It's good to be home

Boulder is beautiful with its wide tree-lined streets and its ubiquitous bike paths and its views of the Rockies, but here it is home. The spring grass was green in Boulder and the trees were fresh and thick, but here it is lush, the verges overflow with wildflowers, 

the trees are varied, and the deer don't eat my fruit or flowers. 

The runners and cyclists on the Boulder trails are serious and intense, keeping fit, stretching themselves. Few of them respond to a good morning or hello, even though generally Boulderites are warm, chatty and hospitable. The people on the Monsal Trail - though retiring Brits - seem to find it easier to greet a friendly passer-by.

This is the view over my front garden wall:

This is the elderflower that grew from a cutting from my parents' garden:

Here is one of my borders: 

I'm finally over my jetlag and am tackling the pile of admin that's built up on my desk over the last three weeks. I've also just picked my gooseberries, and am picking strawberries every day. Soon it will be the blackcurrants. My sweet peas are yellow and sickly and I've just dosed them up with sequestered iron. My blackbird still sings at 4 in the morning. It's good to be home.

Home

It always feels a bit disloyal to the Colorado Hepworths when I say how pleased I am to be home after I've been to stay with them. It sounds as though I didn't love every single minute of my time with them, and that's obviously not the case. Who else am I expected to drink too many margaritas with and then beat at skee-ball?

No, seriously, folks. It was wonderful to be with them all. The skee-balling was a fraction of the fun.

But this is the longest time in 48 years I've been away from Dave and the longest time I've ever been away from our current home, with the fields all around, the views of hills and my garden. 

I kept asking Dave to send me photos of the garden, but he just doesn't 'see' flowers. This is what greeted me at the front gate. Isn't it lovely?

The garden has gone crazy and there's a week's weeding to do.

The other thing that has grown is the collection of yoghurt cartons, but the least said about that the better.

Mixed emotions

It's a day of mixed emotions.

It's a happy day because it's Isaac's birthday and it's the first time I've spent it with him in over 20 years. Neither of us can recall when exactly the last time was. He moved to the States in 2003. I remember his very first 17th June, though. He was two weeks late but took only two hours to arrive. I remember the bright Sunday morning sunshine lighting up my hospital room, and someone else's midwife coming in and asking me to stop making so much noise: there were first time mothers along the corridor and I was scaring them witless. It was all pretty wonderful.

This is the man himself (he's photo-shy) with Wendy last night on a date:

Today he drove me up to a tiny gold rush town on a dirt road in the foothills of the Rockies and bought me the best slice of pizza I've tasted in years, in the general store.

photo by Isaac

Isaac may be camera shy but not when he's taking the photographs. Look at the beaut he took today in the same town:

photo by Isaac

But it's also a sad day today because of what's happening in London. As many of you know, Dave and I lost all our things in a warehouse fire 20 years ago, at a time when we were between houses. That loss was as nothing to what happened to the poor residents of Grenfell Tower this week. I cannot imagine the horror and terror they must have gone through, and are still living through. It is beyond imagining. I think of them all today from thousands of miles and a world away and hope they are being looked after. I am staying off politics, not because it is not relevant, but because it is not what this post is about.

'Our life is love and peace and tenderness, and bearing one with another, and forgiving one with another and not laying accusations one against another, but praying one for another, and helping one another up with a tender hand.'

Isaac Pennington 1667

Boulder biking

I know I've been a bit iffy about the Boulder climate up to now, thinking it rather anarchic - snow in the morning, T shirts in the afternoon -  but I've never visited in May and June before. Now, unlike in the UK, you can depend on sunny weather. So when I went on a bike ride yesterday and forgot to take my camera, it didn't matter. I knew it would be sunny today and I could go again and take some photos.

The bike paths around Boulder (which are technically called multi-use paths and are the equivalent of British bridle paths) are fantastic. I was missing my bike, but now the kids are out during the day and I can cycle, the biking here is a fine substitution for the Monsal Trail. Actually, it's better in that you can have circular routes, and not just there-and-backs.

This is the start of my route today, just up the street from here:

And all the views that follow are taken from the Boulder Creek path. This is the Boulder Creek itself, which is currently full of meltwater from the Rockies:

Further along said trail:

It was hot and sunny all the way and every time I stopped to take a picture, I had to drink some water. You can feel the air is thinner here, and you need to keep hydrated.

There is another difference from the Monsal Trail - instead of rabbits, you see little prairie dogs:

I was very tired when I got home - more tired than I would be from an equivalent ride in Derbyshire. The altitude makes a noticeable difference, which is why so many world class athletes come to train in Boulder. I have no such pretensions. I'm in it for the fun, the exercise, the views and the sunshine.

What's happening here

It's a new week. The girls have both gone to circus camp for the day, Wendy is having the 15th of her 33 radiotherapy sessions, and I'm going to write. And although I'm glued to the news back home, I'm going to attempt to keep my politics off the blog and restricted to Twitter. 

Yesterday, we celebrated Cecilia's fifth birthday. She climbed into my bed in the morning fully dressed, and sang Beatles songs while shaking maracas. (Cecilia is the patron saint of music and musicians, and so far our Cecilia is living up to the name.) 

In the morning we sat at the end of the road for a while and watched the cycle leg of the IronMan Boulder, cheering on these amazing athletes with drums and aforementioned maracas. Here is the local celeb, Cecilia:

photo by Isaac

And here she is when Wendy lit the candle on her humungous cupcake:

photo by Isaac

It was a good day. Happy Birthday, Cece! 

Mornings in Boulder

Every morning the children come and get into bed with me when they wake up. We chat, play games and read. This morning I was reading the news on the iPad when they pattered downstairs to my room - first Lux and then Cece - and got into bed and put their heads on the pillow and closed their eyes. They fell asleep and I was trapped between them. This has never happened before. I wrote some emails, but after half an hour, I needed a pee. Could I extricate myself without waking them up?

Yes! 

I am now in the adjoining room with a cuppa, blogging.

Celebration in Boulder

If you're in Colorado you don't have to stay up all night to follow election results.

Congratulations to Jezza for his stonking success!

And thanks to Wendy for the margarita.

Shocked, appalled and ashamed

I may be staying on another continent living in the world of Ramona and her Mother (we've finished Ramona and her Father now), in a place where my reading companions say things like "Wouldn't it be great if there was a unicorn who could fly round the world delivering rainbows?" but I am still in touch with the real world back in blighty. More's the pity.

To be specific, I am ashamed that billionnaire owners of the most popular newspapers - which give a new high-viz definition to the term 'the gutter press' - and who think the rich should inherit the earth, are so desperate that a politician promising a future "For the many, not the few" should not win the general election, that they print pages of lies and smears against said man. Yes it was a long sentence, but I couldn't stop it.

I was the sort of little girl who didn't believe in unicorns but who did believe the world was a beautiful place and that people were basically kind and good. I am battling despair at the state of the world and the unethical, immoral no, BAD behaviour of so many people in power. But I refuse to despair. If the Maybot wins the election tomorrow, as she probably will, I will be sick at heart. But I shall still refuse to despair. I will try my best to do what I can to make the world a better place. 

I will choose love.

as American as...

Up until yesterday I didn't realise that lemonade stands are an American institution, like yellow school buses and 'baseball.

Anyway...after being read the chapter in which Ramona thought of having a lemonade stand, Lux decided she would like one. So yesterday morning Isaac and the girls made some delicious lemonade, and at teatime the girls set up shop on the sidewalk with a bubble machine and a Beatles soundtrack (Cece's current favourite music) and waited for customers. 

Photo by Isaac

They got six, and were very pleased with their takings. Not bad for a street that looked like this:

This is the same street that a mountain lion walked down on Friday. And the same street from which a bear walked onto the patio to nose around for food in the early hours of Saturday morning. 

I much prefer the human wildlife.

Reading the classics

When I was here at Christmas, the girls were happy to sit on the sofa in front of the fire and work through a pile of picture books with me. Things have changed. Lux is almost seven and has grown out of a diet of Julia Donaldson, Oliver Jeffers and Allan Ahlberg. She now likes being read stories with chapters. Hooray for Beverly Cleary and Ramona.

I don't want to do a hatchet job on Enid Blyton, because her books got me hooked on reading. But even a ten year old family member (who these days prefers to remain anonymous) who'd been given a supposedly updated version of a Blyton book for reading practice, was not impressed. He criticised Blyton for a superfluity of exclamation marks, as well as for various other shortcomings. Well, there is no excuse for anyone to read Blyton now: there are so many better options.

The Ramona books are classics. The first one  - Beezus and Ramona - was amazingly first published in 1955. Lux and I have just finished reading Ramona the Brave (pub. 1975). It is engaging, funny and touching and has not dated one bit. I envy Cleary's writing talent, and I am ridiculously happy we have a pile of Ramona books to read before I go home.

We're not just reading. The list of activities is endless, but I'm way too tired to tell you what they are. And Lux does play video games on an old phone sometimes. Today she taught me how to play Swampy. I enjoyed it and wanted to keep going but after several levels she said: "This level's really hard for you, Sue. You won't understand it at all."

Lux and me

And here is Cece, who has another week before she breaks up, poor thing:

Postcard from Boulder

You're honoured. I've come in from the quiet hammock to say Hello. 

Wendy had a three hour nap today, so as far as I'm concerned the day has been a success. Now she's at the pool with the girls and I've been lying in the hammock on this warm sunny teatime, catching up on emails, reading the news, looking at the trees, drinking wine and eating crisps. 

It's been a busy day - a knitting lesson, a bike ride to the park, a game of baseball, lunch, beads, reading a chapter of Ramona the Brave, and chat. So an hour in the hammock is just the ticket. 

Yesterday Lux and I went to the pottery painting studio, which was, as they say,  aces. She designed and painted this plate as a surprise for Cece, who has not yet broken up from school.

On Sunday we had another success: we made a rocket launcher from a kit. For all of those who remember the Pom Pom Puppies Fiasco (which I have tried unsuccessfully to link to, because I am working on Isaac's spare laptop and I can't for the life of me work out how the hell you right click for copy without a mouse) - let me inform you that this time I followed the instructions and achieved success. So there: I am not an utter dummy in the craft department.

Guess where I am!

after Manchester

I am so sad about the bombing in Manchester, and I send my condolences to all those affected by it.

A local poet, Helen Mort - winner of too many awards to list here - tweeted her poem Prayer yesterday in response to the Manchester bombing. 

The poem is from a collection of poems addressed to the mountaineer Alison Hargreaves and appears in Helen's book No Map Could Show Them (pub. Chatto and Windus 2016). She has kindly given her permission for me to share it with you. I should explain before you read it that Bamford and Hope are two villages in the Derbyshire Peak District.



Prayer

Give us good days.
Days unspectacular but adequate:
the weather neither calm nor wild,
your coat zipped nearly to the top,

a silver thermos cooling in your bag,
the sky at Bamford reddening, as if
embarrassed by its own strange reach
and day-old pipe-smoke clouds.

Above the Hope cement works,
crows wheel arcs of guarded flight
and when you touch the rock
your fingers hold.


© Helen Mort

Photo  © Chris Gilbert by kind permission.

Monday musings

I woke up from a dream in which I was being interviewed at the Jobcentre. I was sitting between the family member who declines to be named and a man whose CV was handwritten on four small post-its. Because of the cuts they were interviewing three of us at a time. The interview was friendly and relaxed, even convivial. This was not the real world.

I also woke up with a headache from tree pollen because I forgot to use the nasal spray last night. There are a lot of trees near our house.This is the view from a bedroom window this morning:

There've been some beautiful evening skies this month. Look at these, taken from the bathroom window:

We are so, so lucky to live here. We are so, so lucky full stop. I shall be using my postal vote today to keep the Conservatives out because I care about all the people in our society who aren't so lucky. I care about social justice, and I want to save the NHS. If you want to know the best way to vote tactically to do the same, you can put your postcode on this website and it will tell you the best way to do that in your constituency.

Over and out with the politics. I could have said so much more.

I fly to Boulder on Thursday. My case is already half packed, including the Penguins and Club biscuits requested by the girls.  It will be hard leaving Derbyshire looking so beautiful, but so good to see Isaac, Wendy, Lux and Cecilia, and wonderful to be there, able to help. It sucks being thousands of miles away from people you love, people whom you yearn to help and support.  

And Boulder is just as beautiful as Derbyshire:

photo by Isaac

Though they obviously have just as many dandelions, which thankfully, it will not be my responsibility to get rid of.

Spring

I wanted to tell you that I miss you. I miss writing my blog. But when I wake up in the morning, instead of thinking of a blog post, I am writing the next scene of the novel in my head. There is not room for both.

May this year is stunning. I don't know if it's always quite as stunning or if it's because I've been paying closer attention than I usually do. I mean I know I like May, I know it's my favourite month, but it seems even more extravagantly beautiful this year - as if there's something in the back of my head that's saying - make the most of this - it might be your last. 

Usually I am in Colorado for the start of the Derbyshire spring, and arrive home after the grass has started to go greener, and the very first tiny leaves are pushing through - the honeysuckle and the clematis. This year I was in Colorado at Christmas instead,  so I've seen the whole production of Spring from start to finish and now - at last, in the last two days - the ash trees have come out and it's the grand finale and I'm giving a standing ovation.

Let’s love today, the what we have now, this day, not

          today or tomorrow or

yesterday, but this passing moment, that will

          not come again.

James Schuyler, from A Few days

don't read this if you're not interested in writing

I just read the poet Anthony Wilson's blog in which he talks about his current writing project: 
'...because it is not like anything I have written before, I am trying to come at it sideways, as though trying to surprise myself...

That's exactly what I'm doing with my new novel - coming at it sideways. But actually, on reflection, the reason I am doing it this way is because I so hate the preparation at the start of a novel - the plotting, the character development, the agony of writing the first three chapters. 

This novel is solely based on an idea that I've been quietly mulling over for a couple of years. It's a different kind of novel from my others. I'm afraid there is very little humour in it, and every time I think of trying to inject some, it doesn't seem right, so I forget the idea. In the past, I couldn't keep humour out of the novels. The humour was endemic. 

The other difference with this one is that I feel completely free to put in it what I like and to make of it what I like as I have no expectation that in the current climate anyone will want to publish it but me. This is liberating. My only guiding principle is that I'm writing the kind of novel that I would like to read. The other thing to tell you is that the story is set in the Derbyshire Peak District, and has characters you have never met before.

I've written half of the first draft and am trying to get as much more done as I can before I fly to Colorado on the 25th to help out.  

This is Cecilia and Lux at Cecilia's school May Faire:

I can't wait to see them and their parents, and to give Wendy the biggest hug that is comfortable for her in her present condition.

oddments, fragments

You may not believe this but it can take an hour to write a blog post which is why I'm being mean with them at the moment: I don't have any writing time to spare.

So here are some oddments that have not been crafted into a post and do not contain my usual fact checks and hyperlinks:

I just read Julia Samuel's new book called Grief Works, which I think is helpful. She has general information and suggestions, and she also has sections on losing a partner, losing a parent, losing a sibling and losing a child. She does not, however, have a section on losing a friend, and this is a shame.

I was looking for a novel that Gil (almost 11) would like to read. He likes exciting fiction but he doesn't like fantasy (rule out Harry Potter)  he likes stories about families, and he doesn't like stories that are too dark. (His tastes are fairly similar to mine.) I asked around and got some good suggestions and as a result bought him a book called Once by Morris Gleitzman. It arrived on Saturday and I decided to read the first chapter just to check it out. A few hours later I'd finished it. I hadn't been able to stop reading. I can't wait to see what he thinks of it.

When I was a beginner writer I read a lot of writing books that talked about 'finding your voice as a writer' and I wondered what on earth it meant. As I went on, I understood. Also, I found my voice. I'm trying not to read any fiction at the mo (except children's books) but I did read a piece in the New York Times by Garrison Keillor, and then dipped into a book I am saving by Sebastian Barry and it hit me in the face as I moved from Keillor to Barry ( two of my favourite writers) how different their voices are. I'm thinking they should show excerpts to budding writers to explain the concept of voice.

Last week Dave and I went with his sister and husband for a fabulous walk that involved two steep climbs. The second was up High Tor from which there is a sheer drop of several hundred feet (you'll have to find the stats on the net) to the river valley below. We were looking down on the cable cars that Kit and Sally ride on at the end of Plotting for Grown-ups, and I asked my sister-in-law to take a picture of me with them in the background. If you look carefully you can see three tiny pale dots in the centre of this photo: 

Here is her photo-shopped version:

Lastly, I am trying to ration myself and blanking out complete days in my diary cos it's been a bit too frantic lately. Realising how I badly needed some peace and quiet yesterday, I was reminded of a sentence from an Amazon review of But I Told You Last Year That I Loved You and thought how the same could be said of me:

"Fran is an extrovert who is drawn to people, but she becomes both distracted and exhausted by their needs."

That is one very perceptive reviewer.  

Protest and Persist

For those of you who want to make the world a better place and who get discouraged - especially in the light of the current worldwide zeitgeist - I recommend this article. It's a bit long winded, but the message is encouraging.

Think it possible you may be mistaken

I have been so engrossed in the month of May and in writing the new novel, that I've been able to suspend depression about current politics. Yesterday, however, I had a day off from the book, and the walk in the bluebell wood was spoiled by noisy loggers. So today I woke up and looked at the news and the news overwhelmed me. 

I have never in my life been so depressed about the current state of British politics and the likely outcome of the same. I abhor the combative stance of Theresa May in pursuing the disastrous Brexit.

What happened to sanity and co-operation?

Quakers have a book called Quaker Faith and Practice and in it there is a section called Advices and Queries - which comprises a list of points to be considered. 

Here is a query which is worth considering. If you don't believe in God (and I'm not sure that I do) it is still worth considering. If the word God really upsets you, then skip the first two sentences.

Do you respect that of God in everyone though it may be expressed in unfamiliar ways or be difficult to discern? Each of us has a particular experience of God and each must find the way to be true to it. When words are strange or disturbing to you, try to sense where they come from and what has nourished the lives of others. Listen patiently and seek the truth which other people’s opinions may contain for you. Avoid hurtful criticism and provocative language. Do not allow the strength of your convictions to betray you into making statements or allegations that are unfair or untrue. Think it possible that you may be mistaken.

And here is something to cheer you up.  7 year old Anu, in Birmingham, showing her friends her new prosthetic leg. Click here and get a tissue.

Perfect Day

You know those columns where a celebrity is asked what their perfect day would consist of? I always wonder what my perfect day might be and can never decide. I realised yesterday that it's because there are all kinds of perfect days. Yesterday I had one.

A perfect day

get woken up by the blackbird (see last post)

have a messaging chat with Isaac and find out how Wendy is; also talk about the words biddable and loggy

have cuppa and take a few early morning photos in my pyjamas because the world is looking so beautiful

write a blog post

have another cuppa and work on the novel

have croissants and home made jam for breakfast

work all morning on the novel in peace because Dave is out on his bike

have lunch and chat to Dave who has now returned

do some gardening (and btw, those tulips in the header are my tulips! I am so proud!)

have half an hour's catch-up phone chat with Zoe (my daughter) 

play table tennis with Dave in the garden

go out for a bike ride

have tea 

watch an old DVD with Dave

play Scrabble

go to bed while the blackbird is still singing 


Another perfect day might be spent with these little beauties:

Wendy has finished her gruelling four months of chemotherapy, and in a couple of weeks will begin six and a half weeks of Monday to Friday radiation therapy. It is such a long haul. I expect perfect days are a distant memory for dear Wendy. I'm so thankful she's getting such expert treatment.

And soon I'm going to stay, and help. 

  

Lucky

Last week I recorded the blackbird that wakes me up every morning at 5 a.m. The moon was still up and there was a crack of dawn to the east.

I love my blackbird. I sent the recording to Isaac who played it to the girls while they were having their breakfast, and Cece said 'It's like a bird concert!'

The annoying bird who pipes up at the beginning of the recording and continues throughout, is a great tit. I'd hoped the blackbird's song was louder than it is, but if you listen carefully you will hear him. 

Isn't he wonderful?






The early morning light today was magical. Here are views from, respectively, the upstairs loo (at the front), the bathroom (at the back) and the bedroom (at the front).

We are so lucky.