post Xmas blues....

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

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 ...........

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.....

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!!

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

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.

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