Remnants

This Saturday I will be at the Old House Museum in Bakewell, celebrating a night at the museum and collaborating with a group of talented people known as the IAC, art for art's sake. There will be photos from Jools Sewell and Billy Bye, and art from Debra Stone and Keith How. I'll be taking my yellow typewriter to encourage visitors to type their thoughts and reactions. The theme is REMNANTS and I know there's been some great explorations of this topic, already shared as teasers on Facebook . I'd thought of landscape and geology, extinct volcanoes, healing wells and springs, blue john and crinoid limestone. I thought of writing about these remnants of past ages, past times. However a couple of weeks ago I was handed an old Asda carrier bag full of papers, maps, envelopes full of old typewritten stories and sheets of paper covered with my once neat handwriting dating back to the 70s and 80s. In spite of my efforts to clear all the cupboards in my house before I sold it, I had overlooked this bag, found at the back of a cupboard. Remnants of my own life. I'll be displaying and talking about them on Saturday night. Most of it relates to local history and folklore, so it will be perfect for a night at the museum. Some of it relates to past work teaching English, something I am hoping to revisit in the next few months.

Arabian Nights

I have already mentioned the way in which books re-present themselves on the shelves when you move house. I keep rediscovering old favourites and I feel justified in hanging on to the books I brought with me, even though it seemed too many at the time. (I know, you can never have too many books!) In the last week I have read Tahir Shah's books about Casablanca again. 'The Caliph's House' is his story of buying a house in Casablanca and the process of making it his family home. It's in a part of Casablanca I can picture, even though he's writing nearly 30 years later. He describes a small rocky island at one end of the beach, accessible by wading across at high tide. It's covered in low white washed buildings. I walked across to it in the first week I spent in Casa, realising that I was out of place and in uncharted territory, but fascinated nevertheless. Apparently the sorceresses live there. You can see film of it on Tahir Shah's youtube posts. He also takes you round his amazing home and shares some of the wonderful French architecture in the centre of the city. I know parts of it must have changed beyond recognition, but there's plenty in the books and the films that is familiar. It seems that living in Morocco, and especially French influenced Morocco, is still the fascinating and disorientating experience I had. It really is like living in four or five centuries simultaneously. High fashion and donkey carts, djinns and nightclubs, art deco architecture and shanty towns. Tahir Shah is the son of Idries Shah, whose collections of Sufi stories were favourite reading when I first discovered them in my twenties. Tahir went looking for his own story, the story in his heart, which led him on a quest for traditional storytellers in Morocco. Once I'd read 'In Arabian Nights' again, I spotted another book about storytelling in Morocco, 'The Last Storyteller' by Richard Hamilton, a BBC correspondent in Marrakesh. Then as often happens, synchronicity struck. As I finished this intense bout of reading, Radio 4 broadcast Moroccan stories each weeknight at 7.45pm. They can be found if you search Open Art on the website. Ben Rivers, an artist, was commissioned to work with Artangel to produce a body of work based on Morocco and storytelling traditions. He's been working on it since 2013. There's a film, The Sky Trembles And The Earth is Afraid And The Eyes Are Not Brothers, and a multimedia installation at BBC Television Centre. There are also these five audio pieces for Radio 4. He uses Mohammed Mrabet's stories, read by Youssef Kerkour. Mrabet was Paul Bowles' muse. Bowles transcribed and translated his stories, publishing them as collections, Harmless Poisons Blameless Sins and M'Hashish. There's a mosaic of Moroccan sounds to accompany the readings. It's evocative and magical to listen to them. They transport you on a magic carpet ride. I'd been so disappointed when the trip I had planned to make to Morocco in April didn't go ahead. This has been a consolation prize.

Body image

Since moving to Sheffield I have met up with a lovely group of young talented musicians, mostly thanks to friendships forged with my youngest son when he moved here. One of them, the lovely and very talented Fran, has set up a Facebook group, inspired by Movember and Dry January, called MAY, I Love My Body. She has invited friends to share and contribute positive messages and thoughts about self image and body awareness. She started sharing with a wonderful song by India Arie. 'Sometimes I shave my legs, sometimes I don't'. What a great line. The song continues to be such a positive and uplifting message about being yourself, not always easy in any circumstances, but especially tricky in the music business. I thought I'd enjoy the posts over the month of May, but wasn't sure about contributing. At the age of 62, I have seen fashions come and go. Not just fashions in clothes and dress, but fashions in looks, body shape, hair type, facial features - you name it. I thought I had reached a point where I truly believe that anything goes, that there are many ways to express yourself, to look good and that as an individual you can take confidence from that. Comparisons don't work. The phrase 'Comparisons are odious' was first recorded in use in the 15th century. Van Morrison wrote the line 'All the girls walk by dressed up for each other' in his song 'Wild Night'. Of course it isn't only girls who judge themselves against their contemporaries. I find the vogue for plastic surgery horrifying, as much because of my fear of needles, stitches and hospitals. I watched the TV adaptation of Fay Weldon's Life and Loves of a She Devil and it had a lasting effect. I also grew up in the sixties when an apparently effortless natural look was chic. Think Jean Shrimpton and Julie Christie. So Fran got me thinking. I've been lucky. My weight doesn't change much. I feel healthy and eat well. It's easy for me to find fashionable clothes and small sizes often end up in charity shops too. My hair grows and I have never had to colour it. It's turning silver rather than gold, but it's an easy look to maintain. My teeth are my own. My toe nails aren't so good but a bit of polish sorts that in the summer. However I am aware that it could have gone another way. Boarding school created some strange eating habits. I hated the school food, especially as I disliked meat. I lived on cereal, cakes and biscuits. There was a tuck shop and we could buy extras, so I think most of my friends could eat a whole cake or a whole packet of biscuits at a sitting. In the late 60s I had never heard of anorexia or bulimia but that didn't mean it didn't exist. Looking back on schooldays I can identify friends who suffered from one or the other - or both. I was Twiggy style and could eat as much sweet stuff as I wanted. I probably weighed about 7 stone. But I do remember a skinnier friend's brother describing me as 'stocky'.Luckily I didn't take it too seriously, though the fact that I remember it all these years later means it struck home. His sylph like sister did go on to be a photographic model in those stick thin days. Noone ever told me I was nice looking or pretty or anything like that through my teens. My parents were on the other side of the world and I don't think it occurred to them that my sisters and I might need a bit of encouragement. As I get older I also realise that my mother had (and still has!) her own issues around ageing, weight and image. Some of my friends were encouraging and kind but I never really got it about looks. Being brought up by nuns didn't help either. Vanity was considered a sin. So I find myself at an age when I can accept who I am and what I look like without any worries . I sometimes look at photos of myself when I was younger and regret that I didn't know what I had back then. It would have been nice to have been proud occasionally! So to those of you reading this as part of MAY, I Love My Body, just do it.

Carfree

After nearly 25 years of essential car ownership I have just made the leap to become carless!I didn't learn to drive until I was thirty and then had access to the family car once I did. I have an ambivalent attitude to driving, especially having waited so long to learn. It's complicated and I do trace it back to my own mother's lack of navigation skills when she had to learn to drive because my father was working abroad.I was designated navigator and at the age of nine it was sometimes traumatic.I like public transport and the chance meetings and interactions that result in bus and train journeys. I'm not a car person, though I do regret that I no longer have the VW Karmann Ghia my former husband and I owned back in the 70s. In the last few months I have found myself unintentionally jobless and homeless, fortunately not for long. That wasn't part of the moving back to the city plan. But thinking about managing without a car was and yesterday I took the plunge. It was tempting to keep it for emergencies,or to trade it in for another secondhand car, but the truth is I wasn't using it and didn't need it. I get free bus travel to work, I live near to the shops I need and it's a short walk and an even shorter bus journey into town. I get trains if I'm going any distance. I am finally well connected. I realised when I worked in Manchester that people were managing work and bringing up a family without a car. A social life was possible and entertainment was accessible without one. In Bakewell a car was necessary for access to work, to shops and to enable my children to have friendships and interests. I could get to concerts and gigs in Sheffield or Buxton by bus, but I couldn't get home. The nearest railway station was a car journey away, with bus links to it cut in the last few years. I remember signing up for the doctor's surgery in Eyam when I first moved to Bakewell. They were happy to supervise the home birth of my youngest. Only a few miles from Bakewell, I assumed there'd be a local bus service for my appointments when I didn't have the car. Once a fortnight on a Monday! That's one bus there and one back. I don't think even that exists any more. Community transport initiatives took up some of the slack for special groups, but not for the general public. Time of course was a factor. The school and playgroup runs before and after work, the dashing about to manage it all. So now when my time is more my own, I can factor in the choice of walk or bus journey, or even a taxi. It's an experiment. I don't expect to be carless for ever, but I do want to be convinced I need one before I go looking. I am also in the fortunate position of being able to borrow one occasionally if I need to. I'm told there's a car club in Sheffield and I'd like to find out more about that too. But for now I'm car free and carefree. Bye little Smart Car. It's been fun!