What Could be Better?

 
 

Three grandchildren, playing together in the sunshine. What could be better?  This is only their second meeting, their first being nearly a year ago because the youngest lives in Austria, but now they begin really to know each other and to communicate.

Travel becomes possible, even if something of a challenge with an active two year-old and all his equipment. My elder son passed his pre-flight CPR test in Austria and got to England for a weekend with his brother's family. The sun shone, toys were shared, gifts were given, everyone was happy and well. What could be better?

After that my elder son and his son travelled by train to stay with me for a few days. The sun was still shining. Then next morning my son felt a bit unwell and used a lateral flow test. To his considerable surprise it was positive. 

Never mind! I had a big freezer full of food, we had lots of toys and books and there was a garden to explore, birds to feed, lots of interesting things to do at home.

Later that day small grandson became unhappy, restless, clingy and obviously infected too. Still never mind, We could all be comfortable here. I asked a kind neighbour to buy us some extra large paper tissues though. Extra paracetamol too, because by the next day I was also producing two red lines.

Never mind, not even now! We were here, together in the sunshine. We had a week more than any of us thought possible, still in the sunshine, in the garden, developing skills on a plastic motorbike (well, one of us was) digging in the sand box, doing a bit of biscuit-making (two of us), sampling the results and giving the remainder to the birds. There were bumble bees and ants to study. There was even frogspawn in the pond.

For a two year-old unlimited time and attention from caring adults is wonderful, as is unlimited time to look out of a window, to study a leaf or an insect, to run about freely in a safe space. It's extremely valuable for an 82 year old granny to do it as well - except for the running about bit.

What could be better for all of us than this priceless time? And we were boosting our immunity as well.

Carry on Learning

Here I am, nine years old, about to fail in learning to swim; a failure which has remained with me for the next 73 years, and one that I can at last recognise as a failure to learn to trust. This photograph was taken in the tidal swimming pool at Lynmouth, North Devon. Two years later Lynmouth was devastated by flooding. I remember my distress when the news finally reached us, realising for the first time how precarious the whole business of life could be.

 I had slight memories of War, of spending time in an air-raid shelter, but in a time before television I  knew only what I had been allowed to hear on radio, or via the illicit reading of a newspaper. I was protected from  knowing the realities. There was no personal involvement, but the destruction of a pretty village where I had spent a holiday was an awakening that changed my childhood. A river had done that. A river that I had walked along, paddled in, watched fish and fishermen beside. River water,  amplified into raging torrents by prolonged rainfall, had burst open stone cottages, torn bridges apart, flung great rocks and whole trees into houses and caused the deaths of more than 30 people, some of whom were never found. Yet this was a natural disaster, quite different from my limited experience of war, and totally unlike what we face today. More than enough to make me feel that I could never trust moving water again though.

My dislike of and failure to achieve any sort of competence in swimming remains, despite several intensive swimming courses and an amount of reassurance that I can actually swim. Perhaps I can, but if I can I can't breathe at the same time which puts me at a disadvantage, I suppose. My older grandchildren, now nine and five years old, are good or better than good swimmers, and now the two year-old can do it as well. I'd really like another try at swimming with a two year-old and I should make myself have another go. But I am not at all confident.

The learning that is so infinitely more important is learning to trust, not just water, but life itself. It seems so vital at these moments of  man-made turmoil, conflict and corruption that we can somehow hang on to a trust that the world is full of good and honourable people; that other drivers on the road will be careful, that people who say they will deliver your groceries will do so, that the vast unknown population is basically well-intentioned. Even more goodness comes from people who drive public transport, doctors who prescribe, surgeons who cut and remove bits, pilots and air crew who take you thousands of miles in a metal tube. You don't know them, yet you put your life into their hands You have to trust them. You have to trust the contents of boxes and bottles in the shops, that they contain what it says on the outside, even to the amount of calories (well, do you really?).  You have to trust the people who teach your children and grand-children, who feed your cat when you're away, who stop their vehicle at a road crossing when the signal tells them to. Then there people who are vital in your life, family, friends, neighbours, colleagues without whom life would be meaningless and empty. Too many people to number, all of then good, kind, caring and essential. We must never let the turmoil of an often regrettably reactive life devalue them or diminish their importance.

We are all enclosed in a great bubble of trust and goodness, and we need it as much as air itself.

Living and swimming are acts of trust.

Long-Buried Treasure.

I have not been idle during  the long, Covid-laden break from blogging, and neither has Jenny Woolf whose posting today on her lovely blog has inspired me to reveal some of my own recent preoccupations and diversions.

For me, the paper-sorting seems endless. My husband died many years ago, and still I have boxes of his writing, collections of relevant cuttings, letters, souvenirs, photographs and other relics of a life lived with books and documents. Then, just when I thought I had seen almost all of his archive, a bundle of records of family life appeared from within a fat folder of theological papers: home-made cards, petitions, letters of thanks and requests, postcards and drawings by our sons from the age when they could first clutch a crayon. I must have seen most of them at some time, but I didn't know that he had kept them.

This is something I wrote and that he pinched and hid among the theology, probably thinking that I wouldn't bother to keep it among the confused welter that was my desk in those days of family chaos. This special bit of paper brought sunshine into my day this morning.

 I recorded verbatim a bit of a Sunday morning in church with sons aged three and six. I never knew that he thought it was worth keeping. I hope we managed to have a laugh about it at the time.

In church.

*=repeated at least three times in crescendo.

E: (aged 3) There's Mrs. Evans. *Hello, Mrs.Evans.

H: (aged 6) Why doesn't Mr. Evans come to church?

Mother: (age not specified) I'll tell you later.

H: Why?

Mother: Because it's a long story.

H: Why?

M: Shhh.

E: Why? What you talking about? Eh? What you and you talking about?

Both parents: Shhhhh!

Both boys read books. E comments loudly throughout.

E:* Let's sing now!

M: Shhhhh. No! Not yet.

E: Yes! Let's have a sing now!. (Sings loudly.)

Both parents, unison: Shhhhhh.

People in pews behind and in front; "Shhhhhh!

H: Mummy. Mummy. I have to know something.

M: Just wait a bit. Please!

H: Just tell me if there are people buried under this floor.

E: Eh? What? Where people under the floor?

H: And I need to know why aren't there any gravy-stones outside this church?

M: Shhhh, just wait until we get outside.

H: It's important. It's in my head and I'm thinking about it now.

M: Probably because it hasn't been consecrated as burial ground. Wait and ask Father A. afterwards.

E:* What? What you talking about? What under the floor?

H: Well, where do people get buried then?

M: Ask Father A. afterwards. Try to listen now.

E slides to floor: What under floor? Nothing under floor?

H: slides to floor: Let's looks for gravy-stones, E!

Both parents, unison: GET UP!

Boys restored to pew after relevant scuffling, threats and protests.

H: Why doesn't Mr. Evans have to come to church?

E:* What?

Very Important Places.

This is the place where I last sat with a dear friend. Quite recently. Now it will be enshrined in memory.

Many others will sit here, and we will have afternoon tea, as we did then. Tiered cake-stand in fine bone china, patterned most appropriately with forget-me-not flowers. Home-made cakes and scones, of course. Cucumber sandwiches, of course, and there will be honey still for tea, but I doubt if anyone else will make a special request for sticky jam sandwiches. I doubt if anyone else could face death with such bravery, compassion and thought for others. Forget-me-not.

This is the place where people can walk into a new section of garden, cool, quiet, fern-filled. Soon there will be a special table for outdoor meals (as well as for me to do a bit of potting up). Children will need to watch out for frogs and possibly trolls under the bridge. But the trolls will have to be small, and certainly not of the breed found on the internet. The lower support rail of the bridge is formed from the adventurous and successful growing of a giant Echium last year in my front garden. I was so proud of it. It reached my bedroom window with its great spire of bee-filled blue flowers. It eventually blew down in a gale, and the stem was like a tree-trunk. I couldn't bear to throw it away. So it was incorporated into the bridge.

The small ginger curly head crossing the bridge is not a grandchild, but a very charming poodle visitor who has just been on holiday here and approves of the garden.

                                                                               

This is the place where my husband created a door many years ago. The door is  still there, but the summerhouse that surrounded it has gone. It's a suitably eccentric door with glass panels, one of them painted by our son. The door opens on to a totally overgrown and inaccessible railway embankment, but my husband fixed a 'Private' notice on the outside just in case (or perhaps because he had it and needed to fix it somewhere). It's all still there.

I found it difficult to lose the hard work my husband put into creating the summerhouse. But it had to go. The door didn't.

 Every garden needs a door into another secret garden.

This is the place for a different sort of door - a fairy door of course, with solar-powered lighting and a staircase inside the opening door. It's positioned so that it may be checked at night from the bedroom where the fairy-watchers sleep. It has been built into the dry-stone walling by the team of stone-masons who did the garden reconstruction work recently, as was the very rustic bridge, created from special timbers. They seemed to quite like it, but they could just have been humouring me.

The fairy-watchers haven't found it yet. I hope they haven't already out-grown it. 

The garden will grow, new memories will be created.

But old ones will be treasured, as will the people who created them.

Special thanks to my bridesmaid of some decades ago, Hellen, who took the photos when I wasn't looking.

All Changing.

 

Still in the middle of change, but last week great progress was made in this garden. This is the result of my long time of isolation which resulted in lots of thinking time and a realisation of what is really important for my hopefully remaining years. I have realised how much I hope to be able to remain here.

 In my house which is large for one person, but not large enough if all the family should want to be here together.  

In my garden which is complex and needs a lot of maintenance, but which is a wonderful place for friends and family, especially smaller ones.

 In my neighbourhood, which contains many friends and which is ideally located for good local shops and local rail and road transport, even though I have not used any form of public transport since the pandemic started.

Before Covid struck I had regular help with both house and garden, but since then I had to manage without anyone entering the house, and now I find that I'm able to continue alone.

The garden needs a lot of attention, so it seemed to be time to simplify things. The greatest need was for repair of the crumbling walls, built by my husband from reclaimed stone.  Another need was regrettable but necessary; the demolition and removal of a summerhouse, also created from reclaimed materials and now in a sorry state fourteen years after his death.

So last week it all began with a firm called Colwall Stone who came to do not only the stonework but also some other tough jobs; removing old fencing and replacing with something different, as well as demolishing and removing the summerhouse, replacing it with a stone patio.

This firm does beautiful precise work with stone, but here they have been asked also to create a rustic bridge suitable for Hobbits, to incorporate a fairy door into a dry-stone wall, to make a stepping-stone path from the bridge to the new patio. And to be completely fair, they not only picked up my ideas but they ran with them, suggesting and finding the rustic materials for the bridge, and also finding a stone arrow to point to where the new family-and-friends dining table will be (so that none of the grandchildren will get lost in the bamboo jungle). They have also been asked (not to say nagged) about respecting some of the planting, and one team member is learning rather more than he wants to know about alpines. I hope the regular deliveries of tea, coffee, biscuits and occasional cake help. It's small return for all the cheerful consideration and extra care that is given.

There's more work to go, but I am so encouraged by the results so far that I can look forward to all the planting work to be done as my part. I'm so thankful that I had the time to sort out what I actually needed to do, and that I've found a team who can do it, no matter how eccentric it may seem. All it needs now is family and friends to come and enjoy it.

A Cat's Tale.

 Not everyone wants to be saved from their current life-style. Some could be quite well adjusted to living in a manner that others may think is not ideal for their best physical or (heaven help us) mental health. Hoarders, for instance. Feral cats for another instance.

This is not a portrait of the cat that has recently been moved into my neighbourhood. He is reluctant to pose for a portrait during his very frequent visits to my garden, despite the fact that he's spending so much time here. He glowers through the windows at me as he scampers past on his way to the killing fields at the bottom of the garden. If he had fingers I'm sure he would raise a couple of them in my direction. However, I think the portrait sort-of sums him up, a shifty-looking loner. I hope I'm not being too hard in my judgements, but if I am it's because I have good reason.

He's a townie, a street-wise city cat; a thieving, murderous cat.  Or at least he was until he was rescued by a well-intentioned neighbour. He's oldish, sexually active, an enthusiastic hunter, a fighter and has probably been fed by numerous other well-intentioned people in the city centre, such as those very kind ladies (usually) from the Cats' Protection League. Or he's a skilled scavenger. Or possibly he knows about cat-flaps and how to get through them when they are left unattended. Or all of these in combination. But he's survived independently, lived a busy life, may well have numerous children of all sorts of sizes and ages.

But now he's been brought to live here, alongside many other cats who have their own devoted owners and their own cat-flaps which open and close in conjunction with their own microchipped shoulders. Not much chance of a nifty raid on someone else's supper dish. Not even much chance of a dustbin raid during the night. Everyone has those massive wheelie-bins, and if a cat falls into one of those he won't get out again. I expect he knows that. Even less chance of a quickie with a local girl. The local girls have their flaps locked in the early evenings. They stay at home, watching television programmes about wild-life, or just sleeping comfortably on  a cushion or a lap while being stroked. Not even the chance of a fight. The local boys don't go out after dark either. They have all met with the local Vet.

During the day he can run across the road, causing vehicles to swerve, and go hunting in a garden full  of dear little fluttering birds. Some of them can hardly fly and are just a mouthful. There are all sorts of birds that he won't have met in the town-centre. There are great hiding places, and easy pickings. The only problem is that he now knows there's a rather fearsome white-haired old lady who's recently spent about £40 on bird-food and who is very much against the continuation of massacre.

What he doesn't know, and what the white-haired old lady knows is that he has an appointment with the Vet coming up soon.

Ha! 

P.S: He's had his treatment from the Vet and is recovering in his new home. It seems that he's realised his new home could have benefits, because he hasn't been seen in my garden since Operation Day. My neighbour says he (the cat) is completely different. The birds and I wait and see.

P.P.S. Oh no he's not!

Letter to a Fairly New Grandson.

 

Dear Smallest Grandson,

Such good news!

You arrived in England, coping well with a long drive into Germany and a shorter flight across to London and have stayed on for a holiday. You have met your English Granny, your Uncle and Aunt, your two cousins and even a few of your parents' friends. It has been a very special time for us all, and I think it has been for you, too.

I hope you will have some memories of it because your parents managed to organise such a lovely location for our meeting (and went through all the necessary isolation and testing processes needed for travel). You did it, they did it, we all did it. Even the weather was kind to us.

So you have met us all, not as the baby we've seen on Skype, but as a walking, very aware, fully interactive toddler, full of curiosity and specific interests.

Music! Yes! (A specific musical toy handed on from your cousins which has been used an awful lot.)   Birds! Oh yes! Any birds, large or small, anywhere. Good on water, good on grass, good zooming about overhead, good but a bit frustrating to chase. Food! Usually enjoyable, always interesting at so many levels (literally; on the plate, on the floor, on the face and hands but being manipulated with increasing skill into the mouth). Your Daddy's and Uncle's 40 year-old toys; I'm so glad I have an attic large enough to store the best for you and your cousins. (Well done, Fisher Price.) Textures, especially the giant bear called Ollie Gark, and the sheep-skin rug that your cousins think is a polar bear.

                                       (And you've had a smart London haircut since this photo was taken!)

You enjoy your bed, too. Even an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar place. You settle into it at around 7p.m and sleep, peacefully sleep for nearly twelve hours. What a wonderfully calm and happy toddler.

You came, you saw and you certainly conquered, Little One,

With lots of love from Granny.