What’s in a name?

My brother Pete (above) and family have been staying, and it’s been grrrreat, and I’ve been too busy to post. (Gosh, I didn’t ask him if I could put his photo on here – I hope he doesn’t mind!)

We have also had the painters here for the last week and one of them – Ben – is painting the front door as I write - the undercoat for Lulworth Blue.

I love these painters – they are quiet, hard-working, reliable, friendly and funny, and I think they like it here, too, because they get six mugs of tea a day and as many chocolate digestives as they can eat. They also get a go on the slackline in their lunchbreak.

Do you know what I like most of all, though?

The chief one calls me boss…as in

“Hi Ben.”

“Good morning, boss.”

No-one has ever called me boss, before. I like it so much it makes me want to start a business, so I can be called “boss”  everyday.

Helpful quote number 5

"The trick is to be attuned to your condition all the time. To know that you are tired when you are tired and energetic when you are energetic. And to release yourself to your condition rather than resist it. Not knowing your condition as it really is, or knowing it and resisting it: That is what's difficult. This is where the pressure builds up. But when you know your condition and release yourself to it, then there's no problem. You can negotiate yourself through your day that way and not have to worry.
There's an old saying in Zen: "Every day is a good day." This doesn't mean every day's a thrilling day or a pleasant day. There are plenty of unpleasant days, challenging days. But if you know your condition and release yourself to it, even an unpleasant day's a good day."
- Norman Fischer

Life and death

I drove through the warm summer evening last night to Zoe’s house in Sheffield with a smile on my face. The last two weeks of hot weather has been wonderful. Life seems easier and freer and so much more relaxed when we’re in a spell of settled summer weather.

Still, I can’t stop thinking about something small and sad that happened yesterday.  i was sitting on the floor below my open study window, with the breeze blowing warm air over my head and into the room, when I heard a thump above me, and I rushed outside, knowing what it was.

One of the best things about our house is the light. My study, and the bedroom above it, has windows facing north and south. But  - and it is a big but - this means that birds see the sky through both the windows and think they can fly straight through. If they are small birds, they do occasionally hit the window, fall to the ground, and then revive, and fly away. This is my younger son holding such a bird, 15 years ago.

But yesterday, the bird was a big and beautiful thrush. It was lying on the flags under my window with its eyes still open, and its beak opening and closing soundlessly. I lifted it up, but its neck was broken. I laid it under the cotoneaster tree, where it died.

Secondly (and I don’t see it as a total non-sequitur) I need to say how pleased I am that after the attack on the flotilla taking aid to the people of Gaza, world opinion forced the Israeli government to say they would relax the siege a little. I hope they do. The Palestinians in Gaza need food, fuel, medicines, materials to rebuild houses and the infrastructure: and the children need toys. I don’t for a minute imagine that the Israeli government will let Gaza have everything it needs, but you know my mantra – It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.

Meanwhile, and in case you didn’t know, Israeli settlers in the West Bank have (for years) been forcing Palestinians off their land, stealing their water, killing their livelihoods, knocking down their houses, and threatening their children. Read this article in the New York Times. It is written by Nicholas D Kristof, a top columnist followed by a million people on Twitter. I am full of hope. Perhaps the publication of this piece will bear fruit in terms of a better understanding of the injustices heaped on the Palestinians by the Israelis, who are in turn supported by the West through the aid that we send.

Inspirational

When I spoke at the Derbyshire Literary Festival, someone asked me which authors I like to read, and I mentioned the usual suspects – Carol Shields, Anne Tyler, and the less usual – Garrison Keillor.

In the heat of the moment, I forgot all about Helen Dunmore.

She is a poet as well as a novelist, and writes beautifully. But she doesn’t let her (poet’s) love of words get in the way of her (novelist’s) characterisation and story-telling. She is a brilliant writer. I have read The Siege three times so far, and this week I got the sequel to it – The Betrayal - from the library. (When it’s out in paperback I shall buy it.) I was drawn into the world of the story from the very first paragraph, and I am loving the book. But I love it so much, that I feel I need to ration it, and only read a few pages at a time. It’s so delicious, that I want it to last as long as possible.

Life won’t wait

You turn your back for one minute (sloping off to the seaside for a couple of days) and when you get back the convolvulus has taken over your back garden. But then so many wonderful things have happened, too. The roses are blooming as if their life depended on it, the fragrance of the honeysuckle and orange blossom makes me swoon, and the climbing rose is out

and finally, that funny yellow buddleia - that I’ve had for four years and was just about to pull up because it refused to produce anything but leaves – has produced odd little flower balls.

And then there are the strawberries…

I’ve just been out in the quiet morning garden, to pick this morning’s crop.

It was balmy. It was heaven. Such a morning as this makes up for the four months of grey cold winter we get here every year. The birds have been at the strawberries. They think I don’t know. I used to have a net on the strawberry patch, but one day I found a dead blackbird caught in it, so I threw the net away. There are plenty of strawberries - enough for us to share. Which is a good job, because as well as the birds and the slugs, there are other creatures who like my fruit…

If I die today, I won’t mind. I have had a fabulous week, away with Jen, and back here at home in my summer garden.

Smitten

I showed Dave my photographs of the beach hut trip, and when he saw this one…

…he said “Ooh, look at those hinges on the door - parliament hinges!How alluring!  It would be worth the trip just to see those hinges!”

Does he remind anyone of Richard in Plotting for Beginners?

The last word on sisters

And they also buy you cashmere cardigans in your favourite colour because “It was reduced to £19 in M&S, and I couldn’t just leave it there, could I?”

In praise of sisters

Don’t you wish you had a sister who whisked you off to stay in a beach hut for the night?

The view from the front…

The view from the back…

The sweet little kitchen…

And enough room upstairs for four – so two of us had plenty of space…

Sisters are great. You can have a laugh with them, talk for hours with them, or sit in silence, drinking wine and watching the sun go down…

They’ll tell you when you’re being daft, give you a hug when you’re sad, and when you want to to buy a voluminous floral smock trimmed with satin ribbon in Jigsaw - which looks lovely on the petite and pretty dark-haired twenty-something assistant – they’ll suggest that if you buy it, you might regret it when you get home. And then when you’ve resisted and left the shop without said smock – which was obscenely expensive anyway, and three times as much as you normally spend on a blouse - they will tell you it made you look like Grayson Perry.

Jen

Yay! Today I am going to stay with my lovely sister Jen. I haven’t seen her for months, and I miss her. While everyone else is watching THE MATCH, I will be doing something fun - lounging in Jen’s kitchen, talking to her. It will be a huge comfort.

And we’re planning a trip to the seaside before the weekend. Yay again!

Jen hates having her picture taken and hates her picture on display, but she did allow me to use this once on the blog before, so here you are…

It’s all so personal

OK, chaps, I probably was a bit mean to Greenberg and Ben Stiller in yesterday’s post.  On the other hand, I really thought the film was…..

You know what? I obviously just didn’t get the film. Maybe people who live in the same world as the guy in the film – maybe they get it.   (I am sooooh relieved I don’t live in that world.)

Opinions about films, plays, music, books – they are all so personal, so subjective. For example, look at these two comments from professionals in the publishing world about the manuscript of a well-published friend of mine – the same manuscript:

Whilst I applaud your use of ordinary characters in a commonplace milieu, I'm afraid none of them really grabbed me and I did not feel sufficiently interested in them to want to read on. It's very difficult to strike that balance and I don't feel this is working. I did not find myself getting involved in the story or caring what happened to these people.

l love it. I think you're a wonderful writer and the novel is lovely - clever, funny, subtle, wry, sad and uplifting all at once. I ADORE ****  [the main character]

You can’t please all of the people all of the time. And as for me and Ben Stiller – it’s probably bad chemistry.

Always read what it says on the tin

When my friend asked me to go and see Greenberg, a film about a man having a mid-life crisis, I said yes. I’ve been having a late-mid-life crisis for 18 months, so I thought it might give me some hints on how to do it better. The film had a great review in her paper and the director had a good reputation.
But then I found out that the star was Ben Stiller, whom I first came across - and loathed - as one of Rachel’s boyfriends in Friends. Since then I have seen trailers of his comedies and been repelled, and stayed well clear. But, I thought, this is a serious film, so maybe Ben Stiller will be OK in something that doesn’t purport to be a comedy. I had a squizz at the film’s ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, and was a bit put off by the lowish 60% favourable reviews. But then, I thought, it is a low budget movie, and it does sound like a quiet one, subtle…you know…so lots of people might not get it.
The film was the most tedious I have ever seen. There was only one sympathetic character – a minor one – a friend of the main character (though my friend insisted that the only sympathetic character was the dog); the dialogue was deadly dull; and nothing happened. I can cope very well when nothing happens if I care about the characters, or the dialogue is good. (After all, not much happens in my books, so who am I to complain?) I could have accepted that the main character was self obsessed, selfish, totally lacking in empathy, repellent, and behaved like an adolescent – though that may be insulting adolescents – but oh, the script did not tell us anything or take us anywhere. Where was the much-trumpeted depth? Oh God, the film was awful. I thought of putting a photo on here of the female lead, Greta Gerwig, because I couldn’t find one of the dog.
When I got home, I looked at the cinema brochure to see what the film synopsis said, and was amazed to see it was labelled as a comedy. Now, if I had read that first, I would never have gone, as Ben Stiller is just not funny. Besides which, I have never forgiven him for shouting at the chick and the duck.*
*in Friends.

Twelve steps to heaven

I managed twelve steps on the slackline yesterday. Twelve steps!!!!!

Five Quakers injured in slackline fiasco…

The slackline is back in my life. I had a breakthrough yesterday. When Mackenzie was here he said that walking backwards on it was easier that walking forwards. So I had a go and realised that the reason is because you bend your knees. When I tried to walk forwards on the line with my knees bent, I did much better. And it’s hot today and set fair, so I shall be out there practising (knees bent) as soon as the sun falls on the line.

The other thing that happened is that my friend Ella sent me a link to a master class in tight rope walking with Philippe Petit. It’s in August in Brooklyn and she suggested I went to stay with her and go to the class. Wow.

And the third slackline strand is that Viv, a friend from Quaker Meeting, came to have a go on it and suggested that the Spiritual Exploration group should have a meeting here, using walking the slackline as a metaphor for life.

When I mentioned it to Dave, he said that if you were using walking the line as a metaphor for life, there should be broken glass on the lawn, someone jumping out of the hedge with a flamethrower, and someone at the end of the line, hacking at it with a blunt Swiss army knife. (Also, he has not a scintilla of admiration for Philippe Petit.)

Everyone has their problems.

(Comments - there is a bug in the Blogger program and there are more comments below each post than is shown by the figure.)

Life

"Almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Pssst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer." David Foster Wallace

Is this true?

There are loads of comments below this post, but for some reason Blogger doesn't want to admit it...

Health and Safety

Statistics show that the majority of accidents occur in the home. On Sunday morning I was washing up. I had bare feet, and was wearing my silk dressing gown with the wide sleeves. My sleeve caught a china mug and whisked it onto the floor, where it smashed. I turned round to pick up the bits and got a fragment of china in the sole of my foot.
I can’t get it out, Dave can’t get it out, the GP practice nurse can’t get it out. She has slapped on some magnesium sulphate and a plaster in the hopes of drawing it out. If the chip is still in there tomorrow, I have to go to A&E.
There has to be a health and safety learning point here…I know - Don’t wash up.

Dream question

My mother died eighteen months ago and in all that time I have dreamed about her three times – just three times. I miss her and I would like to dream about her. Why do you suppose I don’t?

Writers are trying to make a living, and various non-sequiturs

I often come across poems I like on other blogs, and I think – oooh, I’d like to share that with my readers, too. But I don’t.
I don’t think it’s my place to publish other writers’ poems, when they are trying to make a living by selling them. If I put a poem on here, then you won’t need to buy it, will you?   (I have put poems on here, but only the poems of dead poets.)
There was a poem recently on a blog I follow everyday and yet I can’t even link you to the blog, for that would make me an accessory after the fact. I know this because I checked with my son – a most ethical person….such an ethical person that he has just told me off for killing snails that I find eating my poor clematis by the front door. (I shall never be able to call myself a Zen Buddhist, while I continue to kill snails.)

And on quite another tack…

It’s G's birthday this week. Zoe, (his mother) has made him a fire engine cake. He is besotted with fire engines, and I have bought him one to make in Lego. I also tried to find a birthday card with a fire engine on. There were racing cars, VW camper vans, trains and tractors, but was there a card with a fire engine on? Was there buffalo. Dave is drawing one now, as I speak. He’s a gem.
Newsflash – the poor little boy has been throwing up all night, so the bouncy castle is cancelled, and all that slaving over a hot fire-engine cake was for nothing. Poor Zoe.

Heart

Meeting strangers who have read my books and enjoyed them is so very heartening. Last night I gave a talk and the audience were smashing. They were attentive and receptive, they laughed at all my jokes, and at the end, they peppered me with interesting and intelligent questions. It was ace. If any of them are reading this post – thank you for coming to hear me and for making my evening so enjoyable.

Two notices

First, one I saw at Bakewell market yesterday…

And secondly…

If you want to hear me talk about my books, come to Clay Cross library tonight at 7.30 p.m. for my gig at the Derbyshire Literary Festival.

A quarter to six in the morning

I am sitting in bed. The pearl grey sky behind the may blossom and copper beech is heavy with rain. The clock in the hall has just chimed the half hour (it’s slow), the cat has just climbed in the spare room window ( yes – upstairs! - where Dave sits with his computer) and come in to see me. She didn’t have wet feet so she didn’t leave muddy footprints on my newly washed patchwork quilt, which is what she did last week, and which is why the quilt is newly washed. There is a pheasant in the garden, making that awful scratchy croaking sound, and in the distance, a pigeon is cooing.

A moment ago the air was still and muggy. Now a faint breeze is coming in through the window and the leaves on the lime trees across the road are swishing.

My son in California rang last night – as he always does on a Sunday. I miss him. His (and the little red hen’s) first baby is due in July and I long to see them both now, and then immediately the baby is born. But my ticket is booked for September. I shall have to wait.

Perfect happiness

I’ve just been baking a coffee cake while listening to a saxophone playing Gershwin songs. It’s warm enough to have bare feet on the wooden kitchen floor, to have the front door open, to sit outside and lick the bowl, to smell the peonies on my window sill as I sit and write this post.

And this is the view down the lane where we live…

Aren’t I lucky?

(Post script on Gaza – I don’t think we will ever know the truth about what happened on that boat, but we DO know there’s a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and that the blockade is blocking the necessary aid from getting in.)

This is not a complaint

It is too hot to garden.

It is too hot to cycle.

It is too hot to play my sax.

I am happy.

But I would like my chair.

My last post on Gaza for a while

The Israelis will not allow plastic toys through the Gaza blockade.

 

I could blog everyday on Gaza and the suffering of the Palestinian people, but I don’t think that’s why most of you visit. So before I return to everyday trivia, here are two things that readers in Britain can do, if they care about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza:

1/ Write or email your MP and ask them to sign the

Early Day Motion 127 – Israel and the Gaza flotilla

“That this House is appalled by the loss of life associated with Israel's attack on the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza; notes that UK and other nationals have been held by Israel despite the attack having taken place in international waters; endorses the call of the United Nations Secretary General for a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards; recognises that Israel's blockade, which has destroyed the economy of Gaza and deepened poverty, still inflicts widespread suffering and, by imposing collective punishment on the people of Gaza, is itself contrary to international law; and calls on the international community to require Israel to end its blockade and to redouble international efforts to secure a lasting settlement with a secure and independent state of Palestine alongside a secure and independent Israel.”

Please include your address in the email and then your MP will know you are one of his/her constituents. Your MP’s email address is in the following form:

firstname.lastname.mp@parliament.uk

2/ Attend the national demonstration in London, this Saturday, 5th June, to show your outrage at the brutal and illegal actions of the Israeli Government. The march is organised by the Palestinian Soldiarity Committee, CND, Stop the War, British Muslim Initiative and Viva Palestina. The march will start from Downing Street at 1.30 pm and head to the Israeli Embassy in Kensington where there will be a rally.

(Photographs by Cristina Ruiz Cortina)

It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness

If you care about the suffering of the ordinary people of Gaza, and the Palestinians in the occupied territories who are treated as second class human beings, here are some suggestions as to what you can do:

1/ Write to your elected representative and urge them to demand that Israel obey international law, stop building illegal settlements on Palestinian land,and lift the siege of Gaza.

2/ Tell other people the truth about the situation to counteract the lies from the Israeli government. Here are three truths to get you started:

(i) Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian territory.

(ii) Israel is breaking international law by collectively punishing the people of Gaza - by restricting their freedom of movement, and their access to humanitarian aid, power and medical supplies.

(iii) Hamas was democratically elected by the majority of the Palestinian people in an election judged fair and free by impartial international observers. And they have signalled a willingness to negotiate with israel on returning to the pre-1967 borders.

3/ Boycott Israeli goods. Fruit and vegetables from Israel often bear the name Carmel. Beware goods labelled from the West Bank as they are often from the Israeli West Bank.

4/ Give money to charities helping the people in Gaza. Medical Aid for Palestinians and Oxfam and Save the Children Fund are three charities which I know have an agenda of non-violence. There will be others.

5/ Demonstrate.

6/ Don't despair. The campaign to abolish slavery must have seemed like an impossible task when it first began, and so must the drive to abolish apartheid in South Africa.

Free Gaza; free the Palestinian people from apartheid

That is all I have to say today. If you want to read more, you could read this.