Christmas present

I read another blogpost from an old friend today. Like me, she hadn't posted for a while, and like me she has had a big year of changes on a personal and family level. We both grew up politically through the sixties and seventies, and like me, she is struggling to make sense of what is happening as we move towards a new year and what seem to be turbulent times. The dark days of winter are symbolic of many things. A time for growth, underground and unseen, ready to burst forth in Spring. A time of hibernation and dreamimg, as we prepare for the challenges of the new year. And because we don't hibernate like the lucky bears and tortoises, the butterflies and the dormice, it's a time when we can surround ourselves with those we love. If they can't be there in person, they are there in spirit. My own run up to Christmas has been a strange one. Working in an environment that makes a commercial business out of people's desire to get into the Christmas spirit, the pressure to fulfill visitors'expectations has been exhausting and relentless since early November. Work colleagues have been a great support, and there have been some magical moments scattered like fairy dust, but serving up the Christmas experience is very different from enjoying it. Inevitably at this time of year, I have a sense of Christmas past. Childhood memories of waiting for Father Christmas, the first Christmas when my dad was working abroad, the first Christmas when both parents were abroad and we travelled on our own, three young sisters, from a miserable boarding school in Derbyshire to the exotic jungles of Borneo to join them. A Christmas in Casablanca and Tenerife. A Christmas when I dropped out of University. A Christmas waiting for a January baby, just as my daughter is doing now. Christmas with and without my children, as we took it in turns as parents after my marriage broke up. If I put my mind to it, I can probably recall where I was and how I felt for most years since childhood. This Christmas present has been about helping my daughter and son in law turn their first house into lovely home for them and their imminent first baby. It's about having my children with me for our first Christmas in my new home. It's also about the relief of knowing my mother has managed a successful move to a new flat at the age of 87, thanks to help from other members of the family, who pulled out all the stops when I couldn't. This Christmas present is also about the pride I feel for my three children and their achievements this year. Christmas future is about having a grandchild to join us all next year.

A single to Sheffield

I often ponder my relationship status, having been single for many years now. There have been times when I have longed to meet a soulmate. There have also been times when I thought I had, only to be disappointed. I've been thinking about this topic as a suitable subject for discussion for a while, and I have to admit that it is the inclusion of the fictional singleton, Bridget Jones, on the Woman's Hour power list this week that has spurred me to action. Much as I enjoyed the book at the time, I can't begin to identify with her desperation and never did. At a completely different stage of life, with three children, two former marriages and about to become a grandmother for the first time, I can look back over my years as a single parent and responsible adult with a sense of achievement. I embrace my single status and appreciate celibacy and all. Sometimes I wonder if I'm a natural nun, in spite of the traumas of a convent education. Do I have trust issues? Definitely ! I also love my strong friendships and they haven't always been compatible with being one of a couple. There are times when it would be wonderful to have someone in my corner with practical help and emotional support. To have someone make me a cup of tea first thing in the morning and rub my back last thing at night. Someone to admire and appreciate me. I think it was Adrian Henri who wrote' Love is a fan club with only two fans'. I'm lucky because I see those strong and loving relationships close by me, for my children and my good friends. I know they exist and I can admire and appreciate them. Over the years I've resisted well meaning attempts to match make or to get me to sign up for Guardian soulmates and Internet dating. Not my way, though I'm sure it works for some. There are times when I wish I was part of a couple. I never expected anything else when I was younger. There are times when I realise how much I enjoy living alone. There are issues of freedom and status in society that still take me by surprise. People say a trouble shared is a trouble halved, but I am aware that in a relationship the opposite can happen, and it results in double trouble. Life is so complicated! So thank you family and friends for being the love of my life.

Stumbling on the side of twelve misty mountains

Bob Dylan's song A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall has been in the news this week. Patti Smith sang it for him at the Nobel prize ceremony, stumbling over the words of the second verse, the black branch with blood that kept dripping. It's a song I have been familiar with since it was first recorded, thanks to my father's passion for Dylan, Joan Baez, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem and the rest.The lyrics have meant different things at different times in my life and I associated them with the civil rights movement, the Cold War and nuclear threat during my teens. Listening to the lyrics again this week, images were conjured up that reflected the history of the last half century, images that didn't exist in popular consciousness when the song was written. The song looks to the past and to the future in its form and meaning in a remarkable way. It comments on world events, environmental concerns, politics, war, famine and greed in a way that is as relevant now as it was in 1962. That should be depressing, but somehow it isn't because it's the fate of a poet to speak to truth, to enlighten and to create awareness. From awareness comes the opportunity to make changes. One line leapt out for me : I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains. That line sums up this year for me. Each month has brought unexpected challenges. I've been negotiating my way through unfamiliar paths, uncertain if I'm heading in the right direction across those misty mountains. But as the landscape of the year reveals itself, as the sun breaks through the mist, I'm aware of a huge sense of achievement for myself and my loved ones. I salute the poet.

What will survive of us is love

Listening to the news this morning, I heard an item about Philip Larkin's memorial stone in Westminster Abbey. It doesn't include what has become his most famous quote, but it does include the equally meaningful line I have chosen as the title for this post. A friend asked me this week ' What's happened to the Ditch?', and I realise it's been months since I wrote on this blog. There are several reasons for my silence. One is to do with my move earlier this year. Prosaically, now I'm living on the Edge I'd wondered whether to change the name. In reality I live below Brincliffe Edge, but the play on words works as this has been a challenging year, beginning as it did with a major move. And those challenges, which have involved family and friends in my close circle as well as political events in this country and elsewhere, haven't stopped me thinking, but they have made me reconsider my writing and what it's all about. As the national and world view became more incomprehensible to me, I found myself focussing on those I love and their place in my life. Focussing on what I can understand, influence, support and cope with. This doesn't mean I haven't tried to get to grips with Brexit and Trump (and the rest), but I need to be grounded in my own world when the wider world seems so alien. It has been a year of dislocations. Not only have I moved, but my children have had moves and changes. Even my elderly mother is on the move. It's been about finding personal places of safety and refuge, comfort zones and familiarity. For me, it has been about moving back to an area I knew over 23 years ago and finding my place here. It's been a good move and next week I will have my daughter and her husband living round the corner, with a baby on the way. First time granny. I can't wait. So I have been thinking a lot about living in hope. It isn't naivety. Hope is as important as love. It comes back to the old trio of faith, hope and love. So when I woke this morning to Philip Larkin's quote it made a lot of sense. Perhaps one day I will write about his better known quote!

Back to school

It's the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness once more. The shift from late summer to autumn, when you realise that the possibility of a perfect summer has fled. Autumn may be lovely, but the nights draw in, there's a chill in the air in the morning in spite of the promise of a sunny day. Birds are gathering, heather is flowering and the rowan berries brighten the trees. My journey to work through the Peak District is increasingly beautiful, dark green, orange and purple under a clear blue sky, criss crossed with vapour trails. Lines from songs run through my head, all around the blooming heather, the birds on the telegraph line this time. Too late for the summer, but not quite late September when I really should be back at school. Coincidentally my journey to work retraces some of my journey back to boarding school in Derbyshire. Leaving home in Sheffield one morning last week I was overwhelmed by the familiar feeling of dread and longing that accompanied the days leading up to my return to school after the summer holidays. It was something to do with the scent of vegetation after rain, the chill air and clear blue sky, the rowan trees in residential gardens.It may go deeper than that, as the days and nights move towards the equinox and like a bird, I feel it's time for me to leave, with all the emotions that accompany that feeling. Of course I don't have to go anywhere. September hasn't been a physical or geographical turning point for me since my teenage years. But somehow it's deep within me. The dark months of deepest winter don't affect me emotionally in the same way this time of year can. My summer holidays in those boarding school years weren't conventional. I travelled to the far east to join my parents and came back to England via my home town of Manchester, staying with friends and relatives for short periods of time. It was an intense experience. The far east wasn't my home, and I no longer had a home in this country. Yet homesickness was overwhelming and that mix of anxiety, longing and nostalgia can still overwhelm me when I least expect it. I have talked to other boarding school survivors over the years and I think for many of us, this is a difficult time of year. It's a time of separation and loss, of a sense of abandonment, the precious last few days of freedom. With my own children it was a time for buying shoes and stationery, school uniforms and dinner money. Back to the routine of school days,but with home to return to each evening. There's a Welsh word for it, hiraeth, with no direct English translation. It's defined as homesickness tinged with grief or sadness over the lost and departed. I can't help feeling it's a word that would be useful for many people in the world today.

Arbor Low: A sense of place revisited

Sense of Place Arbor Low Artist Keith How and photographer Billy Bye held an exhibition of their work at Upper Oldhams Farm, Arbor Low this weekend. I wrote some words.

Mysterious and awe inspiring for thousands of years, folklorists, antiquarians and archaeologists have their own theories about its historical and cultural significance. Whatever might be their truths, those ditches were dug, those stones were shifted for a purpose. Nearby Gib Hill has its own story, dating back to the Bronze Age. Roman soldiers gazed in wonder as they marched past on their way North. What did they make of it? Did they recognise something and compare it to Stonehenge and Avebury, or the Bull Ring, its sister henge in Derbyshire? Before the stones were laid, before the cove was created, before this plateau of Middleton Moor found its level above the sea, tropical lagoons covered this landscape, sea creatures lived and died, their skeletons forming the beds that became the limestone rocks, now fissured and worn, with their own rock pools of rainwater. Bones and stones. A human skeleton was buried in the cove, the group of rocks in the middle of the circle. Another was cremated, ashes buried in the kist at Gib Hill. Look around and notice the lie of the land, the shapes of the henge echoed by the far horizons of the surrounding hills. Look above to the heavens. Enter the spirit of the skylark and see the shapes from the air. It could be a clock face, it might be a heart, it’s an oval, an egg. Timeless and eternal, in the present it’s a focus for awe and love, pagan spirituality and nature worship. It’s a portal and a place to connect with people who share a common purpose and a shared love for the environment and wild places, who care about the spiritual and natural environment, who need a sense of belonging in their local landscape and the cosmos. This place has had its champions and custodians over the centuries. There is a welcome to enter in from those who live here. They understand its importance. Solstice celebrations at the turnings of the year bring visitors. Ice sculptures are created from blades of grass in December, paths are hidden in the mist. In June the sound of drums accompanies the skylarks’ song and the planes flying overhead. Throughout the year, in any season, there are those who find their way here with a bunch of wildflowers, a crystal, a drawing, an offering left in a cleft of the stones. It’s a place of pilgrimage and a place of deep connection.

1966 and all that

So it's 50 years since England won the World Cup. This morning the presenter of Radio 4's Thought For the Day harked back to 1966. He described it as post-war, with bomb sites undeveloped among the city and suburban streets. I remember it well. Manchester's Arndale hadn't yet been built. The city centre was Dickensian. There was a bomb site where my sister and I played near our house. Close by was an area of devastation known as Swinton Fields. We rode our bikes there, up and over embankments for long demolished railway tracks. On July 30th 1966 my sister and I were staying with my godmother, my aunt in the Isle of Man. School summer holidays, we were aged 11 and 12. Normally we would have been down on the stony beach at Port Jack, skimming stones, climbing rocks and making use of the disguised sewage pipe to walk out into the waves, past the cave in the cliff. But for some reason, though we weren't football fans, we stayed in, watching the game on her small black and white television. My aunt's flat was on Royal Terrace.The first floor living room had a bay window overlooking Douglas Bay from Onchan Head. While she lived there, I've seen the Red Arrows fly so close over the headland and past that window that you could imagine you saw the colour of the pilot's eyes. It was a sunny afternoon. We watched with concentration and fascination, calling my aunt in to join us for the last fifteen minutes. It was impossible not to get caught up in the excitement of the result, and in my mind's eye I see it in glorious colour.