DAY ONE:
As usual my first recourse is to other writers. My battered school edition of Eliot’s poems is not much help –
what is actual is actual only for one time
And for one place
or
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
The Daily Stoic Journal has a different angle: today’s prompt is ‘Where am I a loud mouth?’ Well..! At risk of sounding smug (although self-satisfaction is absolutely not in play here: rather the opposite) last night I was so troubled, or disappointed, or dissatisfied – with myself, my lack of courage, my loss of confidence, my social laziness or ineptitude, evoking vivid and disspiriting memories of our mum in her later years, making absolutely no effort to take part in the conversation, that I googled ‘symptoms of dementia’, inconclusively. Some days I fear I am becoming my mother, or at least taking on some of her least appealing characteristics. I’m not sure which were more off-putting: those occasions when her lack of engagement took a surly turn – I recall in particular an episode with a Norfolk neighbour – or others when she smiled vaguely, as at the supper table in the Hythe hotel on our last Music at Leisure weekend together, making no attempt to join in. The mother of another friend, now also sadly no longer with us, often disappeared into her own world. Sometimes she could be brought back with a word, or a touch of the hand; often it felt like an intrusion. Really, I think I have to take responsibility for my own actions at the time, rather than succumbing to inertia and its resulting dismay and then beating myself up afterwards… something about inhabiting the present moment fully, keeping a lid on petty resentments and minor discomforts but also perhaps being a little more forgiving towards myself? I could certainly take a leaf out of the book of one friend and practise smiling more!
As usual my first recourse is to other writers. My battered school edition of Eliot’s poems is not much help –
what is actual is actual only for one time
And for one place
or
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
The Daily Stoic Journal has a different angle: today’s prompt is ‘Where am I a loud mouth?’ Well..! At risk of sounding smug (although self-satisfaction is absolutely not in play here: rather the opposite) last night I was so troubled, or disappointed, or dissatisfied – with myself, my lack of courage, my loss of confidence, my social laziness or ineptitude, evoking vivid and disspiriting memories of our mum in her later years, making absolutely no effort to take part in the conversation, that I googled ‘symptoms of dementia’, inconclusively. Some days I fear I am becoming my mother, or at least taking on some of her least appealing characteristics. I’m not sure which were more off-putting: those occasions when her lack of engagement took a surly turn – I recall in particular an episode with a Norfolk neighbour – or others when she smiled vaguely, as at the supper table in the Hythe hotel on our last Music at Leisure weekend together, making no attempt to join in. The mother of another friend, now also sadly no longer with us, often disappeared into her own world. Sometimes she could be brought back with a word, or a touch of the hand; often it felt like an intrusion. Really, I think I have to take responsibility for my own actions at the time, rather than succumbing to inertia and its resulting dismay and then beating myself up afterwards… something about inhabiting the present moment fully, keeping a lid on petty resentments and minor discomforts but also perhaps being a little more forgiving towards myself? I could certainly take a leaf out of the book of one friend and practise smiling more!
So: this is the day when we are reminded that we are dust and to dust we will return: good to remember that our time here is temporary and, however big a noise we feel we make in our own worlds, our impact in the greater scheme is negligible. Still, there is the ‘Look Away Now’ factor which has been preoccupying me recently – of which, more later. Meanwhile, Allegri’s Miserere plays in the background, another reminder: how many almost-Easters have we stood in the queue outside King’s with our cups of coffee ahead of the Good Friday liturgy? Useful also I think to take a day to consider how and where we have gone wrong. When I followed such things, Ash Wednesday always felt like a rock-bottom day, a time for confronting – confessing, I suppose – ‘sins’ or shortcomings, and preparing for a period of sober reflection. What was it the school’s bandleader used to say? – ‘You’re only as good as your last concert.’ I seem to remember one year actually following the liturgical framework for the period of Lent – or maybe it was just for Easter week! At any rate, almost entirely selfishly and to benefit my overindulged waistline, this year I am resolved to give up alcohol for the entire 46? – yes, I make it 46 – days (gulp!) – excepting only 14th April when I hope to celebrate my birthday a day late by completing the Tulip Run for Parkinson’s UK in the morning and allowing myself a ‘Refreshment Sunday’ afterwards. I am aware of some slightly out-of-reach awareness that this might be a salutary period of giving myself permission to feel what I often shy away from: there is a cold core of loneliness and isolation – no, it’s loneliness – that is exacerbated when I allow myself to give in to feelings of isolation and return eagerly, and too soon, to this high-level bolt-hole. I think of one friend who has vowed to practise being on her own, without panicking. Virginia Woolf reminds we must ‘face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone’.
Maybe Eliot was some help, after all: perhaps this is a time to ‘commune with your own heart and in your chamber’ and be still.
(Only 45 days to go….!)
Maybe Eliot was some help, after all: perhaps this is a time to ‘commune with your own heart and in your chamber’ and be still.
(Only 45 days to go….!)
DAY TWO: LOOK AWAY NOW
In town this morning, I almost fell over a very substantial all-weather pile of sleeping-out kit, on the corner of Emmanuel Street where a regular Big Issue seller with her cloying greeting has also to be negotiated. On a bench outside Boots, a man who decades ago you might have described as a ‘gentleman of the road’ sat, head in hands, roaring – literally. I could make out the odd word – ‘fuckers’ was in there, for sure. Drunk? Or simply enraged? I didn’t get close enough to tell but, like the rest of the Thursday morning crowd, gave him a wide berth. I wasn’t around for long though long enough to register the untidy straggle of discarded blankets and bits of cardboard or, in other doorways, couples and singles apparently sleeping peacefully. I saw one teenager look curiously at one such nest; others, like myself, hurried by, tamping down any sense of shame or sympathy or outrage that threatened to make itself felt.
In town this morning, I almost fell over a very substantial all-weather pile of sleeping-out kit, on the corner of Emmanuel Street where a regular Big Issue seller with her cloying greeting has also to be negotiated. On a bench outside Boots, a man who decades ago you might have described as a ‘gentleman of the road’ sat, head in hands, roaring – literally. I could make out the odd word – ‘fuckers’ was in there, for sure. Drunk? Or simply enraged? I didn’t get close enough to tell but, like the rest of the Thursday morning crowd, gave him a wide berth. I wasn’t around for long though long enough to register the untidy straggle of discarded blankets and bits of cardboard or, in other doorways, couples and singles apparently sleeping peacefully. I saw one teenager look curiously at one such nest; others, like myself, hurried by, tamping down any sense of shame or sympathy or outrage that threatened to make itself felt.
This is, after all, the new normal. 50 years ago, when i was a student in London, late nights on Thursdays saw me with a dozen others hunting down the city’s rough sleepers as part of our soup run. Then, you had to hunt: the handful of men – it was mostly men, middle-aged or older – hidden away under the arches by Waterloo Station or round the back of the Strand Palace Hotel, out of the public gaze, resigned to being moved on by police. Twenty years later, Ian McEwan’s novel The Child in Time begins in a dystopian future where licensed beggars patrol the Westminster streets with their ‘bright badges’ and their ‘regulation black bowls’. Now – I’m disturbed by the way in which homelessness has become so visible and so all-embracing – women, young, old, alternative and apparently ordinary, ‘substance abusers’ and the squeaky clean: on any corner, in almost every other doorway, you come upon someone who might well be your son, your sister, your mum, yourself. Not that the homeless should feel the need to hide themselves away; but that we have inured ourselves to their pain and their presence to such an extent that we can walk on by with barely a blip in our blood pressure…
(44 days remaining…)
(44 days remaining…)
DAY THREE: WALKING ON BY
I’m remembering Francesca, talking about the last weeks and days of her grandmother: ‘I do what I need to sleep at night.’ And another memory, unbidden: on a street somewhere in Buenos Aires, as we walked back in the early hours from a milonga, Francesca gently tucking a sizable note under the pillow of a doorway sleeper. Last time I was there, real poverty was all too visible: the massive sprawl of Villa 31, the shanty town of 120,000 you pass en route to Tigre, the cartoneros picking through the trash for cardboard to sell, the encampments which have grown up beneath bridges and flyovers, kids who tout for business at traffic lights. I'm remembering too how those who scratch a living from selling or performing on the Subte are treated with courtesy. Some in Argentina, though, recognise that in these respects theirs remains a third world country. Whereas we –
(43 days left)
I’m remembering Francesca, talking about the last weeks and days of her grandmother: ‘I do what I need to sleep at night.’ And another memory, unbidden: on a street somewhere in Buenos Aires, as we walked back in the early hours from a milonga, Francesca gently tucking a sizable note under the pillow of a doorway sleeper. Last time I was there, real poverty was all too visible: the massive sprawl of Villa 31, the shanty town of 120,000 you pass en route to Tigre, the cartoneros picking through the trash for cardboard to sell, the encampments which have grown up beneath bridges and flyovers, kids who tout for business at traffic lights. I'm remembering too how those who scratch a living from selling or performing on the Subte are treated with courtesy. Some in Argentina, though, recognise that in these respects theirs remains a third world country. Whereas we –
(43 days left)
DAY SIX: ENCOUNTERS
Over the past few days, a series of chance encounters. As I rounded the corner of Westbrook Drive late one morning a tall man, well-dressed, beer bottle in hand, stood on the opposite pavement, swaying slightly. As I approached, he turned to face me and observed me as I walked past. Turning onto Milton Road, I was greeted in friendly fashion by a youngish man I’ve seen before but have never spoken to. Scrawny, with long yellow hair and a grubby white cap, he appeared wired. On my way back from the shop, I saw him again waiting at the bus stop, shifting and pacing, unable to be still until suddenly he took off and marched across the road, oblivious to traffic. By this time the first man had progressed the few yards to the end of the street. The following morning, as I waited for a bus, I watched a woman on the opposite side of the road pacing up and down outside the Co-op, looking along the street in both directions, as if expecting a lift. Smartly dressed, with dark hair, perhaps in her forties, she held a single red rose. Was she waiting for a blind date or just a meeting with someone she hadn’t met before, who wouldn’t recognise her – perhaps a potential employer? Given the romantic connotations of the flower the former seemed the more likely. Infuriatingly, my attention was distracted by a young woman who came out of the Old Spring after a birthday lunch for her mother, keen to tell me all about it and the next time I looked, the woman and her rose had vanished. Late that night, as I waited for yet another bus, a young man – late teens, early twenties? – picked bits of litter off the pavement and put them in one of the roadside bins. I watched as he disappeared into the distance, still collecting. Then, yesterday morning, another bus stop, another chance meeting, which began when Chloe, who I later learnt was approaching her 16th birthday, slapped me lightly on the shoulder twice and was reprimanded by the couple I assumed were her parents. They alternately murmured endearments and told her off. The girl was silent. Eventually after a long and affectionate goodbye, the girl left with the man. The woman explained that he was in fact her brother and had looked after Chloe, who had severe learning difficulties and was unable to speak, since birth as she, the mother, also had learning difficulties.
Over the past few days, a series of chance encounters. As I rounded the corner of Westbrook Drive late one morning a tall man, well-dressed, beer bottle in hand, stood on the opposite pavement, swaying slightly. As I approached, he turned to face me and observed me as I walked past. Turning onto Milton Road, I was greeted in friendly fashion by a youngish man I’ve seen before but have never spoken to. Scrawny, with long yellow hair and a grubby white cap, he appeared wired. On my way back from the shop, I saw him again waiting at the bus stop, shifting and pacing, unable to be still until suddenly he took off and marched across the road, oblivious to traffic. By this time the first man had progressed the few yards to the end of the street. The following morning, as I waited for a bus, I watched a woman on the opposite side of the road pacing up and down outside the Co-op, looking along the street in both directions, as if expecting a lift. Smartly dressed, with dark hair, perhaps in her forties, she held a single red rose. Was she waiting for a blind date or just a meeting with someone she hadn’t met before, who wouldn’t recognise her – perhaps a potential employer? Given the romantic connotations of the flower the former seemed the more likely. Infuriatingly, my attention was distracted by a young woman who came out of the Old Spring after a birthday lunch for her mother, keen to tell me all about it and the next time I looked, the woman and her rose had vanished. Late that night, as I waited for yet another bus, a young man – late teens, early twenties? – picked bits of litter off the pavement and put them in one of the roadside bins. I watched as he disappeared into the distance, still collecting. Then, yesterday morning, another bus stop, another chance meeting, which began when Chloe, who I later learnt was approaching her 16th birthday, slapped me lightly on the shoulder twice and was reprimanded by the couple I assumed were her parents. They alternately murmured endearments and told her off. The girl was silent. Eventually after a long and affectionate goodbye, the girl left with the man. The woman explained that he was in fact her brother and had looked after Chloe, who had severe learning difficulties and was unable to speak, since birth as she, the mother, also had learning difficulties.
Yesterday a Skype chat with Di in Brittany, revolving mainly around our Mapping Memory project, leaving me thinking about connections across place and time. Soon after we first met, in Carlisle, Di and I discovered so much in common in terms of our past lives, not just in coincidences of place but also in place-time conjunctions, so that it seemed possible that we might have actually brushed shoulders as we passed each other on some pavement years earlier – which is where our project began. One of the first non-teachers I met in Cumbria was poet Clare Crossman, who set up a reading group with me and a fellow teacher. Ten years later, I started my own reading group in Hallbankgate, by which time I had also been part of a production of ‘Top Girls’ which Clare directed. Soon afterwards, Clare married and moved to Meldreth just outside Cambridge. Eventually I followed her in her path south.
My first visits to Cambridge as an undergraduate, in the company of Ron, RIchard – and once, I believe, the other Richard – around 1969 and 1970. I remember walking across grass – Jesus Green probably – punting down to Grantchester and The Orchard, and swimming off the side of the boat in the Cam. Almost 30 years later, in 1997, I was again in Cambridge, this time for a week with Gordon and Jack. We stayed in the Ferry Path house whilst Andy and Susannah were away on honeymoon. Whilst here, we visited Kettle’s Yard where I discovered Winifred Nicholson for the first time, standing in front of her painting of Bank’s Head, a stone’s throw from our house in Hallbankgate. Back in Cumbria, I came to love her work and rubbed shoulders with various bits of her family.
I didn’t know – until very recently, via Cambridge poet and friend Kaddy Benyon – of her friendship with poet Kathleen Raine nor that, for a time Kathleen Raine rented a cottage in Hallbankgate, this last uncovered by Clare Crossman when researching Winter Flowers, her biography of Cumbrian artist Lorna Graves. (I’m wondering if I heard somewhere it was one of the houses along the road at Coldfell, or whether I’ve invented that?) I have two Kathleen Raine books on my shelf: a first edition somewhat marred (or enriched?) by its sojourn on the shelves of Hackney Library, of the first volume of her autobiography Farewell Happy Fields, published in 1973. My copy is an Amnesty Bookshop find from some years ago but I first came upon the book on the bedside table in the small bedroom upstairs in Kettle’s Yard. Unaware then of the don’t touch instruction, I opened it at this passage from the Introduction:
I once read somewhere that it is a mark of
the perfection of the wise to arrive at the
place they should be, at the time they should
come; but such correspondence does not belong to lives less perfect. If we ever sometimes, momentarily, arrive at the time and the place, it is already much. The marvel is that we ever do arrive at what is our own; and then with such a sense of homecoming, as though the long waste of time stretching before and after had never existed at all.
Which seemed to me then, and seems now, a perfect evocation of that sense of ‘homecoming’ (echoed beautifully in Simon Armitage’s poem of that name).
I once read somewhere that it is a mark of
the perfection of the wise to arrive at the
place they should be, at the time they should
come; but such correspondence does not belong to lives less perfect. If we ever sometimes, momentarily, arrive at the time and the place, it is already much. The marvel is that we ever do arrive at what is our own; and then with such a sense of homecoming, as though the long waste of time stretching before and after had never existed at all.
Which seemed to me then, and seems now, a perfect evocation of that sense of ‘homecoming’ (echoed beautifully in Simon Armitage’s poem of that name).
The second book, The Lost Country, also a first edition, is a volume of poetry published in 1971. It includes poems entitled ‘By the River Eden’ and ‘The Roman Wall Revisited’ and one, ‘A Painting by Winifred Nicholson’, signed ‘Bank’s Head, October 1968’. It’s not entirely clear, but perhaps the ‘friend’ who appears in the second stanza is the painter? A year before the book’s publication, I met the poet herself in Ron’s room in 13 Woburn Square. The event: a postgraduate discussion group, my presence explained by my friendship with the host (the book has no inscription, unusually; even so, I imagine it came from Ron). I recall nothing of the evening, only that I sat on the floor at Kathleen Raine’s feet. Another detail belonging to that evening comes in a pencilled note from Richard, written probably 6 or 7 years ago. He remembers bumping into the poet (and the house cat Theo) on the steps of Woburn Square as he went off to a rehearsal. Apparently Kathleen Raine said something along the lines of ‘Met by a cat and a young man with a cello. What a moment.’ Richard’s memory was pricked by a hand-written copy of her poem ‘Rock’ which fell out of Jacquetta Hawkes’s The Land. The book had belonged to Richard’s Aunt Marjorie and was sent to me as part of the ‘flotsam and jetsam’ which surfaced during Richard and Felicity’s house move. ‘Rock’ had been interleaved in Jacquetta Hawkes’s book for the past 60 years, so they must stay together, Richard says, adding ‘can it even be in the hand of K. R. herself?’
Miranda Boulton 'Inside Out' 2018 This weekend saw me returning to Kettle’s Yard for a presentation ‘A Painter and A Poet: Art and Poetry in Response to Winifred Nicholson and Kathleen Raine’. The collaboration between artist Miranda Boulton and poet Kaddy Benyon is evidently a fruitful one and I’m vicariously excited by the prospect of their research visit to my old stamping ground of north-east Cumbria. Their partnership, doubled by the relationship between Winifred Nicholson and Kathleen Raine is further augmented by writer Victoria Best and I feel myself drawn into the web of connectivity they have created. I‘m very much looking forward to the publication of their book later in the year.
(…and I make that 40 days of abstinence remaining!)
(…and I make that 40 days of abstinence remaining!)
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