Arrival

The tulips were blowsy and past their best that lunchtime last April when our van pulled up outside the house. But the splash of colour of the two-toned red and yellow flowers in the front garden was welcoming as I struggled out of the passenger seat clutching the cat basket. I had hardly slept the previous night and it had been a four hour journey. The cat - poor thing - had protested loudly until we reached Ross, when he had no choice but to give in to the call of nature. We pulled over and Bill went for a cigarette while I did the necessary. (My sister had the bright idea of using incontinence pads - one to start the journey with plus a couple of replacements in case of such an occurrence - at the base of his basket).

l was apprehensive that I wouldn't be able to find the key for the front door - the bunch of keys we had collected half an hour earlier from the estate agent's offices in town seemed more suited in size to Fort Knox than a modest semi. My fears were, of course, unjustified - it transpired that there were three copies of each one. Sally the estate agent, at probably half my age, had asked if I would mind waiting while a colleague popped out to the local florist to buy a pink hyacinth as a house-warming present. This may have been company policy but I was touched and found it a niche on a sunny windowsill.

After unloading the boxes and cartons Bill set off home to Sussex. The furniture in storage locally was delivered shortly afterwards. Water, gas and electricity all worked. I released the cat from his portable prison, drank a mug of tea, read the meters and made arrangements with a friend to go shopping for a washing machine and fridge the following day. Oh, and did a bit of unpacking. All surprisingly straightforward after the stress of the previous months.



That freezing weather of a few weeks back is past - for now - sunlight floods the garden and a strong wind blows from the south west. The daffodils are in full flower and those red and yellow tulips are opening. Nearly eleven months later the sight of them once again outside the kitchen window, drawn upwards inexorably through the dark earth by warmth and light, leaves me jubilant and relieved.

This spring the signs of change and rebirth have particular resonance.

Moderation

An interesting week and it looks as if the coming seven days will have their moments as well. Nothing like a total lunar eclipse to stir things up. None of it bears blogging about for the moment, but it's been a reminder that life is nothing if unpredictable.

Thanks for the comments on the previous post. One of the things that gives blogging its fascination is the ability that it affords to chronicle and celebrate a few moments of an icy, dank February morning in a country town in the Marches. The creation of a post allows me the space to contemplate and experience my own world more deeply and thoughtfully and I can share the moments with others worldwide, most of whom I will probably never meet. Blogging as a creative and meditative tool, creating an invisible spider's web of links across the planet as we exchange pieces of our lives. And there are millions of us doing it. All those webs.

I need to limit my time on the internet though often I'm tempted not to. Mostly I manage to find the balance. When I don't my wellbeing suffers. It comes back to the concept of moderation. Not my natural home, and not where I've spent a good part of my life, but, heaven knows, the alternative is counterproductive. I'm getting older and increasingly body, mind and soul need me to aim for a state of equilibrium, however unfamiliar this may feel. I can't afford to waste these years.

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Because I can't resist, a couple of other photographs of those murky, beautiful days. To see enlarged versions of these or any of the pictures on the blog, click on the photograph and go into Flickr, then select All Sizes.

Monochrome (almost)

We've been experiencing some of the lowest night temperatures in the UK.



Clear night skies and heavy frosts combined with early morning fog means the dawn becomes a study in shades of grey.



Any stretch of open water that doesn't move freezes over ....



... and the pigeons wait for the sun to break through.

When it does the contrast is almost shocking. Colour everywhere. Bright. Clear. Glowing.

New Job

I think it's going to work out. I'm getting to grips with the charity's fiendishly complex database. Remembering names and telephone extensions. The people seem nice and the short working week is good.

Part of the job is to upload information onto the computer system and it's impossible not to be aware of the human beings behind the statistics. Elderly men and women in nursing homes, in most cases suffering from dementia, who can no longer care for themselves and whose families can no longer care for them. As I work I wonder about their lives, the contrast between then and now, whether they are aware of what has happened to them.

And what about the families who are forced to take decisions for which they cannot know the outcome, to choose between painful, often less-than-perfect options? Unlike a few of my friends I've never had to face this situation. Both my mother and grandmother were as sharp as tacks when they died in their eighties; my father was confused but not to the extent that he couldn't function.

So. I've started a routine of wishing each person peace as I load the details of their lives onto the database. It's the one thing that I can do.

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Today has been a peaceful and ordered one, productive without being manic, social but with quiet times. Most of the items on the list I drew up this morning have been ticked off. Feelings come and go. It's OK.

Photograph: Eastgate Clock, Chester.

New Moon

My father, outwardly the most prosaic of men, had a ritual that he kept religiously. Once a month, when he spotted the new moon, he would stop what he was doing and turn over the loose change in his pocket - I can remember the jingle of coins to this day. I think you were probably supposed to make a wish as well but he never talked about that.

Homeward bound, yesterday late afternoon. I had a window seat in the half empty carriage.

I think it was after the train pulled out of Wrexham that the first thin curve of the moon appeared. Hardly noticeable at first in the late afternoon sky, as the day dimmed and the sun sank towards the horizon the new moon's light grew; she seemed suspended above our little train as we hustled south towards Shrewsbury. Now and again her image was reflected in a river or a pond ..... a cool light in the dark land.

We rushed through Craven Arms, Church Stretton, then Ludlow, past hedges and fields, factory farms and gardens - ugliness and beauty one and the same now - the hills much closer here, large black shapes looming out of the night. I could hear the rumble of conversation a few rows back; a woman read a newspaper on the other side of the aisle. Occasionally the ticket inspector came by. For the last hour of the journey I leant back in my seat and watched the crescent moon, from time to time with a lump in my throat. Impossible to focus on anything else.

At some point there was a shift. The heaviness and anxiety of the past weeks softened and lightened.

Spring Walk

The weather offered a foretaste of April: soft rain alternating with fleeting bursts of sunlight. Sometimes both at once. With the new job starting soon this week has a poignant, end-of-the-holidays feel about it, free days measured as a diminishing and precious commodity. After an inactive weekend and in response to a gnawing urge to make the best of Monday, mid-morning I set off westward along the riverbank heading for Breinton Springs, a few miles away.

The narrow path was so slippery with mud and puddles the immediate task was to stay upright. A couple of hikers - a middle aged man and woman - picking their way gingerly through the mud from the other direction, smiled as they went by, the three of us cheerfully bonded in self-inflicted adversity. It didn't matter. The mist of raindrops was so gentle on my face, it resembled a cool caress.

Suddenly a large buzzard rose over the bare branches of the surrounding trees. He was joined by two others - a male and a female - and a loud dog-fight (for want of a better term) broke out overhead between the two males. They came together repeatedly, clashing then withdrawing, their eerie, mewing cries reverberating over the valley.

The losing male flew off, vanquished.



The spring. A trickle of clear water issues from a horizontal crack in a tree-covered escarpment of red standstone a dozen yards from the river. No habitation and no signs to speak of, though it appears on the local maps, just a grassy access track leading towards it from the Wye Valley walk. A mysterious, intimate, feminine place if you overlook the discarded cigarette packets. I hate litter. I couldn't bear to leave them there, so scooped up the sodden cardboard and found a rubbish bin later.

Homewards via a different tracery of paths and lanes. A steep climb then a track leading past cider apple orchards incongruously protected by high, barbed-wire fencing. To the right the wooded drop down to the river, in the distance to the left, green fields and hills.

The rain had more or less stopped and everywhere were visual pleasures: the clump of wild snowdrops in an abandoned orchard .....



the warm, red brick and classic lines of a farm outhouse ....



....and a very faint rainbow's end in an adjoining field. A minute or two later it had vanished completely.



More pictures from the walk here.

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I'm looking forward - cautiously - to the new job. It's a simple, part-time admin position, but the department provides a service that's indirectly useful to the wider community and my soon-to-be colleagues seem friendly and congenial. It will be a relief to have a small but steady income and a definite, though not stifling, structure to the week. I need both badly.

Possibility

It went so well.

I hadn't given any kind of massage for over a year. Force majeure up to a point, but all kinds of instincts of inertia and withdrawal were tucked away behind the excuse of undeniable upheavals. I've missed my handful of London clients badly and have been mulling over whether I should abandon massage altogether. You're all right on the practical side but you keep forgetting the theory, I told myself. Compared to others you're probably not that good. Maybe it's time to let it go. I turned down a couple of tentative approaches.

Recently a new acquaintance asked for a clothed head and shoulders massage. This time with some reluctance I said yes. So yesterday, a day of gales with the wind hurling handfuls of rain against the window, I donned my waterproofs, cycled the fifteen minutes to her house, chatted, took a short case history and began.

It all came back. She'd never had a head massage before so I explained the process. Body and hands and voice remembered and I discovered once again - like meeting up with a long-lost friend - that place of stillness and peace beneath the physical strokes. I watched her face soften as I worked the muscles of her shoulders (trapezius, levator scapulae), neck (sternocleidomastoid, splenius capitis) and scalp (occipitalis, frontalis). I probed beneath the occipital ridge, listening to the silence surrounding and holding both of us, sensing the return of my own confidence. Before I left we agreed on further sessions.

She was happy. So was I.

There are many things I don't have a talent for: mathematics, rock climbing, conceptual thought, dressmaking, ballroom dancing ..... That's fine. But I have been horribly unsure and cripplingly perfectionistic about the abilities I do possess. Nature? Nurture? Karma? It doesn't matter. All I know is that it would be the ultimate betrayal not to go ahead and use them.