Halloween

The most recent attempt to finish a Harry Potter novel. Failure once again in spite of the cat’s unexpected attempt to up the fear factor (moral: always have a camera to hand). I realise I am in a minority.

****

One stormy night this week a friend and I cycled home in the dark along the river path. A section unlit, overgrown and so narrow that we pedalled silently in single file, headlights bobbing in the dark like a pair of foolhardy fireflies. Rain beat in our faces and the cold cut to the bone but exertion and waterproofs minimised the discomfort.

Elemental. The river to our left, a dim, eerie grey-green, its surface ruffled and harried by the force of the wind. Bare willow branches tossed this way and yon, in terror or ecstasy. Wet face and hair and a pulse of wild exhilaration.

****

Halloween

Imminence. Deep darkness
wraps itself around us:
hidden lanterns glow.

Voices

Vocal workshop. Thirty something of us locals, a dozen or so of the fabulous American touring choir who were running the event, all of us in the assembly hall of a local primary school, the women in bright colours, a good few in pink and fuschia and mauve, harmonizing by happy accident with the purple plastic chairs.

And we sang all day a cappella, learning as we went. African choruses. A Georgian song. Traditional American gospel. Appalachian folk. Shape note. Slap down on perfectionism and the urge to get it right. How is the body, how is the breath? Stay loose. Are you enjoying it?

I was still husky after the flu. Doesn’t matter. Just go outside and cough while the others create wave upon wave of sound, soprano, alto, tenor, bass, and then drink and come back in again, the chorus goes on, just join in when you can. Float on the ocean. Sing.

I can fit in as a soprano or alto. I am happiest in the higher range, soaring. The point of choral singing is not to listen to your own voice, you can’t hear it anyway. It is to sound the note with your throat and your belly and your heart, with your whole body, every cell, and to trust that it will reach the right place, the place where it needs to go.

Magpies

Flu. Off work. Aching back. Scrambled brain.

****

Candle and incense lit. Can’t focus on the breath. Or chant. Through the window a low, grey sky as the wind separates more leaves from the branches of the rowan tree.

A pair of magpies chuckle and squawk on a neighbour’s nearby roof. I don’t get the dislike these birds apparently evoke - they can be garrulous and, um, assertive, to be sure but they are also beautiful and there is a dash of entertaining villainy about them. Rather attractive, all that thieving.

Hard to sit still.

****

Finished: Restless, William Boyd. Well written spy story.
Surfed the net: Sporadically. Found this illuminating op-ed in the New York Times on the global implications of the current financial mayhem.
Watched: 2 episodes of the West Wing.
Watched: News bulletins. Lots of them: elections: climate change: Afghanistan: credit crunch. Retained some of it.
Purchased: The Millenium Collection - Tim Hardin (via Amazon). I had an LP of Tim Hardin in the 70s which I lost. Like many other things in that decade.

Drank rooibos tea.
Used one full box of tissues.
Coughed.
Fretted
Slept.
Cabin fever.

****

Two magpies.

One for sorrow
Two for joy ...

Viaduct

Circumstances seem to require you to make a fairly major decision. So you do. Then you are persuaded to unmake it. Loose ends abound. Bah. One of the hardest delusions to relinquish is the stubborn, nagging belief that life should at all times be tidy.

****

Back to last weekend.

Durham. We imagined we would be impressed by the cathedral and the castle as indeed we were, especially by the former which is extraordinary and moving and deserves a blog post of its own. Maybe another time.

But very, very early on Sunday morning, sneaking out alone, it was the railway viaduct - a Victorian engineering masterpiece that rarely makes the tourist brochures - that worked the unlooked for magic. I love the cathedral-like curve and sweep of the arches, the regularity and strength of the massive stone supports, the combination of stone and brick, its grace and scale.











It dwarfs the houses beneath ...



and the castle on the horizon.

On the prowl on the scruffier side of town, absorbed in colour and light and shade and camera angles. No traffic. Empty beer cans in the gutter. Two men, obviously friends, walk their dogs.

Proximity

You’ve been travelling since that morning and now the sun is going down behind the hill at the end of a limpid autumn day and along with a dozen others you’re waiting at the little Victorian station at Great Malvern for the final train to take you home. Last leg of the journey.

The body itches and aches with travel fatigue, a day of sitting too long, not moving enough. You walk along the platform, pulling the suitcase behind you, and take a few photographs. It has been a good few days away, a respite from the reports of financial meltdown and a reminder of reality, of the nuts and bolts of living in close proximity with another person for more than three hours at a time. It can be done.

Back to the bench. Two teenagers walk over and sit down. Extremely 21st century, boyfriend/girlfriend, pale, dressed in black with spiky hair and a clusters of metal studs in nose, mouth and ears, they exchange sentences in a desultory fashion. At first sight they seem edgy, hostile even, yet their conversation becomes surprisingly conventional. College. Examinations. Friends. How to navigate through the next seven days without upsetting the parents.

You’re not used to young people these days except as the collective subject of doom-ridden news items. In spite of wariness and mammoth preconceptions, you warm to these two.

Nothing to fear here. Nothing to envy either, not really.

Behind us the cool moon rises, almost full.

River Path

Click to enlarge.


Brown water murmurs
and churns,
its current
tugging fretfully
at the willow branches.
Come with me.

....

A boy on a red bicycle
hurrying to reach
his future
anxious to overtake me,
saying excuse me
pedals by.

....

I move aside
and watch them pass.

Jolt

So what do you do, as was the case yesterday, when the bank that has been looking after your modest rainy day savings suddenly freezes the account - this is the money you have put by in case the roof blows off or the boiler dies one cold day in December or even both at once - and reports indicate that your cash, your security, your thin financial cushion, has disappeared down a large black hole somewhere in Reykjavik and may not be seen again?

The first reaction was victim guilt. I had obviously done something wrong, had lusted after the relatively high interest rates dangled in front of me and had committed an unforgiveable error of judgement.

Then anger. Then clodding fear.

Evening. I phoned my sister, who reminded me that I have a roof over my head and food in the cupboard. She also made me laugh.

Today I picked up the camera and deliberately decided for the sake of sanity to pay attention to the moment as I walked to work. Any serenity I could hope to find during the coming twenty-four hours would be as a result of living second by second.

On a morning like this, surprisingly easy.







At work I made coffee for my colleagues and sat down at the desk. The phone rang. The boss calling from home. She had just heard on the radio that The Chancellor of the Exchequer is going to look after me and my 300,000 or so compatriots in the same boat. All this on the same day that my fellow taxpayers and I apparently took ownership of every bank in the country. Crazy.

Yes. I am relieved. Very. Aware of my personal good fortune and embarrassed to be in this situation. Goodness knows what is happening to our world, economically and politically, right now but hopefully it might be at least a partial cleaning out of some pretty filthy Augean stables and not simply total madness.

Me, I am a bit more awake than I was last Monday.

Of Cats and Men

From the Hebrides, c. 1930, Iain the herd boy with his cat, Eachunn.

A friend in Scotland sent me this postcard last week. For framing, definitely. If he is still alive, Iain would be very old now.

It reminded me of a June evening in Italy ten years ago ...



... when the man behind the counter of a small hardware shop - I was trying to buy batteries - allowed me to take a snap of him and his cat. He nodded when I asked if I could photograph the animal, scooped up the sleeping feline from his place on the counter and led us outside.

Not a good shot, technically speaking (what is that thing that seems to be coming out of the young man’s ears?). The day was fading fast and the cat was struggling to get down. I think the obliging shopkeeper was happy though and I certainly was.

Something about this combination of men (or boys) and cats undoes me. The two cats appear to be startled and pissed-off respectively, but look at the expressions on the faces of the humans .....

Journeys

Northamptonshire two weeks ago, South Wales for a massage training this coming weekend. At the end of next week the train to the North of England for a few days break with an old friend and former work colleague.

This is the first time since the move that I have travelled further afield than Bristol or Cardiff. The globetrotting days are largely over but in the future it should still be possible to walk in the Welsh mountains or take the National Express coach to London to stay with N for a few days, or even visit Birmingham (never been!).Or do some conservation volunteering. Or rent out the house and go to India for a year.

Or, most daring of all, catch the local bus and spend ten days with these people ...

***

Each day the mind climbs into its hamster wheel and runs and runs. Uncertain, draining times. I need to bite the bullet and ask difficult questions when I return to work briefly next week. One way or another, hard decisions need to be taken.

***

Repeating patterns. The older I get the more they are apparent. When I switch on the news. In my own life. The work. The addictions, greater and lesser. Loves chosen and rejected. The supposed free choices made.

Maybe real freedom is simply to know this, to understand, and with this knowledge to move into the unknown.

Time to go to work.