Home truths

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.

Anon

 

 

Courage does not always roar. Sometimes it is the small voice at the end of the day that says ‘I will try again tomorrow.’

Mary Anne Radmacher

A brief encounter

Sometimes I write a blog post and I fail to get across what I wanted to say in the way I wanted to say it. I feel like that about yesterday’s post. I may delete it.

Today is a picture postcard, with no nuances, delicate or otherwise.

The Lancaster canal runs through Carnforth, a spitting distance from the railway station, where David Lean filmed Brief Encounter. I saw Brief Encounter once and hated it. Here’s a trailer. I prefer Victoria Wood’s parody. I like the atmosphere and the photography of the film but Trevor Howard is a million miles from my idea of a romantic hero, which is a huge deal for me. And I have other quibbles.

But I did want to see the refreshment room on the platform to see where it all happened. We went for a coffee (excellent) and a freshly made scone (delicious) and we had a huge long chat with Andrew who runs the place. It was brill. He let me have my picture taken behind the bar.

The adjoining refreshment room…

And here is the station clock which also features in the film:

À la recherche du temps perdu

The Lancaster canal - which we sailed down last week - is a few miles from Morecambe where my Gran lived. And a few miles further north, near Hest Bank, you get a view from the canal of Morecambe Bay and the Lake District hills beyond.

My Gran used to take us train-spotting at Hest Bank. She was disabled but had a hand-controlled car and she would park on a sloping lane that ran beside the west coast railway line from England to Scotland. She would sit in the car and knit, and Jen and I would climb through the fence and sit on the grass above the line, with our egg sandwiches and our proper trainspotters’ notebooks containing all the engine numbers, ready to tick them off. Gran always looked up when a train came so she could be a third pair of eyes in case we missed a number. I loved those trips. She was a fabulous Gran.
Dave and I walked down from the canal to search for the place. It is 55 years since I was there but I knew we were on the same lane. Now the express trains travel at 125 mph and there is a huge metal fence to stop you getting near the track.

We missed the express, but managed to see a slower train.

We walked back up Pasture Lane in hot sunshine and got back to the barge in time for Dave’s five o’clock fix of news headlines on the radio. Hundreds of refugees had drowned in the Mediterranean. I was overwhelmed by sadness.
When I went train-spotting with Gran in the summer holidays, I had no idea that the world was such a terrible place where millions of people lived impossible lives, and died in dreadful circumstances, and there would be nothing I could do to make it better. Sometimes I wish I was back in that time.
This month a photo of a Syrian girl went viral. She had her hands in the air because she thought the photographer’s camera was a gun. She was four. How must she see the world?

to put you on

I’ll be posting a long post later today, but until that arrives, here’s another photo from our trip. (You can just make out Dave’s new dungarees that he bought in response to his clothing crisis a few weeks ago.)

Self-indulgence

You know that wedding outfit that I got too fat for before the wedding arrived? The one I bought from the designer clothing agency in November? Well on that same occasion I bought my first ever pair of stretch jeans.

Going for a narrowboat holiday on a canal with no locks – which is what we just did - is the holiday equivalent of stretch jeans: pure self-indulgence. No good will come of it.There is no work to do and you grow fat and lazy.

We had a wonderful time, and not just because the days were hot and sunny. This is my favourite photo from our trip on the Lancaster canal.

It was the morning I decided to stay in bed and write while Dave set off down the cut. (He set off at 06.45 so I have some excuse.) Unfortunately this was also the morning we came across the only swing bridge on our trip, so I had to get out of bed after all, to open it in my pyjamas. The photo shows Dave waiting for me to get back on the boat.

Check in/Check out

I’m back. But I’m going away again tomorrow and my mind is full of lists and urgencies and not full of blog posts. I’m sorry. I will be blogging again, but not for ten days.

In the meantime I can offer two pictures from the family wedding weekend which shows the effects a new baby can have on ancient relatives.

Here is my brother Jonty holding his nine-week-old great niece:

And here is me with the same baby – my great niece.

Yep. I am old enough to be a great aunt.

Consequences

It’s all very well living off the fat of the land and massaged kale in Boulder, but not if it means that the wedding outfit you bought last November no longer fits you for the wedding you are going to this Saturday. Oh dear.

Fortunately, there is something else in the wardrobe that will just about do, as long as it’s sunny and warm. If not, I’m in for a chill.

Also fortunately, the planned outfit was second-hand and can go back to be sold at the clothing exchange where I bought it.

I am going away till next Friday – a family wedding first, and then a jaunt, so if I don’t blog while I’m away, you’ll know it’s because of the inadequacies of mobile Blogger. That or too much champagne. (I live in hopes.)

I am feeling more chipper today, dear friends, so….as the fat woman used to say at the end of The Morecambe and Wise Show - “Goodnight, and I love you all!”

Yesterday

Have you ever woken up feeling low and spent the day that way, and not known if it’s because you’re tired, or because you had bad dreams (which lurk there, yet you can’t remember them) or if it’s because you miss your best friend – dead for six weeks – or your mother – dead for six years – or if it’s because you don’t know where life is going? Or is it just because it’s a sunny April day, and whereas the day before you were happy because of that, now you find yourself agreeing with T.S.Eliot…

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

I’ve just been looking for an April photo to illustrate this post and realised that the light is special in April (as it is in September but in a different way). It’s bright and beautiful and uncompromising, but the distance looks mystical. Look at it here:

There are people all over the world who are suffering. I know that. I feel it. I know that my troubles are trivial. I published this post because I like blogs where people share their feelings; and someone, somewhere, might find it helpful.

“We read to know we are not alone.” C.S.Lewis

being here now

I could start by asking why the tourist from London thought I’d like to find his visa receipt for The Nature Kitchen, and the wrapper from his Oats So Simple bar at my favourite thinking place on the Monsal Trail.

But I won’t.

What I really want to say is that on a warm, sunny Easter weekend when the daffodils are out, there is nowhere I would rather be than here at home.

I’m having an idyllic weekend and I hope you are too. It began on Friday when the family member who declines to be named came to see us, and for the first time in ten years he let me take his photograph. It made my Easter. I’m sorry I can’t show you the photo. You’ll have to make do with an Easter photo of Lux.

And a really interesting shot of Cece in Palm Springs:

I started the day with a one and a half hour messaging chat with the Aging Hippie who is on holiday at the coast and had wifi for the morning. Her Peace Corps outpost is deeply rural with no wifi, so we usually have to make do with inadequate and unsatisfying Skyped conversations - me on my laptop and she on her mobile phone – during which we have to shout, and the conversation is stilted because of the time lapse.

Then I went for a bike ride on the Monsal Trail, where I was greeted by two magpies. I am not superstitious at all except for a lingering shame-faced unease about magpies (one for sorrow, two for joy). How do I shake this?

Now I am going to continue de-cluttering, which is really fun!

Happy Easter!

the definitive guide to de-cluttering

I went in the Boulder bookshop and bought a novel I had been looking for, and this little book on the recommended shelves caught my eye.

It was a sweet, small, attractive hardback and I picked it up to flick through and rather liked the approach it took. Then I thought – I’ve already got a de-cluttering book at home that I have never read – and I put it back on the shelf.

When I go away without Dave, he often asks if there are any jobs I’d like him to do while I am away. This last time I said – “Wouldn’t it be great to spring clean the porch?..Clear out all your stuff to the shed that shouldn’t be there, and then paint the walls.” He seemed to take it on board. I rang him on my last weekend and he said he’d been painting the porch, and my heart skipped a beat. Then he said “And now everything is back exactly where it was.”

This may be what prompted me to return to the bookshop and buy the life-changing magic of tidying up.  I devoured it on the flight home and am now in full clear-out mode.

It’s different from other similar books I have read. The author, Marie Kondo, is described on the back cover as “Japan’s preeminent guru of tidiness.” I like her very simple, straightforward approach.

Firstly, she says you should clear out your stuff by category, not by room. And you should start with clothes and work you way down her list of categories, at the bottom of which are photos, letters and mementoes, because these are the hardest, and you need to have got your de-cluttering muscles limbered up in order to tackle them. This made sense to me.

She also says you should make de-cluttering an event, not something you do a little bit every day. I liked that.

The best thing about her approach is the way you are supposed to make your decision as to whether or not to keep something. It’s not – if you haven’t used it/worn it in two years, throw it out. No. You should take each item into your hands and say to yourself “Does it bring me joy?”

This sounds a bit nutty. However, it really works with clothes, which is what I have started on…

I have mentioned my cashmere hoodie to you before. It is so scruffy I’ve taken to wearing it in bed to write, and nowhere else. I picked it up yesterday and asked if it brought me joy and the answer was no. It made me feel sad, because I had once loved it and now it was old and wrecked. So I cut off the sleeves above the elbow and it’s gone in my sewing drawer. It would make hot water bottle covers, or patches for other cashmere jumpers in the same colour of which I have three. (It’s eau de nil, but that’s not clear from the picture.)  OK, I haven’t thrown it out, but I have thrown away the bad bits, and it will be re-used for something else. Other clothes ARE now in a bag destined for Oxfam.

This does not help me with the porch, however. Marie K says strictly that you must never clear out other peoples’ stuff. I agree with her, so I am leading by example. I wonder if Dave will notice.

My guess is no.

Today >>>>>>World Autism Awareness Day

Regular readers know that my husband Dave has Asperger Syndrome, (see this post from last year). It’s also known as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Now it’s simply called Autism.
Phew. Now we’re over the boring bits about terminology, I want to share two things. The first is a very short video talk given by a young man who has ASD, telling us 10 things he wants us to know about autism. It’s interesting, lively and helpful: follow this link. 
The second thing I want to share is a long excerpt from my novel about a woman married to an eccentric man who doesn’t realise until late in the game that he is autistic. A few people have suggested that this storyline is not realistic. I beg to differ. I’d always thought Dave was eccentric and awkward, whilst being attractive, funny and lovable, but it was only when someone else in the family was diagnosed with ASD, that Dave and I realised that he has ASD too.
There is a lot of stereotyping about autism, especially in popular culture. This is understandable. It’s a spectrum disorder, which means it can vary widely in the way it manifests, and this makes it hard for the ordinary punter to grasp, hence the simplification and stereotyping.
Good grief, this is turning into an academic paper, not a blog post.
I’ll stop droning on. Here is the excerpt from BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU, when Fran has realised that Sol has ASD:
“Fran couldn’t imagine her life without Sol. Sol was central to everything. He was special and weird and she loved him for it. The crazy stuff he said made her laugh. He made her whole world bright with his nonsense – that stuff about sharing a bath with Wittgenstein! If she had challenged him on it and said “Don’t talk rubbish – you wouldn’t really share a bath with Wittgenstein,” he would have said “Why not? The Romans went to the baths together. Martial and Catullus went to the baths with their friends. Why shouldn’t I share a bath with Wittgenstein? But you do realise that Wittgenstein is dead, don’t you? So there is, actually, no possibility of my doing so?”
Yes – you crazy weirdo – I know full well that Wittgenstein is dead.
But the thing was, she wouldn’t even have known who Wittgenstein was if it weren’t for Sol. She would never have heard of Martial or Catullus. She wouldn’t know what a gerund was. She wouldn’t know the little she knew about black holes and quarks and supernova if it weren’t for Sol. Her vocabulary would be so much poorer - she wouldn’t know what meretricious and chimera and coruscating meant if it weren’t for him. So much of her knowledge base came from him. He was intelligent and cultured and widely read. He was her own tame polymath. How could she live her life without him and make do with ordinary, normal, pastel-coloured people like George and Fiona and Debbie and Chrissie?.…………………
…….. Was his strange, material way of viewing their marriage due to Aspergers? How could she have been married to him all these years and not recognized that he had a definable condition? Was it because Asperger syndrome varied so much from person to person? Or was it that when you live with someone and adapt to them bit by bit over so many years, you lose the ability to be objective? You just think of the person as themselves – not as someone with a condition. And isn’t that how you should think of someone, anyway? As themselves? Not as a condition or a syndrome or a disorder on legs? But all this Asperger stuff was irrelevant anyway. All that mattered was that she loved him.”

It’s so green!

The only time I want to be rich is after a sleepless, endless night-flight, when I stumble off the plane past the first class seats – you know – those ones where you can lie down flat. (Oh, and when I see amazing biker jackets in the finest, thinnest, softest, navy leather in a shop on Pearl Street, Boulder.)

It’s always painful saying goodbye to my family out in the States. Isaac told Lux I was sad, so she gave me a huge loving hug and said, in an attempt to cheer me up: “Everyone has to die, Sue. And you’re going to die fast.”

Be that as it may (!) I’m startled by how green it is here. It’s spring in Boulder, but the grass has not recovered from the harsh winter snow. Weather…weather. We were eating outside there on Monday, and on Tuesday night when Dave collected me from Manchester airport and drove me home over the hills, it was snowing.

It’s good to be home. It’s good to be back at my own laptop so I’m not blogging on the edge. The technological uncertainties and inadequacies of mobile Blogger make blogging on holiday an activity to be undertaken only by the determined.

So.

Hi!

Thank you for supporting my part in the World Autism Awareness Campaign, and telling people about BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU being free last weekend. And if any of you (who haven’t already done so) feel able to post a review of it on Amazon, I’d love it.

Also, I haven’t mentioned that there is an interview with me on Chrissie Poulson’s blog here.

Isaac, Wendy and kids are now in Palm Springs.

I am here, and ready for spring.

 

Outdoor living

It's 24 degrees here today and we've just come home from a bike ride to brunch (kids in the trailer ) and then to this park with a view of the mountains. There's a play area and loads of fitness training equipment there. I had a go on most of it. It was fun! Boulder is so fitness conscious, there are bike lanes on most of the roads, and a complex network of bike routes weaving between the houses. 

This table from Wikipedia gives you further clues as to what Boulder is like.

It's a good place to be, and although I packed my suitcase as if for a British holiday, the weather has been sunny almost every single day. Only on Wednesday did it sleet and rain. The daffodils have come out this week, and buds are breaking out on the trees. Lux has drawn a spring mural. 

The only physical difficulty is you have to keep drinking water to keep yourself hydrated. It's dry here and it's 5,000 feet high, and if you don't drink a lot of water you don't feel well. 

STOP PRESS

It's World Autism Awareness Week and I am doing my bit to make more people aware of autism by making my novel BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU - free.
The main male character has Asperger syndrome, although his wife doesn't realise it.
The book is one of the National Autistic Society's favourite novels about autism.
If you click on the book cover to the right it will take you to Amazon and you can get your free EBOOK there. Please spread the word in every way you can. Perhaps you'd consider putting a link on Facebook? I'd really appreciate it.

Boulder snapshots

I saw that card again. Inside the card it says "Things will get better."

This time it was in a toyshop and I stocked up with other delightful ones from the same publisher, along with treats for the girls. That was after I'd been to my first ever yoga class, with Wendy. You can't be in Boulder and not do yoga. 

Just like you can't be in Boulder and not eat kale. But you have to ask when you're eating out, "Has the kale been massaged?"  

Apparently, massaged kale is softer, silkier, sweeter and more nutritious than plain old unmassaged kale.

The other thing that surprised me was when a shop assistant said - "As you didn't have a bag for your purchase, would you like a chocolate?"

Of course I said "Yes."  I never turn down free chocolate.

The Carousel of Happiness

When Isaac told me last year that they'd all been on The Carousel of Happiness, I thought it was Lux's name for the carousel, because the name was so naive and childlike. I didn't guess that that's what it's really called.

We drove up the Boulder Creek Canyon road on Saturday into the foothills of the Rockies to a small town called Nederland. That's where the Carousel of Happiness is. The carousel is housed in a small building. There are no other fairground rides. All the wooden animals that you ride on were carved by one man, and it took him 26 years to do it. Lux always rides on the dolphin.

They play songs like Jeepers Creepers on a Wurlitzer, and you can't help singing along. The whole experience is a joy. Anyone faced with something called a Carousel of Happiness who decides to have a ride will be smiling when they get off. It's irresistible. It really does make you happy.  Anyone who pooh-poohs the idea, automatically rules themselves out. 

I'm just feeling cross with myself now that I haven't got pictures of the animals to show you.

making whoopee

You need to know that I am not wasting my trip to Boulder weeping at peculiar stimuli. I am having a fabulous holiday full of treats and trips with my lovely family. Of which more when I can shoehorn suitable photographs into my blog posts - ( not easy when I don't have my laptop here.)

Today I am reduced to words. Lux has noticed that Isaac and Wendy often pronounce things differently from each other, she being American and he English. And sometimes Lux chooses the UK pronunciation  and sometimes the U.S. one. She says tomato and vitamins the English way. She knows that what we call sledging, Wendy calls sledding.

Sometimes there are difficulties. I used the word torch and she admonished me "That's not a torch, Sue! It's a flashlight!"

I'd bought the kids a clutch of Alan Ahlberg Red Nose Readers, and Lux loved Mrs Jolly's Joke Shop, so I decided to buy them a practical joke. The trouble was that I didn't know what Americans call Whoopee Cushions.

Tentatively I said to the man behind the counter in the toy shop, "Do you know what a whoopee cushion is?"

"Yes!" He said. "Do you want one?"

The children love it. Cece ( who is almost 3) and I played with it for half an hour solid yesterday. Every time she sits on it she shrieks with laughter. I wish you could see her. Yes, yes, I know I have a childish sense of humour. I also have a big butt. I am probably the only person in the world who has burst a whoopee cushion. Fortunately Wendy had some duct tape that fixed it, because Cece had been on the verge of heartbreak.

A new experience

On Saturday I had a new experience.

A greetings card display made me cry.

I was in a gift shop in Boulder twirling a carousel of beautifully simple, colourful,  block printed cards and you know how they have categories such as Birthday and Sympathy and Good Luck? There was one called Encouragement. I'm always in need of encouragement  - you know what a wuss I am -  so I checked out the cards. In any case, it's nice to have a bank of greetings cards when someone you love has a need of some kind.

The first one I picked up said
"I made you a kite so you'd have to look up"

And my eyes filled with tears.

Why?

My best friend just died. Yes.
And in my quiet times, I am currently engrossed in Vera Brittain's moving memoir of the First World War - A Testament of Youth.

But to cry at a greetings card in a shop?
It's weird.
This morning I came across this tweet from Liz Winstead, the co creator of the Daily Show. I think it holds the answer.
"When life gives you lemons you find out where all the tiny cuts on your hand are."

I think it's quite deep.

Au revoir

Passport

Travel insurance

Visa

Dollars

Checked in

Jam for Lux

Jumper for Cece

Present for Wendy

Bovril for Isaac

Books for both of the girls

New cossie (to replace my 35 yr old one) to go in the pool with the girls

Goodbye!

Stay tuned. I may blog from Boulder.

The past is a mystery

Since all the first World War hoohah started last year thanks to David Cameron’s devoting £50,000,000 to ‘commemorating’ it (in a cynical manoeuvre to continue on from national celebrations like the diamond jubilee  – ooh, politics alert! – this is a politics free blog) I’ve been thinking about my grandfather a lot. My grandfather was a conscientious objector.

It was easy for me to stand in the cold rain for an hour last November in a peace vigil to mark Remembrance day – my local Quaker meeting’s response to the 2014 commemoration.

Our banner -

We see WW1 as a political and humanitarian disaster and not a cause for any kind of celebration, and we’re concerned that the current commemoration risks glorifying militarism.

Since November, I’ve been wondering how easy it was for my grandfather to stand up before a conscription tribunal, and to live with the aftermath in his community when he was granted exemption. I have imagined him being denied promotion in the bank where he worked, being given white feathers, ostracised, and much much worse.

This is his exemption certificate:

 

I don’t know what were the prevailing attitudes to C.O.s in West Hartlepool in 1916, but at a lecture on Saturday given by Cyril Pearce, I discovered that there were places around the country where the local community supported the conscientious objectors, because of the local political zeitgeist. Huddersfield was one such notable place, and Cyril Pearce’s book explores this. Following on from his research on Huddersfield and other hotspots of dissent around the country, he questions how popular the War was amongst ordinary people of the time.

It was a fascinating lecture, and when I get back from seeing the chundies in Colorado…….

…..I’ll be organising more peace vigils in Bakewell. 

pathetic

Isn’t it ridiculous - and frankly pathetic - how fed up a bad cold can make you feel?
I went to see the GP about my chronic sinus problems on Monday, and the next day came down with another cold…which went straight to my sinuses. Plus I’ve been missing Mary badly this week. Yesterday teatime I felt like this Charlie Smith quote:
”We are often far from home in a dark town, and our griefs are difficult to translate into a language understood by others.”
And then I started missing my mother, who died six years ago.
Pathetic.
I sent a miserable self-pitying email to the Aging Hippie and got an understanding, loving and encouraging email back from her, a woman who is literally far from home, and often lonely. And Dave brought me a mug of tea to bed and said "You look marginally better. Or maybe just a whisker less close to death," which made me smile. And he said that no matter how bad I felt I should definitely go to the talk about Conscientious Objectors in the two world wars that’s been in my diary for two months.
So I’ve had my croissant and home-made lemon curd and I’m going to get up and get moving, no matter how crap I feel. I may be self-pitying and whinging, but I am loved. And really, isn’t that everything?

The lure of turquoise

People around here are beginning to notice that I like turquoise. There’s even an 80 year old Quaker at my local Meeting who calls me “the turquoise lady,” and when Lux and Cece see turquoise, they call it “Sue blue.” I like turquoise. It suits me. You got a problem with that? (last sentence to be said in an American accent.)

I realised I was addicted last week, however, when I found myself on the verge of buying two expensive items I didn’t need. Let me explain.

Toast have been sending me their catalogue for over a decade, and I don’t think it’s because they’ve read the Plotting books and know that Sally Howe loves Toast. A catalogue arrives every month these days and I was worrying about the waste of paper and thinking I’d post it back and tell them to stop, because the clothes are usually so muted you wouldn’t be able to find them in a charcoal factory. This means I never even want the clothes, let alone worry about how much they cost. But when I had a quick flick, two items hit me in the eye.

and

and I swooned. If they had been any other colour, I would not have looked at them, because:

a/ I wear skirts once a heatwave – really. I like skirts, I just don’t like tights, and I don’t like my legs. Plus I only have one pair of shoes I could wear with a skirt and tights: everything else under the bed is a sandal or a boot.

b/ I already have an ancient but what my mother would call a “perfectly serviceable” towelling bathrobe, and a silk dressing gown my sister Jen gave me ten years ago, and anyway, I have a collection of silk blouses in the cupboard waiting to be made into a silk patchwork robe. So why would I want a new one, however pretty and however turquoise?

I love clothes, but I have this Puritan ethic that makes me feel guilty when I buy new ones, so I don’t do it very often. So when I was invited to a swishing party (definition here) to raise money for charity, my heart soared. And I came home with two velvet tops and a jacket. Admittedly they aren’t turquoise, but they are lovely, and I’m a happy bunny.

p.s. I forgot to mention that when I went into John Lewis for vacuum cleaner bags and came out with a raincoat, the raincoat was turquoise. And I don’t regret it.

Clarification

In case you can’t see a sunset in my latest patchwork quilt (see last post) here is a photo that inspired me:

Addicted

I am unhelpfully addicted to pork scratchings, the colour turquoise, and patchwork.

Let’s start with patchwork. It’s tedious, infuriating, and soul-destroying.

I have complained about it on the blog about patchwork before – here, and here. So why do I do it?

I should start by saying that I am a purist in that I only use scrap material, which may include jumble sale booty. I am not a purist in so far as I do use a sewing machine. It is not the sewing that interests me, and that – of course – is the heart of the problem. I make patchwork quilts because I love fabrics and more than that, I love COLOUR!

Here’s one I made when Tate was born, for his cot:

And here’s one I made when Lux was born for her cot:

Now, they weren’t tedious or traumatic to make. Maybe I should concentrate on quilts for babies.

Here’s a full size one I made for Isaac and Wendy as a wedding present, which was still in use this week:

Because patchwork is so arduous, I have considered painting instead, but you can’t put a painting on your bed and wake up every morning and enjoy it, as I have with the quilt that’s been on our bed since 2007. This is a traditional Shaker design, similar to the one I did for Isaac and Wendy:

Now – after two designs, more than two years and much cursing, the current one is finished. Here’s a design I rejected and unpicked:

Here’s the one I just finished, an abstract sunset, using many of the same patches:

I like it a lot. Tonight it’s going on the bed. But if I ever mention again that I am thinking of making another full size quilt, please, please, make me see sense.