Old crocks on the road

 If you book something called a ‘private en-suite room’ you expect to be able to step out of bed take a couple of steps and sit on the loo, don’t you? 

Liz and I stayed in a great Youth Hostel last week and I was lucky enough to have a room with a double bed and views of Swaledale and fresh beech leaves.

It was billed as en-suite, which I’d been very pleased about because I need to go to the loo in the middle of the night at least twice. At home, I creep along the landing in the dark and manage to stay semi comatose so I can slip straight back to sleep. But this “en-suite” room was outside my bedroom door and up twelve steep steps. 

When you got to the top there was a cavernous room where a bright light went on automatically. It was palatial and it had the same lovely views…

but it wasn’t exactly what an old crock like me was looking for when she books an en-suite. 😀

Having said all of that, I loved the hostel, and I loved the trip. We had chilly temperatures, sunshine and showers, in which we never got soaked, and that was far preferable to dry weather with a blank grey sky. Swaledale and Wensleydale were looking lovely, and we had some good walks. But when two dopey friends in their seventies go for a five mile hike there are sometimes hiccups…

I missed a footpath sign that was plain to see;

In a churchyard Liz found some unusual flowers “Sue, come and look at these, they’re like a tiny sedum! Oh! They’re plastic!”

Trying to find the way is a palaver when you have to take off your rucksack to find your reading glasses before you can read the map;

Forgetting to take your walking poles and really needing them on slippy wet stones;

Photo by Liz. Note my pose.

Forgetting to take your mats for coffee break and having to adopt the one buttock pose against a drystone wall;

Thinking you’re talking to your friend and look up to see it’s a friendly stranger you’ve been discussing a calendar with;

We visited waterfalls which were not very full, though still impressive in their way:

Hardraw Force

Aysgarth Middle Falls

Aysgarth Lower Falls

Now I’m home and have an equally lovely view from the bedroom window. 

I’m getting ready to submit some paintings for an art exhibition. Wish me luck.

Meanwhile, here are some extra photos of the holiday…

Photo by Liz

Passing it on

  My sweet pea seedlings have been living on the bedroom windowsill for weeks, but on Friday I decided they were hearty enough to go outside in the cold frame. So now I have regained my lovely uncluttered view of the spring trees.

Yesterday was a Refugee Hospitality Day, for which I prepared five lunch dishes. I also went down to the Meeting House to help set out the crafts and games. And I took these posies for the lunch tables.

Last year, two of the committee resigned for personal and health reasons before I had the chance to say that I wanted to reduce my contribution, because it was getting to be too much. I have been a key member of the small committee for 9 years, since the beginning, and I was finding the days stressful as well as the usual exhausting. I felt very sad, because I still believed in the events we have run. Our guests have loved the days they have spent with us in Bakewell, and we have found them so rewarding. It has felt like such a worthwhile and community-affirming enterprise, and such a positive thing to do in this world rife with hate, particularly against refugees.

But the resignations meant we had insufficient people power to carry on, as only one person was still able to give 100%. He was determined to continue somehow. And then one of our newest volunteers couldn’t believe that such a great initiative should be ending, and said she’d be on the committee, so there were two members, but still not enough.

This was the situation last September. I was feeling sad and concerned. Should I have stepped back? 

But the upshot was that a new committee was formed, with me as background advisor, still providing as much cooking as always, and helping to set up on the day. And yesterday the first one happened. I was there at the beginning and the ending, and it had obviously been another wonderful day. Visitors and volunteers were smiling and happy. They were speaking in a circle about what they had enjoyed most in the day, and there was a lot of laughter.

I helped clear up, and pack away the crafts, and then came home. I am pleased - with all my heart - that this enterprise/project that has been going for so long, and that I have been a key player in, is going to continue. 

Empty space

The longer I leave between blog posts the harder it becomes to write a new one.

Who wants to read about politics these days? It’s all dire.

Who wants to hear me wittering on about being 76 and trying to work out where I fit in the world?

This morning my elder brother suggested I should read through my blog book (Days Are Where We Live) and decide what works, and then write something. But all the posts in the blog book work…that’s why I picked them. They were the best posts from the years 2010 - 2019 (inclusive.) There was a lot of dross left out. 

Talking to him about the blog helped me clarify my thoughts about it. In order to write a successful post, it’s not like writing a diary entry: something has to happen that makes me feel a certain way  - amused or intrigued, puzzled or sad, happy or angry - and it’s the feelings that prompt me to write. 

And the situation right now is this: I feel as though I’ve said everything there is to say about my life from day to day. I am still puzzling about what my role is at this age/stage. And lastly, the feelings I have now about everyday life are generally ones I don’t want to air in public discussion.

For some reason I have not been able to paint for weeks, but today I finished this:

Or perhaps it isn’t finished. I can’t say right now.

And neither can I say if the blog is finished. So keep dropping in to see.

It’s been a bright cold day in May. I’ve felt under par. There’s a refugee hospitality day on Saturday and I am contributing to that in various ways. And next week I’m going to Wensleydale for three days with my friend Liz. After that - who knows?

Idle and blessed

 I share my angst with you on the blog, so I am going to share my happiness too.

We are not having the heating on at all because of the price of domestic heating oil, and when at teatime we haven’t yet lit the fire, and I feel cold and miserable, I dread next winter, with rationed heating. But… now that the spring is here I’m saying to myself with absolutely no effort, Don’t think about next winter, it’s lovely now. Enjoy now! 

Finally - thanks to the awfulness out there - I have achieved being in the now, enjoying the moment.

This morning I rode up the Monsal Trail as far as Millers Dale station and locked up my bike, and walked down the steps to the river. There is a lot of sunshine to be had down there because the leaves on the trees are not fully out. I found a comfy spot and drank my coffee 

and sat looking at the river, listening to the river, lapping up the sunshine, and I was perfectly happy. Not a worry. not a disturbing thought. How lucky am I to have such lovely places so accessible? The price I pay for them is the long dark winters, but now I am here, in the sunny spring, being “idle and blessed.”

The quote is from Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day”

A pedestrian post

This last week was swallowed up in buying a car, although I did fit in two long walks with friends as well, as respite.

But back to the car. 

Our car must be relatively inexpensive. It is to get us from A to B, with plenty of usable room for Dave to transport all his DIY stuff. We don’t need touchscreens, Bluetooth or any of the latest tech. We like basic. But we like reliable. Our first car was a battered old Land Rover and Dave still yearns for it. He once mended the exhaust pipe with a Heinz baby food tin and a couple of jubilee clips.

The second thing to say is that although Dave can mend and make anything in wood, car mechanics is a blind spot. And I am completely lacking in any ability or aptitude for anything more complicated than a screwdriver. So…we don’t feel adequate when it comes to buying cars, and dread it when we need to, because our current one is getting past it. We are also very straightforward people who don’t like argy bargy.

Thank goodness that the salesman was a good guy and we bought a car we are pleased with. There is a much bigger story behind all of this, but it’s one I can’t tell on the blog. Suffice to say that the salesman made our week so much nicer, and in various ways. Thank you, R.

Despite all of this, we ended the week worn out with stress. My aging hippy friend Karen has a word for this which I’m going to adopt - shredded. I talked to another friend of a similar age and we agreed that dealing with heavy duty admin is so taxing at this age that we try to do it in the morning, and certainly not after five o clock. And on some days we don’t feel up to it at all, as in “I can’t face fixing up the car insurance today, I’ll do it tomorrow.”

I am glorying in the spring, and our garden is full of colour. 

Three year old MsX is also glorying in the spring. She said to her mum “I love spring. I love spring. I hate winter. It’s my worst day of the week.”

And at Hepworth Towers the next grown up thing we need to do is sort out the roof.

A long letter from home

 I went to pick up MsX from nursery this week. (Sorry, MsX! Sorry! Not nursery, but pre-school, because she’s three and she’s a big girl now…This is what she would say to me.) 

And as we set off home down the road the first thing she said was “I love spring.”

“So do I,” I said.

And I do, but as I was hanging out the washing this morning, the opening lines of T S Eliot’s The Waste Land came to mind…

April is the cruellest month, breeding  

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing 

memory and desire, stirring 

dead roots with spring rain.

…because I feel in a weird frame of mind right now. Boxed in, restless and useless, with a background anxiety. 

I’m sure the state of the world, and the possible future of the world is mostly to blame for my unease, but it’s also the spring, and it’s also my age, with all that implies - waning energy, awareness of the shortness of life, trying to make the most of every day while also trying to plan for an increasingly uncertain future.

Every day my email inbox fills with messages from pressure groups - Campaign Against the Arms Trade, CND, Safe Passage, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Refuser Solidarity Network, Jewish Voice for Peace, the Good Shepherd Collective, Upbeat Communities, the BDS movement, the Good Law Project… and most of them want me to do something - write a letter, give money, sign a petition, go on a march, and I sometimes do what they ask, and sometimes I don’t read the emails - it’s all too much. But I can’t delete them either, because that would mean that what they’re writing about isn’t important, or that the plight of the people they’re writing about doesn’t matter. So the emails sit there, accusing me, worrying me.

I have been working on a painting for three weeks now and it’s been making me miserable because I can’t get it right, so I’ve finally put it to one side. I might go back to it in the future. Dave says that all artists have paintings they put to one side and keep returning to, sometimes over years, because they can’t get them right. I am sure that’s true. The trouble is I have no idea what I want to paint instead.

This  - above - was the blog post I was writing yesterday, and it didn’t come to a conclusion, except I thought I might use this Mary Oliver poem, which is always a comfort.

But this morning when I woke up and the sun was shining and the tender new leaves of the copper beech looked even more beautiful than yesterday

Yesterday afternoon at 4pm

This morning at 6.24

and I thought it would be better to write a post listing things that happened this week that made me happy, so…

The new leaves - particularly on the copper beeches and silver birches in our garden

Sitting in Meeting last Sunday morning with all the other Friends, with the sun pouring in through the high windows

Sitting in Chrissie’s garden with her on Tuesday, eating lunch

FaceTiming with Lux in Colorado on Tuesday

The time I spent with MsX on Thursday

Having lunch with Dave on Friday at our favourite cafe, The Old Smithy at Beeley

Talking to Liz on the phone yesterday morning early

Hanging out the washing in the sunshine yesterday

After tea yesterday when Dave brought home a wonderful doll’s house we bought from the small ads for MsX to play with and it was ten times nicer than the ad had led me to believe it was, so much so that I wanted to ring up and invite the family to come over today just so we could play with it.

I realise that bike rides aren’t in the list and that’s because when it wasn’t raining I had other commitments.

So. There you are. That’s me.

How are YOU all coping with this increasingly disturbing and uncertain world?

Matchboxes

I read in the paper yesterday that Selfridges are selling posh matchboxes for as much as £843. Apparently…

There are cheaper ones than £843: they have some at £70. Well, well.

The last time we ran out of matches, I couldn’t find any on sale in either local  supermarket, but only in a small, sparsely stocked local shop. Matches don’t seem to be a staple any more, though they are in this house, where we depend on our log burning stoves for warmth.

When I have returned from visiting Isaac and family in Colorado, I have usually brought home at least one match box  - either from Bar Taco, my favourite Friday night place for margaritas, or from Brasserie Ten Ten, a European styled restaurant that Isaac and I like a lot. 

Isaac and me, August 2024

These matchboxes join the other small keepsakes from Colorado I keep in a box somewhere safe. 

But missing our American family, and wondering when, if ever, it will be safe to visit them again, I decided to use a box of Bar Taco matches, so I think of them every day when I light the fire. 

The other day on the phone I said to Wendy - “I wonder if you and I will ever be able to go to The Buff again for breakfast.” Breakfast at The Buff with Wendy is a staple event early on in every visit to Boulder: we have a thorough, frank catch-up. We both feel most comfortable when we talk straight. I feel blessed to have such a daughter-in-law as Wendy.

All this has made me think of that saying “You never know when it is the last time you do something.” It’s another version of treasuring the moment. Another version of being mindful.

How I miss them all. Fortunately they are planning on a summer visit here. I hope the jet fuel won’t have run out by then.

Peace and quiet

I’m sorry for being quiet but it’s been hard to think straight this week as we have had three skilled hardworking men in the house fitting new windows. The work makes a lot of noise - it’s inevitable. And the rooms are in turmoil, one after another, as things are moved away from the windows. The new windows are a success, and will mean Dave doesn’t have to paint them every five years, or replace ones that go rotten because of the harsh weather, because they won’t be going rotten.

And look at this view from our bay window…

It will all be worth it, though at the end of the first day Dave and I were utterly done in. And although we take it in turns to go out on our bikes, there’s a lot of time spent here within earshot of the noise, and it addles my brain. Today, being Saturday, we have peace and quiet. What sweet relief.

The other day I was enjoying some peace and quiet away from home, sitting thinking and drinking coffee mid bike-ride on this bench above Eyam…

when a passer by walking his dog decided to come and chat. I was friendly and responded but his chat went on and on and on, and wasn’t along lines I welcomed particularly - the “fact” that windmills are useless, and we should be drilling for oil,  - and I felt resentful that my peaceful time should be snatched away by someone who then wanted to tell me what Trump should have done, which I could guess was something I absolutely didn’t agree with, so I stood up, and said it was time I got home.

But as I cycled away I thought that actually I should have stayed and put the other point of view, because otherwise he might never consider it.

I usually welcome interactions with people I don’t know. That’s why I always go in the supermarket checkout with someone behind the till. That’s why I talk to people on the bus. I think it’s important to have normal human interactions and conversations with strangers - human connection needs nurturing, particularly nowadays when technology and bots are taking the humanity out of everyday transactions.

I once met a woman from London who said she resented people she didn’t know talking to her in public places: she regarded it as an intrusion on her personal space. I was shocked at the time, but this is how I felt on Wednesday with the man, and it wasn’t only because I didn’t much like him. I was mid bike ride, escaping from noise and turmoil at home, and he spoiled it.

When I cycled up the Monsal Trail yesterday I said good morning or hello to five separate people walking or cycling in the other direction, and not one acknowledged the greeting. I know why: they were tourists, most probably from the south. Locals (unknown to me) would have responded. But later when I stopped my bike and was looking in my pannier to get out my flask of coffee, a man cycled up and said “Everything all right?” because he thought I had stopped on account of mechanical failure. I assured him everything was fine and thanked him for asking. When I’d finished my coffee and was putting the flask away, another cyclist came up and asked if I was OK. I was touched by both of these enquiries. 

Where does that leave me? Sitting in bed, not wanting to get up because it’s cold. But I will, and I will light the fire and get on with my painting in a quiet house with lovely views.

Bits and pieces

First, I’d like to commend this blog post to you. 

https://dimcdougall.com/ageing-changing/

It’s Di McDougall’s latest blog post. Di lives in South Africa and she is a friend of mine though I have never met her. She has been reading my blog for years and years and comments under the name Marmee.

All I have to offer today by contrast is not a well written, coherent blog post, but a ragbag.

I was in Wensleydale for a few days with my four siblings, catching up, playing Rummikub and Scrabble, eating cheese, looking at scenery, generally having a good time despite our collective age of 378.

Towards Coverdale
Photo by Peter Willis (big brother)

Distant view of Bolton Castle
Photo by Peter Willis 

I went for three lovely long walks with Jonty, my little brother

At Redmire Force with Jonty

The river Ure near Redmire

At Aysgarth Upper Falls

And now I’m home, still trying to make big decisions with Dave about household matters, and trying to get stuck into a new painting. On Tuesday we’re having new windows and doors fitted throughout the house. By that I mean they are starting on Tuesday. I’m not looking forward to the disruption, though the end result will of course be worthwhile.

Always in the background the obscenities perpetrated in the Middle East are disturbing and distressing, quite apart from their ramifications for everyday life in the rest of the world. Our esteemed Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper seems to think that it’s Iran that is being unreasonable and reckless. 

What?? It’s Iran that’s to blame?

While we’re on the subject of war, I’d like to commend to you an interview with the renowned war photographer, Don McCullin, which you can hear on the programme This Cultural Life on BBCSounds. It’s available for a year. It’s a deep and frank interview and if you’re interested in Don McCullin’s work you might be gripped, as I was.

I went to see a major retrospective of his work in 2019 and brought back these quotes from him:

I have been looking for a poem to share with you as a conclusion, but I can’t find comfort this morning, and the only thing that seems relevant is the poet Fiona Benson reading her poem called Eurofighter Typhoon. Here is the link…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QWt1Sk51kg&list=PL8VHSOl9gbqmlLHR_A8QnK9RKC8YWkb61&index=4

Life at Hepworth Towers

 I have been lying in bed since 4.30 am worrying about what to do about our car. We need to replace the one we have, and the most sensible thing in the current world situation seems to be to buy an electric one. This means change. At the same time, I’m wondering what to do about the heating. Should we ditch our oil boiler (we have no gas on our lane) and buy a heat exchange pump? More expense and change. And will it keep us warm?

We currently need to buy 1200 litres of domestic heating oil to fill up our tank, but the price has almost trebled since this horror began in the Middle East. A month ago it would have cost us £670, and the last time I checked, it would cost us £1632. Therefore we are not using the heating. Yesterday we had snow, sleet and hail and this morning there is a heavy frost.

The first thing I do after having my morning shower is light the log burning stove in my studio. In the afternoon, before teatime, we light the one in the sitting room. This is all fine. But yesterday when I went in the kitchen at five o clock to make my tea it was perishing; and the cold makes me miserable. Dave came in and saw me and switched in the heating for an hour because, he said, I looked so miserable.

So this morning in bed, to stop myself pondering all of this, I listened to the audiobook of Alan Bennet’s new set of diaries from 2016-2024. I have listened to his other diaries and enjoyed them, but this is a mixed pleasure, because he is not reading them himself, and for me, it makes a huge difference. Alex Jennings, who is reading them, has managed to adopt the same gentle style as Bennet, and he remarkably gets the right cadence, but he does not get the Leeds accent (i.e. the flat vowels)and just as I am slipping into forgetting it’s not Bennet, Jennings will come out with a southern ‘a’ and say ‘barsket’ instead of ‘basket’ or ‘charnce’ instead of ‘chance’ and I shout out the correct (to me) pronunciation. It is not an unalloyed pleasure.

But the sun is shining 

The sun shining through the condensation on the bedroom window this morning 

And my sweet peas have all germinated, and tomorrow I am going to get together with all my four siblings for the weekend in Wensleydale, which I am so looking forward to.

Even more exciting was my trip on Tuesday to meet up with a University friend I haven’t seen for 25 years. Wot larks. (as Het said.) We both remembered the first time we met in freshers week, but M remembered so many details - so MANY  details - that I had forgotten. We were both studying for a psychology degree but at the end of the second year I got pregnant, Dave and I got married, and I took a sabbatical. The prof said I could go back and do my finals after that, and I did, and M was by that time doing a PhD and oh so kindly looked after the baby in her room or the developmental psychology lab, while I popped into lectures. I am so indebted to her. Actually, I only realise now how indebted to her I am.

When I went for my viva with the professor after my final exam, he said “I thought you’d bring the baby with you.” I had made a conscious choice not to, as I didn’t want to be accused of special pleading. As it was, I had mentioned her in my developmental exam, in the question about Piaget, and got a first in that particular paper.

But I’ve now had my breakfast in bed, texted Het about something, popped down and laid the fire, and I must get up and go to Aldi. I feel better for the breakfast, and Dave has put the heating on for another odd hour, because he said I looked so miserable. I must try to mask my cold-misery or we won’t have any oil left for next winter. But hooray! I can have a shower in a warm bathroom today. What joy!

Coasting or dancing

I came across an old interview with Roger McGough this week in which I thought he said, at the age of 75, that he was “coasting.” I then talked to Dave about the definition of the word coasting with reference to our own lives in retirement, and he and I disagreed - as you might expect.

Then I texted Het who said this:

This morning I tried to find the interview where McGough had said he was “coasting” and I couldn’t. I was baffled because why would I have embarked in a discussion of the word with Dave and later with Het? Where had the word come from?

Was it actually from an interview with Alan Bennet, talking about aging?

I asked ChatGPT and it couldn’t find the word coasting either, though I wouldn’t take the first no for an answer.

OK, so this is what RM did say… 

All of this came about because I was wondering why I was exhausted when I got back from my lightning trip to London. I went on Monday morning and came home on Tuesday afternoon. Het met me at St Pancras at 11.30 and we talked until we sat down in the Royal Opera House at 7.30 to watch Giselle.

Giselle was out of this world - music and dancing. I have never seen it before and it was a beautiful production and I loved it. Loved it.

The next morning we went to see the Tracey Emin retrospective A Second Life, at Tate Modern. When Emin burst into the public consciousness with her bed…

…I knew little about her, and wasn’t impressed with her bed. But since I heard an interview with her a couple of years ago, I have been impressed with her, (and I like her bed.) This is why I wanted to see her exhibition. It’s huge, and includes paintings, tapestries, quilts, the bed, her studio, bronzes, documents, films and interviews. My favourite exhibits were the interview about her abortion, and the film of her dancing. Here is the Arts Council description of it.

She dances beautifully, and joyfully, and I love her message.

I still don’t understand why critics like her paintings, though Het thought this one beautiful:

Is Tracey coasting now? No. She has to spend three days in bed every week because of her poor health, following radical and extensive surgery for bladder cancer, but she is still working, and she is still pursuing her philanthropic work in Margate, supporting young artists, and doing so much more.

I’ve been coasting for three days, which has included two bike rides, one walk and lunch with a friend.

I’m not coasting this morning. It’s not yet eight o’clock, and I’ve already written this blog post and a letter to my “Labour” MP.