Grandmothers

I was sitting in bed yesterday morning writing a long newsy email to some old friends of ours, when the family member who declines to be named rang up. It was 7.10. He said MsX was ill and both he and the lovely Jaine had important meetings at work they could not easily miss, and could I go over and look after MsX. 

I said yes, and got out of bed and etc and set off. It takes half an hour to drive to their house. MsX was most unwell. No temperature, but very waxy and completely lacking in energy and her usual vivaciousness. I took over from her dad and he went upstairs to his home office. 

An hour later my poor little granddaughter was violently sick all over me and herself and the sofa. I felt so sorry for her. We cleaned her up and I found clean clothes for her, and I changed into some of her dad’s joggers while my jeans were in the wash.

But the point of this story is that in her clothes drawer I found a cardigan that could only have been knitted by my mother. The style was so distinctive. It must have been made for MsX’s 20 year old cousin and passed along. I put it on her.

My mother died 16 years ago and I loved the connection between my mother and this great granddaughter she had never met. And I also loved being reminded of my wonderful mother.

Later, after MsX had vomited violently for a second time,  I was cuddling her and rocking her to soothe and comfort her and found myself instinctively singing My Bonny lies over the ocean, and then Clementine. These were songs my gran used to sing to me at bedtime when I was little. 

How I love these threads that stretch back through the generations, and that anchor me to my roots.

And here’s a poem by Norah Hanson called Grafters, which I have permission to share with you. It’s from her collection Sparks and is published by Valley Press.

In love with Van Gogh

I just had a 36 hour whirlwind trip to the smoke to grab some culture.

Because of the dire weather warnings and the sheet ice across the width of our lane, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it, or even to get home again afterwards, but Dave is the man for extreme weather and he drove me to the train in Chesterfield.

I stayed with Het, my lovely friend and partner in crime. This is the official selfie for the trip.

I wanted to see the National Gallery exhibition of Van Gogh paintings called Poets and Lovers. I decided in September that I wanted to see it, and it has since had five star reviews from all the leading papers. And no wonder it has. It was so uplifting. It was stupendous. And I have come back with great memories and lots of inspiration for my paintings. It’s the most memorable exhibition I’ve seen since I saw the Hockney A Bigger Picture in 2012. (Which incidentally gets a mention in my book Plotting for Grown-ups.)

We also went to see the Monet in London exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, another sell out. I booked those tickets for us, and Het was in charge of the Van Gogh booking at the National Gallery. After a hairy glitch - when we thought we’d be missing it - Het managed to snag slots for us at 9 a.m. on Saturday morning. Thank goodness for the glitch! We were the first in the queue when the gallery opened, alongside a couple who had flown in from Canada just to see the exhibition! When they told us that, I thought ‘that’s a bit extreme’ but in retrospect…I’m sure it was worth the trip.

Being there first thing in the morning - an hour earlier that the gallery usually opens - meant it was possible to see all the paintings up close with no crowds. When I’ve been to other major exhibitions there have been so many people milling around it has not been ideal. On Saturday it felt like a private viewing. And there were so many paintings I had never come across before. They’d been flown in from all over the world, a handful even from private collections. Rock on the curators who organised the exhibition. I really was blown away by the paintings. My favourites were of the gardens and this one of the olive trees, 

But I was also taken with The Peasant:

There was interesting quote displayed from Van Gogh’s letters which relates to this (as well as to other paintings.)

The last time I saw Van Gogh it was an immersive experience in Denver, which I did not enjoy at all. I love Van Gogh’s painting, I love his paintings - the colour, the vibrancy, the emotion! I’m still aglow with the experience a day later. I’ll remember it for a long time, and it is going to influence my work.

Letter from home

Yesterday I did it.

I sat down and wrote to my new MP (Labour in our constituency for the first time since 1832 - which has a spuriously accurate ring to it, so I hope I have remembered it correctly.) 

I wrote to protest at the U.K. government’s tolerance of the atrocities of Israel.

I wrote to our old Tory MP many times, by email. Yesterday I wrote in longhand and covered two sides of A4, and paid for a first class stamp. 

I didn’t plan what I was going to write, I just wrote from the heart, and it was very cathartic. It was terrifically cathartic. I recommend it.

Today we have woken up to snow. This is the view from my studio window.

The roads around here are icy and dangerous so I have cancelled my lunch with Chrissie. I hope we’ll have a FaceTime instead.

I went to MsX’s birthday party on Sunday. She was two. Our other grandchildren are 12, 14, 18 and 20 so it’s a big treat to have a little one in the family again.

It was a family party, and she was the only child. Everyone had taken her presents, but for the first two hours all she was interested in was playing with the helium balloons, and then later, spinning round and round until she was so dizzy she fell over, laughing. She’s a sensation seeker, that girl. 

Our two grandsons are now amazing adults, and Cece and Lux will be adults soon and I expect ( although of course I can’t know) I’ll still be here to see how they turn out. 

This is them in 2018:

This is them now:

By the time MsX is an adult I’ll be over 90, and that fact is really and truly the only thing that makes me want to be still around at that age. I’ve had a good life, and 90 years of it will be enough. 

Tired

Here I am, slumped back on the pillows in bed, fully dressed, exhausted.

It is 3.44 pm on Friday afternoon and I am done in. 

I slept well last night and all I have done today so far is:

Talk on the phone to Liz about one of my paintings, do 15 minutes of yoga for the bad back* I got from gardening yesterday, reply to various easy emails, make enough leek and potato soup to feed 10 people tomorrow at an event at Quaker Meeting, (I am sharing the catering), work on a painting while listening to dramatised Rumpole stories on Audible, have an overdue catch up with my sister Jen on the phone, eat lunch (some of the soup) and remember that leeks no longer agree with me, paint some more and feel so tired I go to bed and watch an episode of Gilmore Girls on my iPad, and then do half an hour’s gardening. 

I am soooo tired, too tired to read, and anyway the book on the bedside table is one I am not enjoying, despite the fact that the writing is wonderful.

I sit here and remember that another week has gone by and I have not written to my MP about the genocide. He is a new MP and Dave has not yet managed to get a response from him, though Dave has written to him half a dozen times. And yet it was on my to do list. I know it will not make a blind bit of difference because if Starmer has done nothing thus far he will certainly not be speaking out now.  But what else is there to do?

When I am in or on the bed and all else fails,  I pick up a poetry book. The one on the bedside table today is Being Human, which is a wonderful anthology in the same series as Staying Alive and Being Alive. I open it at random and this is what I find:

* I discovered a wonderful yoga teacher online who does 15 minutes of easy yoga exercises that never fail to cure my lower back pain I get from gardening. It’s like magic. 

Here is a link 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeXz8fIZDCE

Here we are

 Well, I’ve read more than enough articles now on why Trump won and Harris lost. The most convincing explanation to me is that Americans felt richer when Trump was last in power. That was because of all the government’s social and economic programmes laid on because of Covid. People felt better off, more secure, and inflation was low. After lockdown, Biden was unable to continue those programmes, though he tried, and now people feel insecure, poor and they’re coping with high inflation. 

And yet, and yet, how could they vote for someone with so many unpleasant characteristics, someone who threatens democracy as well as the future of the world?

I’ve realised that just like the issue of the current genocide in Gaza…there are two distressing aspects of Trump’s victory - the very fact of it, and the fact that millions and millions of Americans are willing to vote for such a person. 

With the tragedy in Gaza, there’s the fact of it, and then there’s the fact that the world’s leaders are watching it and letting it happen.

But I am not going to read any more about America for a while, and I can currently not bear to go beyond the headlines on Gaza.

“To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.” (Jack Gilbert from his poem Brief for the Defence.)

So…

Real life at Hepworth Towers has been good. I have not minded the lack of sunshine because it has been perfect cycling and gardening weather: dry, mild and there’s so far been no frost, which means that there are still some nasturtiums in flower. Yay!

This is one that’s self seeded on the front patio: I love self seeded flowers in awkward places. Perhaps it’s a metaphor: beauty which challenges the orthodoxy. How’s about that for a bit of philosophising on a Monday morning? ( I’m also loving that I used three colons in the last two paragraphs - I love colons and semi colons, and you don’t see a whole lot outside academia.)

The other happy thing is that my daylight lamp has extended my painting time enormously. This means I don’t have to choose between outdoor activities and painting. I can do both. I can start painting at 3 pm for example, when the light is beginning to fade. I no longer dread the dark days of winter. Here is my first painting of the autumn:

I realise it’s Remembrance Day today. We - at Bakewell Quaker Meeting - had our peace vigil last week. Every year the country remembers the soldiers who died in past wars, and every year the country sells billions of pounds worth of arms so more wars can happen. And here at home we waste billions on nuclear weapons, when so many children don’t have enough to eat. 

Our banner last week read:

Darkness

 And today, November 6th 2024, the world became even darker.

Genocide then and now

 When you arrive at Denver airport you walk over a long curved bridge to reach immigration. There is haunting music playing and all along the walls are large portraits of Native American chiefs. The first time I encountered this display I was very moved, though I’ve been there so many times now that the effect has diminished.

Denver International Airport
(Copyright: the above )

A friend of mine has just come back from a work trip to Colorado and he said in an email:

"One of the things I've been perhaps oversensitive to around Denver (and elsewhere in US), is e.g. the pictures of Chiefs on the arrivals wall, and the number of places that say some variant of 'This place used to belong to the indiginous population, but we massacred them and drove them out' (Rocky Mountain National Park leaflet says this, as well as the Univ Colorado lab in Boulder I visited.) I find that all a bit disturbingly close to what's going on in Palestine now, and doesn't bode well for the acceptable end to it."

And still our Prime Minister and so many other western leaders refuse to recognise and condemn the brutal war crimes and genocidal offensives of Israel, or take any actions to stop them. 

It’s no wonder that some poor anguished souls, broken by compassion, feel so powerless in the face of such wilful complicity that they end up setting themselves alight in front of embassy buildings.