I’m With Her

Emma Gonzalez for President. 

 

Some thoughts at the end of March

(Tuesday)
I wonder sometimes about my darling man, who has been deemed "The most stylish man on any red carpet" by an award-winning filmmaker, ripped out of the chic-est part of Shoreditch and dumped into a muddy episode of "The Archers." His smiling face at Terminal 5 arrivals yesterday made my little heart soar (the highlight of the flight was a dip into Henry James' "The Bostonians") but no sooner were we in the car than we were alerted that the lovely little mare #bellabellabella was colicking. Poor uncomfortable girlie, kicking at her tummy, swishing her tail, zig-zagging her stable, pawing at the straw, seemed perhaps a little happy to see us, and was very good and sweet when the kind Spanish vet shoved half her arm up her bum. Darling man stood by bravely, asking good questions. "Does this have anything to do with her itchy udders?" I asked the vet. "I'm sorry. I haven't had a mare before." "I didn't know horses have udders" said DM.

My father frowned on people who were brought up in the City. He didn't trust them one iota. Now that I've been a city girl for more than half of my existence, I find myself happily transitioning from one to another. DM is extremely happy here in our little cottage, beset by mice and rain and a rambling, overgrown garden. ("We really must do some gardening this weekend" he says). But sometimes I think he feels like the French Bulldog, who blinks bravely when I take her out in the rain, the faintest hint of a question on her face. Are you sure you want to go out in this? And then boldly galloping across the cricket pitch, splattering mud in her wake.

The characters are rich and evergreen. The gossip is ripe. Our challenges manifold. "The Beast from the East made life up in the Hilltop Villages very uncomfortable, however IT made it possible to pin-point the worst affected areas. Thank you to everyone who offered advice on which roads were open..." - Letter from the County Council

Oh, we soldier on.

(Thursday)
As the weather remains precipitous, I've put out suet and seed balls for the little birds. DM discovered that a very pretty little Blue Tit is nesting on the window ledge of our office, all blue and yellow for Easter. The dogs believe that the lard balls are a test of their ingenuity; I've witnessed Bean, the spotted dog reaching up onto the bird table and pushing one off onto the ground for her own pleasure. This morning, the crows are squawking blue murder as they huddle the hazel bush for the bird food hidden there. With the extra evening light, everyone is feeling more animated. People smile as they walk. The wild garlic is everywhere. The horses are losing their winter coats.

It turns out that Bella the mare isn't colicking but her girly parts are not functioning as they should and so she is irritable and uncomfortable. Girl, I get it! The vet suggests kindly that she go on the pill. "It happens in older mares," he says. And I nod my head sagely.

I've been writing about expanding and contracting, like the universe. I think we do it to protect ourselves. Fear makes us contract and turn inward. Love expands us, makes us push out further and further, taking on everything. Today, I'm contracted. Lack of sleep has added to this. Four full hours of wakefulness in the middle of the night, enough to see the West Coast go to bed and the Europeans wake up. I'm berating myself for not reading enough, for the inability to write more every day, for being all over the place, and apparently, now, for being bossy. My friend told me this at lunch yesterday as if it were a good thing. I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm not sure why she said it. I'm not sure what it means or why I dislike it as a word. "I'm assertive" I say, assertively. The dictionary says that bossy is "fond of giving people orders, domineering." I don't think of myself this way. I suppose it's one more thing to think worry about.

Perhaps it's cultural. Being assertive, tough, ballsy are all very American traits and I suppose I am an American now (separate from the fact that I listen to NPR all day long, have a subscription to the New Yorker, refuse to call it TK Maxx and favor color.) Perhaps the lack of sleep is making me too sensitive. Who knows?

Every man his stony acre

Right now in my kitchen window

I love this time of the day. Seven o'clock in the morning. Snow on the ground, but pink light in the sky indicating that sunshine may be here soon. The branches I picked in the woods on my mother's advice have fully fledged bright green leaves on them, which is as thrilling as you can imagine after such a long, dark, grey winter. Just the merest thought of spring makes me feel like a very buoyant Tiggerrrrr.

The truth is, it lifted*. Everything is looking up. We drove through Swaffham in Norfolk and TWICE there were murmurations of starlings, both there and back. Twice. Now if that isn't a sign! I have googled "Murmurations Swaffham" and I still don't understand why that town possesses such magic.

We stayed in a huge, comfortable, elegant, dog-strewn, messy house in Great Massingham on Friday night, feasted on a supper of venison sausages cooked in red wine, shallots and juniper, and slept in an enormously comfortable Victorian sleigh bed with gorgeous, old, mismatched sheets and pillowcases, surrounded by church windows (we were on the site of a medieval Abbey). In the morning, the wood pigeons perched on our window sills and mournfully called out to Betty. Large blonde dogs invaded the bathroom as I sat in the clawed tub, surrounded by books and Colefax & Fowler wallpaper circa 1986. Oh I love houses that are dressed in the eighties fashion, so Princess Diana in their ruffled collars and, their raw silk, and blazingly loud chintz, their tassled, blousy curtains.

I said, as I do (to be fair, almost wherever I go, like Paul Young who lays his hat) "Let's Live Here!" "You Must Buy It!" said my sister on text, in unison. Norfolk is where I feel at home. And let me explain why: it's in my blood. My father felt like himself there. The bones of my family, for many generations, lay in that earth. And the people are my people. There are bohemians, poets, artists, potters, gardeners, hen lovers, watercress growers, mad horse people ("there are no rules with riding in Norfolk" said my friend Lily who is 15), free spirits. Here in the Chilterns, arguably the most beautiful countryside in the south of England, there are more bodices, more lacing, a tendency to sensible beige footwear and practical cars, to an adherence to an unspoken code, and perhaps a sense of shock, yes SHOCK! at ideas not found in the pages of the venerable, pearl-clutching Daily Mail. "I want to be where the people are," to quote The Little Mermaid. My people.

My darling man has exactly the same level of curiosity as I do, and so driving from little village to hamlet in search of the elusive house-to-move-into was a pleasure. RightMove and GoogleMaps in hand, dogs in the back, eclectic playlist, and the crisp, cold sunny air from the latest blast from the North Pole. We whizzed around happily, stopped for lunch in Stanhoe (The Duck, highly recommended) and ended up in Holt at Old Town for most excellent minimal work clothes.

Charlie & Chris on Peddars Way, Norfolk

Most notable was a walk on Peddars Way, a Roman Road, and now long distance footpath that stretches from Knettishall Heath to Holme Next The Sea, where it connects with the Norfolk Coast Path. (I have just read that it connects to the south, via the Icknield Way to the Ivinghoe Beacon, which is just a mile or two away from where we live now).

Part of the Norfolk Songline project

This we found on the side of the path. We discovered through research that it is a project Norfolk Songline: Walking The Peddars Way by Hugh Lupton and Liz McGowan. "The idea of a songline comes from the Australian Aboriginal belief system, in which each ancient track is the score of a vast, epic song, whose verses tell the stories of how the landscapes and its landmarks came into being." (luphen.org.uk)  But these words!

"From Blackwater Carr to Sea Gate, since the ploughing first broke the bread of land, pightles and pieces, plots and pastures, to every man his stony acre."

To every man his stony acre. How beautiful is that?

"Each ancient track is the score of a vast, epic song." Such a heavenly idea.





(*With thanks to my friends and blog friends and sweet people who reached out during Severe Brown Dog time. It was horrible and I hate to ask for help, but I did, and you came back and offered it, guileless, with love and understanding. Thank you. Yesterday, I was talking to My Darling Man about the idea of love, and particularly parental love, and I think it is, in fact, acceptance, and the idea you are loved and okay as person no matter what you do, or what you struggle with. This community give me that, very separately from my "public life" and I am so, so grateful.)

I have a brown dog

Don't kid yourself. The black dog comes out of nowhere and always bites you in the arse. There is absolutely no reason for me to be feeling this way, but I have been unable to move today. Finally, at five o'clock I force myself out into the rain with the dogs and stumbled through the woods, only seeing damp, cold, mud and rain. None of the beauty. None of the way the green moss shimmers in the rain, or the way only half the tree trunks are wet, or the way the birds sing despite the rain.

And so I tell my insta-story.

I wish one's mental health wasn't a prisoner to the weather.
I wish I could tell you that muddy puddles and rain are inspiring.
Honestly they aren't.
I don't like it when the world shrinks. It should be expansive and filled with possibility.
Not sure how to fix it, so we walk.
(Even now I feel I shouldn't mention it; it feels selfish, self-indulgent; I am ashamed of it.)
What kind of story is this anyway?
This dog is brown. (Not black: this is the story I tell myself.)
They tell you to ask for help, but I'm not sure I know what help looks like.

Perpetua

A magic thing happened yesterday. The sun came out, fluffy little fair weather clouds floated in blue skies, and the birds were singing as if their lives depended on it. The dogs didn't have to wear their coats, my sub-zero LLBean jacket stayed on the back of the kitchen door, and all around, after the snow, there were little tiny green signs of spring. Nothing lifts one's mood like that...and light until past six o'clock. It's worth it, isn't it? To live through the cold, damp, miserable days, to know about the perpetual spring Camus talks about. I feel lucky.

Stretch & Flow

I've learned that the most excellent editor of the Observer Food Monthly, Allan Jenkins, has written a book entitled Morning. How to Make Time: A Manifesto (pre-order here). This is a subject I dwell on because my concept of time is incomplete at best, and certainly my relationship with it is complicated. It is our greatest commodity, and with it we measure the distance to death. Ten billion heartbeats. That's how many we have in a lifetime. But can we measure time by the heart? A cuckoo clock given to me by my son for Christmas does two things: reminds me of him and tells me how much time I've wasted. I am a procrastinator, a chronically late person, and someone who overestimates how many things I can get done in a day. I am a daydreamer, a daydream believer, a romantic, and I don't believe I will die. Ever. I am spontaneous, bad at planning in advance and live way too much in the moment. (I have recently shut off my Twitter and Facebook apps on my phone in order to create more time.) As you can imagine, I await Mr Jenkins's book like a teenager waiting for a date.

My beloved, who is practical like a Scot, or a German, loves to plan. He likes to pore over train timetables, have daily "diary sessions" where we compare notes, organizes holidays years in advance. I long to be like this. I am last minute. I deliberate until the day is upon me. I am entirely too big picture for my own good.

What is time? How can we stretch time? How do we hold on to something that is intrinsically ephemeral? ("I miss the days of photo albums" my mother says to me on the phone, and I agree with her. The great joy of captured magic in a book, not endless jpgs clumped together on the laptop, blending into each other, a muddle of moments.)  I think, as it appears Mr Jenkins might suggest, that rising earlier in the morning is something to try, as is not drinking ("drunks don't remember anything" I read yesterday, in relation to what, I don't remember.) Drop into a flow state, suggest psychologists. Do something you love and continue to do it so that you don't feel time passing. The yard where my mare lives has a large sign that says "The Time You Enjoy Wasting Isn't Wasted Time." And that is exactly how I feel with my horse; we enter another dimension, the mare and I, where nothing else matters, just our silent conversation. As it is with a lover.

“You are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as though you almost don’t exist. I have experienced this time and again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching it in a state of awe and wonderment. And [the music] just flows out of itself.”

Sa

So the plan for the week is going to be: achieving the flow state.  There is a most excellent Ted Talk on the subject here by Dr Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi. Will you do it with me?

The Compulsive Need for Waitrose

I do love the drama that snow brings. We're perched on the highest point of the Chilterns (200m/650 ft above sea level). Actually, I just looked that up and the highest point is Haddington Hill/Wendover Hill, just to the east of us, at 267m. This is a small group of villages, the hilltop villages, all linked by an email grapevine, where people share questions, concerns, warnings, and, no doubt, gossip. The condition of the roads is a hot topic, and the police have sent out an advisory for us not to drive

"People are still trying to go to Waitrose in Berkhamsted and the small hill on St.John Wells Lane is very dangerous at the moment, so I would avoid at all costs." (actual note from Hertfordshire Constabulary) 

That's where we live, a community where people pay attention to the first butterflies of spring, ask for advice on chiropractors, post warning of white vans with "foreign-looking" men inside it, and are compelled to reach Waitrose, whatever the weather.

There's nothing not to like. It's hard to get used to the subtle, small-minded racism that comes with living in a remote village after living in a proper, multi-cultural city. But then I am reminded that we are only 30 minutes by train to London, one of the biggest and most racially diverse cities in the world. It is amusing more than offensive. Most of it is pure ignorance. But it is jarring nonetheless.

This isn't a hip village, but it is inhabited by kind people who look out for each other, people who offer to bring meals to old folk who can't get out in the snow, people who knock on your door to tell you they found a ten pound note outside your gate and is it yours, people who bring in your rubbish bins and recycling boxes if you've left them out too long. Indeed, people who stop and ask how you are and how you are settling in.

But the snow brings its own set of conundrums. How are the roads? Does anyone have a 4X4 to get to Tring Station? Does anyone have the number of an emergency plumber? The email is a cacophony of questions. I discover that rural Buckinghamshire hasn't had snow like this for four years, that there is nothing to do with horses but to put them out in the field for a stretch and keep them inside with plenty of hay (not much fun for a thoroughbred ex-racehorse to live without proper exercise for nearly a week), that most people don't fuss too much, and that wine, it seems, gets you through most things.

Charlie has bronchitis but is pretending he doesn't. I've brought him soup, clear liquids, paracetamol, guaifenesin,  and "It's the End of the F***ing World." He's listening to a Spurs match on the radio, so all is well (I can imagine the little smile on his face). I'm left to walk the dogs alone, which I like, because it's the time that I think the most clearly. All through the snow-covered trees I'm singing "Deep in the Hundred Acre Wood" in my head. You know, the one with the enchanted neighborhood where Christopher Robin plays. It's so, so quiet. And all the animals, even the crows and pigeons, are hiding. The only sound is that of Thistle breathing (she's a Frenchie, and she has a short nose, so give her a break) and the crunch of the snow underfoot. It's the time when I furiously keep voice messages to myself filled with Brilliant Ideas. Of course none of them link up, but I am hoping one day they will all make sense in some kind of elaborate Grand Plan. I'm still dreaming of levitating. I'm wondering if it has something to do with the Full Moon. Apparently, my friends Maria McKee tells me on Instagram, that people, especially empaths, are experiencing An Awakening. I'm not sure if I'm an empath, but I'm not sure if I'm not either. I certainly believe I feel Too Much and especially wondering in the woods.

There's a village on the way to Stansted called Smug Oaks. Charlie says this is where I should live.

My mother tells me that this snow is perfect for cross country skiing, and she says this with a sense of longing. Her mother died at her age (82) but when she was 80 she was still going up into the mountains with her friends and skiing from cabin to cabin. I know that she wishes she could do the same. Actually, we all do. I'd like to be channelling my mormor right now.

float

I have dreamed of levitating since I was a child. Flying down the stairs. Jumping out of windows into flight. And now, more recently, the effortless scooping of air with my hands to set me aloft. The part I love is how easy it is, as if floating in the sky is the most natural thing for human beings, countless souls surveying the earth from above, carefree.

The quiet is deafening with the snow on the ground. A few birds, perhaps, one or two muffled cars, but just the soundless white spread around into little drifts, cold, hard powder mounds. And smell is gone too. The dogs dig into the ground for things that smell, and linger on barbed wire fences with just the faintest sign of a fox - a feather. Just the crunch of boots on powder remains, white lines on the side of trees, frosted holly.

We have this weather because the north pole has been weakened and the vortex which keeps its blizzard and ice to itself has been compromised, so the cold escapes and comes to Europe for a holiday. Frozen rain, icy wind, freezing faces.

My neighbors have a permanently laid dining room table. I pretend I don't stare in through the windows every time I go past, but I do. I wonder who they are waiting for. A lone white rocking horse stares out from the window above. If it sounds fanciful, it's not. This is what I observe.

Yesterday we brought branches in. We need signs of the spring, and budding hazel and silver birch might help. My mother tells me that as a child in Tønsberg, she brought silver birch into the kitchen and put it in the window in a vase packed with snow.

The north wind blows through the chimney in our quiet house. The exterminator man has made sure that the band the glis glis were putting together won't play. No more scratching or running through the walls and ceiling, no more delighted hi-jinx, just the mournful wind.

I love the few moments between sleeping and waking when you can't remember if your dream was real or not, and it doesn't matter. For a few minutes, you were floating on air, completely sure that the whole world was inside you.