world was - he had in fact been in charge for 6 months at Auschwitz. Even the name is disgust in any decent and moral person's mouth these days, and for survivors and their children, defines them and the reality they inhabit. The meaning of life is different once you know that had you been alive then, you too would have been stripped, shaved, and eventually worked to death or starved to death or gassed to death - or other deaths too awful to contemplate.

I read, in a novel based on truth (Geraldine Brooks - The People of the Book), that in one place Jews were taken to the edge of a cliff, their hamstrings were slashed, and they were pushed into a pit to die on top of each other. My mind reels from all of this, but I need to read, I need to know, I need to understand - what was done, when it was done, how it was done.....the why is almost irrelevant. I will never understand how the German populace fell for Herr Hitler, and will never understand either why anyone should imagine that this kind of thing could never happen again.

Human life is so cheap. So cheap. Every day we read of catastrophes, deaths, mutilations. Thousands have died today in Haiti, a baby was murdered by its parents as others watched their prem babies struggling to live. Have we actually made any moral progress Mr. Darwin as we have made physical progress through evolution? I sometimes know that we haven;t. There are some beautiful people in the world. There is beautiful art, beautiful music, philosophy, literature, poetry, architecture, there are scientists making fabulous discoveries. It doesn't add up to anything until we grow up morally, until we know that the worst crime is the undervaluing of another human life, until we learn to treat others with the respect we feel we deserve.

So to Barbara Cherish.

I thought that she was being less than truthful about her own feelings with reference to what she had discovered. She must have decided that "show and tell" would bring her some financial reward if she published a book, she must have made the moral decision to profit from what her father - who left when she only 9 months old and barely counts as a father - did in Auschwitz. He may have saved a few Jews but the reason he saved them is unclear. He had a new lover. Her own mother died in a mental institution - I think I might have had a breakdown if I had had to live her life.

Cherish didn't sound particularly remorseful - even when she appeared slightly overcome the general feeling I had was that the whole thing was a little ersatz (she must have gone through loads of these interviews and learnt how to answer the difficult questions!) and Fergal Keane was no better - he could have been more ascerbic, his questions less gentle, less mannered.

The article quoted below says that Cherish is now contented as she has found the truth. How interesting. The more I find out, the less contented I become, the less comforted by any illusions about the humanity of those times. I think the words I might use for all of this are sanctimonious and self seeking justification. I know thats harsh but that is how I (ie just me,) view it.

As the child of a survivor of the camps and the Nazi invasion of the Ukraine, I have very very strong views about this subject.

Here is the article about Barabara Cherish from the Guardian - the link to the page wouldn't work but the Guardian article is still online.

"My father, the Auschwitz commandant" - Barbara Cherish's father was an SS officer who ran the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Adopted after the second world war by an American family, she kept her birth father's identity secret for decades. She tells Joanna Moorhead what it's like to be the child of a man responsible for mass murder, and how she finally faced the truth
Joanna Moorhead The Guardian, Saturday 20 June 2009 Article history

At the age of 47, Barbara Cherish was at a crossroads. Her children were grown up, but her marriage was over. Her beloved elder sister, who had been a surrogate mother when she was young, had recently died. "Everything had gone from under me," she says. "But I knew one thing: this was the moment to confront the secret I had kept hidden for so long."
That secret lay buried in an upstairs drawer. It was a photograph of a man whose eyes Barbara describes as "thoughtful and sad", a man whose existence she had never dared to admit to anyone. The man was her father: the photograph betrayed the awful truth about him. In the picture, Arthur Liebehenschel is wearing a military hat - a hat that clearly displays the insignia of Hitler's SS and the death's head of the concentration camp staff.
Barbara's father wasn't just any SS officer - he had one of the most terrible jobs imaginable. "He was the camp commandant at Auschwitz," says Barbara quietly. "And, do you know, when I started being able to say that out loud, it was actually a tremendous relief."
"My father had an appalling job," says Barbara, a 66-year-old grandmother who lives in San Diego, California. "But I couldn't go on hiding it. I had to find out who he was and what he was, as much to find out where I came from as for any other reason." She says she wanted to uncover the truth as much for her son and her granddaughter as for herself (her daughter died several years ago). "I don't want there to be secrets in our family any more. However bad the truth, I wanted it to be known."
Barbara, named Bärbel when she was born in Nazi Germany in 1943, began her quest at that crossroads in 1988 after her sister's death. It was the start of a journey that has taken more than 20 years. The final element in the process is the publication of a book detailing all the information she has been able to muster about Liebehenschel and his life.
It's a book that is both unbearably moving and extraordinarily laborious - there are pages and pages of transcripts from his trial after the war ended. And yet, says Barbara, this was essential to her mission. "I wanted to let him speak in his own words," she says. "I wanted him to have a chance to say himself what his life was about."
Barbara is adamant that she wasn't seeking to exonerate a man who had played so central a role in the Final Solution. Yet it's clear, from the earliest pages, that she can't stop herself from being Liebehenschel's daughter. If there is good to see in the man she will - unsurprisingly - find it. So we are told that when he was put in charge of Auschwitz he released prisoners from the notorious Block II, and put an end to the executions at the Black Wall. Auschwitz survivors, some of whom Barbara has approached and interviewed, have told her that her father, while culpable for his part in the Nazi atrocities, did what he could to help some of the prisoners. And Barbara quotes Anneliese, Liebehenschel's lover, who remembers how he would return home from the camp and cry, before taking long showers and longer walks.
None of it, of course, adds up to any kind of pardon - and Barbara is well aware that there is likely to be criticism about what she has done. What she wants, she admits, is to provide, if not excuses, then a context to what her father did. She talks about him as a man who loved the military life, who was a career soldier, who perhaps wanted to extricate himself from the horror but didn't know how. To many readers this will ring hollow - when she dares to compare him to Oscar Schindler, who saved thousands of Jews from death, one feels she is sailing very close to the wind.

What is fascinating about Barbara is that the man she has managed to see in as favourable a light as possible was not only a war criminal (he was found guilty of war crimes and hanged in 1948) but also deserted her mother, leaving her to bring up four children alone. It was this desertion, in fact, that led to Gertrud Liebehenschel's mental breakdown, as a result of which Barbara was eventually adopted and shipped to the US with her new family.

So the man she is trying so hard to love is responsible not only for unquantifiable public suffering, but also for immense private grief. Yet, almost seven decades on, Barbara is moved to tears when she talks about him.

One is also struck, reading her account of what it was to be the child of a Nazi in the aftermath of Germany's defeat, that this is a story that has rarely, if ever, been told.

She remembers the family suitcases being stolen one day at a railway station, so that she and her sisters and mother were left with "no money ... just the clothes on our backs ... " and that the following winter was so cold that Brigitte, her eldest sister, got the beginnings of tuberculosis. At one point, the family was in such need that she and a little friend sat begging in the street.
But it's the earlier stories that are most fascinating. Her other sister, Antje, recalls, for example, prisoners from Sachsenhausen concentration camp - her father worked there before Auschwitz - coming to the house to build a conservatory. One of the prisoners used to give Antje rides on his shoulders, promising to build her a playhouse one day. When Bärbel herself was born, in 1943, her mother was awarded the bronze Mutterkreuz - the Mother's Cross - a medal awarded by Hitler to women who had four or more children (those who bore six received a silver medal, and those who bore eight got gold).
But, she adds: "At the precise moment of my birth, people were being herded into gas chambers, their babies never even given a chance to live." Later, when her father had left and moved to Auschwitz with his new lover (he was transferred as a punishment for getting divorced), she quotes a chilling entry from his journal, noting the birth of another son, Hans-Dieter, in the camp hospital: the child was, he says, "a special gift from God, a new life in the midst of where so many had to die". Barbara explains that the other women giving birth that day were all camp prisoners; their babies would be taken from them immediately and never seen again.

The story of Gertrud, Barbara's mother, is also tragic: having lost her husband to another woman, she was then derided after the war as the wife of an SS officer. Her descent into mental instability is charted painstakingly, with the young Bärbel trying to understand why her mother is taking her and Antje on a two-week walk across fields and through forests from their home in Germany to their former holiday house in Austria. Eventually, Brigitte - by then 16 - tracked them down, and rescued the starving Bärbel. Brigitte and Bärbel were fostered.

In fact, Barbara never saw her mother again, and Gertrud died in 1966 in a mental institution after being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
A couple of years after being rescued by Brigitte, Barbara was adopted by the sister and American brother-in-law of Brigitte's husband, giving Barbara a new father who had fought for the Allies against Hitler.
Leaving her family behind was very hard - but travelling by ship to the US and starting a new life there was hugely exciting. "Every day was a new adventure for me - I remember arriving in New York and driving upstate and how my eyes followed the road with such curiosity, imagining a whole new life unravelling around every corner. I missed my old family, of course, but having a fresh start was tremendous."
Her American family moved first to New York and then California, but Barbara's new mother warned her never to mention her father's past to anyone in America - and for three decades, she says, "I didn't tell a soul."

For Arthur Liebehenschel, too, the story ends with silence: by the time he was hanged for war crimes in 1948 he had been in prison for three years, and died without knowing what had become of the family he had abandoned.

At his trial, Liebehenschel denied knowledge of what was going on at Auschwitz, which, Barbara admits, is unbelievable. "He lied when he was being interrogated - that's pretty clear," she says. "Why he lied and how much he lied about, we can only speculate. But there were times when he seems to have gone to Berlin to try to stop the transports ... the truth is that the picture is complicated, but it's clear that he knew more about what was going on than he claimed at his trial."

It must be hard to feel sorrow for a war criminal who surely had forfeited the rights he took from so many other human beings, but decades on, and from across the world, his youngest daughter is still sad that her father's last days must have been lonely. "He didn't know where we were or what had become of us, or even whether we were still alive. In his final letter to his wife, he says how peculiar it is that there has been no news or trace of his little girls, and I find that so tragic."
Barbara's search has brought many tears and much sadness, but there is contentment, too, for her these days. Although she kept the truth a secret, she feels that every aspect of her life for all those years was lived under the cloud of her father's Nazi past. Coming out of the shadows, and naming that history, has brought her closure.
She feels that, whatever he did, she has done her best by him. Once, she says, she had a dream in which two hands extended down from the heavens towards her: but they were covered with long, black gloves, and she was terrified as she realised they were reaching for her. The moment the hands touched hers, though, she felt what she describes as "an overwhelming sense of love and peace". Liebehenschel may have been a monster, but he was also a father - and his daughter has never forgotten him.

• The Auschwitz Kommandant: A Daughter's Search for the Father She Never Knew by Barbara U Cherish is published by The History Press.

This is the link that wouldn't work;

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/.../barbara-cherish-auschwitz

and here is the link to another piece on the BBC's own website
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8210135.stm

A friend of mine said that the Holocaust defined Jews and I think it probably does. It is sad - the wonderful Yiddish culture, the humour, the learning, the life has vanished from Eastern Europe and in its place - pictures of skeltal figures in what look like striped pyjamas, horror stories, piles of bones in photographs, possibly even the bones of my family......

It is almost too much to bear somedays and I don't know how my father lives with the memories. I had to run away from home when I was younger. The burden was too great and the fear it might happen again too strong. I wanted to give any children I had a fighting chance in the world. That is the truth.

A Winter Weekend

2010-01-10T23:56:00.002Z

The weather has been so cold, and the pavements around here so icy that it has been almost impossible to venture out safely so I stayed in all weekend, apart from a walk with the dog today. I slid up and down our road to Flyns Field which isn;t so much a field as a patch of rather well used grass at the bottom of our hill, and I let Martha run around for a while to let off some energy. Sometimes when she runs, she looks like a greyhound and it does make me wonder about her ancestry!!

Yesterday I threw out several bags of rubbish from my upstairs study and intend to do the same tomorrow. I have read a novel. I haven;t cooked as I felt totally out of sorts with myself and just couldn;t be bothered so we had an Indian takeaway this evening.

I booked our flights for Abigail's wedding party in France in July. I hope it all goes well. We fly out on the 21st and come back on the 24th, and we fly directly to Avignon (sur le pont d'Avignon ....there apparently is a bridge there) but coming home we have a three hour stop at Southampton - unfortunately.... I also booked a car for the time we are there and my account is now denuded and I will have to be careful until February which isn't a problem as I really don't need anything at the moment. I will be glad when its all over and they are married and everything is done and dusted. I don't usually wish my life away but this time - I think I will be happy to know that Abigail and Eric are finally married . I am dreading going and meeting his parents and feel very self conscious about that part of it, also they will have family present and I will have Cris and then a couple of friends, which is nice but really points up the lack of people around me that are family. Oh well.

Joseph is finishing the article he is working on - hopefully it should be done by the end of this week. We have had words this weekend and that saps my energy. Once this piece goes to print maybe things will be easier!!

Snow is forecast here tomorrow.....I think I will spend some time tidying the study, I will clean the kitchen, do the ironing, and sit down and write my piece for the writing group. There. Thats a plan.

So I need to get to bed as its midnight!! And maybe I will have the creative impulse tomorrow and be able to work on something like this beautiful quilt I saw in Birmingham! Carole Thomson made it click on it to enlarge and look at the details,) I am not sure whether I should post it here, but I want to remind myself that its important to keep going and put myself out into the world, and not retreat into myself and the house again.......

Friday evening.

2010-01-08T23:00:00.001Z

I am listening to Tchaikovsky on Classic FM, I have the Shabbat candles lit, and have just finished reading"The Clothes on their Back" - which was another holocaust novel in disguise! I seem to read so much about this subject, its like a wound that needs to be picked at and doesn;t heal.

I am also wondering why I lit the candles - I have never done this before.

When I married Glyn in 1975 and was so disowned by my parents for marrying out of faith, I took on their hard line view on religion. All or nothing.....but in so doing I allowed them to not only estrange me from my brothers and sister, but also to push me away from my heritage, and I find that I would now like to reclaim some of it.

I don't honestly know what I believe in - I certainly don't believe that each religion has a right to claim their version of God is correct, and I am not sure I believe in God either. Be that as it may, I have a right to be counted as a Jewess, and I want some of the good things back, the sense of community and belonging, the intelligence and humour, and the Yiddishness of Yiddish people. Hence the candles. A small gesture, and a way to show my grandparents who died in the Holocaust that I have not forgotten, will never forget, and to say to my father that it is possible to go through the world with dignity and honour without being a fundamentalist with a perverted world view. In fact not being one makes it all the easier!!

I do not pretend to have led a blameless life or that I did not make a lot of mistakes when I was younger, but time slows us down, and mellows us. It is also like a spiral to me, you come back to the same place but in a different elevation as it were, looking at the same thing from a different view point.

Thats how I think of life - as I giant helter skelter from which we see the world rushing by.....same view and -oops - its gone again, but so fast.

I have had a bad day today with the neuropathic pain in my left arm which is driving me mad. I don;t know what to do with it at the moment, the cold weather is making the pain much worse, the medication I take slows me down so that I don't feel creative, and the ice on the roads is making it impossible to get out which is my usual coping mechanism - distraction therapy. Also we came back to Wallasey for my reading group and Crop - which have been cancelled due to the ice.....so I haven't even had those to enjoy.

Even Martha Dog looks fed up......!! She has been on my lap most of this evening - a bit of a big lap dog, but MUCH loved, she has such a sweet nature and is so affectionate. Love comes in all sorts of shapes!

Maybe I can stay in bed late tomorrow, and the pain won;t be so bad. Its the only other way to cope other than distraction therapy....

My reading blog.......

2010-01-07T21:04:00.004Z

can ben found in my personal profile - I am not sure yet how to link to things here on blogger. I need a book to explain it all!!

Living in a frozen world

2010-01-07T20:54:00.002Z

A reminder of Autumn in our white and blue world.

I have over 1000 photos on my camera and need to get them downloaded so that I can blog the snow colours and views that we have been having this winter. Not unusual in other parts of the world but totally unusual here, so that it has become headline news - not enough gas, not enough salt/grit for the roads, transport disrupted, people panic buying food (? why?) and so on and so on. The road here is so steep and covered in ice and - wimp that I am - I am terrified of falling and hurting some other bit of me. I live in so much pain I don't think I could bear anything else to go wrong!

We arrived back in Wallasey yesterday. The house here was cold - very cold. It had been empty for nearly three weeks, but it is nice and cosy now, and I am sitting here, twinkly lights in the hearth, radio playing softly, dog at feet, and a pile of books, magazines and a couple of stitching and mixed media projects waiting for me so I have no need to go out if I don't want to. I don;t mind snow, I don;t mind getting wet or cold, but I am so scared of slipping....so there is plenty to keep my mind occupied and there is plenty (oh yes always plenty) of housework to do here.

I have joined a book challenge online - to read 100 books this year, and I am on number 3 already. I have started a blog to list them as I need somewhere safe to keep the list. I did have a little red book, and it keeps getting mislaid so online seems safer, and there are vast numbers of people with reading blogs. When I looked I found them overwhelming.

I love reading - my friend Sue said she thought that it was more important to live than to spend too much time reading, but I think I do my fair share of living as well. I read 8 books whilst we were in Nerja and we went out every day and explored new places. Joseph and I go out all the time, we visit and travel and see people and experience many different things all the time, but I need to read the way some people need to breathe. My fantasy was always that I would win a lottery and move into a bookshop and have all my worldly needs met whilst I just gorged myself on literature. I almost live in a bookshop - our house has more books in it than some libraries!! I have set myself the task of reading all the books I have bought at charity shops and book sales and GIVING THEM BACK!! However, we keep visiting charity shops and finding little gems...

What I need to do:
1. Upload my photos.
2. Do some stitching and I have an idea for a mixed media piece based on something I saw in Somerset Studio - so I should really have the courage to have a go.
3. Housework - yuck.
4. Finish my book.....

Some holiday snaps.......Spain December 2009.

2010-01-01T23:04:00.000Z

1. A picture of Frigiliano, a so called "white" village just 1 euros drive away from Nerja in the hills outside the town. It was very beautiful, even though it was touristy and seemed to be full of expats having very loud conversations about the need for pairs of trainers in the UK as well as in Spain! That was not the fault of the place though, and we visited it twice, the first time sitting at the very top of the village to enjoy the view and then going to a local bar for gazpacho and coffees and the second time to have a drink in the little bar outside the ruined sugar mill and a wander through the cultural centre.

2. Just a picture of one of the beautiful sunsets that we witnessed whilst on holiday - I love taking sunset photos!

3. A photo taken in the Cuevas de Nerja - full of incredible formations of stalactites and stalagmites, and so large that there is a concert auditorium in the caves, a place used by pre-historic man, but that remained undiscovered until 1959 by 4 young men.

Finally a photograph - just one of many - taken in Malaga and showing some of the incredibly detailed plasterwork on the Cathedral. I had very mixed feelings about this building - as I inevitably do when I come face to face with religious buildings of this nature. I abhor what the Spanish Church stood for, in terms of the Inquisition, but the buildings themselves, although representative of enormous power and abuse of power remain stunningly beautiful and moving. The Caves in Nerja were also very moving but in a totally different way - they showed the power of nature and of the passage of time, without the haunting overtones.

Last morning photographs

2010-01-01T22:53:00.000Z

These two photos were taken on our last morning in Nerja. The previous evening which had been the evening of my 58th birthday - the hotel had provided a bottle of something sparkly and a special dessert as well. This photo, taken early as we had to leave for the airport shows dawn beginning to break over the Mediterranean from the window of the dining room. The photo below shows the table laid with its Xmas decoration. Christmas was just about to arrive full scale as wel left Nerja, but two weeks away from the UK and our homes here was quite enough - an "adequate sufficiency" and I was quite happy to get back even though the temperature dropped by almost 20 degrees almost immediately!!

A good holiday is one that leaves you happy that you went, but quite happy to return home as well. And as long as I am with Joseph and have Martha Dog with us, I am quite happy to be in the UK....

December and Xmas in Leeds 2009

2010-01-01T22:47:00.000Z

I could not resist photographing this exquisitely sweet angel who was hanging from a Xmas tree in a cafe in Masham that we visited. She has such a lovely face and I fell in love with her and also the cafe in which she was so lovingly living. She had been made by the mother of the owner of the cafe and was one of many objects lovingly placed around the building. I was enchanted both by the pieces themselves and also by the love that the owner of the cafe had for her mother and her mother's creations...

This is a photo of Martha hoping against hope to chase a squirrel that has escaped up a tree - as usual....Poor Martha - she'll never learn. Maybe that's what I love so much about dogs, their indescribable optimism and refusal to grow up, because learning one's limits is certainly one of the features of growing up and then, sadly, growing older. I would like to stop learning about my limits, and just keep hoping against hope that all things remain possible - a recognised piece of writing, a beautiful and original piece of textile art, a unique altered book, a composition or book of pieces for children. I can live in hope - can't I? This picture says it all - keep trying!!

This was just a chance to take a photograph of trees in the snow. I love trees in winter, stripped of leaves, their true essence on view, and in this picture they are clothed in snow making them even more beautiful.

And here finally is a picture of Joseph on Christmas day taken in Harrogate against an incredible blue sky. I rebelled this year and we had no Christmas lunch, but went instead into Harrogate and then had some friends round for a Yorkshire High Tea in the evening - much more enjoyable than slaving over a hot stove, especially when the weather was so glorious, albeit cold. Here he is, my true love, my lovely husband, lover and best friend. I hope and pray that we have a long and happy life together.

Nerja in December part 1

2009-12-31T00:29:00.001Z

We left a cold and blustery UK and arrived in Spain to find blue skies and a yellow thing in the sky that we vaguely remembered - it was the sun which we felt that we had not seen for months. And it was WARM. After a 45 minute bus journey from the airport we arrived at the Hotel Riu Monica which stood like a monolith by the beach. It was the highest building in the whole of Nerja and I think that once it was built the authorities must have decided that nothing else as tall should be built in what was a small village which had been rebuilt after an earthquake in the previous century. The hotel was comfortable and in spite of its size, it was possible to feel quite private within its walls. The food was plentiful - a huge buffet for both breakfast and evening meal, and we never felt hungry enough to eat lunch after a late breakfast.

The water around the main feature of Nerja, the Balcon Europa which is a promenade built on the area of an old fort, was unbelievably clear and turquoise. This photo almost captures the intensity of the colour. Coming from our northern Winter into this hard clear light was amazing. I love the soft colours of an English winter, but this was stunning. Real blue under a clear blue sky and blazing sun. The downside was the concern over the lack of water in the general area. The river beds were dry, there had been no rain at this point for many months and the fear, often expressed, was that the area would suffer from desertification and grow similar to Northern Africa.

This lovely palm tree, lovingly pruned stood on the Balcon. I had no idea that they needed to be pruned to look like this, and assumed that they grew looking for all the world like pineapples.....It took a day of careful pruning to cut away the dead branches and allow the new growth to carry on growing upwards.

The final photo is of the swimming pool outside the hotel and the small beach area between it and the Mediterranean. The days were warm, the evenings cool, the sun shone and it felt good to be out of the incessant rain that we have suffered in the UK this autumn.

My daughter's wedding - a few thoughts.

2009-12-04T17:54:00.004Z

When my daughter told me she was engaged to be married I was absolutely thrilled. I remember feeling warm all the way through my body, I felt - healed. Healed from the loss of Glyn, healed from the effort of dealing with my RSD, healed from other ills of life. It didn;t last long.

Within a couple of weeks the wedding plans had been altered. At first, the marriage was to take place in Amsterdam and I prepared to organise paying for it, helping to choose a dress etc etc. The usual mother role in effect. Then the plans were changed so that the wedding was to be in France where the in-laws live so I swallowed hard and thought that that might be ok. Finally the decision was taken by the couple - something to do with the in-laws - to get married in Mauritius with NO family there at all. My son was told that I had insisted on a wedding here, there were emails that should have been private that were read by the wrong person, and everything became totally messy and I became very unhappy about the whole thing.

I have, in spite of all this, made some kind of peace with the situation. But how it goes now I don;t know.

The final straw was hearing my son tell my daughter that if there were to be a family do after the ceremony, he would prefer to go to the do in France rather than come to me if I organised something. I was so upset by this - the final straw as I said.

I hope all this will sort out in 2010. I don't know how and, worst of all, I don't know how to stop the hurting, when even the postmistress, when I posted something for the marriage, is astonished that I am not to attend my only and much loved daughter's wedding. If my daughter's father had been alive this would never have happened and that fact makes this all the worse.

All will be well in the end though.

I am genuinely pleased - thrilled - that Abigail is marrying Eric who seems genuinely fun, kind, loving, generous, gentle....
Abigail is happy with Eric and that is the most important thing.
The wedding is only the wedding. I just want peace and love between all of us. Life is far too short for arguements to last long. I love Abigail. I love Eric. I love my son Cris.

I love Joseph above all.

All will be well, and all will be well.....please God.

Here is Peepie.....she knows everything will be ok!!

And all this hurt will pass, as all hurt must, or we couldn't carry on.

2009-12-04T17:40:00.001Z

Just a quick view of the cross stitch that I am doing. I know it isn't really creative as such, but it has kept me sane during some bad times this year so I am grateful for its existence. I have managed to keep going, not cry too much, and get through my chest infections and flu and pain whilst stitching so it has done the trick.

2009-12-04T17:30:00.001Z

This is the view from the back of our lovely
flat in Leeds, and I love it....trees, and open space, and somewhere to dream and think and create in future years.
When the sun shine, the view is absolutely beautiful, and the area is so quiet and peaceful.

Here is a photo of my lovely Martha who, as usual, is looking hangdog....silly dog, much loved!

We visited Saltaire whilst we were in Leeds and here is the River Aire taking up residence in nearby fields, a small taste of the severe flooding that has happened in Cumbria. The poor Lake District has just been awash.

I found this bush in full flower - in the middle of all the gloom, a splash of bright yellow, my favourite colour......a touch of the year to come as this year spins away into history.

Going Away - a warning for the future...........

2009-12-04T17:12:00.002Z

We arrived home on Tuesday evening and it is now Friday evening. I have tried to pack and do things in a calm way so that we can set off in a festive-ish mood, but as usual, the whole business of going away is clouded by J's mood. He hates the preparation for going away so I have done as much as I can, but he is still ratty in mood, angry, depressed, stressed by things he hasn;t done and I have had to bear the brunt of all of this. Everything I say is greeted by anger or rage, which is so hurtful. I have had enough hurtful things said this year, I have heard enough lies about myself to last me a lifetime, and I don;t want to deal with this ever again. So I am writing this, so that when we next discuss going away, apart from a long weekend at a Travelodge, we don;t go. We don;t need to go - we have the flat in Leeds, and that gives us enough freedom, so this will be the last major holiday I organise. Period.

I don't need the hurt, I don't need the depression, I certainly don't need the extra hassle of washing and ironing and packing. I am fine with the two places and travelodges. I will not go away on a proper "holiday" again. I am writing this here so that I remember because I am prone to forgive and forget, and I don't want to have to do this again. I am in pain in my heart of hearts. Its not fair.

ps IT WAS WORTH IT!!!!! We had a great holiday and I loved Nerja and the views from the hotel - just a bad week. By the time we were packed and ready to go - all was well. I spent the last day before we went at a scrapbooking crop and did 6 layouts in the 12 hours (it was an ALL DAY crop for Xmas!!) and then came home and shut the suitcases. Look at the photos......of course I will do it again!!

going away

2009-12-01T12:32:00.000Z

We are off on our travels again...

Its strange how quickly this little flat has come to feel like a refuge, in a city with people who care and who might make a difference. Somehow this feeling has never come when I am over the other side of the Pennines. It would appear that people there more "cliquey" and it is very very difficult to break into a clique. Even places where I felt safe or wanted have been illusory places of safety. I don't know why.

Maybe I am becoming paranoid but it seems that I can be easily overlooked or forgotten or just insulted whilst living on Merseyside.

Maybe that is a feature of the community over there and that supposed "warmth" that makes Liverpool famous is actually reserved for locals only and I am - am very much - an outsider?

Sometimes that is how I feel about life in general. That I am outside looking in. I am just on the periphery of life and that is difficult. I make myself talk to people I don't know, but it is becoming an effort, one that I am less and less willing to make.

I like this flat. It feels - safe. And quiet. And I don't relish leaving it.

Rain.......

2009-11-29T22:38:00.000Z

It has been raining here in the UK forever - or that's how it feels. We seem to be surrounded by a sea of rainwater and mud, each step outside takes an age to prepare for with layers of clothing and footwear. Even the poor dog refused to go for a walk this evening feeling outrage at the unremitting wetness.

I am tired of the dark and wet, tired of this cough that does not seem to lift, looking forward to going to Spain next week, into the light I hope.

We have been in Leeds since Thursday evening. Since then we have done so much. We went to Saltaire on Friday and revisited the place where we went, J and I, on our first outing together. So many memories....

On Saturday we went to investigate the Reform Synagogue service in the morning, and I met friends there who came back for coffee and chat, and catching up which was wonderful. When they had gone we went to my best friend O and had coffee there, came back and found an email inviting us to a concert given by Leeds University Music union and it was their main orchestra who gave us a spirited second half with their performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. They were so enthusiastic and had a drummer who looked as though he came straight from a rock band somewhere.

Today, it has rained and rained but we went to see my friend Sue for coffee and now J is decorating - painting some the doors we did not manage to finish, and tomorrow we will shop for Xmas and other items for this little flat.

I want to know what its like to live here when its DRY!! It is so dispiriting to sit here watching the world go dark at 2 in the afternoon. And my poor dog wants a long walk and run, not the quick dash round we are having at the moment. I do like this place enormously. I am looking forward to experiencing spring here, amongst the trees.

How do I feel?

Odd.

Part of me is here, part is with my dying mother, part is with my children, part is dealing with my daughter's marriage ceremony to take place without me. Part of me is fretting because I need to get on with some writing and some stitching. Life never does what you want it to do. I was so happy, so thrilled, so contented when I found out my daughter was getting married, and the awful nastiness that has followed has completely overwhelmed me and I don't know how to get past it. Finally hearing my son say that he would rather attend a celebratory party in France with the in-laws rather than one with his mother and her friends has hurt me greatly. Oh well. It will all come out in the wash as they say.

Meanwhile - what will 2010 bring? I dread to think.....I never expected 2009 to be so bad....

visiting my mother

2009-11-26T01:55:00.000Z

Today was a difficult day.

J and I drove to Manchester to visit my parents, and I went knowing that my sister would be there. My mother is in the same state - unable to speak, not eating, she has a chest infection, a PEG which is a tube directly into her stomach through which she is fed. She is exisiting, not living. My sister had come up from London yesterday, and I deliberately wanted to see her, as I wanted to reinforce whatever connection we had established last week when we spoke for the first time in some 35 years.

J was a star. He sat and talked to my sister for a while, whilst I sat with my mother and just tried to come to terms with the fact that I will never have the chance to talk to her again in this lifetime - I was just too late, or rather I was asked (allowed?) to come to see her when the chance for any meaningful communication was truly over. Then he went and talked to my father whilst I talked to my sister, who has had a nightmare couple of years dealing with my parents. I cannot understand why she didn't ask me to come sooner, but I suppose she was frightened of my father's reaction.

My father is an enigma. He is totally devastated and defeated by what has happened to my mother, and refuses to let her die with some dignity. To this end, whilst he, my sister and my mother's carer were visiting her in hospital about a month ago, they discovered that she had not eaten or drunk for several days and they made an attempt to feed my mother using a syringe to get some fluid into her mouth. The hospital staff apparently reported this as an "assault" and social services and the police somehow became involved. The hospital, however, had not fed her, or hydrated her until they were forced to do so. Apparently, and this was news to me, hospitals have a right to withdraw treatment without consulting the immediate family if they see fit to do so, and my sister and father had to get solicitors and barristers involved so that my mother would be hydrated and this feeding tube placed directly into her stomach. I had no idea that this had been such an appalling nightmare for all of them.

I have told J and I have told both my children that it is my wish, my express desire, to be allowed to die with dignity. This means that if I cannot toilet myself, feed myself, or speak for myself, then I do not want to be kept alive. The quality of life is more important to me than the quantity. I suppose my mother is not in pain, but as I suffer from chronic pain, were I to be mentally impaired in any way, I would not be able to rationalise the pain, and would probably be killed anyway by an overdose of morphine to stop me screaming! Oh the joys of thinking about these things....

However.

Two good things have emerged from this devastation. Firstly I have contact with my family for the first time since I left to marry G in 1974, and have met my sister and have had some type of reconciliation with my father. Secondly, J has been able to talk to my Dad and fill in some of the gaps in his history and in my family history and that has been really helpful to me. I so hope that my sister and I retain our contact even when all this nightmare is over. She is lovely - and I am proud of her. She does what she does with humour, with dignity, with care and pride, and is someone I am glad to have met. I would have enjoyed meeting her even if she were not my sister but there it is - I do love her even though I hardly know her yet.

The flat in Manchester is cheerless. One enters through a long and narrow entrance hall, with floorboards that creak alarmingly. The bedrooms are off this hall, and it ends where the lounge and dining area begin and they are connected to the kitchen. My mother's bed is made up in what should have been the dining area. The lounge is like a colourless waiting room - chairs pushed round the sides of the room to make space for the hoist should my mother be able to get out bed again at some point, and the walls and furnishings colourless. The temperature is kept high so that my mother - and presumably my father - will feel comfortable.

The place feels like a box, and my father who cannot walk and will not leave my mother for fear that she will die if he goes out is a prisoner in its walls. He told me that he knows his leg muscles are growing weaker for lack of excercise but then he shrugs his shoulders and says there is nothing he can do. He and mum moved into this flat four years ago when they were both in their 80s, and since then there has been a catalogue of health disasters culminating in my mother's fracturing her humerus which was the start of this final downward spiral.

The awful thing, the truly hurtful thing, is that I have been asking to go and see them for years. I could have been there to help. I should have been there to help. But noone would go against my father fearing his anger, and yet now, after all this time, he gives me a hug when I hug him, and I know that he too feels only sadness and huge aching regret for all the wasted years of our lives, when we could have enriched each other's existences. But I could not follow his religious path, and so he disowned me.

We were both hotheaded and unwilling to compromise. Now, although I understand my younger self, I think I too could have been more circumspect, more willing to bend a little but he too was totally uncompromising, just cutting me out of his life. Ironically, I think I have probably seen more of him and my mother than either of my two brothers during the past few weeks. There is no point in going back over all of it. It is old history and what is done is done.

That is the wisdom - and sadness - of age.

2009-11-25T00:47:00.001Z

These pictures were taken towards the end of this summer. We had had a perfect evening out, following a difficult few days, and driving back home the sky began to glow in these incredible colours.
I don't know why but even when I lived on the opposite side of the country with no way of knowing that I would eventually live here, I dreamt of living where the sun set over the sea. I had spent so many holidays with G and the kids in North Wales, sitting on various beaches watching sunsets and when he died I knew in my heart that I would be doing that again, soon, but I had no idea of how that could be achieved.
I met J a year after I was widowed. I was so low, so agaraphobic, so traumatised by events that had happened AFTER being widowed that I thought life was over, that no happiness or contentment could happen again.
One night I typed the word "grief" into my search engine and found myself in an American chat room for widowed people - a support group. There I went, night after night, to find comfort amongst people who had suffered similiarly. Two or three insomniac British people were in the group, who only met at 7pm US time but one night a person called Waterspirit arrived. I didn;t even know whether Waterspirit was male or female to begin with, but he turned out to be a Brit, and lived about 90 miles away. We met across a very busy chat room, began to correspond, met, and the rest as they say is history. I don't mean that our courtship was some idyllic period in our lives - we were both widowed, both still grieving and both very edgy. But trust grew and with the trust came friendship and love and when we married there was a sense for both of us of something new being born, a new partnership which could offer us a chance to grow and learn together - and so it has been. J is the kindest and most compassionate of men, he is a writer and a thinker, encourages me in every endevour and I try to do the same for him.

It wasn;t easy moving into the house he shared with his first wife. That was a difficult hurdle to overcome and I will eventually write about it. But as with most things, time and patience paid off, and a desire not to compromise our relationship over material objects. I discarded much and regretted it, and so knew that if J couldn;t discard things, then I had to honour his decision. So the alterations have been gentle and done when he has been ready.
The sky in these pictures is on fire, the sun plunging into a darkening sea.
This photo was actually taken through the car window as we travelled up the motorway home.

This photo shows the beach, the light almost gone, but the fire in the sky refusing to be put out just yet. Nature at its most breathtaking, surely.
And here is J! This photo was taken in near darkness so I did not expect it come out at all, but thanks to the miracle that is digital photography here it is. And here he is, camera round neck as usual, memory stick firmly in shirt pocket, shirt out!! This is my love for this second part of my life. I can tell him anything and everything. I can spill my heart out to him and even if he gets tired of some of the difficulties I go through - and who wouldn;t! - nevertheless he supports me. It is a difficult thing to write about, but sometimes being widowed gives one another chance at another life, and I have had to learn not to be embarassed at my incredible fortune. I was married for 29 years the first time and had no right to expect to be happy this time. But I am. I love this man. He is my husband and with him I can experience miracles.....that is what these photos mean to me. A miraculous evening we shared one evening, an evening that brought us close....

Another home

2009-11-23T23:23:00.000Z

So I am back by the sea in Wallasey, but haven;t been to the beach because the weather has been so atrocious,( the constant rain causing flooding in Cumbria on an unprecedented scale) and because there has been much to do here and I have also been ill - again. I must be run down mentally to be catching so many bugs.
I have had 2 chest infections and a virus/flu/bug over the last two months and tonight my throat is sore and I can;t breathe properly - again! This is getting too boring and is sapping my energy.

I am also feeling extremely anti-social. I want to guard my privacy at the moment, feel the need to be alone for periods of time and just think and stitch and listen to the radio. We are going to Spain in under a fortnight and I am getting ready mentally for that, and then for the onslaught of Xmas, with all that that means in terms of crowds in shops, food to buy, and missing family as well.

I need to get on with some writing but even that is difficult to achieve. J has decorated the hall here which is wonderful, and the place is now light and airy and clean, but there has been so much tidying up to do, and that combined with moving things to our new flat in Leeds is exhausting physically.

I tried to cut down painkillers thinking they were slowing me down but they aren;t - its just this bug, and when I tried to do without them for 48 hours my pain levels went through the roof and my tinnitus went from bad to worse. I went back onto the meds, slept properly again last night for a few hours and felt more like a human being today, so was able to catch up on a lot of chores. Living with chronic pain is like having an unwelcome guest to stay in your house, someone you don;t want there, and yet you can't get rid!! Neuropathy is cruel - invisible, and all engulfing, to the point of being terrifying at times. It is impossible to explain to anyone who doesn't suffer from the condition just how strange it is to have an arm that feels as if it is being burned/frozen/crushed/shredded and yet looks totally normal, and to have pins and needles everywhere if there is so much as a breeze in the room. And yet this is how I have lived my life for the past 18 years, and the pain is getting worse.

That is why we are going to Spain and why I wanted the adventure of a second home. This is my life - here and now - and I want to experience as much as possible in case my health doesn;t hold out forever. That haunts me and I know it haunts J.

I am going to settle down to write tomorrow evening. I can;t do 50,000 words in a month. But I can write 1000 words a day and that is enough for me to carve out the rest of my book and to recast my memoir. All that will have to change if I get to know my sister a little.

I haven;t written about that. We called in to see my parents. I hadn;t seen them for 35 years the first time I went about 7 weeks ago. This was my 3rd visit, and my sister H was there. She was friendly but guarded, and quite formal. I really liked her and just hope that we get to know each other a little better but it will have to be on her terms. I disappeared and it is not her fault that we are estranged. I was the one who ran away and complicated her life as a child. I cannot now imagine the pain and hurt that my family went through, but I had to do things my own way. I could not have grown in a fundamentalist religious household, I doubt I could have survived at all.
When I was young music was my religion, and Beethoven the God-like figure above all others. Now it is Bach I love above all else, but music is no longer a religion. It still has the power to move me above all other arts or even religion itself, but it is now music and that is quite enough!

Well - enough for today. I think I will take my sore throat and cold to bed early tonight and try to get rid of them - again! Or should I say - yet again. I am sure much of this illness is stress related but even so I can't do anything but suffer this bug until it goes away. On Saturday I couldn't even get out of bed my temp. was so high, so at least I have managed to DO something useful today and restore order to our home - partially at least! I would so love to make it a palace...

I have been looking at books to get rid of - but it is an impossible task. They all look so inviting and I want to read them ALL. Oh well. We will have to live in our library rather than our palace! J won't mind.

words of comfort..

2009-11-12T17:34:00.001Z

"This being human is as a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of it's furniture. Still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond."

~Rumi

This is a very mature way of dealing with psychic hurt and harm. I don't know whether I am - even at my age -mature enough to deal with hurt in this way. But for sure I have always used every experience, however horrific, as a learning curve, as something from which to grow.

Just now I am dealing with my daughter's anger and her upset with me, my mother is dying and has dementia and I will never have the chance to talk to her again, my birth family will not contact me, my son is very very distant, and my creativity seems to have gone out for a walk. I hope the latter isn;t permanent, the other things ? I don;t know.

It is hard to stay positive. I feel as though I am walking through glue. I cannot make headway. Its all very odd and difficult. Having said that, I am not depressed, just sad which is different. And lacking in energy which I think is my own fault - not eating properly or sleeping enough. I can;t keep anything regular - eating sleeping writing etc - without J here it seems. He gives my life its meaning.

He's coming tomorrow though - at last. Thank goodness!

away from J

2009-11-08T23:30:00.000Z

Well, its been over a week since J went back to Wallasey and I have been here with my son. It's been ok but very strange to be without my husband. I feel strangely as though I were widowed again, most odd. Just the thought of getting up in the morning and jumping into a bath is foreign without someone to do this most basic of functions for and that is exactly how it was when I was first alone.

I don;t really understand why but the separation brings back all the memories of the anguish and terror of loss - especially such sudden loss. I think if I were to write about widowhood, the things I would mention most are the fear and the aching lonliness. The first was most unexpected, and still strikes at me in strange ways. I have difficulty in getting out into unfamiliar places on my own, I have to force myself into meeting new people, and I struggle when I spend too long without some company - although I don;t need someone to be actually in the house as it were. Very strange.

I do like my own company more than I used to, but then I suppose I have always liked to read, to sew, to practice, to listen to music so now that I am older being alone is not such an issue. But being separated from the person I love most is hard, even though I know I will see him at the end of the week.

I wish I could achieve more, but seeing D and A today, and realising how much pleasure they take in just being together, having a life that doesn't depend on notions of success and reward but in the knowledge that their love for each other and their families is their touchstone, has shown me that I need not strive all the time. It is enough to be sometimes, and to wait for life to show you the way. I think, perhaps, I have been forcing the pace. I certainly did when I first moved in with J, anxious not to impose myself on him in my lonliness, and aware that my lack of friends in a strange city was putting him under a certain degree of pressure. I went everywhere, joined things, made friends almost too quickly. Now, I have put the brakes on. I recognise that I need time to think, to see, to be. I can't run around all the time from person to person. Sometimes, when I feel anti-social, then its ok to be antisocial. I need the space to breathe mentally.

Living with my son like this, just the two of us, is to have travelled through a time warp. He may be 25 at the end of this year, and have travelled and lived abroad, but as soon as he comes home he is back to his mummy and just lives his 14 year old life again. Do sons ever grow up? I watch and wait. He is kind, he has charm and is intelligent as his father was, and I hope that soon - very soon - someone falls in love with this young man who I love dearly, and that he falls in love as well. I think that will make him happiest, however strenuously he denies it.

I think that aquiring this little flat in Leeds has been a wise move. It gives us life at the coast and north Wales, but a life of the soul here in Yorkshire amongst dear and very loved friends. As I approach my 58th birthday I relish the prospect of next year, with J, and with a very different way of life to come.

Nanowrimo week 1

2009-11-08T01:01:00.000Z

I am trying so hard to write my first 50,000word novel but I am stuck- I am swimming in detail and words and the plot is not progessing. I don't know how to move the thing on.

Do I just carry on, or do I jump and then come back and fill this difficult passage in? I know what happens afterwords, I know what the affect will be on the characters of what is about to happen to them, but how to do it? I know there is a really really good novel in there. The characters are all correct, the plot is correct, I like the way they speak and I write good speech (there, at least I am being honest for once) but I actually prefer to read descriptive writing and I am writing short staccato sentences, a hangover from a writing group I attended and which almost destroyed my wish to write. This is the last blow of their influence on me.

The advice to writes is to show and not tell. I don;t understand this yet and will have to find out what it all means as I progress. It is like learning a craft, and I don;t know why I find it so discouraging that it is difficult. At least, even if I do this badly, I will end up with a 50,000word novel on my computer and one that is ready to take to pieces and rewrite. I suspect one of my difficulties is that what I really want to write is a long family saga, and what I am doing is something much more racy. How to combine these two elements in what is really a first draft novel is so hard for me.

Perseverance - and writing this journal will help me to excercise my writing muscles. Thats the hope.

Now - coffee and a 3 hour stretch of novel to see what happens next. Maybe I will like the next section more. Wish me bon voyage.....

first posting

2009-11-08T00:43:00.000Z

The first posting in this new blog. I want it for once, to be about me, the real me, to share what I am thinking, hoping, fearing, creating. I want to learn how to use its features, to learn to write honestly instead of always hiding.

I have been reading Nina Bagley's astonishingly personal blog called Ornamental and I love it. She also requires solitude, loves nature - and her dog and her walks with him - and she quotes a lot of poetry.

That is the kind of blog I want to create here, one that is emotionally open and honest, and is somewhere for me to experiment with my writing, and also my creativity - my altered art, my stitching, and to write about how my life experiences shape all these things. I am going to leave this blog open - private matters are attended to elsewhere. I just hope I can find some kindred spirits to connect with.