So, I got back from my
travels to a warm house, a fed cat, lamb stew on the way and my washing done. It
really makes life so much easier when you have support like that behind you.
The sycamore tree that overhangs the bottom of my garden has now all but shed its load of dead leaves. Its an insignificant thing really but it marks, for me, the beginning of winter. November is a month of transition. You get used to the darker nights. The weather turns chill and damp and, this year, icy. And the leaves fall from the trees.
So, every so often, this month, I've spent up to an hour in the back garden putting dead leaves into a plastic sack in the hope that I'll have prime leaf mulch next spring. I think I completed the last big clear up this afternoon. The rest of the gardening now is a matter of keeping things tidy and protected.
The rest of the weekend had been one of organising things in advance of the residential course I'm leading this coming week. I've sort of missed out on the relaxation for most of the time as I've been organising the production of the course materials. But I did manage a walk round the Hollow Pond in the local gravel pits. It's just at the tip of Epping Forest so the place is full of oak trees and holly. The water is a draw for birds also - geese, swans, moorhens, ravens, seagulls, mallards. Only today, it was partially frozen over after the recent frosts so there was much fun to be had skittering stones over the surface.
What else have I been up to in the three weeks since I last wrote?
Well I went up to Merseyside for a weekend where I saw Roland, attended a performance of Janacek's Jenufa given by Welsh National Opera and spent some time with my parents. Both journeys were easy by car and I enjoyed watching the golden leaves on the trees from the warmth of my vehicle.
The opera was good. Probably among the best things I will see this year. But I have seen more exciting and visionary performances of that work and the 1950s setting did not help my understanding so I'm afraid that I couldn't get as worked up about it or immersed in it as I might have hoped.
Being with Roland and my parents was better. I've brought back to London with me a photograph album of early family treasures. There's lots of stuff of me as a small person. Some of it may appear here eventually but I hope it's going to be part of a process of putting me back in touch with little David.
Ross house sat and
Cyril sat for me.
So, I got back from my
travels to a warm house, a fed cat, lamb stew on the way and my washing done. It
really makes life so much easier when you have support like that behind you.
Elsewhere, everything just continues. Which makes it sound boring and, no doubt to an outsider, it is just pretty routine. But I know that there are lots of changes going on through the work that I am doing with Margaret. But it's not stuff that I can necessarily put into words. I do note patterns that may go back to early childhood. I do want everything to go back to being nice and I do placate to avoid conflict and all of that may well feed out from my paternal grandfather's stroke and the effect it had on the family.
On Remembrance Sunday, I sat for a while in Quaker Meeting and contemplated the chain of being.
In 1917, my paternal grandfather was wounded at Passchendaele. Shortly before Christmas 1956, he had a massive stroke which left him paralysed on his left side and without speech. The wound was thought to be a contributory factor. He was given 6 months to live and lasted a further twelve years. The unexplained grief that I experienced as a child of two-and-a-half taught me that I could sometimes play up and make the adults laugh and love me but that they could just as easily shout at me and tell me to keep quiet.
My mother could have been evacuated from Liverpool. She was 13 during the Blitz of 1940. Her mother, Gladys Evelyn, simply would not let her youngest be taken away from her. So the two of them sat on the front step and watched the bombs rain down. I guess that Grace decided that her children would never be so frightened. And so, to protect herself, she closeted my sister Linda and I away from any strong emotions.
Two Wars. Two separate paths. Both affect me now and as a result have affected my son, Robert, as well. We never know where the chains will go or how the links are made.
But then I also think "So what?" Until I can let go and be at peace with those things, I'm not really progressing. I do know that even just last year, I would have been champing at the bit lately because my life has been work, home, food, sleep, work, home, food, sleep, work, home, food, sleep. Nowadays, I accept it more and see it as a process of taking care of myself. Roland and I have been laughing ruefully of late about the diminishing energies of middle age and both agree with Wilde that youth is wasted on the young.