A game in two

We are in the Mourne mountains for a few days over half-term. Weather-wise today has definitely been a game in two halves! I have only once in my life been as wet in the hills as we all got today. And that first time was a New Year's Day, not the middle of pretend Spring!

Matt and I turned back and let the tallest and the youngest plough on for a spot of caving. And then as soon as we parted ways, the sun came out to stay!

I thought I'd be here until Wednesday which would give me time to wash and dry all my walking gear before heading to Scotland to stay with two friends, but then a weather warning of strong winds was published and all my outgoing plans fell into disarray.

So in fact I leave tomorrow to fly to an airport still quite far from where I want to be, to catch a train to a town closer to where I want to be, to catch another train to a smaller town much closer to where I want to be, and there, hopefully, will be a friendly face to gather me up!

This will be my first time in an airplane since these times of plague, and Northern Ireland is lifting all its restrictions tomorrow. For a convert to reclusivity, this is a stretch. Thus far x

 

A weekend

Prince Charming and I had breakfast together this morning (it was still Saturday when I started typing this!) to the sound of Radio 4 while our mostly adult children slept on. It was the start of a good day. When boys emerged, one studied and t'other helped me clear childhood clutter toys. In my head there will be one room completely cleared and completely cleaned each 2022 month. Forward, I suppose, but methinks this first room is going to be greedy for some February!

Not all 'in my head' things come to pass. In a new Meadowplace order, we are realising that these mostly adult children of ours have minds of their own which must be respected. So the blast to the coast after lunch was just the two of us. This is recently new, and we are adjusting! We did nonetheless love breathing in the last of the daylight all the way from Ballintoy to White Park Bay and back. It's not so far, but being in week 4 of a six week ankle recovery time, it's far enough! It transpired over Christmas that we have four front steps and not three. Who knew?

And here is some progress thus far. The sock was doing well until it became clear that I couldn't really go on knitting joyful rounds indefinitely. So now it's stalling. Fortitude needed for the next bit, or just some concentration. Both of which sound like a lot of effort! The second panel of Mum's tree blanket is nearly finished, though. Size 4 clogs for scale. The book is a proof copy of Francis Hagan's latest novel. FH is novelist and poet, psychotherapist and local English teacher... in the school where I work! Leaving for America is a poignant and increasingly teasing tale, written with Shakespearean scope and beauty. I have to read it very slowly. And this chromebook is my chromebook, to paraphrase the Bard himself.

 Can I tell you about the bags? The red one is A4 size which is perfect for the pattern for Trees. It was bought for its size at a craft fair that I must have gone to with my mother in 2002. I only know this because I got it to keep my first antenatal notes in. It hadn't been used since 2004 when it became redundant after the second now mostly adult boy was born.

The little white one, book-sized but also perfect for sock-things, was bought in July 2019 in a gorgeous bookshop in Germany, as you might have guessed. That was our last time out of a UK country (except for the quick drive across The Border that I had to do last Saturday - which was another quite nice day). We were on holiday with three friends and stayed in a centuries old watermill. One of the friends is a German teacher, and she did translate the Nietsche for me. I can't quite remember it now, but maybe you'll work it out!

I do hope that you might be having  a lovely forward-looking weekend, full of breath and joy in whatever makes you smile. I hope she won't mind me quoting it but the hardest working woman I know, who has an enormous heart full of big pain-won faith, said this, crowning my good day, forward...right out the door, to the barn with prayers God will overwhelm you with His blessings this year. This entire year. XO

Home in a time of Covid

I'm trying to work out how many months I'd need to go back to get to a time when I wouldn't believe that I'd come home from school one day to pick up the mask cut-outs and get them all sewn up, like some bizarre pandemic version of the Elves and the Shoemaker. Except that there's only me, as presumably the elves would be not very good at self-isolating. This time last year I was also thinking about The Elves and the Shoemaker, but we're definitely into Grimm days now, and not the Ladybird book version. I think it would be only three or four months ago. Back when I thought hoped that Lockdown could last forever! 

I'm using the rest of the Black Watch material to make more masks. My father was very pleased with his yesterday, although he's unlikely to be going anywhere to need it! The fabric looks quite light in today's afternoon sun, but it's actually extremely dark and thus acceptable to the men of my house. Aren't we all very particular about the masks we'll wear, or indeed not wear? They really do seem to be this year's latest fashion accessory. Fat quarters are taking on a whole new role!

Having the big table turned into a mask production line made me think about what home is like now, especially with three of us back in our two schools. Shoes and blazers stay strictly at the front door where we're greeted by a little tomte of hope that a friend made for my birthday in the summer. He tries to be a cheerful little soul. I wonder what conversations he has with the plague doctor though. Do they argue? I do hope not. I bought the little mask many many years ago in Venice. I was on a three city tour of Italy with my brother, zipping between destinations in first class train carriages and glorious heat. It all seems so long ago, not just because it was in fact decades ago, but also it seems now something from The Olden Days when people got on planes and went places! 

Admittedly we did enjoy five days canoeing on and swimming in Lough Erne, in Northern's Ireland's lake county of Fermanagh, in July; and a week walking and climbing in our Mourne mountains in August. So, there are no complaints here about staying home. It is just interesting, isn't it, how quickly life, and our expectations of it, have changed? I know we'll all have either subtly or even dramatically different opinions about that, but here in the Meadowplace, we're happy to keep it small.

I follow a local potter on farcebook - Rachel Julca. During Lockdown she made batches of these pendants. I bought a few for friends who had Lockdown birthdays and for the women with whom I was, and still am, messaging and calling to extend mutual love and support. Two of us were saying just this week, as we discussed whether or not we'd be going physically back to church this month, that we have never once felt devoid of teaching or fellowship over the last six months, and that indeed we have felt more a part of the body of the church in these last few months than in these last few years. I think we have made more of an effort to cleave to each other, as we have cleaved to the faithful loving kindness of God. I'm keeping my pendant up in the kitchen until the Christmas tree goes up, and then it can hang there with all the other keepsake memories that come out to tell their stories at each year's end. 

And really, apart from these few things, inside the house there's not much changed. It is wonderful to come home from school in the afternoon to decontaminate and decompress. Maybe that's the biggest difference now: school clothes come off, masks go into the washing machine, everyone gets scrubbed, and we gather round a table for tea and tales. We are definitely taking more deliberate time to be together and breathe - breathe easily and breathe healthily. I do most sincerely hope that we will all be able to do the same through the next months of These Strange Times, esteemed blogging friends. Thus far has the Lord helped us, Blogland; thus far x

First weekend in September

Here is the Hurricane Tree. It's right outside the kitchen window, and above it's outside Mattman's bedroom window which is where we stood ? years ago when Hurricane Ophelia blew through, relatively kindly as it turned out. We thought we could track the strength of the storm by how bare the tree would get hour by hour. It didn't! So here is the tree in the first weekend of September. I imagine month by month bare is exactly what it will get. And I am really very happy to see the first few orange leaves and to feel that different coolness in the air and to hear the crisper rustling in the branches that whispers Autumn. Is it too early to get the pumpkins out?

I'm also very very very happy that my little pear tree has THREE pears this year. It has only ever had one pear per year, and that only twice. So this is a rich harvest indeed. I am very excited. I am less excited about the potential broccoli harvest. Mattman and I joined the home produce enthusiasm over Lockdown, but I have to admit that growing food has never been my success, and if we get one head of skinny broccoli, we will count ourselves lucky indeed.

And because of a blessing in my school's timetabling on Friday, Prince Charming and I got a walk all to ourselves on Friday, and it was sublime. A bright blue sky sort of a day with coast and tides and blackberries and muddy paths and languid cows and fields of corn. It was good to be right out of the city, after two weeks back in school with masks and visors and a circuitous one-way system, and to walk far and wide with lungs full of clean and healthy air.

And so, fine blogland folk, blessings on your September. Here's what I'll be at:

What I'm reading: Psalms; Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo; Lilies for Gretchen, finally.

What I'm making: a tartan mask for my Scotland loving about to be 80 years of age father; Cushla's Comfort, a blanket in a secret colour; the Hookery Shawl, which only advances by six rows a week at my Hookery Crochet group which has been meeting in Zoom for six months now.

What I'm doing: getting used to us all being back at school (see Psalm 91); still thinking about signing up for an online course, deadline this Thursday; outdoor swimming in Belfast Lough with Jordanstown Lough Swimmers, and wondering if I can keep that up into October...

Happy Autumn  (let's all be like trees flourishing in the house of the Lord, whether we're back there physically or not, and whether they grow out of our heads or not) x

 

Donna and Mags do afternoon tea #1

 Everybody needs a partner in crime, metaphorically speaking. I realise that I am very blessed to have many co-conspirators, and here is one the best! Donna and I met when our older boys were great friends at the start of primary school, and here we still are: deciding to work our way through 2020 with a tour of local afternoon teas. Sandra, I don't think we'll top your Titanic experience, but we'll have a good go!

On Saturday, we braved the elements and headed slightly north of our little suburb to Carrickfergus. The most important thing you can do in Carrickfergus is visit what is possibly the UK's finest example of a Norman Castle. Apparently the quirkiest thing to do in Carrickfergus is visit the old gas works museum, but I've not done that... yet. We, however, headed to the Loughshore Hotel which is a huge monstrosity of a place on the outskirts of the town, beside a much nicer little M&S food hall. We were hoping not to judge this book by ts cover.

The food was lovely. Tiny warm quiches that were delicious. Sandwiches with generous, if extremely plain fillings, and very small scones. My appreciation is in descending order.

The little scones were delicious, and there was certainly an enormous amount of cream available, but I think that they should have had full sized, adult scones, given that the sandwiches were just a tad uninspiring. What was great, however, was the amount of fresh strawberries.Overall the bottom layer of a savoury course was a bit too meagre for me. We booked for 2pm, and my morning bowl of porridge was well digested by then, so I would have liked a slightly more substantial "real" food offering before devouring the desserts!  

The toffee profiterole didn't last long enough to be photographed, but here are the other desserts. Possibly defrosted and therefore a bit too soft? Not the macarons though; they were wonderful, as macarons always are. Then there was a top layer of too many chocolates. Perhaps you feel that there can never be too many chocolates. It is a standing joke in this house (and my place of work) that I don't like chocolate. I don't, particularly. Certainly by the time we had eaten absolutely everything (including all the chocolates), I did feel that I had overdosed on sugar, but would still have been able to eat something tasty and filling and scone-like, with some of that left-over cream.

What put me off the most though, was indeed the setting. There is a very interesting frieze of Belfast in the entrance hall, but the tea itself was served in the main restaurant. This felt a bit odd, because lots of families were finishing their carvery lunches, and when they had all been and gone, we were left with the good folk clearing away counters and dishes. We did feel out of place. We moved out to the seating area at the front of the hotel with our tea and glasses of fizz, and there was much more of a relaxed atmosphere there. We could even watch a lovely wedding unfold!

Lessons learned:

Brush your hair before letting anyone take your picture.

£15 is very good value when it includes a glass of fizz, but you can't drink the fizz if you're driving so look for something that might cost the same, without the fizz, and give you more on the cake stand.

Look for somewhere that can let you sit in a nice, relaxed coffee area, or somewhere with a nice view from the window, or plants.

And finally, marks out of ten? Well, Donna would have gone to 6 but I think I might stop at 5. It was super fun being out with a good friend, with hours to sit and catch up, and the food was lovely. They did also very happily refill my pot of peppermint tea. I think however that the setting could have been made nicer, and I am looking forward to more interesting sandwiches and bigger scones next time. Donna, diaries out...

Reading=hibernation

It's definitely still Winter here in the Frozen North, though I am bizarrely insulated from the cold most days by this particular chapter of my life that seems to come with built in, if somewhat erratic, central heating. However, in the afternoon there is a glorious hour or so of full sunlight, with no shadow of dusk. So, with the resolutely cheerful flowers that someone gave me on Sunday and the first ever St Brigid's cross I've made myself, I look forward to Spring!

So far this year I've finished three books and started a fourth. I suppose that, having absolutely nothing else to share with Blogland, I could talk about that! Bedtime reading snuggled deep down under my quilt listening to stormy winds outside is as close to hibernation as I'll get just now!

 I am going to buy everyone on my list "Christmas Days" for Christmas next year. It's a beautiful collection: a story and a recipe with an anecdote for every one of the twelve days of Christmas. The perfect gift! The stories are appropriately spooky and explore Christmas from lots of quirky perspectives. Lots of twists and turns. Winterson is so warm and gentle and generous and honest throughout, especially about her life with her family, wife and friends.

 I didn't mean to spend January with short stories, but I'd bought Prince Charming Tom Hanks' collection for Christmas because I'd been wanting to read it for ages and filling PC's Christmas stocking seemed a good excuse at the time. Obviously PC saw through it not immediately but certainly as soon as I spent two weeks guffawing through it when he was trying to get to sleep. (Note to self: don't buy PC "Christmas Days".) This book is genius. There really is a typewriter in every story: it's like an erudite Where's Wally. The stories are brilliant, just brilliant. Mostly unconnected, but there is a group of four friends who do pop up throughout with another instalment of their misadventures. I might like the space one best, or the girl typing at the window...

Now, "Olive Kitteridge" is not, I think, a collection of short stories in the purest sense. It is the coherent story of one place, and though it took me a while to work out why she claims the book's title, it is the story of Olive Kitteridge. But Olive is a bit like the typewriters in Uncommon Type, isn't she? Sometimes the chapters are all hers, but mostly she appears in the background to a greater or lesser degree depending on how well the chapter's protagonist knew her. It's a very clever book. I loved her husband. I was terribly disturbed by her. She made me fear for my future relationship with my sons. She made me fear for me. This was a book that seemed to be gentle, but was in fact harrowing.

And just now I'm re-reading la Peste; what else could you read during this Coronavirus? Here is a book that seems to be harrowing, but is in fact gentle. That's why I love Camus. I love his love of life, his enjoyment of the simple things, his respect for people and his faith in them. My Masters dissertation was about "le Christ de Camus", because of his respect for faith and those who chose it. The most poignant thing, thus far, in la Peste is the sadness of separation for those whose loved ones are outside the quarantine. I was shocked that when I wrote about it nearly twenty years ago I didn't actually twig that the plague in the book symbolises Nazism and its taking of Paris, where Camus was stranded when France fell. Not that shocked actually; my preparation for that dissertation was nothing if not desultory!

 By the way, did you know that St Brigid is buried with Columcille and Patrick here on the hill beside the cathedral in Downpatrick? This is the big stone that marks their grave. It's a very lovely spot, looking out to the Mourne Mountains, with a bench just behind the camera where you can sit and think awhile. Brigid apparently wove her cross from reeds that she plucked as she sat telling a dying Irish chieftain about Jesus. He came to faith, and her cross is still made on 1st February all over Ireland as people look forward to Spring. Until then, I'll be hibernating and reading!

FoolsFest

Ages and ages ago we used to take small boys into Belfast every May Day weekend to watch the Festival of Fools. I'm sure I've blogged it before. Street performers doing hilariously and often terrifyingly insane things in every little square around the town. Then strawberries grew up, and expressed opinions. Years passed!

Last weekend, however, we deemed ourselves not quite too cool for a fool, and in we went again! Hoorah. There were fools; there was hilarity; there were tricks; there was food in very trendy watering holes.

Two of the acts we saw were in the square opposite St Anne's Cathedral, which had obviously allowed itself to be filled up with a bit of foolishness for the duration.(1 Corinthians 1:25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.)

Nonetheless I must confess that to see pictures of fools you'll need to insta Jojo, if that is indeed a thing. My camera phone died because I was taking so many photos of the ground in Writers' Square. It will come as no surprise whatsoever to you to learn that the ground in Writers' Square is covered, absolutely covered, in quotes from Northern Irish writers. Had I made this connection? Ever at all? Hey ho no nonny nonny.  Who wrote the poem in the first shot? Answers on a virtual postcard!





Low Sunday and a book plug

On farcebook I've just seen an excerpt from "A Few Green Leaves" by Barbara Pym where it says that the Sunday after Easter is called Low Sunday. Is this indeed true? It must be because we're all going back to work and school tomorrow...


I've had a lovely week off. The strawberries have been revising hard, but we determined everyday to do something out and about. We cycled into town, had lunch on ancient Navan, and marvelled at Tim Peake's Soyuz. And of course Mattman turned sixteen. 16!

I read two great books. I would have read three if I could make any decent progress whatsoever with Michelle Obama's "Becoming". I can manage a chapter a night, sometimes. I'm really not a fan of autobiographies, except for Stephen Fry's "Moab is my Washpot". They must be appalling to write. How could you avoid dry lists, unless you're Stephen Fry?

Anne Enright's "The Green Road" is brilliant. Told from the perspectives of an awful Irish mother, her four children, and a mysterious other who appears intriguingly in the narration at certain baffling points, it impels you to find yourself in the dynamic. I fear the characteristics of the bi-polar mother. The offspring of this banshee most certainly do not arise and call her blessed. On the other hand...


#31blessed is a very recent, self-published little book of which you will only have heard if you're a farcebook friend. I am biased but I think that it is brilliant too. It's been produced as a fundraising project for a friend of ours who works with the Christian organisation UCCF. Sophie supports Christian students' groups in Liverpool and Chester, and encourages them in their outreach. But in and of itself the book is a collection of what 31 women think about the Proverbs 31 Woman.

My friend, Karen, and I are deeply grateful to everyone who contributed, not least the five of you who gave us beautiful reflections. I'm going to blog-thank you properly tomorrow! In the meantime, if you'd like to have a look, here is the link x

Ubi sunt?

 We went to see a specially commissioned Game of Thrones tapestry at the Museum just before Hallowe'en. It stands in tribute to the contribution made by the series to the Northern Ireland economy! From the Stones and Thrones-like bus tours to the Dark Hedges and Giant's Causeway to Castle Ward's becloaked archers, this little country has made a serious amount of money from books and TV far too graphic for me to encounter beyond marvelling at the gory tapestry scenes! Right now though, it's not so much that winter is coming, because winter is well and truly here. Cold!

 It was on one level quite the usual autumn here in the Meadowplace. Pumpkins, berries, cosy times. Finding that someone had raised an Ebenezer long ago in their home, as I endeavour badly to do here! There have been exceptional moments too- the small matter of a little hurricane for one. On that other level of things outside the norm, I was so glad to read MK's recent post about how the reality behind Blogland can bely its pictures. It's been a tough season here in many respects. When I walk out of our friends' new house to see that old Ebenezer sign it does me good to remember that thus far God has indeed helped us. I pray that He is helping you too x

 I finished an anthology of Emily Dickinson last week. My! That is a hard read. Possibly one of my hardest. I did, however, love the idea of ubi sunt literature. Writing that voices our questions over where the values of the past are, where the things that we have lost are. This articulated for me all my approaching fifty angst- where are the things that I had/did/aspired to/achieved? Then, thankfully, I had a little Epiphany.  What if I asked not,"Where are?" but, "What now?" What if I did do not very much with my education, my thin body, my opportunities to do this, that and the other? What now? What next?

Yesterday Mattman and I climbed one of our local hills. He wanted to keep on going and walk down the other side. I think he could have walked all day. My forward-facing teenage man and a clear, cold November dusk-coming sky. Not so much ubi sunt, as ubi ergo!

Raising Ebenezers

I have blogged about this little sculpture before. It is "Community" by Sonja Landweer, and it is my very favourite piece in the whole of the wonderfully wonderful Ulster Museum. I have always loved the diverse mounds and pillars and surfaces, all of us in all our shapes and sizes, how we look and how we feel.

 We spent an evening in the Museum one Friday night last month. Such a hoot. It was open for one of Belfast's Real Sketchy events, where you roll in and wander, with a drink in your hand, live music in your ears, and sketching any of their treasures as you go!

 It was planned to coincide with the Museum's hosting of the Lines of Thought exhibition- sketches of masters from Michaelangelo (in whose fat belly this middle-aged and spreading woman found much solace) to Picasso. The Barbara Hepworth is all ours, but it was gorgeously intimate to be there after hours, able to look and consider, though still not touch!

 Some people took it very seriously. This is Colin Murphy, a Northern Irish comedian we laugh over when we watch the Blame Game on BBC1. He really didn't want to be disturbed. I'm afraid I did. Couldn't resist. I don't get out much.

This is our friend, the prof, who doesn't wear shoes inside. Ever. Anywhere. When we first met him, and his fabulous wife, in church, we presumed it was a standing on holy ground thing. It's not. He just doesn't do shoes unless absolutely necessary. Darlings! It was just his sort of night.

Other people didn't take it quite so seriously. However, what I have since appreciated about Prince Charming's artistic output has become something very significant. PC downloaded an app that allows you to photograph something, and then turn it into your own piece of art. Very David Hockney. Very now. Darlings.

And so here is Landweer's community re-imagined a la PC. (That's a very PC word- apparently re-imagined is an old hymn given a modern twist.) And what I keep thinking about now, is how perfectly it illustrates what is increasingly for me a very, very fundamental truth. I Samuel 7:12. "Thus far has the Lord helped us." It's the story of Samuel experiencing the loud thunder of the Lord's deliverance, and setting up a stone, raising an Ebenezer, as a visual reminder that time and time again God deals with the details of our lives, the fights, the struggles, the worries, the times. I know that we know this, but I am not good at remembering this. I love the notion of having visual reminders in the landscape that say to this generation and the next- thus far has the Lord helped us.

So, until I can get some big rocks into the garden, I'm sticking with PC's Landweer!