23 Oct 2014

Bookshop mystery.

In the secondhand bookshop where I first started a new career fourteen years ago I found a collection of Virginia Woolf’s early writings. I’m enjoying them though the style is so different to today’s writings that it is almost archaic. What has also come to me as a result of this purchase is the tantalising inscription, scribbled on the front free endpaper, to “Sandra:

‘Detachment is the last refuge of compassion, to step away from pain and observe is the only gift of an artists/scientist. He was well loved and love knows no guilt, no shame, no betrayal, only itself.’


I suppose it to be a quote from one of the stories but haven’t found it yet. I looked it up as a quote in the usual place. No luck so far. My curiousity whisker has been tickled.

21 Sept 2014

'Coming Home'

Now the Neverendum is over, the right choice made (in my opinion)  I can put my focus and my writing energies elsewhere.

One event I didn’t get round to describing was a community project called ‘Coming Home.’ It was initiated by people from the new University of the Highlands and Islands which has, because of the terrain it serves, a ridiculous number of campuses across the most northern parts of Scotland. As far as I could gather this project was part of the ‘Music in the Community’ course, but I could be wrong about that. Certainly there was plenty of music involved. The writing group, and other local groups, were invited to join in the creation of a multi-media piece to arise out of the work and inspirational input from the members of these groups. All very vague, and it didn’t immediately find takers. The people who did roll along to the early meetings reported back that they were putting together a .... er ... um... thingy. Eventually, after a bit of persuasion, I went along to see what it was all about. 

They had already put in the ground-work with brain-storming sessions. They’d chosen a beautiful poem written by one of our group to open with, a violinist had composed music to follow it, and our script-writer had scripted some dialogue. Happily I had a poem I wrote ages ago called ‘Small Town’ which is a pastiche of a day in the life of the High Street (above which I lived for long enough to feel I was justified in calling myself a part of it.) ‘Quite Early One Morning ’ it isn’t but it did help pull the disparate pieces together and I was very proud to be able to read it in two parts, day and night, for the performances. (First time I have ever had a mike in front of me.) With the help of musical twiddly bits between pieces everyone’s work eventually slotted in seamlessly. We performed it twice with a visual background of film of nearbye beaches, dance, and a comedy sketch set in the weekly Coffee Morning which has become something of an institution in the Town Hall. The same folk turn up, week after week regardless of the cause that is raising money by selling them low-priced coffee and cake and setting up stalls of bric-a-bra home bakes, books, etc. Men and women alike  settle in for a good moan and a blether. 

Most importantly, there was lots of music. The piece opened, was punctuated by and ended with live music from fiddles, guitar and keyboard. 

We did it twice, once in the Tolbooth under the severe, glowering, portraits of town worthies in the Civic Chamber (perhaps not what it’s called but justice was once meted out there and sentences passed. Now the Town Council meets to wrangle over the use of Common Good land and so forth.)

Two days later we took it to Inverness, Eden Court where we performed in the Bishop’s Palace. An alarming number of men in suits were amongst the audience. Not so many suits worn in this part of the world so they are noticeable. The men inside the suits turned out to be the President and notables from the university, and an official from the whisky company who sponsored the project. It went well, was well received and by the end of that run-through I was feeling quite teary. 



At both events there was a reception with wine afterwards, so for two weeks I downed rather a lot of chilled white. Good quality too. We had the whisky company to thank for that. Very nice.


13 Sept 2014

Medea - a supprising sister.

Medea.

 On Thursday last week I went into Inverness to see a live streaming of the last performance of  Medea at the National Theatre. What a thrill! We could even hear the audience in London settling as we sank into our own, extremely comfortable, seats. So exciting to be watching this without all the hassle and expense of actually traveling to London. 

I hadn’t read or seen Medea before although I knew the ghastly story. If it hadn’t been for the exceptional circumstances I doubt I would have wanted to put myself through the horrors of watching a mother decide to murder her own sons in pursuit of revenge. I certainly didn’t expect to have any sympathy with her. Before the performance we heard Helen McCrory say she didn’t think Medea was crazy or psychotic. I listened in disbelief. Half way through her  portrayal of this woman my feelings changed. 

Medea was not what might now be termed a sociopath. She was capable of love and compassion, sensible to the feelings of others, but she was temporarily maddened, unhinged, by an unbearable agony of grief and rage. She had been set calmly aside by a man whose sons she had born, and for whom she had committed dreadful acts - out of love for him. Quite unexpectedly, and rather uncomfortably, her emotion cut into some sludgy personal sewage long side sunken to the bottom of my consciousness but evidently not cleaned out. I realised that what I was feeling was not sympathy but empathy. I understood Medea. I felt what she was feeling.  I remembered once behaving like an animal in pain, lashing out at all around me in some desperate search for relief. 

Later I read the program notes. A psychologist says that the first six moths of marital breakdown are the most dangerous time for the children of that marriage. Killing them in revenge for the pain caused by the separating partner is not unknown.


The closing image of Medea dragging herself off into her terrible future, her own body bowed low, distorted, by the weight of the bodies of her dead sons was something I will never forget.

Life is enriched by poetry and crime.

So, the last entry was about the tangle of threads that is currently my grandson’s path through my personal tapestry. Worrying, but also impressive as I have been able to get glimpses of the fine man he will eventually be.

My own activities have been rich but thankfully less complicated. A neighbouring town has an annual ‘Book and Arts Festival.’ over the last ten years or so it has grown steadily until it is able to attract an impressive number of known writers and artists. I’ve rarely been to any of the events, was once involved to the extent of organising a secondhand bookdealer’s pop-up shop (in the days before pop-up shops were given that name.)  That enterprise was successful (especially for me!) although it disjointed the nose of the local bookshop owner at the time although he specialised in new books. Sigh! We weren’t invited back. 

The bookshop owner has changed and the present incumbent (female) is supportive of any literary project so, although she isn’t a fan of poetry, once a month after regular opening hours she reopens her doors for a poetry group. This group formed the core of a fringe event to the main festival: ‘Bards in the Bookshop.’ 

My good friend and stunning poet, Eileen Carney-Hulme, started the week with a reading last Monday. Mid morning three of us hit Nairn’s best restaurant for coffee and scones. At lunch time we walked up to the bookshop where Eileen did her reading beautifully, then, scooping up a couple more poetry-loving friends we went back to the same watering hole for soup and wine. This pattern was repeated, for me three days in a row, four days for some, until other events took over (the Callander Poetry Weekend for my friends, other things for me). The readings continued until Saturday, the last day of the festival. 

On that last festival day I spent the afternoon listening to three crime writers talking about their craft. The three hour program was accompanied by wine lavishly served out in the intervals. Heaven! The writer’s were Malcolm Mackay (ridiculously young Hebridean author, ridiculously good), Alex Gray, and Ann Cleeves whose ‘Vera’ series I am addicted to and whose latest series set in the Shetlands I also find irresistible. By the end of it I wanted to rush off to form a crime-lovers reading group. 


Growing up, leaving school and how to give your parents grey hair.

The last two or three weeks have been full of events, some very pleasant, some less so. That old saw about life’s rich tapestry has been on my mind. At times the tapestry becomes a tangle of threads and it’s difficult to see the pattern.

So, to start with the worrying bits. The grandson did not get the GCSE results  he had demanded of himself. Not that we, his mother and I, were disappointed, on the contrary. Considering all he has had to cope with over the last six years, any likelihood of him absorbing school subjects was much reduced.  But then came his own ambitions, suddenly announced, (probably as a result of much time spent in A&E for one injury or another.) He wants (wanted) to become a doctor. For that he needed sciences and -  gloom - maths. His grasp of mathematics is about as good as mine, which means he doesn’t have one. The subjects he has a natural aptitude for, like English, Art  and Design, they were dismissed as being ‘no use to him’ and therefore no comfort when he got creditable passes in them. He didn’t do badly in physics and chemistry either but maths, oh dear, oh dear.  

So he declared himself fed up with schooling and determined not to go back to it. He is just sixteen. In Scotland that means he can get married without parental permission and officially leave school. Mother and grandparents held their collective breath in fear. This is the point it can all go horribly wrong. Luckily we are unified in our belief that no good comes of forcing a sixteen year old, especially a stubborn and otherwise sensible one, to do what it doesn’t want to do. The time has come for a little faith in the innate intelligence and good sense of the person he is showing himself to be. Still, it was a nastily worrying moment. 

His next step took our breath away. He fixed himself up with an interview for the Navy. 

He downloaded the necessary forms, filled them in, and persuaded his quaking parent to sign them.  He wants to be a medic - or an engineer..... or...  He was very nearly accepted too. The interviewer was enthusiastic, said he was just the sort of young chap they need. Then he was given some test papers. He passed them all until the b***dy maths.  ‘Come back in six months’ he was told regretfully. ‘If we can see you have been working at your maths  then we’ll see what we can do.’ 

It turns out he has been watching documentaries, youtube clips, researching on the net, about life in the Royal Navy, for two or three years. He knows, as much as he can without the experience, what he is letting himself in for. Sharing fish and chips and a bottle of wine with him last night I was amazed by the details he has picked up.  It still seems ridiculous that this young man who disliked the institutionalised life of school so heartily, would put himself into an organisation that imposes an even stricter discipline and demand for conformity.  

Increasingly, he reminds me of his uncle who was not at all absorbed or engaged by academic subjects as they were taught in school, but once he had a purpose in mind could achieve anything he set his mind to. After years of managing water sports centres he is now on his way to becoming a chartered accountant.


What I do wish schools (governments?) could get over is the emphasis on exams. The school we chose for him was founded by a man with ideals. He saw the importance of developing the whole child, of allowing the full potential of that child to emerge. Nowadays, with league tables and the unnatural emphasis on the certain sort of intelligence that enables people to pass exams, the school has lost its way. At sixteen they are given the impression that a pass or fail will determine the whole of their future. That’s nonsense, but teenagers are intense creatures and take this to heart. It’s dangerous. They learn to define themselves by results and it is hard work to swing the emotional balance, to stop them from writing themselves off as failures.

31 Aug 2014

Writing process

An internet friend sent me a questionnaire to answer for her blog. I don't think she'll mind if I put it here as well. He blog is more read than mine! It was an interesting exercise for me.

What am I working on?

I’ve written an 80,000 word children’s novel pitched for 9 - 12 years about a furry four-armed alien called Yub who, a teenager on his own planet, has a special ability that allows him to travel through space. His planet is dying and all its inhabitants live underground in biospheres built after the Cataclysms (a war) that caused the destruction of the protective atmospheric shield around the planet. Looking for a planet like his own was before the violent changes Yub arrives in the North of Scotland and contacts a teenage boy, Josh, (who is also feeling a bit alien as he is an incomer from the south). With the additional help of another isolated incomer, Leonie, they get Yub’s family and closest friends to Earth and hide them. There are many ups and downs, some humour, and some real-life problems like Leonie’s relationship with her chronically depressed father.

I’ve written it, edited and re-edited, worked on a sequel, and think it is good enough to publish but haven’t enough courage to try sending it to any publishers! My self-confidence comes and goes.

I’m also working on a sort of patchwork novel which gives me a chance to make stories up for the characters that fill my imagination. It’s much more adult but doesn’t yet have a connective ‘voice.’ 

How does my work differ from others in the genre?

That is an extremely difficult question. Quick answer: I’m not sure either of these novels actually differ much from what’s on the market already. Probably because I am older  I will have a more old fashioned approach to writing children’s stories, but I have read a lot and still enjoy teen fiction(Kathy Reich’ ‘Virals’ for instance. ) I love J.K.Rowling’s style and would like to be like her without actually emulating her (if you see what I mean.) What I admire is her talent for spinning a good yarn, for creating characters who are real and walk off the page, for always mixing in touches of humour with drama even when the situation is dire. She has created a world where friendship, loyalty, bravery and good intentions are the most valued qualities. She creates a whole world that children love to lose themselves in. 

In my opinion children need escapism as much as adults and really don’t want ‘real life’ stuff about drugs, getting pregnant, dysfunctional families, or the terrible life of children in war-torn lands, thrust at them constantly. That sort of ‘good for you’ genre reminds me of the books I used to get given as ‘prizes’ at Sunday School, moralising Victorian works like ‘Mary Jones’s Bible.’ They darkened my days - and completely put me off religion I might add!

Why do I write what I do? 

That’s another poser. I’ve written both the children’s story and portions of the adult novel with great enthusiasm and enjoyment. The characters for the latter are composites of people I have met, together with ideas of people I would like to meet, or to be. Their developing psychology amuses me. Probably they are all projections of myself - that’s fine. It’s like being allowed to be multiple-personality-me. I love crime novels so it is shaping into one of those, but I do have to avoid actual police procedures or autopsies because, though I’ve read a lot about both, I don’t want to get into areas that I only half understand. It would distract from the intricacies of the human mind behind the crime and the reactions of the other characters involved one way or another. We shall see.

How does your writing process work?

I used to always be writing something but have never been very good at consistency or discipline. I’m easily distracted by family matters, and daily obligations. It’s been better since I retired properly and I have acres of time to myself - I love that. Once I do hit a hot spot I can write for eight hours a day, coming up for air only for coffee and snacks. I love that. At those times even when I lay down to sleep my mind is busy with the next chapter or event. Then months will go by and I can’t bring myself to add anything or even glance at what I’ve done. During this sort of period I usually write poetry. Recently there have been times when I write nothing. Strangely I think this has come about because I joined a writing group. They are very supportive people and for nearly a year I loved my Tuesday evenings. Then I started to feel full up with other people’s words and my own output dried. I’ve stayed away for two months - it’s coming back.  


So, no words of wisdom here. I’m not a published author, I am an author who has self-published three small collections of folk tales indigenous to this part of the world. I am an author who, if I had had a little more conviction, belief in my self and a proper spine, might have made a name for myself. Not sure that’s going to happen now so perhaps my advice is: perseverance is the key. The ultimate secret!

Pyromania

Inspired by a friend who has stitched poems onto fabric, I have bought myself a pyrography kit and am now looking for suitable slices of wood to burn my (shorter) pieces into. Since it arrived I've realised lots more potential - adding colour and design for instance. What I'm aiming for is something that can hang on the wall, be decorative, but also let the words take centre stage. First I have to get used to using it so - nobody hold their breath. 

29 Aug 2014

Achievements: Few.

Yesterday I took out the trash. Later I fetched in the empty trash can. (SometimesI forget I'm not an American because I watch so many US series on DVD.) 

I also lay in bed comfortably reading a crime novel from cover to cover.  'Broadchurch.' The book of the TV series by Erin Kelly. She's a good writer so although I knew the story it was still an enjoyable, even engrossing, read.

Finally, at 7pm, I did do something creative. I joined a local group putting together a sort of multi-media montage of our town. It was initiated by a ---- um.. er … I'm a little unclear on this …. a student or a professor of the newly formed University of the Highlands and Islands. I came to the group after they had already been through several meetings and found myself enjoying, for once in my life, the feeling of cooperating on something arty, local and possibly of universal interest. There could be similar projects in all small towns and communities to  reflect, give voice to, their pride in their community. 

The idea was that the locals should be the creators and the prof. and student should stand back, helping only when invited, suggesting but not directing. There is lovely original music from violin and saxophone; singing (she wrote her own song and set it to music)  films of dancing on Findhorn beach, a 'coffee-morning' dialogue, (the town is practically famous for its fund-raising weekly coffee-and-cake mornings in the Town Hall), two old boys gurning about the state of the world, and poems by several of the writer's group I belong to, including, I'm proud today, one of mine. 

As I have written virtually nothing for months (in my own defence I have had some health blips) and almost all the feedback I've had from the handful of submissions I've roused myself to make have been: 'Thank you but no thank you', it was nice to have a piece welcomed into the fold and be usefully put to work. 

Probably the very best thing has been the easy feeling of cooperation toward the best result possible in a very short time. No ego-blasts and no prima-donna stuff from any of us - not even me!!

Small Town.

Monday. 
The queue for pensions forms.
On the street, nods and smiles 
make light of life’s dark Sundays.
Glad to be alive and on the go again
women talk cheerily of ailments,
their grandchildren. 
Sometimes of their husbands.

Men, not old, but unemployed,
look for motivation,
buy themselves a pie and a newspaper,
warm themselves with women’s gossip.

Tired mothers lean on buggies,
bite a surreptitious candy bar,
feed their toddlers crisps to get a minutes’ peace whilst they gaze through glass
at flighty shoes and teasing fashions,
dreaming of future days
when they might be themselves again.

At 5pm a lull. A hiatus.
An extinguishing of windows, 
a pulling down of blinds.
Doors locking on another day of retail.
The final ring of tills and card machines.
The reconciliation.
Shopkeepers take change to buy a pizza,
Pity the 8-Till-Late but wonder,
with a curling of the gut,
if they too should open longer.

There falls a calm.
The stage is ready to reset.

Along the night streets
newly broken voices bark obscenities.
In shrill counterpoint reeling girls
harpoon young men with cruel wit
dragging them to shore
thrashing, roaring, yearning to be caught
and held for a few moments
of fumbled bliss.

The pack moves on,
away from the municipal attempt to bring        daylight
 to sanitize the dark, 
in the sure and certain hope that sin cannot survive
street lighting. 

By 3am there is an emptiness,
thin mists congeal, the town brings back its ghosts.
Fishwives with baskets on their backs
walk across the low-tide mud 
to sell the hard-won herrings.
The coalman’s horse stands patient in the shafts,
while at the Tolbooth a stagecoach stops
to let down wey-faced passengers,
sickened by the jolts.
A piper from a later age skirls silently
for weddings and for death.

Under harsh security light the Visitors drift on 
undisturbed by oyster shells that fool 
the scavenging gulls,
turning into polystyrene boxes as they swoop.
Their curdled cries, like wounded cats 
or babes,
wake the men who stagger from their sleep
to drive the wooly-footed monsters through the streets. 

Slaloming round cars they wash away the primitive,
returning the street to quiet sobriety
before its present folk drift in again, 
imprinting their own lives onto its canvas.



10 Aug 2014

Chemistry Experiment.


It’s been a beautiful summer. Mostly. Lots of sunshine, not too hot up this end of the country. Walks on the beach, cafe-sitting, pizza and white wine. Watching little dinghies sporting with the waves, children licking ice-creams.

There was always the underlying unease. Something not quite right. Occasional bouts of faintness, rather too strong for comfort.

Finally, last weekend, after three almost-black-outs in a row, the inevitable trip to A&E  and much monitoring.  So now I have a diagnosis: Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation. Somehow that impressive title does make it less frightening and although the moments of unease haven’t gone away entirely at least they aren’t made worse by mounting panic. Warfarin (have to jiggle with the quantities) to avoid the danger of a clot, and if the fibrillation gets too troublesome there’s something called Veloceraptor (maybe not, but that’s as near as I can get) to help settle it. 

I like to be able to forget about my body as often as possible. It gives me aches and pains and asthma and I’m used to all that, but this is rather new and doesn’t please me at all. 

14 Jul 2014

Jolly Super


I love Jilly Cooper. I suppose I mean I love her books since I have never met her and she obviously inhabits a very different social stratum to me, but from her novels I feel I have a shrewd idea of what she is like as a person. My favourite has always been ‘Score’ as it combines the usual cast of characters set against a musical backdrop with a nicely plotted murder. Yesterday and this morning I galloped through three of her much earlier novels about young women, Harriet, Imogen, and Octavia. The upper class names say it all. They provided utterly enjoyable light reading, formulaic (the formula being very much her own) but having some real insights into human nature.

Two of the heroines are forerunners for many of her subsequent heroines, overweight (or think they are) with frizzy hair (hair like Jilly Cooper’s own in fact) and unfashionably flushed faces. They are forced to watch whilst the man they long for is swept away by events and other women, then, because of their misery, they lose weight, go pale, turn into swans, whilst their red-eyed suffering and  their beautiful, naive, innocent and kindly natures win Mr. Right.  Yes, it’s schmaltzy, and possibly ridiculous, but satisfying. I’ve always loved happy-ending fairy stories. The third young woman is a spoilt bitch who has always been lovely but in her determination to forget her deep unhappiness and insecurities, sets out to hunt down and seduce any and every man in her orbit, including the one engaged to her best friend. A good spanking is what she needs and a good spanking is what she gets. Predictably she falls in love with the spanker. Her humiliation does not end there; she becomes poor and is forced to work for a while at jobs she is ill equipped for. We get very little detail of her working conditions. This sordid and potentially depressing interlude doesn’t take up many pages before she is rescued from doing something dreadful in an attempt to save her brother from penury or knee-capping, (I can’t remember which.) Thus the good in her is unveiled and Mr.Right (the spanker of course) comes along to rescue her from a fate worse than death, and the tax man.

The heroines throughout her works, fictional and non-fictional, tend to follow these prototypes. They are painfully sensitive to other people’s unhappiness, have huge affection for dogs, cats, horses, and suffer if they are suffering. They fall in love with playboys, or the most irascible, rude, damaged and embittered men, becoming the catalyst for change through kindness and goodness. The inevitable culmination of their story comes in the last few pages. 

Not great literature but perhaps what is needed in a shallow world. Good triumphing over evil in a glamorous, Diorissimo-scented, non-demonic way. Some of the characters are ‘portable,’ that is they walk out of the novel and follow one home. She is an astute observer of human behaviour and is compassionate with what she sees. Her books show the understanding of a psychologist; they also have soul. From all I read about her she has been through some rough times herself and found ways to deal with those times, translating them into stories, lacing them with humour, but never belittling either life-events or people. 




11 Jul 2014

Nautical shots from the shore.

The Agenda here is almost the hidden agenda. Owner Greg and grandson coming from Whitehills in Banffshire to Findhorn. It took them ten hours (takes about two by road!!)
Passing the seals on the bar. Wish I had been with them at this moment.

Getting closer, but it's a tricky approach.

Coming safely through the mouth at speed - with the incoming tide.

Rounding the buoy to their mooring. 

My favourite watering hole was very busy the next day. We had a long breakfast with the sailors. 

Even busier today - glorious sunshine and they have added pizza to their menu, wine, local  beers and, obviously, ice-cream..

There's small pontoon now but Agenda is moored elsewhere in the bay.

Sometimes when I point and shoot I get grass.

8 Jul 2014

I discover Millay.


'...the rain 
is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply'

Reading this on someone’s blog led me to discover: 

Edna St. Vincent Millay 
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American lyrical poet and playwright. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the third woman to win the award for poetry, and was also known for her feminist activism and her many love affairs


6 Jul 2014

Where to call home?


The count-down to the Great In/Out Referendum has been disturbing me for eighteen months now. I’ll be glad when it’s over, though the consequences whichever side wins are likely to take the country through rocky waters. What really irks me is the emotional turmoil it causes me. I try to understand why I feel so very involved without having, as far as I know, the tiniest strand of Scottish ancestry in my genetic make-up. 

Truth is, the whole stramash has brought to the surface the anti-English feeling Scots have been nurturing for generations. My children and I arrived here to live 27 years ago, in response to an inner imperative that this was a good place, the place I wanted my children to experience, where they could have a real childhood with physical freedoms impossible in a city, where my compromised lungs could breathe clean salt air, where we could walk on almost empty beaches under wide skies, where there was room to be all we could be. It was the landscape that drew me and the relative dearth of people. I was not put off by travelers tales of Scottish racism and bigotry. I hardly thought about the indigenous population, but if I did it was to appreciate the friendliness of shopkeepers. 

I had lived thirteen years in Brussels, suffering the palpable rudeness of shop-assistants,(One told a friend of mine with long arms that it wasn’t a different style of coat she needed but a surgeon!) Nurses, school teachers, people I met socially and invited to my home all struck me as blunt and outspoken to the point of rudeness. Belgians have an intrusively inquisitive, almost aggressive way of asking questions that made my English soul quail. It wasn’t wholly that we were incomers, ex-pats in a country ridden rough-shod over by many nations in the course of  wars having little or nothing to do with the peoples of the land between themselves and their goals. Divided itself for centuries by language and culture, and now uncomfortably united, Belgium has its own problems from which I was largely cushioned by a wide circle of friends from other European nations in the EU, especially the Germans, Danes, Italians, and the French. There were coffee mornings with other English women recently arrived and happily delighted with the restaurants, the wonderful choice in the hypermarkets, the patisserie, charcuterie, chocolatiĆØres. Gastronomically Belgium was a wonderland to us poor Brits. We also met Australians, New Zealanders, Americans. Lots of Americans. They were for the trade contacts with the new Europe and of course for NATO. I met the wives of diplomats of all nations. My husband bought a book of cocktail recipes. We lived well. 

I had babies in Brussels. I might never have had babies in England, on the NHS. I needed hormones injections to kick-start my body into reproduction. In London I was told ‘W don’t like messing with lady’s hormones.’ Well, no, they probably didn’t but they probably also found it expensive. There was no such prohibition in Belgium where if you had a good insurance all was possible. Once started my body seemed ready to go on for ever and we had three much cherished babes before stopping it again. It was these babies who, in their beauty and purity, eventually made me want another place for them to grow. That and the asthma.

Brussels is a long way inland. It is also in a kind of bowl which often causes temperature inversions during the winter when the air at ground level isn’t able to rise and blow away. Within a few months of arriving the asthma which had been my lot since infancy, Kicked in. Even living just outside London in the built-up areas of Thornton Heath, then Blackheath, it had been in total abeyance. Possibly there were psychological reasons, but chiefly I think it was the bad air. After the first baby arrived it increased uncomfortably and after the second it was incrementally worse. After the third our doctor was called several times to administer adrenaline injections and, once, to accompany me into hospital. there were days I could hardly walk across our bedroom and nights were terror-filled and long when I woke unable to draw breath and bargained with death, with a god I don’t believe in to be allowed to survive to be with my babies. Long spells of bronchitis followed and general exhaustion couple with the side effects of brutal medicines that made me jittery and more emotional than ever. 

It was not a good time, yet through it ran the joy of having the children. We also discovered, as can happen at crisis times in lives, a new way of seeing life. We discovered the Findhorn Foundation and the New Age. Although I believe that for both my husband and myself this was something of a diversion on a pretty road, it did open my eyes to the existence of other levels of perception. Eventually it led to our separation and the end of a 21 year marriage.That was, for me, a tragedy, but it gave me something in return. It gave me Scotland.

Returning to Brussels after an earlier stay of about five months in Findhorn, mostly in the real village, our eldest daughter, who was by then eight, asked more than once ‘When are we going back to live in Scotland? I want to live there before I’m too old to enjoy it.’ I returned with them two months before her eleventh birthday. She is still enjoying life here. The three of them finally began their real childhood. One owned a pony, one learned to sail, eventually had a dinghy and set course for making a life around watersports, one found friendships and experiences that she still writes about in her poetry.

I have much to thank Scotland for.

But - and does there always have to be this dark side to paradise? (Well, of course there does.) My initial happiness with the friendly ways of shopkeepers was eroded bit by bit by small incidence, mostly experienced by the children at school and in the street. Generally it came in the form of comments from bitter men, drunk on their morning tinny, making stupid remarks about the English voices of the children in front of them in the queue. My second daughter, a very sensitive soul, has never felt at ease here since the first of these experiences although she, like me, loves the landscape. She had a best friend who would talk in the most disparaging tones of ‘the English’ whilst (and I think it was genuine) forgetting the essential Englishness of our family. None of us picked up a Scottish accent. To me that would have been a falsity. Two young German boys who came to live here when they were seven and eight however became more Scots than the Scots. They picked up the accent along with the language. They also had their problems. There was, memorably, the old man invited to speak at the Academy prize-giving whose rambling and thankfully boring speech strayed into a diatribe about the Germans, defeated so heroically by the brave Scots in WW2. Sigh!

For me the erosion came little by little. In Belgium I had learned that I was English. This is so undeniably true it makes me blush, but I had never thought of myself as being anything in particular. I was a world citizen with a strong ideal about unity in Europe to be brought about by the brain-child of a good man, the French Foriegn Minister of the 50‘s, Robert Schuman. My family was not politically aware or inclined whereas my husband’s father was a Greek Communist and every bit as idealistic as Schuman about the enrichment of humanity, he just had differing ideas as to how it should be brought about. He was a good man too. In my family the Germans were spoken of with sympathy (and it has to be remembered that my parents lived through the war and the heavy bombing of Chelmsford with Marconi Marine where both of them worked as the target. They had experienced the war first hand, my mother working at night on the ambulances.) 

Soon after we arrived in Brussels my insular world view was shattered. We met a family from Pennycuik who were Catholic Scots and had chips on their shoulders about both allegiances. It isn’t going to far to say I was baffled by their attitudes, though they were nice enough to me. They made their feeling about Maggie Thatcher very clear and seemed to equate the rest of the English nation with her, quite forgetting that English miners suffered too; that English poor had to pay Poll Tax, lost the daily milk allowance for children and so on. 

They were a gentle introduction to the sort of racism I would come up against later. Soon after we moved here I made a friend who was born in the Gorbals, Glasgow and had escaped to South America as a young man. He was frequently vituperative abut the English systems and this has hardened into belligerence as he has aged. 

Someone once told me that most Scots don’t know their own history (it was a Scot who said this.) I have found this to be true. Over 400 years they have ignored the facts of clans fighting and massacring each other. Somehow all defeats, disasters and outrages have always been the fault of the English, especially the Clearances (Note the capital. They are an important part of Scottish justification for hating their neighbour.) Clearances happened in England, Wales and Cornwall long before they happened in Scotland ad a result of an increasing population and changes in agriculture and land use. It was for rather different reasons that the lairds decided to supplement their coffers with the income from sheep farming and ousted labourers from their cottages. Most of these lairds were Scottish, absentee landlords, living the high life in London but they called in the English militia to help them so - it was the fault of the English. Some lairds had put in place help for resettlement. That is conveniently forgotten too. 

Whatever the truth, it all happened a long time ago. The English are also blamed for killing off the Gaelic language. In fact, from local books, (written by locals) I have come to understand that in order to promote commerce with both the English and the Norman French, English was seen as an important language to be taught in schools. Tales of beatings given for speaking the native tongues (there’s more than just gaelic) could most probably be rivaled by beatings administered for failures to pay attention in class during other subjects, for behaviour and failure to produce good work but they are not remembered with such a sense of injustice and there is a handy place to alot blame.  There was undoubtedly suppression. The warring and rebellious clans were a trouble to the Kings in London, kilts were forbidden in an attempt to curb the wild Highlanders and so forth (brought back later by another King who fancied showing off his legs.). 

It all happened a long time ago. It’s wearying just thinking about it. But every English outrage is still seen as a rallying cry. My erstwhile friend has availed himself of every drop of acrimony, and charged his batteries on it. Our friendship is damaged because of this. His partner, South African, told me she had suffered the same hatred from the English when they learned where she was from, blaming her for Apartheid. I recently saw the film ‘Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.’ I cried at the terrifying ill-treatment of the blacks, the arrogance and cruelty, the sheer stupidity of the Whites. Who wouldn’t. Through it all I thought: ‘S- equates this with the English-Scottish relationship across the years? How can she? It’s really not the same. The Blacks were treated like animals. The Scots are respected the world over- and in England too. How many English are proud of their Scottish ancestry? Were they segregated from the English in trains and restaurants? Did they still live in poverty in townships in the eighties only seen as necessary livestock to be employed as servants?’ No. They weren’t.

The Scots (it is impossible not to talk in generalities) seem to feel they have ‘lost their nationhood.’ I have never come across a nation so sure of its own identity. As far as I can see the very presence of the annoying neighbours has given them a reason to find that cultural identity and make much of it. Other countries have helped them in this. The Highland Games are celebrated more in the USA than they are here. The kilt, itchy and hot as it is, is worn with pride in Canada, Australia, America on Burns Night and at ceilidhs. Whereas the English are not quite sure who they are any more. The achievement of the English nation (and I am NOT using ‘English' where I should be using ‘British') is huge. Go to the Wikkipedia page to see that list.) We have always punched far above our weight and not always with the help or support of the Scottish nation. 

I knew the SNP was originally a Nationalist party that admired Hitler and many of its members refused to fight the ‘English war’ running away to Ireland when trouble started. The Irish didn’t ant them and sent them back again. Even the Irish who equally hated the English went to willingly to war against Hitler. I was shocked to read the words of a famous Scottish poet, Hugh Macdiarmid: 

 Now when London is threatened
With devastation from the air I realise, 
horror atrophying me, That I hardly care.’

This coming referendum is stirring up stuff. The last time I spent an evening with my bigoted friend took me a while to get over. I was hurt. He said as he left my dining table: ‘Perhaps you know now how it feels to be a Scot.’ Utterly unjust words that shook me. I have never looked down upon anyone from another nation. I have mostly despised stereotypes as lazy thinking. I do not feel responsible for perceived oppression. He considers himself an intelligent man but in this he shows only a painful lack of education and insight. Most sadly he has done three things for me: Firstly he has become the personification of the emotionally-driven chip-on-the-shoulder, find-someone else-to -blame Scotsman. Secondly he has made me proud to be English. 

Thirdly, and I say this sadly, he has also made me unsure I want to stay here if the Separatists get their way. 

I still remember the moment when driving into Findhorn with three excited young children ready to start their new life, I felt an almost physical shift as though I had been existing somewhere slightly to the right of myself and in that moment everything came fully into line, so for all the pain of separation from my husband (and it was intense) I never felt I had done the wrong thing. Now, however much 'they' say it isn't about hating the English, emotions are running high. For me it is the idea of waking up one morning to find I am living in a foreign country. I'm British. 








3 Jul 2014

'How Do The Parakeets Stay Green?'

We had a Launch here for Sophie's new collection: 'How Do The Parakeets Stay Green?'  It was fun. Eileen Carney-Hulme and Andy Allan and I also read, as support acts. It was the day after my birthday so I was still in celebratory mood and thought of it as my party. Quite a lot of organising went on beforehand, and the usual fear that no-one would show up, but they did.Yay! Sophie sold all the copies she had with her. She is a wonderful poet.

Sophia
Her sister Chloe sitting at the front with her new man.

Sandy made a laid-back bartender. Here he is keeping an eye on cousin Theo who is checking out the muffins.

Eileen, who is also a creator of moving and evocative poetry.

Andy, who celebrates his Scottish homeland with vibrant imagery.



23 Apr 2014

Another gothic tale


          I enjoy writing in the gothic genre. This story, 327 words, was published on a site that calls itself 330words and is devoted to flash fiction.
Edinkillie Churchyard. (I can't find a tomb with a bell in this area.)


                                                          The Bell

Emily rubbed her belly gently, smiling as she thought of the child growing in her. Somewhere in the night a bell tolled twice. Comfortable in her silken sheets she slept again.

In his lonely mansion on the edge of the moor Sir Edward lay sleepless thinking of his wife. He heard a small bell toll in the distance.

Emily roused once more from fitful slumber. She tried to refrain from fidgeting for fear of disturbing her dear husband but her mouth was dry and her head full of feathers. She raised a hand to reach for the carafe of water by her bed and heard the bell toll again. Her hand felt heavy. Something dragged at her wrist. Exhausted she dropped it back to her side. 

‘It is as though I have taken a sleeping draught,’ she thought drowsily, ‘Perhaps I did, but I do not remember doing so.’ She slept again.

Edward heard the bell and leapt out of bed dragging on his quilted dressing gown. His heart raced and his palms were wet. He threw back the curtains and stared into the night. The church spire rose above the village, a blacker blade piercing the black of the moonless night, touching the stars. Was she now amongst them?

‘I am maddened by grief,’ he thought and, sighing heavily, lay back on his bed.

After his collapse at the graveside the doctor had given him a powder to take to bring sleep, but he would not allow himself such comfort when his beloved lay cold in her grave. He tossed fretfully, the images chasing him from oblivion. Emily in her satin-lined casket. The child inside her already making a roundness to her loved form. Her face had been peaceful, but no longer that of his mischievous, teasing darling. 

Finally he succumbed. He added the powder to the water in the flask by the bed. This pain was unbearable. He must have respite for a few hours. Whilst he waited for the opiate to take effect he tried to comfort himself with the excellence of the oaken coffin he had chosen for her, fully sealed against the depredation of worms and the corrupting air. The next time the bell tolled he could no longer hear it.